Seven Silent Men

by Behn, Noel;

  Once out of the car and walking along a dirt path running back through the trees, Yates asked Jez, “Who planted this place?”

  “Planted?”

  Yates continued to survey the forest about him. Above him. Beneath him. “Who put in the vegetation? Trees, flowers, grass?”

  “God.”

  “God never allows yellow poplar and blue juniper into the same space at the same time. Look over there. Three different species of cottonwood. Plains, Narrowlead and Black cottonwood trees … none of them indigenous to this part of the country. That one there’s a cedar elm … and there are no cedar elms in Missouri. No tawnyberry holly or dahoon or yaupon trees either. Only you’ve got one of each right behind us. This is some crazy forest. I see all kinds of species that don’t belong here. If God grew it, he must have been on pot.”

  “You grow up around trees?” asked Jez.

  “Nope.”

  “How come you know so much about them?”

  “Because I used to know everything.”

  “Everything?”

  “Everything. Absolutely everything there was to know, I knew.”

  Jez slowed his pace, cautiously estimated the taller, younger, poker-faced man walking behind him.

  “Aren’t you going to ask why I knew everything?” Yates said.

  “… Why did you know everything?”

  “Because I studied everything. Granted, I was slightly weak on minor Peloponnesian deities, but besides that, I knew absolutely everything there was to know.”

  Several more steps were taken in silence before Jez asked, “You still know everything?”

  Yates shook his head. “Nope.”

  “How come?”

  “When I knew everything, no one asked me questions.”

  Waiting in a clearing directly ahead of them stood several wide-brim hatted, green-uniformed rangers from the Forestry Service. Beyond the rangers was a scattering of picnic tables and beyond that a phone booth. A ranger lieutenant, when introductions had been exchanged, thanked Jez and Yates for responding so promptly to his call to the Bureau office. “The Geo guys discovered something you might want to see.”

  “Geo guys?” Jez questioned as he and Yates accompanied the lieutenant toward a red marking flag rising up from the tall grass at the other end of the clearing.

  “Geological Survey,” the ranger said. “The group trying to find out what’s causing the mud trouble west of Prairie Port. Earlier this morning they ended up here.”

  Jez glanced around. “Where?”

  “Right under you.”

  Despite being marked by a red flag, the moss-covered hatch in the high grass had gone unnoticed by Yates and Jez until they were nearly at it.

  The lieutenant said, “I thought there was nothing underneath here except solid rock. The Geo guys say someone else knew better. Knew about this hatch and used it. They say it could have been the bank robbers you’re looking for. Check the hinges on the hatch. They’ve been oiled.”

  Jez knelt down, bent back the tall grass. The ground around the hatch was well trodden. The moss had been neatly cut away from the two hinges. Touching the hinges, he felt oil and grease.

  The lieutenant pulled the heavy metal hatch open, lowered himself onto the ladder in the circular hole beneath, said this was an auxiliary, or emergency, means of egress and disappeared into the darkness beneath. Yates followed. Then Jez.

  A lightless descent ended on a narrow, dimly lit catwalk which wound several hundred feet through a curving crevice in the rock to an iron door. Passing beyond the door, Yates and Jez found themselves on yet another catwalk … this one looking down into an immense six-story-deep chamber cut in the rock heart of Warbonnet Ridge. Crisscrossing the vast space, at various altitudes, were pipes and support struts and other metal walkways and lines of glowing unglazed light bulbs. More lines of glowing lights rose perpendicularly up the rock. On the floor, eighty feet below, lay bare concrete foundations on which electrical turbines once reposed. Moving among the foundations were tiny metal hats of the inspecting engineers and scientists.

  The ranger lieutenant reached the end of the catwalk and pulled open the railing gate on a cageless elevator of two seats fastened to a solitary rail which ran eighty feet to the floor below.

  “You want us to ride this?” Jez said.

  “Or use the ladder over there.” The lieutenant pointed back across the short walkway to metal rungs trailing down the rock face.

