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  Haney walked over to a folding metal chair and sank into it, reaching up to rub his forehead as all the wind seemed to come out of his sails at once. Thayne actually felt sorry for the guy but he was responsible for what happened here, at least in part, and Thayne wasn’t going to leave until he had answers. He looked at Jarrett whose face was also grim but determined. Jarrett gave him a small nod and turned to Haney.

  “Mr. Haney, you said everyone is blaming you for something that ain’t your fault,” Jarrett said. “You’re the safety officer, right?”

  Haney shot to his feet. “Yeah, I’m the safety officer and the manager so I suppose the buck should stop with me but I swear, every time I try to direct safety funds toward upgrades, I get shot down by Boggs. You try and hold the rock walls of a mountain together with spit and toilet paper and see how successful you are!”

  The door to the office opened and a man wearing a hard hat walked in. He was carrying a small box and he walked over to Haney holding it out to him. “MSHA says the methane and carbon monoxide levels is safe now, Doug,” the miner said.

  Doug Haney stood up and took the box, which appeared to be a meter of some sort, from the young man and nodded to him. “Thanks, Clay.” He looked down and examined the readings before looking back up at the agents. “Well, if you’re goin’ down there, now’s the time. I’m goin’ with y’all.”

  “Let’s go,” Jarrett said. He walked over to Thayne and locked gazes with him. “You ain’t got nothin’ to worry about, partner. I’m right with ya.”

  Thayne leaned close and lowered his voice almost to a whisper. “If I pass out from lack of oxygen, feel free to do mouth to mouth.” When he gazed back at Jarrett, his ice-blue eyes were dancing. He smirked.

  “I’ll keep that in mind and just for that visual, I’m gonna make you pay dearly when we get back to the room.”

  “I can hardly wait.”

  “You fellas ready?” Sales asked, walking over with his partner.

  Thayne stepped away from Jarrett and smiled at Bud Sales. “Yes. We’re ready.”

  “Stop yer jawin’ and let’s go,” Haney barked. He followed it by low mutters and Thayne was pretty sure he heard “fuck the ATF” but he couldn’t be certain as they all traipsed out of the office after the crotchety manager.

  As they stepped out into the brisk morning air, a miner walked over to them.

  “If you’re goin’ underground, y’all be needin’ these.” He had a bag over his shoulder and he set it down on the ground to begin pulling out small backpacks. He handed one to each of the four of them along with bright yellow vests with reflective strips sewn on and dust masks made especially for use in mines.

  Thayne put the vest over his head and then tightened the straps at his waist as the others did the same. It made them look like construction workers. He hung the mask around his neck, grateful to be able to use it if they needed it. He certainly didn’t want to breathe in any of the coal dust that covered everything outside. He hefted the backpack and looked at Jarrett who was gearing up like he was. It wasn’t very heavy.

  “I take it these are the SCSR units you’ve been talking about?” Thayne asked.

  Jarrett nodded. “Yep, that’ll save your life if you get lost down there but I want you to stick to me like glue, Thayne.”

  Thayne glanced at him and saw an unspoken promise in Jarrett’s eyes. He understood that Jarrett would do whatever he could to protect him if danger presented itself while they were down there. He’d risked his own life to save Thayne more than once and he saw the same emotion in Jarrett’s face now. It warmed Thayne like nothing else.

  Inside the backpack were masks with small square tanks attached. Thayne pulled one out to look at it. It was a small tank with a hose leading to a mouthpiece like the tank a diver would use. Jarrett walked over and showed him how to use the nose clip that was attached to the SCSR by a string.

  “If you have a reason to use this, the nose clip has to be in place so you don’t inadvertently breathe through your nose. All your air will come from the air stored in the tank. There ain’t much so getting to the surface quickly is important. That’s why you’ll stay with me.”

  Thayne watched his eyes closely as Jarrett explained. He took this stuff very seriously. He reached out and laid a hand on Jarrett’s forearm, squeezing gently as he gave him a small nod.

