23
FOR TEN SOLID MINUTES
the Grouper continued to climb, but
ever more slowly.
“We’re passing a
thousand,” Paul said.
A thousand feet, she
thought. That sounded so much better than sixteen thousand or ten
or five, but it was still deeper than many steel-hulled submarines
were able to go. She remembered a ride she’d taken with the Navy
years ago on a Los Angeles–class attack submarine that was about to
be retired. At seven hundred feet the side had dented in with a
resounding clang. As she nearly jumped out of her skin, the captain
and crew laughed heartily.
“This is our test depth, ma’am,” the captain had
said. “That dent shows up every
time.”
Apparently, it was an
inside joke played on all guests, but it scared the heck out of
her, and the fact that she and Paul were still three hundred feet
deeper than that meant one thousand feet could be just as deadly as
sixteen thousand.
“Nine hundred,” Paul
said, calling out the depth again.
“What’s our rate?”
she asked.
“Two-fifty,” he said.
“Give or take.”
Less than four
minutes to the surface, less than four minutes to
life.
Something snapped off
the outside of the hull, and the Grouper started to shake.
“I think we lost the
rudder,” Paul said.
“Can you control
it?”
“I can try to vector
the thrust,” he said, his hands working the two joysticks on the
panel furiously.
She glanced to the
rear. At least eighty gallons of water had filled the sub. The icy
liquid had already reached her feet, causing her to pull them up
toward her body.
A minute went by, and
they began closing in on five hundred feet. A strange creaking
sound reverberated through the hull, like a house settling or metal
bending. It came and went and then came again.
“What is that?” she
said. It was coming from above her head.
She looked up. The
clamp on the top of the flange was quivering, the creaking sound
coming from the hull above it.
She looked aft. The
tail end of the sub was filled with water. A hundred gallons or
more. Eight hundred pounds more than the front. All that extra
weight twisted and pulled and bent the sub at the already weakened
seam, trying to crack it in half like breaking a stick in the
middle.
They had to level out
before it ripped them apart. Had to spread the weight evenly even
if it meant just climbing due to their buoyancy.
“Paul,” she
said.
“Two hundred,” he
called out.
“We have to level
out,” she said.
“What?”
The hull groaned
louder. She saw the upper clamp slip.
“Paul!” She lunged
forward as the clamp shot away from the notch. It hit her in the
back of the leg, and she screamed.
Her voice was drowned
out by the sound of the second clamp being flung from its moorings
and the furious dissonance of water gushing into the sub like it
was blasting from a high-pressure fire hose.
HALFWAY DOWN the
twisting mountain road to Vila do Porto, the game of chicken was
on. Katarina kept her foot down on the accelerator. The cars coming
up at them seemed undaunted. If anything, they’d accelerated also,
and continued to charge shoulder to shoulder, their headlights
blazing.
Kurt put a hand up to
block the glare, trying to save some of his night vision. He
glanced in the mirror; the single car behind them was closing in.
He wondered if everyone had gone insane.
He flicked his eyes
forward again, caught sight of a road sign and an arrow. It read
“Hang Gliders—Ultralights.”
He grabbed the wheel,
yanked the car to the right.
“What are you doing?”
Katarina shouted.
They skidded onto a
gravel road, turned sideways for a moment, and then straightened,
as Katrina spun the wheel madly in one direction and then the
other.
Behind them the sound
of screeching tires pierced the night. A slight crunch followed,
not the massive impact Kurt was hoping for but a happy sound
nonetheless.
“Keep going,” he
said.
“We don’t know where
this goes.”
“Does it
matter?”
Of course it didn’t.
And moments later the lights swung onto the dirt road far behind
them, so there was no way to turn back even if it did.
“Up ahead,” Kurt
said. “Head for the cliff.”
“Are you crazy?” she
shouted. “I can barely keep us straight as it is.”
“Exactly.”
They rumbled along
the gravel-strewn road. A massive cloud of dust billowed out behind
them, not enough to block out the light completely but enough to
obscure everything. He could imagine the Audi’s driver, blinded,
getting pinged with rocks, sliding this way and that, as he tried
to keep up.
Sometimes extra
horsepower and bigger tires were bad. With standing water and
gravel, this was the case exactly. At a high-enough speed, the Audi
would become uncontrollable—it would literally begin to float on
the tumbling rocks and pebbles underneath its tires—but the little
Focus, with its skinny tires, dug right through the gravel down to
the more solid ground.
