Sam listened.
There was a distant high-pitched sound coming from outside the tunnel. He waited as the pitch of the sound changed. It was an engine or possibly two or more, two-stroke engines. Someone had opened its throttle and the motorcycle was racing toward its powerband.
“Motor bikes!” Sam said. “Any chance your local ranger would use a two-stroke?”
“Not a chance in hell,” Jesse said. “They might be some kids on dirt bikes having fun.”
Sam cocked a worried eyebrow. “You get some of those up here?”
Jesse nodded. “Sometimes in the summer break, but not usually this time of year.”
At the entrance to the tunnel a familiar Yamaha YZ250 motorcycle slid to a crisp stop. A second or two later, two identical riders pulled up alongside.
Sam swallowed.
Jesse said, “Now what?”
Sam said, “Now we wait and see if they’re a few kids riding motocross for fun… or…”
“They’ve been sent here to finish what the phony Sam Reilly had begun,” Sandi finished for him.
The motocross rider flashed a powerful headlight down into the tunnel. Sam glanced around looking for a side tunnel or crevasse to hide, but there were none. The three of them stood out like animals caught in a powerful spotlight.
The riders revved their engines.
They sounded menacing, if that was even possible for a motorcycle.
And then the first rider took off.
Deeper inside the mine, the tunnel’s ceiling dipped and the riders wouldn’t be able to keep going, but out here, toward the entrance, the tunnel was somehow taller, allowing the riders to ride in the upright position as the bikes entered the mine and raced toward them.
Sam shouted, “Time to go!”
They started to race back the way they came, deeper into the mountain, running along the narrow-gauge tracks used by the minecart in times long since passed.
Sandi said, “Where?”
“Anywhere but here!” he turned to Jesse. “I don’t suppose there’s another way out of this mountain?
Jesse grinned. “As a matter of fact, there is.”
Chapter Thirteen
It was impossible to outrun a motorcycle on foot.
Up ahead were a pair of twin dilapidating mine-carts. They were roughly seven feet long, by three wide and three high. Made of solid iron, with a total of four railway wheels, the heavy carts were designed to carry more than a ton of gold rich ore.
Sam shouted, “Into the mine cart.”
“Oh no!” Sandi shouted, “I’m not getting into that old thing… I’d rather take my chances negotiating with the riders.”
Sam shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
Leaving the first minecart as a natural shield and impediment to the riders behind, he released the second minecart’s brake. He and Jesse started pushing the heavy iron cart down the tunnel, until it picked up speed on its own.
Jesse climbed in first.
Sam kept pushing from behind, gripping the iron holds used by miners from a bygone era when they rode the carts.
He held out his hand for Sandi who was running fast behind. “Quick, give me your hand!”
She looked at him, her face distorted by fear and indecision.
Any doubt about the motocross rider’s intentions were shattered a moment later, when the one at the front pulled out a handgun and started to fire directly at them.
The shots slammed helplessly into the ore cart behind them.
That was enough for her. She took his hand and Sam pulled her onto the cart. A moment later she’d climbed inside and took cover.
Jesse said, “You’d better get inside too, Sam. The roof’s about to disappear.”
Sam’s head snapped forward. His eyes locked on the tunnel up ahead where the ceiling of the shaft became not much larger than the minecart itself, as it turned steeply into its downward descent.
He didn’t need to be told twice.
Sam climbed over the iron railing and dipped his head, just as the cart disappeared into the darkness of the shallow tunnel.
With the ceiling nearly the same height as the ore cart, they had to keep their heads down inside the cart, or risk losing them altogether. At first Sam had kept his flashlight on, but now there seemed like no point; it wasn’t like they could see where they were going.
The cart picked up speed rapidly. Its old wheels made a cacophony of sounds as the metal on metal sent shards of sparks shooting through the velvet darkness of the tunnel like shooting stars. Sam felt the contents of his guts shift as the ore cart turned sharply to the right, before punching out of the corner into an even steeper decline, like a bobsled racing down a luge.
All fear of the attacking riders disappeared.
They raced faster still and for a moment Sam was certain they were about to be thrown out of the uncontrolled ore cart.
“Jesse!” Sam shouted. “How do we slow this damned thing?”
“That lever there,” Jesse replied, switching his flashlight on again so that its beam was directed at the mechanism. “But I wouldn’t touch it yet.”
Sam was just about ready to force his way across the cart and shove the brake lever all the way forward. “Why not?”
“We need the speed.”
“We’re already going fast!” Sam yelled above the whine of the grinding wheels.
“Not fast enough.”
Sandi intervened, “For what?”
“To get up the next rise!”
Sam gritted his teeth and held on. He felt helpless. There was nothing he could do to change the outcome of the events around him, a sensation to which he was highly unaccustomed.
There was no way of telling his speed.
The cart reached a shallow dip that he hadn’t noticed on his way up the tunnel earlier, and the ore cart slowed as it reached the crest, like the open car of a roller coaster slowing as it climbed before dipping sharply.
The cart lurched forward, picking up speed quickly.
“How much farther?” Sam asked.
Jesse grinned sardonically. “A fair way. We need to descend a total of eleven hundred feet into the mountain!”
“Eleven hundred feet!” Sam shouted. “Why? I thought you said you knew another way out of the mine!”
“I do.”
“So why are we going deeper,” Sam asked. “Don’t we need to climb?”
“We want the Queen Maud’s reef. That shaft runs clear through the mountain, exiting into a state forest.”
They passed underneath a small waterfall, with the dripping water hitting them at speed like pellets from a gun.
Sam wiped the water out of his eyes. He looked up. The ceiling seemed more distant, as though the tunnel had suddenly opened up into a wider space. He shined his flashlight on the ceiling, where quartz crystal speckled with fine particles of gold reflected back at him from a height of forty feet at least.
“Where are we?” Sam asked.
Jesse said, “Queen Victoria’s Vault.”
Sam grimaced. “Where?”
“Queen Victoria’s Vault. The largest stope in the region. It was once the richest gold reef in the entire mountain and the miners, God bless them, worked their way through the area like an army of termites, removing every piece of the reef that wasn’t absolutely necessary to maintain the structural integrity of the mountain.”
Sam said, “Why did they stop? I thought I saw plenty of specks of gold in the quartz.”
“You probably did.”
“So, what happened?”
“It became unprofitable to extract at the time and nowadays, with modern technology, what’s left of the reef would be considered too meagre to go to the trouble of setting up a modern day operation.”
“Why?” Sam asked, with surprising curiosity. “Because it’s too high up?”