Riggs pulled up his suit and returned to the Humvee. He checked to make sure all his seals were tight and used some electric tape to shore up the mine lamp’s attachment to his hard hat. After taking a final swig of his Mountain Dew, he put on his facemask. The other guys did the same. They were all now breathing the mix coming from the liquid oxygen and liquid nitrogen tanks and through the MAP Mix 9000. They climbed back into the Hummers, and Billy shifted the lead vehicle into drive.
Riggs said very little on this leg of the ride, using the time to concentrate his mind on the tasks ahead of him. Once again he would have the toughest job of the day, crawling into the off-take pipes to pull the plugs. He hoped to end this shift with a lot more than the two plugs they had managed to remove the day before. Tim turned to him201 and said, “You’re the man in the barrel.” Riggs told himself, I can do this as well as anyone, if not better. All he had to do was keep his focus, and keep that demon locked in the closet.
At ten-thirty they arrived at riser number 12, the Humvee parking spot near the nine-and-a-quarter-mile mark. The divers set up the yellow console of the mine phone inside the Humvee wagon, and Tim phoned in an update to Harald. The guys drove the gray Hummer wagon off the two-way trailer, positioning it for the westward drive back to the shaft. They then unhitched the trailer from the white Humvee pickup and attached it to the gray one. They pulled the flat-bottomed boat off the trailer. Then they slid the rack of liquid gas tanks to the opposite end of the trailer, closest to the gray Hummer. That way, at the end of their shift, they could back the white Hummer up the ramp at the other end of the trailer for the drive back to the shaft. They loaded up the boat with the hundreds of pounds of gear they needed for the excursion. In addition to the emergency bottle of HP air, the sandbags, and the water pumps, they had packed several hand tools, including a battery-operated Sawzall reciprocating saw. And, of course, there was the manifold that connected their umbilicals to the main breathing supply in the Humvee. A little after eleven o’clock, with all their setup work done, Billy joined Tim in the Hummer wagon while Hoss, Riggs, and DJ began trudging east202.
Around eleven-thirty the excursion crew arrived at riser number 4. Riggs knew the pulled plugs from numbers 1 and 2 were still near the very end of the tunnel, so he walked over to them with DJ following behind. They lugged around lots of heavy gear, then each grabbed a plug and dragged it 125 feet. They set up sandbags outside the off-take pipe leading to riser number 3, so it could be pumped out. At that point, they resumed the process of dragging the pair of sixty-five-pound plugs all the way back to the boat, which was parked around number 4, where the tunnel’s diameter was slightly less cramped.
Meanwhile, Hoss had cleared enough room in the boat to hold the plugs, since they’d eventually need to transport them back to the Humvees. He then started sandbagging outside number 4, so it would be ready to be pumped out after Riggs and DJ finished number 3.
As Riggs lifted one of the pulled plugs into the boat, he saw Hoss staring at the gauge on the manifold. He looked troubled. “The pressure’s down203,” Hoss said. “It’s down to 20 PSI.” He gestured for Riggs and DJ to take a breather. Then he used his comm wire to call Tim and ask what was going on.
Tim said he and Billy hadn’t done anything to change the pressure on their end, and their gauge looked fine, reading 120 PSI. Still, he said he’d confer with Harald.
A minute later, at 11:45, Tim called back, relaying Harald’s instructions: Hoss, Riggs, and DJ should avoid all working hard at the same time, so as not to overbreathe the system. Instead, they should take turns.
Tap Taylor had spent the morning rushing around, making sure the guys had what they needed and were where they needed to be. But that instantly changed as soon as those Humvees started their drive into the tunnel. That’s when the frenzy slowed to a crawl as he sat in his topside trailer. All of a sudden, like a snowed-in traveler staring at a screen full of cancellations at O’Hare, there was nothing for him to do except wait.
The entire Deer Island job had been a humbling one for Tap. He was used to being the guy in charge on his work sites, but on this one he felt like little more than Harald’s lackey. He was still smarting204 over an incident in his backyard during mobilization. When he had posed a question to Harald about the system, the Canadian engineer had embarrassed him in front of the other divers, reminding him in no uncertain terms that his job was to provide labor and logistical support—nothing else. Even the equipment Tap had provided for the job now had Norwesco stickers covering the Black Dog logos. Once the divers were down under, Tap felt even more marginalized. Their sole communication with topside205 went directly to Harald, who sat at a table in his trailer, next to his mine phone, radar monitor, and laptop computer. From his own trailer ten feet away, Tap could overhear some of Harald’s communications. But at best he could make out just one end of the conversation, and Harald wasn’t particularly forthcoming when pressed for details.
Still, Tap had made a habit of popping his head into Harald’s trailer periodically, asking, “How’s everything going?” Invariably, the answer had been, “Fine.”
A little before noon, Tap stuck his head in again. Tim had just phoned in an update to Harald, reporting that Riggs and DJ had dragged plugs 1 and 2 down to the boat, and Riggs was not far off from crawling into the pipe for riser number 3. Satisfied that everything appeared to be on schedule, Tap walked away from the trailers and headed to a rocky area of the island overlooking the water. This radiant July morning was more than just an important day on the plug-pulling calendar. It also happened to be Tap’s thirty-sixth birthday.
If the morning’s best out-of-the-gate performance carried through the day, Tap was hoping he might be able to get home to New Hampshire in time to share a late supper and a birthday cake with his wife and kids. His daughter was seven now, and his son was four. Tap was so focused on building his business into something bigger that he couldn’t conceive of slowing down, even if that meant family time largely consisted of his kids wandering into the Black Dog shop in their backyard and watching their dad work. Tap knew Billy had a point about finding balance, but in his own life, that would have to wait.
In addition to being his birthday, this Wednesday offered another bright spot for Tap. A Boston TV station had recruited him to offer his expert advice in an on-air phone interview. Not only would the interview break up the tedium of his long day of waiting, but it provided a welcome ego boost, reminding him—and everyone else around—that despite all the indignities of this job, Tap Taylor was much more than somebody’s gofer.
The TV station’s interest in Tap actually had nothing to do with his involvement in the high-stakes operation to remove the tunnel plugs. As central as the divers’ mission was to the rescue of the massive harbor cleanup project, they were doing their work completely off the media’s radar. Instead, the anchorperson would be interviewing Tap about the news story that had been dominating the national airwaves for five days: the plane crash involving the son of Camelot, John F. Kennedy, Jr.
202 (Chapter 10, note 12)
Hoss, Riggs, and DJ began trudging east: Humvee log, July 21, 1999, 11:14 a.m.