Isobel was neater-fingered than he was, and worked faster. In a few minutes, while Joey was still struggling with his fourth link, she had made six tidy bundles.
The only problem was they were starting to run short of cable ties. Joey shone his flashlight over the ground, brushing it with his fingers, hoping to pick up any of the ones that had fallen. Isobel was creating another link, looping the two lengths they’d made together.
“I’m two ties short here,” she said. “Are there any others?”
“I can’t find any.” Joey swept the area with his flashlight and fingers again, wishing for his fingertips to touch one of those precious pieces of plastic, but they didn’t. There were no more.
One link would have to have only five ties in it.
Joey looped the end of the chain around the tow hitch. There was just enough rope for him to tie a secure knot on the other end.
“Now we see if it works,” he said. He didn’t have a clue if it would. He was having serious doubts about the sanity of using a few pieces of plastic, underspecified for the job, to try to hold up a deadly weight long enough for them to rescue everyone trapped inside.
But it was their only chance.
“I’m going to get into the car now and ease it forward,” he told her. “I’ll do it as slowly as possible, so as not to put more strain on the cables. Take the flashlight and shine it down the passage. Tell me if it’s working, and if the grate is lifting.”
“Will do,” Isobel confirmed.
Joey would rather have had her behind the wheel and himself exposed to further fumes in the passage, but it was better for the person more familiar with the car to do the job. And he would prefer for the burden of failure to fall on his own shoulders than on hers.
“Easy now,” he urged the big SUV, as he disengaged the hand brake and pressed down on the gas pedal. He could visualize the rows of looped plastic tautening, taking strain as the rope tightened. He imagined the weight of the grate. God, what if they’d been totally wrong in judging it? He was bracing himself for the sudden lurch forward that would mean one of the links had broken.
Instead, the SUV eased a foot forward, then another, and he heard Isobel shout: “It’s lifting!”
Carefully, carefully... it would be so easy to overshoot, to draw this contraption of plastic and rope beyond its breaking point. Perhaps another foot. He edged the car forward, imagining the steel grate lifting, its full weight bearing down as it rose.
“Go higher!” Isobel called, her voice sounding hoarse.
Joey eased forward another foot, and then another, and when he heard her cry of “Stop!” he reacted immediately, cranking the hand brake as tight as it would go and hoping it would hold. He left the car in gear, turned it off, and then he was out and racing back down the tunnel.
The grate was open, angled over the gap and making him think of a jaw waiting to snap shut. But, so far, it was holding.
Chapter 26
“You stay outside,” Joey urged Isobel. His face looked drawn from strain.
“But you’ll need help,” she protested, as he lowered the ladder down.
“I don’t know how strong the fumes are down there. One of us needs to stay out, to deal with the emergency services when they arrive.”
“OK,” she agreed reluctantly, feeling her heart clench with worry as he clambered down. She could hear a few faint cries coming from below, but she feared that he was right, and that many of the miners had already succumbed to the fumes.
“Keep away from the grate,” Joey warned. Then he disappeared into the smoky darkness.
Isobel glanced up at the grate, noticing the jagged metal along its edge, speckled with rust. She stepped hurriedly back, imagining it slamming down. What could she do? She thought she could hear Joey’s voice coming from far below, speaking gently.
She prayed the emergency services would come soon. With their supplies of oxygen and other equipment, the rescue might stand a chance. She ran down the tunnel and out into the night.
She thought she could see them, far away in the distance — a faint patterning of red lights cutting the humid air. It would take another few minutes for them to get close enough to see her.
Something crunched under her feet, and she bent to pick it up.
It was a cable tie.
But, when she looked at it more closely, she realized it wasn’t an unused one.
This tie had stretched and snapped, right next to its fastening. Horror flooded through her as she saw it. One had broken, stressed to its limits, creating a weakness that would allow more to follow.
Adrenaline surging through her, Isobel screamed, “Joey! Hurry!”
That single snapped tie meant that there might be only a few minutes left. Maybe less. She needed to buy more time...
The car jack!
It could prove useful now to keep that lethal wedge of metal suspended and prevent it crashing down again.
She grabbed the jack and sprinted down the tunnel. The wave of dizziness she felt from the fumes almost knocked her off her feet, but she struggled forward. Where, and how, to position it? If she wedged it as close as possible to the base of the grate, and then cranked it upward, that would create an additional support, and hopefully take some of the strain off the makeshift rope.
Fingers shaking with tension, Isobel cranked up the jack. One turn, two... It was holding now, and seemed to be wedged firmly enough in place that it wouldn’t shift. Hopefully, with this to support the grate, the rope would hold for long enough to get the miners out.
She could hear the sirens in the distance.
Running back to the entrance, hoping the gunman was not waiting and watching somewhere, Isobel headed out into the night.
“Here! Quick!” she screamed and waved her arms.
The sound of the sirens grew louder and headlights blazed in her eyes as the first ambulance sped toward her.
Chapter 27
Scrambling down the ladder, Joey descended into a cramped underground hell. The engine fumes were stronger down here. The air was filled with choking fumes, but Joey could also pick up the sour stench of unwashed bodies, and the reek of vomit. Nausea roiled inside him, his body’s reaction to the toxic air. He tried to suppress it as hands from below reached up to grasp him, and hoarse voices pleaded for his help. His flashlight shone over their terrified faces and dread stabbed him as he saw a few had already collapsed on the ground.
“Right, come on. Let’s get you out of here.”
There was a language barrier to overcome; Joey had a basic knowledge of Zulu and Sotho, but some of the men had no English and didn’t speak either of these local languages. He had a sense that they were not down here voluntarily. He’d met a few zama zamas during security operations in this area. They had been hard and dangerous men, often with a criminal history, and prone to violence. Perhaps it was the effect of the gas, but these miners appeared only frightened and confused.
As he started organizing a hasty triage system, he clearly heard the sound that he had feared most. A harsh, grinding noise started, and then stopped abruptly. It told him that the grate had started to slip. One of the links must have weakened. If the rope broke entirely, the grate would crash down, an unstoppable weight, sealing the entrance again.
Nothing he could do now... he just had to get these men out as fast as possible.
And then, as he helped the first of the survivors up the ladder, a prolonged, harsh, scraping sound from above made his heart jump into his throat. At first he thought the grate was falling — that they were all doomed.
But as he struggled to the surface with the first of the weakened men, he saw that Isobel had used the car jack, jamming it into the angle of steel and cranking it up so that this sturdy structure took strain off the rope.