At The Edge

23

He ran toward the voices as quietly as he could, hoping to determine something about whoever it was before they became aware of him. Maybe nobody had thought to count suits or maybe they would think he was just another Amada worker.

Voice sounds carried extremely well in the otherwise quiet rock chambers. Either that or they were very close.

"Get your damn gun up, dildo," he heard.

"Why, he wouldn't know what to do with it."

"Shut up and do your jobs-all of you," a serious voice cut in. "I don't want any shots fired until I say so."

Dan reversed course and ran until he came back to the vertical shaft. Now staying up could be just as dangerous as going down. Jamming the screwdriver alongside the down button, he hopped in a stirrup and began the descent. He told himself, all the way down, that large mines normally had more than one entrance.

As he descended, he studied the rock walls, trying to reassure himself that they could be climbed. Soon his headlamp wouldn't reach the stainless-steel pulley and estimating vertical distance became difficult. It might be too far to climb even with rests and outcroppings. He couldn't hear the voices anymore. Not knowing whether he was armed, they were probably coming slowly, looking in every crevice and dead-end side tunnel.

When next he looked down, he saw a pool. He looked around for something to stand on and was relieved to see a lateral tunnel just above the pool. Jumping off into it, he pulled the cable after him and began coiling it at his feet. What if the cable wasn't anchored to the drum? He knew the answer; the end would drop uselessly at his feet.

He watched the cable, knowing that at any moment he would have his answer.

Just as he was near panic, the cable began retrieving. It had been anchored to the drum and now was being reeled in even though the drum continued to turn in a clockwise direction. There were seven dust-coated stirrups on the ground, and the first of the seven was going back up. Damn! Frantically he looked around for something to hold the cable and stop the drum. The sixth stirrup was rising.

He saw some timber and wrapped the cable, then waited anxiously to see if the winch would move the timber and start a cave-in. When the cable snapped taut, it stopped.

The moment of relief was broken when he noticed the cable line relaxing. A few seconds later, the winch started and the cable snapped taut again. Once more, it loosened and pulled. Over and over, somebody loosened and pulled. The timber gave an eerie creak. The next time, it moved an inch and groaned terribly.

"Stop, you dumb shit." He heard the words from above clearly. The winch stopped. "Hey, you down there. Come on up. You're trespassing."

He remained silent.

As the last stirrup lifted off the ground, he had to make a choice. In a split second he decided not to go. If he arrived at the top and found armed men, the men who had thrown the stun grenade, the men who had hurt Maria and killed Lynette, they might just give him a shove and end his investigation forever.

After the stirrup had risen well into the vertical shaft, it stopped. A large light shone down and hit the pool. He could only imagine the muzzles of the guns aimed down the shaft. Rescuers would have kept the cable rising.

"Where are you?" the voice asked.

"Enjoy your stay, dumb shit," another voice said, and the cable motor turned on once again. It didn't come down.

They turned off the light and above there was only blackness. He was trapped.

It took a moment before he fully realized his predicament. He had about one liter of water, some trail mix, and that was all. Loosening his mask, he verified that the fumes were coming from the pool. Even a small whiff choked him. When he ran out of air, he would die-unless he could get far enough away from the pool that the fumes didn't overcome him. There was no telling what kind of deadly material the pool contained.

"There's no way out of there, mister. You better come up." It was a different, more reasonable-sounding voice. "You're going to run out of air, my friend. You've got to come up." Quickly looking around for a weapon, or a place to hide, or something that might help deliver him from the madness of his predicament, he found nothing. There was only a pool of noxious liquid.

He turned and began to jog. Here the ground was rougher. Rock that had fallen from above lay where it hit the ground. There was a track at this level, so he knew it was likely that this tunnel went a long way. It twisted and turned, depriving him of any sense of direction. He stopped long enough to pull out his compass but didn't know what good it would do since the tunnel offered no options.

Determined to control the jitters, he began regular deep breathing and maintained a brisk walk. The passage was narrowing and in places he had to stoop. Soon outcroppings and debris slides to either side narrowed the passage further.

He came to a partial cave-in where timbers had fallen. He squeezed his way between the rough timbers and over a pile of rock that went almost to the ceiling.

