The Cooler King by Patrick Bishop

Author:Patrick Bishop
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atlantic Books Ltd

NINE

Soon the chamber was crowded with bodies as the first batch of escapers clambered in. The margarine lamps gave off an orange light, casting gigantic shadows over the walls. Many of the escapers were wearing dyed black combinations to protect their civilian clothing. It looked to Tommy Calnan like a ‘scene from Dante’s inferno’. He made his way over to Eddie Asselin, who was preparing to squeeze his broad ice-hockey player’s shoulders into the entrance of the shaft. ‘Good luck, Eddie,’ he told him. ‘I hope you make it home. I’ll buy you dinner at Prunier’s in a week’s time.’1 Asselin managed a smile. He seemed nervous. ‘That’ll be the day,’ he replied. Then, after urging Calnan to see that he ‘got plenty of air’, he disappeared into the black maw of the tunnel, followed closely by Bill and the first escapers in the queue.

In the chamber Calnan and Kee were working the air pump, pushing it back and forth like demented oarsmen. Then more feet were swinging through the chamber entrance and it was their turn to go. Up at the front, Bill and Eddie wriggled towards the tunnel’s distant end, pushing their luggage before them. Although strict silence had been ordered they could hear the grunts and curses of the human chain crawling nose to toe behind them. By about 7.30 the tunnel was full up, with twenty-six men stretched along its length. Another half a dozen waited in the chamber. The last part of the operation was the most risky. Bill knew very well that potential catastrophe was awaiting them. Tunnel collapses were an occupational hazard, but in normal circumstances if the shoring was sound there was no great cause of alarm, for it was a relatively easy matter for one or two men to dig themselves out. This was different. ‘With the men lying head to toe all the way back behind us, even a slight tunnel collapse would mean the end,’ he wrote. ‘It would take hours for each man to wriggle backwards, allowing the one ahead to do the same.’ In that case only those nearest the entrance stood any chance of getting out alive. The rest would face a slow death by asphyxiation.2

Tommy Calnan was also feeling a mounting sense of alarm. It was pitch black and a boot in the face told him he had caught up with the man in front. His shoulders were scraping the walls on either side and if he raised his head an inch it hit the roof. He felt the first stirrings of claustrophobia.

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