Chapter 5 - Fire in the Pit
Claire didn't say a word. She didn't have to. Twelve years of building model rockets and tinkering in the garage with his mother had taught Ethan exactly how unstable old nitroglycerin compounds were.
"They're sweeping toward the conveyor," Ethan whispered, his eyes locked on the tactical flashlights sweeping across the mud outside.
Claire knelt beside the lowest crate, using the flat edge of the pry bar to carefully pry loose the brittle wooden lid. Inside, wrapped in waxed paper, lay a dozen dull-gray sticks of blasting gel. The outer casings were sweating—beads of volatile nitroglycerin weeping through the paper after decades of moisture and heat.
"If we drop one, it’s over," Claire murmured, her hands miraculously steady despite the cold rain shivering through her thin funeral dress. "We don't need a detonator. The flare gun has enough thermal output to ignite the compound on contact."
"Mom, look," Ethan pointed to the far wall. An old ventilation shaft rose vertically toward the forest rim above the quarry wall, iron rungs embedded into the rock face. It was an emergency escape route for miners trapped by cave-ins.
"You climb first," Claire ordered, shoving two sticks of gelignite into the pockets of her oversized coat and gripping the flare gun. "Go, Ethan. Don't look down."
Ethan grabbed the first iron rung. It was freezing and slick with condensation, but he pulled himself up with frantic energy. Ten feet. Twenty feet. Below him, Claire was halfway up the ladder when the metal door of the shed was kicked off its hinges.
"In here!" a voice shouted from below.
A flashlight beam cut through the darkness, illuminating Claire’s legs on the iron rungs.
"Hold your fire, she's climbing the shaft!" the contractor yelled into his radio, stepping into the shed with his rifle raised. "Claire! Drop down or I shoot your legs out!"
Claire looked down at the man, then locked eyes with Ethan above her. Her face was pale, set in stone.
"Close your eyes and hold on, baby," she said softly.
She drew the heavy orange flare gun, aimed directly at the open crate of weeping gelignite sitting on the concrete floor, and pulled the trigger.
THUMP-BOOM!
The flare struck the crate. A blinding sphere of white-hot fire erupted in the enclosed space, followed instantly by a shockwave that blew the entire roof off the shed. The iron ladder shuddered violently, nearly tearing Ethan’s hands from the rungs as heat and smoke blasted up the shaft like the chimney of a volcano.
The contractor below was instantly swallowed by the fireball. The rock wall groaned under the explosive pressure, fractures spiderwebbing through the stone.
"Mom!" Ethan screamed into the smoke.
A hand covered in soot and blood reached through the blinding gray haze, grabbing Ethan’s boot. Claire pulled herself up onto the top ledge, gasping for breath, her dress singed and her skin covered in soot.
They collapsed together onto the wet pine needles of the Blackwood Ridge forest just as the bottom half of the shaft collapsed inward, sealing the quarry pit beneath thousands of tons of falling rock.
Ethan pulled Claire to her feet. They were shivering, drenched in mud, blood, and rain. Below them, through the trees, the second SUV was already speeding down the logging road that wrapped around the ridge toward their position.
Claire checked the heavy silver locket around her neck. "The backup servers are at the Lakehouse cabin. If we can reach the landline terminal, we can broadcast the files directly to the Federal Bureau of Investigation before Richard can freeze the accounts."
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"How far is the lake?" Ethan asked, wipes rain from his forehead.
Claire looked through the dark woods toward the jagged peaks in the distance. "Four miles through the gorge. And Richard knows the trails better than anyone."
