The Mine Read Free Page A

drive."
    Joel faced his friend. He held up his right hand and extended every finger.
    "That's all I ask. Five minutes. I'm curious, OK? I've never been in a gold mine and want to take a peek."
    Adam's hard stare crystallized.
    "All right," Joel said. He glanced at his watch. "It's eleven twenty-five now. At eleven thirty we leave. Fair?"
    Adam jumped off the boulder, held up his cell phone, and pointed to its screen.
    "Eleven thirty."
    "I promise," Joel said, smiling. "And look at the up side: If I find a gold nugget, the next hundred drinks are on me!"
    Joel wiped the grimy lens of the flashlight with his grunge band sweatshirt, kicked a baseball-sized rock away from the narrow opening, and adjusted his first impulse buy, a felt cattleman crease cowboy hat he had picked up in Butte. It was not a hard hat, but he did not seem to care. He entered the mine and disappeared.
     

CHAPTER 5
     
    The dust hit Joel first. It was industrial strength, the kind that sent asthmatics like Adam on benders and made even the hardiest breathers pine for a respirator. No OSHA compliance in this facility. The mineshaft was also incredibly dark. Pre-Edison dark. Stub-your-toe-in-the-middle-of-the-night-and-cuss-three-times dark. Joel mentally saluted the poor souls who had once made a living crawling into this hole. He wondered how much gold had been pulled from the mountain.
    The shaft's first hundred yards revealed solid construction. Thick crossbeams and smaller wooden strips that ran along the walls and ceiling appeared sturdy, if predictably worn. Steel rails broke up a dirt floor and guided the way inward. To the right, a smaller, less-structured shaft veered to points unknown. Otherwise, the mine was remarkably unremarkable. The last people to move through this place did not leave souvenirs behind.
    Joel pushed forward. With each step, he thought of gold and glory. But he also thought of the running clock, the drive home, and Adam’s wraparound sunglasses. Had Smiling Sarah put them in a lost-and-found drawer? Would she demand a phone number for their ransom? Or were they now the property of the pimple-faced boy who had claimed Adam’s barstool as the college students had exited the diner?
    As Joel pressed deeper into the mine, he experienced the kind of solitude generally reserved for solo jogs, beach walks, and bike rides. It had probably been a very long time since anyone had wandered through the bowels of this mountain, maybe decades. Yet he was not alone. Small clusters of brown bats hung from the ceiling at fairly regular intervals and at least two rats had managed to stay a step ahead of the flashlight. The mine fauna did not appear agitated by the intruder, but Joel got the impression that they would be more than happy to see him return to the Canary.
    He was about to do just that when he saw what appeared to be another side shaft, this time to his left. He directed the flashlight toward the narrow opening, but its beam was not necessary. A bright phosphorescent glow lit up most of the space, an unsupported extension that measured roughly fifteen feet by forty.
    Joel knew that gypsum, calcite, and zircon, among other minerals, could emit light when exposed to ultraviolet radiation, but he had never seen or heard about anything like this. The blue light flickered wildly and covered nearly the entire cell. Only the back wall lacked significant illumination.
    Driven by renewed curiosity, Joel entered the chamber. He ducked under a low beam, walked about twenty feet, and turned to face a particularly bright spot on the nearest wall. He placed a hand to the rock, half expecting his digits to burn on contact or pass through a membrane. They did neither. The hard, smooth surface was cool to the touch.
    Joel examined the opposite wall and found the same. He could see no reason why a solid rock cavity, deep in a mountain, would put on the airs of a discotheque. What was this stuff? Sapphire? Uranium? Kryptonite? It had to be valuable.