He also wished he was back out in the light. “How much further are we going?” he asked Djai, suddenly realizing he wouldn’t know an ore body from his elbow.
“As far as you want,” Djai said. “You’re calling the shots here.”
“I mean,” Dan growled, jerking Djai’s arm, “how much further to the ore body. Or, wherever the hell you’re getting’ the goddamned platinum.”
Djai made a funny little hop up into the air. Dan thought he was just trying to take some of the pressure off his arm, but then Djai slammed back into him.
Dan stumbled backward and fell painfully on his butt. In the process, he let go his grip on Djai’s wrist when he put his hands back to break his fall.
Rob’s flashlight bounced, waved wildly about, then disappeared.
Rob shrieked, the pitch of the sound going down as if he were shooting off down the rails.
Absolutely blind in the darkness, Dan fumbled out his gun. With the gun’s reassuring heft in his right hand, he scrabbled in his pocket for his phone. Turning it on, he waved it around, using the light of the screen to make sure Djai wasn’t about to kick him in the head.
As near as he could tell, he was all alone.
Turning the screen of the phone toward him, he swiped down and chose the flashlight icon. He swung the brighter light around as he levered himself to his feet.
He still saw no sign of either Rob or Djai. He turned and looked behind him, but the tunnel was empty back that way as well.
Ahead a couple of steps to his left, Dan saw some roped stakes. They’d been knocked down. As he got closer, he realized they surrounded a hole in the floor of the left side of the tunnel! With a sinking sensation he realized Djai’d leapt up to kick Rob in the butt. A kick that would’ve sent Rob right into the hole!
“Djai, you sonofabitch!” Dan screamed at the top of his lungs. “I’m gonna kill you.”
After sweeping the area around him to be sure Djai wasn’t creeping up, Dan edged up to the hole and looked down into it. He hoped to see Rob lying unconscious at the bottom of a shallow pit.
As best he could tell in the crappy light from his phone, the hole was bottomless. No sign of Rob. He looked down into the hole again, then put a finger over the light on his cell phone. He couldn’t see even a faint glow from Rob’s flashlight.
Son of a bitch! he thought, uncovering the light on his phone and sweeping around again to look for Djai. With no sign of Djai, Dan leaned closer to the hole, cupped a hand around his mouth and shouted down into the bottomless cavity, “Rob! Rob, buddy, you okay?”
He got no answer.
Dan held the phone off to his side—in case Djai had a gun and started shooting at the light—while he stood and thought for a moment. He didn’t think Djai’d gone past him toward the entrance of the tunnel, but if he had, Dan was already screwed. Djai had to be deeper in the mine. Dan realized that going deeper into a dark, dangerous place—one that the other guy presumably knew pretty well—had to be kind of crazy. However, he couldn’t leave the bastard alive.
Not unless he was willing to go back to prison.
Taking a deep breath, he started down the tunnel, walking on the right side and holding his phone and its light out in the middle of the shaft. I’d better not drop this goddamn phone…
***
Realizing she’d been waiting for quite a while, Kiri Djai turned her eyes to the clock in the corner of her laptop’s screen. He’s way late! She thought in irritation. Pulling out her phone, she sent her dad a text, “You going to pick me up?” Her dad claimed he liked picking her up at the college. He said it gave him an opportunity to talk to her about what she was learning, both during her mornings at the high school and in the dual enrollment classes she took on the college campus. Despite his good intentions, when he was hyper-focused on the project up at the mine he often forgot things.
She turned back to her computer, thinking she’d just as well get something done while waiting for him to answer.
But he didn’t answer.
She texted her brother, Lindl. “Did dad say he had plans this afternoon?”
Lindl’s reply said, “Don’t know. On my way to band practice.”
Kiri rolled her eyes; she’d forgotten about her brother’s practice.
Her dad sometimes didn’t notice text messages, so she tried actually calling him on the phone. Still no answer.
