Just The Pits (Hetta Coffey Series, Book 5) (24 page)

HIGH AND DRY (Nautical term): Beached or caught on rocks and standing out of the water as the tide recedes (stranded or without resources or support)

The minutes ticked by excruciatingly slow until time for the Mexico City office to open. Unlike the mine, they were on Mexican office hours, with the switchboard coming to life at nine. I had decided to take the bull by the horns, go straight to the source, and gently stir the pot.

I could have gotten a home number for Vargas through the Trob, but I wanted to feel the comptroller out before sounding an alarm. The last thing I wanted to do, if he was a part of the embezzlement scheme, was to panic him so he could rabbit with the dough.

At nine, Mexico City time, I called out, "Laura, can you please put a call through for me to Julio Vargas?"

"Of course. But he has probably left the hotel by now."

"What hotel?"

"Las Casitas, in Santa Rosalia. I will try to call."

"No!"

She looked startled by my outburst. "Uh, I mean, I'll talk to him later. Thanks." Vargas is here? That didn't sound good for anyone.

"Miss Coffey, Mr. Vargas should be arriving here at the office soon. I have set up a conference call for eleven with Canada and Mexico City. I am sure they will be discussing the...uh, accident."

"No doubt. Okay, I need to run down to the Equipment Yard, so call me on the radio if you hear anything new, all right? Or Vargas shows up."

"Of course."

Once in the pickup I made a beeline for John's office and that bug I planted. I had a feeling this place, the entire jobsite in fact, would soon be swarming with cops of all kinds and I didn't want bugs with my fingerprints on them found. Some sleuth I am, I didn't even wear gloves.

I had just arrived and was making my way to his door, hoping it would not be locked, when my cell phone rang and caller ID told me it was Jan.

"Look, I don't have time to worry about your future employment right now, okay?"

"Uh, sure Hetta. No problem. Uh, can you like ix-nay down to the boat?"

Ix-nay? Uh-oh. "Sure. What's for lunch?"

"How about fried ad-bay fish?"

Okay, so there's a bad fish, or bad guy, involved somehow.

"Great. What kind?"

"Those amera-cay we bought at Sweet Pea on Saturday."

"My favorite. See you—" The phone went dead.

I didn't waste time going back to my office. I booted up John's desktop, went online and activated my boat cameras.

Jan, Topaz, Po Thang and Rosario were crowded together on the settee, and no one looked happy. I turned on the sound and heard a male voice, but he was out of camera view. I could manipulate the camera, but was afraid it would make a noise or he'd see the movement.

"Nice work, Blondie. Let's see, it should take her about forty-five minutes to an hour to get here...what was that?"

At the same time I heard that question, the building rocked so wildly my office chair rolled across the room. I pushed it back to the computer, and just before the screen went blank, I caught a glimpse of a man rushing out onto the boat's deck. I recognized him from the photo ID Jan pulled up on the computer: Julio Vargas.

I fled the still swaying trailer and was met with a chaotic scene of workers running helter-skelter with no idea where or why. I joined them, but made a beeline for my pickup, feeling for some reason it might be safer. Safer than what I had no idea. I'd almost reached my truck when a second shock wave hit, and this one knocked me to my knees. I crawled the rest of the way and climbed in.

The truck's radio was useless, as everyone was trying to talk at the same time, and our two-ways were not full-duplex, as are telephones. On a simplex radio, only one person can talk at a time, thus the need for saying
over
, especially in an emergency situation. No one was getting through to anyone, so I checked my cell, saw I still had a signal, and called Laura. "Are you all right?" I asked her when she finally answered.

"Yes, I was under my desk. You said that is what to do."

"Well, never listen to me. Get out of the building, right now. Go sit in the biggest pickup you can find outside."

"Yes, Miss Coffey. Are you coming?" She sounded terrified, and for some reason she had the ridiculous idea I could help.

"Yes, but the radios are
no bueno
so I cannot call you.
Do you have a cell phone?"

"No."

I'd read somewhere that over eighty percent of the people in Mexico have a cell phone. How did I end up with a secretary who didn't?

"Okay, get to a pickup and tell everyone else to do the same. I'll be there as soon as I can."

The roads, nothing to write home about in the first place, were littered with large boulders, some of them still on the move. Looking up at a nearby bluff, I rethought the safety of my pickup and took off for the equipment yard, and the biggest machine in it, the 777G.

I hunkered down in the driver's seat, feeling much more secure from whatever the earthquake brought next. Cocooned within almost two hundred tons of steel, I was thinking of yelling something like, "Bring it on!" when somehow, through all the chatter I heard Laura, who was frantically calling my name. I grabbed the mic and held down the transmit button, effectively cutting all communication. After a very long three minutes I let the button up and was gratified with nothing but static.

"Laura, are you hurt? O-ver."

A couple of people tried to transmit, but once again, I held down the button, this time for about two minutes. When I let up, I heard Laura transmitting, repeatedly, "Not hurt, not hurt. Building gone, over."