Air from the tank might run out at any time, and he had no idea whether he could breathe in these shafts. Instantly he cracked the mask and was greeted by the same pungent smell-but not as strong. Coughing hard, he replaced the mask. To continue on might well be suicide. He had no guarantee that the air would improve. It probably wouldn't. If he went back, he had no idea what they would do to him.

He looked at the gauge and discovered it was half empty. Undoubtedly, stress was causing him to gobble the air supply. He began to control his breathing. Walking around the next bend, he came to an old chamber filled with debris and partially collapsed timbers. Leading off this chamber were three passages. This was obviously some kind of a hub near a concentration of whatever ore they had been mining. There were four options. One of them was a vertical shaft going up. It might lead to the level above, perhaps to the right fork of the shaft through which he had entered.

"You're daydreaming," he said to himself, staring upward into the blackness, trying to figure if he could even climb it. In studying the vertical tunnel, he turned around 180 degrees. Then he sucked in his breath.

In his direction came the faint glimmer of a light How could they be so near? Quickly he ran into the largest-looking shaft and went perhaps a hundred yards before he came to another debris slide and an unfinished vertical shaft. There were massive timbers partially caved in and large boulders, perhaps from a blast before the mine was abandoned. He couldn't keep running. There was an old, rusted crowbar about six feet long lying in the dirt. It was his first bit of luck.

Sighing at the improbability of what he was about to attempt, he climbed up the debris and began the vertical ascent of a narrow chimney. It looked like the start of an abandoned vertical shaft. Wedging himself in an alcove above the main shaft, he waited. The bar was heavy and he laid it on an outcropping. In the process he glanced up and what he saw stopped his breath.

A hand.

Pulling himself up to the next ledge, he found a headless body dressed in a filthy, blood-soaked blue blazer.

Forcing his mind back to the men who were after him, he lowered himself down and listened. His heart beat like a drum. Trying desperately to quiet his breathing, he attempted meditation, but he was unskilled and the fear crowded his mind. He was in a terrible spot. If two of them came down this passage, he might get the first and catch a bullet from the second.

He didn't know if he had the stomach to ambush some faceless, nameless guy whose intent was unknown. Until someone shot at you, there was no way to know for sure that they were out to kill you. There was no black and white here, no obvious villain. Then again, the guard had a gun, and those guys in the mine had guns and were talking about using them. Above him someone had hidden a corpse.

In that moment he knew that everything in his existence boiled down to one thing-his son needed a father. He never should have risked Nate's future by coming here. Maria was right.

Then he saw a light. He held his breath instinctively.

Think, think. Breathe. Get control of yourself.

His breaths began coming again, shallow but regular.

Still the light bounced around the walls. It was taking forever.

"Nothing yet," he heard the words, low in tone, like a whisper. The guy had to have a radio. Sweat broke out on his forehead, stinging his eyes, as if he'd run for miles.

He gripped the iron bar and saw that his hand wasn't quite steady.

The light was bright now, completely lighting the walls.

The first thing he saw was a silencer on a semiautomatic weapon. This was no goody-two-shoes rescue group.

He aimed one end of the iron bar at the side of the man's head. It struck his hard hat with an ugly whack. Then Dan dropped his 240 pounds right on top of the man even as the man collapsed. They hit the ground in a tangle. Dan had one hand on the gun, the other on the man's throat, overpowering him. Glancing around, he saw no more lights. They were apparently alone for the moment. The man struggled feebly, barely conscious.

Dan choked down on the man and could feel the man's body shaking in some kind of nervous spasm. Perhaps by instinct Dan rolled the half-conscious man so that both of them were sitting with his adversary's back in the direction of the large chamber. The man's arms windmilled and there was a loud smack, like a fist hitting mud, and the man's body jerked violently. Instantly Dan knew they had shot their own by accident. Yanking the man's gun from his hand, he snapped off both his light and the man's, then retreated into the mine. After three steps he realized the man would be carrying more clips of ammunition.

Knowing he was taking a terrible risk, he stepped back to the body, grabbed the man's radio, his air tank, and two clips from leather pouches on his belt. The man groaned and Dan could feel the body armor. In all probability he wouldn't die unless the bad air killed him. Again he retreated around the corner. Everything was quiet for several minutes. Then he heard the man gasping. "Help," he said. "Help."

Dan cracked his mask. The air was bad but didn't seem sufficiently bad to cause suffocation. He held down the broadcast button on the radio.

"Come and get your man. You cretins shot him."

