Red Helmet (45 page)

“We'll need to put something heavy on top of the charges,” Cable said. “Otherwise the blast might not get to the water.”

Song looked at the unpinned roof. “I could knock down the draw rock on top of the explosives. I did that once already when I thought I killed Bum.”

He mulled the idea over. “Okay,” he said. “But cross your fingers the rock doesn't cut the firing wire.”

Song inhaled but not much came through. Her SCSR was starting to fail. She sat down. “I'm bushed.”

Cable dragged himself and the shot box until he could pack the sticks of powder inside Song's small excavation. Two wires were attached to one of them. He crawled away, grunting in pain, while spooling out the wire. When he got clear, he said to her, “Knock down the roof, Song. Be careful not to get under it.”

“I've already been under it, digging out your precious little hole.”

“Oh yeah,” Cable said. “I forgot. Sorry.”

Song looked at the roof. She'd been afraid to look at it before or she wouldn't have been able to work beneath it. Now she was astonished at what she saw. “Cable, there's a kettle bottom here. No, there's two!”

“You're kidding. Did you pray for another miracle?”

“No. Did you?”

“No. But I bet they're praying a lot right now in church. Guess we're getting the benefit. Go ahead. Knock them down.”

Song took a step back and struck the kettle bottoms with the slate bar, then did it again. Though she managed to scar their bottoms, they didn't move. “Great. Any other time, they'd have fallen on my head.”

“Pry the rock from around them,” Cable advised.

Song pried and some draw rock fell. Still, the kettle bottoms stayed stubbornly clinging to the clay and rock that encased them. She sat down again, shaking her head, trying desperately to suck a little oxygen out of her SCSR. “It's no use. We need a
real
miracle this time, Cable.”

Almost as if on cue, a sound like a hive of mad hornets suddenly filled the air, then both kettle bottoms and a huge load of rock broke free, falling in a heap on top of the charges. Song was only able to scramble out of the way at the last second.

Moments later a spinning drill head poked through the collapsed roof and whirred to a stop. Then it disappeared back up through the hole to be replaced by something cylindrical and black. “Hello,” a voice called through it. “Anybody there?”

“We're here!” Song and Cable cried out in astonishment.

There was a pause. Then an excited voice came back. “What's your situation?”

“We're alive!” Cable croaked. “Is that you, Birchbark? We're about to blow the face. We're going to try to flood the section.”

Birchbark's voice was incredulous. “What did you say?”

“I said we're blowing the face! We're going to flood the section with the water from the old works. We've got a fire to put out.”

“Did you say you're going to flood the section?”

“Just tell Bossman and Einstein!”

“Okay! Okay!” Birchbark yelped, the message finally sinking in.

“We've got to get to some place as high as we can,” Cable told Song.

“The shuttle car in the entry,” Song suggested. “It'll put a pillar between us and the face. And we can get up on its boom.”

“I like it,” Cable agreed. “Let's go.”

Cable crawled through the gob, the wires spooling out behind him while Song tried to keep them from getting tangled. They made the turn toward the entry, but when they got ten yards from the shuttle car, Song felt the wires go taut. “They won't reach,” she said.

Cable sat up and thought for a second. “All right. You keep going to the shuttle. I'll blow it from here.”

Song sat down beside him. “No, Cable. You can't move fast enough. You go on. Crawl up on the shuttle. Let me know when you're there. I'll blow it and then join you. I can beat the water. I'm fast. Track team in college. Sprinter. Bet you didn't know that about me, did you? Thought not. Go ahead. Attach the wires to the blaster and then get clear.”

Cable rigged the blaster. “When you're ready to blow the face, yell ‘Fire' three times before you turn the key,” he instructed.

“Why do I have do that?”

“Because that's the proper way to do it. You're still a red cap. I'm educating you.”

“You're nuts, Cable. That's another reason I love you.”

“There are too many reasons for me to count why I love you.”

“Awww . . .”

