Private: Gold
Page 7
Chapter 25
Joey raced to his SUV. He climbed in, and reversed it as close as he could to the tunnel’s entrance. How much rope did he have? Would it be enough?
He opened the trunk and pulled out the nylon coils. Now, as he thought about the massive weight of the grate, the rope seemed flimsy and he was seriously worried it wouldn’t be long enough. But all they could do was try…there was no other hope for the men below.
“Let’s tie the rope to the grate first, and then string it back to the car,” he said. “We don’t want to be fiddling around in there longer than we have to.”
“Breathe deeply now, before we go in,” Isobel advised, and they spent a few seconds drawing long breaths before jogging down the darkened passageway. The fumes stung his eyes; he wished for the storm to return, forcing air into this tunnel, but the breeze had dropped and the night was still.
Isobel shone the flashlight onto the grate, and Joey tied a bowline knot. His fingers felt clumsy—he supposed either from haste or the insidious effect of the gas. The hook was a few inches above his outstretched arms, but he propped the ladder against the wall and stood on the second rung. Hastily, he fed the rope through the hook.
“Out,” he said, after pushing the ladder clear, and they ran back to the entrance, Joey holding tight to the coiled loops, paying them out as he went, aware with a sick certainty that the rope was slipping through his hands too fast.
He was dizzy, leadenness spreading in his limbs and nausea churning in the pit of his belly. He was worried that the zama zamas weren’t keeping quiet because he’d asked them to, but because they had succumbed to the flood of poisoned air.
“It’s too short!” Despair crushed him. They were standing just one pace away from his car, and he’d run out of rope. He pulled as hard as he could on the remaining length, staring in despair at the short, but insurmountable, distance between the end of the nylon line and his tow hitch.
There was no way he could drive in any farther. The tunnel was a few inches narrower than his car, and the back of the vehicle was already almost flush with the rock.
“Your cable ties! I saw them in there earlier. Surely we could use them to make up the distance?” Isobel rummaged in the open trunk and pulled out a handful of them.
“That could work. Their breaking strength, though…”
“What is the strength?”
“About two hundred pounds per tie.”
“And if you use more than one?”
“Then it multiplies the strength.”
“How much does the grate weigh?”
“That’s the million-dollar question,” Joey acknowledged.
He had no idea what its weight would be, but he guessed at least half a ton. So, to be safe and create a margin for error, he needed seven ties per loop. How many loops would he need to cover the distance? And how many cable ties did he have? He found two more packets in the back of his car. He passed one to Isobel and they tore them open. Joey’s bag ripped down the side and the black ties scattered over the ground.
Isobel was neater-fingered than he was, and worked faster. In a few minutes, while Joey was still struggling with his fourth link, she had made six tidy bundles.
The only problem was they were starting to run short of cable ties. Joey shone his flashlight over the ground, brushing it with his fingers, hoping to pick up any of the ones that had fallen. Isobel was creating another link, looping the two lengths they’d made together.
“I’m two ties short here,” she said. “Are there any others?”
“I can’t find any.” Joey swept the area with his flashlight and fingers again, wishing for his fingertips to touch one of those precious pieces of plastic, but they didn’t. There were no more.
One link would have to have only five ties in it.
Joey looped the end of the chain around the tow hitch. There was just enough rope for him to tie a secure knot on the other end.
“Now we see if it works,” he said. He didn’t have a clue if it would. He was having serious doubts about the sanity of using a few pieces of plastic, underspecified for the job, to try to hold up a deadly weight long enough for them to rescue everyone trapped inside.
But it was their only chance.
“I’m going to get into the car now and ease it forward,” he told her. “I’ll do it as slowly as possible, so as not to put more strain on the cables. Take the flashlight and shine it down the passage. Tell me if it’s working, and if the grate is lifting.”
“Will do,” Isobel confirmed.
Joey would rather have had her behind the wheel and himself exposed to further fumes in the passage, but it was better for the person more familiar with the car to do the job. And he would prefer for the burden of failure to fall on his own shoulders than on hers.
“Easy now,” he urged the big SUV, as he disengaged the hand brake and pressed down on the gas pedal. He could visualize the rows of looped plastic tautening, taking strain as the rope tightened. He imagined the weight of the grate. God, what if they’d been totally wrong in judging it? He was bracing himself for the sudden lurch forward that would mean one of the links had broken.
Instead, the SUV eased a foot forward, then another, and he heard Isobel shout: “It’s lifting!”
Carefully, carefully…it would be so easy to overshoot, to draw this contraption of plastic and rope beyond its breaking point. Perhaps another foot. He edged the car forward, imagining the steel grate lifting, its full weight bearing down as it rose.
“Go higher!” Isobel called, her voice sounding hoarse.
Joey eased forward another foot, and then another, and when he heard her cry of “Stop!” he reacted immediately, cranking the hand brake as tight as it would go and hoping it would hold. He left the car in gear, turned it off, and then he was out and racing back down the tunnel.