"Yeah? Well, you can prove that in court. Right now you need to give up that gun."

"Help me," the man screamed.

"I have no gun. You're the ones with the guns and that fellow didn't look like Roger the ranger out trying to help a lost soul."

"Come out and we'll talk. We can work this out."

''Body armor and automatic weapons with silencers? That doesn't seem to me like a real talking-type group."

"Go get the dumb son of a bitch," he heard the boss say.

"What if he shoots?"

"He's an officer of the court. He won't shoot you in cold blood." A hint of sarcasm in the tone.

They know who I am.

"I'm dying," the man groaned.

"Don't shoot. Red Cross coming through here." He saw a light coming up the passage.

"I'm dying," the man said again.

Dan was staring around the corner with his gun pointed at the ground and his light off. The rescuer approached the downed man and put his own mask over the man's face. He could hear the deep sucking breaths.

"Put your gun down when you carry him out."

"What?"

"You heard me. Put down that gun when you carry him out of here."

"You bastard. You never said-"

''You try walking out of here with that gun and I'll shoot you in the back."

"Keep the gun," the boss said. Dan squeezed off three shots right next to the rescuer.

"Shit, you idiot," the man screamed in panic. "You're gonna kill somebody. Bullets ricochet in here."

"Throw the gun or wave bye-bye to your fat ass."

He threw the gun.

"Smart man."

"I hope you got life insurance," the leader said. "That kid of yours will need it."

"You shouldn't be telling me you're going to kill me. Makes me harder to catch."

"Well, fuck you."

Dan took the second gun and began feeling his way back down the tunnel toward his pursuers. He wanted out of this hole, and he figured an outright attack this soon would surprise them. Feeling with his hand enabled him to distinguish large boulders and the wall. It was hard not to stumble. When he came around a bend with a straight view to the main chamber, he saw four headlamps. Now was his chance. He could nail at least one or two of them as if they were pigeons to ground-sluice. He wanted to see Nate again, and killing these men was the surest way to do it.

His body was shaking, hands slick with sweat. He wanted to kill them. He wanted to walk out over their dead bodies. Somehow his finger would not pull the trigger.

Then it was too late. They turned off their lights.

He ran perhaps twenty paces, kicked a rock, and then deliberately hit the ground. At the sound there was a spray of gunfire lighting the darkness. Bullets popped everywhere. Instantly he was slithering fast, without thinking, oblivious to the pain of the hard rock on his knees, elbows, and belly. The shooting stopped. Ammunition would be a problem he knew. They weren't expecting a war.

He could feel the fear like a hot flame in his body fueling his adrenaline. He could see nothing. There was a debris pile, he knew. Reaching for it, he had a premonition. Or maybe he was thinking like the enemy. The leader would have crawled right in front of the debris pile-right where Dan would come through-and would wait. He moved to the side, flat against the wall. Clearly, the questions were: Who would first turn on a light? Or would somebody start shooting at noises?

In the mine, noises were hard to place; echoes confused the ear. Perhaps if he made a noise, he could seduce a light. Scraping the barrel of the gun lightly along the rock might do it. He reached as far from his body as he could, then yanked the gun back. A spray of bullets smacked the wall and fire erupted from a barrel not ten feet away. If the shooter hadn't hesitated at the sound, Dan would have lost his arm. He fired into the blackness at the spot he had seen the fire.

The weapon Dan had taken was a fully automatic handheld machine gun. If you pulled the trigger, it shot until the clip emptied. That was all he needed to know until he ran out of ammunition. Then he needed to know how to replace a clip and how to get the first bullet from the new clip into the chamber. He began fumbling around in the dark with the clip when he realized that the second gun was hanging from his shoulder.

There was an awful groaning coming from the far side of the debris pile.

"You've got a man down. Maybe you better help him."

There was silence.

"Please help me," the man wailed. It wasn't the leader. He rambled and begged, and said he wanted to see his family. Then he began wailing.

"Mother, God, I want my mother." The leader had put another man at the debris pile. The screaming turned Dan's stomach. This was nearly the worst moment of his life, second only to holding his wife's dead body.

He was tired. Tired not just in his body, but in his mind and in his spirit. How did men get to such a sorry state that they were killing each other in a hole in the ground? And for what? Out there in the dark the leader waited in silence for him to turn on his light or reveal his presence-then he would shoot. Somewhere there was a fourth man.

