Trapped

First part of this engaging narrative here. And here's the second from Neil Swidey: Dave Riggs wanted to do the right thing. But can something be right if it's likely to leave you dead? "We need to go!" he shouted through his face mask.

Riggs was one of three commercial divers stranded near the end of a pitch-black, oxygen-deficient tunnel, hundreds of feet below the ocean floor, more than 9 miles from shore. They had just backtracked 1,200 feet along slippery terrain to get from the very end of the tunnel to their Humvee, only to make a crushing discovery about the two other divers on their team. Tim Nordeen was slumped over in the driver's seat of the Humvee, while Billy Juse was lying just outside the passenger's side, his legs under the vehicle and his torso pinned in the narrow space between the door and the tunnel's side wall.

Riggs assumed Tim and Billy had been felled by the mixed-gas breathing system they'd been given for their high-stakes journey into the earth on July 21, 1999. It's the same system that he, DJ Gillis, and Donald "Hoss" Hosford had been breathing off while they were at the end of the empty tunnel, removing safety plugs so the Deer Island sewage treatment process could finally work. They'd survived, thanks to Hoss's quick instincts back there, switching them to their emergency high-pressure air at the first sign of trouble. Still, their prospects for making it out of the tunnel alive were dwindling fast.