David Dun - At The Edge

Still, it was a serious risk. He knew that if he never came out Maria would find a way to get the police into the compound and maybe with luck she would guess where to look. But it was a slim chance that she could find him if something went wrong. He hesitated. He had his son to think about. His mother would give it a valiant try, but she was getting along in years. It would be hard for her to raise a nine-year-old boy to manhood all by herself. Dan's father was dead and his brother was single and running the ranch. Katie would try but how would she deal with Nate and a panic attack at the same time?

Nate was a good reason not to go down. He found himself sweating and breathing deeply.

Then he heard voices.

He ran toward the voices as quietly as he could, hoping to determine something about whoever it was before they became aware of him. Maybe nobody had thought to count suits or maybe they would think he was just another Amada worker.

Voice sounds carried extremely well in the otherwise quiet rock chambers. Either that or they were very close.

"Get your damn gun up, dildo," he heard.

"Why, he wouldn't know what to do with it."

"Shut up and do your jobs-all of you," a serious voice cut in. "I don't want any shots fired until I say so."

Dan reversed course and ran until he came back to the vertical shaft. Now staying up could be just as dangerous as going down. Jamming the screwdriver alongside the down button, he hopped in a stirrup and began the descent. He told himself, all the way down, that large mines normally had more than one entrance.

As he descended, he studied the rock walls, trying to reassure himself that they could be climbed. Soon his headlamp wouldn't reach the stainless-steel pulley and estimating vertical distance became difficult. It might be too far to climb even with rests and outcroppings. He couldn't hear the voices anymore. Not knowing whether he was armed, they were probably coming slowly, looking in every crevice and dead-end side tunnel.

When next he looked down, he saw a pool. He looked around for something to stand on and was relieved to see a lateral tunnel just above the pool. Jumping off into it, he pulled the cable after him and began coiling it at his feet. What if the cable wasn't anchored to the drum? He knew the answer; the end would drop uselessly at his feet.

He watched the cable, knowing that at any moment he would have his answer.

Just as he was near panic, the cable began retrieving. It had been anchored to the drum and now was being reeled in even though the drum continued to turn in a clockwise direction. There were seven dust-coated stirrups on the ground, and the first of the seven was going back up. Damn! Frantically he looked around for something to hold the cable and stop the drum. The sixth stirrup was rising.

He saw some timber and wrapped the cable, then waited anxiously to see if the winch would move the timber and start a cave-in. When the cable snapped taut, it stopped.

The moment of relief was broken when he noticed the cable line relaxing. A few seconds later, the winch started and the cable snapped taut again. Once more, it loosened and pulled. Over and over, somebody loosened and pulled. The timber gave an eerie creak. The next time, it moved an inch and groaned terribly.

"Stop, you dumb shit." He heard the words from above clearly. The winch stopped. "Hey, you down there. Come on up. You're trespassing."

He remained silent.

As the last stirrup lifted off the ground, he had to make a choice. In a split second he decided not to go. If he arrived at the top and found armed men, the men who had thrown the stun grenade, the men who had hurt Maria and killed Lynette, they might just give him a shove and end his investigation forever.

After the stirrup had risen well into the vertical shaft, it stopped. A large light shone down and hit the pool. He could only imagine the muzzles of the guns aimed down the shaft. Rescuers would have kept the cable rising.

"Where are you?" the voice asked.

"Enjoy your stay, dumb shit," another voice said, and the cable motor turned on once again. It didn't come down.

They turned off the light and above there was only blackness. He was trapped.

It took a moment before he fully realized his predicament. He had about one liter of water, some trail mix, and that was all. Loosening his mask, he verified that the fumes were coming from the pool. Even a small whiff choked him. When he ran out of air, he would die-unless he could get far enough away from the pool that the fumes didn't overcome him. There was no telling what kind of deadly material the pool contained.

"There's no way out of there, mister. You better come up." It was a different, more reasonable-sounding voice. "You're going to run out of air, my friend. You've got to come up." Quickly looking around for a weapon, or a place to hide, or something that might help deliver him from the madness of his predicament, he found nothing. There was only a pool of noxious liquid.

He turned and began to jog. Here the ground was rougher. Rock that had fallen from above lay where it hit the ground. There was a track at this level, so he knew it was likely that this tunnel went a long way. It twisted and turned, depriving him of any sense of direction. He stopped long enough to pull out his compass but didn't know what good it would do since the tunnel offered no options.

Determined to control the jitters, he began regular deep breathing and maintained a brisk walk. The passage was narrowing and in places he had to stoop. Soon outcroppings and debris slides to either side narrowed the passage further.

He came to a partial cave-in where timbers had fallen. He squeezed his way between the rough timbers and over a pile of rock that went almost to the ceiling.

Air from the tank might run out at any time, and he had no idea whether he could breathe in these shafts. Instantly he cracked the mask and was greeted by the same pungent smell-but not as strong. Coughing hard, he replaced the mask. To continue on might well be suicide. He had no guarantee that the air would improve. It probably wouldn't. If he went back, he had no idea what they would do to him.

He looked at the gauge and discovered it was half empty. Undoubtedly, stress was causing him to gobble the air supply. He began to control his breathing. Walking around the next bend, he came to an old chamber filled with debris and partially collapsed timbers. Leading off this chamber were three passages. This was obviously some kind of a hub near a concentration of whatever ore they had been mining. There were four options. One of them was a vertical shaft going up. It might lead to the level above, perhaps to the right fork of the shaft through which he had entered.

"You're daydreaming," he said to himself, staring upward into the blackness, trying to figure if he could even climb it. In studying the vertical tunnel, he turned around 180 degrees. Then he sucked in his breath.

In his direction came the faint glimmer of a light How could they be so near? Quickly he ran into the largest-looking shaft and went perhaps a hundred yards before he came to another debris slide and an unfinished vertical shaft. There were massive timbers partially caved in and large boulders, perhaps from a blast before the mine was abandoned. He couldn't keep running. There was an old, rusted crowbar about six feet long lying in the dirt. It was his first bit of luck.

Sighing at the improbability of what he was about to attempt, he climbed up the debris and began the vertical ascent of a narrow chimney. It looked like the start of an abandoned vertical shaft. Wedging himself in an alcove above the main shaft, he waited. The bar was heavy and he laid it on an outcropping. In the process he glanced up and what he saw stopped his breath.