All hell broke loose again, so I threw the useless mic down. I was trying to figure out what to do next when my phone rang. Laura had commandeered  a cell phone. A woman to my own heart. "Miss Coffey, did you hear me? The building is gone."

"It collapsed?"

"No, there is a large...
hoyo
."

Hoyo
?  You mean a pit? The office is in a hole?"

"Y-es. Miss Coffey, you have saved my life."

"Laura?"

"Yes?"

"Don't you think since I saved your life you can call me Hetta?"

"Yes, Mi—Hetta."

Someone on the two-way fired off a string of machine gun Spanish. The only thing I caught was
Cuesta del Infierno
.

"What was that, Laura? What did they say on the radio?"

"They say there is a
derrumbe
. On the
Cuesta
. And there is smoke from
La Vírgen!
"

Derrumbe
. I had seen signs along the roads and looked it up in my Spanish/English dictionary: landslide! And that volcano I didn't trust? It was spewing smoke?

A few minutes, and two aftershocks, later what I had feared most was confirmed by someone on the radio; Hell Hill was blocked by a large landslide. Mex 1, the only highway to Santa Rosalia, and my boat, was impassable.

"Laura, stay right there. I'm coming."

I called the boat and by some miracle Jan answered.

"Is everyone all right? We had a huge earthquake up here."

"Here, too. Yes, for now we are."

"Sorry I won't be there for the amera-cay lunch, but Hell Hill is blocked by a landslide."

"Oh, no."

"So, looks like it will be a long, long time before I get there, Ot-nay."

"Sure. We'll wait."

The big Cat started right up after I went through the steps taught me by John Warren. I was worried there was some kind of locking system, but if there was, no one had bothered to activate it. Man, if I were running this jobsite I'd instigate some seriously stringent safety measures to keep the likes of me out.

I patted the steering wheel and sang, "Here I come to save the dayyyy. Mighty Mouse is on her wayyyy!" Unfortunately I'd left my cape back on the boat.

No one seemed interested in a big Cat on the move. I had on a hard hat and dark glasses, so I guess they figured I knew what I was doing. Silly twits.

I knew, from what John told me, that these machines could do up to sixty miles an hour, but the first twenty felt like a hundred, so I slowed to five. It took me almost an hour to reach Laura because of boulders and debris in the road.

Only one corner of the office building roof was visible, the rest swallowed up by what could have been a collapsed mine shaft from yesteryear. As a civil engineer I was dumbfounded that they hadn't at least performed an ultrasound test on the site before they built in an area as full of holes as Swiss cheese.

The look on Laura's face when I stepped out on the walkway of the big Cat and motioned for her to come up was priceless. She hesitated, probably weighing the odds between staying and maybe dying, or joining me and dying for sure.

Another ground wave made up her mind for her and she dashed for the Cat.

Others tried to follow, but I took off before they could catch us. I felt badly about leaving them, but the only place for more passengers was in the body, or dump bed, and even though there was a rubber liner, with what I figured lay ahead there was too much risk of serious bodily injury.

I was right.

CUT AND RUN (Nautical term): Sever the anchor line in an emergency (leave abruptly and abandoning others).

Just as Safety told me, the back road out of the mine site was marked by whitewashed rocks. And as he'd also said, the road was little more than a goat path. I knew the brine truck was almost as wide as the big Cat, though, so I was certain we could get through, if, and that was a big if, the road hadn't suffered too much damage from the earthquake.

The white rocks Safety and the old brine man had placed were a godsend, for like Google Earth showed, the desert was a maze of roads and paths. If it weren't for the markers, we could be out there for days trying to find the way. And even knowing which way to go didn't make the trip easy. We rarely hit more than ten miles per hour, and even that was pushing our luck.

Several times we ended up in a precarious tilt that, had we not been strapped in, would have sent us slamming into the cab's steel interior. As it was, we were still going to show some nasty bruises from our seat belts.

After we bounced over a rise and did a three-tired side-slip—all three tires being on the same side of the rig—into a narrow ravine, we stalled in a cloud of dust and laughed to tears. Nothing like surviving a near death experience during something akin to a disaster film to send you into hysterics. It took some agonizingly slow maneuvering, but we were eventually underway once again, but now at a prudent five miles per hour.

Time ticked away, and constantly in the back of my mind was what was happening on the boat. We lost cell service about what I hoped was halfway into our trip to meet up with Mex 1, sending my tension level even further into the ozone layer.

Another worry was the fuel gauge. I had no idea what the big Cat burned, and certainly no clue how far a quarter tank would get us, even at such low speeds. After an intense two hours of jockeying us around slides, crashing into ditches and plowing through desert growth, I realized we had somehow gone wrong when I made a turn and was forced to halt. A high chainlink fence with a PELIGRO! NO TRASPASAR! PROPRIEDAD PRIVADA! blocked our way.

"Gosh, Laura, you think they want us to stay out?"

