Bitter Recoil

Chapter 32

I edged my way toward the old pump foundation. When I thought I was close, I reared up on my knees like an old dinosaur, hand outstretched and groping.

The edge of my hand touched cold, damp concrete. With infinite care I palmed the small automatic, held it against my chest, and pushed off the safety. I took a deep breath and braced my forearm on the concrete. The darkness in front of me was a solid door.

Finn would have to use the light to walk Daisy out. I strained to hear. Nothing.

“Keep your eyes on your feet, Ruth,” he said. The voice took me completely by surprise. I crouched as low as my belly would allow. Their feet made soft shuffling sounds with an occasional tinkle as some small piece of mining detritus was kicked from their path.

The light cut the darkness over my head, darting out into the shaft. I kept my head down. My hand on the automatic was wet with sweat. The sounds stopped. Had the son of a bitch seen the rope?

“Gastner!” His voice was strong…and close. The beam of light twitched, swinging from one side to the other. “I’ve got the girl with me.”

I could hear her breathing, little chirpy breaths of raw fright. He took another step, and I watched the flashlight beam.

His voice was a soft whisper. “Stay close, Ruth.” She wasn’t linked. I gritted my teeth and slipped my index finger in the trigger guard of the Colt.

The flashlight beam was narrow and intense. He was close. Another step, you bastard, I thought. I saw the shadow of his hand behind the light, counted three, and moved.

Six feet away, the target for my automatic was just a murky figure behind the light. I saw Finn’s trick almost soon enough. The images registered just as I squeezed the trigger. The smaller of the two figures was holding the flashlight.

I pulled the shot, but too late. The little Colt coughed and spat. The bullet sang past the side of Daisy’s head, whined off the ceiling, and ricocheted down the drift.

Finn was already in motion, but he was a big target. I squeezed the trigger twice, and this time Finn yelped and spun sideways. In two staggering backward steps he crashed into the wall of the shaft.

Instinctively Daisy turned, and the beam turned with her. For a moment Finn was illuminated. He scrambled to his feet. In his right hand was my.45 automatic, and there was no silencer on the muzzle.

I pointed quickly and fired twice. Each time the little pellets struck him, he flinched and staggered back. But he didn’t go down. For a moment he stood motionless, his face looking up at the roof of the drift, as if he were lost and searching for direction from the rocks.

The little girl dropped the light. It clattered, rolled a couple of feet toward me, and lay against a length of rusted pipe. Its beam pointed back into the drift. She whimpered and sat down, a tiny, frightened ball.

I slapped the automatic down on the concrete foundation, lunged toward her, and grabbed the harness. I pulled the little girl to me. I saw motion and looked up to see Finn staggering like a drunk. He raised the.45 and held it in both hands.

“Don’t do it!” I shouted. Releasing my hold on Daisy, I made a wild grab at the little Colt. Finn swung toward me and pulled the trigger. The.45 bellowed, the explosion mind-numbing in the drift. The bullet passed harmlessly two feet over my head, crossed the main shaft, and thudded into a timber.

I locked my arm against the damp concrete, pointed the.380 toward the center of the shadow that was Finn’s torso, and pulled the trigger twice.

Finn staggered backward. The drift was filled with the crashes of the.45 as his finger jerked the trigger spasmodically. I cringed low, hugging Daisy to me. One of the fat, hollow-point bullets of the.45 glanced off an iron bracket and sang over our heads like a wasp. Finn had already lost his balance, the recoil of the gun adding to his backward dance.

Another sound became harmony to the big automatic. With a loud “whump,” a section of the wall just behind the timbers caved in, the mass striking Finn and carrying him to the other side of the drift. He screamed and went down. The dust billowed toward me.

I slapped the light switch on my helmet. In one desperate motion I stood up, pulled Daisy off her feet, and plunged the carabiner through the loop of my own harness. The spring snapped shut.

With the little girl hanging from my waist like a rag doll, I turned and waddled toward the vertical shaft.

Behind me, Finn screamed. “No! Listen to me!” he shrieked. The son of a bitch would have to talk to himself.

I fumbled with the mike switch on my collar. “Pull me up!” I bellowed into the mike.

Behind me, Finn continued to shriek and then he found the.45 again. Its last cartridge exploded. The flash illuminated the back of the drift, and the slug danced off the rock and dug into the dust. Even as the clip emptied, the rumble of the earth’s guts built, low and ominous.

A puff of air hit my face and with it came the acrid smell of fresh rock dust. A timber nearby cracked loudly and a shower of rocks clattered around my feet. I grabbed a fistful of Daisy’s jacket and reached the mouth of the drift just as the last of the rope’s slack snaked past. The rotten timbers above the pump station collapsed inward.

Something heavy struck my right foot and I spun sideways. “Son of a bitch!” I shouted and jumped into space.

The jolt of the rope damn near cut me in half. Daisy was a small child, but her weight pulled the harness off-sides.

Like a twisting, turning pendulum, we snapped out away from the drift and then crashed back against the side of the shaft, the iron of the ladder cracking my helmet. If Daisy screamed, I never heard it.

The rumble of the collapse died away in the drift even as we were lifted toward the surface. I hung limp, head back and eyes locked on the patch of light above me.

It was almost a relief to hang in the quiet shaft.

“Gastner, you copy?”

In order to key the mike, I would have had to release my hold on Daisy. That would have been a hell of a way to test whether or not the carabiner still locked her harness to mine. I didn’t have the strength to yell. Let ’em wait, I thought.