“Um,” I said. I glanced at the hole. One of the deputies trotted toward us, his boots raising dust. Everyone else had been herded well away, behind the yellow plastic banner that ran from car bumper to bumper.
“Sir,” he said, “they found Mr. Begay. They’ll be here in just a few minutes.”
“All right,” I said. “Let’s find out what this hole looks like before we jump in it. See if we have any options.” I raised the bullhorn and said, “Finn, we’re going to find a way to get me down there. Give us some time.”
“Nothing…but…time,” he replied.
“That goddamned cocky son of a bitch,” I said. “Find me an elevator,” I said to Sterns, “and you’re probably going to need about a mile of 2,000-pound test rope. By the time you find that, we’ll have Begay…and one more thing. I want a small automatic with a good silencer.” Sterns looked puzzled.
“Bill’s right,” Tate said. “If you had to fire a gun down in that mine, the whole thing’s apt to collapse.”
“I’m going with you,” Parris said. I regarded him for a second. His face was covered with sweat and he looked like he was ready to faint.
“No,” I said flatly. I didn’t have either time or inclination to baby-sit. I motioned to one of the deputies. “Find him some shade somewhere.” I turned back to Sterns. “I’m not going down there unarmed,” I said. “Finn’s a master of one-way deals. And it’s not going to happen again.”
“We’ve got Arajanian’s Beretta in Albuquerque,” Tate said. “It’s in the evidence locker. You kept a hold on that through thick and thin.”
“Too big. I want something small…something that I can hide. I won’t use it unless I can get close enough to shove it up his ass.”
“Well, I’ll work on that,” Sterns said. He walked off, scratching his head.
Tate glanced at me. He didn’t have much faith in Edwin Sterns. “I know someone in Albuquerque who can get us anything we need. We’ll send one of the choppers in for it.”
I nodded and he gestured to his detective. For a moment I was alone at the rim of the shaft. I looked down into the hole and felt a chill.
Chapter 30
Stubby Begay arrived about six-thirty—a short, scrawny man with badly bowed legs, a narrow, hawk-nosed face, and stone-black eyes. He had two teeth left, one snaggled right in front of his tongue so that he lisped. He talked so softly that in order to hear him I had to hunker down with him, his face no more than a foot from mine as he drew pictures in the dust.
According to Begay the vertical shaft of Floyd’s Number Two sank 785 feet below the headframe. We tested the depth with dinner.
Earlier Finn had agreed that we could send food down for the little girl. We considered spiking the food to put them both out, but I knew damn well that Finn wouldn’t fall for something that simple. And we had no way of knowing who might eat what…a dose necessary to knock out Finn would kill Daisy. So we played it straight. The small plastic cooler of sandwiches, fruit, and milk sank out of sight. The hundred yards of chalk line that we knotted to the cooler’s handle ran out and was tied to another ball of brown twine, and that reeled off for what seemed forever. Every inch of that 785 feet paid out before the cooler touched bottom.
We waited several minutes and then we heard Finn shout, “Pull…it…out!” We did so. There was no way we could touch the son of a bitch.
Begay enlarged his drawing in the dirt. “You got a drift on that side at 300 feet,” Begay said. “It’s an old pump station. And here, at 430, and another here, at 785. Right on the bottom.”
“Side tunnels, you mean?”
“They call ’em drifts.” His eyes twinkled.
“That’s where he must be then,” I said, tapping the bottom.
“I’d be right here,” Begay said and gouged his stick into the sand where he’d sketched the first side tunnel, or drift, 300 feet down.
“Why’s that?”
“’Cause the ladder goes right by it. No need to go to the bottom.”
“The food went all the way down.”
Stubby Begay grinned. His gums looked like plastic. “So you think he’s on the bottom.” He grinned even wider. “He takes the string and…” He made hand-over-hand motions as if he were pulling a bundle up. “He fake you out good that way.”
I frowned. “What about the other drifts? The deeper ones?”
