Richard and Rig sat, hidden behind a pile of rock and dirt, looking over the milling pit of activity before them. There were hundreds of Diamond dogs scattered around the old mining site. The only was to describe an open pit mine, is a hole in the ground. A 2 foot wide spiral wound itself up from the floor of the hole all the way to the top. Thousands of years ago this would have been the road the HUGE mining trucks used to move the iron ore from its resting place at the bottom. Over the years the wind and rain had worn the rock ledge so much that is was only a few feet wide now, a foot path more or less. If you squinted enough you could see the extremely rusted hulks of steel that once were cranes, loaders, and dump trucks from yesteryear. You would have thought that the iron hungry Diamond dogs would have cut them to pieces by now right? Wrong. Everything about those machines was heavy. You needed a crane and a massive loader to change ONE tire. Just one. Richard just sat there with his thinking face plastered on. He was thinking of how to get their two clumsy hides into the fortified mine at the bottom.
Rich looked to his cohort, "Well Rig, you got any ideas?"
The pony put a hoof to his chin in thought, "Well, I say we try and use crates of old explosives to our advantage. There is one to the extreme right and one halfway up the side of the wall. You can use the bottom one to distract them and then set off the other, creating a rock slide and burying them all under it."
The human looked at the pony with an astonished look on his face, "I think your right." replied Richard as he started to feed cartridges into his Henry .44. As he fed the last one in he shouldered it and fired at a seemingly harmless crate of ancient Dynamite near the extreme right side of the mine. There was a second crate about halfway up the side of the pit, ready to be set off.
The dogs, frightened by the explosion, all ran towards the site. They all looked at the crater with confused looks on their faces, like they had ever seen a crate of TNT explode. Stupid dogs...
Richard took aim and again fired at the other crate. Over the years, the walls had become extremely unstable, making for the perfect chance to cause a rock slide. The explosion vibrated the wall enough to send a couple rocks down, but not the entire wall. The dogs looked around to see the source but came up with nothing and resorted back to the investigation.
Rigs face twisted in anger and was about to yell out before Richard stopped him, "Just wait for it..."
Rig looked at his boss and calmed down slightly. Just then the ground shook violently, causing the engineer to grin with satisfaction. Rocks and rubble started to fall from the side, crushing the unsuspecting dogs underneath. It was quite a sight to say the least. Boulders millions of years old tumbled down and smashed into a group of cowering miners and converted them into pancakes. Soon the once hundreds of dogs outside the mine had been turned into 3 lone wolfs, running for the mouth of the mine, their tails between their legs.
Seeing their chance,Richard and Rig took off down the slope towards the bottom. The human soon lost his footing and tumbled down, head over heels towards the hard bottom. His face slammed into the shale floor with a solid smack and just laid their, still as a rock. Rig galloped down after his boss and stared at the limp body before him.
"This cant be good." The pony muttered to himself, "Hey boss! wakey wakey!" he prodded the human with a hoof.
"Eh... 5 more minutes..." sighed Richard, batting the hoof away. Rig rolled his eyes and poked him again. "Ugh! Fine, Ill get up!"
The lumbering, and slightly confused, human stood up to his full height and glanced around. He found their pack of food stuffs and swung it over his shoulder, but something was missing.
"Where is it?" he asked Rig
The stallion looked at him, "Where is what?"
"The rifle." Richard said flatly
The pony pointed a grey hoof in the direction of said gun. The brass casing sparkled in the sunlight, indicating its location. With a huff of annoyance, Richard strode towards the rifle, snatched it up and swung it around his shoulder along with the pack. Nodding to Rig they made their way to the opening of the mine. Just as they got to the entrance they could hear howls and barks. They scampered into the mouth and hid behind a wooden pillar just as a brigade of dogs marched past them. The demo man and pony looked at each other and wiped the sweat from their brows in relief.
Now it was time to make their way to the main cavern, 100 feet below from what their sources told them. Slowly they moved from rock to rock and pillar to pillar, trying to keep out of sight of the extremely vigilant guard dogs scattered through out the mine. Most had weird metal helmets atop their heads, that covered their eyes for some odd reason. Richard looked at one for a few seconds before ducking back behind the rock.
