Deep Fire Rising

THE DS-TWO MINE, NEVADA

The floor of the box canyon was in shadow long before sunset, making it easier for Mercer to pretend it was almost dawn rather than a few minutes until dusk. Just one of the tricks he used when working a graveyard shift. The other mental games he played weren’t doing much to alleviate the tension cramping his shoulders, the nagging pain in his lower back or the gritty, red rims around his eyes. He hadn’t spent as much time at the mine as the others, yet he’d pushed himself so hard he felt the deep exhaustion infecting them all. The work pace had been brutal and he hadn’t yet recovered from Canada.

In the command trailer he stooped over the seismograph, his attention focused on the steady line of ink trailing across the revolving drum of paper. The stylus remained motionless but wouldn’t for long. Although it meant reporting to work an hour before his shift, he’d gotten in the habit of watching the results of Donny Randall’s blasts.

Red Harding stepped into the trailer where they kept the seismograph and several other pieces of scientific equipment. He placed a cup of coffee at Mercer’s elbow. Mercer acknowledged with a nod. Observing the seismograph had become a “morning” ritual for both men.

“Still haven’t figured it out, huh?” Red sipped from the Pepsi that gave him his jolt of caffeine.

Outside, the men of Donny’s team made their way past the trailer on their way toward their rooms for showers, dinner in the mess, and bed. The schedule left most too tired to bother with the satellite television, pool table or other amenities in the rec hall.

“Not yet,” Mercer said absently. The big clock on the wall showed that a minute remained before Donny would fire the charges his men had just planted.

Harding scratched his sunburned bald spot. “He has a different technique is all.”

Mercer had noticed the anomaly over the course of the ten days he’d been on-site. Both work shifts removed similar amounts of rock with each blast, although Donny used slightly more explosives. What tickled the back of Mercer’s mind was that the seismograph readings indicated Donny’s shots were slightly smaller than Mercer’s. Somehow Randall managed to reduce the amount of seismic shock from the charges he laid, creating less stress in the surrounding strata, something miners strove for. Mercer had watched him working but had found nothing to indicate how he was doing it.

It was ego driving him to find the answer, he knew. He didn’t want to admit the possibility that Randall the Handle was the better blaster.

“And if you average out our teams,” Red added, “we have cleared six feet more tunnel than he has. He ain’t better than us. He’s just overpacking his holes after he places his ’splosives. That accounts for the damping effect.”

“You’re probably right,” Mercer replied, not wholly satisfied with the answer but unable to find another.

The earth and the stylus jumped at the same instant. The bump at the soles of their feet was much less dramatic than what happened on the seismograph. The steel needle traced a jagged line on the paper like an EKG recording a heart attack. A moment later the shock waves dissipated and the machine flat-lined as if the patient had died. On an adjoining computer Mercer brought up comparison patterns from previous blasts. Like before, Donny’s shot showed a two percent decrease in shock waves from what Mercer’s team managed. The six additional feet that his men had excavated wasn’t enough to make up that difference.

Mercer’s mouth turned down at the corners.

The trailer door crashed open. Randall loomed at the entrance, his face and clothes covered in dirt. Pomade and dust turned his hair into a shiny helmet that clung to his skull. The dye he used to keep his hair unnaturally black bled down his forehead in gray streaks of sweat. “How’d I do?” His voice crashed unnecessarily loud.

“Three point two,” Red mumbled, as if betraying his supervisor with the answer.

“Hah,” Donny sneered. “I hot-loaded that shot with ten extra cartridges of Tovex. Had you made that shot, the graph would’ve spiked at four-oh, minimum.” He walked away without waiting for a reply.

“As if we needed another reason to think he’s a jerk,” Red commented to Mercer.

Mercer said nothing. What could he say? He checked the sensors monitoring ventilation for fume and dust concentrates. It would take a half hour for the massive fans to clear the workings of the choking mixture. Next he called up the video feed from a shielded and stabilized camera placed just back from the end of the tunnel.

