Soul Intent

by dennis batchelder

  When their time was almost up, Val and I descended to the bottom of the shaft.

  “Good luck,” Rose called as we passed them.

  We saw the remaining four barrels when we reached the bottom. Val tilted the first one, and I slid the cable loops underneath it. “Take her away, George,” I called.

  We watched the cable pull taut. The barrel slowly rose above us. A few minutes later the cable came back. We sent the other three barrels one by one to the surface.

  I looked at Val when the last barrel went up. “That’s it, then.”

  She nodded. “Should we retrieve our lights from the alcoves?”

  I tapped my dive computer. “We barely have enough time for decompression.” Our time was tighter than the twins’ because we had retrieved Ned’s bones from one hundred feet.

  “Leave the lights,” George said. “Come on up so we can get these barrels out of here.”

  So we made our final ascent through Viliam gallery. As we floated for our twenty minutes at fifteen feet, I thought about the mess we had made to the alcove, and I hoped it wouldn’t come back to haunt Soul Identity.

  My dive computer showed a minute left before we could return to the surface.

  Then George’s voice came over the intercom. “I’m sorry,” he said. “We have a private permit to use this mine. You’ll have to come back after midnight.”

  Who was he talking to? I grabbed Val’s arm and switched off my wrist-mounted video camera.

  Silence for a moment, and then I heard George again. “Hey buddy, you don’t have to point that thing at me. Let me get—”

  I heard what sounded like a car backfiring, followed by a woman’s scream. Then a man’s sharp voice, laced with a German accent. “You will do exactly what I say, or I will shoot the old man next.”

  “You son of a bitch—you shot my husband!” Sue yelled.

  “And I will most assuredly shoot you as well if you do not follow my instructions.”

  Silence over the intercom. Val grabbed my hand. I looked at her wide eyes behind her mask and raised my finger toward my lips. She nodded.

  “What do you want?” I heard Madame Flora ask.

  “We want our gold back. All seventy-two bars.”

  “That gold is mine!” Madame Flora shouted.

  “I am sorry you feel that way.” Another sharp crack. Val gripped my arm.

  “That was just a warning, old lady. The next bullet will surely land between your eyes.”

  Silence for what seemed forever. Then I heard Archie say in a wavering voice. “The gold is in the barrels. You may take it.”

  “Danke.” And I heard in the background the faint sounds of orders. I imagined men hauling the barrels up the mine’s tunnel.

  I strained to hear anything over the intercom, but I couldn’t make much out. Some labored breathing, some murmurs from what sounded like the twins, and every now and then a barked German command.

  After what must have been thirty minutes, Sue’s low voice came over the intercom. “Scott? Val? I don’t know if you can hear me,” she said. “But don’t answer—just listen.

  “The group is wearing uniforms with swastikas on their armbands. You heard the leader—he’s the one who shot George.” Her voice sounded choked up as she said that, and then she was silent for a minute.

  “I think George is still alive, but I don’t dare approach him. I whispered for him to lie still so they don’t shoot him again.

  “Six soldiers are hauling the barrels out of here. Every now and then only the leader’s left guarding us. Next time that happens, I’m going to make my move. You guys need to wait this one out. Stir up the water so you can stay out of sight.”

  The line went silent. I stared at Val, and knew she felt as helpless and as powerless and as tension-filled as I was.

  Sue wanted us to hide under a cloud of silt. A great idea, except that Val wouldn’t be able to sing me through this one.

  I took a deep breath and steeled myself for the panic attack that I knew would come. Then I reached out with both arms and scrubbed my hands against the wall.

  The silt cloud blossomed and enveloped us. I gritted my teeth as the panic monster broke free within me. I clenched my fists and fought to control my breathing.

  Val grabbed my arm and led me in a descent to just under the silt cloud. I felt the panic attack subside, and I squeezed her hand.

  We waited. I glanced at my dive computer: it had been fifty minutes since George was shot.

