the time he reached the 800 level, his knee was locked in pain, his fingers dead. He suffered from white hand—the nerves in his hands permanently damaged from the constant vibration of the heavy pneumatic jackleg drill that shuddered daily through his body as he drove blast holes into rock.
Miners got cold, they got wet and they got old as they toiled in perpetual blackness, forcing tunnels deeper and deeper into the bowels of the earth to extract ore that would be turned into bright, gleaming gold. And he was no different—his body just as battered.
Dragging his left leg now, he made his way to the scoop tram shop. He was edgy. Even at this hour, someone could be in this part of the mine. He took a tram and drove it along the tunnel to the powder magazine. Breathing hard, he worked quickly to load two bags of explosives, a couple of powder sticks, detonator caps, B-line.
By 5:02 a.m. he was tackling the knee-grinding, lung-busting seventy-story ascent to the earth’s surface. He exited the shaft at the deserted Sodwana headframe, three miles away from the main gates of the Tolkin Mine, limbs shaking. Waiting for him in cold predawn shadows was a friend with a hard shot of whiskey and a ride back into town.
At 6:33 a.m., on that bleak Alaskan morning, a man-car loaded with twelve miners trundled and screeched along the black drift eight hundred feet below ground. The men—all from the small town of Safe Harbor—huddled facing each other, knees touching, clutching thermoses and lunch pails as they made their way to their workstations for the day.
The beam from the headlamp of the man sitting in front lit the rail ahead. He spun around suddenly, terror on his face as he tried to shout a warning.
But it was too late.
The blast was massive, rocking the ground above, registering on sensitive seismic monitoring equipment as far away as the university in Anchorage.
The first external agency to be notified of an unexplained explosion in the bowels of Tolkin Mine was the Safe Harbor Fire Department. Seconds later Safe Harbor Hospital was on high alert for possible mass casualties, and frantic calls were going out for all available doctors to be on standby. These calls were picked up on home scanners, the news rippling like brushfire through the small, close-knit community. Family members hysterical with worry converged on the mine site.
Adam Rutledge, head of mine rescue and the shop steward for the local miners’ union, scrambled into his Draegers—mine rescue gear complete with breathing apparatus. He hurriedly contacted the members of his volunteer team.
When they reached the mine, acrid black smoke was billowing out from D-shaft and the extraction vents. At this point, no one aboveground knew what had happened eight hundred feet below. Snowflakes began to crystallize in the frigid air and a group of women shivered together against a biting wind, not knowing if their men were alive, injured or dead.
Among them was Mary O’Donnell, clutching the hand of her nine-year-old daughter, Muirinn.
Muirinn watched the rescuers tumble out of a bright yellow bus in their Draegers, led by their neighbor, Adam Rutledge—her friend Jett’s father.
But a police officer flanked by burly mine security men stopped Adam and his crew at the gate. One had a gun. Angry voices carried on snatches of wind as Adam clashed with the police. A German shepherd strained against his leash, barking and baring teeth at Adam. The cop then drew his gun. Adam raised both hands, backing off. Swearing.
Muirinn grew very scared.
She knew the whole town was at war over the big mine strike, neighbors pitted against neighbors, family members against each other. That’s why all the police and security men were here. Still, she didn’t understand why they wouldn’t let Mr. Rutledge and the mine rescue team in—her dad was down there.
Desperation squeezed the nine-year-old’s heart.
Snow swirled thicker. Temperatures dropped.
Slowly, miners began to emerge from the earth, blackened with soot, choking from emergency stench gas released by management into the tunnels to warn them out of the mine. Muirinn and her mother stood alone as other families were reunited all around them. A few women started to sob. Their men hadn’t come up yet, either.
Then Safe Harbor Police Chief Bill Moran came striding through the snow toward Muirinn and her mother, flakes settling thick on the wide brim of his hat.
When she saw the look in his eyes, Muirinn knew her daddy was never coming back.
By late afternoon, Chief Moran had examined the scene and learned of the two bags of explosives missing from the powder magazine. Positive he was now dealing with a mass homicide investigation, he’d contacted the FBI field office in Anchorage, and Tolkin Mine was locked down as they waited for the postblast team. But the spring snowstorm had other ideas. It barreled in and powered down with a vengeance, unleashing blizzardforce winds on Safe Harbor, cutting off access to the remote Alaskan coastal community. The FBI team was unable to land in Safe Harbor for a full forty-eight hours. The television crews came shortly after, filling the few hotels and restaurants in the tiny mining town. As the story of mass murder in the North broke, it rippled across television screens south of the 49th.
Three months later, Muirinn stood beside a hospital bed, tears streaming down her face. Sheer grief had stolen her mother’s life.
Muirinn was taken home to be raised by her grandfather, Gus O’Donnell, her last living relative.
Someone had planted a bomb that had killed Muirinn’s father, taken her mother, and changed her life forever.
And the police never found him.
The heinous secret remained buried deep in the abandoned black tunnels of Tolkin Mine. And a mass murderer still walked among the villagers of Safe Harbor.
Twenty years later
The wings banked as the pilot began a steep descent into an amphitheater of shimmering glacial peaks at the head of Safe Harbor Inlet, a small and isolated community that clung to a rugged coastline hundreds of miles west of Anchorage.
When Muirinn O’Donnell fled this place eleven years ago, those granite mountains had been a barrier to the rest of the world, a rock and ice prison she’d sought desperately to escape. Now they were simply beautiful.
Pontoons slapped water, and the tiny yellow plane squatted down into a churning white froth as the engines slowed to a growl. The pilot taxied toward a bobbing float plane dock.
She was back, the prodigal daughter returned—almost seven months’ pregnant, and feeling so incredibly alone.
Muirinn clasped the tiny whalebone compass on a small chain around her neck, drawing comfort from the way it warmed against her palm. Her grandfather, Gus O’Donnell, had left her the small compass, along with everything else he owned, including the house at Mermaid’s Cove and Safe Harbor Publishing, his newspaper business.
His death had come as a terrible shock.
Muirinn had been on assignment in the remote jungles of West Papua for the magazine Wild Spaces when Gus’s body had been found down a shaft at the abandoned Tolkin Mine, a full thirteen days
