Fire Down Below 1997

Nestled in the peaceful Appalachian hills of eastern Kentucky, a quiet environmental crisis unfolds as toxins are dumped into abandoned mines, threatening the land and the people who depend on it. EPA CID agent Jack Taggert is sent to investigate after his friend and partner, Frank Elkins, is found dead, a death that seems likely not to be an accident. The investigation is sparked by an anonymous tip from Jackson, Kentucky, and Taggert goes undercover to follow the trail.

The investigation centers on the Orin Hanner Sr.-owned Hanner Coal Company, which is shown to be paid to dump toxic waste into an abandoned mine shaft. Taggert’s cover places him in Jackson as an assistant and volunteer carpenter for a local church, where he lives in a room in the church basement and begins his work by repairing a roof on a house where a child suffers from the pollution. He probes the community, asking questions that rarely yield answers, and the locals give him little information. Even the man who tipped off the EPA remains unusually taciturn. While testing the water, Taggert wanders into a marijuana field and is briefly confronted by its growers; after disarming them, he makes it clear he has no interest in arresting them.

The men behind Elkins’ death quickly notice the outsider in town. As a new face, Taggert is targeted by Orin Jr. (Brad Hunt), the corrupt sheriff Lloyd Foley, and a cadre of hired thugs. The first clashes are brutal: rattlesnakes are left in Taggert’s dwelling, which he answers by capturing the snakes and leaving them in the thugs’ pickup, triggering a crash. A later ambush leaves him battered after five attackers strike, and an attempted “accident”—orchestrated by Orin Jr.—claims the life of a truck driver who drives Taggert off the road into an open-pit mine.

Amid the danger, Taggert forms a fragile bond with Sarah Kellogg, a young woman who is treated as an outcast because of her father’s murder. Sarah Kellogg eventually agrees to testify against Orin and his people, though her estranged brother Earl resents the idea because he was responsible for the crime and had abused their sister. Earl, who works as one of Hanner’s enforcers, sets the church on fire, killing the preacher who had been helping Taggert, and then tries to topple the mine to trap Taggert inside. Taggert survives the assault, and several of Earl’s mercenaries are killed in the ensuing chaos.

With a solid evidence trail and a key witness, Taggert attempts to place Sarah under protective custody with the FBI. But the FBI in this story proves corrupt, and a firefight erupts. Taggert kills one agent and sends the other back to Orin with a threatening message. Although Orin is arrested and charged, he receives only a slap on the wrist for environmental violations, leaving Taggert wary but undeterred. He returns to Jackson to press the case, forcing Orin Jr.’s henchmen to fall back as the truth about racketeering, conspiracy, and murder starts to surface.

In a climactic sequence, Taggert travels to a casino to bring Orin Sr. to justice. Hearing of the reception awaiting him in federal prison, Orin Sr. resists, but Taggert shoots him in the shoulder and he is taken into custody. The pursuit ends with a sense of closure as Taggert makes his way back to Jackson and is reunited with Sarah, cementing a hard-won victory against a powerful corrupt network.