When The Green Man's Away, 10. Trouble at the Pit.

The Llancorwenidris coal mine was located in a remote spot, not a house for miles. I let Samantha out of her basket and got out of the car. The two of us moved silently through the blasted landscape towards the ruins of the pit-head. The huge steel frame of the winding-gear loomed over us menacingly.
"Stay here and watch," I told Samantha. "I'm going in."
I ran across the open, exposed ground by the pithead, into the derelict building.
I don't make a habit of wandering around derelict Welsh coal-mines (I have better things to do with my life), but I've been in a few, and this one looked much like the others. Everthing was wrecked. The casual observer would have assumed that this building was indeed abandoned.
Not me. The other three I've been to were also being used as hide-outs by baddies, and I knew that the real base was probably underground, excavated inside the coalmine itself.
I moved through damp, rotting passages, into a large room filled with decaying equipment. A small railway ran inside the building, used for hauling coal-trucks from the mine. The rusty iron trucks made good cover for a slim grey figure who moved quickly through the space.
Somehow, I had to get down the mine-shaft.
Crack!
I heard the pistol-shot and rolled under the truck. Now, I don't actually carry a gun (they're nasty things that make a loud noise and kill people), so all I could do was take cover. I looked around the huge space, trying to see where the gunman was. There were catwalks high above me, and he might have been on any one of them.
Carefully, I picked up a lump of coal and threw it. As I hoped the gunman fired, disclosing his position.
I acted at once, pulling my bullwhip from my belt. With one crack of the whip I tore the pistol from his hand, and then, wrapping the whip around a steel girder, I swung up onto the catwalk to fight the man.
As I expected, he had a knife. One kick disposed of that, and then he was unarmed.
But he was still larger than me, and he thought to use that against me. The guard rushed me, and I neatly sidestepped.
But the plank under me was rotten. It gave way, and I fell into a coal-truck. My opponent jumped after me, and as he landed the truck started to move.
As we fought it gathered speed. Heading, I realised, towards the mineshaft. If that was open, it would be a very nasty experience.
I punched the man in the jaw. He tred to hit me, but I dodged and he slammed his fist into the iron of the truck. While he was swearing I knocked him out with a Karate-chop to the neck.
Quickly I jumped to my feet - but not quickly enough, for as I did so the mine-truck careered over the edge of the pit, and fell into the deep shaft below.