flag on his shirtsleeve as he works on the Plan B drill, and sometimes he wears a cloth that protrudes from the back of his white Layne Christensen helmet. Almost always, he drills with one foot on the rig, and one day the minister of mining asks why. Drilling is “a feel,” Hart explains. “You have to actually be standing on the rig so you can feel what’s going on.” Down below, metal is rubbing and pounding against rock, and the friction is transmitted up the shaft, where Hart and his foot take note of “good vibrations” and “bad vibrations” coming from the rig. “That’s how you know your bits are coming apart, or if their cutting edge is actually gone,” he says. The Americans are all the more vigilant because the rock here at the San José Mine is harder than they expected. As the drilling for the final stage of the Plan B shaft goes deeper, they have to stop and change bits every 10 or 20 meters or so. “It started to get very nerve-racking, because it got very sticky,”