He shrugged.
“There’s no way to reach them other than the ladder?”
Begay shook his head. “If it ain’t come loose.”
I looked up at Tate and Sterns. “Maybe that explains why we can hear him so well when he shouts,” I said. “If he’s only a hundred yards down in that first drift.”
“Only,” Tate said. He turned and watched two of the deputies unloading gear from the trunk of one of the patrol cars.
“So, Stubby, how about this. If I was lowered down in a sling seat, right along the ladder, I’d fetch up at this drift.” I tapped the dirt. “Where you say he’s got to be.”
“That’s what I say.”
“There’s nowhere else he might be?” Begay shrugged. “I mean except maybe the other side tunnels.” He shook his head.
I looked over at the climbing harness that one of the deputies was shaking loose. “There’s enough rope there?”
“Plenty,” Sterns said. He sounded confident. It wasn’t his ass in the sling.
As we made final preparations, the sun set. Spotlights from three cars converged on the shaft entrance, bathing it in harsh white light. Two big four-wheel-drive pickups had been recruited and parked thirty feet away, facing the shaft. Their floodlights added to the artificial daylight. The deputies attached the ropes to both front axles. They knew their job and took their time. When everything was finally ready, it was dark outside the circle of spotlights.
I looked down into the shaft, skeptical. The rope had to let me down right along the ladder so I could keep my feet planted and be able to use my one good arm. Otherwise, I’d just dangle and spin in the shaft, nothing more than a target on a string. The two deputies repositioned one of the trucks and were confident. I wasn’t.
“Sir?” The deputy, Gareth Burns, gestured for me. “Can you step into this?” He held up a bright blue nylon harness that looked like a big athletic supporter.
With several sets of hands assisting, I was trussed up tight enough to choke. Then two big steel rings were clipped into the nylon loops in front.
“Can you work these with one hand?” the deputy asked. He gave me a demonstration of how the carabiner worked and then watched me diddle with the lock ring. I pressed in the release and the ring came off. “Good. Although you might just want to leave it hooked up. We can pay out all the rope you’ll need.”
“Terrific.”
He nodded, mistaking my grimace for enthusiasm. “And I’ll just clip these two other harnesses to the belt here, so when it comes time to bring everybody up, we can do it right.” He had different plans than I did.
They pushed a plastic hard hat with a miner’s light on my head and pulled the chinstrap tight.
At one point during the preparations, Pat Tate handed me a tiny Colt .380 automatic. The silencer looked like a six-ounce juice can. I handed it back to him. “Put a round in the chamber.”
“You sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure.” After he did so, I pointed the muzzle of the gun off into the desert. The tiny safety catch was awkward to use with my left hand. I practiced snapping it on and off, then slid the little pistol inside my shirt, sticking its snout under the bandages that bound my right shoulder, arm, and ribs.
“Is that going to work?” Pat Tate asked.
“It’s going to have to,” I said. Pat didn’t ask what my plans were. The deputy snapped another large flashlight to my belt. It hung from a nylon loop.
“Slide this in your hip pocket,” Tate said and held out a slender black penlight.
The deputy saw my expression at the third light. “Rule of threes,” he sai
d. “It’s dark down there.” I didn’t argue. Tate adjusted the hand-held radio in its holster and made sure the microphone cord was free. The mike was clipped to my collar. I felt like a goddamned hardware store, but we were as ready as we could be.
Sterns jerked a thumb in the direction of the crowd. “The television station sure would like to be able to bring their cameras on over,” he said.
“Sure,” I said. He looked hopeful. “On one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“That you be the one to go down there.”
He didn’t like that much, but he didn’t mention the news hounds again.
I picked up the hailer. “Finn! I coming down now.”
“Take…your…time.”
I handed the hailer to Tate. “Polite bastard, isn’t he?”
The deputies handled me like glass. The iron mesh and its frame had been pulled completely off the shaft opening, and the hole gaped ominously. I stood with my back to the hole, the ladder’s top rung behind me.
