Gold Promise

by Ninie Hammon

  "The miners in Lord of the Rings were dwarves — there's a reason for that," he'd said.

  She couldn't think of Brice. Not now.

  Looking around, she tried to remember why they'd hollowed out this open space in front of the shafts, made it a cave with a ten-foot ceiling stretching across the whole face. But either the guys hadn't explained that part or she hadn't been listening. She had been listening when T.J.'d placed the string off his coat on Dobbs's model, though, and there in the center shaft — Main Street! — was the belt line that hauled out the coal, extending twenty feet out into the open space. When the mine closed, the miners must have just flipped a switch to turn off the conveyor belt and walked out — because there was coal still loaded on the belt bound for the front of the mine.

  A piece of equipment with a shovel on the end was sticking out the nearest shaft and Bailey assumed it was the scoop the machine used to scoop up coal and pieces of the roof when it caved in, and there was a continuous miner around somewhere, she supposed, since it was the piece of equipment that cut into the coal. It wasn't here in the hollowed-out space, which was empty, except for instruments of some kind on a post on the wall opposite the elevator. Methane meters, she supposed, about as reliable as an alimony check.

  Bailey had to admit this was the perfect place to … to do whatever you wanted to do. Sound would not even carry up into the cave above. Whatever happened here … no one would ever know.

  Hollywood crossed to them when the elevator door opened and took the two duffle bags they carried. Jacko shoved Bailey out the door and she stumbled to the ground and remained there. He looked at the man who'd ridden shotgun in the van, Vinny, the ugly, chinless wonder.

  "Go back up and keep an eye on the car and van."

  As Vinny went up in the elevator, Jacko instructed the other men to "get the barrels set up," and they arranged the barrels along the back wall and pried off the lids. From the duffle bags, they retrieved bags of someth—

  Bailey understood and horror stole her breath.

  Jacko caught her looking at the barrels.

  "We might as well get started — with me asking questions and you answering them." He crossed in two steps to where Bailey sat on the ground, yanked her to her feet and grabbed her by the neck with one hand.

  "Tell me … what do you think I'm going to do with these barrels?"

  She could barely speak with his clenching fingers around her throat, but she managed to croak, "You brought them to … put the bodies in."

  "And whose bodies would those be?"

  Bailey nodded toward the girls, who had been dropped in heaps on the floor.

  "Their bodies."

  "And what will happen to the bodies?" He didn't wait for her to answer, just indicated the sacks the men were opening. "Plop, plop, fizz, fizz. In a week, there will be nothing left in these barrels you couldn't pour down your sink without stopping up your drain."

  The girls cried out, and one girl, who had hair as black as the coal in the walls of the mine, began to sob, big gulping sobs like an inconsolable child. Jeni looked shocked and afraid. But she wasn't surprised. Perhaps she hadn't shared her suspicions with the other girls, but it was clear she had known all along that they would not leave the mine alive.

  "And who else's body will be turning to mush very, very soon?" he prompted.

  "Mine."

  The crying of the girl obviously annoyed him. He said nothing, just gestured toward her with his chin and the red-haired black man stopped opening the sacks of whatever the chemical was — not simple lime, she didn't think, sodium hydroxide maybe — and advanced on her. She saw him coming and stifled her tears, almost choking on the effort. The Beast let go of Bailey's throat and she staggered backward, almost tripped over the pile of coal at the end of the conveyor belt but didn't fall. Her heart was pounding, her vision pulsing with each beat and she felt lightheaded. Her hands went to her throat and she coughed.

  "It was a stroke of good fortune for your friends that you … wandered away from the herd."

  Bailey got the implication — they'd planned to take her by force. Her shock must have shown on her face.

  "What, you don't think I could have killed the big sheriff and the other buffoons?" He scoffed. "They sit there so complacent, believe they are safe. They are prey." He gestured toward the girls, lying where they'd been dumped on the floor. "Prey! And prey is always stupid. A single wolf can take a whole herd of sheep. They are many, he is one. But they are too stupid to join together and fight so he kills them all."