Exasperated, she called an Uber. She briefly planned out how she’d hassle her dad for being so inconsiderate, something he was always riding her about. But then a niggling doubt surfaced. After all, the mine was a dangerous place.
Kiri used her phone to log onto the surveillance cameras in the mine. First she pulled up the camera in the first room built into the side tunnel where their platinum synthesis project was located. The cameras were producing images, so the Wi-Fi up there was working and her phone call should’ve gone through to her dad on VoIP. Unfortunately, as she clicked through the cameras she saw all three of the rooms were empty.
When the Uber dropped her at the house, the first thing Kiri did was look in the garage. Her dad’s truck was there, so he hadn’t gone somewhere else.
Where the hell could he be? she wondered. He wasn’t the type to go for a walk in the woods.
She yelled for him
as loudly as she could, just to be sure he wasn’t somewhere in the house. He didn’t respond. To be completely sure, she went down into the basement and looked around. Her dad had a lot of tools and other equipment down there. She pictured some power tool injuring him so badly he couldn’t respond.
He wasn’t in the basement either.
Could he be in some other part of the mine? Why?
She went to the desktop computer in her dad’s office. Using it she called up a display of the feeds from all six of the mine cameras—the three in the rooms as well as the feed from the camera at the mine entrance and the two in the main tunnel. She’d thought her dad was paranoid for putting in all the cameras. Now she felt glad they were there.
Her dad wasn’t on any of the screens. Thinking she’d be pissed when it turned out her dad was fine, she scrolled back through the feed. As she scrolled, she mostly focused on the record of the feed from the tunnel entrance. She expected that the first thing she’d see scrolling backward would be her dad backing into the door at the entrance of the tunnel—a reverse of his leaving the mine on his way down the hill to the house.
Instead, the first activity she came to was a strange guy backing out the door. Since she was watching in reverse, that meant he’d actually been entering. Alarm flashed over her. The guy stood around outside the mine entrance until another guy, a big one, backed out a little later. This meant the big guy went in first, then the little one entered a little later. On the screen, they stood around briefly, then backed down the road and out of sight She paused the video and looked at the time hack. That was hours ago!
She scrolled forward until the two guys entered the mine’s entrance gate, then slowed. She hadn’t seen it on her fast reverse through the record but one of the interior cameras caught the big guy walking down the tunnel. Her dad appeared with a flashlight and went up to the guy. He didn’t look happy, though there wasn’t audio to tell her what he said. Suddenly, the guy grabbed her dad, then twisted his arm up behind his back.
Kiri dialed 9-1-1 as she scrolled further forward to watch them disappear into the depths of the mine. Getting up, she ran to her bedroom to put on her boots.
“9-1-1 operator, what’s your emergency?”
“My dad! A couple of guys have got him!” Boots on, Kiri ran for the door, holding the phone to her ear.
“Okay,” the operator said, “can you confirm your address?”
Kiri shouted their address as she reached into the closet by the door and grabbed the pipe her dad kept stashed there.
“We have police on the way. Are they holding your father in the house, or have they taken him away in a vehicle?”
Kiri stopped runnin
g for a moment to answer, “No, there’s an old mine up the hill behind the house. They’ve got him in there!”
The 9-1-1 operator sounded dubious. “Our system locates your cell phone’s just behind your house.”
“Yes. I’m on my way up to the mine. We’ve got security cameras inside the mine shaft. That’s how I saw the guys grabbing my dad.”
“You need to stay away from there and let the police handle it. How old are you?”
“Fifteen.” She considered stopping there, without telling them her thoughts, but decided they needed to know. “I can’t stay away. I’ve got to see if I can help.”
“No! You need to stay out of there. You’re just going to give the police more to worry about.”
“Sorry—” Kiri started jogging again. She hoped it didn’t take the police too long to get there. It was hard to hear what the operator was saying while she was running, but it sounded like the operator was still telling her to wait for the police to deal with the situation.
