The Deep Dark (19 page)

“Yeah,
great.”

Ulrich stayed put, and Wilbur started walking. Visibility was so poor that he couldn't even see his feet. He stayed on the track line by sliding his boots at a blind man's pace. Fifty yards down the drift, an epiphany hit him.
What am I going to do when I get there? How can I pack a man out of here?
He returned to Ulrich, feeling completely defeated.

Ulrich dismissed the younger man's attempt at valor and announced he'd get the missing men himself.

“I don't think there's any sense in it,” Wilbur said, but the headstrong electrician ignored him and retreated into the smoke. He stared at the black wall. In the nothingness of what was being accomplished, time raced.

How much longer should I wait? Should I go after him?

And when he could no longer put up with idleness, Wilbur started through the smoke a second time. He knew that what he was doing was pointless, maybe even stupid. He slowly edged about twenty yards when he saw a feather of light coming toward him, moving with the cadence of a man's hurried stride. Norm Ulrich had also given up.

A few minutes later, both men were on the cage to the surface with nothing to show for their heroics. Not long after, Wilbur saw Harvey Dionne out by the portal. But what happened to production foreman Bob Bush and shifter Paul Johnson? They'd gone into the drift and disappeared. Where were they?

M
INE SUPERINTENDENT
A
L
W
ALKUP DROVE HIS COMPANY CAR, A
blue El Camino, over Fourth of July Pass to Big Creek as fast as the car/pickup crossbreed could go. He was new to Sunshine, having been hired in September 1971. At thirty-five, Walkup not only had a college degree from the school of mining at the University of Montana at Butte, but he had done his share of mining, and had a genuine love for the underground. His dad was a miner, and he knew that whatever he'd do with his own life, it would be related to digging for ore. Walkup and his wife and son moved from Montana to Mullan and soon found that despite snowy winters that left the front windows of their house blocked of all sunlight, it was a pretty nice place to live.

Sunshine was head and shoulders above the others where Walkup had mined. He'd worked at some rinky-dink outfits in Montana where the owners didn't have a pot to piss in and where miners didn't know a pick from a shovel. Sunshine had financial resources. And despite the corporate backbiting, the company had mined more than 8 million ounces of silver in 1971. The plan for 1972 called for an astounding 10 million.

When he pulled into Big Creek, a turgid column of smoke was rising from the ventilation shaft, the likes of which Al Walkup had never seen. It filled the sky. He found his buddy, Jim Bush, in a small group near the shifter's shack. Bush had taken in a lot of smoke and was in a daze. He was also sweating profusely.

He's going to collapse any moment,
Walkup thought. A couple of miners stood ready in case he fell. His words spilled out of his mouth.

“I tried to get Bob out, but I couldn't,” Bush said. “There were bodies everywhere. Tried to drag him out.”

Walkup felt tears welling up. Bob Bush had been his mentor.

“Some guys that went in for my brother didn't come out.”

“Jesus.”

The smoke was churning in the sky. No one had a plan. What could they do? The smoke had become an impenetrable barrier. Where did that leave them?

“Where are the others?” Walkup asked.

“Still down there,” someone said.

And then the kicker.

“The hoist room is down on 10-Shaft. No one's answering.”

The men faced the portal. Its concrete header spelled out
JEWELL SHAFT
in big block letters, making the entrance resemble some kind of underworld monument.

1:05
P.M.,
M
AY
2

3100 Level

T
HE APPROACHING CLOUD REMINDED SAFETY ENGINEER
B
OB
Launhardt of a column spewing from the chimney stack of an old steam locomotive. It rose up black and thick, and rolled down the drift. He estimated visibility at five feet, though it was tricky to approximate. The heavy curtain kept heaving. Launhardt held a Wolfe flame safety lamp and a Draeger gas detector. Looking a bit like a tall, thin, brass seaman's lantern, the safety lamp indicated when oxygen was adequate underground. Launhardt noted that the flame slightly diminished in size, but there was still enough oxygen in the air to sustain life.

