Peter Hernon - 8.4

Neutron moved into the shaft and started up the incline, gripping the nozzles of the two foam packs it carried on its back.

Crouched over in the tight space, Atkins and Elizabeth stayed close to the robot. Flames were still shooting into the shaft up on Level 10, long darting waves of orange and white fire.

“Steady now,” said Booker, who was following their progress on his television monitor. “Get ready to turn on your extinguishers. Hold it—”

Shimmering waves of heat rolled toward them down the shaft.

“Do it!” Booker said.

Atkins and Elizabeth started spraying foam. So did Neutron, a wide, double jet that instantly knocked the flames back five feet.

They’d reached the tunnel entrance. Atkins saw nothing but a wall of fire. Every step forward seemed to take an eternity.

“When Neutron stops, move on around him,” Booker said. “He’ll buy you a few seconds of time. Get around fast.”

The robot halted, pivoted so it squarely faced the fire, and laid down a thick blanket of white foam that continued to push back the flames. As Elizabeth and Atkins slipped behind it, Atkins noticed that his foam canister was losing pressure. So was Elizabeth’s. Their face masks started to fog over and blister in the intense heat.

Atkins saw two dark figures looming a few yards ahead of them.

Murray and Booker.

They’d come down the shaft to meet them and were dousing the fire with more foam.

Murray motioned for them to hurry.

Atkins and Elizabeth kept climbing up the shaft. Elizabeth stumbled, and Atkins grabbed her around the waist and pulled her with him as he kept going up the steep slope, fighting for every inch. Murray and Booker followed them, moving backward a step at a time as they continued to throw spray on the fire.

When Atkins and Elizabeth reached the coal tunnel on Level 9, Weston was waiting for them.

“Where’s Wren?” he asked.

Atkins shook his head. “He didn’t make it.” That was all he was going to say. They’d have to deal with Weston and what Wren had told them later.

Murray and Booker soon joined them. Neutron rolled into the tunnel right behind them. The paint had blistered on the front of the robot. The sides of the football helmet had melted. The top had flattened out and turned black at the edges. Orange goo had puddled on the metal surface like candle wax. But the alloy steel was undamaged. He was still operational.

On Murray’s advice, they moved down the tunnel until they were a good two hundred feet from the entrance to the skip shaft. The smoke had diminished enough for them to take off their face masks. After checking the methane and CO levels with his gas meter, Murray left them there while he scouted ahead.

When he returned a few minutes later, he was smiling.

“I have a way out,” he said. “But it’s gonna be a bitch.”

THEY HAD FIFTY MINUTES.

Murray’s proposed escape route was the vertical air shaft, which ran up the center of the mine, paralleling the elevator shaft. Barely three feet wide, it was connected to a powerful fan at the surface. A kind of return air duct, it was designed to suck stale air from the mine.

Murray would go first, wedging his back and legs against opposite walls of the air shaft. Slowly, a few inches at a time, he would “walk” his way up the sides. The elevator cage was one level up, a distance of about a hundred feet.

When he got to the top, he’d lower a rope for the others and help pull them up. “I’m not trying to fool anybody. This is going to be tough,” Murray said. “If you slip, you fall. It’s that simple. And if you fall and break something, you’re dead. The trick is to concentrate. Think ahead every time you move your arms and legs. Try to mentally visualize what you’re going to do. Think it through before you do it. Don’t rely on the rope. And don’t rush it.”

Murray checked his gas meter. The CO levels continued to hover at the danger mark, nearly fifty parts per million. The methane levels had fallen off some after the fire and explosions, but were starting to inch up again. They were back over the redline, reading nearly 7 percent.

“Keep track of the time,” Murray said, hooking a coil of rope in his belt. “The clock’s really running down on us. We got to bust it, folks.”

A sharp tremor jolted them, another strong shake. Fragments of the tunnel’s roof fell. Everyone instinctively dropped into a crouch position, covering their heads with their arms. The quake lasted only three or four seconds but was stronger than some of the others.

The sound came from far below them, a loud cracking noise that reverberated through the mine. Atkins was sure it was rock fracturing at great depth. The fault was continuing to slip, continuing to build toward a final rupture.

“They’re coming more often,” Elizabeth said. She didn’t say the rest of it—that the tremors were also building in strength. She wondered how much more shaking the mine could stand before the tunnels collapsed on themselves.

Atkins and Booker helped boost Murray up into the shaft, which was cut into the roof of the tunnel. He got his back and legs in position in the cramped space and started up the rough rock walls, bracing himself hard with his feet and shoulders. He’d trained to do this very maneuver dozens of times. This was the first he’d ever tried it in a mine. He kept repeating to himself the advice he’d given the others: concentrate on every move, think it through from start to finish.

It took nearly fifteen minutes for him to climb to Level 8. He was pouring sweat when he pulled himself out of the shaft. Kneeling on the floor of the tunnel, his chest heaving from his exertions, he took a look at the elevator cage less than ten yards away. His heart sank.

“We’ve got a problem up here,” he shouted down to the others. “The cage won’t work. The cable’s snapped.”

NATHAN Ross was drinking a cup of hot coffee, trying to warm himself in the damp cold. The sun hadn’t taken any of the chill from the air. He had the collar of his jacket pulled up. His ears felt frozen.

Ross looked at his watch and frowned. They were cutting this awfully close.

Draper ran up and told him about the broken cable. Booker and the others were trapped far below ground.

“We’re lowering ropes to them,” he said.

“That bomb’s scheduled to blow in forty minutes,” said Phil Belleau. “Those people are down about eight hundred feet. We’ll never get them all up.”

“We’ll damn well try,” Ross said quietly as he walked to the elevator shack, where a squad of paratroopers had lowered two makeshift harnesses with basket-seats down the man shaft. The ropes were attached to cables that ran to hoists on the two helicopters. The big UH-60s that had remained at the mine.

“Mister President, I’ve got to insist you leave here,” said Belleau, not giving up. Ross was his sole responsibility. He was ready to force the issue if need be.

Ross ignored him. He was helping paratroopers carry more rope into the mine.

THERE was no changing Booker’s mind. Atkins saw it in his eyes, the frozen, unblinking stare.

“I’m sorry, John. You know what needs to be done as well as I do. We can’t risk any venting.”

The last tremor had done more than snap the cable to the elevator cage. Booker had carried a small instrument that monitored the fuse circuit in the non-1 detonating cord he’d run through the mine. The device showed several breaks. He’d arranged the charges to fire in sequence, relying on a network of low-voltage electric blasting caps with multi-second delays to touch off the detonator cord and the explosives. The caps were equipped with special shunts to prevent any sparking that might have ignited methane gas.