The air was blasted out of the underground chamber with the bone-shaking force of an explosive blast.
The sky excess pressure slammed Len deep into the crevice of the check nook. He drove the breath from his lungs in a ragged gasp that left his chest burning. The cedar splints on his left forearm creaked under the pressure as the shock wave flattened him against the weeping bedrock. A blinding storm of turquoise sparks erupted across the water chute as the steel guide-shoes on the edges of the dark rock gate ground into the iron wall-tracks, stripping out three-quarter-inch rivets like dry pine needles.
BOOM.
The bottom chisel edge of the five-ton gate struck the dressed granite doorstep with a shattering, earth-shaking impact that shook through eighty feet of solid bedrock.
The sound was not a metal clang. It was a deep, bone-shaking thunderclap that cracked the floor plates of the sump. Then it sent a geyser of crushed slurry, black water, and limestone gravel forty feet into the air. The bedrock beneath Len’s boots heaved upward two inches, the shock wave rattling his teeth and making his bruised ribs throb with nauseating fire. Overhead, loose shale and century-old mortar rained down from the ceiling in a choking cloud of white dust that coated his hair and filled his throat with the taste of burnt lime.