  Yates, gingerly, moved out on to the far seat of the open elevator. Jez, very slowly, got into the near seat. The ranger lieutenant shouted down. Metal hats far beneath tipped upward. Hands waved. A yellow metal hat crossed the floor to the wall, extended an arm, pulled something. Whirring sounded from an unseen generator. The elevator started down, jerkily.

  “What the hell is this place?” Jez asked.

  “Beats me,” Yates said.

  “I thought you knew everything.”

  “Only above ground.”

  A willowy yellow-helmeted man in chinos and lightweight safari shirt introduced himself as Henry St. Ives, divisional director for the Missouri Valley Geological Survey and nominal chief of the team of experts trying to neutralize the mud eruptions. Also in the party welcoming Jez and Yates were Chester Safra, a short, doll-faced hydrologist from the Mississippi River Control Authority, and Jamie E. K. Thurston, senior engineer for the Missouri Power and Electric Company.

  “Never dreamed this operation existed,” St. Ives said. “Should have, I suppose. Heard rumors of it long enough. Some of the others had too. Only no one we know ever set foot inside. Imagine our feeling when we stumbled in here last night.”

  “What is it?” asked Jessup.

  Chester Safra held out rolls of dusty, discolored blueprints. “Pump-priming idiocy.”

  “That is very clever, Chester. Very double-entendre.” St. Ives applauded once and turned back to Yates and Jessup. “Chester’s terminally Republican, which is to say, the initials FDR are poison to his tongue. What we are standing in is New Dealism at its fiercest.”

  “It didn’t work,” Safra insisted. “None of it worked.”

  “Not thirty-four years ago, Chester,” St. Ives agreed. “But someone has certainly put part of it back into operational shape and recently. Mister Jessup, Mister Yates, we are gathered at the common crux of everyone’s individual problems. Mister Thurston’s power shortages, Mister Safra’s and my mud … and most definitely, your robbery … stem from in here. Come.”

  The party descended a concrete staircase past two more levels of empty chambers, with St. Ives giving a history of MVA. They cortinued down through fifteen feet of solid rock into a low-ceilinged, rectangular room, two of whose adjacent walls were constructed of glass. Glass looking out on utter blackness.

  St. Ives slapped a hand against the plaster wall bearing an eight-foot-long, five-foot-high, faded overlay drawing of the Missouri Valley Authority of the early 1930s. “There it is, the entire system. MVA, in all its glory.”

  “Pork-barreling!” Safra called it. “Trotting, not creeping, socialism.”

  St. Ives turned to Jessup and Yates. “Thirty-four years ago, in 1937, the electricity-producing aspect of the project was closed down without ever having been used. The machinery was moth-balled, and all the chambers above us were sealed shut.

  “The irrigation-flood facilities were kept operative and made self-sufficient. Its terminal, where we now are, was equipped with its own power plant and master-control apparatus regulating the water flow throughout the system as well as up here. Should the power plant, or any part of it, fail, plans were formulated for connecting into whatever source of commercial electricity was near.” His finger moved back onto the wall overlay, stopped at a point west of Warbonnet Ridge. “This was another phase of the MVA, construction of a reservoir network in the hills behind the Bonnet to supplement both the city’s water supply and the irrigation system. With the hydroelectric capabilities aborted, it was hoped expansion of the
reservoirs could make them the primary source for irrigation water. Plans were revised. An underground tunnel was built linking this irrigation terminal in the Bonnet to the reservoirs under construction in the hills. It was the discovery of these tunnels yesterday afternoon that led us here.”

  St. Ives checked his notes. “The entire MVA was disbanded in 1938. Work stopped on the incompleted reservoirs. The irrigation-flood control center here in the rock, like the hydroelectric facilities before, was sealed closed. The irrigation tunnels themselves were not sealed, simply left to lie fallow. The water gates in the tunnels were also left to rot. Before long they were pretty much forgotten. All of MVA was.” He went on to say how early in World War II a need for heavy electricity-producing equipment made the government open up the hydroelectric plant above them, and they found the machinery was missing. No one knew where it had gone or who had taken it. “Those chambers were reseated more permanently than before. Nobody seems to have remembered the irrigation-flood control area down here, including the looters.