When Kiri got to the mine’s opening, she quickly slipped through the open door and off to the right side. Normally she would’ve waited a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dim lighting, but, almost frantic with urgency, she immediately started jogging down the tunnel, her fingers brushing the right sidewall.
She ran until she approached the location of the side tunnel where the three rooms with the transmutation experiments were set up.
The side tunnel was closed off. The woman from 9-1-1 was still talking. Kiri squeezed the cellphone between her palms to damp its speaker and paused to listen. Not hearing anyone coming, she turned on her phone’s light and surveyed the opening. Her dad had mounted a section of tunnel wall on one of the mine’s old rail cars. When the car slid forward, it closed off the irregular opening in the rough side tunnel wall, making it hard to tell there was a door there. Right now the opening was closed tight. Even knowing where the door was located, Kiri had a hard time seeing the cracks between the irregular rock of the door and the rock of the wall.
She paused to think, wondering if her dad and the two men could’ve entered the side tunnel and closed the door behind them. It seemed unlikely, but she decided she should check. She took a few moments to pull up the security cameras’ feeds on her phone. No one was visible, at least in the rooms of the side tunnel.
She looked down the tunnel, deeper into the mountain. The lights ended about a hundred feet further on, and she’d never gone much beyond where the lights stopped. Where the hell are the police?
Kiri lifted the phone to her ear. The 9-1-1 operator was saying, “Hello, hello! Kiri, are you there?”
“Yeah, sorry. I’ve been busy. How much longer until the police get here?”
“They’re there. They say no one’s home. Where are you?”
“Up at the mine! I told you I was going up to the mine!”
“Our system isn’t pulling any GPS data from your phone anymore. What’s happened?”
Trying not to yell, Kiri said, “I’m inside the mountain. There’s no GPS in here. Are the cops coming up to the mine?!”
“Um, yeah. Just a sec.” The operator was off line a moment, then came back. “Okay, they should be there in a few more minutes. Wait for them, okay?”
Despite her misgivings, Kiri’d already started walking deeper into the tunnel. “Sorry, I’ve got to keep trying to find my dad. I’d never forgive myself if I could’ve made a difference.”
“Kiri! Wait for the professionals!”
“Sorry. I should tell you that my phone’s communicating using a voice over internet protocol on the Wi-Fi system here in the mine. The Wi-Fi doesn’t go much deeper into the mine than I’ve already gone. I’ll probably lose you in a little bit.”
“Don’t! Don’t go any deeper! The police’ll need to be able to communicate with you.”
“Sorry,” Kiri said as she kept walking. She turned on her phone’s light as she passed the last ceiling light and it got really dark. Nonetheless, she kept walking. She felt dismayed when she saw the broken stake and rope barrier around the down-shaft. Edging close to it, she turned her phone’s light down into the hole. The beam faded into the utter blackness in the depths of the hole. “Dad?” she called down into the cavity. When there was no response, she shouted it again, as loud as she could.
Still no response. Lifting the phone, she said, “Are you still there?”
Though the transmission had begun breaking up, she heard the operator speak unhappily, “Yes, I’m still here. Please don’t go deeper into the tunnel.”
Kiri spoke into the phone, “Tell your men there’s a deep down-shaft in the left side of the floor of the tunnel about 100 feet beyond the last lights. It had a stake and rope barrier around it, but the barrier’s broken. Your guys’ll want to be careful.”
“Okay. Please stay there to warn them when they get to that point.”
“Sorry,” Kiri said as she resumed walking. She’d never been more than a little way beyond the down-shaft, so from here on the tunnels were new to her. Her dad had told her there were side tunnels beyond this point, so she started trailing her fingers along the right wall so she wouldn’t miss one. That way if her light went out, she’d be able to find her way back out of the mine by trailing her left hand against that same wall.