  Bailey looked around the room, searching for any way she could take her own life before he had a chance. Any way to inflict a head injury. But there was nothing. The chunks of coal lying about were jagged, with sharp edges, like the smaller pieces that had cut into their hands and knees when she was dragged out of the car. But she doubted she could grab one and clock herself in the head with sufficient force to dislodge Oscar to do his job.

  The Beast stepped up in front of the girls and made a speech.

  "I have not been at all satisfied with your job performance." He stopped and smiled wickedly. "Oh, I don't mean your performance with your customers. From the comments I have heard, you have done a remarkably good job satisfying them, particularly for amateurs at the trade. But being an amateur, not a professional, was what they were willing to pay so dearly for."

  He began to pace, affecting a professorial tone, as if lecturing a group of students who had done particularly poorly on the midterm exam.

  "But in other areas, you have not lived up to my expectations."

  He whirled around to face them so fast it was startling.

  "One of you," he paused, then whispered the words for effect, "has a loose tongue."

  He continued in a normal voice, shaking his index finger at them. "You cannot say you did not know. You were warned. The most important rule? Keep our business our business." He paused, looked each girl in the eye, his gaze lingering before he moved on to the next. "But one of you, or perhaps all of you — that remains to be seen — have broken the rule. Now you will pay."

  It was clear that he delighted in the girls' terror, thrived on it. His was, indeed, calculated intimidation. He had kept the girls in line with the threat of his retribution, and now he was very much enjoying the chance to make good on his threat.

  "I have invested enormous time, effort and spared no expense to make you profitable commodities. But I am first and foremost a businessman, and a good businessman must learn from past mistakes. Obviously, I did not impress upon you in sufficiently forceful terms that there was a penalty for disobedience. I will not make that mistake with the next group of girls."

  He smiled the snake's smile. In this light, his eyes could have been any color or no color at all. They were just black holes under his eyebrows, desolate wells in the lonely depths of which something small and feral had drowned.

  "So I am going to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak." He turned back toward Bailey. "No, three birds. First, I will make of you such an example that the next group of girls fortunate enough to take your places will be sufficiently impressed with the consequences of transgressions that they will keep their mouths tightly shut."

  He had been pacing and he turned back the way he'd come with almost military precision.

  "Two, in the process of making you an example, I will find out which one of you it was whose loose lips got all of you into such terrible, terrible trouble." He focused his gaze on Bailey. "When you see what is in store for you if you are not honest with me, you will be anxious to give me all the information I require."

  He turned back toward the barrels.

  "We all agree that you are stupid girls, yes?" He seemed to be waiting for a reply, so some of the girls nodded. None dared speak. "But even stupid girls must be looking at these barrels and wondering — how does he intend to fit the bodies of eight dead girls into only three small barrels?"

  At the words "dead girls," the black-haired girl bu
rst into sobbing again. Two of the others followed suit, crying and shaking their heads, their eyes and faces pleading, their voices muffled by the duct tape across their mouths.

  He walked to the duffel bag Bailey had carried down in the elevator for him. It was fastened shut with Velcro and the sound of the pieces separating set Bailey's teeth on edge. Then he reached into the bag and pulled out what Bailey had guessed was in there.

  A chainsaw.

  As soon as the girls saw it, they began to scream and cry in earnest.

  The Beast rumbled, "Quiet!" and the volume decreased, but the girls were now past the point that they were capable of controlling their tears.

  "I will not be jamming bodies into the barrels. Just pieces of bodies."

  He held the chainsaw up in front of their faces.

  "Messy work, yes." He smiled. "But we—" he gestured at the other men "—are prepared."

  Jacko's performance had commanded the rabid attention of all the girls, and they'd not noticed what the other men had been doing. Now they turned as one to look.

  The man called Sandy, who had helped Jacko snatch Bailey out of her back yard — the one with white hair and a flat head — had put on coveralls.

  Hollywood had taken out his phone and held it in front of him.

  Nick, the red-haired black man, merely stood by Jacko's side. The two of them would be the muscle.

