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Another two-degree drop and he would be unconscious. Five more minutes and it would have been too late. The water was only inches away from the chamber's ceiling. Pitt didn't waste time in talk, but shoved the mouthpiece into the anthropologist's mouth and pulled him down into the cleft and out into the tunnel.
Fifteen minutes later, they were all grouped around a fire that Pat had managed to ignite from scraps of wood she'd found in a nearby crosscut passage. Scrounging about, Pitt soon discovered several old, fallen timbers that had remained dry over the years the mine had been abandoned. It wasn't long before the tunnel was turned into a blazing furnace and the survivors from the inundated chamber began to thaw out. Marquez began to look human again. Pat rebounded and was her old happy self as she vigorously massaged Ambrose's frozen feet.
While they treasured the warmth of the fire, Pitt busied himself with the computer, planning a circuitous route through the mine to the ground above. The Telluride valley was a virtual honeycomb of old mines.
The shafts, crosscuts, drifts, and tunnels totaled more than 360 miles. Pitt marveled that the valley hadn't collapsed like a
wet sponge. He allowed everyone to rest and dry out for close to an hour before he reminded them that they weren't out of the woods yet.
"If we want to see blue skies again, we'll have to follow an escape plan."
"What's the urgency?" shrugged Marquez. "All we have to do is follow this tunnel to the entrance shaft and then sit it out until rescuers dig through the avalanche."
"I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings," Pitt said, his voice grim, "but not only were rescuers finding it impossible to get their heavy equipment through twenty feet of snow up to the mine on a narrow road, they were pulled from the search because of rising air temperatures that were increasing the chances of another avalanche. There is no telling how many days or weeks it will take for them to clear a path to the mine entrance."
Marquez stared into the fire, picturing the conditions topside in his mind. "Everything is going against us," he said quietly.
"We have heat and drinking water, however silty," said Pat. "Surely, we can exist without food for as long as it takes."
Ambrose smiled faintly. "Sixty to seventy days is what it generally takes to starve to death."
"Or we could hike out while we're still healthy," offered Pitt.
Marquez shook his head. "You know better than anyone, the only tunnel that leads from the Buccaneer Mine to the Pandora is flooded. We can't get through the way you came."
"Certainly not without proper diving gear," added Ambrose.
"True," Pitt admitted. "But relying on my computerized road map, I estimate there are at least two dozen other dry tunnels and shafts on upper levels that we can use to reach the ground surface."
"That makes sense," said Marquez. "Except that most of those tunnels have collapsed over the past ninety years."
"Still," said Ambrose, "it beats sitting around playing charades for the next month."
"I'm with you," Pat agreed. "I've had my fill of old mine shafts for one day."
Her words prompted Pitt to walk over to the edge of the shaft and peer down. The flickering flames from the fire reflected off the water that had risen to within three feet of the tunnel floor. "We don't have a choice. The water will spill out of the shaft in another twenty minutes."
Marquez stepped beside him and stared at the turbid water. "It's crazy," he muttered. "After all these years, to see water flooding up to this level of the mine. It looks like my days of gemstone mining are over."
"One of the waterways that run under the mountain must have broken through into the mine during the earthquake."
"That was no earthquake," said Marquez angrily. "That was a dynamite charge."
"You're saying explosives caused the flooding and cave-in?" asked Pitt.
"I'm sure of it." He peered at Pitt, eyes suddenly narrowed. "I'd bet my claim that somebody else was in the mine."
Pitt stared at the menacing water. "If that's the case," he said pensively, "that somebody wants all three of you very dead."
"You lead off," PITT ordered Marquez. "We'll walk behind the beam of your miner's lamp until its batteries give out. Then we go the rest of the way on my dive light."
"Climbing to the upper levels through shafts will be the tough part," said the miner. "So far we've been lucky. Very few shafts had a ladder. Most of them used hoists to transport the miners and ore."
"We'll tackle that problem when we face it," said Pitt.
It was five o'clock in the afternoon when they set out through the tunnel, heading west as indicated on Pitt's dive compass. He looked odd, hiking through the tunnel in his dry suit, gloves, and Servus dive boots with steel toes. He carried only the computer, compass, underwater dive light, and the knife strapped to his right leg. He left the rest of his gear beside the dying embers of the fire.