It took a second for his eyes to adjust to the swirling clouds of dust blocking the camera’s view. It looked like a furious sandstorm. He sipped his coffee while the ventilators drew the smog to the surface. After a few minutes he could see rubble strewn on the floor of the tunnel, the debris blasted from the rock face by Donny’s charges, and then the end of the tunnel resolved itself from the haze. The stone was remarkably uniform considering the explosive onslaught it had just endured. Donny’s blast had been clean.

Mercer was just turning away so he could get ready for his shift when a shadow on the rock wall caught his attention. He almost ignored it, figuring the blemish was the result of the camera’s low resolution, but he sat back down and studied the mark.

Red sensed his sudden tension. “What is it?”

“Not sure,” he said. “Nothing probably.” Mercer watched for another minute. The stain remained unchanged. And still he felt a premonition. The geologic reports said they were roughly thirty feet from the subterranean reservoir, so it couldn’t be water, but what was it?

He made a quick decision. From a wall rack he grabbed a portable air cylinder and a mask with an integrated intercom. “Stay here and keep an eye on the camera. I’m going below.”

“Sure you don’t want me down there with you?”

“Positive. If that spot on the wall changes, tell me.”

“What do you think it is?”

“Probably an inclusion in the rock, but I don’t want anyone going down until I’m sure.” Mercer grabbed his hard hat and jogged from the trailer.

The elevator operator was just climbing from his control booth when Mercer entered the cave. “Mike, fire up the skip and don’t leave your station. I might need you to haul me out fast.”

“What’s up?” the worker asked even as he swung himself back into his elevated chair.

“Possible pressure seepage.” Mercer slammed the cage doors closed and barely heard the warning bells before the car dropped away. He fitted the oxygen tank onto his back and checked his communications link with Harding. “You reading me, Red?”

“Loud and clear.”

“Any change?”

“Nothing yet. You think the report was wrong and that we’ve already hit the water, don’t you?”

“Maybe.” The motes of dust swirling in the beam of his light were like a snow flurry that became a full-blown blizzard as he plunged into the depths. His visibility was down to thirty feet by the time the elevator reached the substation eight hundred feet below ground.

The geologic reports said they were well back from the underground lake, but he couldn’t discount that the blemish really was water seeping through the earth’s crust. The pressure behind it would be unimaginable, and the rock dam between the water and the tunnel could withstand only so much. If it was water, the next set of drill holes could easily cross that threshold and the whole thing would let go in a catastrophic flood. It was possible that even now the rock was breaking up and would explode.

Mercer couldn’t risk sending his men down here until he was sure. The fear of drilling into an undetected aquifer was one more on the long list of mining dangers, one very few survived to talk about. More than cave-ins or fire, miners feared a flood in the shafts. He recalled the long three days he’d spent in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, consulting with local experts to rescue six trapped workers caught in an unexpected flood. Getting them out safely had been one of the closest calls he could remember.

His emotions were torn between urgency and caution, but like so many times in his life, he let his dedication to his job push him on. He ran down the drive, his boots splashing through puddles and echoing dully in the tunnel’s confines. His breath hissed behind his face mask. The beam from his helmet lamp danced with each long stride.

If they had hit water, he’d have to keep men out of the mine for a minimum of thirty-six to forty-eight hours to monitor the seepage rate. Then they would have to change their blasting techniques. Finding seepage this soon would slow them down dramatically.

The vent fans were doing a good job clearing the air. As he approached the working face, his visibility had increased slightly. He stepped past the camera.

“I see you, Mercer,” Red called over the radio.

“How’s my butt look?” he joked to ease the strain in Red’s voice.

“Your overalls make your ass look big,” Red teased back. “The spot hasn’t changed.”

“I’m looking at it now.”

From a tool locker built into one of the small electric bulldozers, Mercer grabbed a six-foot steel pry bar. The ground was a jumble of rocks, some as large as car engines, others reduced to pebbles by the explosives. Although the ceiling looked pretty good, he tested some fissures with the pry bar to make sure none of it would collapse on to him. He jimmied loose a few stones, dodging aside as they crashed to the floor. It took him a further ten minutes to safely approach the blemish. Red called down to tell him the air was cleared enough to breathe. Mercer removed his face mask and unlimbered the air tank.