Next he prepared the Draeger to test for carbon monoxide. Developed by a nearly century-old German company, the Draeger detection tube had become an indispensable tool of mine safety, so much so that in the 1930s, mine rescue men were called “Draegermen” and were featured in the Superman comic book series. The Draeger came in two parts—a glass tube filled with chemical reagents and a small bellows to force air through the tube. The tube was etched incrementally from 1,000 to 3,000 parts per million (ppm) to measure the magnitude of the danger. Launhardt broke off the tip of the tube, put it into the chamber, and worked the bellows, passing about 50 cubic centimeters of mine air through the tube. Usually it took a minute or so for a dark stain to appear, thus giving a reading. Certainly it took a full air sample. Not this time. Launhardt stared at the tube, his light flashing against glass and smoke. With only one-fourth of the sample air through the chamber, the stain had gone beyond the manufacturer's calibrations. The tube went completely black. The mine was poisoned with more carbon monoxide than his instrumentation could record.

As Launhardt warned his crew of the air's ruthless toxicity, a light from a miner's lamp approached from down the drift.

A moment later, Launhardt fished through the smoke and grabbed a hand and pulled. It was Roger Findley, the cager who'd prayed for a second chance after running from the chaos of the station only to find a dead man propped up in the drift. Shaky and near collapse, but alive, Findley was wearing a BM-1447. Launhardt felt a small surge of hope.
More would come out.

The young man was in shock, but he rattled off the names of dead men he'd seen back at the station. He also had a warning.

“Be careful with the motor,” he said, “when you get back just before the crosscut. You'll run over those guys. They're laying all over the tracks.”

Findley needed medical care, and Zingler asked Beehner to take him topside.

“No, you go ahead and take him out,” Beehner said. “I'll go in with Larry and Bob.”

“We'll head for 10-Shaft,” Launhardt said, his rescue party now down to three. “But we'll take it slow.”

Six hundred feet later, another light came down the drift. It zigzagged and moved with the trajectory of a ricocheting Ping-Pong ball, side to side and up and down. To the unfamiliar, it might have resembled a flashlight carried by an exuberant kid or a sloppy drunk. Launhardt knew it was a cap lamp. And its erratic tempo meant trouble.

A frantic voice called out.

“They're all dead back there!”

It was Byron Schulz, the cager who'd escaped from the hoist room after Doug Weiderrick determined that he couldn't make it out alive and fell to the floor. Schulz stumbled at the motor, his wet shirt and W-65 self-rescuer hanging at his side. He was crying, and his sweaty face was red from his frenzied run in the dark. His deep-set eyes were a study in panic.

“They're gone! All of them,” he said. “I need oxygen!”

Hawkins reversed the motor, pulling away from a particularly tight stretch of track, and Launhardt jumped from the car. Schulz's arms were flailing in desperation, and it seemed that he might grab at Launhardt's face mask. The air was reasonably clear there, but Hawkins decided to err on the side of caution and kept his mask in place. Launhardt did the same. Hawkins remained on the motor because, from the way Schulz was carrying on, it seemed a good bet they'd be returning to the Jewell.

“I need oxygen. Get me oxygen, please,” Schulz said.

Launhardt told him that he'd be all right, but the words did little to soothe. He tried to hold Schulz's convulsing torso, like a baby that couldn't stop crying. The younger man struggled. He had been within a minute of dying, and fear had taken over reason.

Don Beehner got off the motor to help.

About that time, Hawkins's light cord caught on a timber, forcing the ray of his cap lamp askew. His stomach roiled and his heart rate escalated.
This looks very bad.
He glanced over his shoulder and saw Beehner fiddling with the hose that ran from his McCaa pack, still not on his back but resting on the back of the motor.

“Let's get a helmet on him, so he can get some oxygen,” Hawkins called out, his words muffled through his face mask.

Schulz was in that place halfway between passing out and being totally scared stiff. The self-rescuer plugged his mouth, stifling his words. His eyes were watery pools, with big dark pupils awash in fear. As Launhardt prepared a McCaa by clearing the hose and releasing the flow of oxygen, Don Beehner removed his own mask and held it over Schulz's face.

“Here,” the nipper said, “breathe this. This is fresh air.” After giving Schulz a shot of oxygen, Beehner returned the mask to his own face. He repeated the switch several times.

