by Peter Hernon
Booker didn’t answer. Bent over the weapon, he was carefully feeling the casing with his fingertips, searching for bullet holes. One of the slugs had skipped off the metal hard case. The other had penetrated the housing an inch from the weapon’s nuclear package. Booker couldn’t believe it when he saw the hole.
“That wasn’t supposed to happen,” he said. “A bullet from a handgun shouldn’t be able to penetrate a missile’s hard case.” He looked astonished. “If it had hit two inches more to the left, we’d all be dead.”
“From an explosion?” Murray asked.
Booker said, “From plutonium radiation escaping from the primary. We would have received a lethal dose in about two seconds.”
Repeating his earlier question, Wren wanted to know what was in the backpack that Jacobs had grabbed before he went over the edge.
So did Atkins.
“The batteries and timer,” Booker said matter-of-factly. He continued to examine the surface of the bomb.
“Then how are we going to do this?” Wren said in a screaming burst of anger. It was the first time Atkins had seen him lose his composure. Normally easygoing, the young geologist looked like he’d finally reached the breaking point.
“What about the capacitors?” Elizabeth asked.
Booker stood up. “They’re right here,” he said, smiling as he patted the pocket of his heavy jumpsuit. He removed a small package of electrical components. “When all the lights were out, I managed to slip it out of the pack before Walt grabbed it. It’s the only part that’s crucial to the detonation. The only one I couldn’t do without.”
“We still need batteries and a timer,” Atkins said.
“That’s not a significant problem,” Booker said. “We can use batteries from the flashlights. And I’ve got a backup timer. I’d planned for redundancy, at least I thought I had. I can’t believe I forgot to bring a backup for the capacitors.” He frowned. It was almost a fatal oversight. He should have known better, planned better. “I guess I’m older than I thought.”
The ground trembled, an almost imperceptible shift at first, then much harder shaking. The sound of cracking, splintering rock boomed up from the depths of the crevasse. Another tremor hit, a strong sideways motion. Rock fragments fell on them. A cloud of dust formed in the tunnel. They heard a heavy rumble somewhere above them. It sounded like an avalanche.
“That’s a cave-in,” Murray said, coughing in the thick dust. “A big one.”
“How long did it last?” Elizabeth asked. She held a handkerchief over her mouth in the dust. Murray and Booker had dropped to their knees to keep from being knocked down.
“Five seconds,” Atkins said. He’d timed the shaking, the longest since they’d entered the mine.
“Folks, I suggest we switch to plan B and get moving,” Murray said, clearing his throat as the dust settled.
Atkins agreed. The fault’s seismicity was increasing. The pattern closely resembled the one that had preceded the 8.4 earthquake, a series of gradually intensifying preshocks, sometimes coming in flurries. Then the big one.
Booker took four double-A batteries from two flashlights and wrapped them together with tape, attaching them to the capacitors. The batteries would charge the capacitors, which would send an electric current across a bridge wire connected to the detonator.
The timer looked like a digital alarm clock. Booker had carried it in one of his pockets. He wired the timer to an enabling plug on the exterior of the bomb’s hard case.
“It’s time to raise the critical question,” Booker asked. “Do we stick with the original plan and set it for four hours?”
“We might not have four hours,” Elizabeth said. “This fault seems primed to explode.” Like Atkins, she thought a major earthquake was imminent.
“I’d make it longer,” Murray said. “We don’t know what happened above us during that last shake, whether the passageways are still open. And we still need to lower the bomb into this hole. That’s going to take more time.”
“Then considering the differing opinions, I’d suggest we stick to the plan,” Booker said. He pushed two buttons on the timer. One set the hour and minute. The other set the trigger.
Atkins watched the red digits begin to flash on the small device, which tracked the seconds and minutes.
Four hours.
Earlier, it had seemed like plenty of time. It didn’t now.
He turned on the radio and got Steve Draper.
“We’ve started the countdown,” he said.