The beam of his light slashed across the spot and reflected off its slick surface. It looked like water had seeped from the reservoir through microfissures in the rock.

Mercer bent closer. The rock itself wasn’t exactly wet to the touch. It almost felt like a snake’s skin, merely hinting at moisture. He returned to the toolbox to get a piece of chalk and traced the perimeter of the two-foot stain. The outline would give him a reference if more water filtered into the tunnel.

Sitting back on his heels, he studied the spot, breathing slowly through his mouth because dust continued to flow past on the ventilation currents. For five minutes his concentration didn’t waver as he watched to see if the mark was growing. Had it expanded even a fraction of an inch he would have run from the mine as fast as he could.

Red’s voice on the intercom finally drew his attention. “It’s water, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but I think it’s stable.” Mercer stood. “There’s no indication of continued flow.”

“You want us down there?”

“Not yet. Give me a few more minutes.”

Mercer turned his attention to the mounds of rubble displaced by Donny’s last explosive blast. The wet spot was low down on the left side of the tunnel so Mercer concentrated there, using the pry bar to pick through the debris. He was looking for evidence of how deeply they’d already mined into the waterlogged rock. Unwilling to risk any other men in the tunnel, he strained to roll some of the larger boulders by himself. His body was soon bathed in sweat.

It took ten minutes to find the first chunk of stone showing water saturation. It was darker than the surrounding material, almost oily to the touch. Once he knew the appearance of the hydrostatically altered rock, he found several more farther down the drive. It became clear that Randall had ignored the evidence of seepage when he drilled the shot holes for his last charges. With the crews generally blasting three times during their shift, he wondered how many times Randall had knowingly risked his men by drilling into the dangerous formation.

Mercer felt his body grow taut with rage. “Red,” he called into his comm link, his voice cracking like a whip. “It looks like Donny drilled his last shot holes knowing he’d hit seepage. Get a team together to check the overburden he sent up during his shift. I want to know if any of it shows further saturation.”

“Roger. Anything else?”

“Yeah. I don’t want anyone else coming down without my express order. Get a portable seismograph ready. I want to take direct measurements of the working face. It looks like it’s holding, but there could be tremors I can’t feel.”

“Okay.”

“And find the Handle.” Mercer had returned to the rock face so he could move the camera closer to the damp spot.

The water stain hadn’t expanded beyond the chalk outline he’d drawn. By releasing the counterpressure of rock against the water, it didn’t appear they’d increased the flow rate. Mercer was relieved and thankful. He bent close once again, moving so his face was an inch from the shiny stone. He deliberately stuck out his tongue to lick the grainy surface.

And he recoiled at the alkaline taste.

“What the…?” He licked another spot just to make sure of what his senses had just told him. The water percolating from deep inside the earth was salty. After being filtered through untold hundreds of feet of rock it should have been as clear as a mountain spring.

“Not just salty,” he said aloud, baffled. “It has the exact salinity of seawater.”

Mercer had everyone working straight out for the next three hours. Ignoring Ira’s prohibition to draw attention to themselves, he had every light at the facility blazing away as sweep lines of men scoured the tailings recently excavated from the mine. With each empty pass his anger ebbed slightly.

Sleep-dazed and pissed off when he’d been roused from bed, Donny Randall insisted he hadn’t seen any water when his men drilled the last holes on their shift, and it appeared evidence supported his claim of innocence. None of the overburden pulled out prior to the final blast showed that water had seeped past. Randall’s curses had evolved into snide comments by the time Mercer admitted that he’d been wrong about Donny putting his men in jeopardy.

Randall sat in the command trailer wearing sweatpants, heavy boots, and a leather jacket over his bare chest. The trailer was only slightly warmer than the desert night. He was picking at his fingernails with a folding knife when Mercer entered. Randall’s dyed hair shimmered like an oil slick under the fluorescent lights. He dropped his feet off the desk when he saw Mercer. “Since you didn’t find shit, I’m going back to bed.” He stood over Mercer in an attempt to intimidate him. “I guess your Ph.D. and your thousand-dollar-an-hour consulting fee and the fact that Ira Lasko thinks the sun shines out your ass don’t mean much, huh?”

