Read Online Digging Deeper: An Adventure Novel (Sam Harris Series Book 1) by PJ Skinner - Free Book Online Page B

it wasn’t being used.  Since she did not need to handle the acid, she kept her worries to herself.
    The constant threat from landmines had lowered people’s sensitivity to fear and HF was not considered very dangerous in comparison with the chances of being blown up.  She suspected that people would sneer at her if she voiced an opinion, so she swallowed her objections.  The idea of Brian Lynch getting a nasty burn was not such a bad option.
    Black had told Sam in their meeting in Johannesburg that she could run the mining operations when Jim went away on leave for a month.  She knew that she had to be ready to take over the operation by then.  Jim had been generous with his technical information and she absorbed every detail.  If she worked hard enough, the barriers that had been erected to her entry to the management team should begin to crumble.
    The heat and dust was now just background and she was even beginning to feel at home in Kardo.  She hoped Mondongo was as welcoming when she returned there.  She fancied a long flirty lunch with Pedro.
    Sam was woken up before dawn the next morning by a loud bang somewhere in the house.  Her heart thundered.  She grabbed her emergency rucksack from beside the bed.   If it was an attack, she was supposed to wait for Frik, the security guard, and to run off into the bush and hide with him for a couple of days to avoid being raped or murdered by MARFO forces.  She felt sure that she would get eaten by a crocodile before she was rescued, but, nevertheless, she prepared an emergency rucksack just in case.
    She calmed down a bit and listened carefully but could not hear anything except for a strange banging coming from inside the house.  She sat on the bed, forcing herself to be logical.  The sound was coming from the kitchen or maybe the laundry room.  Why would someone be thrashing about in the laundry room?  There was nothing to steal there.  Despite her terror, she forced herself to go and look.  She switched the light on in the kitchen and shoved the laundry room door open.  The main pipe from the outside water tank to the laundry had burst free from its bindings and was swinging around in a circle bashing the washing machine and walls and filling the utility room with water.  She ran around looking for the key to open the padlock to the back door.  Wrenching it open, she let all the water rush out into the dust.
    The pipe was still spraying gallons of water all over the electric circuits of the hot water tank, washing machine and pump.  She hoped that they would short, which they did at the slightest excuse. But when she wanted something to happen, it invariably did not.  She tried to re-attach the pipe and was saturated with cold water.  Then she spotted the switch for the water pump.  Praying not to get an electric shock, she pushed the switch.  Nothing.  Again.  Nothing.  She grabbed a big piece of wood and poked the switch box hard.  No result.
    She knew she could not leave the water running all night, so she threw on some clothes.  After negotiating the padlock, she ran out into the road.  There was no way she could contact someone in the camp.  Despite being senior management, Sam had not yet been allocated a radio because they were in short supply and she always drove around with one of the senior team who all had radios.  The internal phone service did not work and looked like it had not worked for years.  She realised then that she had no idea where anyone lived.  They disappeared from the office at the end of the day or went to the bar beside the canteen.  Apart from Jim and Jorge, who was nice to everyone, no one had shown the slightest interest in working with her or talking to her. 
    She ran to the prefabricated house where the Filipino technicians lived at the back of the canteen, ringing the doorbells of several houses on the way that went unanswered.  She found two nonchalant Tamazian security guards having a cigarette on