  “Okay, Marine. You know your way around and the dangers I might not see and I promise I have no intention of wandering off on my own.” He watched as Jarrett, Sales, and Lafford put their vests on as he had done. They walked over to where Doug Haney waited beside one of the two battery-powered personnel carriers the mine had. Jarrett had referred to them as mantrips and Thayne thought that was an apt and simple description of the vehicles. Haney nodded at them as they walked up.

  “Get in. We’ll be taking this directly to the blast site. I’ll point out where the dead men and Harlan Sizemore were found. Hopefully, once ya see that it weren’t nothin’ but a horrible accident, y’all can skedaddle and leave us to do our jobs,” he groused.

  Thayne could see his point in a way. He didn’t want them there any more than they wanted to be there but this was the job Thayne and Jarrett had signed up for and so, he was going to try his best to rise to the occasion.

  “Thank you. That’s all we can ask for,” Lafford replied.

  Thayne got into the mantrip and Jarrett climbed in after him. He scooted close so that there’d be room for Lafford and Sales to sit on the same bench. The proximity made Jarrett’s side push up against Thayne’s and the feeling of having him this close was reassuring. Thayne had to admit to himself that he was a little freaked out about traveling down into the mine. He wasn’t really afraid of the dark but the fact that he knew there was no way out of there but the way they were going in, and that they’d be close to fifteen hundred feet underground, was a little daunting. He’d done some diving in his day, even venturing into caves, and he always had the same thoughts about that when he was doing it. Tight, dark spaces where you had only one way out was just a little scary and Jarrett really hadn’t needed to remind him to stay close. He had no intention of leaving his side. Thayne knew if that happened, he’d really freak out so it just wasn’t going to happen.

  Haney was seated across from them so he could explain things as they went along. Another miner was accompanying them as the driver so he started the battery-powered mantrip and they began their descent into the mine. After going just a few dozen feet, they were enveloped in darkness with only artificial light from their cap lights and lights that ran along the walls on either side of the mine’s central shaft. They were connected to each other with wire wrapped in colorful plastic that ran along the walls, tacked to it by some sort of metal pins that had been driven into the walls like staples.

  Every fifty or sixty feet were small boxes hung on the walls that Jarrett explained were hard-wired communication ports put there so the miners could communicate with the surface or each other. They looked like old-school intercom systems with a single push button and a small panel with holes to speak into. Jarrett explained that cell phones were unreliable when they were underground and that made sense to Thayne. There was no way to bounce a signal off a cell tower once they were inside the mine. The communication system underground seemed to be a rudimentary system at best and it unnerved Thayne even more.

  Thayne was surprised that they were traveling mostly horizontally. For some reason, he had always been under the impression that miners worked in tunnels that ran vertical deep into the earth. In the case of the Red Hills Mine, it was deep inside a mountain but they were headed straight in like a car tunnel though they were going in on a slight downward slope. The closed-in feel of the place was the most unnerving thing of all to Thayne, knowing that the mountain, with thousands of tons of rock, was right above them and if the earth decided to shift at that moment, th
ey’d be flattened like bugs. He could easily understand how smoke from a fire or explosion deep in the mine, would envelop everyone inside from the bottom up, as it made its way to the surface. Getting oriented in the dark and breathing through a mask until they escaped to the outside would be frightening as hell and it made Thayne’s stomach turn.

  The shaft was wider than he expected, twenty feet in places, and on one side there were rails on the ground. Thayne assumed small shuttle cars would run along them to be brought out of the mine. On the other side was a conveyor belt and Jarrett explained that the miners used that to bring the majority of the coal to the surface which was the most efficient way of getting it out. When the personnel carrier stopped, Thayne glanced at Haney who had the meter in his hand. He was constantly checking it as they drove deeper in the mine. He looked up when the carrier stopped.

  “This here is where we found Harlan Sizemore,” he said, pointing to a large orange X drawn in spray paint on the dirt floor of the mine. “He had his SCSR device in place and by his tracks here in the intake travelway we could determine he’d been runnin’. This is the primary escapeway from the mine. He was unconscious.”