Mercer recoiled. He hadn’t realized that Randall did indeed know who he was.

Donny laughed, misunderstanding Mercer’s movement. “Next time you want a lesson on mining, you come and ask me and I’ll tell you how it’s done.” The animal hatred flashed in his eyes once more and he poked a hardened finger into Mercer’s chest. “And the next time you question my ability you’d damn well better be right, because if you’re wrong again I’m going to beat you to an inch of your life. You hearing me?”

Mercer didn’t consider the eighty pounds of weight or six inches of height he was giving to Randall. That wasn’t even a factor. The only thing keeping him from snapping Donny’s finger was that the move would only anger the larger man and the subsequent fight would likely end up destroying the trailer.

“I didn’t think you were as tough as I’d heard,” Donny scoffed with a dismissive toss of his pomaded hair. He was almost out the door when Mercer’s comment stopped him dead:

“I was wrong about you, Donny. I apologize.”

“That’s more like it.” Randall laughed.

Mercer’s face remained expressionless. “You’re not only the dumbest son of a bitch I’ve ever known, but I’ve watched you checking out the other men here and realized you used a pick handle on those boys in Africa because you’re also the most sexually confused.”

Randall blinked, the nature of the insult taking a few seconds to register. To Mercer it was almost as if he could watch the thoughts ricochet in his mind like a pinball bouncing from bumper to bumper. Just as his eyes widened in comprehension, Red Harding and a half dozen other men stepped into the trailer. They’d just completed their last sweep of the mine tailings and had no idea what they’d walked in on.

Randall paused for another heartbeat before deciding to let this drop, but he gave Mercer a murderous look. As if Mercer didn’t already know it wouldn’t end there. He almost smiled at Donny’s transparency.

“What was that all about?” Red asked after Donny had skulked into the night.

“Just Donny expressing his disappointment about how I sullied his character.”

“Come again?”

Mercer chuckled. “Randall was just trying to prove he can piss farther than me.”

“Gotcha,” the wiry Texan said. “We’re ready to place the remote seismograph. You’re going to need a hand.” He pointed at the monitor showing the camera’s view of the water stain. “The spot hasn’t grown since we first saw it, so I think we’ll be okay for a quick trip down.”

The fact that water wasn’t continuing to seep through the rock quelled only part of Mercer’s uneasiness. He was more bothered now by the nature of the water, although he hadn’t said anything about it. He was going to stick by his original decision to keep men out of the mine for at least a day.

“All right. You coming?”

“Damn straight.”

Mercer nodded his appreciation. “Get one other man. Meet me at the skip in ten minutes.”

“You going to call Admiral Lasko?”

Mercer reached for the encrypted satellite phone on the desk. “That’s next on my list.” He waited until the men had left the trailer before placing the call.

“Lasko.”

“Ira, Mercer. We hit water.”

A stunned moment, then, “How bad?”

“It just looks like a small patch of saturation. It’s not growing, nor is any water wicking through.”

A sudden realization hit the deputy security advisor. “You guys haven’t broken into the chamber, have you?”

“No. It looks like we’re still some twenty-eight feet shy, but the water seems to have expanded past its cavity, at least in this one patch.”

“Ah, is this common?”

“Hard to tell,” Mercer said after a moment. “It all depends on the water pressure, the permeability of the rock, how long the water’s been there—”

“Why would that have anything to do with it?” Ira asked sharply.

“Given a few million years water will seep through just about anything. Knowing how long ago the void in the earth was filled would give me an idea how fast the water’s moving.”

“Oh, right.”

“I’ve got a camera monitoring the damp spot, and we’re about to place a portable seismograph to judge the rock’s stability.”

“Good. How many men are down there now?”

“None,” Mercer replied. “That’s one of the reasons I called. Until I get a better handle on this, I don’t want anyone working at the face.”

Mercer expected a protest, but Ira agreed instead. “Good idea. For how long do you think? A couple of days?”

“At least. The plug separating the tunnel from the reservoir is under strain, and until I can determine how safe it is, we can’t risk the men.”

