Smoking Gun (Adam Cartwright Trilogy Book 1) (18 page)

Drilling would continue through the night under floodlights for the first time but no blasting would be carried out. Jack Gilmore estimated that up to eight slices could be blasted during daylight tomorrow. By tomorrow night we might only have three or four metres of cutting to be excavated. But there was no room for complacency as the heavy rainfall associated with the cyclone could well have reached Red Rock by then.

The cleaning up and tying down around the site had gone well. Derek had the compressor in place and the lengths of pipe were on site ready to be connected. A pond had been excavated such that any overflow from the stormwater drain would collect in the pond before overflowing into the drainage pipe. Hopefully, water would be airlifted and discharged beyond the processing plant thus reducing the flow through the drainage pipe.

I did not actually hope that the major storm hit us so that the urgent, expensive scramble to excavate the cutting would be justified. But the thought had crossed my mind. I would much prefer that Red Rock was not in the storm’s path even though that meant that I could end up with egg on my face.

The weather report that evening was now confidently forecasting that cyclone Abby would cross the coast to the north of Cairns tomorrow afternoon. The low pressure had dropped further and the predicted wind speeds were now around 150 kilometres per hour. It was such a massive storm that the meteorologists were also confident that the Atherton Tableland would receive heavy rainfall and be buffeted by cyclone force winds. It seemed that Red Rock was unlikely to escape unscathed.

***

That evening Brian Clements called me on Skype. “Adam, Kate and I have been watching the weather forecast. It looks to us like your project is in line to get a bit of wind and rain. How does it look to you up there?”

The two of them were looking quite concerned so I did my best to downplay the situation. “Yes, it does look like we will get a drenching and experience some fast moving air, but nothing to worry about in regard to physical safety. Everything here has been designed with just this eventuality in mind. Things have been a little hectic today and will continue like that for the next few days.”

Kate asked, “Adam, are you going to be able to get down here before Christmas? Christine will arrive in Sydney on Thursday. I was hoping that the four of us could have dinner somewhere nice to welcome her home.”

Brian laughed. “Well, Adam, you did say that you welcomed any help with your love life that you can get.”

I grinned. Kate’s sister, Christine, was due to arrive back in Sydney in a few days and Kate was engaged in some blatant matchmaking. As far as Kate was concerned Christine and I were made for each other. I didn’t mind Kate’s efforts and did not take it seriously, but I did wonder if Christine would welcome Kate’s determination for the two of us to meet.

It had already been agreed that Christine would stay with Kate in my apartment, at least until the wedding in early January. There had been no discussion yet about what will happen after the wedding; I guess that I expected that Christine would stay on and rent the apartment on her own if she wished to. I wouldn’t be needing to stay there at least until after the Red Rock Project was completed, and that was another five or six months away.

In any case it did me good to relax and exchange banter with Brian and Kate. I needed something to divert me from worrying about the storm clouds moving towards us from the Coral Sea, even if only for a few minutes.

***

The first thing that I did when I woke up on Saturday morning was to open the door and look outside. It was five thirty and the sun had yet to rise. It was cloudy but no sign yet of rain. The only wind detectable was a slight breeze. There was nothing ominous looking to me.

But appearances can be deceiving.

When I switched on the TV, selected the weather channel and clicked on Mareeba my latent feeling of optimism was soon quashed. A storm warning was in place for the Atherton Tableland. Strong winds and heavy rain were forecast within twenty four to thirty six hours.

Putting on my running gear I jogged across to the cutting excavation. The large drilling machine was still in action as it had been when I had last checked it less than five hours ago. I stood still counting the rows of holes that had been drilled. They had made excellent progress overnight. They looked to be completing the twelfth row of drill holes spaced at half a metre across the cutting. That left a further three metres of the cutting remaining to be drilled. Two more rows, one metre apart, remained to be drilled. The men on the drilling rig saw me watching them from the gloom beyond the floodlights and each gave me a tired grin and a wave. I grinned and gave them a thumbs-up before jogging back around the site to my quarters to get showered and go to breakfast.

