Caleb grinned. “That’s what we need.”
“Ah,” Dixon said, “but that’s the good news. The bad news is that, even though the lower level is an extension of the upper level—extending farther along under the hillside—the two tunnels abut. If we collapse the lower level by taking out the framework where the two levels meet, then we will inevitably take out some of the upper level as well.” Dixon held Caleb’s gaze. “The bad news is that I can’t be sure how much of the upper level will go, too. A yard? Three? Or the whole damn lot?”
Hillsythe sucked in a breath through his teeth, then he looked at Caleb. “We can’t risk losing the entire upper level. If we do, we risk the backers, if not Dubois himself, cutting their losses and calling an immediate end.”
Caleb grimaced. For a long moment, he stared at the lantern. Then he raised his gaze to Dixon’s face. “The only assessment we have to go on is yours.” He paused, then asked, “Realistically, can we collapse the lower level enough to shut it off from view, preferably to collapse it entirely, without taking down more than, say, a third of the upper level?”
Dixon looked away. He stared at the rock face above the others’ heads. Then he drew in a long breath, held it for several seconds, then exhaled. And nodded. “I think so.” He glanced at Caleb. “And acting now, while the lower level is no bigger than a crawl space, would be best. The thing we have to consider is that that space is now empty. When the supports collapse, what’s above—the hillside—will fall in to fill the gap. That’s where subsequent destabilization will come from—if the shift in that mass makes the rest of the hillside unstable. It might not have much of an effect away from the immediate site, but depending on the composition of the hill, it might. That’s where the wider risk lies, and there’s no way for us to predict what might happen.”
Silence fell while they all digested that.
Fanshawe shifted. “So what you’re saying is that, if we do this—collapse the lower level—we’ll be acting blind. That we won’t know how much of the hillside is going to collapse until it does.”
Grimly, Dixon nodded.
Caleb stirred. “As I see it, that’s a risk we have to take.” He looked around the circle. “One we have to face.”
He paused, then reiterated, “We have to block off the lower level before Dubois or any of his men get a chance to see it. Everything”—he strengthened the conviction in his voice—“all and every possible chance we might have to survive and get out of this jungle—rests on that. If we don’t take the risk, we have no hope.”
He gave the others a moment to take in that stark reality before concluding, “As far as I can see, we have no choice.”
Phillipe, Hillsythe, and Hopkins were already with him. Dixon and Fanshawe were reluctant, but they, too, saw no other option.
It was Dixon who asked, “Do we tell the others—the other men, the women, and the children, too?”
They discussed the point. It was immediately agreed that the rest of the men would need to be told; all worked in the mine and would be involved in one way or another with the operation.
All agreed that the children should be left in ignorance. Although many would be in and out of the upper level as well as helping in the continuing digging out of base ore surreptitiously going on at the end of the first tunnel, they’d grown used to Dixon and the others working on the timbers at the far end of the upper level and wouldn’t see anything sufficiently out of the ordinary to pique their curiosity. But if they were informed, it was very likely that their anxiety would become apparent—possibly even to the extent that too many of them became fearful of entering the mine.
That, Dubois and his men would notice.
“The way we’ll engineer it,” Dixon said, “there’ll be no more danger than there already is to anyone in the mine, not until we initiate the collapse.” He went on to assure them that all danger would come after that point.
Caleb exchanged a wry glance with Phillipe; Dixon was throwing himself into the challenge of collapsing the lower level with significantly greater zeal than he’d invested in opening it up in the first place. It was hardly surprising that Dixon had such a sterling reputation in the corps.
They then moved on to the trickier question of whether to share their plans with the women.
Caleb was for; all the others were against.
Indeed, all the others were faintly aghast at the notion.
From their comments, Caleb realized that, all experience to the contrary, they saw the six women as weaker beings it was their duty to shield and protect. He could understand the protectiveness, but had trouble equating “willfully keeping them in ignorance” with protection. He knew beyond question how his mother, had she been there, would react to not being told—to not being trusted, as she would interpret it. As for his sister-in-law, Edwina—much less his soon-to-be sister-in-law, Aileen Hopkins—they would erupt. The thought made him wonder how well Will Hopkins knew his sister; as Will was adamant that the women not be told, apparently not that well.
At Caleb’s suggestion, they called Jed in and asked what he thought.
Jed frowned and considered long and hard, but eventually, he stated that he would rather not have Annie worry.
Caleb inwardly sighed. “I still feel—strongly—that it would be wrong to keep this from the women.” Especially from Kate.
Phillipe caught his gaze. “Do you really want Katherine worrying and fretting over whether the tunnel will suddenly give way and bury you—and everyone else—inside? Children and all?”
Caleb frowned and absentmindedly corrected him. “Kate.”
