The Underdwelling

11

Up in Level #8, it was a dog and pony show and Russo, the mine captain, didn’t expect much more. But he was there, hell yes, cracking the whip and kicking ass because time was a factor here. Those men were down there. Trapped. Maybe dead, but maybe alive and this is what he was counting on. It was what everyone was counting on. The brass at Hobart were having kittens over this one and they were crawling up Russo’s ass. They were so far up there he could feel them in the back of his throat.

And what he got, he gave.

Standing there in his rainsuit, boots, and miner’s helmet, he was watching the diggers clearing rubble from the drift. They were going at it hard, but not hard enough for Russo’s liking. “C’mon! C’mon, you fucking pussies! Clean that drift! We got to get it blasted out to get that drilling rig in! Move! Move! Christ, you boys dig like I fuck!”

It was a hive of activity down there with the clearing and the blasting, the rubble being carted away. But the brass were on him and he had never let them down before and he wouldn’t let them down now.

They wanted action.

They wanted results.

There were families out there who wanted to know what the hell was going on and what was being done to free their men. They were riding the Hobart people hard and when they hopped off the saddle, the Safety and Mine people hopped on. And topside, Jesus, the media were already descending and interviewing family members and word had it they’d already dug up a few old hands that were more than happy to spill the beans about the unsafe working conditions at the Hobart. Russo knew who those guys were… people like Lem Rigby and Charlie DeCock. Men he’d fired for being lazy, careless, or downright incompetent. Here was their chance to bask in the sun and point fingers and, goddamn yes, they were sure pointing them.

Revenge, that was it.

Against the Hobart mine. Against Russo himself.

And Russo, like every man who’d worked those drifts and channels, knew that the word of those guys wasn’t worth a sip of piss on a hot day, but the media didn’t know that. The journalists and TV parasites didn’t know the difference between a stope and a gopher hole, just like they didn’t know the difference between a hard-working man and a guy like Lem Rigby who’d shown up drunk and been canned on the spot by Russo.

No, they didn’t know what Rigby’s game was.

They only knew that in him and half-wit Charlie DeCock they had eyewitnesses to the workings of the mine itself that would sweeten the deal and make the Hobart look guilty as hell. And already the brass were smelling those lawsuits and they did not care for the stink.

Russo knew somebody would get dragged over the rocks on this one.

And that somebody would probably be him.

So he shouted. He yelled. He threatened and intimidated and raised three kinds of holy hell.

But what he was thinking about all the while was not his job and not lawsuits and not those candyass reporters topside.

He was thinking about Jurgens and the miners.

Down in the darkness, far below.

Russo had been trapped underground for thirty-six hours once, so he knew. He goddamn well knew what that score was about.

As the air hammers chiseled and the rubble was dragged out, as hydraulic lines vibrated and steam hoses hissed and men scrambled, he said under his breath, “Don’t worry, boys. I’ll get you out. Johnny Russo is on the job and I’ll get your fine white asses out of the pit. See if I don’t. And if you’re nothing but corpses, by God, then I’ll carry you out with my own bare hands.”