Jack Gilmore joined me at the table while I was having breakfast and brought me up to date with the drilling. “Adam, we’ll finish the drilling by about nine o’clock. The first blast will be about ten. Just how fast we go after that will depend on how the blast affects the holes already drilled. We expect to have to clear the later holes with man-held pneumatic drills before we can place the explosives. It will slow us down, but by how much we don’t know. We have eleven primary blasts remaining. My best guess is that we will get seven or eight primary blasts before sunset today. Since we can’t blast at night we can resume at first light tomorrow, say six o’clock, so the earliest we can complete the blasting is around ten o’clock tomorrow morning. But it may well be midday. It all depends on how we go today.”

It wasn’t what I wanted to hear, but now I had a time frame to work with.

***

By early afternoon Derek Crowther had made excellent progress with the assembling of the pipelines and getting them in position. I was confident that when the storm arrived he would be ready. The forecasts were unanimous. It was no longer ‘if’, but ‘when’ the storm arrived.

During the day most of the men on the site were busy installing and fixing cladding to the various buildings. The best protection against strong winds will be secure roofing and wall cladding. They all knew that it was crucial to fully enclose buildings as any gaps in the cladding would enable the wind and rain to penetrate a building and cause havoc even if we weren’t flooded.

When I checked my emails after lunch I discovered a message from Ewan Ryan asking me to call him when it was convenient. I also had a message from Tom Barton, it read simply ‘call me’. I smiled wryly as I read Barton’s curt email. I could think of quite a few things to call him but I wasn’t going to waste time talking to him. I assumed that he had seen all the site activity on the site webcams, including the airlift pipelines, and wanted to ask some time-wasting questions. Feeling in an impish mood I responded to his email with an equally brief message, ‘what do you want me to call you?’. Then just to rile him further I attached a link to the fourth webcam, the one that showed the hive of activity at the cutting. It would be the first inkling that he would have had that I’d continued with the cutting after he refused to include it in the project’s budget.

Responding to his emailed request I called Ewan Ryan. Moments later he answered, after exchanging greetings he said, “We’ve been watching the weather forecasts. How bad does it look to you up there?”

“Our latest forecast is that Cairns will get hit tonight and us twelve hours later. We should be buttoned down by the end of the day, and I don’t expect any major problems from the wind and rain. But I still believe that we have a distinct risk of serious flooding.”

Ryan took in an audible breath in shocked surprise and exclaimed. “What? Haven’t you completed the storm water drainage plan already?”

“Of course, a couple of months ago.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“I tried to explain to Tom Barton and the design engineers months ago that their drainage plan was inadequate but they wouldn’t listen. Eventually I received written instructions that I must construct the storm water drainage exactly as shown on the plan and included in the budget.”

Ryan was silent for a moment before asking quietly. “So you just constructed what you believe to be an inadequate drainage plan, secure in the knowledge that your backside was covered?”

I hesitated for a moment before replying. “Actually no. I have had miners digging a cutting to divert the storm water away from the site. The problem is that we may not have it completed in time.”

“You say that you are not certain about the outcome. What are the odds on you succeeding?”

I had been thinking about that very question and responded, “I reckon that there’s a fifty percent chance of completing the drilling and blasting in time. Plus a fifty percent chance that the cutting will be sufficiently clear of rubble for it to function as a storm water channel. So, I give the cutting about a twenty five percent chance of succeeding to prevent calamitous flooding of the site.”

“So, you don’t give the drainage system any chance of coping?”

“No, none if we get anything like the rainfall that’s been predicted. If the storm reaches us, and I’ve been given a ninety percent probability that it will, then I give the system no chance of preventing flooding.”

“Is there anything that I can do from here to get you more help?”

“No. There’s no time to try something new. I can’t think of anything that we could bring in at this late hour that could make any difference. Look, I’ll email you a link to a webcam that will enable you to see what we are doing with the cutting.”

“I thought we already have access to the site webcams. I check on them regularly.”

“No. You have only had access to three of the four that I had installed.”

