22
PAUL AND GAMAY were
rising fast in the Grouper. With all
the ballast dumped on the bottom of the ocean, the sub’s nose
pointed upward, and, the electric motor churning at full power,
they rose at nearly three hundred feet a minute.
As the depth
decreased, the pressure decreased. But twenty minutes into the
climb they were still ten thousand feet below the surface, and the
steady flow of water was increasing.
“The weakest part of
the hull is the flange,” Paul shouted, noticing that the water was
flowing in where the two sections of the submarine had been joined
together like lengths of pipe.
“We have clamps, we
can help seal it,” Gamay shouted back.
Paul reached over to
the wall and tore down a Velcro-latched covering. Behind it was a
set of tools that the sub’s designers thought might be useful to
its occupants. Included in that package were four clamps. Large,
sturdy, and designed to fit the particulars of the Grouper, they were not that much different from a
standard screw clamp that one might have on a workbench at home
except they worked on a ratchet system like a jack used to lift up
a car. Apparently, whoever had designed the boat realized the
flange between the two halves of the sub was the weakest
part.
Paul ripped down one
of the clamps and handed it to Gamay; he was too big to turn around
and get back there to help her.
“You’ll find a spot
on the flange with a notch in it, like the notch under a car for
the jack. Slip the clamp on there. Once you get it locked, give it
everything you’ve got to wrench it down. Then I’ll hand you another
one.”
She nodded and took
the clamp. Running her hand along the flange, she located the
notch, lined the clamp up, and began to tighten it.
“Should I leave a
little play, like when we do the lug nuts on the tires?” she
asked.
“No,” he said. “Slam
that sucker down as hard as you can.”
As Gamay worked, Paul
sensed the Grouper rolling a bit. He
glanced back at the control panel. They were still angled up at
thirty-five degrees, but the sub was yawing to the right. He
figured one of the control fins had been damaged and bent. He
corrected their alignment and glanced back at Gamay.
He could see the
strain on her face as she worked to get one final click on the
first clamp.
“How are we
doing?”
She slammed the
handle home. “I think that one’s done.”
He looked over at the
leak. It hadn’t stopped. If anything, it was a little worse.
Looking past her, he could see water pooling at the tail end of the
sub, maybe a gallon or two.
He grabbed another
clamp as they passed nine thousand feet. “Here,” he said. “Hit the
other side of the leak next.”
KURT AUSTIN FELL in
what seemed like slow motion to him.
He’d seen the pipe
coming his way. And from the corner of his eye he’d caught sight of
a burly man swinging it like an amateur ball player, using a big
wide arc, a slower swing than it could have been.
He’d been able to
react fast enough to flinch and harden his body against the blow,
but not enough to dodge it.
As he doubled over,
most of his mind focused on the intense pain across his abdomen,
with just enough left over to hear Katarina scream and to realize
the next blow would likely cave his head in.
Even as his knees hit
the ground he flew into action.
He saw legs and
lunged for them, pushing hard off the ground and driving his
shoulder into the man’s knee.
The joint
hyperextended backward and gave out with a sickening snap. The thug
let out a shout and fell backward. Kurt climbed onto him and
slammed his fist into the man’s face, exploding his nose in a spray
of blood.
A second shot
shattered a cheekbone or an eye socket, and the man’s head snapped
sideways, unmoving.
Whether he was dead
or just unconscious, Kurt didn’t know or honestly care. He had
bigger things to deal with, mainly a second thug that had jumped on
his back and now had him in a sleeper hold.
“Get out of here,” he
shouted in a raspy tone to Katarina.
He tried to pull the
man’s arm loose, a natural reaction that was impossible to
accomplish under the best of circumstances. In this case, with his
abs screaming from the impact of the pipe, Kurt had no power or
leverage, and the man knew it.
The arms tightened,
cutting off the blood supply to Kurt’s brain.
Gasping for air, Kurt
rolled and tried to slam the man against a van parked beside them.
He pushed back and felt the impact. He did it again, but far weaker
this time, and the man didn’t let go.
He groped around for
a weapon of any kind, a rock or a stick. Then suddenly he heard a
dull thud, and the man’s grip weakened. Kurt sucked in a breath of
air as a second thud followed, and the man sloughed off him like a
dead vine falling from a tree.
He tried to turn but
couldn’t, tried to stand but couldn’t do that either. He could only
squat there on the parking lot’s black surface. He felt hands
grasping his arm, small hands but with a firm grip. They pulled him
up, helping him to his feet.
“Put your arm over
me,” Katarina said.
He threw his arm over
her shoulder despite the pain it caused him. Leaning on her, they
hobbled across the parking lot and made it to the small car. He
just about fell into the passenger seat as she ran around to the
driver’s side.
She opened the door,
tossed the pipe she’d grabbed from the first assailant into the
back, and climbed into the driver’s seat
The small engine came
to life with a quick turn of the key, and seconds later they were
speeding out of the parking lot onto the twisting mountain
road.
Unseen by either of
them, two Audis snapped on their headlights and turned to
follow.
GAMAY HAD WRENCHED
the third clamp into place and tightened it down with all the
strength in her lithe body. Breathing hard, with the muscles in her
arms burning, she glanced at the seam through which the water was
forcing itself. The leak had slowed back to a trickle for a while
but had now increased again and was becoming a continuous
flow.
