Mercer was grateful, and somewhat surprised Ira had had the same thought as he did earlier. Then again Ira was a master administrator and knew how to maintain peak performance from those under him. Forty-eight hours in Vegas was exactly what his men needed after months of continuous work. He laughed. “Just great. A few minutes ago the men thought I was the hero for giving them a few days off. No way I can top you sending them to Sin City.”
“When you’re there,” Ira joked back, “you can pick up the tab at the strip joints they will no doubt visit.”
The teasing tone evaporated on Mercer’s lips. “I’m not going with them. I want to stay and monitor the mine.”
Ira’s reply carried the same seriousness. “You are going with them.”
“Forget it,” Mercer said. “No offense to your hydrologists, but I’m the one in charge out here and I’m the one who has to be satisfied the tunnel is safe.”
Ira’s smile resonated in his voice. “That’s why you and I are friends, Mercer. You’ll take responsibility even when you don’t need to. I’ve done that my entire life. Go to Vegas, for Christ’s sake. You can study the hydrology reports when you get back. You were hired to dig the tunnel, not oversee the entire project. Besides, I won’t be able to get Dr. Hood or Dr. Marie there until the day after tomorrow at the earliest.”
“I don’t want anyone going into that mine,” Mercer cautioned. While his work made him an expert in hydrology, he conceded that Gregor Hood knew this area much better. Until his arrival, there wasn’t much for him to do except stare at computer monitors. And whether he was at the mine or in Las Vegas, nothing could stop water from bursting through the rock plug if it was already unstable.
“I’ll order some guards to the site. No one goes in or out. Take a couple of days off. If we’re that close to the underground cavern, you guys have earned it.”
“All right.” Mercer felt himself relaxing. “You win.”
“Choppers will be there in half an hour. Only takes fifteen minutes by jet to fly from Area 51 to Vegas. Hold on.” Ira again clamped a hand over the phone to speak with someone in his office. “Okay, thanks. Mercer, you’re booked in the Luxor Hotel. Sorry it’s not a suite, but you’re traveling on the government’s nickel. I’ll try to get away from Washington and meet you when Drs. Hood and Marie arrive.”
“Okay. I’ll see you in a couple days.” Mercer paused. “And if you tell Harry I’m in Vegas for two days, I will kill you.” On Harry White’s list of life’s priorities, he ranked gambling below smoking and drinking but above eating and showering. Mercer was already planning on calling him from his hotel to rub it in.
Ira laughed. “There are practical jokes, and then there’s downright cruelty. Your presence there is considered a national secret. You’re safe.”
Mercer swiveled off his chair and started for the mine head. He remembered he wanted to tell Ira about the salinity in the water deposit, but figured it could wait until he talked it over with Gregor Hood. More than likely it meant nothing and he’d find the hydrologist had experience with similar abnormalities during his previous evaluation.
Red was waiting with another miner, Ken Porter. At their feet was the seventy-pound armored case for the seismograph and its batteries. They heaved it by the handles and followed Mercer into the cage lift. No one spoke as the elevator dropped into the gloom. Normally miners whiled away the commute with jokes or games of dice on deeper shafts. For this descent they remained grim-faced and tense. They all understood the risks.
At the substation, Red and Ken set the seismograph on a utility tractor as Mercer got into the low-slung bucket seat and engaged the electric drive. He continued a dialogue with the topside safety monitor, who was watching the camera for any changes at the working face. He stopped the tractor well before they reached the end of the tunnel, knowing that the slight vibration of the heavy tires on the rough ground could trigger a catastrophic collapse. From this point on, they moved with the careful deliberation of demolition experts defusing a bomb.
Red and Ken lugged the seismograph, heads down under their burden. Mercer twisted his head in a steady rhythm so his lamp flashed on the floor, ceiling and walls. Their boots crunched on the debris-strewn tunnel.
At the face, Mercer went straight to the damp spot, satisfying himself that the camera hadn’t lied. The stain seemed safely contained by his chalk outline.
“Let’s get it planted and get out,” he said, straightening. He pointed to where he wanted the unit set.
He and Red began the laborious process of calibrating the seismograph and jacking it into the same data cable carrying the camera images to the surface. Ken Porter spent the time scouring the rock for additional water spots that Mercer might have missed.
“Son of a bitch!” he shouted suddenly, scrambling away from the working face.
Mercer looked up. “What is it?”
“UXB.”
Mercer’s body went cold. UXB was an old term for unexploded bomb. Ken had found an explosive charge that hadn’t gone off with the others. He pointed to one of the two-inch holes Donny Randall’s team had drilled into the stone. At this angle Mercer couldn’t see into it, so he couldn’t tell that it was nearly ten feet deep. Ken had been right in front of it and had flashed his lamp down its length and saw the blue wrapper of the Tovex explosive.
“Back away nice and easy,” Mercer cautioned in an even voice. Tovex was one of the most stable demolition charges on the market, but he wasn’t going to take any chances.
Ken took several steps back, his face ashen, his eyes glued to the black hole in the dark stone. He angled away from the mouth of the hole to get out of the potential blast radius and was twelve feet away when the charge blew.
Because the drill hole hadn’t been repacked to contain the blast, the explosion came out like the exhaust of a rocket engine, a seething plasma of gas and flame that shot down the tunnel in an expanding plume. Ken had just gotten himself clear yet was still thrown a dozen feet by the concussion.
Mercer and Red too were tossed back by the blast, neither able to hear the warning shouts of the other because their hearing had been nullified by the overwhelming detonation. Mercer was the first to get to his feet, swaying against the ringing in his ears. He began to rush to where Ken lay like a limp doll and pulled up short. What he saw in the wavering light of his helmet lamp defied description.
Like a spreading pool of spilled ink, the area around the smoking hole darkened as he watched. Water under tremendous pressure was filling microvoids in the rock, oozing out almost like sweat from pores. At first the surface appeared merely damp and then began to glisten. In seconds, drops of water formed and began to trickle from the stone.
The primitive part of his brain told him to forget the others and flee, but he fought the temptation. Keeping one eye on the impending flood he reached for Ken Porter, shouldering the unconscious miner in a fireman’s carry. Red Harding was up, staring at the water now spurting from the solid rock.
“Let’s go!” Mercer screamed at the top of his lungs. His voice was deadened even in his own head.
Red finally saw Mercer lurching toward him, shook himself of the shock and started loping down the tunnel. Behind them the water tore at the stone from behind, exploiting the tiniest cracks until it found the weakest spot. Like a liquid laser, a shaft of water shot from the drill hole, a two-inch diameter spear that hit the seismograph machine. For a moment the water exploded around the armored case in a roiling froth, but its power was too great to be deterred by such a puny obstacle. The heavy case began to slide across the floor, slowly at first, then accelerating. Red had a fifty-foot head start on the tumbling crate and it nearly bowled him over as the water jet propelled it like a projectile down the tunnel.