Ryan exhaled slowly as he understood what I had said, “So, up till now, we couldn’t see you working on the cutting?”

“Well, you wouldn’t have seen much. Just some intermittent quarrying of concrete aggregate from a long narrow excavation.”

Ryan paused before saying anything. “Perhaps that’s a conversation for later. In the meantime, best of luck to you and everyone on site. We’ll keep an eye on the site webcams.”

***

It was around midnight when I checked on the cutting for the last time on Saturday night. There was a dam of insitu rock across the cutting about three to four metres thick, which had already been drilled for the final primary blasts on Sunday morning.

There were more large rocks lining the floor of the excavation than I had hoped for but almost no pieces less than fifty kilograms or so. Those had all been removed by hand and disposed off at the end of the cutting into the gulley by a gang of workers referred to by Jack Gilmore as the scavengers. Others were still at work drilling the large boulders ready for ‘popping’ first thing in the morning.

***

I was awakened by someone thumping on the door to my quarters. It was Jack Gilmore. His face was grim and his news grimmer. “At four a.m. cyclone Abby crossed the coast one hundred kilometres north of Cairns and was travelling slowly inland in a south westerly direction. Red Rock is in its path. Expected arrival time of the storm centre is late morning, but the winds already picking up and we can expect rain any time soon.”

I glanced at my watch. It was nearly five o’clock. Looking closely at Jack, who was clearly exhausted. I asked, “Are you okay?”

He grinned tiredly. “Sure, I’ve been up all night. I’ll try and have a nap for a couple of hours and have some breakfast. You can be the go-to man for the drillers, blasters and scavengers while I’m offline. The primary drilling is all done. The next blast should be at first light, around six thirty. That will be to pop the large boulders that were drilled last night. There will be a team of around twenty scavengers to remove the smaller pieces and dump them into the gulley. We will then do the first primary blast. The scavengers will then go back in the cutting to get rid of small pieces while the next row of drill holes is reamed out and the explosives placed. As soon as they are ready the next blast will take place, followed by another round of scavenging and drilling the larger pieces for popping and scavenging. They will then continue popping and scavenging until the cutting is clear. Or until the storm prevents us from continuing.”

The effort that Jack and his miners had already made was extraordinary. But it was going to be even more difficult when the wind and rain arrived. I clapped him on the shoulder. “Go and have a rest. You look beat. I’ll grab something from the dining room and will be down at the cutting in twenty minutes.” Since the dining room was now operating on a 24/7 basis until the crisis was over, I knew that I could get a quick coffee and something to eat.

***

It was just after five thirty when I arrived at the cutting. The only activity was the shot-firers who were finalising arrangements for the first blast for the day. Light rain was falling and the wind was picking up and already making it difficult to set up for the primary blast in the exposed area at ground level. Those working in the cutting to pop the large boulders were at least protected from the wind. Even so their working conditions were far from ideal.

Shortly after five thirty they declared that they were ready for the blast, so even though I couldn’t see the sun rise as it was hidden by the darkening mass of clouds, I gave them the okay to go ahead and sound the five minute pre-detonation siren.

As soon as the all-clear siren sounded I returned to the cutting. The blast had been very effective, all the large boulders had been shattered into manageable pieces. Within minutes of the blast, aluminium ladders were lowered into the cutting and a swarm of men had descended to start work. They were the scavengers. It was their job to remove the shattered pieces of rock and drop them down into the gulley.

Jack had said that there were twenty of them but the actual number was closer to forty. I found out later that many were volunteers from other sections of the workforce. They were like ants swarming in two lines along the newly excavated section of the cutting. One line carrying pieces of rock towards the gully and the other line returning to get another piece of rock. I grabbed a pair of leather gloves out of my vehicle and joined them. Thirty minutes later the cutting was cleared of rock debris and we all returned to the surface. I don’t know how the others felt but I had found it to be the hardest half hour of physical work that I had ever done. I was exhausted.

Immediately that the ladders had been withdrawn, the five minute pre-detonation siren sounded. This time it was to blast the in-situ rock.