Then came a dull roar and Song was astonished to see the curtain that led to the beltway suddenly catch fire. A hot wind blew past its remnants. Black smoke billowed around them. “Get going, Cable,” she urged. “I'll be right behind you. Go!”

Cable crawled to the shuttle car and dragged himself up on it. He struck his splinted leg on the frame and stifled a scream. Then, inch by inch, he pulled himself up until he was on the boom. “Ready!” he called out.

Song knelt and steadied the blaster in her hands. Her helmet light was dimming, its battery dying, its yellow glow just bright enough for her to see. She was so intent she didn't hear the heavy boots behind her, but she did feel the kick of one of them in her back. She was slammed face-first into the gob.

“Hey, girl!” Bum yelled maniacally. “How ya doin'?”

She'd dropped the blaster. Song reached for it. Bum, holding a number four shovel in his right hand, stepped in front of her and picked it up first. “What were you going to do with this?” Following the wires, he walked around the corner of the entry, then walked back. His body was twitching.

“How much meth have you taken?” Song asked.

“Enough to keep me high and alive, girlie girl,” he said. He walked around the pillar until the spot of his light landed on Cable stretched out on the shuttle boom. “Hey, Cable, old teammate. You don't look so good. What's the plan?”

“There's about ten million gallons of water behind that face, Bum,” Cable said. “If we blow it, there's a good chance we can put out the fire.”

Bum began to laugh. He kept laughing until he had nearly lost his breath. He beat on his legs and shook his head. Finally, he said, “Aw, we don't need to do that. They'll pump down foam to put it out. Probably in, oh, I don't know, a day or so. Good thing I've got lots of SCSRs. I found a whole cache of them. Looks like Petroski and his boys been squirreling them away.”

“The fire's coming this way,” Cable said, keeping his voice calm and modulated. “It'll kill you before anybody can get in to put it out.”

“I'll take my chances. At least until I see you and that girl die. Ever since I met her, she ain't been nothing but trouble, just like you.”

“Bum, think about it. All I've ever done is be good to you. Why would you want to see me die?”

“Are you asking me why I hate you? Well, let me see. Maybe because you gave me a job, a job where you could lord the fact you're the mine superintendent over me for the rest of my life? Just like you made all-county linebacker while all I got was kicked in the butt?”

“High school was a long time ago, Bum.”

Bum disconnected the wires from the blaster, then tossed it down. He walked beneath the boom and shined his light up at Cable. “Tell me about it. I'll think about you when I'm old, Cable, and you're dead.”

Cable tensed, readying himself. “Blow the face, Bum, or you'll burn up with us.”

“I don't think so. I'll find me a little hole somewhere. Are you suffocating, Cable?” Bum giggled and did a little dance. “Oh, I'm going to tell everybody how sorry I was that you died. Maybe I'll write a book, be on
Oprah
. Oh, gol-l-lee, Oprah, if I had only known where my old buddy Cable and his stupid little wife were holed up, I'd have brought them an SCSR. I'll even shed a tear on national TV for you two.”

Cable pushed himself off the boom and landed on Bum. Bum grunted, staggered, then fell with Cable on top of him. “Blow the face, Song!” Cable yelled while desperately trying to hold his old friend down.

Song crawled to the blaster and found the wires. She attached them, then twisted the key, but nothing happened. Desperately, she looked over at Cable and Bum. Bum had managed to roll Cable over and was sitting on his stomach. Bum's fist was raised to smash into Cable's face. “Say good night, Cable,” he said.

With the last ounce of her strength, Song picked up the shovel Bum had dropped, then walked over and hit him as hard as she could in his face. Bum flopped over and went very still. Song kicked him for good measure, then stripped him of his SCSR, and handed it to Cable. “Get up on the boom again,” she commanded, too spent to be polite.

Song went back and picked up the blaster, unscrewed the terminals, pulled the wires loose, and ran the ends through her mouth. Spitting out gob, she reconnected them. She turned to see that Cable was back up the boom. “How many times am I supposed to say fire? Oh yeah. Three times. Here goes. Fire, fire,
fire
!”

Song turned the key.

