Up Against It - M. J. Locke [149]
She removed the pony bottle and stuffed it into her utility kit. Then she clipped her kit to her suit. Geoff hooked the tether to her harness.
She looked up at the top of the stovepipe. Geoff knew she was thinking about what had happened to Carl, trapped outside with no air. Geoff said, “If you get in too tight a squeeze, give three sharp jerks on the tether, and I’ll pull you out—with my bike if need be.”
“I’ll be fine,” she said.
“Good. Hang on.” Geoff ran her tether around a boulder, and secured the other end to his bike’s handlebars. Then he took hold to brace her.
Kam radioed them. “They’re setting up the equipment now. Nobody’s looking over this way. They must not have got us on radar, coming in.”
“Maybe not.”
“There could be more people inside, though. I thought I saw some movement through the cockpit portal.”
“All right. Thanks.”
Kam said, “I know you’ll ace it, Amaya.”
She gave him the spacer OK sign: left arm crooked with the glove touching helmet crown; right arm straight out and up at a forty-five-degree angle.
“Ready?” Geoff asked. In answer, Amaya gathered up half the slack in her tether and clipped it to one shoulder. Geoff handed her the main air tank. She gripped it in one hand and leapt up to the top of the stovepipe. As she arced over the pipe, she grabbed hold with her other hand. In a single motion, she swung atop the vent and landed in a crouch, balanced on the top edges of the pipe. Amaya gave another OK sign and flipped on her helmet light. She dropped her airtank into the vent and dove in after it.
The tether in Geoff’s hands tightened suddenly, nearly pulling him off-balance. He braced his boots against a boulder and started giving out slack. He heard her breathing, heard the rustlings as she descended the vent.
“Amaya, talk to me.”
“Past the vertical section,” she radioed. “Sliding down the incline. Infamous bottleneck turn just ahead. About six meters. Hang on.” A pause; rustling. She pinged his waveface, and in his heads-up he saw what she saw: a small tunnel receding into darkness. It narrowed to a funnel, just ahead. Along the pipe’s inner edge was the power and radio conduit they had put in last year. She could not cut through it, as it was a live line and the shutoff switch was inside the mine. It had not been in her way before. Dangling in the center of their shared vision was Amaya’s airtank, attached by its tubes to her helmet.
“How are your lines?”
“Holding up. No leaks.” Another pause, as she moved downward. “OK, here’s the bottleneck. Moment of truth.” She shoved her utility kit through. Next she turned the tank lengthwise and shoved it through the narrowed opening. Geoff could see it resting on the tunnel floor just beyond.
“Testing the line. Two tugs.” Her headlight danced around, and he felt the line pull twice against his grip. “You felt it?”
“I felt it. You’re good.”
Nothing happened for a moment, except her breathing. He watched her air lines swaying. “Take your time,” he said. Another pause. “Amaya?” he asked. No reply.
“She all right?” Kam asked him, from up on the hill.
That’s it, he thought. This isn’t going to work. “Come on back, Amaya. I’m pulling you up.” He tugged, but she resisted, wedging herself against his pull with her arms. “No! No. I’ve come this far, I’m going through. More slack. More. Motherfucking asswipe shitberries!”
With that, she forced her way into the opening. Geoff held his breath. Her hands flailed in front of his vision, trying to gain purchase on the sides of the tunnel beyond the bottleneck. More than a minute passed, while her light jumped and jerked. This is insane, he thought. We shouldn’t have done this. But then the scene in his waveface