Hunter awoke. He felt pain. He knew that he had scrapes, bruises, and cuts, but he wondered if he could add broken bones, internal bleeding, or muscle strains and dislocations to that list. He gingerly staggered to his hands and knees and opened his eyes. At least he could do that much. He felt a very timid sense of relief at the realization that moving his limbs meant that the fall had not paralyzed him. He saw nothing. He waited patiently for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. He thought about calling out, but the sharp pain in his head screamed at him not to make the attempt. Waiting accomplished nothing. Not a single ray of light entered the void that he found himself in.

Tiyana had a similar experience, except that she could not get up onto her hands and knees. Her left foot, caught between a rock and a piece of excavation equipment, would not budge. She could not recall anything about the fall except for her life flashing before her eyes. The vertigo that she felt as gravity gave way had transported her back to her childhood.

She remembered making breakfast for her littler sister, Janie, while her mother slept off a hangover on the couch. She remembered using her college tuition check to bail her mother out of jail when her mother was arrested for driving while intoxicated. She remembered Dr. Fiona Cresswell, her Advanced Chemistry professor and mentor, giving her a place to live, employing her as a Teacher’s Assistant, and then finding her post-graduate employment at an artificial flavoring company.

In the course of time, Tiyana found herself at the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences doing radiocarbon dating like she used to do with her mentor. There, while dating archaeological finds, she met the man who changed her life.

As Tiyana came to her senses, she heard that man calling her name, “Tiyana!” “Tiyaaaaaaaana!”

“Over here sweetheart.” “Oh, Hunter, I’m over here.” Tiyana softly murmured while trying to keep the pain out of her voice. She felt fingers on her leg.

“Tiyana, Tiyana, is that you?” Hunter said.

Tiyana spoke, “Yes, that’s me. I’m stuck. I think a support beam is on my foot. There’s no pressure on the foot and it doesn’t hurt too bad, so I think I’m not seriously injured. Can you get whatever it is off of my foot?”

“Hrmph! No, I don’t think so.” Hunter replied as he bent his knees low, grabbed the beam, and lifted with all his might. “Where’s Hongo when you need him?”

A deep Kenyan voice spoke, “Just here, Bwana.” Hongo started barking orders instinctively, “Most of us are okay. Geb, Haji, Andwele, come help us lift.”

The five men felt blindly for a grip on the heavy beam. Once each man secured a firm grip, Hongo began counting, “Moja, mbili, tatu, lift!”

They all grunted as they lifted the beam. The beam did not come straight up. It was tangled in the rocks that had broken its fall. After shaking the beam, it budged upwards. Tiyana bent her knee and pushed back with the palms of her hands. She breathed a huge sigh of relief as she felt her foot move unobstructed through the opening and into freedom.

“Thank you everyone. I’m free.” She said.

All of a sudden Hunter was kissing her. They forgot the darkness and silence for a few moments as they embraced.

Hunter, Tiyana, and Hongo rallied the troops. They had about fifteen men. Geb and Haji, the Egyptians, were fine. Andwele, the Tanzanian, had a few nasty cuts, which they effectively bandaged with an emergency first aid kit. The rest of the crew had bumps, cuts, and bruises, but, almost miraculously, no serious injuries. Shenouda suffered the most severe injury. She could not stand up and by touching it, they could tell her leg was swollen. She almost certainly had broken a bone. She bore it well, but by her whimpers, they could tell she felt serious pain.

By walking slowly with arms outstretched, they mapped out the room. One end contained a pile of soft, porous rock, the same rock they had drilled through, the same rock that collapsed underneath them. The other side of the room, interestingly, had windows. The windows were covered with metal mullions. The side with the rock seemed to slope upwards, but the ragged pile was too steep to climb.

“Well, we’re trapped from the looks of it.” Tiyana said, pointing out the obvious. She meant to get a dialogue going where someone would suggest what they should do.

“What looks? I can’t see a thing.” Hunter retorted.

“It is pitch black.” Hongo chimed in.

“Let’s punch it.” Hunter suggested.

They couldn’t see Hongo’s face in the dark, but it bore a puzzled expression.

“I’m sorry, punch what, dear?” Tiyana replied.

“The wall. If the drill’s still pointing west toward this wall with the barred windows, then lets fire it up! We don’t know what’s behind us or what’s to our left or right, but we know that there is something behind those windows. Hongo, can this baby still run?”

Hongo was stunned. “I do not know, Mr. Price.”

“Well, let’s find out.”

Hongo had a number of Tanzanians working for him that he had brought from the Olduvai Gorge digsite, but he tried to include Egyptians in the work as much as possible in order to promote camaraderie. The last thing that he wanted to deal with was feuding between the Egyptian and Tanzanian workers. Geb and Haji wound up getting included often because they spoke passable English. Andwele got included because he had a long working relationship with Hongo, he was physically strong, and he did not make many mistakes.

