Jasper Mountain (38 page)

Dark. Silence. Jack couldn’t move.

Then a whimper. Did it come from him? He saw nothing, not even dark. Just nothing. He didn’t exist, the only thing left of him, an echo in a vast forever. Jack, the miner’s ghost. What a fate, haunting Jasper Mountain for eternity. God possessed a keen sense of irony, and he was the perfect butt for this joke.

He tried to move. A lance of pain pierced through his side and stopped him.

Wait. Ghosts don’t hurt. Do they?

The rich smell of dirt filled his nostrils, and he snorted it out. Yep, he hurt too damned bad to be dead. He breathed in a glimmer of hope along with a snoot of dirt and coughed. Thank the good Lord in heaven, he wasn’t dead.

A realization crushed hope. He was worse than dead. He was buried alive.

Milena ran up Gooseneck Road, past the stamping mill, the steady drum shaking the ground beneath her feet. The gate to the mine proper rose ahead. A huge man came out of a building to watch her approach, a rifle held loosely in his hands. She slowed to a walk, hoping to have enough breath to talk when she reached him. She wondered how to start.

He scowled, grasping the rifle tight. “Help you?” he grunted.

“There has been an …” her voice trailed off. Accident? Hardly. “Incident,” she continued. “A collapse in the mountain. Men are trapped.”

He grinned, several missing teeth turning his expression into a leer. “Ain’t been no collapse.”

“Yes, there has.” She tried to move past him.

He blocked her way. “No women allowed on minin’ property.”

“This is a, how do you call it? Emergency. I must speak with …” Who? Victor Creely?

He shook his head. “Nope. You ain’t steppin’ foot on minin’ property and you ain’t speakin’ with nobody.”

She didn’t have a plan, was a fool to think anyone here would help or care. She stared at the filthy hulk before her. She didn’t know what to do.

She surveyed the area beyond the gate, searching for anything. An idea, a person. A large brick building squatted close to the gate, and several wood buildings, resembling shacks, dotted the landscape. Farther back, the headframe towered from the top of the plateau. The constant din of steam engines clouded around the complex, every so often a shout punching through. No one cared about a lone woman at the gate.

“You kin look all you want. That’s it.”

She returned her attention back to the huge man before her. Perhaps he possessed a conscience. “Your comrades are in trouble while we waste time speaking here. Do you want their deaths on your head?”

He laughed. Apparently, no conscience.

“Tell you what,” he said to her. “Give me a free poke and I’ll let you have a quick look around.”

Disgusted, she turned away from him and a flash of movement behind a window in the large brick building stopped her. Someone watched.

The King of the Jackals. And this monster, his guard dog. She turned from the mine, not sure what to do next. The big, dirty man’s laughter followed her, mocking her as she retreated down the road.

A whimper skimmed the heavy silence.

Jack figured he was buried alive. In a grave? Assumed to be dead when he wasn’t?

A whimper. Again.

Was the sound faraway or close? Or inside his head?

That’s right, the mine. He’d been in the mine.

“Digger?” he tried to call out, but his voice raced backward choking down his windpipe. Coughing, he clawed and pushed through a blanket of dirt and rock. He started to sit up and smacked his head on, what else, rock. Goddamned rock.

Goddamned rock? He wasn’t buried in a grave. He was in the mine.

Holding his hand to the side of his head, he felt sticky wet. Blood. He rolled over and gagged, then coughed out more dirt. Grit sifted under his shirt like an army of ants skittering over him.

Well, at least he wasn’t a ghost. Yet.

Again, the whimper sounded, this time, closer. Jack heard it clearly now he’d dug himself out of dirt.

“Digger?” his voice grated out. More dirt raked in his throat. Seemed he was chockful of mountain.

“Jack?” Not Digger. Pete. Jack grabbed and held to Pete’s voice, reaching out to him in the dark. His mind began turning like a rusty wheel coming to life after centuries of nonuse. There’d been an explosion. Cave-in. Maybe in that order, maybe not. He was alive. With Pete. Two. There were eight in his crew. He concentrated, and the thinking made him feel real again. Six. He had six men to find.

“Pete?”

“Over here.” Pete’s voice wavered. Jack didn’t ever think he’d hear fear come from the tough old guy, yet it shivered through the miner’s voice.

Jack crawled to where he thought Pete’s voice came from. Rock scraped his knees and elbows, ripping through his clothing. Pain shot through his side and stopped him after he’d only crawled a few feet.

He rolled on his good side and gasped in air, wanting to curse, to cry. No sound came. Nothing in him but a hot poker in his side and bands of ache closing around his chest. Not to mention, the throbbing through his skull. His eyes stung. He swiped gritty blood away.

Goddamn it anyway. What a mess.

He wondered if they had a chance of survival. How far did this thing reach? Were any of the other teams affected? Did anyone up top realize what had happened? Did anyone know someone was down here, alive?

Did anyone care?

He remembered someone dumped him in the tunnels, near his team, set it up, lit explosives. Mining accident? Hardly. “Jack?” Pete’s voice called out again.

Jack grunted in reply. Someone moaned from another direction, and again the whimper skipped through the dark. That added up to three alive other than him: Pete, the moaner, and the whimperer. Four to die slowly.