The radio crackled.
“Then get the hell out of there!”
It was the president’s voice.
Atkins explained they were going to lower the bomb into the crevasse to reach the two-thousand-foot maximum-effect level.
He briefly described what had happened to Walt Jacobs.
There was no answer. Then the radio clicked again. It was Draper.
“Did you feel that last shake?”
Atkins said, “I thought it was going to bury us.”
“It was a mag 5.1, John. Get out of there as fast as you can, pal.”
NEAR KALER, KENTUCKY
JANUARY 20
11:55 A.M.
BOOKER GENTLY SLID THE CAPACITORS AND batteries into a canvas bag, which he looped over the front of the bomb. He lashed it down with cord and tape. Then he and Murray tied a three-hundred-foot length of rope to both ends of the MK/B-61. They wrapped the rope several times around a steel post that had once supported the frame of the collapsed elevator shaft. Murray tied a white handkerchief at the two-hundred-foot mark.
With Booker operating the joysticks, Neutron lifted the bomb, then placed it over the side of the crevasse while Murray, Atkins, and the others held on to the rope, keeping it taut as they slowly lowered the weapon into position.
Atkins stood behind Wren and was surprised at his strength. A thick pack of shoulder muscles moved under his coveralls as he gripped the rope. The geologist was much stronger and fitter than he looked.
“Let it down a little more,” Booker said.
They lowered the bomb a few feet at a time until they reached the handkerchief. They looped the rope around the steel post and tied it down. The entire procedure had taken nearly half an hour.
Atkins went to the edge of the crevasse and took a final look at the bomb as it hung suspended against the rough wall of the trench. He could just make out the red glow of the timer, ticking off the seconds and minutes.
Would it go off on schedule?
Would it be a dud or a misfire?
Was it too powerful, or not powerful enough?
Booker put an arm around his shoulder. “Don’t think about it,” he said, guessing what was on Atkins’ mind. “We’ve done everything we could.”
“I hope so,” Atkins said. He knew you never did everything you could. There was always that small or large detail you forgot, the potential for a screw up.
Murray quickly got everyone back in line for the ascent. The sooner they were moving, the better he’d like it.
They picked up their canisters of dry foam and extra coils of rope. Murray told them to recheck the straps on their oxygen tanks.
“Unless we find out different, nothing’s changed,” he said. “We’re going back the same way we got down here, up the skip shaft to Level 15. Then up the main air shaft to the elevator cage on Level 8. Any questions?”
They started up the skip shaft. It was more difficult climbing up the steep incline than descending. What had taken nearly half an hour during the three-hundred-foot descent now ate up forty minutes of time. Tied together again, they had to lean into each step. Their leg muscles soon began to feel the strain and they had to stop once when Booker’s calves cramped up. Only Neutron had an easier time of it, carrying the large spool of non-1 fusing as it rolled up the shaft once used for the coal conveyor belt. Freed from the weight of the bomb, the robot moved effortlessly up the slope.
When they reached Level 15 Murray checked the temper
ature gauge. They stopped beside the three-foot-high red-painted number on the wall—15.
“Man, I don’t believe this,” he said. “It’s pushing ninety degrees. This ground’s a furnace.”
He didn’t have to tell that to Elizabeth or Atkins. Both were soaked through their heavy clothing. They all were.
They started down one of the dark, forty-foot-wide tunnels that had been carved out of the coal seam. They squeezed through a narrow space where part of the ceiling had collapsed and were approaching a crosscut that linked two of the tunnels when the ground heaved. They’d gone about four hundred feet.
The force of the tremor hurled Atkins down. He fell hard on his back, his air tank cracking against his spine. Elizabeth and Weston also fell. The ground kept moving, shaking back and forth like a vibrator. There was a deep rumble far below them, the sound of buried thunder.
“Get back! Move!” Murray was screaming at them as they scrambled to their feet.