She looked dejected. I hadn't told her about the hostage situation on my boat, but she clearly wanted to get home and check on her family. No one at her house had answered her cell phone calls before we ran out of service.

"We must find another way, Mis...Hetta."

"Whose property do you think this is?"

"It must be the Boleo Mine. No one else has money for such a grand fence."

"Oh, goody! A shortcut!"

"What is a short...Hetta!"

That fence, well built or not, was no match for my two hundred ton dumpster of doom.

After we crashed through the fence, it was only another mile before we entered a working section of El Boleo, and a blessedly smooth road. They had evidently suspended all operations due to the earthquake, for vehicles of all kinds were stopped on the road, making me go around them. Several workers, at their peril, tried waving us to a halt.

Once I spotted the Sea of Cortez, shining like a turquoise beacon in the distance, I knew exactly where I was from a previous tour of the mine. That wrong turn had saved us hours. Elated, I sped up to forty miles an hour, racing past large yellow signs warning of dire consequences if one exceeded twenty
kilometers
an hour and I was doing about sixty. Let them dock my pay. Better yet, maybe they'd take my birthday away? But first they had to catch us.

Making a beeline for the entrance to the mine, I was spotted by the gate guards, who rushed out and began waving wildly for me to slow down and stop. Lucky for us they were unarmed, and the gate was obviously made of inferior materials.

Mex 1 was jammed with parked cars, most empty as their drivers lounged around on the fenders, waiting to hear when the road north was cleared. One unfortunate vehicle had been abandoned in my lane, so I plowed into it and shoved it to the side of the road, much to the amusement of the crowd and even my passenger, who was by now egging me on.

I knew we couldn't get all the way into town with the Cat, but was determined to get as far as possible before blocked by buildings. I didn't think even the big rig could take out a house on the first run.

The decision to abandon ship was made when I spotted a military truck loaded with marines weaving in and out of traffic, headed north. Before they could react to the threat of a large yellow monster speeding toward them, I skidded to a stop, and ended up sideways across both lanes. We scrambled down the side facing away from the marines and fled, leaving the engine running. Hitting the streets on foot, we ran to where Laura said a cousin of hers lived, only two blocks away.

We couldn't resist climbing to the second floor of Laura's cousin's house and looking back down at Mex 1, where Big Yeller was surrounded by marines. It looked as though they thought someone was still inside, and no witnesses seemed at all inclined to report that one of their own and a redhaired Gringa had hared off up the hill. You gotta love Mexicans for such wonderful passive aggression: their way of dealing with any kind of authority.

I called the boat and once again Jan answered. I guess the little turd Julio Vargas didn't want to alert me that anything was amiss, and it was working in my favor. "Everything still okay in Santa Rosalia?"

"Yes. Everything is exactly the same here." There was a shuffling sound, and I pictured Jan with the phone in hand, Julio listening in and covering the mouthpiece, then Jan asked, "Where are you?"

"Still stuck at the ix-nay mine. I guess the road will be blocked for hours."

"Okay. I'll save some amera-cay for you."

"Great. Listen, my cell batteries are getting low, so can't recharge because they've cut the generator power on the job. I'll call when I can."

I hung up and asked Laura if her cousin had Internet service. Nope. They had a quick discussion and Laura told me there was an Internet café on the main street, but she didn't think I should be seen hiking around the streets of Santa Rosalia, in case someone finally ratted us out for leaving a large yellow behemoth blocking Mex 1.

Her cousin gave me a baggy dress befitting almost every old Mexican woman's Sunday go-to-church attire and a large hat festooned with flowers. I pulled the dress on over my clothes and jammed on the hat, and with my scuffed tennis shoes peaking out below the dress's uneven hem, I accomplished a fashion statement like that of the famed Minnie Pearl. The cousin, dressed in similar garb—even including sneakers—insisted on going with me so I wouldn't stand out quite so much as I would alone. I made a note to reward her hugely if I lived through this day.

Laura wanted to go to her own house, so we said our goodbyes. I considered telling her what was happening on my boat so there would be a witness later down the road, but figured she had enough to worry about at the moment.

As we walked through town, it was obvious there had been little damage. Shop clerks were placing some merchandise back on shelves, but other than that the town had emerged unscathed. The same cannot be said for people's nerves. 

The Internet café was jammed.

Unlike the States or large cities in Mexico there were no television helicopter crews feeding live shots to a waiting public. It would probably be hours before any coverage of the earthquake and landslide showed up, so everyone was using the Internet to tweet and email family members. Needless to say, with the slide blocking Mex 1 and a volcano thought dormant spewing smoke, people were frantic for word of the men and women stuck at the Lucifer Mine and other outlying areas.

I felt a twinge of guilt at my selfish escape, but if I'd let those people ride in my dumpster bed they would probably be badly injured, or worse, by now. Besides, I had my own big fish to fry, namely why Jan wanted me to turn on the boat cameras again. Something new was afoot and I needed to see what it was.