Private Gold

Chapter 25

Joey raced to his SUV. He climbed in, and reversed it as close as he could to the tunnel’s entrance. How much rope did he have? Would it be enough?

He opened the trunk and pulled out the nylon coils. Now, as he thought about the massive weight of the grate, the rope seemed flimsy and he was seriously worried it wouldn’t be long enough. But all they could do was try... there was no other hope for the men below.

“Let’s tie the rope to the grate first, and then string it back to the car,” he said. “We don’t want to be fiddling around in there longer than we have to.”

“Breathe deeply now, before we go in,” Isobel advised, and they spent a few seconds drawing long breaths before jogging down the darkened passageway. The fumes stung his eyes; he wished for the storm to return, forcing air into this tunnel, but the breeze had dropped and the night was still.

Isobel shone the flashlight onto the grate, and Joey tied a bowline knot. His fingers felt clumsy — he supposed either from haste or the insidious effect of the gas. The hook was a few inches above his outstretched arms, but he propped the ladder against the wall and stood on the second rung. Hastily, he fed the rope through the hook.

“Out,” he said, after pushing the ladder clear, and they ran back to the entrance, Joey holding tight to the coiled loops, paying them out as he went, aware with a sick certainty that the rope was slipping through his hands too fast.

He was dizzy, leadenness spreading in his limbs and nausea churning in the pit of his belly. He was worried that the zama zamas weren’t keeping quiet because he’d asked them to, but because they had succumbed to the flood of poisoned air.

“It’s too short!” Despair crushed him. They were standing just one pace away from his car, and he’d run out of rope. He pulled as hard as he could on the remaining length, staring in despair at the short, but insurmountable, distance between the end of the nylon line and his tow hitch.

There was no way he could drive in any farther. The tunnel was a few inches narrower than his car, and the back of the vehicle was already almost flush with the rock.

“Your cable ties! I saw them in there earlier. Surely we could use them to make up the distance?” Isobel rummaged in the open trunk and pulled out a handful of them.

“That could work. Their breaking strength, though...”

“What is the strength?”

“About two hundred pounds per tie.”

“And if you use more than one?”

“Then it multiplies the strength.”

“How much does the grate weigh?”

“That’s the million-dollar question,” Joey acknowledged.

He had no idea what its weight would be, but he guessed at least half a ton. So, to be safe and create a margin for error, he needed seven ties per loop. How many loops would he need to cover the distance? And how many cable ties did he have? He found two more packets in the back of his car. He passed one to Isobel and they tore them open. Joey’s bag ripped down the side and the black ties scattered over the ground.

Isobel was neater-fingered than he was, and worked faster. In a few minutes, while Joey was still struggling with his fourth link, she had made six tidy bundles.

The only problem was they were starting to run short of cable ties. Joey shone his flashlight over the ground, brushing it with his fingers, hoping to pick up any of the ones that had fallen. Isobel was creating another link, looping the two lengths they’d made together.

“I’m two ties short here,” she said. “Are there any others?”

“I can’t find any.” Joey swept the area with his flashlight and fingers again, wishing for his fingertips to touch one of those precious pieces of plastic, but they didn’t. There were no more.

One link would have to have only five ties in it.

Joey looped the end of the chain around the tow hitch. There was just enough rope for him to tie a secure knot on the other end.

“Now we see if it works,” he said. He didn’t have a clue if it would. He was having serious doubts about the sanity of using a few pieces of plastic, underspecified for the job, to try to hold up a deadly weight long enough for them to rescue everyone trapped inside.

But it was their only chance.

“I’m going to get into the car now and ease it forward,” he told her. “I’ll do it as slowly as possible, so as not to put more strain on the cables. Take the flashlight and shine it down the passage. Tell me if it’s working, and if the grate is lifting.”

“Will do,” Isobel confirmed.

Joey would rather have had her behind the wheel and himself exposed to further fumes in the passage, but it was better for the person more familiar with the car to do the job. And he would prefer for the burden of failure to fall on his own shoulders than on hers.

“Easy now,” he urged the big SUV, as he disengaged the hand brake and pressed down on the gas pedal. He could visualize the rows of looped plastic tautening, taking strain as the rope tightened. He imagined the weight of the grate. God, what if they’d been totally wrong in judging it? He was bracing himself for the sudden lurch forward that would mean one of the links had broken.

Instead, the SUV eased a foot forward, then another, and he heard Isobel shout: “It’s lifting!”

Carefully, carefully... it would be so easy to overshoot, to draw this contraption of plastic and rope beyond its breaking point. Perhaps another foot. He edged the car forward, imagining the steel grate lifting, its full weight bearing down as it rose.

“Go higher!” Isobel called, her voice sounding hoarse.

Joey eased forward another foot, and then another, and when he heard her cry of “Stop!” he reacted immediately, cranking the hand brake as tight as it would go and hoping it would hold. He left the car in gear, turned it off, and then he was out and racing back down the tunnel.

The grate was open, angled over the gap and making him think of a jaw waiting to snap shut. But, so far, it was holding.