Two Explosions, One Grudge

Two Explosions, One Grudge

I got the call at eleven at night, and by the time I hung up I already knew who I needed.

Brian Mason. Best demo man I've ever worked with. But a job like this, he'd need a right hand, and there was only one guy good enough — Mike Kilbreath.

Only problem was Brian and Mike couldn't stand each other. They hadn't spoken in years, and if one of them said the sky was blue, the other would swear it was green just to be contrary.

There wasn't time to go looking for options. I called them both. Didn't tell either one who they'd be working with. Just told them what needed doing.

A mine had collapsed in Belize. The entrance was buried — the whole mountainside had come down on top of it, and any charge big enough to punch through would bring the rest of the slope down with it. That left one option. The back end of the mine opened onto the ocean, a four-hundred-meter stretch of exposed rock face. Handled right, you could blow a hole through it without the Caribbean pouring in and drowning the sixty-three miners trapped on the other side.

Handled wrong, sixty-three men never saw daylight again.

Both men were in. Flights booked that night, wheels down by morning.

Mike got there first. We hugged, caught up, told a couple of old stories. About half an hour in, Brian walked through the door.

Mike's face went hard. "What the fuck is he doing here?"

"Hold on, Mike."

Brian was already turning for the door.

I went after him into the hallway. "Hey. You're not so childish you're going to let a grudge get sixty-three men killed, are you?"

"Johno, you're an asshole. I never would've come if I knew I had to work with that prick."

I walked him back in anyway.

"Mike. Let's cut the shit," I said. "Brian already knows what's at stake. Sixty-three men die if the two of you can't put this away long enough to save them, and the clock's already running."

Brian was twenty-eight, with more time on a rock face than most men twice his age. His father — Brian Senior — had been Mike's partner for forty years, right up until cancer took him. Brian had grown up on job sites, traveling with his old man since his mother died young.

Mike had a daughter, Tina. Raised mostly by her mother, but one summer she came out to join Mike on a job.

Brian met her there. I know it's a cliché, but it was love at first sight.

Mike hated it on sight. Last thing he wanted for his little girl was a life spent standing under falling rock.

That was the end of Mike and Brian Senior's friendship. Brian Jr. married Tina anyway. They had two kids.

Mike hadn't seen his grandchildren, or his daughter, in four years.

They just looked at each other, and then they got to work.

The next five hours went into survey photos of the ocean-side rock face, diagrams of the formation underneath it, and arguing over a plan neither one of them liked but both agreed was the only one that could work. Two charges, set at separate points along the face, detonated at the exact same instant. Set them right, and we'd have a hole without bringing the mountain down. Even if the ocean did get in, it wouldn't flood the shaft all at once — it would come in slow enough that the miners could ride the surge out on lifeboats instead of drowning in it.

The miners were staged thirty feet above the lowest point the water would reach. Once the wall came down, they'd have to move fast — down the rock, into the boats, and out through the hole before the shaft filled behind them.

I wasn't on that rock face. What I know of the climb and the water, I got afterward — some from Brian, some from Mike, the stories varied a bit, both of them agreeing on the parts that mattered.

Then the storm rolled in off the water.

It was rain at first, then it was like being shot with pellets. It actually stung — hard enough it found its way inside his raincoat. By the time Brian was roped up and starting his climb, the wind had picked up enough to shove him sideways against the rock every few feet. Forty feet of wet stone, black in the dark except where his headlamp caught the spray coming off the waves below. He went up it like it was nothing — driving the charge brace into a seam near the top, packing it, wiring it, his hands going numb around the tools.

Mike was down below, waist-deep in surf that kept slapping him off balance while he set the second charge at the base, salt water in his eyes, the roar of the waves loud enough that he had to shout into the walkie just to be heard.

Brian keyed his radio. "I'm coming down. Meet you at the mark."

He'd barely clipped it back to his belt when his brace let go.

He plunged ten feet until the safety bit. It scared the shit out of him — his heart was coming through his chest. He had to get his shit together, and quickly. He got a boot back on stone, got his weight under him, and kept coming down like it hadn't happened at all.

Four lifeboats, twenty men each, sat off the mouth of the proposed opening, far enough out that the blast wouldn't touch them.

Mike and Brian met at the mark. Triggered both charges together.

The rock let go all at once — a good clean section of wall. It was perfect. When the dust and spray cleared, there was a hole where there hadn't been one, and water already pouring through it into the dark.

Mike ran up the signal flag. The boats started in.

After that, there wasn't anything to do but wait. No way to raise anyone inside, no way to know if the charge had done what it was supposed to or torn something open they hadn't planned for. Forty minutes crawled by. Mike and Brian stood together in the rain, not saying much, and somewhere in that forty minutes the two of them found out how much they actually had in common. Brian pulled out his phone and showed Mike pictures of his grandkids. Mike didn't say anything. Just looked at them a long time.

The water kept climbing. Two feet from the top of the hole, still no boats. Waves and wind and rain coming sideways now, hard enough that neither one of them could keep his eyes open for more than a few seconds at a stretch.

Then the first boat came through.

Then the second.

Then the third.

All sixty-three men made it out alive.

I had a bottle of rye waiting back at the office.

"Well," I said, pouring three glasses, "are you two going to kiss and make up?"

"Let's just say we're having one drink with you and getting our asses out of here," Mike said. "I've got grandkids to go see."

They walked out together, arms slung over each other's shoulders.