  Thayne deduced that the miners called the area where they’d stopped the intake travelway and escapeway was pretty self-explanatory but some of the lingo was lost on him. “His tracks?” Thayne asked.

  “His footprints,” Jarrett clarified. “They would have been very easy to see in the coal dust within the mine. Rescuers follow footprints when looking for lost miners. I know it sounds creepy but sometimes you can see where a miner lost his bearings and then went in circles or retraced his steps over and over before he finally found his way out or fell, just by looking at his tracks.”

  “You’re right. That’s kinda creepy and awful,” Thayne said. He glanced over and noted Haney frowning at him.

  “You never been in a mine, boy?”

  “No but my partner worked down here in Bluefield for a few years,” Thayne replied, instantly deflecting the question.

  “The Wallaby 2,” Jarrett clarified, “But that was more’n fifteen years ago.”

  “The Wallaby 2 closed down in 2005 after the Darby mining disaster in Kentucky. The two mines was owned by the same collective. They up and went bankrupt after the collapse when the Kentucky families sued ‘cause their medical weren’t covered by insurance. The Wallaby 2 weren’t a union mine.”

  “Yes, I heard about that,” Jarrett said. “Tragic.”

  “Yeah, this here’s a tragic business. Lots a’ problems and disease even if ya survive to retirement,” Haney drawled.

  Thayne watched him closely. He wondered if all miners had the same attitude. He realized that the life was hard but some miners must truly like their job. It was just hard to believe that everyone was that miserable all the time. The negativity around this place was overwhelming, Thayne thought. No wonder Jarrett got out when he could. The grueling work would have used up the energy that Jarrett always had thrumming around him but the feeling of being trapped down here would have made his partner nuts. He knew Jarrett could never have survived working in a place like this for very long. Seeing the mine and the conditions miners worked in, made Thayne wonder how Jarrett had endured it as long as he had. Maybe that’s what made him crazy. He smiled at the errant thought.

  “Well, there’s nothin’ much to see here. We should keep goin’ if ya wanna get out anytime soon,” Haney said.

  “Go on,” Sales said.

  “Take us outby,” Haney ordered the driver in a loud voice.

  “Outby?” Thayne asked, turning to Jarrett as their driver started the carrier.

  “It means further into the mine from where we are now. Miners use inby or outby to help other miners navigate in the mine or to explain where they’re headed. For example, if you know that there’s a power station at 750 feet down the central shaft, and the place you’re going is beyond that, a miner would say, “It’s 200 feet outby the power station.”

  Thayne nodded. “Meaning it’s 950 feet down in the mine, 750 to the power station and 200 feet beyond that?”

  Jarrett grinned. “That’s it. Inby is used the same way but meaning closer to the exit. So, if we were headed out of the mine, we’d say we were traveling in the inby direction.”

  “I get it.”

  “Stick with me, partner, and you’ll know a whole lot more about mining than you ever thought you’d want to.”

  The thought of sticking with Jarrett was appealing in and of itself, whether or not to learn a thing or two about mining. As long as they were on this journey of life together, that’s what really mattered. He was sure of it.

  Chapter Eight

  The battery-powered personnel carrier drove them ever deeper into the mine. The deeper they went, the more Thayne thought about the mountain that was overhead. Every so often they’d cross through an area where timber had been stacked against the wall and kept in place by something. He really hoped it wasn’t gravity or they were all in deep shit. The thought that the roof of the mine was being held up by that creeped him the hell out. It looked as though the timber was literally holding up the walls and if it had another purpose, Thayne couldn’t imagine what. The whole thing freaked him out just a little bit and though he’d never been especially claustrophobic, he found himself feeling each breath he took, concentrating on something—anything—so that he wouldn’t lose his shit. Thayne was dying to see the roof of the mine but he couldn’t see it because of the mantrip’s low canopy over their heads blocking his view.

  Pretty soon, they came to another vehicle of some sort. This one looked a bit like a small bulldozer with huge black rubber tires and a scoop on one end. It was longer than a bulldozer though, and Thayne realized that the area behind the operator’s cab must be where large batteries were stored. Long rectangular boxes seemed to be built into the chassis. He’d seen the same boxes under the seats of the mantrip they were riding in. Jarrett leaned close.