“Hold on a second, Mercer.” It sounded like Ira had clamped his hand over the phone’s receiver to speak with someone in his office.

It was nine o’clock in D.C. Mercer wondered why Ira was working so late.

“Okay, I’m back. There’s no sense you guys hanging around for two days, so I’m organizing helos to get you to the Area 51 air base. They’ll hold their regular personnel flight to Vegas for you. I’ve got someone working on getting you hotel rooms.”

Mercer was grateful, and somewhat surprised Ira had had the same thought as he did earlier. Then again Ira was a master administrator and knew how to maintain peak performance from those under him. Forty-eight hours in Vegas was exactly what his men needed after months of continuous work. He laughed. “Just great. A few minutes ago the men thought I was the hero for giving them a few days off. No way I can top you sending them to Sin City.”

“When you’re there,” Ira joked back, “you can pick up the tab at the strip joints they will no doubt visit.”

The teasing tone evaporated on Mercer’s lips. “I’m not going with them. I want to stay and monitor the mine.”

Ira’s reply carried the same seriousness. “You are going with them.”

“Forget it,” Mercer said. “No offense to your hydrologists, but I’m the one in charge out here and I’m the one who has to be satisfied the tunnel is safe.”

Ira’s smile resonated in his voice. “That’s why you and I are friends, Mercer. You’ll take responsibility even when you don’t need to. I’ve done that my entire life. Go to Vegas, for Christ’s sake. You can study the hydrology reports when you get back. You were hired to dig the tunnel, not oversee the entire project. Besides, I won’t be able to get Dr. Hood or Dr. Marie there until the day after tomorrow at the earliest.”

“I don’t want anyone going into that mine,” Mercer cautioned. While his work made him an expert in hydrology, he conceded that Gregor Hood knew this area much better. Until his arrival, there wasn’t much for him to do except stare at computer monitors. And whether he was at the mine or in Las Vegas, nothing could stop water from bursting through the rock plug if it was already unstable.

“I’ll order some guards to the site. No one goes in or out. Take a couple of days off. If we’re that close to the underground cavern, you guys have earned it.”

“All right.” Mercer felt himself relaxing. “You win.”

“Choppers will be there in half an hour. Only takes fifteen minutes by jet to fly from Area 51 to Vegas. Hold on.” Ira again clamped a hand over the phone to speak with someone in his office. “Okay, thanks. Mercer, you’re booked in the Luxor Hotel. Sorry it’s not a suite, but you’re traveling on the government’s nickel. I’ll try to get away from Washington and meet you when Drs. Hood and Marie arrive.”

“Okay. I’ll see you in a couple days.” Mercer paused. “And if you tell Harry I’m in Vegas for two days, I will kill you.” On Harry White’s list of life’s priorities, he ranked gambling below smoking and drinking but above eating and showering. Mercer was already planning on calling him from his hotel to rub it in.

Ira laughed. “There are practical jokes, and then there’s downright cruelty. Your presence there is considered a national secret. You’re safe.”

Mercer swiveled off his chair and started for the mine head. He remembered he wanted to tell Ira about the salinity in the water deposit, but figured it could wait until he talked it over with Gregor Hood. More than likely it meant nothing and he’d find the hydrologist had experience with similar abnormalities during his previous evaluation.

Red was waiting with another miner, Ken Porter. At their feet was the seventy-pound armored case for the seismograph and its batteries. They heaved it by the handles and followed Mercer into the cage lift. No one spoke as the elevator dropped into the gloom. Normally miners whiled away the commute with jokes or games of dice on deeper shafts. For this descent they remained grim-faced and tense. They all understood the risks.

At the substation, Red and Ken set the seismograph on a utility tractor as Mercer got into the low-slung bucket seat and engaged the electric drive. He continued a dialogue with the topside safety monitor, who was watching the camera for any changes at the working face. He stopped the tractor well before they reached the end of the tunnel, knowing that the slight vibration of the heavy tires on the rough ground could trigger a catastrophic collapse. From this point on, they moved with the careful deliberation of demolition experts defusing a bomb.