Some things were just as bad as being shot. Suffocating in a hole was probably one of them. Either way he would leave his son an orphan. Even as he thought it, sucking air became harder. Now he was running out. As quickly and as quietly as he could, he fumbled and changed tanks.

Without warning Dan jumped up and slid over the debris pile, then began walking in the pitch black, his gun pointed straight ahead. The man screaming tended to drown out everything else. His hand reached out for the rock wall and soon he felt the cold of the earth. He followed the wall.

Staying low, he walked the perimeter of the large chamber, recalling that there was one passage before he reached the main passage that led back to the pool. All of a sudden the staccato spitting of a silenced automatic weapon had bullets smacking the wall just ahead of him. They knew what he was doing, and they were getting desperate. He hit the ground and kept crawling.

This time he hadn't seen the muzzle flash. Perhaps the shooter was smart enough to stand beside a boulder to hide the flame. He came to the first tunnel off the main chamber. Putting out his hand, he crawled until he felt the far wall and then resumed a duckwalk along the wall. Based on the sound of the shots, he was sure they had come from the center of the chamber.

Smack, smack, smack. More shots were fired, but this time he saw the muzzle blast Trying to fix the spot in his mind, he fired back into the blackness. He could not have hit the shooter except by dumb luck.

He knew they would try to cut him off. Probably they would move to the wall. Any moment he should arrive at the main shaft leading back to the pool. He stopped. These men were determined. They would not let him walk out of here and the most likely spot to stop him was the mouth of the main shaft.

Think.

If they waited, he could wait. They all had about the same amount of air and he had a little more. The closer they got to the pool, the worse the air. Soon everybody would have to move away from the pool or get out of the mine.

Seconds ticked by. Every muscle in his back and neck felt stiff. His tongue was dry like toughened leather. He needed cover. He duckwalked forward, feeling for some debris. Something in front of him felt like a boulder. In an instant the exit tunnel was lit by a bright light. It was ahead of him. Without hesitating, he emptied the clip at the light and blew it away. Breathing hard and trying to see where nothing could be seen, he forced himself to wait and to think.

They had attempted to surprise him. Had he been upright he would be dead. Anger filled him. He took a full clip from his pocket; he felt for the clip release. A small button by the trigger guard didn't do it. Probably the safety. Near the top of the clip, he found a lever. It worked. Sliding the new clip into place, he pulled back the small bolt on the ejector. It had an action vaguely similar to his Browning semiautomatic twelve-gauge shotgun.

Sitting on the hard stone, he took off his boots. They scraped the rock in the dark and made soundless travel impossible. He tied the laces together and hung the boots around his neck. Duckwalking, he moved back toward the center of the cave in the direction of the light. It was the last thing they would expect and that's why he liked it. Leveling his gun in front of him, he kept his finger on the trigger. One way or another, this would end. When he had gone about thirty feet in complete silence, he tossed a stone. It hit, and before it rolled, the darkness exploded in machine-gun fire only a few feet from his chest. He shot back and knew he had a hit.

"Who is that?" he cried into the mike, trying to sound like one of them.

"All right, let's call a truce," came a frightened voice over the radio.

Maybe he had hit the leader; he sensed the survivors were spooked out of their minds.

"You out there, lawyer man?" a shaky voice said.

He remained silent.

A terrified, whispering voice came back over the radio. "Are we shooting at each other?"

"Turn on your light," one man said to the other.

"Fuck you," came the reply.

"Boss, you there?"

There were two of them talking. He was certain that he had shot two and knocked one silly with the crowbar. But they had body armor, so maybe they weren't dead or even dying. He turned off his radio and concentrated on hearing the next sound.

"We can't just sit here; we'll run out of air."

"What the fuck do you suggest?"

"I'll come to you."

"How will I know it's you?"

"Some things you gotta take on faith."

One voice was straight ahead. Dan was sure that he stood between the speaker and the exit. Quickly he turned and duckwalked back to the entrance of the main shaft, put his boots back on, and hurried down the corridor. After making the first turn, he switched on his headlamp and began running. Then he stopped, turned off his light, and fired a single shot.

"I got the bastard," he spoke into his radio.

"Who was that?" He heard an obviously bewildered voice.

"Maybe it's Meat. That you, Meat?"

There was silence.

"If that's Meat, then who operated the winch? And why ain't he talkin' to us?"

