Black Gold Deception

by Jess Walker

  The valley would have been the most direct route to get away from the dogs, as it provided more concealment due to the dense tree growth and vegetation, but with the tracking dogs entering the mix, whether they hid up a tree, in a cave, behind a bush, or down a hole, no place was safe. The mountain would have to do.

  The trees and brush thinned out as they climbed across an increasingly barren landscape, pockmarked with rocky outcrops and flat stones. Their breathing became laboured and their legs burned as the climb grew steeper. Spent and exhausted. they eventually had to stop for a break.

  They had climbed three quarters of the way up the mountain and from where they sat, they had a bird’s eye view of the woods and valley below. The incessant yelping of the dogs persisted, growing louder by the minute, a sign that they were closing in. Dexter lay down on a flat rock and looked up at the sky, trying to regain his breath.

  “Got any ideas on how to lose those dogs?”

  “We can’t hide from them—they’ll sniff us out like sharks to blood,” Lawrence replied. “If we block our scent or mask it somehow, it’ll buy us some time, but sooner or later they’ll pick up the scent and continue where they left off.”

  Lawrence nervously eyed the terrain they had just climbed.

  “Those dogs are coming for us and something tells me they’re not looking to play catch or have their tummies rubbed.”

  “And to think that I felt bad for forgetting to bring the chew toy and a ball,” Dexter said.

  Lawrence half smiled to himself as he continued to scan the terrain below. His pulse quickened when something caught his eye. He spotted movement: a black-clad figure following a dog along a ridgeline a half mile downhill from their position.

  “Damn, they’re persistent. I can see one of them. If we can see them, they can see us,” Lawrence hissed.

  “Maybe they haven’t spotted us yet,” Dexter interjected.

  “I don’t know if they have or haven’t, but I’m sure as hell not going to stick around to find out.”

  Both men found new energy, fueled by pure adrenaline and fear as they scurried up the winding mountain trail. The time and distance between them and their captors was eroding by the second. Lawrence moved quickly, pumping his arms like a sprinter while his legs dug in with each stride. He gazed slightly ahead and down, watching where he stepped to avoid tripping over the minefield of rocks peppering the ground ahead. Dexter stumbled and slipped behind him as he tried to keep up. Lawrence felt for the Glock and was relieved to feel the cold steel of the gun still tucked under his waistband.

  A flash of light caught his eye for a split second. Something whizzed past his face so close, it singed his beard. He brushed his hand across his face, feeling the sticky residue of his own blood. Realizing a bullet had caused his injury, he glanced back at Dexter to make sure he wasn’t hurt.

  “Your face! It’s bleeding!” Dexter cried.

  Lawrence heard the pop of a second shot being fired.

  A second later, the swooshing sound of a second projectile whizzed past the tops of their heads.

  They dove behind a mound of rocks and lay flat on their bellies with their heads kissing the dirt. Lawrence looked behind to see where the shot went. Stuck to a pine tree, like an arrow, sat a syringe encased in a metal cartridge. Whoever had shot it remained at large and was somewhere uphill of them.

  “Looks like we got one above us and one below us,” Lawrence said.

  “In other words, we’re up Shit’s Creek,” Dexter replied.

  “It looks that way. They’ve boxed us in.”

  Lawrence peeked over the rocks to locate their shooter, determined to get a fix on his position. It didn’t take him long to find him. He was positioned fifty yards above them, slightly to the left. He looked below and saw that the dog handler had closed the gap. He would reach them in the next ten minutes if they didn’t get a move on.

  Scanning the area to the right of them, Lawrence spotted a dilapidated wooden structure, made of rotting two by fours, configured in a square-shaped formation. There was a sign affixed to it, but it was too far away to read.

  “You see that wooden structure over there?” Lawrence asked as he pointed toward it.

  “Yes, I see it,” Dexter replied.

  “That’s where we have to go. On my signal, we go, got it?”

  Dexter nodded his head. “It’s not like I’ve got a choice, anyway. I have the feeling that once you set your mind to something, nothing stops you.”