When Hawkins saw that Launhardt was ready, he pulled the BM-1447 from Schulz's mouth.

“You put the mask on his face,” he said.

“They're all
dead
back there,” Schulz repeated.

Launhardt tightened Schulz's head straps while Hawkins continued to brace him so he wouldn't fall. Launhardt told Schulz to be calm. He hoped that the Wardner kid wasn't in so much shock that he didn't understand that they were trying to save him.

“Breathe through the apparatus,” the safety engineer said. “We'll get you out of there.”

Launhardt turned around to tell Don Beehner things were under control, but he was gone.

1:05
P.M.,
M
AY
2
Jewell Shaft Portal

F
OREMAN
H
ARVEY
D
IONNE ASKED IF ANYONE HAD SEEN HIS SON.
Many had, of course. Greg Dionne was the sole reason miner Bill Mitchell and others on his cage had escaped. Certainly, Harvey Dionne had a job to do, but he was also a father, and his son was missing. The Dionnes had been one of at least a dozen pairs of fathers and sons underground Tuesday, including the Kitchens, Delbridges, and Follettes. Besides worrying about his boy, something else found room to lurk in the foreman's thoughts—the borehole on 3700. He wondered what had happened after Kenny Wilbur stripped the hole of its lagging stopper.
Did it work? Did it allow for good air to course down to 4800? And where was Greg?

1:08
P.M.,
M
AY
2

3100 Level

L
ARRY
H
AWKINS
'
S LAMP, NOW HASTILY RETARGETED TO
HIS LINE
of vision, illuminated the rib of the drift. Nothing. Where was Beehner? He lowered his gaze to track level and, with the rapid swipe of his light, saw Beehner's feet, legs, torso, and head. He was facedown in the piss ditch. Schulz was screaming again, and Launhardt was doing his damnedest to calm him. Hawkins knelt down and grabbed Beehner by the shoulders and rolled him over. He shifted his weight and pulled him upright; suction from mud threatened to pull off his boots. Hawkins knew there wasn't enough time to get a helmet on Beehner.

What am I gonna do? There's only one mask right her
e—
and there's two of us.

Beehner felt heavy and startlingly lifeless. Hawkins returned the mask to his own face, breathing in quickly and deeply. He'd just come up from the bottom of the ocean, and this was the only oxygen he'd get.
This,
he thought,
could be my last breath.
He positioned the mask on Beehner's face. Blood had begun to fountain from Beehner's nose and mouth, splashing the inside of the face mask. Hawkins held his breath.
It'll be all right. We're gonna make it.
And then Beehner's body made a strange movement—a strong, then slightly fainter, twitch. A shudder, perhaps involuntary, possibly the man's last fight to live.

“Bob! Beehner's down,” Hawkins called out. “Let's get the apparatuses off the timber truck and get him on it and get him out of here!”

Launhardt looked over, his terrified eyes filling his mask, as Hawkins wiped blood from his faceplate. The rock rabbit felt disoriented and nauseated. He suddenly became convinced something wasn't right with his own air supply. He thought he was rebreathing his own used air, but mixed with the deadly atmosphere of the drift. Panic took over. He struggled to lift Beehner onto the timber car, but he couldn't do it. He gave it everything he had, but he just couldn't do it.

“Bob, I have to go,” he said, already moving away. “My machine isn't working right.”

“Do you think you can make it?”

Hawkins thought he could. “Just go ahead and take care of Beehner and the kid. I think I can get to the fresh air back there.”

With that, the rock rabbit hurried down the track, feverishly working the bypass valve of his McCaa self-rescuer.

L
AUNHARDT BALANCED A FRIGHTENED
B
YRON
S
CHULZ ON A TIM
BER
truck ahead of the motor, a precarious and dangerous spot. If Schulz thrashed and slipped off, the motor could slice him in two. Don Beehner was splayed out alongside the tracks, his body limp and damp. Launhardt squatted and hooked Beehner under his arms and lifted him chest high, but the sides of muck cars were wider at the top than at the bottom, making it awkward to get him inside. A cocktail of adrenaline and fear drove him, but Launhardt still couldn't gather the strength. He made at least three attempts.