Bitter Recoil

Chapter 31

Six feet at a time, I sank into the earth. I kept my feet free of the ladder, learning to trust the sit-harness. The ladder’s iron side rail slid through my left hand. That small contact was my anchor.

The vertical sides of the shaft were timbered, and in more than one spot water dripped down the face of the wood. The timbers smelled musty. I wondered what pockets of gases waited down below, trapped by the years of stagnation. I’d heard stories about miners walking into shafts where they took a breath and keeled over before they had time to turn around. That couldn’t be the case here…Finn had no shortage of breath.

As the bright light of the entrance drifted up and away, the shaft seemed to narrow with me at its focus. My mind played games with the perspective. When I was fifty feet down, the deputy touched me with the beam of his flashlight.

“Any problems?” he asked. He didn’t bother with the radio.

“No,” I said. The rope played out again. The next time I looked up, I flinched. I could have covered the opening of the mine with the palm of my hand. Looking down, I saw the beam from my helmet light stab into nothing. No bottom. Just wooden timbers and old iron.

I avoided looking at the rope. What on the surface had looked stout and unbreakable in its coil now stretched out above me thin and gossamer. Every time the deputies reached the end of a pulley bite and the drop stopped, the rope twanged from side to side slightly.

On impulse I reached up and turned off my helmet light. The blackness of the mine was complete, the entrance above nothing but an insignificant postage stamp of artificial light. I caught my breath as the rope descended again. The light had been my lifeline to equilibrium and I turned it back on.

The side tunnel, what Stubby Begay had called a drift, took me by surprise. The side of the shaft had been passing by my left shoulder as I descended, a steady, unchanging parade of old wood timbers, dripping water, and abandoned iron fittings. I hadn’t used the side of the shaft for support. Nevertheless, when it suddenly shelved inward, away from me, my stomach tightened. The rope dropped me far enough that my light shot into the tunnel.

The drift was nearly as large as the main shaft. I breathed in relief at seeing something substantial and horizontal.

I turned my head slightly, keyed with my left hand, and spoke into the hand-held radio’s mike that was clipped to my shirt collar.

“Stop,” I said. “I’m at the drift.”

“Affirmative.”

I pushed away from the ladder, rotating to face the drift. The floor of the tunnel was littered with junk-old sections of pipe, fittings, various lengths of wire and cable. The light illuminated heavy timbers and a series of three small concrete pads, each two feet high. Rusted bolts thrust up from the concrete where at one time machines had been secured.

Stubby Begay had called it a pump station. The miners hadn’t left much behind…just enough scars and litter to puzzle archaeologists in another thousand years.

For the first thirty feet the drift was as securely timbered as the main shaft. But forty feet back the drift elbowed to the left and the timber supports ended. I couldn’t see around the bend. The place made my skin crawl.

Rotten and water-soaked as the timbers were, they gave the illusion of strength and support. In the drift they gave way to something that looked like monstrous cobwebs, with patches of the material hanging down from a ceiling of jagged rock. It was some sort of fabric, bolted right to the face of the shaft.

In dozens of places rock fragments littered the floor of the drift where the old fabric had pulled loose, and off to the left, just visible before the drift turned out of sight, an entire section of wall and ceiling had slumped, filling nearly a third of the tunnel.

I swept the light carefully, looking for movement.

“Finn?” I said. My voice echoed down the shaft. The dust of the years had padded the floor, and the fresh tracks were as clear as if they had been painted on a sidewalk with Day-Glo paint. And the prints came in two sizes.

“Finn, are you in there?” Again my words rattled around and died with no response. I ducked my head and looked down the main shaft. Ten feet below the drift, the iron supports that held the ladder had pulled loose…or rusted through. The section of ladder was twisted away from the wall and hung off at an angle. Finn had to be in the drift.

I reached for the second flashlight, adding its beam to that of my helmet. I saw that with just a slight stretch I could plant my feet on the lip of the drift’s shaft and grab one of the wall timbers with my left hand. With some slack in the rope I could pull myself into the tunnel.

If I slipped and fell, it would hurt like hell, but the rope could be trusted. That’s what the deputy had said.

“Turn off your light,” Finn said. His voice was quiet and conversational.

Out of reflex I swung the lights toward the sound of his voice. Nothing. I snapped off the flashlight and let it hang, then reached up and turned off my helmet. The blackness was oppressive…the spotlights above at the shaft mouth served only as a beacon in the distance. I reached up and touched the small, reassuring pistol grip of the Colt under my arm sling. I waited.