T
HE FLOOR TREMBLED
in the control room. “What was that?” Joe Hawkins demanded.

Einstein and Bossman exchanged glances while Mole raced to the seismograph. “Another explosion,” he said, after a cursory inspection of the screen. “Afterwards, a tremor, like a little earthquake.”

“I think they just did what Birchbark said they were going to do,” Einstein said.

Hawkins stood up. The miners in the room were surprised to see that he had his chin up and was grinning. “Gentlemen, I'll tell you who did it. My Song!”

I
N THE EBONY
depths, a small spurt of water began to grow. Then, with awesome force, a wall of water erupted like a gigantic geyser that turned into a monstrous wave. A tide of black water roared forth, first encountering a continuous miner, which it swept aside as if were a toy. It rolled on until it struck a shuttle car and flipped it over and over. The miner and shuttle car, tangled together, became wedged, creating a partial dam. Diminished only slightly, the great black wave turned the corner and raced toward the second shuttle car where Song desperately clung to Cable's outstretched hands.

Forty-One

3:21 a.m., Wednesday

M
ole made the announcement. “Birchbark says all he's getting is steam out of the entry borehole.”

“Is that good?” Hawkins demanded.

Einstein pulled the telephone away from Mole. “What about the borehole at the face?” He listened, then said, “Let me know if it changes.”

“What's going on?” Hawkins demanded.

Einstein turned toward Song's father. “The entire end of the mine is flooded.”

“I'll ask you again. Is that good?” Hawkins demanded.

What passed for a joyful expression on Einstein's face faded until it had returned to its usual grim countenance. “I don't know,” he confessed. “If they were able to get above the water and hang on, maybe . . .”

T
HERE WAS A FRENZY
around the governor, who had made herself available just outside the mine office. “Is it true?” the media demanded. “Is the fire out?”

Governor Godfrey, having just consulted with Einstein, allowed as how it might be.

The reporter named Geraldo had been doing his homework. “Governor, over the last hours, and I mean no disrespect, I assure you, we've heard all about the love story between Cable Jordan and Song Hawkins. But isn't it true that you and Mr. Jordan were also romantically, even sexually involved?”

The governor glared at Geraldo until he seemed to melt. “That is certainly not the truth. Cable and I are friends. That's common knowledge and everything else is mere gossip. After my dear husband passed on, Cable was nice enough to squire me around to a function now and again, but our relationship was always entirely proper. We were more like . . . cousins. Yes, that's it. When I saw Cable and Song together, I recognized instantly they were meant to be together. It is so saddening to me that they opted for annulment. I tried to talk them out of it. If this situation unfolds as I hope, I pray we will see these two fine young people back together.”

A few of the West Virginia media people applauded the governor. They had never heard such an astonishing story told so convincingly. One nudged the other. “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story, eh?” There was a subdued ripple of laughter that neither the governor nor the national media caught.

Joe Hawkins came out on the porch, and the media spotted him and came running. They thrust their microphones in his face. “One at a time, boys, and ladies,” the old pro said. “I will answer your questions gladly. Just don't yell them at me all at once. The only thing I want to say is I love my daughter. She is strong, very strong, and I believe she is still alive.”

Hawkins looked up and found his eyes landing on the face of the governor of West Virginia. Her eyes were as blue as the Caribbean and he found himself falling into them.

“Excuse me, fellas,” he said, coming off the porch and pushing through them. “There's someone I would like to meet.”

O
N
T
HREE BLOCK
,
the combined rescue teams got the word that the fire was out. They cheered. Fresh oxygen tanks had been brought up. They were ready to go, including the red caps, now accepted as part of the crew.

“Holy smokes!” Mahata cried out as he aimed the beam of his light toward Four block. A river of water was coming their way. There was no time to run. In seconds, they were up to their knees in it. They held hands to stabilize themselves and leaned against the force of the flow. After a few minutes, they saw with relief that the water wasn't getting any deeper. Shorty called Einstein and told him the situation. “Can we get that scoop loader now?” he asked.

“When the water goes down,” Einstein said.