Stop feeling sorry for yourself, Buchanan, and move!

Four men with four still to find. He was supposed to be their leader. It was up to him to pull them together, find the others.

“Mmmmm …” rolled through the dark. “Mmmm … Jack. Jack.” Digger’s voice. Barely a whisper, yet enough. All Jack needed. Ignoring his pain, he resumed his crawling.

“Dig, hang on!” He dragged himself up a dirt mound. Or wall. Or whatever it was. All the times he’d imagined the mountain turning into a grave, and it was accommodating him. He felt like a smashed and blinded bug, attempting to make its way through an impossible maze.

“Digger!” he called, his voice trembling. “Pete!” He sounded feeble to himself, like a ninety-year-old man with consumption.

“Over here.” Pete’s voice ribboned through the dark like a guide rope. Panting against stabs of hurt, Jack crawled over the dirt pile, pulled himself through a small opening that scraped every part of him, then he skidded down. And down. For a second he thought he might be sliding into a hell of a pit, but he stopped after a few feet. The pain jolting through him felt familiar, like it had always been there.

“Jack?”

Pete spoke right next to him. Jack reached out and found the hand of his friend.

“Christ, Pete.” Relief swam through his voice. Then he added, “We’re in trouble.”

“Yep.”

“I heard Digger.”

“He’s right behind me.” Pete’s voice dropped down to a whisper. “He’s bad off. Half-buried. I can’t get him free.”

Jack reached out and Digger was right there. Jack scooted closer and slid his hand along the miner’s chest. He came up against rock. Digger groaned, the sound small. If there hadn’t been dead silence, Jack might not have heard him at all.

“Hold on, buddy. It’ll be fine,” Jack lied. He needed to see. The dark was not black, it was blindness. “Pete, you got your candle? Or a lantern?”

“Nope.”

“Damn.” Jack slid his hand up Digger’s neck to his head. God only knew how, but he still wore his hardboil, candle intact. Gently, Jack removed the hardboil. Digger moaned again.

“Hold on, Dig. I need to get your candle.”

“Don’t light it. I don’t think I want to see what’s lyin’ on me,” Digger said, his voice heavy with the effort it took to speak.

“We’ll get you out,” Jack promised.

“Weighs two tons. First I thought it was Rolf.”

Digger’s humor bolstered Jack’s courage. God bless him. A small sound of movement came from behind them.

“Who is it?” Jack called out. For a moment he heard no sound at all. He thought he might break his ears, he listened so intently.

“Rolf.” The big man coughed his name through the dark. “Are you hurt?” Only silence answered.

“Hell, Rolf, you baby. Answer us. Hey, Rolf, I’m fit as a fiddle,” Digger said, although the pain stabbing through his voice didn’t quite agree with his words.

Jack dug in his pocket and grabbed a match. “Hold on. I’m gonna light this candle.”

“Jack,” Pete’s voice came softly through the dark. “What if there’s powder in the air? You might ignite this whole … whatever it is we’re in. Chamber.”

Jack froze. Pete was right. Someone set this up to kill them. Someone? Who was he kidding? Luke. Who wasn’t smart enough to pack in extra powder to be sure no one survived. Or was he? One thing Jack did know for sure, next chance he got, he’d pound the sardonic grin right off the bastard’s face. He wondered how much Victor paid the man to kill his friends.

“I’ll crawl back far as I can from you. You’re right, I might finish the job Luke and Victor began.”

“We need to see what we’re into,” Pete answered, then his voice turned angry. “Jesus, Jack, I did hear the explosion first. You really think Luke did this on purpose? Luke?”

“I know he did. If we don’t blow ourselves to Hell, we’ll have plenty of time to discuss everything.”

“Light it,” Digger said. “I’m gonna die anyhow. Sooner’d be better than later.”

“No, you aren’t going to die,” Jack answered. “We’re all getting out. Together. Pete?”

“I say go ahead and light it.”

“Rolf?”

Emptiness answered.

“Rolf?”

Silence.

“Go ahead, Jack,” Pete said, “Digger and I just outvoted you.

Do it.”

“All right.” Truthfully, he did want light, but now their lives were bound together in the mountain. Jack lifted himself to his hands and knees again. He gasped.

“What?” Pete asked.

“Sorry, nothing. Having trouble breathing.”

“Just don’t start pukin’ again. I hate puke,” Pete answered.

Jack crawled. He touched a soft mound that wasn’t dirt. A man. He put his hand on whomever it was. No rise and fall of the chest. No heartbeat. But the body still felt warm.

“God have mercy on your soul, Rolf,” Jack said. What a shame.

Scooting around Rolf’s body, he made his way until rock stopped him. He pulled himself to his feet, and stars shot through the dark. His legs shook, and he grasped rock to steady himself. God, it was nearly impossible to tell which way was up. He figured the opposite way his body wanted to go.

Time to light the candle. He pulled matches out of his pocket.

“Ready?”

“I reckon,” answered Pete’s voice. “Here goes.”

At least, if he was about to get blasted into Death’s waiting grip, he’d die on his feet.

He saw Milena’s face. He reached out in the darkness, touched her soft hair, drank in her luminous eyes. Tasted her lips. At least he’d had sense enough to tell her he loved her. At least she knew that much.