David Dun - At The Edge

"Mother, God, I want my mother." The leader had put another man at the debris pile. The screaming turned Dan's stomach. This was nearly the worst moment of his life, second only to holding his wife's dead body.

He was tired. Tired not just in his body, but in his mind and in his spirit. How did men get to such a sorry state that they were killing each other in a hole in the ground? And for what? Out there in the dark the leader waited in silence for him to turn on his light or reveal his presence-then he would shoot. Somewhere there was a fourth man.

Some things were just as bad as being shot. Suffocating in a hole was probably one of them. Either way he would leave his son an orphan. Even as he thought it, sucking air became harder. Now he was running out. As quickly and as quietly as he could, he fumbled and changed tanks.

Without warning Dan jumped up and slid over the debris pile, then began walking in the pitch black, his gun pointed straight ahead. The man screaming tended to drown out everything else. His hand reached out for the rock wall and soon he felt the cold of the earth. He followed the wall.

Staying low, he walked the perimeter of the large chamber, recalling that there was one passage before he reached the main passage that led back to the pool. All of a sudden the staccato spitting of a silenced automatic weapon had bullets smacking the wall just ahead of him. They knew what he was doing, and they were getting desperate. He hit the ground and kept crawling.

This time he hadn't seen the muzzle flash. Perhaps the shooter was smart enough to stand beside a boulder to hide the flame. He came to the first tunnel off the main chamber. Putting out his hand, he crawled until he felt the far wall and then resumed a duckwalk along the wall. Based on the sound of the shots, he was sure they had come from the center of the chamber.

Smack, smack, smack. More shots were fired, but this time he saw the muzzle blast Trying to fix the spot in his mind, he fired back into the blackness. He could not have hit the shooter except by dumb luck.

He knew they would try to cut him off. Probably they would move to the wall. Any moment he should arrive at the main shaft leading back to the pool. He stopped. These men were determined. They would not let him walk out of here and the most likely spot to stop him was the mouth of the main shaft.

Think.

If they waited, he could wait. They all had about the same amount of air and he had a little more. The closer they got to the pool, the worse the air. Soon everybody would have to move away from the pool or get out of the mine.

Seconds ticked by. Every muscle in his back and neck felt stiff. His tongue was dry like toughened leather. He needed cover. He duckwalked forward, feeling for some debris. Something in front of him felt like a boulder. In an instant the exit tunnel was lit by a bright light. It was ahead of him. Without hesitating, he emptied the clip at the light and blew it away. Breathing hard and trying to see where nothing could be seen, he forced himself to wait and to think.

They had attempted to surprise him. Had he been upright he would be dead. Anger filled him. He took a full clip from his pocket; he felt for the clip release. A small button by the trigger guard didn't do it. Probably the safety. Near the top of the clip, he found a lever. It worked. Sliding the new clip into place, he pulled back the small bolt on the ejector. It had an action vaguely similar to his Browning semiautomatic twelve-gauge shotgun.

Sitting on the hard stone, he took off his boots. They scraped the rock in the dark and made soundless travel impossible. He tied the laces together and hung the boots around his neck. Duckwalking, he moved back toward the center of the cave in the direction of the light. It was the last thing they would expect and that's why he liked it. Leveling his gun in front of him, he kept his finger on the trigger. One way or another, this would end. When he had gone about thirty feet in complete silence, he tossed a stone. It hit, and before it rolled, the darkness exploded in machine-gun fire only a few feet from his chest. He shot back and knew he had a hit.

"Who is that?" he cried into the mike, trying to sound like one of them.

"All right, let's call a truce," came a frightened voice over the radio.

Maybe he had hit the leader; he sensed the survivors were spooked out of their minds.

"You out there, lawyer man?" a shaky voice said.

He remained silent.

A terrified, whispering voice came back over the radio. "Are we shooting at each other?"

"Turn on your light," one man said to the other.

"Fuck you," came the reply.

"Boss, you there?"

There were two of them talking. He was certain that he had shot two and knocked one silly with the crowbar. But they had body armor, so maybe they weren't dead or even dying. He turned off his radio and concentrated on hearing the next sound.

"We can't just sit here; we'll run out of air."

"What the fuck do you suggest?"

"I'll come to you."

"How will I know it's you?"

"Some things you gotta take on faith."

One voice was straight ahead. Dan was sure that he stood between the speaker and the exit. Quickly he turned and duckwalked back to the entrance of the main shaft, put his boots back on, and hurried down the corridor. After making the first turn, he switched on his headlamp and began running. Then he stopped, turned off his light, and fired a single shot.

"I got the bastard," he spoke into his radio.

"Who was that?" He heard an obviously bewildered voice.

"Maybe it's Meat. That you, Meat?"

There was silence.

"If that's Meat, then who operated the winch? And why ain't he talkin' to us?"

"I don't know, but it sounded to me like one of our guys got the snoop. Maybe Meat's radio went dead. I'm getting out of here. Screw this. Without air we'll turn puke yellow and shake to death."

"I'm coming too."

Dan found a boulder and waited. So at least they were convinced their leader was dead or unconscious. Soon he saw headlamps bouncing off the wall. The men were moving erratically, no doubt peering around corners and trying to stay behind cover. Retreating, he found a straight stretch with no place to hide, backed up until he came to a large rock outcropping at a bend. There he waited.

He knew that their hands shook like his, their throats were tight-it was in their voices-barely holding it together until they could rip off those masks and breathe in the goodness of open air. He waited for them, breathing shallowly, not moving a muscle. It was obvious from the light on the rocks that they were getting close. When he guessed they were twenty feet away, he peered around the corner, saw them as vague shadows behind their six-inch lights. He aimed. In the eerie light, with unsteady knees and the quiver in his hands, he hoped the bullets would go over them. "Freeze," he shouted.

Instantly they turned off their lights. He squeezed off a single shot. Bullets poured back through the tunnel, hitting the rock wall twenty feet beyond him. They were utterly panicked, just emptying their guns at where they had seen the muzzle blast. When he heard the click of a man pulling a clip, he flipped on his light, catching them both like deer in the headlights.

"Drop your guns or I will blow you away."

They did as he said. ''You're using up a lot of air. You got no place to go. Either we all go up or we all die. Come on forward. Do exactly as I say, or I'll kill you so I can get out of here alive."

Dan collected both guns, slinging one over his shoulder. Before they made their way back to the heavy stink of the pond, he took their lights and threw away their shoes. They teetered when they walked.

"What the hell is in here?"

"We don't know."