“Sheriff, you copy?” The crackle of the damn radio sounded like a string of firecrackers.

I keyed the mike and snapped, “Stay off the air.”

“Ten-four.”

I took a deep breath, my fingers still covering the lump that was the automatic. “All right, Finn. What do you want?”

Unless Finn had developed sonar, he could see no more than I. His light exploded out of the darkness, and I jerked my head back in surprise.

“Get that goddamned thing out of my eyes,” I snapped, but he took his time. Finally the light slipped away and I cracked an eyelid. The beam was centered on the thick bandage that bound my right arm and shoulder. My right hand stuck out of the linen and lay flat against my belly, useless. Finn played the light this way and that, examining me and my equipment.

“Turn around,” he said and watched as I touched the shaft wall with my fingers and gently pushed myself so that I rotated on the rope. The wash of his light cast a fat shadow of me on the opposite wall of the vertical shaft. As I rotated back around, he turned off the light. I blinked my eyes, trying to put out the yellow sunbursts that remained.

“So,” he said.

“Are you through playing games? Where’s the child?”

“She’s asleep. And you’ve managed to make quite a name for yourself, haven’t you? I underestimated your tenacity.”

I was in no mood to exchange compliments. “You have to let us bring her up. Nobody’s going to hurt her…or you.”

Finn chuckled. “I can imagine.” The harness dug into my crotch and belly, and my right leg was falling asleep. Finn knew he had all the time in the world. I didn’t if I was going to be worth anything.

“I was surprised that you had put it all together, Sheriff,” he said. I tried to picture where he might be standing.

“Sometimes I get lucky.”

“Yes,” he said. “Had your truck not let me down, we wouldn’t be having this conversation now.”

“What do you want, Finn? What do you think I can do for you?” I was tired of hanging like a goddamned potted plant.

“I saw the newspapers under the seat. You’re a clever man, to make the association. I’m curious why you didn’t call in any of the other authorities earlier.”

I frowned and said, “What do…” when what he’d said hit me like a sledge, smashing open the doors of my rusty memory. The newspapers. My notes. Until this day, I’d last seen the papers Friday night when I parked at the campground. The two-week-old papers, one of them with the front page headline…my notes in the margin.

I breathed a silent curse. We’d received the bulletin from Washington State along with a thousand other law enforcement agencies. We were close to the border. It made sense.

H. T. Finn had seen the newspaper when he’d stolen the radio-the headline and my notes. He had assumed that I’d made the connection, knew who he was, what he’d done.

“Arajanian did those hits for you, too,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm and hoping that he didn’t recognize the guess.

“He learned well,” Finn said. “He would have been of great use to me.”

My mind raced. “No, he did just what you wanted,” I said. “It worked out better the way it was…you left the rifle with him for the police to find. It’s probably the same rifle you had him use on the governor of Washington and the prison warden, isn’t it? If there was a matchup, it’d tie those shootings to the kid, and you’d be long gone. No witnesses to say otherwise after you shot us…and set the mountain on fire.”

“Cleansing fire,” Finn said softly, and his voice drifted off as he recited, “‘And the fire shall cleanse the evil from the earth and…’” His voice became indistinct.

“And they don’t know you as Finn in Washington, do they?” I said, but he refused the bait.

Finally he said, “You will make arrangements, Sheriff. Listen carefully.” I wasn’t in a position to do otherwise, but I wanted answers to a flood of questions. Finn continued, “I want a fully fueled helicopter. The television station has one. The helicopter, one reporter, and a pilot. That’s all. It will land immediately beside the mouth of the shaft, close enough that I can see the flash of its blades over the opening.”

I sighed. Why was an aircraft always such magic to these fruitcakes? Where would he go, other than Mexico? And what made him think Mexico would want him? He wanted a reporter, and that meant he thought the world would be interested in hearing his sorry tale.

My eyes ached with the strain of trying to see him in the darkness, and my finger itched to reach for the Colt automatic. But he had the girl, and we would play his game until the time was right.

“That’s all?”

“As a beginning, yes.”

“You’ll let them send down two more ropes, one for the girl and one for you?”

“No!” he said sharply. “Ruth and I will use the ladder. We will go out the way we came in.” He laughed softly. “You’d like me in harness, helpless. You’d like that, wouldn’t you. Oh no. That’s how they killed my Ruth. It won’t happen again. Never again.”