  Suddenly I heard Sue’s yell, followed by a barrage of shots. Everybody seemed to be screaming. Then it was silent. Deathly silent.

  I grabbed Val’s hand and pointed upwards. She shook her head and signaled me to stop. I clenched my fists and tried to control my frustration.

  Then I heard Sue call, “Watch out below!” I looked up and saw the winch falling toward us out of the silt cloud. I shoved Val at the wall and kicked hard to get away, and the winch passed between us on its way to the bottom.

  The winch’s cable dragged behind it. And then about thirty feet later, the cable was wrapped around the torso of a man in a green uniform, his eyes bulging and his mouth open as he passed us.

  The man jerked to a stop five feet or so below where we floated. The winch must have reached the gallery’s bottom. The end of the cable fell past him as the he twisted upward to face us. I pointed my light at him. The blood from cuts on his face made a red cloud form around his head, and it seemed his legs floated at unnatural angles. Sue had really messed him up.

  The man reached into his boot and pulled out a small pistol. He pointed it at me, but at that moment the weight of the free end of the cable must have been enough to counteract his buoyancy, because he was jerked downward and out of the range of my wrist light.

  Bullets wouldn’t travel more than a few feet in the water, but just to be safe, I switched off my light and motioned Val to do the same.

  Instead of responding, Val floated limp in the water.

  I swam over to her. Her eyes were scrunched together, and her chest was heaving. I didn’t think the winch had hit her. I reached out and spun her around. Her rebreather’s status light flashed red—something must have malfunctioned when I pushed her; she wasn’t getting any oxygen.

  I spun her back around and cranked open her bail-out bottle and opened her regulator bypass. She kept breathing, and after a minute she opened her eyes and flailed her arms. She was alive.

  At fifteen feet the five-pound tank would last fifteen minutes. Val could suck for another fifteen from my bail-out, but then we’d have to surface.

  Sue came back on the intercom. “Scott? Val? I neutralized the leader and grabbed his pistol. The other six are heading back down this way. I’ve set up an ambush, but I only have four bullets. There’s no time, or I’d ask to you to come up and help me. Sit tight, okay?”

  So we waited. I wanted to get the small pistol from the leader floating below us, but I wasn’t sure if he was done drowning.

  We heard four shots over the intercom. Then we heard nothing. Did Sue get them all? I doubted it, because she would have said something.

  “Hands in the air, or the old man dies!” Another German-accented voice yelled. Then silence. I gritted my teeth.

  “Where is our Rottenführer?” the man asked.

  “At the bottom,” I heard Sue reply.

  “That is unfortunate for you,” he said. “Our orders were to take as many prisoners as we could, but you have eliminated five of our team.”

  “Only two more to go.” Sue’s voice sounded hard and flat.

  I heard a short chuckle. “I don’t think so.” Another shot, and I heard the twins scream. Val’s body was shaking violently.

  “Silence!” the man roared. After the girls’ screams stopped, he said, “The belly shot means you will have several days to remember how brave you were, until you die next to your husband.”

  “Damn you,” Sue gasped.

  “You have damned yourself,” he replied. Afte
r a minute of silence, he continued. “The rest of you are to come with me.”

  “Where are you taking us?” I heard Archie ask.

  “Back to the surface, to the Untersturmführer,” he said. “Something tells me he will remember you older ones.” He laughed. “And the two frauleinen will be a nice treat.”

  “Take us, but leave the girls,” Madame Flora said.

  “Ah, you prefer they die down here?” The voice sounded pleasant, as if he was about to tell the punch line of a joke.

  “No!” Rose said. “We’ll come.”

  “Perfect,” the man said. “My partner will go first, then the four of you, and I will come behind. If anybody tries anything heroic, everybody dies. Is this understood?”

  “We understand,” Marie said.

  And then we heard nothing more.

  fifty-three

  Present Day

  Dubnik Mine, Slovakia

  I waited until Val had sucked her bail-out bottle dry and was halfway through mine. Then we headed up through the cloud of silt.