Red and Ken lugged the seismograph, heads down under their burden. Mercer twisted his head in a steady rhythm so his lamp flashed on the floor, ceiling and walls. Their boots crunched on the debris-strewn tunnel.

At the face, Mercer went straight to the damp spot, satisfying himself that the camera hadn’t lied. The stain seemed safely contained by his chalk outline.

“Let’s get it planted and get out,” he said, straightening. He pointed to where he wanted the unit set.

He and Red began the laborious process of calibrating the seismograph and jacking it into the same data cable carrying the camera images to the surface. Ken Porter spent the time scouring the rock for additional water spots that Mercer might have missed.

“Son of a bitch!” he shouted suddenly, scrambling away from the working face.

Mercer looked up. “What is it?”

“UXB.”

Mercer’s body went cold. UXB was an old term for unexploded bomb. Ken had found an explosive charge that hadn’t gone off with the others. He pointed to one of the two-inch holes Donny Randall’s team had drilled into the stone. At this angle Mercer couldn’t see into it, so he couldn’t tell that it was nearly ten feet deep. Ken had been right in front of it and had flashed his lamp down its length and saw the blue wrapper of the Tovex explosive.

“Back away nice and easy,” Mercer cautioned in an even voice. Tovex was one of the most stable demolition charges on the market, but he wasn’t going to take any chances.

Ken took several steps back, his face ashen, his eyes glued to the black hole in the dark stone. He angled away from the mouth of the hole to get out of the potential blast radius and was twelve feet away when the charge blew.

Because the drill hole hadn’t been repacked to contain the blast, the explosion came out like the exhaust of a rocket engine, a seething plasma of gas and flame that shot down the tunnel in an expanding plume. Ken had just gotten himself clear yet was still thrown a dozen feet by the concussion.

Mercer and Red too were tossed back by the blast, neither able to hear the warning shouts of the other because their hearing had been nullified by the overwhelming detonation. Mercer was the first to get to his feet, swaying against the ringing in his ears. He began to rush to where Ken lay like a limp doll and pulled up short. What he saw in the wavering light of his helmet lamp defied description.

Like a spreading pool of spilled ink, the area around the smoking hole darkened as he watched. Water under tremendous pressure was filling microvoids in the rock, oozing out almost like sweat from pores. At first the surface appeared merely damp and then began to glisten. In seconds, drops of water formed and began to trickle from the stone.

The primitive part of his brain told him to forget the others and flee, but he fought the temptation. Keeping one eye on the impending flood he reached for Ken Porter, shouldering the unconscious miner in a fireman’s carry. Red Harding was up, staring at the water now spurting from the solid rock.

“Let’s go!” Mercer screamed at the top of his lungs. His voice was deadened even in his own head.

Red finally saw Mercer lurching toward him, shook himself of the shock and started loping down the tunnel. Behind them the water tore at the stone from behind, exploiting the tiniest cracks until it found the weakest spot. Like a liquid laser, a shaft of water shot from the drill hole, a two-inch diameter spear that hit the seismograph machine. For a moment the water exploded around the armored case in a roiling froth, but its power was too great to be deterred by such a puny obstacle. The heavy case began to slide across the floor, slowly at first, then accelerating. Red had a fifty-foot head start on the tumbling crate and it nearly bowled him over as the water jet propelled it like a projectile down the tunnel.

The noise began to swell as the hole widened and more water gushed through. It was more powerful than any fire hose. Mercer knew if it somehow touched him the least that would happen was it would knock him flat. More likely, he realized as he ran, it would tear away whatever limb it encountered.

They raced on, pursued by the relentless flood. The water level rose and waves pulsed down the drive so that two hundred feet from the working face they kicked up spray with every pace. After five hundred feet the water was up to their knees. Red looked at Mercer, reading in his eyes the determination to fight on despite the lengthening odds.

Far behind them billions of tons of water tore at the rock, seeking release from its subterranean reservoir. The hole widened, allowing the flood to come through with such force that the stream remained airborne for fifty feet before the water column hit the tunnel floor. It swept past the utility tractor like a raging river, boiling around the four-ton vehicle until it too was dragged along in the torrent.

