The Curse of the Dragon God (31 page)
Read The Curse of the Dragon God Online
Authors: Geoffrey Knight
Tags: #Mystery, #Suspense, #Adventure, #Gay
Push!
Jake’s machine backed through the boards and planks crisscrossing the entrance to the short tunnel that led to the sinkhole. The wood broke apart easily, the warning signs flipping to the ground before smashing apart under the weight of the excavator.
Jake’s machine backed through the boards and planks crisscrossing the entrance to the short tunnel that led to the sinkhole. The wood broke apart easily, the warning signs flipping to the ground before smashing apart under the weight of the excavator.
Jake peered once more through the rear panel of the cab. Across the rocky floor of the unfinished tunnel he could make out the massive black chasm of the sinkhole only 10 feet or so away. Frantically he looked for something to hold on to, knowing one more shove would be enough to—
Shove!
The tracks of the excavator slid across the tunnel floor and over the edge of the sinkhole. The machine came to a stop halfway over the edge of the black hole.
The tracks of the excavator slid across the tunnel floor and over the edge of the sinkhole. The machine came to a stop halfway over the edge of the black hole.
For a moment it teetered on the brink. Jake felt the entire vehicle seesaw, dipping over the hole, then correcting itself, and then—
With a loud groan Jake’s excavator tipped into the hole, its tracks sliding down the edge, sending a rockfall into the chasm with the excavator behind it.
Jake had no way out. He glanced through the smashed glass at the laughing face of Richard Conrad, who jerked his control levers, about to shut the jaws of the excavator and pull the head free of Jake’s doomed machine.
But in the second before Richard managed to clamp the jaws shut and lift the head clear, Jake shot a glance upward into the gaping jaws of the excavator. He saw the dangling tendrils of the hydraulics.
He reached up with his good arm, as high as he could, up into the mouth of the beast, and snatched a handful of squirming cables. Then he pulled as hard as he could, severing the hydraulics with a hiss and a howl.
Instead of closing, the jaws snapped apart, locking themselves wide open. Too wide for Richard to lift the head of the beast out of the shattered cab and free himself.
“Oh, shit,” Richard breathed, wrestling with the levers.
Jake glared at him through the shards of glass. “If I’m goin’ down,
you’re
comin’ with me.”
you’re
comin’ with me.”
As the weight of Jake’s machine slid backward into the chasm, it began pulling Richard’s machine with it.
Richard stood on the brakes but the tracks of his excavator simply rattled and bounced across the rocky surface, crushing stones and tearing two wide gutters in the earth; gravity was simply too powerful to stop him from following Jake’s beast over the edge.
With a jolt, Jake’s vehicle twisted and tipped into a vertical position, metal moaning, accelerating Richard’s approach to the chasm.
Jake fell against the broken back panel of the cab, nothing but blackness and a long plunge beneath him. The cracked glass splintered even more beneath his weight.
Richard tried to jam his own vehicle in reverse, unwilling to let go of the brake. The gears shrieked, the engine revved, but the edge was approaching too fast.
He had to jump. And jump now.
The tracks of his machine were dragged over the edge.
He knew as soon as he took both feet off the brake the chasm would instantly suck both machines down. He pushed open his door, still standing on the brake, ready to launch himself out of the cab and away from the hole as far and as fast as he could.
The machine tilted downward with a fierce jerk.
Richard lifted his feet off the brake, ready to send Jake plummeting alone to his death. He turned for the door. And in the same moment, he heard something whip through the air.
A giant hook punctured the roof of his cab. The line twanged taut. Twisting the sliding excavator. Knocking Richard back into his seat just as the machine toppled over the edge.
“Gotcha!” Shane cried, grinning determinedly. He had roared toward the tunnel entrance inside a giant mobile crane, swung the 60-foot latticed boom of the crane as far back as he could, then hurled it forward, letting the line go at just the right moment.