“Now just lean a little against the rope so your weight is diggin’ in your heels,” the deputy said. “And remember with this Z-haul, you’re goin’ down in five-or six-foot bites. We’ll keep ’er just as smooth as we can. Now just edge on back until you got your feet on the ladder.”
The deputy had his hand on my left elbow while another adjusted a set of heavy edge rollers to guide the rope. I waited patiently, my pulse pounding in my ears.
“Just trust the rope,” Burns said.
“Do I have a choice?” I replied.
“Really, it works easy as can be. Now, just step down. Real easy. Leave it up to the rope.” I did so while he orchestrated. The ladder flexed and I stopped. “Go on down until you can hang onto the top rung,” he said.
One awkward step at a time, I backed down the ladder. After four rungs, I grabbed the ancient rust of the top rung in my hand.
“Now just relax for a minute and sit in the sling.”
He switched his light back and forth, checking ropes. The weight was off my feet, and with a twitch of the hand I could have spun around like a kid on one of those swings made out of an old tire. I kept my feet on the ladder rungs and my hand in place.
I twisted my head and looked down. The pencil beam from my helmet light shot down into the darkness. I looked up and squinted against the glare of the spotlights. Pat Tate was standing close by, as was Sterns. Both of them had that look on their faces that said, “Better you than me, kid.”
I took a deep breath. “All right,” I said. “Let’s get this over with.”
Chapter 31
Six feet at a time, I sank into the earth. I kept my feet free of the ladder, learning to trust the sit-harness. The ladder’s iron side rail slid through my left hand. That small contact was my anchor.
The vertical sides of the shaft were timbered, and in more than one spot water dripped down the face of the wood. The timbers smelled musty. I wondered what pockets of gases waited down below, trapped by the years of stagnation. I’d heard stories about miners walking into shafts where they took a breath and keeled over before they had time to turn around. That couldn’t be the case here…Finn had no shortage of breath.
As the bright light of the entrance drifted up and away, the shaft seemed to narrow with me at its focus. My mind played games with the perspective. When I was fifty feet down, the deputy touched me with the beam of his flashlight.
“Any problems?” he asked. He didn’t bother with the radio.
“No,” I said. The rope played out again. The next time I looked up, I flinched. I could have covered the opening of the mine with the palm of my hand. Looking down, I saw the beam from my helmet light stab into nothing. No bottom. Just wooden timbers and old iron.
I avoided looking at the rope. What on the surface had looked stout and unbreakable in its coil now stretched out above me thin and gossamer. Every time the deputies reached the end of a pulley bite and the drop stopped, the rope twanged from side to side slightly.
On impulse I reached up and turned off my helmet light. The blackness of the mine was complete, the entrance above nothing but an insignificant postage stamp of artificial light. I caught my breath as the rope descended again. The light had been my lifeline to equilibrium and I turned it back on.
The side tunnel, what Stubby Begay had called a drift, took me by surprise. The side of the shaft had been passing by my left shoulder as I descended, a steady, unchanging parade of old wood timbers, dripping water, and abandoned iron fittings. I hadn’t used the side of the shaft for support. Nevertheless, when it suddenly shelved inward, away from me, my stomach tightened. The rope dropped me far enough that my light shot into the tunnel.
The drift was nearly as large as the main shaft. I breathed in relief at seeing something substantial and horizontal.
I turned my head slightly, keyed with my left hand, and spoke into the hand-held radio’s mike that was clipped to my shirt collar.
“Stop,” I said. “I’m at the drift.”
“Affirmative.”
I pushed away from the ladder, rotating to face the drift. The floor of the tunnel was littered with junk—old sections of pipe, fittings, various lengths of wire and cable. The light illuminated heavy timbers and a series of three small concrete pads, each two feet high. Rusted bolts thrust up from the concrete where at one time machines had been secured.
Stubby Begay had called it a pump station. The miners hadn’t left much behind…just enough scars and litter to puzzle archaeologists in another thousand years.