The grate was open, angled over the gap and making him think of a jaw waiting to snap shut. But, so far, it was holding.
Chapter 26
“You stay outside,” Joey urged Isobel. His face looked drawn from strain.
“But you’ll need help,” she protested, as he lowered the ladder down.
“I don’t know how strong the fumes are down there. One of us needs to stay out, to deal with the emergency services when they arrive.”
“Okay,” she agreed reluctantly, feeling her heart clench with worry as he clambered down. She could hear a few faint cries coming from below, but she feared that he was right, and that many of the miners had already succumbed to the fumes.
“Keep away from the grate,” Joey warned. Then he disappeared into the smoky darkness.
Isobel glanced up at the grate, noticing the jagged metal along its edge, speckled with rust. She stepped hurriedly back, imagining it slamming down. What could she do? She thought she could hear Joey’s voice coming from far below, speaking gently.
She prayed the emergency services would come soon. With their supplies of oxygen and other equipment, the rescue might stand a chance. She ran down the tunnel and out into the night.
She thought she could see them, far away in the distance—a faint patterning of red lights cutting the humid air. It would take another few minutes for them to get close enough to see her.
Something crunched under her feet, and she bent to pick it up.
It was a cable tie.
But, when she looked at it more closely, she realized it wasn’t an unused one.
This tie had stretched and snapped, right next to its fastening. Horror flooded through her as she saw it. One had broken, stressed to its limits, creating a weakness that would allow more to follow.
Adrenaline surging through her, Isobel screamed, “Joey! Hurry!”
That single snapped tie meant that there might be only a few minutes left. Maybe less. She needed to buy more time…
The car jack!
It could prove useful now to keep that lethal wedge of metal suspended and prevent it crashing down again.
She gr
abbed the jack and sprinted down the tunnel. The wave of dizziness she felt from the fumes almost knocked her off her feet, but she struggled forward. Where, and how, to position it? If she wedged it as close as possible to the base of the grate, and then cranked it upward, that would create an additional support, and hopefully take some of the strain off the makeshift rope.
Fingers shaking with tension, Isobel cranked up the jack. One turn, two…It was holding now, and seemed to be wedged firmly enough in place that it wouldn’t shift. Hopefully, with this to support the grate, the rope would hold for long enough to get the miners out.
She could hear the sirens in the distance.
Running back to the entrance, hoping the gunman was not waiting and watching somewhere, Isobel headed out into the night.
“Here! Quick!” she screamed and waved her arms.
The sound of the sirens grew louder and headlights blazed in her eyes as the first ambulance sped toward her.
Chapter 27
Scrambling down the ladder, Joey descended into a cramped underground hell. The engine fumes were stronger down here. The air was filled with choking fumes, but Joey could also pick up the sour stench of unwashed bodies, and the reek of vomit. Nausea roiled inside him, his body’s reaction to the toxic air. He tried to suppress it as hands from below reached up to grasp him, and hoarse voices pleaded for his help. His flashlight shone over their terrified faces and dread stabbed him as he saw a few had already collapsed on the ground.
“Right, come on. Let’s get you out of here.”
There was a language barrier to overcome; Joey had a basic knowledge of Zulu and Sotho, but some of the men had no English and didn’t speak either of these local languages. He had a sense that they were not down here voluntarily. He’d met a few zama zamas during security operations in this area. They had been hard and dangerous men, often with a criminal history, and prone to violence. Perhaps it was the effect of the gas, but these miners appeared only frightened and confused.
As he started organizing a hasty triage system, he clearly heard the sound that he had feared most. A harsh, grinding noise started, and then stopped abruptly. It told him that the grate had started to slip. One of the links must have weakened. If the rope broke entirely, the grate would crash down, an unstoppable weight, sealing the entrance again.
Nothing he could do now…he just had to get these men out as fast as possible.
And then, as he helped the first of the survivors up the ladder, a prolonged, harsh, scraping sound from above made his heart jump into his throat. At first he thought the grate was falling—that they were all doomed.
But as he struggled to the surface with the first of the weakened men, he saw that Isobel had used the car jack, jamming it into the angle of steel and cranking it up so that this sturdy structure took strain off the rope.
Then footsteps were rushing to meet them, flashlights cutting the darkness. The paramedics had arrived. Moments later, the weight of the miner’s body was lifted from his arms.
“Oxygen. Quick!” Joey called, and within seconds, life-saving supplies were making their way down the ladder in the hands of two more paramedics. In that instant, Joey knew that the miners’ lives were going to be saved.
He wanted to hug Isobel, to take her in his arms and feel the warmth of her against him, to smooth down that spiky blond hair and watch her smile up at him, because they had done it. The two of them together had achieved the impossible in bringing the men to safety.
But when he finally left the tunnel and strode out into the open air, he didn’t get that chance.
Chapter 28
The area outside the mine’s entrance was bustling with activity, and lit by flashing red and blue lights. Medics shouted to each other, and police walkie-talkies crackled. Joey saw that the miners were all being given oxygen and were being divided into two groups—those who needed immediate hospitalization, and those who were less severely affected, who were being interviewed by police.
