He didn't drop the torch. With a sudden, explosive heave of his massive frame, Wayne swung the heavy iron torch nozzle upward, aiming the hissing yellow flame directly at my eyes, while his left boot kicked a spray of blinding limestone gravel toward my face.
I didn't hesitate. I dropped my center of gravity, turning my shoulder into the spray of grit. The heat of the open flame scorched the collar of my wool jacket with a violent hiss. I didn't fire at his chest—fourteen years of instincts kept me from executing an unarmed man, even Wayne—but I drove the heavy steel frame of my mag-lite straight into his right forearm.
Bone cracked against aluminum.
Wayne roared in pain, his fingers involuntarily opening as the oxyacetylene torch clattered into the shale puddle, its yellow flame sputtering and dying instantly under three inches of water. But his forward momentum carried all two hundred and forty pounds of his weight into my chest, driving us both backward off the wooden pallet into the freezing muck of the trench apron.
We hit the ground hard. My breath exploded from my lungs in a ragged gasp as the weight of him pinned my left shoulder against the jagged edge of the concrete slab. His massive hands clamped onto my wrists, his thumbs digging violently into the tendons of my gun hand, trying to wrench the Glock out of my grip and turn the muzzle down into my own stomach.
"You should have stayed... at the desk... boy," Wayne grunted through clenched teeth, his face inches from mine, his breath smelling of stale tobacco and bile. His weight was suffocating, his brute strength fueled by absolute desperation as he forced my right arm back against the stone.
Behind us, Lyle was screaming—a high, useless wail of a bureaucrat watching a murder unfold under the halogen lights. "Wayne, stop! Stop, there are headlights on the lower road! Wayne, look at the bridge!"
Wayne didn't look. He lowered his forehead like a battering ram, smashing his brow into the bridge of my nose. Pain exploded in blinding white stars behind my eyes, warm blood immediately pouring down my upper lip. My grip on the weapon slipped, the Glock tearing free and skidding three feet into the mud.
He reached for it. His right hand, bruised and swollen from my mag-lite strike, lunged across my ribs toward the fallen pistol.
I didn't try to beat him to the gun. I reached up with both hands, hooked my fingers into the collar of his heavy yellow slicker, and used his own lunging momentum to pivot my hips against the slick shale. With everything left in my back and legs, I kicked upward, rolling him over my shoulder and slamming his back down into the open, jagged crater where the concrete slab had been pried loose.
The impact drove the air out of Wayne with a wet, sickening thud. Before he could roll, I was on his chest, my left knee driving deep into the center of his sternum, pinning his shoulder blades against the shattered aggregate. I pulled my secondary pair of steel peerless cuffs from the small of my back, caught his right wrist in an iron wrist-lock, and wrenched it behind his shoulder until the steel ratchet clicked shut with a sharp, irreversible bite.
Wayne bucked violently, cursing me, spitting blood and mud into the gravel, but the angle was impossible. I grabbed his thick left arm, hauled it behind his back against his ribs, and drove the second cuff home until the double-lock clicked into place.
He went limp in the mud, chest heaving, his face pressed against the gray limestone slush.
"Arthur... Arthur, please," Lyle whimpered from beside the survey truck, his hands held high above his head, tears streaming through the grime on his cheeks. "I didn't know about Caleb. I swear on my children's lives, I thought the chamber was empty when the sluice collapsed. Wayne told me the crew was outside. He told me it was just an equipment loss."
"Shut up, Lyle," I said, wiping the blood from my mouth with the sleeve of my torn uniform. I picked up my Glock from the puddle, racked the slide to clear the mud, and stood over the wooden pallet.
The red steel tool chest sat undisturbed in the white glare of the floodlights. Its heavy brass latches were intact, Caleb’s hand-stamped welding tags still wired through the center eyelets, their lead seals stamped with the initials C. V. — 2012.
I pulled my pocketknife, cut the copper wire, and popped the heavy draw-latches. The hinges groaned with fourteen years of dried grease as I lifted the lid.
Inside the upper tray, resting on top of his chrome-vanadium wrenches and brass calipers, lay Caleb's daily maintenance ledger, wrapped tightly in three layers of heavy, vulcanized canvas. I pulled the canvas back. The blue cloth-bound cover was dry, preserved by the airtight seal of the heavy steel box.
I opened the book to the final entry, dated October 14, 2012.
Caleb’s tight, deliberate handwriting filled the page in dark blue waterproof ink: