Her jeans and waders were slung over a chair next to her cot, and she tried to be silent as she reached for them. The others were still sleeping, and if they were anything like her, they would need it. Too bad she couldn’t keep her eyes closed.
Once she dressed, Junie slipped into the church’s toilet to relieve herself and wash up. Trying to keep her Wellies from clumping too loudly, she made her way out of the building into the early morning.
Pulling her grey sweatshirt closer, she zipped it and yanked the hood up to cover her ears. Impossible thing about short hair—it provided no warmth, and it was always cold near the ocean at night. She beamed her torch around, but she’d made the trek to and from the workstation so many times in the last twenty hours that Junie knew she didn’t really need it.
The walk to the site of the beach where the clean-up crew had been stationed took only ten minutes. Junie moved quickly, as much to keep warm as to get to the area and get to work again. Saving the life of even one more salmon or trout, or using dishwashing detergent to clean the oil off the feathers of one more seabird would help to ease that tension gathering in the base of her spine.
A tier-three oil spill was the worst of its kind. It would be millions of euros in damage, and decades before the wildlife in the region would completely recover from the infestation of its habitat. A tragedy to this habitat; and yet the rest of the world went on.
She sniffed the air, drawing in a deep breath of salty sea tang. Junie had loved the ocean since she was a little girl, growing up on the coast of England, and she was fortunate that she’d found her life’s calling, studying something she loved.
She sniffed again. Fresh, cold, crisp. Familiar.
Then she realized she smelled only the ocean, the natural smell. The ooze of oil that usually tainted the air at one of the clean-ups wasn’t so strong.
She walked faster. She must not be as close to the beach as she’d thought.
The sun had begun to faintly light the sky, and Junie saw that, no, she was wrong—she was right at the beach.
Odd. The oil smell wasn’t strong; in fact, she couldn’t smell it at all.
Maybe her olfactory nerves were getting used to it, and so didn’t sense it any longer.
Junie strode down to the beach, where only hours ago, black oil had swept onto the sand or crashed onto the rocks, mingled with the foamy waves. It would splash onto the boulders or shore, then the water would pull back, leaving slimy black residue to seep into the sand.
Only, the sand wasn’t black.
And the water … .Junie stared, flashing her light around. It was dim, and grey in the early morning, but she could see well enough with her flash that the water was just water.
Junie dashed toward the wave crashing at her feet, and knelt in the sand in her rubber waders. Pulling off a glove, she reached for the water and sand, sifting it through her fingers. No oily residue. Nothing.
Was she dreaming?
Her head felt light all of a sudden, and she tilted to one side, her hand bracing herself in the damp sand.
Suddenly dizzy, Junie pulled to her feet, beaming her light along the shore. The shore where, only hours ago, had been thronged with workers and animals they’d pulled from the oiled water.
The oil was gone.
Miraculously disappeared … .and that was her last thought before the ground raced up to slam into her face.
-13-
July 6, 2007
The Mountains of Central Pennsylvania
The rush of water was coming closer, and Marina felt her adrenaline spike and a welcome wave of energy surge through her limbs.
Leveraging her toes, bent and aching inside her sturdy boots, she scooted backward. Knees, hipbones, elbows; shimmying, zigzagging, squirming through the narrow passageway, canting from side to side, half-rolling, grunting and groaning, she worked them back through the tunnel.
A fear that had never been with her before, a tense closeness from confinement, worked into her consciousness. Marina shook her head suddenly as if to throw it off, and her helmet banged against the side of the tunnel. She heard a pop! and everything went horribly black.
Not dark, not the darkness of the middle of the night, where, if you stared long enough, shadows began to form. No. This was true, ink-black nothingness.
No daylight, no illumination however faint, to allow her eyes to adjust to the light.
Just black. Like someone had wrapped her head to toe in black construction paper.
Cold swept over her. Pitch darkness, in a cave. Water rushing in.
She had to ignore the chill that came from the inside out. Marina took the chance and let go of one of Dennis’s hands. Gingerly, she pulled her own hand toward her body, barely able to bend her elbow in the narrow space to bring her arm back to her side where she needed to pull her extra light from her ride-side belt clip.
Maneuvering that move wasted precious seconds, and was nearly as difficult as bringing Strand through the tunnel. At last, she grasped the light, pulled it from her belt, and switched it on. With that in her hand, she could only hold onto one of Dennis’s hands now … .unless she continued to move in solid darkness.
Solid darkness. She could do that. There wasn’t anywhere to go but through the tunnel … .
Marina crabbed herself backward, craning half-around on her side, curling back to spear the light through the tunnel behind her, just to see where she was going to be navigating in the pitch dark … .and suddenly she saw it.
She’d forgotten!
The one part of Close Knocks that could save them!
Marina gauged the distance, feeling her breath slow. She could do it. She would do it.
And she had to; for that steaming sound of water pouring through the area was filling her ears. Getting louder. Soon it would fill this small tunnel, smashing them against the walls, slamming them into the low ceiling, carrying their bodies.
Clipping the waterproof flashlight, still lit, to her belt, she grasped Dennis’s other hand and reaching for her extra line, wrapped it around the only part of his body she could reach, his wrists; then tied it to her belt. At least she wouldn’t lose him in the rush of water. Then, with renewed strength and purpose, she began to move backward quickly and painfully. She had to get them a little further before the water came blasting in.
Six inches. Twelve. A yard.
And then the wash of water spewed around a curve in the tunnel, smashing suddenly onto the inert body in front of her, slamming into her face. She let it come. It picked her up, and she allowed it to, holding onto Dennis’s bound hands with one hand, and reaching out, grasping above her head, and—yes!
She caught it!
A heavy ledge, the only part of Close Knocks that actually branched off onto a second level. She caught it, grabbed the arm-like formation she’d targeted with her light only moments before, and pulled up above the rush of water.
Her weight was dragged by Dennis Strand, but Marina was able to use her feet on the bottom of the low tunnel to push herself half upright. As she came up, she wrapped an arm around Dennis’s waist and shoved him onto the ledge, only shoulder height from the ground.
But high enough, she thought—she hoped—to be safe from the swell of water in the narrow tunnel.
It was the only chance, and they’d only find out after waiting.
The water bubbled and swirled against her as she scrambled up after him, again using the force of her legs to launch up from the bottom of the tunnel. She barely made it onto the ledge; another few inches, and she would have missed it. At last, she collapsed on the narrow space at Strand’s feet, and gasped for breath as the water rose and fell and whorled below. Marina didn’t watch it; instead, she tried to see what condition Dennis was in.
The ceiling bumping against her helmet, she struggled closer to him. The ledge was long but narrow, and the ceiling low, and she had move alongside his limp body. It took some effort to tip him to the side, and then she lay next to him, pinching his nose and blowing into his mouth. Only two breaths, and he jerked, coughing. She tipped him to the side to let the water pour out.
In the narrow space, she counted his faint pulse, and the labored breathing after his coughing told her he was holding on … .but for how much longer? The rescue operation had been going on for hours, it was well past midnight … and he’d been in the bottom of that winze for at least five before.
Marina shined her light to the right, into the area that branched off from her ledge. Did she dare try to follow that course if the water continued to rise?
It was brushing the top of her ledge, spilling water over her feet, lapping at them like a tease.
She watched it, watched it, terror numbing her more than the chill … staring in the pool of golden light as the cold black liquid splashed over, surging over her shoes, ebbing back, and surging again.
And then, suddenly, it wasn’t pooling over the top any more.
Marina looked again. It did look lower.
And it seemed to be moving slower.
She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and then opened them again. Yes. It was lower.
It was lower. She’d done it.
As she watched, the water slowly receded. Minute by minute, centimeter by centimeter, it ebbed back, slowed, sank.
Now it was just a matter of time until someone came in after them.
It was later, three hours after the water in the tunnel began to recede, that Marina helped ease Dennis Strand through the last narrow passage into the main cavern of the old mine to cheers and applause.
She was freezing, exhausted, filthy, and screamingly sore.
But she’d never been more exhilarated.
Darin McCarty, an EMT who had remained in the main cavern waiting for the injured man, helped to lower Strand’s body onto a full litter. The lines of concern in McCarty’s face etched deep, and Marina quashed a pang of regret. She’d done what she had to do to get Strand out. At least he was alive.
Bruce pushed his way through the crowd and slung an arm around her shoulder, crushing her against him. Their helmets clunked like two dull marbles. “Thank God,” he muttered near her ear. “Thank God.”
At that moment, flush with adrenaline, exhausted beyond measure, Marina wanted nothing more than to sink fully into his embrace, to sag against him and let it all go. She wanted to respond to the bald need in his eyes, to see what he would taste like. She wanted comfort. She wanted someone.