Shadows (Ashes Trilogy 2)

“There are things you just don’t forget, though,” Weller had said, unfurling a grubby roll of yellowed paper over a low workbench that reminded Tom, too much, of Wade’s butcher block. Considering that Mellie and Weller’s camp was situated on an abandoned farm whose hog barn had been converted into a command center, Tom thought this wasn’t such a great omen.

Weller’s map was crap: just a rough pen-and-ink schematic with virtually no detail and nothing to scale. Yet the old man’s description had been accurate. With its rough grid of vertical shafts and horizontal tunnels, broken up by cartoonish balloons where the biggest chambers were located, the thing did remind Tom of a glorified ant farm.

“When it comes to hard rock mining, you basically got two options,” Weller said. “You can either tunnel in from the side and then truck ore out on a decline ramp—”

Tom shook his head. “I’m already lost. What’s a decline ramp?” “Just a big underground road. But you get to a point where you’re down deep enough that using only the ramp becomes real expensive and inefficient.” Weller’s finger jumped to a vertical line. “So you drop a shaft, like what you see in movies.”

“And that’s how they hauled up the iron ore?”

“Not iron,” Weller said. “Gold.”

“Gold?” Tom’s eyebrows rose. “In Michigan? You’re kidding.” “Nope,” Weller said. “Ropes Gold Mine is the most famous; that’s way, way east, near Marquette. We’re in the second-best place in the U.P. for gold, in Gogebic County. When the original Yeager—this would’ve been the current reverend’s dad—started the first iron mine—”

“The one they eventually turned into Devil’s Cauldron, right?” “The lake, yeah. It’s pretty common in these parts to fill tapped-out pit mines with water. Anyway, looking for gold was the brothers’ idea, and once they did find it, they first tunneled into the mountain and then dropped shafts later. A shaft is a way of cutting down on distance. This ore body runs west to east, so it’s better to drop a shaft over top and work your way down. Besides, once you’re that far over, you need other escape routes in case something goes wrong—and in a mine, something always goes wrong. Plus, you situate the shaft right, you catch the air for better ventilation.”

“With cross currents.” He understood that. It was the same principle as opening multiple windows in a house depending upon the prevailing winds. “So how many shafts? I see three here.”

“The biggest ones, yeah, going west to east.” Weller touched the vertical line left of center on the paper and closest to where he’d labeled the entrance to the mine. “Shaft One, the Yeager Shaft, is the oldest, and goes down to eight hundred and fifty feet. Further east, they drilled Shaft Two, which peters out at twelveseventy.”

Tom studied the name scribbled next to Shaft Two: Ernst. That rang a bell. “Wait a minute. Isn’t that the last name of that kid you told me about—the one who got killed in an ambush?”

“Peter.” Weller made a face like the name smelled bad. “Yeah, that’s him. The Ernsts partnered with the Yeagers from the get-go. Those families have always been tight.”

Tom’s eyes skated to the third shaft, which was both the deepest and the furthest east. “Who’s Finn? Is he on this Council of Five you were talking about?”

Tom thought he saw something spirit through Weller’s eyes, but it might just have been a trick of the light. “No,” Weller said. “Tell the truth, I don’t know much about the Finns, other than they went in on the mine as partners and then there was some kind of falling out. There is no Finn in Rule now.”

“Okay. And you’re sure these are the only shafts?”

“No, but they’re the only ones that matter. I know there are others, but they’re real straws by comparison, probably only big enough around for a couple people to get in and out. I don’t even know where they are, tell you the truth. Most will have caved in or filled up with water by now anyway.”

“What about the kids? Which shaft are they using to get in and out?”

“Near as we can figure it, they’re not using any of the shafts. I think the Chuckies are holed up in the oldest chambers around the Yeager Shaft.” Weller traced the rough rectangles outlined in ink that lay less than a finger’s width to the right of the Yeager Shaft. “Those are right off that underground road, and the easiest to get to.”

“If this rock is as rotten as you say, why haven’t these chambers come down already?”

“Oh, parts of this mine already have, way back in 1962, and pretty much around this same general area, only left of the shaft. You can’t see it now because the Yeagers backfilled the thing, but the ground just collapsed. No warning, not even a rumble. The hole was a hundred feet deep and four hundred feet wide. Lost a couple trucks and one of the change-out buildings. Killed seven miners,” Weller said, then added, “One of them was my dad.”

Hmm. Tom had a feeling there was a lot about Weller he just didn’t know. “What’s keeping this one from caving in now?”

“Whether or not a mine caves in depends on how well you shore it up. You can backfill the space with sand, but it’s expensive and Yeager Brothers was a cheap outfit. What they left behind instead were these real spindly rock pillars.” Weller skipped a finger to another rectangle penned immediately below the larger chambers. “The pillars in this one, where we’ll plant the bombs, are even worse.”

Like trying to hold up the second story of a rickety old house with toothpicks. “How are we going to get underneath and into that room without being seen?”

“We get in and out through the Ernst Shaft. You can’t tell on this drawing, but the Ernst is actually a little southeast of the mine’s main entrance. It connects up with the mine at regular intervals, starting at six hundred and seventy feet. We climb down the shaft, then hike over and up, plant our bombs, and hustle back out the same way. It’s about a half mile one way, so not bad. Might be a few stray Chuckies around, but we can handle them.” Weller shrugged. “All we need’s a little luck.”

“I don’t believe in luck.” Luck was just a synonym for a random event that didn’t kill you. Tom saw a dozen things that could go wrong. Designing the bombs to deliver maximum force where it was required would take doing. Without more sophisticated electronics, he’d have to figure out a way to time the explosions. Even if he managed to do that, the bombs might go off early, or not at all. And what if the Chuckies posted guards, or they ran into more than a few? Weller had said that groups moved in and out of the mine. This particular kind of plan meant they could send out only a very small strike squad: three people at most. Stumble on a crowd and things would get interesting in a hurry. Or what if they succeeded but ended up trapped? Or say they made it out of the mine only to die when the ground opened up under their feet? Knock out underground supports and the surface might cave in, too, as Weller said had already happened back in 1962.