Cilka's Journey(79)
“Coming.”
Kirill, Pavel and Cilka race to the mine.
“Not asking what we’re facing today, Cilka?” Kirill asks.
“Does it matter?”
“Having a bad day?” Kirill fires back.
“Drop it, Kirill.” Pavel comes to Cilka’s defense.
“All right. It’s an explosion, so there will be burns as well as broken bones,” Kirill says.
Neither Pavel nor Cilka responds.
Kirill shrugs. “If that’s the way you’re going to play it.”
* * *
The chaos is evident as they approach the mine. There is the usual gathering of onlooking prisoners, moving from foot to foot in an effort to keep warm.
Cilka is out of the ambulance before the engine is killed.
“Cilka, over here.”
She joins a group of guards. A supervisor appears.
“Cilka, good to see you. Got a nasty one for you. We were taking explosives into the central drift so we can advance and one of them went off unexpectedly. We’ve got at least six prisoners in there and about the same number of guards. We’ve also got our explosives expert in there. He was going to be setting the dynamite. He’s the top man around here. Shit, there will be trouble if he’s not all right.”
Cilka starts walking toward the entrance to the mine.
“Pavel,” she calls out, “bring the box. Come on, hurry up.”
The supervisor runs after her. “Cilka, you can’t go in yet. They haven’t declared it safe.”
She’s heard it all before.
“And who’s going to declare it safe, standing up here?”
With no answer, Cilka turns to Pavel. “I can’t make you come with me, but I’d like you to.”
“Cilka, you heard the man—the walls could collapse around us.”
“There are men in there. We have to try.”
“And get killed ourselves? I don’t think so.”
“Fine, I’ll go in by myself. Hand me the box.”
Pavel holds out the box, hesitates, then pulls it back toward himself. “I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?”
“Probably,” she says with a small smile.
“Definitely,” says the supervisor. “Look, I can’t stop you, but I can advise against it.”
“Come, Pavel, let’s go.”
“Here, take the big lamp,” the supervisor says.
As Cilka and Pavel descend in the lift, the lamp barely penetrates the dust rising and swirling around them. They step out into the darkness and inch forward for several minutes before beginning to call out.
“Can anybody hear me?” Cilka shouts. “Call out if you hear me so we can find you. Is there anybody here?”
Nothing. They walk deeper, getting closer to the blast site as the ground underfoot becomes an obstacle course, littered with rocks and boulders. The path narrows.
Pavel stumbles, slipping on a jagged rock, and screams as much from the fright of falling as from being hurt.
“Are you all right?”
His string of expletives bounces off the walls. As the echo dies down, they hear a cry.
“Over here, we’re over here.”
“Keep talking, we’re coming,” Pavel calls out as he and Cilka hurry in the direction of the voice.
Their combined lights illuminate several men waving and calling to them. As they arrive, Pavel asks who is in charge. A guard sitting beside an unconscious man identifies himself.
“Tell me who we have here and what you know of the others,” Cilka says.
There are six of them—three guards, two prisoners and the explosives expert who is unconscious. Their helmets were knocked off in the explosion, the lights went out at the same time and they can’t see to tell how badly injured they all are.
Cilka asks if any of them can stand and walk out themselves. Two say they think they can even though they are badly hurt. One reports he has a broken arm, as bone has pierced his shirt and coat.
Using the lamp, Cilka and Pavel do a quick examination of the men. The explosives expert’s breathing is ragged, and he has a head wound. She asks Pavel to check on another unconscious man. It only takes him a moment to report that he is dead. He was one of the guards.
Cilka concentrates on the explosives expert. Besides the head wound, he seems to have been hit in the chest by something; a depression tells her he has several broken ribs. Cilka has the able-bodied men help her lie him straight. She administers a drip into his arm, and roughly bandages his head.
“What of the others?” she asks the guard. “We were told there were about twelve of you down here.”
The guard tells her to shine her light farther ahead. When she does, she sees that the path is mostly blocked by rock from the explosions.
“They will be on the other side of that,” he explains.
“Have you tried calling out to see if any of them respond?”
“It will be a waste of time. They were about a hundred meters in front of us, going ahead with the dynamite when it went off. They would have taken the full force of the first explosion, then there were two more. They didn’t stand a chance.”
“Okay, I’ll let you report that when we get out. For now, let’s see who is capable of helping other men walk out of here. I need at least one to help Pavel carry our expert here.”