“Geb, Haji, Andwele! Let us go look at the drill. We will inspect it and try to make it run.” With that, the four of them were blindly combing the drill, trying to find out if they could get it started again.

Tiyana quickly joined them. Hunter helped as much as he could.

After about an hour, they met. Tiyana spoke, “The machine’s integrity isn’t compromised too badly. I think we can start it, but we have a problem. The grippers use hydraulic jacks to push off the tunnel walls. Without tunnel walls to push off of, the machine won’t go anywhere, it will just spin and cut through thin air.”

After a long drawn out silence, Tiyana spoke again, “Any ideas?”

Hunter spoke up, “Well, the machine’s only a couple feet from the wall and it’s pointed in the right direction. What if we unscrewed the cutter head and let it fall away from the machine onto the wall?”

Another long silence, “That could work.” Tiyana said softly.

“Yes, that could work.” Hongo chimed in.

“It’s not going to be as easy as all that though. The cutter head isn’t screwed on, its fastened with rivets. We’ll need to drill each rivet. We’ve got a drill that will work, but it’s going to take a while, especially in the dark. Also, we don’t have anything to punch the rivets out with. We’ll just have to drill them and then fire up the machine and hope that the rivets are weak enough and that the gears vibrate enough to shake them loose.” Tiyana explained.

She went on, “We’ve got the sandwiches that Shenouda brought for lunch and we’ve got the chai and we’ve got a few gallons of water. Those aluminum barrels that they haul water and chai around in are practically indestructible. Unfortunately, those supplies will not last us long. If we are going to do something, we’ve got to do it now.”

With that, they all got to work. Hongo and Andwele operated the drill on the rivets. They had no concept of time in the dark pit. The tiny light on the end of Hongo’s battery-operated drill barely lit the rivets.

Meanwhile, up on the surface, a full-blown crisis broke out. The remainder of the digsite crew threw everything aside and used all of the excavation equipment that they had to furiously dig in search of the lost tunnel boring team. Calls went out all over the world. Hunter’s affluent parents quickly offered to spare no expense to anyone in the world who could get to Dahshur, investigate the situation, and offer information on how deep the crew was buried, what chances they had of surviving, how long it would take to extricate them, or how exactly to extricate them. Droves of engineering experts booked last-minute flights to Dahshur.

They had no way to count the passage of time, but most of the crew thought that the day had ended. The crew members who had nothing to do grew increasingly frightened as time crept on. They heard the loud drill and they heard Hongo and Andwele’s voices, but nothing else. Eventually, Hongo finished.

“The last one is done. I think it is time.” Hongo said to the Prices.

“I don’t know if all the motors will work, but the engine seems okay. I hope we get at least the starter motor to work. The wires connecting the battery to the starter solenoid haven’t broken, for whatever that’s worth. Should we go ahead and start it?” Tiyana asked.

“Yes.” Hunter and Hongo replied in unison.

“Okay, here goes nothing.”

The whirring noise of the starter motor made a brief cameo appearance before the deafening roar of the main engine filled the room. Another less constant noise filled the room. The rivets holding the cutter head to the frame of the machine rattled in their sockets. Soon, with a creak and a crash, the cutter head fell. It hit the wall with the disc cutters spinning. The top of the wall where the disc cutters made initial contact gave way in moments. The bottom of the wall crumbled beneath the cutters and the weight of the cutter head. As the head separated from the rest of the boring machine, the cutters lost power. The power loss did not matter because by the time the cutters stopped spinning, a gaping hole had been torn in the wall. The crew merely needed to shut the engine down, climb the rubble, and walk into the adjacent room.

As they explored their new surroundings, they realized how tired they were. Unbeknownst to everyone trapped, it was close to midnight. Hunter spoke up, “There are beds here. These recesses that go into the wall, they are, or at least they used to be beds. This must be some sort of underground barracks.”

“Or catacombs.” Tiyana disgustedly replied.

“I wasn’t going to say that. Hey, there are scratchings on the wall here, just lines of scratches, all in a row.” Hunter remarked.

“This was a prison.” Hongo said softly. “They were counting their time down here.”

Knowing of Hongo’s military past and further knowing of his reluctance to discuss it, Hunter and Tiyana remained quiet.

Eventually, Hunter took charge, “Look, there’s enough space for all of us, lets lay Shenouda down in one of these low spaces and then everyone pick one and try to get some sleep.” Everyone was too tired to argue.

They gave Shenouda a triple dose of aspirin from the first aid kit. Tiyana and Hunter picked a rather large wall recess and spooned close, taking off their shirts and jackets and laying them over the top of their upper torsos. They stayed warm by keeping the bare skin of Hunter’s chest next to the bare skin of Tiyana’s back. No one slept well that night.

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