Black Sun Descending (27 page)

“They're going to blow the place!”

Silas and Hayduke followed the orb of light down the stope, past where Silas had discovered the uranium slag and deeper into the mine. They had been hobbling along for less than a minute when the blast came. The sound of it deafened them in the narrow confines of the mine, and the concussion of the explosion took them off their feet and sent them flying down the steep shaft. They landed face first in the rock and dust. There was no fireball, but even a few hundred yards into the mine shards of wood clattered around them. A wall of thick dust, permeated with radioactive waste, choked the tunnel.

SILAS CAME TO
with his ears ringing. His headlamp had gone out. He felt around for it on his head and it wasn't there. He opened his eyes but couldn't see anything. “Hayduke?”

There was no response. Silas felt around more and found the young man's body next to his. “Hayduke!” Silas shoved him. There was no response.

He felt for the headlamp again and found it amid the rubble on the floor of the mine. He tried to turn it on but it had popped open, the batteries ejected with the force of the blast. Silas closed his eyes in the perfect darkness and tried to find them. Eventually the three tiny
AAA
batteries came to hand and he inserted them and got the light working by banging it against his thigh a few times. He shone the light on the body next to him. He rolled the heavy man over to look at his face. He listened for breathing and heard a faint gasp, then Hayduke's eyes popped wide open and he sat up, fumbling with his belt as if reaching for his pistol. “What the fuck happened?”

“They blew the doors to the mine. I bet the whole thing has come down on top of the mouth of this shaft.”

Hayduke was still fumbling around.

“They took your gun.”

“Motherfuckers. They shot me too, didn't they? Someone is going to pay for this.”

“Are you alright?”

“You mean, besides having been shot and blown up? Yeah, fine. I bet you're glad you didn't have to do mouth-to-mouth, hey?”

Silas shook his head in disbelief. “I'm going to go and check to see if there is a way out.”

“Watch it. Those bastards might still be waiting.”

“I will.”

Silas walked back up the stope, his legs feeling like sacks of concrete. There were bits of burning pieces of wood in the shaft and a thick, oily smoke hung in the air. He was glad he was still taking his medication for his thyroid from his first encounter with uranium waste. He pulled a bandana from his back pocket and tied it around his face. He walked another fifty yards and stopped. A pile of rocks, wood, and metal barred his path. There was a wheel of an old truck amid the rubble. There was no way around it. Silas tried to climb over the wreckage, but the space between the crumbling top of the mine stope and the smoldering material was less than six inches. He tried to push and then pull some of the material aside, but it had been blown by the force of the blast and embedded into the soft limestone.

He stood, his left hand to his face, pressing the handkerchief there, and then turned and went back to Hayduke.

“There's no way out. We're stuck in here.”

“WHAT DO YOU WANT TO
do?” Silas was looking at the gunshot wound on Hayduke's thigh. He had torn open the young man's jeans and was applying a compress from his first aid kit. The wound was a clean in-and-out and Silas had stopped the bleeding, but he knew that fragments of the torn jeans were likely in the wound and would cause an infection if not removed.

“If we can't go up, let's go down.”

“Do you know anything about this mine? How long it operated?”

“Nope. Nothing. It looks like a going concern.”

“I don't think it was producing. Must be a remnant. That's why they were trucking radioactive material
into
the mine. They wanted it to
look
like it was a producer so they could get in line for a big payday.”

“Well, even if it is an old mine, there's got to be more than one way out.”

“I hope so. My cell phone doesn't work down here. How's the leg? Can you walk?”

“I think so.”

Silas helped Hayduke up. “Here,” he said, picking up a cast-off piece of wood from the floor of the mine. “Use this.” Hayduke fitted the piece of wood under his arm to form a crude crutch. “What happened out there?” Silas and Hayduke made their way farther into the darkness, the beam of Silas's headlamp creating a small circle that they followed down the stope.

“They got the drop on me. I was putting away that shit that we were looking at, those maps, and rushed out to catch up with you. They were there. All three of them.”

“Slim Jim, Balin, and Terry?”

“Shit, that woman is a bitch. She had her own piece and almost took my head off with it.”

“I heard a bunch of shots.”

“Yeah, I pulled my gun and she got a shot off with a little .22. I got one round off and that sent them scattering. Balin and Slim Jim, they had nines, and put a few rounds into the building around me. I think it was Jim that pegged me. I tried to get back inside, but they had me flanked. The only thing I could do was drop my piece. It's a thousand-dollar pistol. Fuckers. That Aldershot woman wanted to put one between my eyes, but the other two already had an old truck packed with ammonium nitrate. They had come here to blow the place. I think they followed us.”

“How did they know? Ted?”

“Maybe Ted. But I stole the map. It was a stupid move. Amateur. I should know better, goddamn it. They
knew
where we were going.”

Silas was silent for a while as the stope leveled out. The shaft was narrow, less than six feet across. It was roughly hollowed out and propped with crudely cut pine logs. The ceiling was low and in places they had to duck to move forward. They passed piles of mining waste: old equipment from the 1950s and '60s along with barrels and tins of discarded fuel, oil, and grease. “What are we looking for?” Silas asked.

“A way out.” Silas gave Hayduke a sideways glance. “We're looking for some kind of air shaft or vent, maybe a back door. Some kind of back entrance that they might have dug.”

“This doesn't look like a complicated enterprise. If it's operated at all since the 1960s, I'd be surprised. I bet if we look at the records we'll see that Zahn had this place for a while. When the Department of the Interior started looking at shutting down uranium mining on the Arizona Strip, he fired things back up to get in line for the buyout.”