But the catch was heavier than the cowboy had bargained for. As the hefty combined weight of Jake’s and Richard’s excavators dropped into a free fall, the line of the crane snapped tight, metal buckled, and the pull of the excavators yanked the entire boom of the straining crane flat to the ground before dragging the long-necked machine at full speed toward the tunnel as well.
Inside the cab of his falling excavator, Jake’s weight shattered the last of the glass. He dropped through it but managed to grab on to the twisted rim of the cab with his good arm.
At the same time, Richard fell toward the open doorway of his own cab, trying to grab on to something, anything, before tumbling out. His hands hooked the edge of the door. The hinges twisted, threatening to break altogether as the door swung wide and bent the wrong way. It slammed against the side of the excavator, barely clinging to the cab while Richard barely managed to cling to
it
.
it
.
As the two machines continued to fall, Shane’s crane cut through the snow toward the tunnel. The 60-foot boom snaked inside, then bent and buckled and twisted downward into the sinkhole, following the plunging excavators, pulling the cabin of the crane after it with Shane inside.
Shane’s eyes widened at the sight of the approaching black hole. He held on even tighter. With a moan, the cabin of the crane was pulled over the edge of the sinkhole.
Shane put his bare feet on either side of the wide dash in front of him as the cabin fell forward. The entire view in front of him tipped downward, into the bottomless black chasm.
Shane shut his eyes.
And then—
—with the screech of rock chewing into metal and a gigantic jolt—
—the wide base of the outrigger wedged itself in the opening of the sinkhole.
The crane and the two excavators snapped to a halt.
Shane fell with a grunt against the windshield of the crane’s cab and heard the cracking of glass.
A hundred feet below him, the jolt broke the hinges off Richard’s dangling door, sending both Richard and the door plummeting 15 feet before crashing onto Jake’s excavator.
At the same time, Jake held on to the shattered rim of his cab with his one good arm, three of his fingers sliding loose, with nothing between him and the abyss below. He glanced up and saw Richard on the front of the cab, still clinging to the dislodged door.
Richard in turn glanced down and saw Jake dangling helplessly.
An eerie groan of metal echoed up and down the shaft as the two excavators swung gently, like a broken pendulum waiting to drop.
High above them, Shane tried to lift himself off the windshield, but as soon as he did so the pressure of his weight sent more cracks trickling across the glass. He shot a look over his shoulder and saw the retraction switch for the boom. He needed to get to it before the glass shattered so he could try to winch Jake up to safety.
“Jake? You down there?” Shane’s voice traveled down the abyss.
It gave Jake hope. Just enough for him to hook one of the fingers that had slipped back onto the rim of the mutilated cab. “Yeah, I’m here!” he called back, then whispered to himself, “just barely.”
Then came Shane’s reply, bouncing down the walls of the sinkhole. “I suggest you grab hold of something. I’m pullin’ you up!”
“Oh, Jesus, I’m trying,” Jake muttered. Ignoring the daggers in his bad shoulder, he quickly lifted his other arm up, knowing that when Shane said hold on, he meant it!
Suddenly Shane launched himself for the retraction switch. The glass beneath the cowboy broke. His finger hit the button.
Jake’s injured arm reached up and hooked the rim of the cab just as the excavators lurched into motion once more, this time being pulled upward.
As his finger slipped from the switch, gravity sent Shane through the cracked windshield. He tried to grab levers and gearshifts as he fell, missing them all before knocking the wind out of himself as his torso slammed into the boom below. He grabbed desperately, his arms catching on the latticed neck of the crane, hands hooking the beam, bare legs swinging out from under him, then slamming back against the boom.
As the automatic retractor began to haul the twisted, conjoined excavators upward, the pull on the crane sent rocks tumbling from the sides of the sinkhole as the strain on the wedged outrigger increased.
Richard let go of the door and gripped the cab of Jake’s excavator with both hands.
The door slid from his grasp and fell over the edge, flipping and twirling through the air, narrowly missing Jake before spinning into the dark depths. Jake and Richard stared into the blackness below, waiting to hear the door crash on the bottom. They stared unnervingly long. When the sound of impact finally came, it was faint and far below.
