Forbidden by Susan Johnson (best feel good books txt) 📗

muttered. Daisy had a way of making her feelings known on a subject, a circumstance of which Trey was fully aware.

Bringing enough dynamite with them to assure opening the crosscut, the four men loaded the wooden box and drills on the cage and lowered themselves to the 2433 level of Alaska shaft. They made their way to the extremity of the new tunnel, cutting through to the adjacent shaft where Hazard and the other miners were battling the flood waters. As they neared the rock wall separating the two mines, the muffled turbulence of surging water was audible.

"What do you estimate—ten or twelve feet between us and the Pacific shaft?" Trey asked, recalling his earlier conversation with the foreman.

"Fifteen feet, at the most," Trewayne clarified.

"No more than six feet then for the drill holes?"

"Six would be safe. Anything more, the water might bust through before we can dynamite and get the hell out." Trewayne's voice was emotionless, as though their discussion didn't carry the imminent threat of death 2433 feet below the surface of the earth. And the men set to work, running the two-man drills, slowly cutting into the granite. The time required seemed an eternity although only fifteen minutes passed until they had enough holes drilled, loaded with dynamite, and primed to accomplish their task.

With sweat dripping from their faces, their clothes wet from the water they'd been working in for the past hour, the four men surveyed the four neatly packed drill holes attached to the seven-foot fuses stretching out from the wall.

"Good luck, gentlemen," Trey said, his voice grave for a moment as he considered their chances of outrunning the deluge. "And thank you." He smiled suddenly. "Any wagers on the race to the hoist?"

Their hat-lamps shone dimly on the underground scene, the nearest station lamps beyond the curve of the tunnel, the damp heat almost smothering, like the darkness barely kept at bay. In the shadowed gloom, the men's smiles shone white against their dirt-smeared faces.

"Let's just say, last one there buys beer at Skala's," Trewayne quipped.

And they bent to the task of lighting the fuses, the masculine sportive crisis management discharged and preempted now by more pressing concerns.

After waiting just long enough to make certain the fuses were burning well, the men sprinted down the rough tunnel toward the main passageway leading to the hoist. The ground shuddered under their feet forty seconds later when the dynamite exploded prematurely, and a moment later they all heard the ominous thundering explosion of rushing water.

The glow of the lit cage station seemed minute and distant, the roar of the water menacingly close, their speed inadequate against the equation of distance and water velocity. A cool mist drifted over them, the deafening rush of water intensified, preface they all knew to the engulfing tide.

The cage was a hundred yards away now. Life and a future beckoning… if they could reach it.

Then seventy yards.

Running full-out, agonizing pain stabbed their rasping lungs as they gasped for air, every man's eyes on the cage, all thoughts on the essential need for speed.

Fifty yards left.

The lights shone vividly now behind the metal mesh protec-tive covers, the cage door invitingly open, the lever required for ascent brilliant red. Their goal and salvation.

Only thirty yards to go.

Each man's heart thudded in his chest, and the smallest man, Trewayne, was keeping pace with the longer stride of the other three only by sheer gutsy determination.

Ten yards.

The light mist had altered to dense fog, the lights almost concealed although they were near, the tumultuous roar behind them booming in their ears.

Trewayne's boot caught on a rough outcropping and he stumbled. As Etienne's peripheral vision discerned the flashing lurch, he instinctively checked his speed.

Trewayne's arms flailed out in a jerky spinning flutter and he caught himself—in the next split second—almost… as Etienne tried to reach him—then losing his battle with gravity, toppled over, falling in a staggering sprawl.

Trey and Lund, running a few places ahead, were unaware of the accident until they'd reached the cage. Turning back, they observed with horror the fallen Trewayne—Etienne in a crouch, reaching for him. Behind them a dark glistening wall of water, roof-high and black as hades, rushed toward them.

"Signal up!" Trey shouted above the deafening sound of the water before sprinting back toward the two men. Seconds later, adding his strength to Etienne's, they swept Trewayne up, and supporting him under his arms, ran toward the cage.

"The door! The door!" Trey screamed, gesturing with his free hand to start swinging it shut.

And the cable began slowly revolving, the cage lifting the first few inches off the 2433 level.

Five seconds more and they would have been safe. Five seconds more and the cage door would have been closed on them.

But the wall of water hit them two strides short of their destination, hurling Trey and Trewayne into the slowly rising cage.

Sweeping Etienne away… past the steel cage, past the shaft, into the tunnel extending westward from the hoist. Into pitch-black darkness as the station lamps went out. Into a suffocating maelstrom of swirling water.

As powerless as a leaf in a flooding torrent, the surging force took him away. Twenty-four hundred feet below the ground, he realized with horror. And if the pumps in Pacific shaft went under, it would be months before the mine could be reopened—he'd be buried twenty-four hundred feet beneath the surface in a watery grave.

Holding his breath, he controlled the panic screaming through his mind. He wasn't dead until he was dead, dammit! But unnerving images flashed through his mind, vignettes of his past life, of Daisy, his children, his mother… those fearful prognosticated final moments of existence.

His lungs felt like they were going to burst when the powerful suction took hold of him, and moments later he was swept into a narrow opening of some kind because he was being smashed and buffeted against solid rock. Protecting his head with his arms as he was dashed back and forth by the hurtling pressure, he