Kiri saw a brief flash of light deeper in the tunnel. It looked like it’d come from around a bend. “Dad?” she called out.
Suddenly the wall she’d been trailing her hand along disappeared. She paused and reached out for it.
A big arm wrapped itself around her neck from her right. No! she thought.
As she twisted and flailed, her phone slipped out of her fingers, falling facedown. She swung her pipe blindly back up over her shoulder, smacking the guy in the head and eliciting a curse. His right arm reached around her body, trapping her right arm under it. His meaty right hand grabbed her left arm just below the elbow to inexorably trap both arms. Desperately, she flailed the pipe at his legs using the limited mobility of her right wrist.
His left arm released her neck and that hand slid down over her body to her right hand. He jerked the pipe loose. For a moment she thought he was going to hit her with it, but then the pipe also rattled to the floor of the tunnel.
She started trying to kick back at his legs with her feet, but the impacts didn’t seem to have be bothering him much. His left arm rose back up around her neck and tightened. The man’s lips came down against her ear. Dispassionately, he said, “Hold still, or I’ll choke you out.”
Her neck felt like it was being crushed. Unable to breathe, Kiri stopped kicking. Her mind began gibbering in fear.
She’d always thought herself so capable.
She dealt with things.
She didn’t panic.
She was almost always right.
None of those things were true at the present. I should’ve waited for the police!
The guy eased up on her neck and she sucked in a breath. He lifted his mouth away from her ear and called out, “Djai. I’ve got your daughter. Get your ass back here and tell me where the platinum is before I decide to hurt her.”
“The police are almost here,” Kiri gasped out desperately.
“Sure they are,” the man said, a total lack of belief evident in his voice.
“They are! I called 9-1-1.”
“Sure you did,” he growled in her ear, “Now, shut up before I choke you unconscious.” He produced a nasty giggle, “Turns out I kinda like chokin’ girls.”
Kiri heard her dad’s voice from further down the tunnel. “Okay, I’m coming. Just don’t hurt her.”
The man said, “Get back here, now, before I do.”
“I’m coming. I’m coming.”
A light came on down around a bend in the tunnel. Kiri could hear faint footsteps and the light started getting closer.
Moments later, the light came fully into view. It looked like a cell phone’s light. The guy ground into her from behind. Squirming and twisting away
, she said, “Oh, gross!”
He chuckled, “Like that, do you? Go ahead and squeal a little bit. Maybe your dad’ll start making better time.”
Kiri’d been about to scream, instead, she pressed her lips together and kept squirming away from the bastard. His right arm let go, allowing her to pull her body away, though she was still pinned to him by her neck.
Where the hell are the cops?! she wondered. While wondering where his right hand had gone, she felt gently downward with her right hand. A light skittering of her fingers told her where his crotch was. He said, “Oh, you want some of—”
His words cut off as she lifted her hand away, then slammed the heel of her hand back into his balls.
There was a bright flash down by her right hip. A simultaneous thundering bang—so loud it hurt her ears—echoed through the tunnel. Oh my God! she thought, He’d pulled out a gun! The man curled over in pain, forcing her down as he did so.
Her dad’s light fell to the tunnel floor.
Behind her someone shouted, “Police! Drop your weapon!” They were hard to hear over the ringing in her ears.
The guy grunted, “You little bitch!”
A blow knocked her onto the rails. Dazedly, she thought, He pistol-whipped me! Then, He should have held onto me as a hostage against the cops. As soon as she thought it, she scrambled further down the tunnel away from him, crabbing low on her hands and feet toward her dad. When she’d made 20 feet without being captured, she thought about standing up, but decided not to try running in the utter darkness, especially on the rough surface between the rails.
The only light was a trickle leaking from under her dad’s cellphone on the ground ahead. That plus the flashing beams of police flashlights moving around behind. She started running crouched over, her fingers touching over the rails for guidance, and ready to catch her if she stumbled.
The Transmuter's Daughter Page 2