  “That’s a battery-powered scoop. It’s used to move very large rocks, too big to put on the conveyor belt. They dump ‘em into them shuttle cars you saw on the tracks and then they’re taken out of the mine.”

  “Oh, so that’s what those are for. I thought the shuttle cars take coal too.”

  “Naw, we use the conveyor belts for that,” Haney said. “Minin’ used to be a lot slower and harder. These days, we can move more short tons of coal faster than ever before, using machines.”

  “With all these machines, you must have a lot of maintenance issues,” Thayne observed.

  Haney nodded. “Yep, we do. Just keepin’ all the moving metal parts lubricated with grease so somethin’ don’t break, is hard work. We run three shifts out here, two producing shifts and one maintenance shift. The maintenance shift is the graveyard shift and the men are put on it when they’re new so they get trained on all the machines by other miners.”

  “I know this may sound like a stupid question but you refer to the miners as men, usually. Do you have any female miners?”

  “It ain’t a stupid question,” Haney said with the first smile Thayne had seen on the grumpy manager all morning long. “Some of the smaller mines that weren’t unionized a couple decades back actually began to encourage female miners because they could get away with payin’ them less. The unions demand equal pay so you didn’t see women in the larger union mines. There was even a mining school set up to train women ‘bout twenty-five years ago. Women are often smaller so the school of thought was that they could get into tighter places but that’s real dangerous. And of course, the work is always backbreaking so you don’t see more’n a few women workin’ down in the mines.

  “Red Hills has been open fifteen years and we’ve never had a female miner, don’t mean I wouldn’t hire one. But often the women are treated differently down in the mines, so they ain’t generally encouraged. If ya think of
a fire department, it’s much the same. A miner has to shovel several tons of coal in a workweek and use heavy machinery, pick axes and equipment like that. Them things is heavy just like a firefighter who has to carry an unconscious victim out of a building. Imagine bein’ a woman and needin’ to have the upper body strength to do that. I spoze that’s why ya don’t see many female miners. My wife works in the industry though. She’s an inspector for the MSHA which don’t require heavy lifting, just patience for idiots.” He chuckled and Thayne couldn’t help but smile.

  “That’s interesting. Thank you.”

  They traveled into the mine for several more minutes, until the personnel carrier stopped. They’d passed a caged-off station that Haney explained was the power center for that particular section of the mine. He told them that there were several power centers in the mine located at various crosscuts.

  “I’m sorry. What’s a crosscut?” Thayne asked.

  “A crosscut is where a branch of the mine comes off of this area called the central shaft. At each crosscut, you’ll find a power station or power center. and also it’s the area where the miners will try to establish a fresh air base or ‘FAB’ during a rescue operation,” Jarrett explained.

  “Like base camp when climbing Mt. Everest?” Thayne said.

  Jarrett nodded solemnly. “Yeah, just like that. “The miners or rescuers can pick up clean, full oxygen tanks, rescue equipment, and first-aid equipment at an FAB.”

  “At our FAB’s we have tools and replacement cap lamps and things like that. We keep those bases open at all time during producing shifts.” He pointed. “Two of the miners were found down this crosscut,” Haney said. “This is the B Left section. Do ya wanna see where?”

  “If ya don’t mind,” Lafford said.

  “Okay.”

  Haney gave the order to their driver and the mantrip turned and they entered another shaft, this one not as wide as the one they’d just come from. They traveled about five hundred feet before the personnel carrier came to a stop. Thayne was trying to picture the layout of the B Left section and how it came off the mine from what he remembered on the map they’d seen in the mining office. He remembered Harlan Sizemore telling them that he and two other men had been working on a continuous mining machine down in this crosscut when they realized they didn’t have the right part so Sizemore headed back for the surface. It was also the place where the two men had suffocated because they were trapped by a partial collapse and couldn’t get out before they ran out of air.