Another Ruth. But now it was the little girl I worried about. “It’s a long climb. I was just trying to make it safe for Daisy.”

“You don’t need to be concerned. Just do as I say.”

“All right.”

“Talk to the ones on the surface now,” he commanded. I keyed the mike. “Gastner here.”

“Go ahead, Gastner.”

“Listen carefully, and get this right the first time. Finn wants Channel 8’s Jet Ranger, fully fueled, with a pilot and a reporter on board. He wants it to set down immediately beside the mine shaft. We have to be able to see the blades flash, or he won’t go for it. No one else in the way. The three of us will come up. The three of us will board the chopper. Is that understood?”

After a pause, I heard Pat Tate’s voice. “Understand: Channel 8’s chopper, one pilot, one reporter. They might not agree to that.”

“Don’t waste time, Pat.” The television crew would leap at the chance to be evening news. “And nothing else. Tell everyone to keep their fingers off the damn triggers. I don’t want the girl hurt.”

“Ten four. Search and rescue wants the girl in a harness, on a rope.”

“No,” Finn said loudly.

“Look,” I said. “It’s for her own safety, Finn. Use your head. You could slip. Without a harness, there’s nothing between you and 400 feet of shaft.”

His voice regained its original composure. “If you and your men do as I say, there won’t be any slips, will there?”

“Gastner, did you copy?”

I keyed the mike. “Negative on the rope,” I said. My brain raced. There was no way a four-year-old child was going to be carried up 300 feet of rusted, slippery ladder.

“We’ll see what we can do,” Tate said, and the shaft fell silent. I shifted in the harness, trying to let some blood down my right leg.

“Finn, listen to me. Turn your light on.” To my surprise he did so, keeping the beam centered on my torso. “Are you wearing a heavy belt?”

He didn’t answer.

“Look, if you are, use this.” I turned and groped with my left hand for the small harness that the deputy had clipped to my own. “They gave me this. Put it on Daisy, and clip her to your belt. At least do that.”

“No.” He turned off the light.

“Damn it, she’ll be clipped to you. She’ll be safe that way. What can we do if she’s clipped to you? No one can make a move to grab her. And it keeps your arms free. It will be even better.”

Finn was silent, and I hoped he was weighing his options. “All right,” he said. “Throw the harness into the tunnel.” He turned on the light. I breathed a sigh or relief. For several minutes I fumbled with the carabiner before the big steel ring snapped open. I tossed the smaller of the two extra harnesses into the drift.

The beam always fastened on me, Finn made his way through the scattered junk. He stopped when the line of pump foundations separated us. I couldn’t tell if he held a weapon in his other hand. “Tell them to pull you up ten feet.”

The bastard was shrewd. I keyed the mike and repeated his order. I had no sense of moving. Rather, the entrance of the drift sank, as if the wall itself slid downward. My feet were just above the top of the tunnel mouth when the pull stopped.

“Finn, do you know how to hook up that harness? Do it properly now.” I shouted, suddenly frantic at not being able to see inside the drift.

He didn’t respond, but I heard his footfalls as he advanced and picked up the harness. I tried to picture him bending down, then straightening up, and then retreating back down the shaft. I counted eight footfalls, then lost him. There was no other time to take the gamble. I reached up and gently keyed the mike. I kept my voice a husky whisper.

“Don’t answer,” I whispered. “Give me five bites down.”

Their response was immediate. In the darkness I felt the wall slide by, felt the breath of air as the drift yawned in front of me. I’d have one chance. I stretched out my feet, my toes reaching for rock. The floor of the drift touched my left foot and I grabbed with my left hand, my teeth clenched.

I felt wood, slipped, and grabbed a rough crack in the timber. I yanked with all my strength, pulling the rope in after me. As the downward bite continued, I let my weight carry me into the drift until I was resting on my left hand and both knees. My right leg, until then sound asleep, tingled sharply with the new movement.

Above they would continue to pay out the rope, giving me three more bites of slack…about eighteen feet of line. I hoped they wouldn’t ask questions when the weight left the line. I straightened up slightly and pulled out the Colt automatic.

The murmurings of soft voices reached me. I tried to judge the distance, but the sound bounced and echoed. I recognized Daisy’s little voice, high-pitched and confused.

Finn hadn’t heard me. I kept my mouth closed, forcing my breathing quiet. My heart hammered in my ears. Slowly I shuffled forward five feet, a third of the distance to the pump foundations.

In minutes Finn would return with Daisy. I knew I’d have the time and the strength for only one try.