The Siege (18 page)

     “You got lucky, honey. I hope you know that.”

     “I know, Daddy. Getting shot sucks, and I don’t ever want to do it again. Once is enough.”

     “Well, since you’re here early, I think I’ll walk on over to the tunnel and see how the guys are doing.”

     “Don’t forget to wear your respirator. I was over there yesterday and they’re kicking up quite a bit of salt dust.”

Chapter 3
8

     John walked to the feed barn and slipped under the false floor, which had been propped up. He could instantly smell the salt.

     The first time he’d entered the mine, the smell surprise
d him. He’d never associated salt with having a smell. But it wasn’t an unpleasant smell, and he got used to it. Now, after being out of the mine for a few days, it seemed to draw him back. Like an old friend.

    At the foot of the steps someone had placed an old wooden coat rack. But the rack didn’t hold coats. It held hard hats and respirators.

     He tried on several of the hard hats and they all fell down and covered his eyes. He muttered that the men working the tunnel all must have big heads as he tightened the strap on the inside of one of them.

     Then he took a respirator off the rack and carried it into the tunnel, past a very noisy ventilation fan.

     Seventy yards into the tunnel he came to a branch he’d never been in before. The boys were moving fast. They’d only started the new tunnel two weeks before, and they were already so far into the new tunnel extension he couldn’t see them. Of course, the thick white cloud of fine powdered salt didn’t help his vision much, either.

     He put on his respirator and walked slowly into the milky white cloud. He could only see three or four feet in front of him, and moved at a snail’s pace so he wouldn’t crash headlong into one of the tunnelers.

     About fifty feet in, he finally came upon Bryan, using a commercial boring machine to drill holes at random ninety degree angles on the tunnel’s face.

     John stood and watched, fascinated by the process, for a full five minutes before anyone noticed he was there. Brad saw him out of the corner of his eye and waved, but didn’t say anything.

     The noise from the drill was deafening. John noticed that the four men were wearing ear plugs. He hadn’t thought to bring any, but he didn’t expect to be here long. He just wanted to check on the progress and see the process in action.

     After
Bryan drilled a dozen or so holes, Mark tapped him on the shoulder and relieved him on the heavy drill. Mark drilled another dozen holes, until the entire face of the tunnel was pockmarked with holes about eight inches deep.

     Then Mark put the borer off to the side, and Bryan and
Jason each took a heavy metal bar and inserted them into two of the holes.

     Working the metal bars up and down and then to each side, they were able to break off huge chunks of the hard packed rock salt, which fell to the floor in a debris pile. As the chunks fell,
Brad dragged them back out of the way with a heavy metal garden rake.

     Brad
then used a snow shovel to scoop up the debris and dump it into a long line of orange Home Depot paint buckets that were queued up along the tunnel wall.

    
Bryan wiped a heavy coating of salt dust from his wristwatch and then tapped each man on the shoulder. When they looked at him he pointed to his watch.

     The international symbol for “break time.”

     John turned to exit the tunnel with them, until Mark yelled at him. John turned back to see Mark pointing at the filled orange buckets, and then held up two fingers.

     The bastards were putting him to work.

     He picked up two of the heavy buckets and headed back to the main part of the tunnel, then continued into the mine. Up the steps and to the right he went, with the four men behind him, each of them carrying their own buckets. They stopped just long enough to remove their respirators, and for the four tunnelers to take the plugs out of their ears.

     Halfway down the mine’s B
ay 24 they came to a huge pile of tunnel debris. John dumped his buckets onto the pile and then placed the empties onto a stack. The others followed suit.

     “Welcome to hell, John!” Mark shouted. “Nice to see you.”

     “If I knew you were going to put me to work, I wouldn’t have come by to visit.”

     “Hey, it’s the rule. Nobody leaves the tunnel for any reason without carrying out two buckets. It’s how we keep the filled buckets from backing up on us in there. Anytime we take a break, anytime we go to lunch, anytime we take a leak… two buckets go with us.”

     John couldn’t resist a smile.

     “Do you know how ridiculous you guys look?”

     The four tunnelers, to be sure, were a sight to behold. Covered with a thick coating of salt dust from top to bottom, except for their heads and faces. Those had been covered with their respirators and hard hats.

     They more resembled walking
, talking snowmen than human beings.

     “Oh, laugh if you will, John. If you stayed in there for more than a few minutes you’d look like this too.”

     “No, thanks. I have enough trouble retaining my dignity already without looking like the Michelin man.”

     Then he got serious.

     “That’s quite a system you guys have going in the tunnel.”

     “Yeah. We’ve learned a lot since the first tunnel. The method we’re using now goes a lot faster, and it’s a lot less labor intensive. We’re moving right along at a pretty good clip.”

     “How long before you think you’ll finish?”

     “Maybe a month. Maybe a little bit less. We’ve got a big logistical problem we’re going to have to solve first.”

     “What do you mean, a logistical problem?”

    
“We inventoried the railroad ties we’re using to line the walls and hold up the ceiling arches, and we’re not going to have enough of them. All the ones in the main part of the tunnel are flush up against each other. The ones in the new branch are an inch apart. That’ll reduce their usage by ten percent, without affecting the stability to a great degree.”

     “Is it safe?”