Phillipe bent an exasperated look on him. “Exactly. Just think, man! She’s going to be agitated—enough for Dubois to notice. We might think he’s not watching, but he is. He knows damn well that we’re plotting and planning. It’s purely his arrogance—and his peculiar brand of malevolence—that makes him just watch and laugh at our helplessness, and believing we are ultimately helpless, he continues to let us amuse him. And remember, he caught the change in her—and whatever that was, it wouldn’t have been overt—enough to think to follow her and capture us in the first place. And with this, she and the other women will be even more anxious, more than enough for him to notice. Then when the tunnel collapses, he’ll know what to think.”
“And we can’t risk that.” Fanshawe looked determined.
Hillsythe weighed in with, “At present, viewed from the perspective of getting the job done while fooling Dubois, one of the most attractive aspects of this plan is that it is so bloody dangerous. That it’s such a crazy, desperate, reckless, and—given Dubois knows nothing about our impending rescue, as far as he will be able to see—stupidly senseless thing to do.” Hillsythe spread his hands. “Why would we bring the hillside down on our heads? To him, such a notion will make no sense at all. He’ll never think it was our deliberate doing—not unless something occurs to tip him off.” Hillsythe caught Caleb’s gaze. “We can’t risk telling the women, because we can’t risk alerting Dubois that something’s afoot, even nonspecifically.”
Phillipe leaned forward. “We can’t risk him making the connection because he will retaliate.” He paused for an instant, his gaze locked with Caleb’s, then more quietly said, “And you know who he’ll reach for first.”
Not you. Kate.
Caleb heard the words Phillipe left unsaid more than loudly enough. He dropped his head back on his shoulders, stared upward for a second, then straightened his head and nodded. “All right. I agree. We’ll tell only the men.”
With that decided, they opted to get at least a few hours’ sleep before they started on the work to put their plan—their bloody dangerous, crazy, desperate, reckless, and thoroughly sensible plan—into action.
CHAPTER 16
First thing the next morning, Caleb, Phillipe, Hillsythe, Dixon, Fanshawe,
and Hopkins separately broke the news of their latest plan to the men with whom they usually worked. Although the new plan was initially greeted with grave faces, nevertheless, as the day wore on, that they actually had a plan—one the leaders believed would work and were actively pursuing—sank in, and the atmosphere changed.
The men understood the danger, but they also fully comprehended not just the need to do something but the need to take this particular risk, and one by one, they, each in their own way, committed to the gambit.
Caleb, together with Dixon and the three carpenters, spent the entire day examining the timbers framing the opening to the lower level, then discussing and rejecting various ways to weaken them.
“The critical point,” Caleb repeated, for the third time in different words, “is that we need to be able to set everything in place—have everything ready—without collapsing anything. We’re not going to be able to have multiple attempts—it has to be exactly what we want on the first and only try.”
Dixon threw him a frustrated look, but the engineer didn’t disagree.
With his hands on his hips, Caleb watched and listened as Dixon and the carpenters examined, opined, and argued.
Having to make do with only one lantern didn’t help.
Later, once the four had finally agreed on the most useful timbers to work on, and on a plan of attack, so to speak, Caleb reminded them, “The temporary bracing has to be set up in such a way that preferably one man, or at the most two, can initiate the collapse and still get out of the mine.”
Dixon grimaced, but nodded. He surveyed the section of the framing they’d elected to weaken, then looked at the carpenters. “We’ve identified the timbers we need to work on. Given the lack of light, there’s no sense starting on the work now.” He glanced at Caleb and explained, “It’s going to be exacting and will, as you said, have to be perfect the first time. We won’t get any chance to make corrections, and one unwary slip—one cut too deep—and we could bring it down then and there.”
His jaw set, Caleb nodded. He would have preferred to start active work today, but Dixon was correct. They couldn’t afford to rush, and Dubois was unlikely to send anyone to examine the lower level just yet; they hadn’t yet informed him it was possible to crawl in, and even if they had, while the space was so narrow, none of the mercenaries would be keen to go in, especially as Dubois himself wouldn’t.
In those circumstances and with so much riding on the outcome, rushing would be foolish.
Instead, Caleb asked, “When do you think Cripps will be back with more oil?”
One of the carpenters who’d been a captive almost as long as Dixon replied, “If there’s a rush, Cripps and his crew can make it to the settlement and back in three days. Because Arsene goes for the mining supplies, he and his group usually take five.”
Dixon nodded. “Three days will mean tomorrow.” He met Caleb’s eyes. “I really don’t want to even mark things up without better light, and the way Arsene is rationing the oil, using two or more lanterns at full light down here is going to leave too little for those mining.”
“Let alone if one of Dubois’s boys thinks to stick his head in and sees us here, bathed in light.” Jed grimaced.
Caleb sighed and looked up at the beams, half of which were shadowed. “So our best bet is to hold off until Cripps gets back and we can work under full light.” He was speaking more to himself than the others.
“What we can do, however,” Dixon said, his voice gaining enthusiasm, “is to use the time—the rest of today and tomorrow until whenever Cripps gets here—to work out our strategy for holding off the collapse until initiation, and also how to delay the actual collapse after initiation to allow whoever triggers it to escape.”