The wind was gusting and intermittent heavy showers of rain were falling as we all retreated to Lookout Hill to observe the explosion. This blast was equally successful. When I returned to the cutting the wall of insitu rock was now much narrower, it was now no more than two metres thick. Again within minutes of the blast the aluminium ladders had again been lowered into the cutting and the scavengers were in action. Me included. By now the floor of the cutting had been churned into mud by the heavy rain and the scavengers boots as they trudged back and forth in the newly excavated cutting carrying pieces of rock. Nevertheless the smaller pieces of rock debris had all been cleared and the drillers were busy preparing the large boulders for popping.

The process was then repeated until at just after eight thirty the final primary blast took place. This time, not unexpectedly, the result was less clear cut. The previous two metre wide barrier of insitu rock had been reduced to a one metre wide three metre high wall across the cutting.  Within minutes the scavengers were back sloshing their way through the muddy puddles scattered around the floor of the excavation.

Jack Gilmore arrived as the all-clear siren sounded and immediately began to plan the final assault on the rock barrier with the mining foremen. They had everything under control. As soon as the scavengers had cleared what rock debris that they could, the drillers would drill horizontal holes in a close grid pattern. The drill holes would then be detonated with sufficient explosives to pulverise the rock into pieces small enough that they could be swept away by the storm water flow. At least that was the plan and it sounded good to me.

As I stood listening to the miners making their plans I noticed that storm water was starting to trickle into the upper section of the cutting and pond against the base of the rock barrier. That could only mean that the storm water pond was getting overtopped. It could be nearing the time when the airlifts are put into play. It was time for me to be elsewhere.

***

Even though it was summer, and we were in the tropical far north, we were a thousand metres above sea level and it was cold. Cold, wet and windy. Very cold, very wet and very windy in fact.

Derek and four others were seated in a 4WD parked near the inlet to the storm water drain watching the flow of water in the unlined open channel leading to the inlet of the stormwater drainage pipe. The pond that they had excavated a few metres from the pipe inlet had already filled enough to commence discharging through the stormwater drain. Sitting in my vehicle I watched the water level in the pond rising slowly but relentlessly. It would not take long before the overflow from the pond achieved the full capacity of the pipe.

The wind had increased to the point that it was close to impossible to walk and stand in the open. The vehicle that the men were taking shelter in was rocking violently in the gusts and their situation was far from secure. But when they saw me arrive they all grinned and gave me a thumbs-up. They were there to start the airlifts when the concrete pipe drain was at the point of being overtopped.

The compressor was already running, the roar of its engine almost lost in the sound of the wind and rain. The plastic pipelines and the airlines were in place and secured. All Derek and his team had to do was to open the valves to the airlines and make sure that nothing was dislodged by the storm. They had a job to do and they weren’t deterred, they would do it. In fact they seemed to be enjoying the challenge.

My concern was whether the airlifts would actually work, as we needed them to, at the first attempt. Derek had accepted my reasoning that the concept was sound and that I believed that it should work. However, now that I saw the effort being made by Derek and his men in such difficult, possibly dangerous, circumstances I was worried. We didn’t have time or opportunity to fine tune the airlifts. They had to work first time or all this effort would have been to no avail.

I then drove with some difficulty around the site checking the buildings. They were all protected by sandbags placed in a continuous bund around each building to a height of about a metre. This was our final safety net.

Having completed a circuit of the construction site I returned to the cutting. I couldn’t believe it, there were still men working there. Even though they were being buffeted by the wind and rain they were still placing explosives in drill holes in the remaining section of the insitu rock barrier. The only reason that they could even keep standing was that they were in the cutting itself and got some protection from the howling wind.

Driving back towards the airlifts I stopped in the lee of the processing plant where I had a good view of the pond at the inlet to the storm water drainage pipe. Driving to this spot had been a hair-raising feat. I had been almost tipped over by gusts and I was now relieved to be in a fairly secure location. As I looked across at the pond I was shocked to see that the drainage pipe was already overtopped and water was spilling across the open area towards me and the processing plant. Derek and his team were scrambling back into their vehicle having just opened the valves in the air lines. Their situation looked precarious as their vehicle was being buffeted by a howling gale and they looked to be at risk of being blown into the four metre deep pond. A disaster seemed to be unfolding in front of me.