  Lawrence acknowledged Dexter’s remark with a quirk of his lips that wasn’t quite a smile. “That’s about right. Give it everything you got,” Lawrence said. “Ready, set, go!”

  Lawrence pushed him up to his feet.

  In a matter of seconds, they were running toward the wooden structure. Shots rang out, echoing like thunder through the air as tranquilizer darts peppered the ground around them. As they drew near to the wooden structure, Lawrence recognized it as an old mining entrance. The sign posted at the entrance read, “Do not enter, danger. Trespassers will be prosecuted.”

  Several wooden boards were haphazardly nailed up as a makeshift barricade. Lawrence didn’t slow a bit. Instead, he charged straight ahead, put his shoulder down, and flung himself against the barricade. His momentum carried him through, breaking the rotting boards like a pile of dried-up twigs. Dexter stayed close on his heels, following him inside. Ten steps ahead of them, a metal gate blocked further entry into the interior of the shaft. A padlock reinforced their entrapment.

  “They got this place locked up like Fort Knox,” Dexter said.

  “Stand back,” Lawrence warned.

  Dexter took a couple steps back and covered his ears. Lawrence took out his Glock and fired. The bullet splintered the lock in two. He pulled the gate and swung it open.

  “Home sweet home,” Dexter muttered as both men stepped into the dark, damp confines of the mining shaft.

  There were several abandoned mines in the Porcupine Mountain area. At one point in time, the area had been a mining hotspot, rich in copper deposits. Decades of hard labor had produced a vast network of vertical and horizontal shafts that penetrated deep into the mountains, some going as far down as a hundred-story building.

  In the early 1900s, when the world economies took a plummet and the supply of copper surpassed its demand, the mines went belly-up. The miners were told not to go to work and like a flick of a switch, the mines were shut down. Everything from the dynamite, pickaxes, lanterns and helmets were left behind. The mines lay dormant and abandoned, many left in their original state, including the one Lawrence and Dexter currently found themselves inside.

  CHAPTER 12

  The mine entrance was dark and eerily quiet. Sunlight flooded through the entrance, partially illuminating the dark, damp confines of the shaft. Lawrence had to bend over to clear the low ceiling, which was crudely supported by rotting timbers every ten feet. Jagged rock walls surrounded them on all sides, and the ground consisted of loose dirt and sharp rock-bits. They appeared to be in a makeshift utility room; old tools and mining supplies were stacked on shelves, and wooden boxes were scattered everywhere.

  Lawrence found a metal bar leaning against the opposite wall, picked it up, and wedged it into the metal gate, locking it in a closed position.

  “This should buy us a little more time. Now, what to do about the issue of light?”

  Dexter checked his pockets for a lighter.

  “I still have the lighter.”

  He pulled it out and handed it to him.

  Lawrence ignited it.

  “We need something a little more substantial than that.” Lawrence gazed down the dark shaft. “We need to go down there, but we won’t get very far with a small flame.”

  “I think I just saw the solution to our problem,” Dexter replied.

  He walked over to a wooden crate b
rimming with a mixed assortment of tools and pulled it away from the wall. Sitting behind the crate was an old kerosene lamp. He picked it up and brought it to Lawrence. Lawrence tried to ignite it but couldn’t get a spark going. After several attempts, he thought about his alternatives.

  “If we can’t use the lantern, we can use the kerosene inside it.”

  He shook it from side to side and heard the kerosene slosh around, before dismantling the glass-housing unit from the base.

  “Hey, grab me that loose metal bar on the ground by your feet.”

  Dexter picked up the bar and handed it to him.

  “What do you plan on doing with that?”

  “Watch and learn.”

  Lawrence grabbed a pair of overalls that were draped over a wooden bench. He took out his knife and cut the fabric into several long strips, wrapping each one tightly around the top of the bar. Satisfied the strips were firmly in place, he soaked them in kerosene.

  “I get it,” Dexter said, “You’re making a homemade torch.”

