Десмонд Бэгли - Landslide

Crupper said with decision, ‘Where’s your telephone, Mr Donner?’

‘Now, wait a minute,’ cried Donner. ‘You’re not going to grind this man’s axe for him, are you, Crupper?’

Clare said suddenly, ‘Do you know why Bull Matterson had a heart-attack, Donner?’

He shrugged. ‘It was something about Boyd being Frank Trinavant. Now, there’s a cock-and-bull story!’

‘But what if it’s true?’ she said softly. ‘It will mean that Bob Boyd will be bossing the Matterson Corporation in the future. He’ll be your boss, Donner! I’d think about that if I were you.’

Donner gave her a startled glance, then looked at me. I grinned at Clare and said, ‘Check!’ She was pulling a bluff but it was good enough to manipulate Donner, so I followed up quickly. ‘Do you pull the men off the site or not?’

Donner was bewildered; things were happening too fast for him. ‘No!’ he said. ‘This is impossible. Things don’t happen like this.’ He was a man who lived too far from nature, manipulating his money counters in drilled formations, unconscious of living in an artificial environment. He could not conceive of a situation he could not control.

Crupper said harshly, ‘Put up or shut up. Where’s your site boss?’

‘Over in the powerhouse,’ said Dormer listlessly.

‘Let’s get over there.’ Crupper moved off through the mud.

I said to Clare, ‘Take the car and get out of here.’

‘I’ll go when you go,’ she said firmly, and followed me to the powerhouse. There wasn’t much I could do about that, short of spanking her, so I let it go. As we went along I sampled the mud, rubbing it between forefinger and thumb. It still had that slick, soapy feeling — the feeling of disaster.

I caught up with Crupper. ‘You’d better plan for the worst, Captain. Let’s assume the dam goes and the lake busts through here. The flood should follow the course of the Kinoxi River pretty roughly. That area should be evacuated.’

‘Thank God this is an underpopulated country,’ he said. ‘There are only two families likely to be in trouble.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘And there’s a new logging camp just been set up. Where’s that goddam telephone?’

Donner came back just as Crupper finished his telephone conversation. Behind him was a big hulk of a man whom I had last seen closely when crashing a gun butt into his jaw.

It was Novak.

He stiffened when he saw me and his hands curled into fists. He shouldered Donner aside and strode over and instinctively I got ready for him, hoping that Crupper could break up the fight quickly. Without taking my eyes off him, I said to Clare, ‘Get away from me — fast.’

Novak stood before me with an unsmiling face. ‘Boyd, you bastard,’ he whispered. His arm came up slowly and I was astonished to see, not a fist but an open hand extended in friendship. ‘Sorry about last week,’ he said. ‘But Howard Matterson had us all steamed up.’

As I took his hand he grinned and rubbed his face. ‘You damn’ near busted my jaw, you know.’

‘I did it without animosity,’ I said. ‘No hard feelings?‘

‘No hard feelings.’ He laughed. ‘But I’d like to take a friendly poke at you some time just to see if I could have licked you.’

‘All right,’ said Crupper testily, ‘This isn’t old home week.’ He looked at Donner. ‘Do you tell him — or must I?’

Donner sagged and looked suddenly much smaller than he really was. He hesitated and said in a low voice, ‘Withdraw the men from the site.’

Novak looked at him blankly. ‘Huh?’

‘You heard him,’ said Crupper abruptly. ‘Pull out your men.’

‘Yeah, I heard him,’ said Novak. ‘But what the hell?’ He tapped Donner on the chest. ‘You’ve been pushing to get this job finished; now you want us to stop. Is that right?’

‘That’s right,’ said Donner sourly.

‘Okay!’ Novak shrugged. ‘Just as long as I get it straight. I don’t want any comeback.’

I said, ‘Wait a minute; let’s do this right. Come with me, Novak.’ We went outside and I looked up at the dam. ‘How many men have you got here?’

‘About sixty.’

‘Where are they?’

Novak waved his hand. ‘About half are down here at the powerhouse; there are a few up at the dam and maybe a dozen scattered around I don’t know where. This is a big site to keep track of everybody. What the hell’s going on, anyway?’

I pointed up the escarpment to the dam. ‘You see that slope? I don’t want anyone walking on it. So those guys up at the dam will have to take to the high ground on either side. See Captain Crupper about getting the boys away from the powerhouse. But remember — no one walks on that slope.’

‘I guess you know what you’re doing,’ he said. ‘As long as Donner goes along with it, it’s okay by me. Getting the guys off the dam will be easy — we have a phone line up to there.’

‘Another thing — have someone open the sluices up there before leaving.’ That was merely a gesture — it would take a long time for the new Lake Matterson to empty but whether the slope collapsed or not it would have to be done eventually and the job might as well be started as soon as possible.

Novak went back into the powerhouse but I waited a while — maybe ten minutes — then I saw the small figures of men moving off the dam and away from the danger zone. Satisfied, I went inside to find Crupper organizing the evacuation of the powerhouse. ‘Just walk out of here and find high ground,’ he was saying. ‘Keep off the Fort Farrell road and away from the river — keep off the valley bottom altogether.’

Someone shouted, ‘If you’re expecting the dam to bust you’re crazy.’

‘I know it’s a good dam,’ said Crupper. ‘But something’s come up and we’re just taking precautions. Move, you guys, it’s no skin off your nose because you’re still on full pay.’ He grinned sardonically at Donner, then turned to me. ‘That means us, too — everyone gets out of here.’

I was feeling easier. ‘Sure. Come on, Clare. This time you are leaving, and so am I.’

Donner said in a high voice, ‘So everyone leaves — then what?’

‘Then I have a closer look at the situation. I know the dangers and I’ll walk on that slope as though on eggs.’

‘But what can you do about it?’

‘It can be stabilized,’ I said. ‘Others will know more about that than I do. But in my opinion the only way will be to drain the lake and cap the clay outcrop. We can only hope the thing doesn’t slip before then.’

Novak said in sudden comprehension, ‘Quick clay?’

‘That’s right. What do you know about it?’

‘I’ve been a construction man all my life,’ he said, ‘I’m not all that stupid.’

Someone yelled across the room, ‘Novak, we can’t find Skinner and Burke.’

‘What were they doing?’

‘Taking out stumps below the dam.’

Novak bellowed, ‘Johnson; where the hell’s Johnson?’ A burly man detached himself from the crowd and came across. ‘Did you send Skinner and Burke to dig stumps below the dam?’

Johnson said, ‘That’s right. Aren’t they around here?’

‘Just how were they taking out those stumps?’ asked Novak.

‘They’d got most of ’em out,’ said Johnson. ‘But there were three real back-breakers. Skinner has a blasting ticket so I gave him some gelignite.’

Novak went very still and looked at me. ‘Christ!’ I said. ‘They must be stopped.’ I could visualize the effect of that sharp jolt on the house-of-cards structure that was quick clay. There would be a sudden collapse, locally at first, but spreading in a chain reaction right across the hillside, just like one domino knocks down the next and the next and so on to the end of the line. Firm clay would be instantaneously transformed into liquid mud and the whole hillside would collapse.