As I watched trying to comprehend what I could do to help I saw one of the gigantic dump trucks emerge from the open pit and drive towards Derek's vehicle. After a few moments of manoeuvring it had positioned itself to the windward side of, and close to, the endangered vehicle. Within seconds the smaller vehicle’s occupants had exited and were scrambling up the ladder on the lee side of the truck and into the cab. They were safe. Big brother had come to the rescue.

Initially the surge of water across the open ground towards me stopped and retreated as the airlifts went into action. There was no doubt what had happened, the airlifts had worked first time. And they were making a difference. The intensity of the rain was increasing along with the wind speed but the water was retreating. For now at least.

The airlifts held back the flood waters for almost ten minutes before the pond and drainage pipe were overtopped for the second time and flood waters again surged across the open area towards the processing plant. The smaller drains around the buildings were designed to carry the volume of rainwater collected on their roofs. They were adequate for that purpose but could not cope with the wave of floodwater that now submerged them. As I watched the floodwaters surged around the sandbag barriers. It looked like it was only a matter of minutes before they were also overtopped.

I was in no immediate danger as I was parked on a slightly higher piece of ground fairly well protected from the wind and driving rain. Looking across towards the cutting I could not see any activity. It seemed that in spite of their heroic efforts that the miners had failed to demolish the rock barrier in the cutting.

No recriminations would be forthcoming. It was impossible to stand or walk in the open and I was astounded that they had carried on trying for so long. As I was pondering what seemed to be the inevitable catastrophe another of the gigantic dump trucks emerged from the open cut and rumbled through the storm heading towards the cutting. It was awe inspiring to see the huge machine take what nature was throwing at it, and not be deflected from its purpose.

The truck did not deviate when it reached the barricade defining the blasting exclusion area. It just kept on going. It was far too wide for the access point anyway. As I watched the huge truck crashing through the barricade I noticed that the steel-lined cubicle next to the access way was on its back. Its open side was facing into the wind which had probably made it less stable in the gale force winds.

When the truck reached the cutting it turned side on to the wind and was stationary for several minutes before I heard the faint sound of a siren. It had to be the five minute pre-detonation warning. To me five minutes was too long as it looked like the sandbag barriers would be overtopped by then.

To my surprise a second siren could be faintly heard less than a minute later. It was the blasting alert signal. At the same moment the truck started moving, turning in a wide arc to head in my direction. Moments later it pulled up alongside my vehicle. I did not need a formal invitation. I was instantly out of my vehicle and scrambling up the ladder into the cab.

There were no greetings. I joined the group of eight very wet, tense and tired-looking men staring in the direction of the cutting. Just when I thought that some thing had gone wrong, I felt, rather than heard, an explosion. Nothing could be seen at the cutting as a gust of wind and a heavy rain squall hit just as we felt the thud of the explosion. I immediately turned to look at the floodwaters building up against the sandbags. Nothing had changed. The freeboard was now only a few centimetres and disaster seemed to be imminent.

All of us were staring at the floodwaters about to invade the processing plant as though hypnotised. There was nothing more that could be done. We had given our all. A few minutes passed before I glanced at Jack, and noticed that he was looking at me as though he was about to say something when one of the men shouted. “It’s dropping. The bloody water level is dropping.”

I looked back at the sandbag barrier closest to us. He was right. The freeboard that had been just a few centimetres was now at least double what it had been. Minute by minute there was a discernable drop in the floodwaters until about ten minutes later the sandbag barriers were completely above the water level and the stormwater was still retreating.

Finally Jack spoke to the driver and the truck rumbled back towards the cutting and stopped close to the excavation where we could all get a clear view. It was awe inspiring. There was almost a metre depth of water rampaging through the cutting. It was a raging torrent. What was clear to me was that this was nowhere near the peak flow. Runoff would take another eight hours to reach this point from the farthest point in the catchment area.