“Let him get a little
closer,” Kurt said, scanning the terrain up ahead.
She nodded. She
seemed as if she knew what he was thinking.
“Now punch it and
turn.”
She slammed the gas
pedal down, spinning up more dust and rocks and pulling away from
the Audi. But the Audi driver must have mashed his pedal as well
because his car now surged toward them.
“I said turn,” Kurt
yelled.
She threw the wheel
over, but the Focus skidded, and Kurt realized he’d overplayed
their hand. He grabbed Katarina by the shoulder, pulled her into
the passenger seat, and then dove out of the car through the open
section where the door had once been, dragging her with him as he
went.
They tumbled and
rolled on the grass beside the road. The Audi shot by, missing them
by a foot or two. The Focus disappeared off the cliff, and the
Audi’s brake lights lit up.
“Too late,” Kurt
said.
The Audi skidded
through the dust cloud and then vanished, going over the edge at
twenty miles an hour or so.
It was eerily silent
for three seconds, and then twin explosions boomed through the
night one right after the other.
The gritty air
swirled around them. For a second it seemed as if they were
alone.
“They’re gone,”
Katarina said.
Kurt nodded and then
glanced down the dirt road. White light could be seen filtering
through the settling dust, moving toward them. Two cars
remained.
“They’re headed this
way,” Kurt said.
He took Katarina by
the hand and led her back away from the road. “Come on,” he said.
“We can’t run, but we can still hide.”
PAUL PULLED GAMAY
toward the cockpit of the Grouper. She
was clutching her leg as if she’d been injured.
“I’m okay,” she
said.
Behind her, the sub
was filling with water.
He turned to look at
the depth gauge. 150. 140.
The needle continued
to turn, but it moved slower and slower. Despite the props turning
at full rpm, despite all the ballast being gone, the Grouper struggled to ascend. 135.
The gurgling water
was filling the sub. It had reached the halfway point and was
rapidly climbing toward them. Paul turned back to the controls. He
angled the Grouper straight up, trying
to maximize the vertical component of the propeller’s thrust. It
gave them a slight kick, but as the water began to swirl around his
legs he could feel their momentum failing.
The needle touched
130, went just below it, and then stopped.
The Grouper was standing on its tail now, the propeller
straining to keep it going. It wasn’t going to be
enough.
The water churned
around Paul’s waist, Gamay clung to him tightly.
“Time to go,” he
said.
Gamay was struggling
to keep her head above water as the sea filled the little
submersible like a bottle.
“Take a breath,” he
said, pulling her up, feeling her shiver in the chill of the water.
“Take three deep breaths,” he corrected. “Hold the last one.
Remember to exhale as you ascend.”
He saw her doing as
he’d said, tilting her head back to suck in one last breath as the
water covered her face. He managed to inhale once more, and then he
went under. In a few seconds he’d reached the hatch. With the
pressure now equal inside and out, the hatch opened
easily.
He pushed it back and
helped Gamay escape. As soon as she was free he shoved her upward,
and she began kicking for the surface.
The Grouper was already dropping. Paul had to get
himself free. He pushed off as the hull of the submarine slid out
from under him. He kicked for the surface, trying to use smooth,
long strokes.
The neoprene suits
helped; they were buoyant. Without weight belts, they were almost
as buoyant as life preservers. The desire to live helped. And the
fact that they’d been at depth breathing compressed air helped. He
exhaled slightly as he surged upward, hoping that Gamay remembered
to do the same. Otherwise, the compressed, pressurized air would
expand in the chest and explode the lungs like an overinflated
balloon.
A minute into his
ascent, Paul could feel his lungs burning. He continued to kick
hard and smooth. Around him, he could see nothing but a watery
void. Far below, a fading pinprick of light marked the Grouper as it plunged back into the
depths.
Thirty seconds later
he exhaled a little more, the pressure on his chest building. He
could see light above but no sign of Gamay. At two minutes his
muscles were screaming for oxygen, his head was pounding, and his
strength waning.
He continued to kick,
but ever more slowly. He could feel his muscles beginning to spasm,
his body shaking, convulsing.
The spasms passed.
The surface shimmered above, but Paul could no longer tell how far
away it was. The light faded. The shimmering blue he could see
narrowed to a small spot as his arms and legs became too heavy to
move.
All movement stopped.
His head lolled to the side, the light vanished, and Paul Trout’s
last thought was Where’s . . . my . . .
wife?