“Give me the last
one,” she shouted to Paul. She hoped it would make a difference.
She hoped that four clamps, a couple hundred extra pounds of force
holding the seam together, would be enough to offset the thousands
of pounds of pressure trying to force its way inside the
Grouper.
“Here,” Paul said as
he handed her the last of the clamps.
She found the fourth
notch and slotted the clamp into place. “What’s our
depth?”
“Four thousand feet,”
he said.
She began pumping the
lever. The arms on the clamp closed on the flange and locked, each
additional pump getting harder until she could barely move the
lever.
She let out a primal
grunt as she gave the last push everything she had.
“That’s all I can
do,” she said, falling back exhausted.
The leak had slowed,
not quite to a trickle, but it no longer looked like someone had
turned on a faucet and let it run.
“What’s our rate of
climb?” she asked.
“We’re down to two
hundred feet per minute,” Paul said.
“Slower?” she said.
“Why are we moving slower? Are we losing rpms?”
“No,” Paul said.
“We’re gaining weight.”
He nodded toward the
tail end of the sub, and she turned. At least thirty gallons of
water had pooled in the Grouper’s tail.
Thirty gallons, two hundred sixty pounds of added weight, and
rising.
Gamay now realized
they weren’t just in a race against the hull splitting open, they
were in a race against time. Even with the reduced leak the
Grouper would slowly take on water and
continue to get heavier. Survival or destruction would be
determined by the balance between how much water was coming in and
how fast they could continue to rise. If they didn’t get to the
surface soon, they’d reach a point where the Grouper’s buoyancy was overridden by the added
weight. At that moment, their long slow climb would turn into an
even longer and slower descent, one from which there would be no
escape.
THE TIRES OF THE
RENTAL CAR squealed on the macadam of the mountain road. Kurt
looked behind them. Two sets of lights had suddenly appeared and
were getting closer at every turn.
“We should have gone
back into the restaurant,” she said.
He’d considered that,
but there were only ten or so people in the building, and maybe a
pair of cooks in the back. Not enough to really make it a secure
location, and too many lives to endanger.
“Keep going,” he
said. “We’re dead if they catch us up here. The best thing we can
do is get to the city. We can find the police down
there.”
Katarina kept her
foot on the gas, whipping the car through the turns as she’d done
on the way up the hill. It kept them ahead. But two long
straightaways allowed the larger, more powerful Audis to catch
them.
Another series of
hairpins gave them some breathing room, but if Kurt remembered it
right, the longest straight section was coming up.
“Do you have a
weapon?” he asked.
Katarina shook her
head.
Unfortunately,
neither did he. The Azores had strict policies regarding guns and
such. Perhaps that was a good thing. Otherwise, the thug at the top
of the hill might have had a Lugar or a Glock instead of a
pipe.
Still, it led to
problems here and now.
“We’re coming up on
another straight bit,” she said.
They rounded the
curve, and Katarina stomped on the gas, but the Audis all but leapt
toward them, moving up fast in the rearview.
Suddenly, the window
shattered on Kurt’s side, and the sound of bullets punching holes
in the sheet metal rang out. Kurt ducked down. So much for the
no-gun policy.
Katarina began
swerving back and forth, trying to keep the pursuers off them. As
she did, Kurt spotted something sliding around in the backseat: the
pipe he’d been hit with.
He grabbed it,
glanced in the side mirror, and had an idea. The lead Audi was just
a few feet back on his side.
“Hit the brakes,” he
shouted.
“What?”
“Just do
it.”
Katarina shifted her
weight, gripped the wheel, and slammed her foot on the brake pedal.
As she did, Kurt threw open his door.
The rental car’s
tires dug into the asphalt, screeching, streaming white smoke. The
Audi’s driver was taken by surprise; he hit his brakes late, took
the rental car’s door clean off, and then rumbled over
it.
Shocked and confused,
he didn’t notice Kurt leaning out of the car, holding on to the
garment handle above the door and swinging the pipe with a backhand
like Rafael Nadal’s.
The blow smashed in
the windshield. A thick spiderweb of cracks spread out over the
driver’s half, completely blocking the view. The Audi swerved away
and then came back as if it would ram them.
Kurt swung again,
this time a forehand coming in from the side. It took out the
driver’s window, catching the driver in the side of the head. The
Audi swerved hard this time, dropping back and moving toward the
cliff, then swerving rapidly to the right. It hammered the rocky
slope on that side of the road, flipped, and tumbled. It slid on
its caved-in roof, shedding parts and glass for a hundred yards,
but avoided going off the cliff.
“That’s gonna leave a
mark,” Kurt said.
The second Audi cut
around the first one and began to accelerate. Kurt doubted the same
plan would work twice. He looked ahead. Two more sets of lights
were coming up the hill. They could have been locals or tourists,
but they stayed abreast of each other, like one car trying to pass
another and never actually making it. He was pretty sure what that
meant.
“They’re trying to
corral us,” he said over the wind that was pouring through the
missing doorway.
For a moment he saw
trepidation flicker across Katarina’s face, and then the young
agent who had something to prove stood on the gas pedal and gripped
the wheel like a madwoman. The little Focus shot forward as
Katarina flipped her high beams on for good measure.
“I’m not stopping,”
she shouted.
Kurt didn’t doubt
that, but as he glanced ahead he guessed the drivers of the cars
charging up toward them had no plans of stopping
either.