  I fought the panic monster through the cloud. It wasn’t as bad as before, probably because I was worried about what we would find waiting for us in the gallery.

  When we finally surfaced, I helped Val pull off her facemask, and she took great, gasping breaths of air. I pushed from behind and helped roll her onto the ledge. I stripped off her rebreather, and she lay on her back and stared at the roof.

  I quickly shrugged out of my suit and gloves. I helped Val get dressed so she could warm up. As soon as I got her lying down I hurried over to George and Sue.

  They both lay next to where the winch had been. Sue’s arms hugged her stomach. George lay face-up with his head turned away from me.

  “They took Mr. Morgan,” Sue breathed in my ear. “We have to get him back.”

  “You’re not going anywhere yet,” I said. I straightened her legs, unzipped her coat, and pulled up her shirt. The bullet had entered just below her navel, a couple inches to the right of center. It had left a hole less than a half-inch across. Blood seeped around its edges.

  “I’m going to have to turn you,” I said.

  She nodded, then let out a cry as I rolled her toward me. I leaned over her and saw that the bullet had exited on her side, an inch below her left hip. There was just a trickle of bleeding from the quarter-sized hole.

  “How bad is it?” Sue asked as I rolled her onto her back.

  “Not as bad as it must feel,” I said. “It looks like you twisted away just in time. The bullet exited cleanly.”

  She nodded and gave a big sigh. “Thank God,” she said. “How about George?”

  “Just a sec,” I said. I used my dive knife to cut a strip off the bottom of Sue’s shirt. I handed it to her. “Use this for the bleeding.”

  She took the cloth, and I knelt next to George and righted his head.

  He was breathing, but not well. Bright red blood dripped from the corner of his mouth. His eyes were open and unfocused. I looked down at his chest, and I saw a small, bloody hole on the left side of his shirt, close to the bottom of his rib cage. I reached around him, but I could find no exit hole in his back.

  I held his cheeks in my hands. “George, can you hear me?”

  He blinked, opened his mouth, then closed it again.

  “I can’t sit up to see him—is he all right?” Sue asked.

  “He’s still breathing—but it looks like his lung was hit.”

  “What can we do?”

  “We can treat him for shock.” I turned Val’s diving suit inside out and slid it under George to insulate his body from the cold ground. Then I dragged her broken rebreather over and put it under his feet so the blood flow to his vital organs would increase.

  “We have to get him out of here,” I said. “He needs more help.” I rolled Val’s empty bail-out bottle into my t-shirt and slid it under his neck.

  Sue frowned. “What’s wrong with Val?”

  “Her rebreather conked out—and I didn’t notice it fast enough. She needs a few minutes to recover.”

  She shuddered. “We’re going to have to get out of here and rescue Mr. Morgan. Can you help me stand?”

  I wasn’t sure if Sue should be walking, but it would save time if I didn’t have to drag her out. I placed my arms under hers and lifted.

  “Wait!” She winced and lowered her head. After a minute she looked up. “Okay, the rest of the way now.”

  I lifted, Sue gasped and wrapped her arms around my neck, and then she was standing.

  “Can you walk?” I asked.

  “Give me a minute.” Then she unwrapped herself from me and stood on her own. “It hurts like hell, but I can do this.”

  “Do you think you can help with George?”

  She nodded. “Whatever it takes.”

  I helped her step over to him, and she reached out and grabbed his foot. “Hang on, Georgie.” Then she turned to me. “How are we going to get him out of here?”

  Good question. Then I thought about the carts outside of the mine entrance. “Maybe we can roll him up the tracks.”

  “Those carts are piles of rust.”

  “It’ll be easier than carrying him.” I said.

  She twisted to grab George’s hand, but then she let out a cry and grabbed my shoulder. “I need to sit down.”

  I lowered her to the floor right next to George. She reached out and caressed his face.

  “I’ll get the cart,” I said. I headed toward the stone staircase leading up to the tunnel.

  BOOM!