With Ken slung over his shoulder, Mercer could barely keep up with Red, and yet the loyal Texan didn’t leave him behind. They ran in step, fighting side by side as water climbed up to their waists. The speed of the water pulled them along and threatened to tear their legs out from under them. Both knew that to fall was to die.

After what seemed like an hour but was only eight minutes, Mercer saw the lights of the substation. He could even hear the water as it cascaded into the deep sump, a thunderous sound that shook the earth. He began to hope. If they could reach the skip, maybe they could be pulled out before whatever rock still damming the underground lake failed completely.

It wouldn’t happen.

There was just too much water, too much pressure. Rather than collapse in sections, the entire span of the tunnel, from floor to ceiling, failed at the same time. The wall of water hurtling down the tunnel filled every square inch of space, a solid barrier moving at forty miles an hour.

Because water cannot be compressed, the collapse formed a pressure bulge that shot through the flood. Mercer and Red were caught totally unaware.

Like a tsunami, the wave rushed over them in a near-solid sheet that left both men tumbling in its backwash. Mercer lost his grip on Ken Porter when he smashed against the wall, the precious last gulp of air he’d taken exploding from his lungs at the blow.

He managed to right himself in the tumult and came up gasping. The black water settled to its earlier level and he staggered to his feet, knowing the massive surge had been a preview. Red surfaced a short distance away. His breathing was labored and he couldn’t focus his eyes. This time Mercer couldn’t deny his instincts. Searching for Ken meant he’d lose Harding for sure.

He grabbed the smaller man by the back of his overalls to keep his head clear and charged down the tunnel like a rampaging animal. The flood had taken one man and he wouldn’t let it take another. He’d lost his helmet and its precious lamp in the swell so he focused on the distant constellation of lights ringing the substation. A fierce wind howled past his shoulders, driven to hurricane force by the wall of water bearing down on him.

Had the floor of the skip elevator not been an open mesh that allowed the water to vanish into the sump, the tunnel would have already flooded to the ceiling. However, this reprieve was double-edged. If Mercer and Red were caught in the cage when the main wave hit, their bodies would be diced against the heavy-gauge wire like cheese through a grater.

He staggered the last steps into the substation and allowed the torrent to sweep him off his feet so that he and Red were carried into the elevator and pinned to the floor. From there, Mercer clawed his way to his knees, his throat aching from swallowing so much water, his eyes stinging from the salt. He slapped his palm against the UP button and fell back so he was facing the tunnel. The car began to lift, water sieving through the floor. Mercer barely noticed. Far down the drive, he saw the lights strung along the walls begin to wink out as they vanished behind the rampaging flood. Two hundred feet. One hundred. Fifty.

The elevator had risen only three-quarters of the way above the tunnel.

The tidal wave exploded into the wider substation, filling every corner as it sought freedom. As if sensing an outlet, the wall surged toward the elevator shaft. The carriage had just climbed clear when the water hit the back of the vertical passageway and geysered through the floor. Mercer and Red were lifted bodily, slammed against the mesh roof and pinned there for many long seconds until the elevator lifted them clear of the water’s grip. Both dropped to the floor, lying in pitiable heaps, bruised and dripping and unable to believe they were alive.

Below them water thundered into the sump in a solid curtain that ran clear and green. A subterranean Niagara Falls.

“You okay?” Mercer asked through labored gasps.

Red needed a moment to answer. “Cracked my head, busted some ribs and I think my wrist is too. Yeah, I’m fine. Ken?”

Mercer needed a moment to come to grips with losing one of his men. As much as he hated it, Ken Porter wasn’t the first he’d lost underground, and as long as he stayed in the business he probably wouldn’t be the last either. That was the nature of the work. “He’s paying the butcher’s bill.”

Red held up two fingers and then three and then gave a thumbs-up. Two out of three was damn good considering what they’d just endured. “Question for you,” he said, palming water from his hair. “You notice this tastes exactly like seawater?”

Mercer nodded in the darkness, then answered when he realized Red couldn’t see him. “Yeah, I noticed.”

“You got an explanation?”

This time Mercer just shook his head as the elevator climbed for the surface.