  The smile never left Jacko's face as he wrapped up his speech. It hung there, an old rug left on a clothesline.

  "We will be making a … recruitment video." He nodded at Hollywood. Then he turned his gaze on Jeni. "As I promised, you will be the star."

  The smile finally drained off his face. Without it, his features were all sharp angles. His soul sat there, naked and proud. A predator.

  "You serve as an example to future girls, a word-picture of the price of disobedience. You will give of yourselves totally to the lesson I am teaching. With this," he held up the saw, "you will be cut into pieces — a hand, an arm, a leg — while you are pleading with me for a mercy that I will unfortunately be unable to show."

  Bailey felt the room sway around her. The edges of her vision grayed out and blackness threatened to slam in from all sides and take her. But she remained conscious, though the man's voice, shouting above the girls' hysterical crying, seemed to come from a long way off.

  "You. Will. Be. Silent!" It was the roar of an angry lion. "Or you will go first!"

  The screaming cut off like water from a turned-off spigot. He dropped the next words into the ocean of dark silence.

  "That's better."

  Holding the handle of the chainsaw in his left hand, he took hold of the pull chain. One yank and the motor would spring to life.

  A voice suddenly came from out of the darkness of the tunnels that opened into the hollowed-out area where they stood. It was impossible to tell which tunnel, since sound bounced around like a ball in a racquetball court in the enclosed rock-walled space.

  "I wouldn't do that if I were you," the voice said.

  It was T.J.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Though T.J. had believed he and Dobbs ought to check out the Last Hope Ollie Mine, he hadn't never seriously considered the possibility that it really was where the men was takin' the girls and Bailey. He'd believed the better interpretation of the flashes of images Bailey had seen through the eyes of girls being transported in the van was that the kidnappers were making for a cavern off North West Ohio Route 7.

  Even Dobbs, whose idea it'd been to go to the mine to look for 'em in the first place, was stunned speechless when they rounded the last curve and seen light ahead. Dobbs had slowed down then, drove past the entrance to Last Hope Ollie #1 carved out of the back of a cave. A car and a van was parked there, inside the fence, which meant somebody'd given them a key. No one was in sight. The men had already taken their captives into the mine.

  Dobbs had looked at T.J., his eyes open too wide, and T.J.'s heart'd locked up in his chest. He'd learned a phrase in the military — doin' the necessary — the Marine Corps way of sayin' soldiers had to set aside their feelings to do whatever it was the mission required. T.J. had to concentrate on doin' the necessary now. There was no help coming. They couldn't summon law enforcement. Even if they could get cell coverage — which in this hollow wasn't likely — there wasn't nobody to summon. Brice and the troops were in Ohio. T.J. had texted Brice as they were leaving Bailey's house, told him their take on the mysterious sign. Once Brice came up with a handful of nothing in Ohio, he'd come blazing back into West Virginia 10-60 — lights and siren. But he couldn't possibly get here before whatever was going to happen was long done.

  No, T.J. and Dobbs was on the hook for this one. They was all the hope the captives had and the soldier in T.J. recognized dispassionately that the flame of that hope was a flickerin' candle on a dark, stormy sea.

  The man with the skull tattoo had at least one, maybe two men with him in the car. Added to two or three men in the van, they were facing at least four, maybe as many as eight armed, trained assassins. Those men had brought the teenagers to this secluded spot so no one could hear the girls' screams when they were murdered. The one Poli'd called the Beast would torture Bailey until she gave him a believable explanation for why she'd warned Poli, and since she had no explanation he'd believe, she would suffer a slow, painful, brutal death.

  He and Dobbs were all that stood between her and that fate.

  T.J. had to come up with a plan. Fast.

  They were armed, had stopped by T.J.'s and picked up weapons. They could hide in the woods and capture the unsuspecting men when they came out of the mine. Or they could — and T.J. would — simply drop the men where they stood, without warning, firing out of the darkness before they had a chance to respond. He'd likely get most of them, and the ones he didn't would be returning fire at an invisible enemy. Even with the automatic weapons he was sure they were packing, T.J. would have the advantage.