Atkins heard the sharp crack and glanced up just as a section of the roof collapsed. A slab at least twenty feet long fell ten yards in front of them. Coal dust stung their eyes. They were coughing, spitting it up.
When the air started to clear, they made out the dimensions of the cave-in. They stood in the dusty haze, staring at a wall of broken rock that had sealed the tunnel from floor to ceiling. They’d almost been crushed.
“I noticed that weak spot coming in,” Murray said, angrily shaking his head. He was mad at himself. He should have been more cautious. They were in a hurry, but that was no excuse for carelessness. He shined his light on the ceiling, looking for other dangerous fractures. They’d moved back just in time.
“How strong do you think that was?” Elizabeth asked.
“I’d say another 5,” Atkins said.
“I don’t like the way they’re starting to bunch up,” Weston said. “The ground’s really moving.”
Atkins couldn’t have agreed more. He thought again about the huge fault that spread out twenty miles below them and how dangerously close it was to others that cut through the Mississippi Valley.
Murray laid out their only option.
“We’re going to have to blast our way through that rock,” he said. “I’ll set the charge. Everybody get back as far as you can.” They retreated down the tunnel almost to the skip shaft, nearly fifty yards.
Murray waited until everyone was out of the way. He checked his gas meter. Methane levels had climbed slightly, but still weren’t at the danger threshold. He set two sticks of plastic explosives in a shallow crevice in the rock, positioning them at the base of the rib wall. Designed to blast escape holes through blocked passageways, the shaped charges of gelatin dynamite were called “rock busters.”
The fuse cord was attached to a small blasting cap, which resembled a shotgun shell. Made of aluminum, it was crimped onto the explosives. Murray ran the cord back up the tunnel nearly to the skip shaft and crouched behind a pillar.
“Get ready!” he said. He counted down from five, then shouted, “Fire in the hole!”
He pulled a metal trigger attached to the end of the fuse cord, which provided the spark that ignited it. Within seconds the black powder core of the fuse raced to the blasting cap. The explosion went off with a ripping blast that peppered the tunnel with rock fragments.
When the dust settled, Murray shined his spotlight at the cave-in. His heart sank. The hole the explosives had blown in the rock was too small. Barely two feet high, it didn’t go all the way through.
“That’s not going to do it,” he said.
Elizabeth asked whether they could use the explosive charges that Booker had placed in the shafts on the way down.
Booker said, “They’re much too strong. They’re designed to collapse the tunnel. The whole thing would come down on us.”
Murray didn’t like the way it looked. Long cracks had opened in the ceiling. He was worried about another cave-in.
Booker had another idea. “Let’s see if Neutron can widen that hole.” Working the controls, he manipulated the robot’s steel-composite “man extender” claws so they spun like a drill. Within twenty minutes, Neutron had widened the hole enough for them to scrape through.
Booker sent the robot in first, its orange football helmet still securely strapped in place. He switched on Neutron’s powerful headlamp and television monitor and maneuvered it fifty yards down the tunnel. Beyond the cave-in, everything looked clear and open.
Pushing their air tanks and foam canisters in ahead of them, they crawled through the cramped opening.
Murray hurried them another six hundred feet to the air shaft at the end of the tunnel and immediately noticed something was wrong. He no longer felt fresh air moving in it. He shined his spotlight up the shaft. A row of green reflectors glinted in the light, extending at spaced intervals as far up as he could see.
“It looks clear,” he said. That was good news, but Murray was worried about all that falling rock he’d heard earlier. Somewhere up there, they were going to run into trouble.
They started up the air shaft, the longest leg to the elevator cage on Level 8, nearly seven hundred feet.
“How much time do we have?” Murray asked.
Booker checked his watch. “Just under two hours,” he said.
Atkins felt something turn in the pit of his stomach. They were eating up the minutes. He doubted four hours was enough time to get out of the mine.