  He sparked a flame on the lighter and set it against the kerosene-drenched fabric to ignite it.

  “Presto!” Lawrence said. “Let there be light, and there was light!”

  Dexter had a bemused look on his face.

  “Don’t you mean God said?”

  “You get the gist. Let’s get a—”

  Lawrence stopped mid-sentence. The sunlight streaming through the shaft suddenly dulled to a dark shadow, as though a cloud had just passed over the sun. Except it wasn’t a cloud, far from it. It was one of the tracking dogs, a German Shepherd! The moment he locked eyes with the animal, the dog went berserk, growling and barking, biting the bars of the gate, trying to squeeze its head inside, like a rabid wolf on steroids, foam spewing from its mouth. The whites of the dog’s fangs flashed as the animal attacked the gate repeatedly, smashing against it with the force of a wrecking ball. The gate shook but held steady, not budging an inch under the animal’s weight.

  Lawrence stood motionless. His eyes remained glued on the dog as he watched the animal’s repeated attempts to breach the gate. The dog was only a couple feet away, so close he could smell the animal’s hot rancid breath and feel the spray of drool.

  “Let’s get out of here!” Lawrence shouted.

  They ran down the shaft but stopped when the ground gave way and disappeared down a steep decline.

  “Wow, that’s steep,” Dexter hissed. “It’s too steep. We can’t go down there without falling.”

  Lawrence jogged back to the utility room and grabbed a sheet of metal resting against the far wall. It was half an inch thick, roughly the same dimensions as a door. He let it fall to the ground. A reverberating clang filled the air as it dropped and echoed through the shaft like a rusted-out church bell.

  “Come over here and give me a hand, would you? Help me move this.”

  They pushed the metal sheet to the edge of the drop while the dog continued to thrash and push at the gate, growling furiously.

  “You up for a little sledding?” Lawrence asked. “It’s the latest craze, mine-sledding.”

  “You’re crazy!” Dexter yelled.

  “You got any better ideas?”

  Dexter said nothing. He only gave him a worried look.

  “We have to make distance and make it fast. This should help to speed things up. Get on and don’t let go of the torch. It’s our only light.”

  After Dexter got on, Lawrence gave the metal sheet a slight push from behind and jumped on. It slowly lurched forward past the lip of the edge, and then shot down the shaft. They barreled down the slope at breakneck speed, kicking up a pile of rocks in their wake. The flame from the torch was extinguished from the rushing air whizzing past them, leaving them engulfed in darkness as they rocketed blindly into the mind, oblivious to their surroundings, just holding on tight. The screeching and scraping sounds of the metal sheet sliding across the rock-pebbled ground sounded like a million tiny fingernails scratching down the surface of a chalkboard. The scraping sounds ended with a loud bang as they crashed through a metal grate. They flew through the air and landed on a massive mound of loose rocks at the bottom.

  A cloud of dust surrounded them as they lay sprawled on their backs. A cascade of rocks came shooting out of the ventilation shaft above, the same rocks they had just uprooted in the wake of their rapid descent. They rolled off to dodge the falling rocks, somersaulting their way down the mound of rocks until they hit the bottom. Thankful to be alive, they both lay in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the mound.

  “You okay?” Lawrence asked.

  “Besides almost being killed three times in one day, I’m doing great, but hey, who’s keeping count?” Dexter was breathing hard, and Lawrence imagined he was taking stock of his bruises.

  “You still got the torch?” Lawrence asked.

  “I got it, but as you can see, the flame’s gone out.”

  Lawrence took the torch and lit it.

  The glow of the flickering flame cast a dull light off the massive enclosure, which looked to be a deep mining cavern. Lawrence looked up and saw the grate they had just busted through, hanging off its hinges, a good three storeys up. Thanks to the large rock pile at the bottom, a mixture of loose rocks bits, pebbles, sand, and dirt, their fall had been broken.

  “Well that was fun,” Lawrence said. “Who needs amusement parks when you can have all this? Care to go again?”

  “I think I’ll pass,” Dexter replied as he brushed dirt and rocks from his clothes.