"I don't know, but it sounded to me like one of our guys got the snoop. Maybe Meat's radio went dead. I'm getting out of here. Screw this. Without air we'll turn puke yellow and shake to death."

"I'm coming too."

Dan found a boulder and waited. So at least they were convinced their leader was dead or unconscious. Soon he saw headlamps bouncing off the wall. The men were moving erratically, no doubt peering around corners and trying to stay behind cover. Retreating, he found a straight stretch with no place to hide, backed up until he came to a large rock outcropping at a bend. There he waited.

He knew that their hands shook like his, their throats were tight-it was in their voices-barely holding it together until they could rip off those masks and breathe in the goodness of open air. He waited for them, breathing shallowly, not moving a muscle. It was obvious from the light on the rocks that they were getting close. When he guessed they were twenty feet away, he peered around the corner, saw them as vague shadows behind their six-inch lights. He aimed. In the eerie light, with unsteady knees and the quiver in his hands, he hoped the bullets would go over them. "Freeze," he shouted.

Instantly they turned off their lights. He squeezed off a single shot. Bullets poured back through the tunnel, hitting the rock wall twenty feet beyond him. They were utterly panicked, just emptying their guns at where they had seen the muzzle blast. When he heard the click of a man pulling a clip, he flipped on his light, catching them both like deer in the headlights.

"Drop your guns or I will blow you away."

They did as he said. ''You're using up a lot of air. You got no place to go. Either we all go up or we all die. Come on forward. Do exactly as I say, or I'll kill you so I can get out of here alive."

Dan collected both guns, slinging one over his shoulder. Before they made their way back to the heavy stink of the pond, he took their lights and threw away their shoes. They teetered when they walked.

"What the hell is in here?"

"We don't know."

He tossed one gun in the pool and kept the other, replacing the clip. Now he had two guns and almost two full clips of ammunition. Quickly he removed a sample screw-topped capsule from his pack, took a sample from the pond, and put it in his pocket. One of the radios crackled to life.

"Where's McCall?"

"Answer," Dan whispered.

"Dead."

"Who's left?"

"Me and Willy."

"And one more," Dan whispered again with his gun prodding at the man's back.

"And Wilson."

"Jeez. How'd he take down Jansen and McCall?"

"It wasn't hard once he got a gun. You can't see anything down here. You got these damn suits on. Get us up; we're running low on air."

The cable started to rise and Dan stepped in the loop. In turn, each of the two men followed suit and they all rose toward the faint glimmer of light above.

There was a slight shimmy in the cable that Dan didn't recall. Probably they had damaged the assembly when jerking on the timber. Something wasn't as tight on his mask and he could smell petroleum vapor or something similar. As he rose, he strained to see what waited at the top, but it was useless. There could be an army with guns ready and there was nothing he could do except die fast in a hail of lead.

He wondered if the men below him knew he wouldn't bother killing them just because somebody was trying to kill him. No purpose in it.

When he got within twenty feet of the top, he could see the winch operator. Although he had an automatic in his hand, he didn't look very spooked. This guy hadn't heard the muted pops, the screaming men, nor felt the terror of hundreds of rounds smacking rock in the dark. Just sat up here thanking God it wasn't him.

As Dan reached the top, he realized that there was nobody topside to do the thinking. The operator was no candidate for higher education. Meat was perhaps a suitable moniker. Dan stepped off the cable, reached out, and took Meat's gun as if he were taking it from a child. Tossing it down the hole, he saluted the man who still hadn't been able to discern his face behind the mask.

"Hey," Meat said. "What're you doing?"

"Hey," Dan said. "You have a real good day, Meat. Afraid I gotta take your shoes, though."

"Who are you?" Meat said as the other two stepped off.

"I'm Superman. Hurry with the shoes."

"You bastard," Meat said as the other two stood by.

Dan stepped back twenty feet or so. "You gentlemen will want to stay right here, because if I should see you again when I go around that corner, I'll turn you into bratwurst. You got that?"

Dan watched Meat, cursing and swearing, untie his shoes. Interestingly, the man sat on the ground, almost as if he were a child having a tantrum.

"How does a guy get a name like Meat?"

"It's on account of his last name," Ed said.

"And what might that be?" Dan asked.

"It's Ball."

"That would explain it," Dan muttered to himself as he began running, desperately hoping that no one stood between him and the mine entrance.