Ducie by Chris Freeman
Chapter 14. Hugo Boss
As far as copper mine’s went, Ducie’s was small by comparison, but it still made a man feel dwarfed to stand in the middle of it all. The dyke embankment on which Andrea stood was a man-made hill that ran a complete circle round the perimeter of the tailings pond, keeping the bright blue liquid from escaping from this giant bath tub and flooding a large part of the island. As Andrea looked out over the pond, the afternoon sun had cast two of its ultra violet beams down towards the lake in a ‘V’ shape, appearing as lines so prominent in the sky, that the scene looked more like a child’s drawing of a beach. A yellow blob with lines coming out of it representing the sun, and an overzealous shade of blue mass beneath it for the sea.
The soft, yet pungent voice of Lionel Martinez jolted Andrea from his brief daydream.
- Come on buddy, we’re on the home straight now. Just a couple more hours and we’re back on the wagon home.
Andrea shuffled down the embankment, gathering momentum with each mini-step he took, heading straight for Lionel who waited with open arms, imitating a parent catching a child.
- Come to Daddy! Sleepy time’s over honey!
Andrea squirmed away from Lionel, changing direction to escape his attempt at a hug.
- Get off me you gay boy! I know you get excited when the end of a shift is in sight, but come on man…
Lionel pouted his lips in mock seduction and began chasing Andrea.
- Hey, come here lover boy. I’ll show you the time of your life!
The pair chased each other around the dusty rock surface, before one of them slipped and the two friends collapsed on the floor in fits of hysterical laughter. The fun came to an abrupt stop when the imposing voice of no-nonsense Shift Leader Hugo Valerendez boomed down to them from the site office at the top of the rocky gradient behind them.
- What the fucking hell are you two sad-acts playing at? Get your immature backsides up here pronto. We’ve got issues of gargantuan proportions developing here.
The two men helped each other to their feet.
The site office was a tight squeeze on a normal day for Valerendez, his desk and his ever-growing library of arch-lever files. With 15 men now jostling for space and impatiently awaiting unknown news, the room was now at bursting point. The anxiety and curiosity amongst the workers was so real that Lionel thought he could feel it polluting his nostrils as he and Andrea squeezed themselves into a barely available cranny on the left flank of the office. More likely however, his nose was experiencing an onslaught of 15 different kinds of body odour, all with the sickly sweet fragrance of a hard day’s work in common. The room hummed with heat and emotion as the jumbled conversations hit a peak, then lagged into relative silence as Valarendez bustled through the crowd to take his post at the front of the room.
- Men!
Everyone in the room conducted their own personal micro-analysis of this first word to leave Valerendez’s mouth; analysing tone, pitch and accompanying facial expression in an attempt to forecast the nature of what would follow. They needn’t have bothered, as the Shift Leader soon rattled into the rest of his delivery.
- About an hour ago, I received a report of a visual account of slight liquid seepage from the south-west perimeter. Since then, site investigation and liquid behaviour analysis have confirmed that there are 3 related fractures in the dyke perimeter of the tailings pond. Each fracture is growing at a rate of around 500% each hour. Without remedial action, total collapse of this section of the perimeter is around 80 minutes away.
The congregation didn’t gasp collectively, nor were there whispers of worried conversation. The room held a strong silence that spoke of the men’s readiness for this type of situation rather than any kind of collective shock. They had drilled this scenario regularly and each was well educated in the lurking layers of danger that lay beneath the work that they did. In this small, clammy office stood the dream team to deal with this exact kind of emergency.
- Men! Disaster recovery protocol 1.A is now in force. You know what you have to do.
1.A was the primary response protocol to any real degree of risk of the blue sludge escaping the tailings pond and engulfing Ducie. Each man had an assigned role. Lionel would man the bulldozer, which would dump rock and soil around the fracture as a first line of defense. The pressure of 300,000 litres of water seeking its lowest available level however, would not be curtailed by rock and soil alone. The materials Lionel deposited would merely stem the tide, whilst 7 other workers constructed a permanent concrete solution behind him.
Andrea took his place on top of the dyke embankment, where he would orchestrate proceedings like a concert conductor drawing exquisite sounds from the talented musicians below him. The sound of Lionel's bulldozer was not exquisite and it was not music, but Andrea conducted him anyway.
- You've got to come in from an angle pal. You're too straight on! Veer out to the left a little when you reverse.
Lionel was usually a cool customer and a competent operator of the bulky, offensive machinery on which he sat, but the pressure of an emergency situation seemed to make the bulldozer louder, his face become hotter and Andrea's bellowed instructions grate more and more on his ever fraying nerves.
- Do you want to get down off your little perch and come drive this frigging thing then? It's a bulldozer, not a kid's tricycle! I can't make it jump through hoops like you're asking me to.
As uncharacteristic an outburst as this was for Lionel, most of its pungency was swallowed up in the din of clanking machinery and bellowing workmen.
Andrea, oblivious to Lionel's frustrations, had now turned to the right and was barking orders at 3 men trying to navigate a cement mixer into position.
- Woah! Woah! No more! We're trying to patch up a crack here, not build a fucking sand castle! It shouldn't take all 3 of you.
You'd be forgiven for thinking Andrea ran the shift. He didn't! Somehow his assigned position on top of a lofty embankment seemed to give him a self-imposed reign of authority. As if being physically higher than the others made him superior. It didn't!
One of the men retorted.
- How about you get the fuck down here and give us a hand Andrea?
- I'm up here for a reason. Reason being so I have a bird's eye view of you failing to do basic crap properly.
- Well you come and do it then if.... Woah! Andrea! Pal!
Whilst Andrea's back had been turned, Lionel hadn't hung around and waited for directions. With a steel plate full of rock and soil, he drove the bulldozer towards the embankment, thudding the heavy load against the already fragile perimeter with way more force than he'd intended. It wasn't enough to cause it to collapse completely, but the resulting tremor rocked the precarious ground upon which his good friend Andrea stood...
By 5pm, the operation to seal the crack in the dyke perimeter was a success, and Ducie was spared the unthinkable onslaught of the blue sludge.
The 15 men involved were all heroes.
14 of them would later return to receive praise and recognition from King Eduardo for their efforts.
Andrea Fuentes lay dead at the bottom of the tailings pond.