Jake glanced back up. He knew he had to get past Richard before the whole thing came crashing down.
But Richard was already climbing. He too knew the only way was up—and fast!
More rocks showered down around them from the crumbling walls of the sinkhole as the crane’s outrigger dropped a few more feet, slowly surrendering to the drag from the ascending excavators.
Shane began to spider the boom down toward Jake. “Jake! You might wanna hurry, pal!” Another shudder and another short drop put even more urgency in Shane’s descent.
“Would you quit stating the damn obvious!” Jake shouted back, annoyed and panicked, pulling himself up painfully by his good arm and his badly wounded one. Peering up, he saw Richard clamber up the side of his own excavator cab, pulling his way past the opening where the cab door had once been. Richard grabbed the giant hook jutting out of the cab’s roof, then took a firm hold of the retractor cable with both hands. It sent vibrations down his arms as it pulled the two excavators swiftly toward the boom above.
Richard glanced downward with glee, watching Jake straddle the neck of Richard’s excavator with great effort and begin to pull himself up.
Then, suddenly—
CRUNCH!
The retractor cable ran out. The excavators’ ascent slammed to a halt at the point of the crane’s boom.
CRUNCH!
The retractor cable ran out. The excavators’ ascent slammed to a halt at the point of the crane’s boom.
The impact was accompanied by a bloodcurdling scream: Richard had been looking down at Jake when his hands, still gripping the cable, were pulverized in the collision, his forearms now wedged between the giant hook and the point of the boom.
The impact rocked all three of the huge, precariously placed machines.
The outrigger of the crane screeched another 10 feet down the sides of the sinkhole, triggering another small avalanche.
The rocks pelted Richard’s excavator and one of the wheel tracks unraveled, sending a string of muddy, icecaked steel treads raining down on Jake’s excavator. The hammering caused the locked-open jaws of Richard’s excavator to finally dislodge, sending Jake’s dented, twisted machine plunging silently into the darkness below.
At the same time, Jake—still clinging to the steely neck of Richard’s excavator—lost his grip and slid all the way down till he thumped against the creature’s head, catching one of its huge rusted teeth just in time to stop himself.
Almost at the bottom of the crane’s boom now, Shane watched in horror as Jake swung from the open jaws of the remaining excavator, once again with nothing between him and certain death.
Swiftly Shane reached the tip of the vertical boom and only now got a good look at where the screams were coming from. At first it looked like Richard was hugging the end of the boom, legs buckled, head pressed against the cold steel. Then Shane saw the blood running down his pinned forearms, flowing from the now red metal connection between hook and boom. Shane swung from the boom and landed deftly, lightly, on the dangling excavator.
“Help me!” Richard spat demandingly through his foaming agony.
Without hesitating, Shane sized up the situation and took hold of the retractor cable, pulling down on it with all his might, trying in vain to ease the pressure.
High above, the crane’s outrigger gave another rumble, this time carving out 10, 20 feet of rock from the sides of the walls, dropping fast, then stopping, threatening to give way altogether at any moment.
“Hurry, you fucking fool!” Richard screamed at Shane. “Get me out of here now!”
Shane saw the pain in Richard’s glazed eyes. But he also saw the slippery glint of self-preservation as well. He let go of the cable and glanced down to see Jake, his friend, desperately holding on to the excavator’s teeth below.
With no time to lose, Shane made a choice.
He straddled the neck of the excavator and slid down its length, then held out his hand and said to Jake, “Let’s get the fuck out of here! Now!”
Jake’s palm slapped against Shane’s. Together they clambered up the neck of the excavator and onto the cab.
Richard shot an enraged glare at the Texas cowboy, then a desperate one at Jake.
“Jake, help me! Get me out of here! I’ll give you anything you want. Money, jewels, men!”
“Like I said before,” Jake told him, “I don’t want your damn prizes.”
The crane groaned, gave a few more feet, and the three men jolted.
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