     “Well, Mark there says it is. He’s the engineer in the family, so I have to assume his calculations are correct. The problem is that even leaving one inch gaps between them, we still won’t have enough.”

     “Uh, oh. So what’s the game plan once you run out?”

     “We’re going to start gradually tunneling up, grading the tunnel by about five degrees, until we’re only about three feet or so below the surface. We’ll be underneath the woods by the time we get to that point, and the root systems for the trees will help stabilize the ground.

     “When we run out of ties we’ll start using pallet
s from the trailers in the yard.”

     John was puzzled.

     “Pallets? I’m sorry, I’m not familiar with the term.”

     “Pallets are
the wooden frames that cargo sits on in the back of tractor trailer rigs. They’re forty inches wide, forty eight inches long, and four inches high. They put the cargo on the pallets so that it can be loaded and unloaded easily with forklifts and pallet jacks.

     “Anyway, some of the pallets are junk, but a lot of them are very well made, with doubled up stringers and hard wood. When we run out of railroad ties, we’ll start using those, doubled up on each side of the tunnel and standing on their ends.

     “The tunnel will be lower, going from six feet to forty eight inches high. So we’ll have to duck down as we move through it.”

     Mark added his two cents.

     “It’ll also be narrower. Since the pallets won’t bear as much weight, the last fifty five feet of the tunnel will be about shoulder width. That’ll reduce the amount of weight bearing down from the top. So when we enter or exit, we’ll be ducking down, single file.”

     “And you’re sure it won’t collapse?”

     “Not unless we want it to.”

     “Are you wiring the new part with explosives?”

     “Not the narrow part, no. But just after it transitions into the wider part we’ll have two sticks of dynamite hidden behind the ties to blow the tunnel if we need to. We’ve already got two sticks in the other end, just before it connects with the main tunnel. So if we get followed, we can blow the two and trap the bad guys like we did before.”

     “Is there anything I can do to help?”

     “Well sure, since you asked. We don’t need any more help inside the tunnel. It gets pretty crowded in there sometimes already with the four of us, and we try to choreograph everything so we don’t bump into each other.

     “But what we do need help with is gathering the pallets. If you can assemble a team of two or three helpers and gather them for us, we can focus on the digging instead.”

     “Okay. What do we do with the stuff that’s on top of the pallets?”

     “I started a project before, but then got distracted and had to abandon it.

     “When we brought all of those trailers into the compound, we put an empty one on the end. We took everything out of the trailer next to it and put it into the empty trailer, only we put the pallets off to the side. We stacked the merchandize from floor to ceiling, with an aisle down the middle for when we wanted to get access to the stuff at the front of the trailer.

     “Once the second trailer was empty, we put the stuff from the third trailer into it. And so on and so forth. I think we got as far as the fourth or fifth trailer before we got sidetracked and never finished the project.

     “But here’s the thing… not all of the wooden pallets are suitable for our use. Some are made of flimsy wood and not very sturdy. We only want the ones with multiple stringers, made of hard woods. They’re several times stronger than the cheap ones.

     “If you and your team can go through the trailers and stack all the pallets outside in a big pile, we can go through
and select the ones we think will work. Later on we can dismantle the others and use the wood for other projects.”

     “Okay, Mark. I’ll do that. It just so happens a couple of the guys have been coming to me lately looking for something to do. We’ll get started this afternoon.”

     “Thanks, John. You’re a lifesaver.”

     Mark guzzled the last of his bottle of water and asked the others, “You guys ready to get back to work?”

     None of them said anything, but all of them got up and started moving toward the tunnel. Bryan grabbed one of the stacks of empty buckets to carry back in with him.

     John followed them as far as the new tunnel entrance, then continued down the original tunnel and exited through the feed barn. Once outside, he paused long enough to get a deep breath of fresh clean air. It never smelled so sweet.

Chapter 39

     It was time to hatch Hannah’s evil plan. Like delinquent school girls up to no good, they giggled as they assembled in the lounge area at precisely four p.m.

     Sami’s father John and his crew were outside going through trailers. They’d made a lot of progress in recent days and would be done with the project soon. But for now they were tied up, and much too busy to ask why Hannah, Sarah and Sami might be sneaking off into the tunnel.

     Everyone else seemed to be busy doing their own chores or projects, or enjoying some leisure time.

     It seemed like a good time to go.

     Helen, on the security desk, saw the three walking toward her.

     “Well, hello, ladies,” she said. “What are you three up to today
?”

     Sami said, “Oh, not much, dear.
We just thought we’d head to the mine and look through the library over there. There’s a book that Sarah’s been looking for that she can’t find in the library here. So we’re helping her look for it.”

     Helen was nothing if not helpful.

     “Oh? Which one, dear? Maybe I’ve seen it.”

     All eyes turned to Sarah, who didn’t perform well under pressure. So she named the first book that came to her mind.

     “Um… 
Gone With the Wind.
”

     “Oh, that’s a great book. I’ve read it several times myself. But I haven’t seen it lately, I’m afraid. I think you’re right. It’s probably part of the collection we left over there.”

     The three breathed a collective sigh of relief. Helen seemed to be buying it.

     “Well, you girls have fun over there. And be careful in the tunnel.”

     “We will, Helen, and thank you.”