"Rig, you think they got echo location somehow? You know, like bats?" inquired the engineer
Rig took the chance to take a look for himself and came back down with a 'thinking face' on. "You know, I think your right. Other wise they would just bump into each other. It could be because they are always down in these mines."
"So like termites. They cant see at all. In fact, I don't think they even have eyes anymore. The dogs up on the surface have eyes though, and don't wear the helmets."
"From what I can tell," Started the grey earth pony, "the ones up top are the managers. The ones down here are the grunt workers, never really getting out into the sun light."
"Little observations aside, I think the hall that that big one is guarding is the main hall to the cavern." observed Richard, pointing to the oil in the wall with dirt covered hands.
"Lead the way then." replied Rig
Richard grabbed a duffel bag from the pony's back and dug his hands inside. When he pulled them out a large cloth covered a long object. When it was unwrapped it was found to be a gun. But not just any gun, and tranquilizer gun, complete with elephant darts. Richard smirked at the confused earth pony. Rig thought it was a real gun, one that went BANG! when it was fired. The human opened the firing chamber and slid in a dart. He snapped it shut, shouldered it, aimed and fired in one smooth motion. It was near noiseless and the dog went down right when the dark hit. It rolled around on the rock floor for a few seconds before being knocked out cold by the tranquilizers that were injected in to its blood stream moments ago. The obstical taken out, the pair proceeded to their destination. 500 feet and a couple close calls later they walked out into the MASSIVE underground mine. It was nearly a half a mile across the bottom but as it went up it turned into a cone, making a rounded point at the top. Made up of about 100 floors, with Richard and Rig being on the 3rd from the top. Each floor had around 100 or so tunnels that had been drilled into the walls, excavating out as much rock and minerals as possible while still being structurally sound. Large lodge pole pine trees, debarked and nearly 8 feet across had been dropped in from the top to act as supports for the very top. With about 20 jutting up from the bottom, they shot up and were cabled to the roof. Their engineering was a wonderful sight to Richard, but sadly, it would all have to be ended if they were to achieve their goal.
"Woah..." was all Richard could say.
Rig just stared into the huge space between them and the floor below. Luckily the crew of demo beings had ended up on the 3rd floor, the floor were the poles came right up through the middle of the floor. It would be easy for them to blow the thing up.
Rig and Richard slowly made their way to the first pillar. They strapped the Dynamite and the C4 just above the floor and covered them up with dirt, not before inserting the detonator first though. These detonators were powerful transmitters that could beam through rock and dirt with very little power being used. Quite the innovative device it was. Made demolishing stuff easy to say the least.
it took about 2 hours to get the explosives strapped down and hidden and once it was done, the 2 infiltrators quickly fled the arena of pending destruction. They dodged guards and sentries, hid behind rocks and boulders. They did just about everything they could think of to keep just out of the dogs vision. It took them 2 MORE hours just to get to the rim of the old pit mine, Once there they hid behind a pile of over Burden and panted from the strenuous climb.
"Ready Rig?" sighed Richard, still trying to catch his breath
"Ready when you are Boss." replied the demo pony
The human reached into his pockets, looking for the detonator. He began to panic when it wasn't in his right front pants pocket. He frantically searched each and every pocket, sweating as he went. Rig noticed his companions panicking and chuckled, prodding him with a hoof.
"WHAT!?!?!" yelled Richard in frustration
"Ah, the detonator is still in the pack..." he said, pointing to the saddlebags
With a deadpanned face expression, Rich reached into the bag and pulled out the red button of death.
"Heh, here it is." he pointed to the button, getting a facehoof from Rig in return.
Richard just stared at the button in his hands.
"So you gonna just sit there and stare at it, or are ya gonna press the damn thing and get this over with?" commented the pony sarcastically
With a sheepish expression, the human flipped open the safety lid and counted down.
"10... 9... 8... 7..."
"WILL YOU JUST PRESS THE DAMN BUTTON!"
*click*
*BOOOOOOOOMMMM!!!!!!!!!*
Half the pit caved in on itself and into a hole that wasn't there before. Rocks and boulders clattered around, hitting the stray dogs on their way into the depths of the earth. What had once been a giant, circular hole in the ground was now an oval, since half of the one wall had filled in the cavern, suffocating the dogs within...
_________________________
Authors note:Damn it, almost made it to 2000 words. Well, here it is, the next to the last chapter.