As they crept single-file up the steep incline, Booker stopped to examine the explosive charges and fusing he’d inserted into the rock wall on the way down. Everything looked intact. As a backup, he placed more of the water gel explosives in the shaft, running a separate fuse line, which he would connect once they reached the surface. The charges were designed to explode with a delay interval of twenty-five milliseconds for maximum effect.
Murray called a halt when they reached Level 11. His gas meter had started beeping. A red light flashed. He cleared the meter and rechecked the reading.
“We’ve got a methane problem,” he said. “I’m getting concentrations of 5.4 percent, and the damn thing is still climbing.”
Atkins remembered what Murray had told them about methane danger levels. Five percent was the redline. Anything over that was bad news.
Murray announced more trouble. “The carbon monoxide levels have really popped,” he said. “They’re reading fifty parts per million.”
“What does it mean?” Weston asked.
“It means there’s a fire burning somewhere above us,” Murray said. “It could be anywhere in the mine, in one of the tunnels, up a crosscut, in one of the galleries. Anywhere. We’ve got to worry about all that methane igniting.”
Moments after he finished speaking, there was an explosion far above them. A single loud blast. The air shaft vibrated under their feet. Dust and rock rained down on them.
Atkins could tell it wasn’t an earthquake. Something was crashing down the air shaft, a wall of moving rock that was rolling in their direction.
“Everyone out of the shaft,” Murray screamed. “Get up the tunnel!”
The noise grew louder as the rock swept down the air shaft, blasting it wider as the walls gave way.
They ran up the main tunnel on Level 11, moving awkwardly under the weight of their air tanks, rope, and foam canisters. They’d gone about a hundred feet when Murray shouted for them to huddle in one of the “rooms” that had been dug into the rock face. There wasn’t time to go any farther. A cloud of coal dust and pulverized rock exploded down the length of the tunnel, pushed in by the collapse of the air shaft.
Coughing and spitting in the thick dust, Murray told them to put on their air masks until the tunnel cleared. When the dust finally settled a few minutes later, the entrance to the air shaft at the end of the tunnel had disappeared. It was completely sealed. There was no way to get through.
“That was a methane explosion,” Murray said, taking off his mask. The air had cleared sufficiently to breathe without ass
istance. “My guess is the fire ignited a pocket of gas.” He checked his meter. “Damn, we’ve still got a methane reading of 5.6.”
Still in the danger zone, the methane level had even climbed slightly. The only good news was the carbon monoxide levels had dropped.
They had to find another way up to Level 8, assuming it was still there. With all that methane in the air, they weren’t about to try to blast their way through the rock.
Murray said, “We’ve got three chances. The other air shaft, the elevator shaft, or the skip shaft. Let’s hope one of them is open.”
“What do we do if we run into a fire?” Wren asked.
“We try to get around it and keep moving,” Murray said. “You don’t want to have the fire get between you and an escape route.” Murray made a brief reconnaissance. He returned a few minutes later and said, “The skip shaft looks open. I can’t tell how far up it goes. At least one more level, maybe two.”
They had no choice. The entrance to the skip shaft was about eight hundred feet down the tunnel, which, to Atkins’ relief, still looked fairly intact.
Before they moved out, Murray wanted to do a short practice drill with their air tanks. He wasn’t happy with their first effort. Everyone had fumbled with the awkward mask and air canister.
Murray told them to put on their face masks, explaining they needed to familiarize themselves with the air supply system while there was still a little time. “When I give the word, turn off your headlamps,” he said. “If we run into smoke or dangerous levels of CO or methane up there, it could hit fast. You’ve got to be able to get that mask on in the dark.”
One by one, the helmet lamps went off as they squatted or knelt in the tunnel. Elizabeth was next to Atkins. The darkness was like nothing she’d ever experienced. Black, impenetrable. She couldn’t see her hand when she pressed it against her nose.
As she fumbled with her mask and straps, Elizabeth noticed a faint green light. Barely visible in the inky dark, it was glowing and luminescent. As her eyes slowly focused, she could make out the greenish light more clearly.