17
THE RUMBLING IN THE
DEPTHS shook the Grouper. Sliding rock
and sediment from the slope that the Kinjara
Maru sat on was tumbling down at an accelerating pace,
released by the exploding torpedoes.
As the avalanche came
on, it forced the water out of its way, creating its own current
and stirring up the sediment. Clouds of silt engulfed them, lit up
by the submersible’s lights. The world outside the view port became
a swirl of brown and gray.
“Get us out of here,”
Gamay shouted.
Paul intended to do
just that, but whatever vessel had fired the torpedoes at them was
probably still waiting out there. And, in all honesty, being blown
to bits seemed just as ghastly as getting buried
alive.
He flipped the
ballast switch and dumped the rest of the iron that held them down.
He pushed the throttle back to full and angled the nose of the
Grouper upward, but the Grouper was too underpowered to overcome such a
current, and it banged against the Kinjara
Maru’s hull once again.
Gamay put her hand on
his arm as they began to rise. Then suddenly they were yanked to a
stop.
“We’re caught on
something,” Gamay said, craning her head around, desperately trying
to see what it might be.
Paul threw the motor
into reverse, backed up for a few feet, and then went forward at a
different angle. Same result: a steady acceleration followed by
sudden stop that twisted the Grouper
around like a dog being yanked backward on its leash.
Through the dust and
silt Paul could see items tumbling across the deck and bits of the
Kinjara’s superstructure being torn
away. The rumbling sound reached a deafening pitch.
A wave of thicker
sediment hit the sub, and all went dark. Something metallic
snapped, and then the Grouper started
to tumble.
Gamay’s visor and a
couple of other items slid to one side and then toppled over and up
the wall and then onto the ceiling. Paul held on but saw his wife
was unable to brace herself. She hit the side wall and then banged
against the ceiling two feet above them and then came back
down.
He realized they’d
rolled over, becoming momentarily inverted. He reached out, pulling
Gamay to him.
“Hold on to me,” he
shouted.
She wrapped her arms
around him as they continued to bang and twist at the mercy of the
current and the landslide. Something slammed against the view port
for a second, racing out of the murky water, hitting it hard, and
then being swept away. The lights failed, and the wrenching sound
of something being torn off the outside of the Grouper ended with a snap.
And then it
stopped.
The rumbling sound
continued for another minute or so, dissipating into the distance
like a herd of buffalo had stampeded past.
Paul held his breath.
Amazingly, incredibly, they were still alive.
In the darkness, he
felt his wife breathing hard. His own heart pounded, and his body
prickled with adrenaline. Neither of them said a word, as if the
mere sound of their voices might set off another landslide. But
after a full minute of silence, and no further sounds of danger,
Paul felt his wife move.
She looked up at him
through the dim illumination of the emergency lighting, She
appeared as surprised to be alive as he was.
“Any leaks?” she
asked.
He looked around.
“Nothing up here.”
She eased off him.
“When we get home, I’m finding out who built this thing and I’m
buying him a bottle of scotch.”
He laughed. “A bottle
of scotch? I might put his kids through college if he has
any.”
She laughed
too.
As Gamay moved back,
Paul eased over to the control panel. They were obviously resting
at an odd angle, maybe forty-five degrees nose down, and rolled
over thirty degrees or so.
“The main power is
out,” he said. “But the batteries look fine.”
“See if you can get
them back online,” she said, pulling on the headset that their
tumble had ripped off.
Paul went through the
restart, got most of the systems back online, and then rerouted the
lights through the backup line. The lights came back on. “Let’s see
if we can—”
He stopped
midsentence. Gamay was staring past him, a hollow look in her eyes.
He turned.
Packed sediment had
pressed itself against the glass of the view port. It looked almost
like a sand painting, with a few swirls and
striations.
“We’re buried,” Gamay
whispered. “That’s why it got so quiet all of a sudden. We’re
buried alive.”