They came to a dead end in the horizontal passage. The pit props held up a low roof. On either side the tunnel had collapsed. There was no way to move forward. Hayduke sat down on the ground to rest his leg. “Hurts like a son of a bitch,” he said.

“Didn't you get shot in Iraq?”

“Sure, but it's not like you get used to it.”

“Stay put. I'll be right back.”

“Where you going?”

“Back up a ways. I want to check something.”

“Don't go too far—”

“Hayduke, are you alright?”

“Fuck yeah, fine. I just don't want
you
to get hurt.”

“I'll be fine.” Silas walked back up the stope, scanning the ceiling and walls as he went. In a few minutes he found what he was looking for. He turned and walked back to Hayduke.

“What did you find?”

“Maybe a way out. Maybe a nest of angry scorpions and certain death by their poisonous bites.”

“You have a shitty sense of humor.”

“That's what my students always said when I handed back their term papers. On your feet. We have some climbing to do.”

SILAS DRAGGED A
barrel along the rocky stope and positioned it between two rickety pit props. “I think this is some kind of ventilation shaft that might go to the surface.”

“What makes you think that?”

“I think there's air movement here.” Silas waved his hand around the opening. “Can you climb?”

“I don't know. Maybe. Sure, yeah. I mean, what choice do I have?”

“I'm going to rig a couple of harnesses with this webbing. I've got two carabiners that I can use as a belay device. I'll climb up half a rope length and belay you up.”

“I weigh two hundred twenty pounds, Doc. If I take a hard fall, and you're not tied in, I'm going to pull you down with me.”

Silas looked up at the narrow tunnel above him. “Then don't fall.”

SILAS STOOD ON
the barrel and shone his headlamp into the shaft. It was about two feet wide at the mouth but seemed to narrow as he climbed through the sandy rock. Silas had looped one of the slings around his waist and legs to create a makeshift harness and clipped them together with the carabiners. He did the same for Hayduke, gingerly slipping the webbing around his bloody leg. He noticed that the young man's pant leg was soaked with blood. He knew that he had to get a move on.

The rope was looped through Silas's harness and on the far end he had tied his pack, which he would haul up before Hayduke climbed. Silas was aware that they might not be able to climb out in one pitch; they'd cross that bridge when they came to it, he figured. He'd have to find a safe place to belay Hayduke from.

He reached up with both hands, found a decent hand-hold on the sandstone on either side, and began to pull himself up. The rock that his left hand was holding on to broke. Silas fell, colliding with the empty barrel below him. He crashed to the ground, his headlamp going out again.

“You alright?”

Silas lay in the dirt for a moment. He had landed on his left arm, which was screaming in pain, but he could move it and he decided it wasn't broken. “Just fine.”

“Dark in here.”

Silas fumbled with the headlamp. It flickered on and off and on again.

“You wanna try again, or do you want me to have a go at it?”

“Your leg still shot?”

“Yeah.”

“Then shut up.”

“Right.”

Silas righted the barrel and climbed back up. “That's right,” encouraged Hayduke. “Right back on the horse.”

“What part of
shut up
didn't you understand?” Silas reached for the secure hold on the right and felt around for another for his left hand. He found one, a narrow ledge, and pulled once more. This time he managed to get his body up into the shaft, his left arm smarting but holding his weight. He wedged his knees into the opening and reached up again. He moved ten, then twenty feet into the shaft this way, using his hands to pull and wedging himself into the narrow confines of the chimney-like air shaft. Dust floated all around him and his headlamp caught the glint of a scorpion's sheen on two occasions. Silas yelled to Hayduke, “Incoming” and brushed the arachnid down the shaft. He heard Hayduke yell from below but was high enough now that the young man's profanity was muffled.

He was looking down, trying to find a place to put his feet, when he hit his head on something. He felt a trickle of blood seep into his eye. Making sure his feet were secure he reached up and smeared the blood away from his eye and felt above him. A heavy chock stone blocked the way forward. The shaft was less than eighteen inches wide here, and the stone blocked two thirds of it. Beyond he thought he could see a faint glow of light through the dust.

He pushed up on the stone and it moved slightly. He tried again. He was able to move the rock by bracing his legs on either side of the shaft and using his shoulder to push. He stopped. If the rock fell down the shaft, it would crush the young man beneath him. He tried to see beyond the stone. What looked like a ledge was just ten feet above him.

He couldn't call down to Hayduke. The distance was now too far to communicate his intent. The idea of climbing all the way back down, and then up again, left him feeling exhausted. Instead, he pushed. Bracing both feet on the sides of the shaft, he used his body like a fulcrum and started to wedge the stone upward. He muscled the rock before him one foot at a time. It slipped once, but he was able to use his back to arrest its descent. Bleeding, bruised, and hungry, he reached a place where the stone could safely be pushed aside. He climbed on, another twenty feet, and found himself in a constriction with a few deep cuts made in the rock that gave him decent purchase and lots of room below him for a second person.

He yelled down. “Hauling my pack!” He started to pull on the rope and hoisted his bag. When he had it pulled to him it was coated in rock and dust and a few small harmless spiders. He wedged it into a cleft in the rock and then yelled again, “Rope!” After double checking that he had it tied off to his harness he let the rope back down.

Hayduke yelled something up the shaft. Silas took that to mean he was tied in.

“Setting belay!” Silas threaded the rope through the two carabiners and tested the brake. It was a little loose so he adjusted the braking device, turning one around so it created more friction. He tested it again, pulling the rope hard through the metal lockers so that they snapped together. Satisfied, he yelled, “Belay on!”