Caleb nodded. “Good idea. I take it we can do that outside, in the light?”
Dixon replied, “We can draw up plans and work on them.”
He and the carpenters looked up at the beams, clearly fixing the structure in their minds.
Caleb was thinking of what might be achieved with a decent delay after the collapse was triggered. Several enticing thoughts were circling in his brain, along with several long-ago memories. “For the latter project—the delaying of the ultimate collapse—I think we should pick Lascelle’s brain. And Hillsythe’s, too, come to that. They might have experience that’s relevant, not necessarily with collapsing mines but similar situations.”
Dixon—who must have had at least an inkling of Hillsythe’s background—nodded. “Excellent idea.” He waved toward the exit. “Shall we?”
* * *
Caleb found himself cravenly grateful that Dubois’s extended hours for the men, which the mercenary captain insisted on maintaining even in half shifts, meant he could take his turn in the mine late at night, and so avoid having to spend any significant time with Kate.
Even though he’d come to accept that the other men were correct, and that in this instance, sharing their plans with her and the other women wasn’t the best path, he still felt...uncomfortable.
Nevertheless, when he walked out of the mine close to midnight and saw her waiting on the porch of the women’s hut, his feet took him to her without further thought.
She met him with a kiss—sweet, full of promise—but then she drew back. Her hands gripped his forearms as she looked into his face. “I can’t walk tonight—the children are so excited over being included in the plans and making a stockpile of their own that they’re having trouble settling.” She grimaced. “The other women are sleeping, but while the little ones are tossing and turning, my governessly instincts won’t allow me to leave them.”
His reassuring smile was entirely genuine. “Then let’s sit for a little while.” With an elegant flourish, he assisted her back to her stool, then sat on the open porch by her feet. He leaned back against her legs, then felt her hand lightly touch, then stroke over his unruly hair. “Tell me what was decided for the children.”
In a clear, soft voice, she told him of the arrangements she, Hillsythe, and Hopkins had made with the children to create another stockpile of diamond-bearing ore concealed among the piles of discarded rock. “Even with the second tunnel yielding lots of diamonds, courtesy of those mining rock from the end of the first tunnel, there are still many more discards than diamond-bearing clumps. We gave the children a ratio of four to one. Four diamond-bearing rocks into the pile for the cleaning shed and then the next into their special pile. They can all count to four.”
Even though he wasn’t looking at her, he registered her satisfaction as she said, “And as Dubois relies on us women to check over the children’s work, then that special pile will remain where it is—concealed between the true discards and, indeed, covered by them.”
“Hmm.” He leaned back, relishing the feel of her fingers absentmindedly combing through his hair. “And now that Dubois has caused such a large pile of diamond-bearing rocks to be created outside the cleaning shed door, then a few less being put onto that pile isn’t going to be noticeable.”
“With the stockpile in the mine, and now the stockpile by the discards, plus the cache of cleaned stones we’ve started in the cleaning shed...” She halted, then, in barely a whisper, asked, “Will it be enough, do you think?”
He reached up and caught her hand, stood, and turned to face her. He bent over her and looked her in the eye. “I said we’ll manage, and we will.” He managed a cocky grin. “Remember that. Believe in that.”
She smiled.
He closed the distance between their lips and kissed her—long, assured, a kiss he ensured brimmed with confidence.
Then he raised his head, pressed her fingers and released them, and stepped back. He smiled. “Now go inside and sleep, and we’ll see what tomorrow brings.”
She chuckled and rose.
He saluted her, watched until she disappeared inside the women’
s hut, then turned and strode across the compound.
He didn’t know why it should be so, yet every time he reassured her, he reassured himself.
* * *
What tomorrow brought was Cripps, a renewed supply of oil, a significant amount of dried meat, root vegetables, and flour, a massive amount of extra mining supplies, and a totally unexpected visitor.
“I can’t believe it!” Along with Hopkins, Fanshawe stood glaring across the compound. “It’s bloody Muldoon!”
Hopkins narrowed his eyes on the nattily dressed figure of the naval attaché. “Looks like my sister and Frobisher’s brother were right. Muldoon is one of those involved.”
“Interesting,” Hillsythe laconically observed. “I wonder what’s brought him here.”
Dixon snorted. “What I’m looking at is all those extra supplies. It looks like they’ve cleaned out the fort’s commissariat!”
“Either that,” Caleb said, already thinking about what impact having even more supplies would have on their plans and on Dubois’s expectations, “or Muldoon and his cronies have been stockpiling, too, and have decided it’s time to clear out their warehouse.”
His hands on his hips, he stood with the other leaders at the entrance to the mine and watched a long procession of native bearers march into the compound.
Phillipe, standing beside him, poked his arm. When Caleb glanced his way, Phillipe nodded past the side of the mercenaries’ barracks. “Looks like your ladies are going to get us the relevant intelligence.”
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