To lighten their load, Hoss decided to unhitch the trailer from the Humvee. That meant cutting the hoses that tethered the liquid oxygen and nitrogen tanks to the controls inside the vehicle. They certainly didn’t need the liquid tanks or the cursed MAP Mix 9000 anymore. He looked over to see that Riggs was now wearing a one-hour device, finally released from his free-flowing hell. Hoss called him over, asking to borrow his knife, while DJ took over the task of assembling the other rebreathers with ice packs.
As Hoss was about to cut the first hose, he looked down and was startled by what he saw. His hand was shaking uncontrollably. It felt as though his brain were no longer in control of his fingers. He turned to Riggs and asked him to do the cutting228. The panic may not have overtaken Hoss’s mind, but it had found its way to his fingertips.
Before Riggs began slicing through the hose, DJ yelled over to them. “ALL STOP on cutting the trailer loose!”
Hoss shot him a puzzled look.
“We’ve got to get these guys out of here, and we can’t load them into the Hummer,” DJ explained. Although they had used the pair of opposite-facing Humvees for the drive into the tunnel, they had decided to leave behind the white Hummer, which was pointed to the east. Still, with all the equipment jammed inside the gray wagon, it would have been tight to try to fit all five guys into one Humvee—in fact, with three of them wearing the bulky rebreathers, nearly impossible. “We can put them on the trailer,” DJ said.
After scanning the setup in front of them, Hoss agreed to leave the trailer attached.
By now, DJ had the other rebreathers ready. Hoss grabbed one and DJ helped him maneuver it onto his back and get him switched over, an even more complicated process than donning the Ocencos. Then Hoss helped Riggs do the same. DJ put his backpack on himself, by laying it upside down on the tunnel floor, sticking his arms into it, and then flipping it over his head, like a preschooler learning how to put on his jacket.
They moved Billy’s body first. DJ slipped several times on the slick tunnel surface as he tried to pull Billy out from under the Humvee, his own legs sliding under the vehicle. When they finally got Billy to the trailer, DJ tried one last time to revive him by purging his mask.
It had taken DJ longer to admit to himself what Riggs and Hoss had sensed fairly early on. But he realized now that he couldn’t hold out hope any longer. Billy and Tim weren’t just down. They were gone. Rather than discussing it, DJ simply removed Billy’s mask. Looking at Billy’s wide-open eyes above his trademark mustache, he whispered to Hoss, “Tap would not want to see this.”
Hoss did what he sensed DJ could not229 bring himself to do and closed Billy’s eyes. They then moved to the driver’s side to get Tim. In the tight quarters of the tunnel, it was a challenge to extricate Tim’s 220-pound body from the Humvee and then carry him along the slippery tunnel floor over to the trailer. After they managed to lay his body down, they once more tried to revive him, even if, by now, they knew they were just going through the motions.
With Tim out of the driver’s seat, Hoss motioned for Riggs to move behind the wheel to get the Humvee started. Hoss stood at the back of the vehicle and turned on the oxygen-injector system. Then he gave Riggs the sign to turn over the engine.
Nothing. They tried it again. Nothing.
That was when Hoss, whose poise and quick thinking had kept the three of them alive, hit his lowest point. He knew they had nowhere near the air they would need if they had to walk the entire nine miles out of the desolate tunnel. And he knew how long it had taken to get the Humvee going when they’d had trouble starting it previously. He looked back at the trailer, fixing his eyes on Billy and Tim’s inert bodies. And he thought to himself, Is that our future?
Then he answered his own question.
DJ knew his party-boy reputation pretty much defined him, but he prided himself on being nothing but serious when it mattered most. His mother had always said there was nobody better in a crisis than DJ. And he had reprised his crisis cool so far on this wrenching afternoon. Still, like Hoss, he felt panic set in when the Humvee wouldn’t start. How many more things can go wrong?