  But if they waited until the men come out of the mine, all the captives would be dead.

  Comin' at 'em from inside the mine, T.J. would still have the advantage of surprise, could get the drop on 'em while remaining in the darkness. But he had no illusions about his ability to capture that many armed assailants. Sure's God made little green apples, one of 'em would go for a gun, and the resulting gunfight would be lethal in such an enclosed space. With bullets ricocheting off the walls, ceiling and floor — automatic gunfire — the captives stood little chance of survival. If he simply opened fire on the kidnappers without warning, he'd have to drop maybe half a dozen men with one shot each. Not likely. And they'd almost certainly be hostages in the line of fire, anyway.

  Dobbs pulled over to the side of the road about a quarter of a mile past the mine. He said nothing, just waited.

  "Get out," T.J. told him. "I want you to go back there and disable those two vehicles, any way you can. Take whatever you need out of the toolbox."

  Dobbs obediently got out from behind the wheel of his Jeep and began to dig around in the toolbox on the floorboard in front of the back seat in the extended cab.

  "Take the gun." T.J. was trained to use all the weapons they had brought, but Dobbs'd never fired anything more powerful than a deer rifle. But he was a crack shot with it.

  "Any of them men come out of that mine … shoot him."

  Dobbs held his stare for a moment, then nodded. He was no a soldier, but T.J. knew he'd drop any man he got in his sights.

  Without a word, Dobbs picked up the gun and tools and headed back down the road in the darkness.

  T.J. slid over behind the wheel. Dobbs had brought hisself a brand new Jeep Renegade to replace the one the flood washed away in Turkey Neck Hollow last summer. With its 1.4-liter turbocharged engine, that baby could fly. T.J. knew the roads, and if you was lookin' to speed, it was a whole lot safer at night than in the daytime 'cause you could see headlights coming at you over a rise or around a corner. He was expecting no traffic. This was a min
e access road and the mines was closed.

  When the mining industry hit the skids, W. Maxwell Crenshaw had been the last man standing. He'd been paying off mine inspectors for years to keep the Last Hope Ollie #1 and #2 open and likely would have gone sailing merrily along … but he'd been slapped with a lawsuit by a miner injured in a rockfall. The story had hit the media — a David-and-Goliath tale of one lone miner against the biggest coal operator in West Virginia — and it had gone viral. If it hadn't, Crenshaw'd have tried to buy the miner off, and if he'd refused to settle, well … But with all that media attention focused on the case, a federal judge had issued an injunction just a month ago closing both mines and freezing the assets. The way T.J.'d heard it, the miners who'd been working that last day, just got up and walked off the job.

  As soon as they'd discovered Poli'd been only a teenager, that she and — how many? — others had been kidnapped as part of an international operation on a grand scale, he knew Crenshaw was involved somehow. He'd availed himself of the services of teenage sex slaves to make good on his guarantee, "Your Every Desire Fulfilled." The Beast hadn't taken the girls to Last Hope Ollie by coincidence. They'd needed a place to commit brutal murder and Crenshaw had provided it — had obviously given them the key because T.J. could see that they hadn't had to break down the fence.

  Careening around hairpin turns at a ridiculous speed, T.J. raced around the base of the mountain toward the front side of Last Hope Ollie #2. He was sure the open area at the face of #2, sixty feet below the cave opening that formed the front of #1, was where the monster intended to commit his crimes. T.J. intended to come up behind him. Which meant he'd have to travel the whole length of the mine. Oh, he could take a mantrip, the vehicle that transported miners inside the mine. He was sure there were several sitting unused in the back of the mine. None of the mining equipment — the mantrips, scoops or the continuous miner — required a key for operation. But a mantrip would make noise and all T.J. had going for him was the element of surprise.

  He slid to a stop in front of the entrance to the front of Last Hope Ollie #2. There was a fence around it and the gate was locked. Shifting Dobbs's Jeep into four-wheel drive, he backed up fifty yards and slammed into the gate, knocked it off the hinges and sent the lock pinging off into the darkness.