  “In 1954 the State of Missouri, with federal funding, resumed construction of one of the reservoirs abandoned in 1938, an immense basin more than a mile deep in places that today is called Tomahawk Hill reservoir or lake. The state engineers had no information or interest about where the old water gates in the original basin led, even though there were two sets of these gates—some ten small ones built directly into the reservoir’s eastern wall and two enormous slab gates built directly into the basin’s floor near the eastern end. The state engineers even ignored the fact that every gate, floor or wall, was counterweighted and hydraulicized. They let all this be and installed a new system of gates miles away at the other end of the reservoir, on the western side …

  “And those old gates are what was opened over the weekend, Mister Jessup and Mister Yates, three of those original gates. The two enormous slab gates in the basin floor and one of the small wall gates. That is what caused the flooding and the mud. The fact that three thirty-four-year-old gates were opened is startling enough. How it was accomplished is even more amazing.

  “This, where we’re standing, was the nerve center of the irrigation-flood system abandoned in the 1930s.” He played his penlight on a wooden counter running the length of the dark glass. “The electrical equipment controlling water flow throughout the tunnels rested here.”

  The light beam shifted onto a faded line-rendering thumbtacked to the counter surface. “It’s a 1937 electrical wiring chart for the whole system. For everything from the tunnel’s diversionary locks twelve-point-six miles south of here to the forgotten gates in the reservoir a mile and a half to the west … and someone has rewired part of this system … rewired it in the last few weeks.”

  The beam moved back and in tighter on the electrical wiring chart. “If you look closely at the plan you’ll see pen markings for what areas the connected wires are controlling … it’s everything in the main tunnels between here to right there.” St. Ives’s finger tapped at a distinct check mark on the faded paper. “The tunnel directly under Mormon State National Bank.

  “The crucial element, at the risk of sounding melodramatic, is behind us.” St. Ives’s penlight swept along to the wall at their backs, stopped on a large, rusty iron box imbedded in the plaster, with two forked switches, one on either side, in the down or “off” position.

  “That is your culprit,” St. Ives told Jessup and Yates. “The aider and abettor in the robbery at Mormon State National Bank … Mister Thurston is better qualified to provide specifications.”

  Jamie E. K. Thurston, senior engineer for Missouri Power and Electric, went to the wall with his own, more powerful flashlight on. “This is the original fuse box/circuit-breaker. It wasn’t a standard make even in the 1930s. I would say it was manufactured specifically for this operation, as was most of the other equipment down here.”

  Thurston opened the door of the box. The fuses within were thick and glistening and a half foot high. “These are not the original fuses,” he said. “They are far more resistant than the specifications on the old chart, and as you can see, they are brand new. They were handmade. Expertly made.”

  The light beam played on a thick cable descending from the bottom of the box, new cable. “This lead line was recently installed as well. Tracking it down through the floor, you’ll find it stretches a mile and a quarter through a side tunnel and ties into the main power line near the highway. Only a suicidal son-of-a-gun would try splicing into that much voltage midline. The splice was made hot and midline. That’s one reason we hadn’t found it till now. He did it midline and hot.”

  “Is that what caused the power failures?” Jessup asked. “His splicing into the main power supply?”

  “Not by itself. This had more to do with it.” Thurston seized the forked switch on the right side of the fuse box. Pushed it up and on.

  Moaning resonated. The control booth shook. Whirring replaced moans. Shaking ceased. Dim-burning electric light bulbs grew visible in the blackness beyond the glass walls of the room, became brighter … jumped in intensity. Illuminated below the shorter of the adjacent glass walls was a vast room in which stood two massive generators and six large engines. The view through the longer glass wall was of brightly burning light bulbs in an enormous square concrete chamber. Twenty yards in was a large wood-and-metal water gate. A closed gate, five feet high.

  “Only one of the two generators has been activated,” Thurston said as he moved up to the shorter glass window overlooking the machinery. “Everything you see down there is original equipment, the same ones installed back in 1936. Whoever put them into working shape was something of a wizard. Those are old-fashioned contraptions, old-time power-guzzling machines. They’re guzzling three times what they did back in the 1930s because the two generators were not only reactivated, they were converted into motors as well … and connected to the high-voltage line out west. Instead of creating electricity, they were using it. Everything you see down there was sucking power out of the city’s electrical supply. The generator running now and the two engines nearest it are the power sources for the tunnel between here and Mormon State National Bank. Most of the water-control gates in the tunnel are operated by it. If the criminals used any sort of electrical devices … air hammers, drills, lights … this system would more than provide the power. The two engines and generator by themselves probably are responsible for the power losses and dimouts in the earlier part of last week. But not for what happened on Friday or over the weekend. Help was required for that.”

  Thurston reached for the fuse box, let his fingers rest on the handle of the second switch of the fuse box. “This activates the other generator and the last four engines. The major blackouts on Friday took place not long after this switch was thrown.” His hand moved away from the box. “The second generator and four engines are what was required to open the sluice gates in the reservoir. Those gates were so old and resistant that the machines literally blew a fuse getting them to move. Or I should say, blew Prairie Port’s fuse. There are indications that no more than one of those reservoir gates was ever meant to be opened, that opening the others may have been an afterthought, as will become evident when we go downstairs.”

  The party descended into the immense concrete chamber beneath the glass-fronted control booth. Along the base of two of the area’s three walls were large round openings which had been bricked closed. The fourth, or southern, wall was missing, had only the wood-and-metal water gate.

  “This structure is a rudimentary shunting terminal not untypical of engineering beliefs in the 1920s and 1930s,” Chester Safra, the expert on hydrology, explained. “As you can see, those pipe openings in the north wall beneath the booth have been sealed shut, but they were the original source of intake from which this entire system evolved. Through those unsealed mouths, thirty-five years ago, was supposed to have gushed the discarded river water which had been used to turn the turbines of the hydroelectric plant overhead.”

  S
afra pointed to the bricked-over holes in the east wall. “Those were one of two routes of water outtake. The pipes behind them go right through the rock base of Warbonnet Ridge and pour into the Mississippi River.” He pointed to the water gate at the southern end of the chamber, started walking to it. “That was the second route of outtake. By closing the valves in the eastern wall, the water would head for there.”

  Jessup and Yates moved up beside Safra, looked beyond the gate into a high, wide concrete tunnel running from their right to their left, from northwest to southeast. The drop beyond the gate to slowly flowing water was twelve feet. A narrow metal stairway zigzagged down the wall beneath to a rusty metal dock and several bobbing motor boats. Farther to the left, water rippled over a series of closed gates.

  On Safra’s instructions, Jez and Yates peered past those gates to where the tunnel began to curve due south. Lines of round openings were visible on the far, or western, wall.

  “That is your second source of intake water,” he told them. “Those are sewerage and drainage tubes leading down from the western hills, bringing in the natural rainshed and spillage. On the other side of the tunnel are the outtake pipes.” Safra pointed in the opposite direction … pointed uptunnel to the northwest. “That’s where the reservoir is … where the third source of intake water can be found.”

  Thurston took over. “All of this, all the intake and outtake systems, whatever the initial water sources, was controlled from the booth we were just in … until a recent innovation was made.”

  They went down the metal steps on the tunnel wall and onto the dock, with Thurston saying, “Going right in this tunnel for a mile and a half brings you to the water gates in Tomahawk Hill reservoir. Follow the tunnel five miles to the left and you’re at Mormon State National Bank. Keep following beyond the bank seven and a half miles and you’re at downtown Prairie Port.”

  Thurston reached into the water, searched below the surface, brought up a long, rectangular metal instrument panel. Attached to its underside, and trailing back down into the water, were several thick cables and twenty-one wires. “I believe this is how your criminals originally meant to regulate the water flow in this tunnel. Automatically. It’s a timing device. A homemade device, but ingenious.” He held the instrument out for all to see, tilted up the bottom. “Those cables tie directly into the generators … can activate or shut off the generators one at a time or together. The smaller wires lead to the intake-outtake gates down the tunnel to the left … the section of tunnel between here and the Mormon State bank.