  A shock wave came blasting out of the tunnel entrance and knocked me over. I banged my head on a rock, and it took me a minute to get my bearings and sit up. The air was full of dust, and this darkened the gallery. I couldn’t see more than a couple feet.

  “You guys all right?” I called.

  “I’m here, and George is okay,” Sue said.

  “Val?”

  No response. I crawled along the ground back to where I had left her.

  Val lay face up. She was breathing, but she didn’t open her eyes when I shook her.

  “Did you find her?” Sue called.

  “She’s unconscious,” I said.

  “Bring her over here, and I’ll keep an eye on her while you get the cart.”

  That sounded good, especially since the dust had settled enough for me to see Sue and George. I scooped up Val into my arms and carried her across the gallery. I set her down so Sue was between Val and George.

  I looked up toward the tunnel and saw the lights were out, so I grabbed both Val’s and my wrist lights before I headed up the stairs.

  The dust was thicker in the tunnel, and I banged my head on the first low point. I crab-walked through the next two dips and avoided further injuries. Then I straightened up for the last section, and I slammed my shins into a large boulder.

  As I pitched forward, I tried to contain the damage by landing on my hands. My wrist lights illuminated a pile of rocks just before I crashed into it.

  I scrambled up and used my lights to trace the contours of the rock pile.

  What I saw dashed my hopes: large boulders, the smallest at least two feet in diameter, filled the tunnel all the way to the ceiling. I scrambled my way up the pile and tugged at the top-most stones, but they were wedged in, and despite my efforts, they wouldn’t budge.

  I crept back the length of the tunnel, down the stairs, and into the gallery.

  Sue looked up. “No cart?”

  I shook my head. “They seem to have blasted the tunnel up close to the entrance, and it’s now full of huge rocks. We can’t get out that way.”

  “Can’t get out…” Her eyes widened, and she reached out to George. “He needs medical attention, Scott—he’s barely getting any air. He’s got a tension pneumothorax.”

  “A what?”

  “A collapsed lung. Every breath forces more air through the bullet hole into his chest cavity, and it’s squeezing against his organs.” She pointed to George
’s neck. “See how his veins are bulging? That’s the pressure building up against his heart. He’ll die, Scott, unless he gets immediate help.”

  fifty-four

  Present Day

  Dubnik Mine, Slovakia

  I stared at George’s ashen face and bloated chest. “What can we do?” I asked Sue.

  “Get him to a doctor now!”

  That wasn’t going to happen until we found another way out of the mine. I tried to remember anything from the first aid course I had taken as a teenager, but I drew a blank.

  Maybe Sue knew. “What will the doctors do when we get him there?” I asked her.

  She screwed up her face and clenched her fists, and I reached out and grabbed her arm. “I know you’re in a lot of pain, Sue, but you’ve got to help me help George.”

  She stared at me and then back at her husband. It didn’t seem I was getting through. I reached up and grabbed her cheeks in my hands, forcing her to look at me. “Sue?” I whispered. “How does a doctor fix a pneumothorax?”

  She bit her lip and closed her eyes. Then she opened them, and I noticed her panic had subsided. “They put a tube in the chest,” she said. “To let the air out and relieve the pressure.”

  Of course! Memories of that long-ago first aid class surged through my head, and I could see my teacher holding up a ballpoint pen and saying, “when all else fails, the barrel can be used as a tube.” He had been talking about a tracheotomy, but that was close enough.

  “Do you have a pen?” I asked.

  She shook her head.

  “How about George?”

  She leaned over and felt through his pockets. “No pen.”

  Dammit. I glanced around the gallery, and I saw my discarded bail-out bottle. Maybe that would work.

  I scrambled over to the bottle and used my dive knife to cut off a four inch section of the narrow-gauge hose. I rushed back to Sue. “Which lung do you think collapsed?”

  She put her hand on his left side. “This one.”

  Her hand lay just above the bullet hole.

  I decided to put the tube on the right side. I looked at Sue. “I’m going to cut a small slit with my knife, and then I’m going to shove in this tube. Are you okay with that?”