Deathwatch by Robb White Page B

for me to get myself in a bind so it can quit. Well, I don’t let it. I start that booger up in the morning, and I don’t let it quit until I’m home again.”
    Ben went to the edge of the cliff, cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled as loudly as he could. He kept on yelling and moving, jumping, swaying, waving his arms.
    Denny O’Neil didn’t get out of the chopper. The other man walked over to Madec, who was now beside the Jeep, and Ben watched them as they talked.
    They probably had to yell at each other to be heard over the sound of the engine.
    The man looked like Les Stanton, but he had on a purple shirt outside his yellow trousers and he wasn’t wearing a hat.
    When Ben saw the man’s shoes he knew it wasn’t Les. Les wouldn’t be caught dead in the desert in a pair of low-cut white shoes.
    Still trying to attract their attention, Ben could feel something dying inside him.
    This was where Madec would be good. His lies would be smooth, logical and convincing.
    The man shook hands with Madec and went back to the chopper.
    Still yelling and knowing that it was useless, Ben watched the chopper swirl up, emerge from its cloud of dust and go away.
    It disappeared so fast, so fast, leaving only the fading sound of Denny’s always running engine to taunt him for a moment longer.
    Ben walked slowly into the tunnel and stood at one of the biggest of the water-worn holes looking down.
    Madec was walking briskly back toward the butte.
    Ben watched him until he was out of sight under the overhang. For a long time he just stood there, defeated, listening to the hammer, hoping the chopper would come back, but knowing that it would not.
    Then, finally, he wandered out of the tunnel, out onto the ledge and along it to the end. There he leaned out as far as he could, keeping one hand firmly on the cliff face, and looked down.
    Whatever Madec did he did well. He was braced now, the rope around his waist, about fifteen feet above the ground, his boots firmly planted in the footholds he had chopped out, the rope secured around a tent peg driven into a crack in the rock.
    He was chopping a new handhold, the hammer head glinting in the sunlight.
    It would take Madec the rest of the day to chop his way up to the first ledge. From there the rest was just a stroll up the butte, no problem.
    Madec wouldn’t come up there at night. He was too cautious to do that.
    He would finish cutting his little holes in the rock and finish driving his spikes where he needed them and then, when all was ready, he would wait out the night and come in the morning.
    Returning to the tunnel, Ben looked out through its stone mouth, which seemed to frame a picture and make it more vivid.
    The far mountains were masses of purple, rugged and alive looking. These were not the old, worn, tree-covered mountains he had seen in other places. These were tough, young mountains, their peaks sharp and strong against the deep blue of the sky, their ridges full of vigor.
    And the desert itself was not the bleak and arid place it seemed, but a place full of life. A place where a plant might lie dormant for years and then, with the first drops of rain, spring to full life, produce its flowers, cast its seed and die—all in twenty-four hours.
    The hammer had stopped.
    It was insulting; the thought of being killed here in the desert where he had always lived by this man from the city was insulting and outrageous.
    Ben got to his feet slowly and walked down to the narrow end of the tunnel. As he did so, he made his decision.
    Ben sat on the edge of the stone, his feet hanging down in the bisected funnel and leaned over, looking down at the steep, smooth surface of the funnel, studying it down and down until the top of the funnel spout, also bisected, narrowed sharply, going straight on down to the breccia. He noted every wrinkle in it, every rough patch, every stratum. He studied each change in the basalt’s texture and memorized every tiny fissure in the surface of