  They walked around the perimeter of the cavern, searching for an exit. It didn’t take them long to spot two possibilities, each at opposite ends of the cavern. Both options entered into large shafts lined with old rusty railway tracks. They were at a fork in the road and had to decide which way to go.

  “Should we take the exit to the left or to the right?” Dexter asked.

  Lawrence stewed over the question.

  “Your guess is as good as mine. I know we don’t want to go down a dead end. We need to find an exit that leads outside”.

  Lawrence placed the torch in front of both exits. The flame on the torch flickered when he placed it in front of the one to the right.

  “There’s a definite draft coming from this exit. If’s there’s a draft, the air is escaping somewhere. Probably to the outside.”

  “And outside is where we need to go,” Dexter said, finishing his sentence.

  “Let’s go then.”

  A dented, misshapen metal door sat at the entrance to the shaft. Lawrence grasped the door, looping his fingers through the tangled mesh of metal and pushed. The door swung open with a loud creak. They walked through and followed the flickering light of the torch.

  “We better lock the door behind us,” Dexter said.

  Lawrence slammed the door shut.

  “Couldn’t agree more.”

  Lawrence grabbed an old spool of cable wire and uncoiled some of it. When he had enough laid out, he cut it with his knife and wound the wire around the door and the frame until it was firmly affixed in a locked position. He tested it to see if it kept it locked. It didn’t budge.

  Almost on cue, a familiar sound broke the silence.

  “You hearing what I’m hearing?” Lawrence asked.

  “The dog?” hissed Dexter.

  “No, not just one dog. It sounds like there’s two of them. The handlers are probably with them or close behind.”

  The two tracking dogs rocketed out of the ventilation shaft in a cloud of rock and dust, landing on top of the large mound of rocks. They scurried down the mound and bolted toward them but were stopped at the closed door, crashing into it at full stride.

  “We have to stop meeting like this!” Dexter hollered from behind the caged door.

  The two tracking dogs charged at the door repeatedly, each time bounc
ing off it like flies hitting a window.

  “You’re awfully brave behind the safety of the door,” Lawrence muttered, noting the more nervous Dexter got, the more jokes he tried to crack. “Let’s get going before the door comes crashing down on you.”

  They took off at a dead run following the faint glow of the torchlight. The crunching of their boots across the rock covered ground, combined with the yelping dogs and their labored breathing, rolled in as one sound. The crumbling rock walls and rotting timber support beams flew past them as they ran down the shaft. The sounds of the yelping dogs grew thin as they continued to run until only a faint trace of sound remained, muffled further by their strained breathing.

  “I think we’ve lost them,” Dexter said.

  “I think you’re—”

  “Lawrence!” Dexter screamed.

  Lawrence’s run came to an abrupt stop when he fell through a vertical shaft, hidden under rotting floorboards. He tossed the torch aside as he crashed heavily through the floorboards, each one crumbling like chalk dust under his weight. A protruding beam about six feet down snagged him like a fish on a hook, leaving him suspended in midair. He held on to the beam with both arms wrapped around it in a bear hug. From the sound of the pebbles dropping down the shaft, it was a long way down.

  Dexter skirted to the edge of the shaft, set the torch on the edge, and got down on his hands and knees to peer over. There was Lawrence holding on for dear life.

  “Take my hand!” Dexter called into the shaft.

  Lawrence grabbed hold of his hand and Dexter used all his strength to pull him up until Lawrence was far enough up to grab hold of the ledge. From there, Lawrence pulled himself up and over. When he felt solid ground, he rolled clear of the shaft. Both men lay sprawled out on their backs, fighting to catch their breaths.

  “I’m lucky that beam broke my fall,” Lawrence said. “Otherwise, I would’ve been as flat as a cooked egg, sunny side down.”

  Lawrence rolled on to his stomach, grabbed the torch, and crawled back to the ledge. He picked up a rock and dropped it into the shaft. Seven seconds later, he heard the muffled sound of the rock hitting the bottom.