He knew there was a standby team230 of divers back on Deer Island, but how would they help? The central message drilled into them during their mine rescue training had been to avoid endangering additional workers, so it wasn’t clear whether that backup team would even be sent into the tunnel. If a rescue operation was authorized, it would take those standby divers time to mobilize before they could begin the nearly two-hour trek. DJ, Hoss, and Riggs weren’t about to sit around in a panic waiting for a possible ride, burning through their dwindling supply of air. If they didn’t get the Humvee started, DJ figured there was little hope.
He wouldn’t reach his thirtieth birthday for another two months, and he began to wonder if he’d ever see that milestone. All three of their lives seemed to be slipping away. Suddenly, a grim vision from his future flashed into DJ’s mind. He saw people climbing the stairs to the duplex apartment he shared with his mother. They were somberly offering their condolences to Lorraine, to Dana, to his brother. “I’m so sorry,” they all said. In this vision, DJ’s four-year-old son, Cody, was also there, though he seemed to have no idea why everyone around him was so sad.
Yet in this moment of darkness, he was able to find light from an unexpected source. Riggs—the guy DJ had thought was too uptight, the guy DJ had thought wanted to bolt on foot out of the tunnel—was now sitting behind the wheel of the Humvee. And in the moment when DJ and Hoss found themselves most despondent, Riggs was projecting nothing but steely calm. He was going to get the damn thing started.
Wearing the bulky rebreather on his back, Riggs could barely fit into the driver’s seat, but that didn’t seem to faze him. He appeared to have gleaned from the previous day’s engine troubles exactly which steps he needed to follow to trick the oxygen injector into working, and how to do it without draining the battery. He waited for the electronic sensors to reset; then, to override the injector, he flooded the intake with oxygen and ground the starter for longer than seemed wise. All of a sudden, in a thunderous groan, the engine turned over, belching a plume of diesel smoke that filled the tight section of the tunnel as though it were a shotgun barrel.
It was 1:55 p.m. “Keep it running!” Hoss yelled from behind. DJ rounded up some of the equipment they might need for the ride, tossed it into the back of the Hummer, and then jumped into the rear seat, struggling to sandwich himself, and his roller-suitcase rebreather, into a space that was already crowded with gear. By the time he was settled back there, Hoss had climbed into the passenger’s seat. Riggs stepped on the gas.
As they drove off, a new worry washed over DJ. Because they had kept the trailer attached, that meant they were still carrying the tanks of liquid nitrogen and liquid oxygen. If the Humvee took a hard turn in the unforgiving tunnel with all that standing water, the trailer might jackknife. DJ knew there was a chance that a collision could turn those tanks into bombs. As much as the divers wanted to hit the gas pedal to race out of the tunnel, they all knew they could only go so fast—probably not more than five miles per hour—if they didn’t want to court further catastrophe.
“Riggs, stay on your toes,” DJ said.
Tap knew something was wrong. Harald wasn’t just being sparing with details, as was his custom. Now he wasn’t saying anything at all. Tap had stopped by his trailer for one of his periodic check-ins, asking Harald what was going on. Harald didn’t mention that he had been concerned when, just after 1:40 p.m., Tim had failed to call in with his regular update. He didn’t mention that he had then tried phoning Tim, and, when he got no answer, decided he needed to alert a Kiewit supervisor about the potential problem231. And Harald didn’t mention that, at 1:45 p.m., DJ had phoned in with the unthinkable update that two men were down232.
229 (Chapter 11, note 10)
Hoss did what he sensed DJ could not: Ibid., 8; DJ Gillis, interview by author, June 2009.
230 (Chapter 11, note 11)
He knew there was a standby team: Trooper Mary T. McCauley, “Interview of Harald Grob,” Massachusetts State Police Suffolk County Detective Unit, January 7, 2000, 9.
232 (Chapter 11, note 13)
two men were down: Harald Grob, topside log, July 21, 1999, 1:45 p.m.; Riggs accident notes, 11.