For the first thirty feet the drift was as securely timbered as the main shaft. But forty feet back the drift elbowed to the left and the timber supports ended. I couldn’t see around the bend. The place made my skin crawl.
Rotten and water-soaked as the timbers were, they gave the illusion of strength and support. In the drift they gave way to something that looked like monstrous cobwebs, with patches of the material hanging down from a ceiling of jagged rock. It was some sort of fabric, bolted right to the face of the shaft.
In dozens of places rock fragments littered the floor of the drift where the old fabric had pulled loose, and off to the left, just visible before the drift turned out of sight, an entire section of wall and ceiling had slumped, filling nearly a third of the tunnel.
I swept the light carefully, looking for movement.
“Finn?” I said. My voice echoed down the shaft. The dust of the years had padded the floor, and the fresh tracks were as clear as if they had been painted on a sidewalk with Day-Glo paint. And the prints came in two sizes.
“Finn, are you in there?” Again my words rattled around and died with no response. I ducked my head and looked down the main shaft. Ten feet below the drift, the iron supports that held the ladder had pulled loose…or rusted through. The section of ladder was twisted away from the wall and hung off at an angle. Finn had to be in the drift.
I reached for the second flashlight, adding its beam to that of my helmet. I saw that with just a slight stretch I could plant my feet on the lip of the drift’s shaft and grab one of the wall timbers with my left hand. With some slack in the rope I could pull myself into the tunnel.
If I slipped and fell, it would hurt like hell, but the rope could be trusted. That’s what the deputy had said.
“Turn off your light,” Finn said. His voice was quiet and conversational.
Out of reflex I swung the lights toward the sound of his voice. Nothing. I snapped off the flashlight and let it hang, then reached up and turned off my helmet. The blackness was oppressive…the spotlights above at the shaft mouth served only as a beacon in the distance. I reached up and touched the small, reassuring pistol grip of the Colt under my arm sling. I waited.
“Sheriff, you copy?” The crackle of the damn radio sounded like a string of firecrackers.
I keyed the mike and snapped, “Stay off the air.”
“Ten-four.”
I took a deep breath, my fingers still covering the
lump that was the automatic. “All right, Finn. What do you want?”
Unless Finn had developed sonar, he could see no more than I. His light exploded out of the darkness, and I jerked my head back in surprise.
“Get that goddamned thing out of my eyes,” I snapped, but he took his time. Finally the light slipped away and I cracked an eyelid. The beam was centered on the thick bandage that bound my right arm and shoulder. My right hand stuck out of the linen and lay flat against my belly, useless. Finn played the light this way and that, examining me and my equipment.
“Turn around,” he said and watched as I touched the shaft wall with my fingers and gently pushed myself so that I rotated on the rope. The wash of his light cast a fat shadow of me on the opposite wall of the vertical shaft. As I rotated back around, he turned off the light. I blinked my eyes, trying to put out the yellow sunbursts that remained.
“So,” he said.
“Are you through playing games? Where’s the child?”
“She’s asleep. And you’ve managed to make quite a name for yourself, haven’t you? I underestimated your tenacity.”
I was in no mood to exchange compliments. “You have to let us bring her up. Nobody’s going to hurt her…or you.”
Finn chuckled. “I can imagine.” The harness dug into my crotch and belly, and my right leg was falling asleep. Finn knew he had all the time in the world. I didn’t if I was going to be worth anything.
“I was surprised that you had put it all together, Sheriff,” he said. I tried to picture where he might be standing.
“Sometimes I get lucky.”
“Yes,” he said. “Had your truck not let me down, we wouldn’t be having this conversation now.”
“What do you want, Finn? What do you think I can do for you?” I was tired of hanging like a goddamned potted plant.
“I saw the newspapers under the seat. You’re a clever man, to make the association. I’m curious why you didn’t call in any of the other authorities earlier.”
Bitter Recoil Page 18