“So you didn’t know you were going to be working down a mine?” Joey heard one of the officers ask a raggedly dressed zama zama. The man, who obviously understood some English, shook his head before replying haltingly.
“They told us we would be carrying rocks to the surface. They said that the business would organize us all the proper permits, and that the money would be good. It was only when we came here that we found they had lied to us.”
The miner’s story confirmed Joey’s suspicions—the men had, indeed, been trafficked here. He should tell Isobel. Where was she? Looking around, he found himself smiling when he caught sight of her. She was standing apart from the group and watching the headlights of another approaching car. He called her name, but in the hubbub, she didn’t hear. He started walking toward her, feeling suddenly nervous of what else he should say. He still wanted to give her that hug—but should he drive her back into town? Buy her dinner? Help her find better lodgings?
He had a very comfortable spare room in his own house, where Hayley sometimes stayed. He should offer it to her…but he knew that if she came to his home, he wouldn’t want her to sleep in the spare room. Thinking this way about her was going to be dangerous at best, depressing at worst.
Driving her to a good hotel with top-class security would be most sensible. He was still concerned about her safety, and guessed she’d have a busy evening updating her husband on the goings-on within his company that he should already have known about. From the sounds of things, Dave had been neglecting his business—and his wife.
But could this have been done deliberately?
Once the suspicion had lodged itself in Joey’s mind, it refused to leave. He decided that after he’d dropped Isobel at her hotel, he was going to call Jack Morgan, brief him on the situation and ask for his opinion, because something about it didn’t feel right.
Abruptly, the approaching headlights swung in Isobel’s direction. A moment later, the car stopped, and a tall man climbed out. Joey saw Isobel’s posture instantly freeze into shock, and for one horrified moment, he thought the gunman had arrived.
He was already sprinting forward and fumbling for his gun when he saw her demeanor relax. The tall man opened his arms as Isobel shook her head, and he thought he heard the sound of her laughter. Then they embraced and Joey slowed his pace.
“Dave!” he heard her say. “What on earth are you doing here? How did you even know I was in South Africa?”
“Samantha called me yesterday,” the American explained. Joey noted he was blond, well built, with strong, handsome features. “Samantha discovered that Brogan had intercepted some of the e-mails you girls sent to each other.”
You girls? Joey wanted to grab the man by his broad shoulders and shake him hard.
“Brogan intercepted them?” Isobel asked.
“Yes. Samantha was worried when you messaged that your bodyguard had been canceled. She got an IT specialist in who confirmed that the e-mail server had been reconfigured to forward all correspondence between you two to Brogan at the South African office. She contacted me immediately. I was in Cape Town, waiting to catch a flight back to the States, so I got on a plane and flew straight up here instead.”
“I had no idea you knew!” Isobel cried.
“No, I had no idea you were doing this. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Well, I tried to, but…”
“Next time, you tell me about these things. You’ve done an amazing job here, baby girl, but seriously, you were in massive danger. I’m not gonna let you out of the house when we get home. I nearly had a heart attack when I heard about this crazy scheme.”
“But you’re not…”
“Come on. Let’s get out of this dump and go somewhere civilized. I’ve called the police already and they’re on the way to arrest Brogan. I’ve got a room booked for us tonight at the Michelangelo Hotel, Sandton, and we’ll fly back home in the morning.”
“My luggage!” Isobel exclaimed. “I left my bags in the rental lodgings.”
Perhaps it was the residual effect of the toxic fumes, but Joey felt suddenly nauseated. He turned away. No point in staying here…there was nothing more he could do. The trafficked miners had been rescued, and Isobel was booked into a secure hotel, where she would be safe until her departure. He’d call her sometime, and tell her good-bye.
Maybe tomorrow.
Maybe never.
Chapter 29
Lock-picking was an acquired art, and Steyn had made himself proficient at it. There was a time and a place for forcing a door. Because it was noisy, you gained the element of fear, which could be very useful depending on who the victim was, but you sacrificed the element of surprise. In this case, surprise was more important, because his target owned a firearm, which was usually kept in the safe.
Steyn did not want to give him enough time to access the safe.
After waiting until the security guard who patrolled this neighborhood had turned the corner, Steyn came out of hiding and quickly climbed the wall. Then he walked through the well-kept garden, breathing in the fresh scent of flowers and leaves still wet from the rain. He did some work on the house alarm’s electronics box before making his way to the imposing wooden front door. The target lived well in this rental accommodation—Steyn guessed that African network manager was a very senior position. Clearly Brogan also felt safe in these lodgings because the alarm had not, in fact, been turned on.
A minute’s stealthy work at the front door, and Steyn was inside, his soft shoes padding across the marble hallway. A trickle of sweat inched down his forehead, surprising him with its presence. It wasn’t such a warm night. But then, he was operating on a knife edge right now, riding out the rodeo that this job had become, leaving him far from his usual state of implacable calm.