“Good work.”
From the river tunnel, a shout: “Help! Pull us in, pull us in!” Several of the men rushed down the pier and began hauling the rope hand over hand. After ten seconds a man appeared at the end of it. Lights panned over him. He was semiconscious, half his face covered in blood. They pulled him onto the dock and laid him flat.
“Where’s Pavel?” Kholkov demanded. The man mumbled something incoherent. Kholkov slapped him across the face and grabbed his chin. “Answer me! Where’s Pavel?”
“The rapids . . . the line got cut. . . . He hit his head. I tried to reach him, but he was gone. One second he was there, then he was gone. He’s gone.”
“Damn it!” Kholkov spun around, paced halfway down the pier, then spun back. “Okay, you two carry him and get back to the lagoon.” He pointed to the other man. “You and I will set the charges. If they’re not already dead, we’ll bury the Fargos alive! Get moving!”
CHAPTER 19
Kholkov and his men left. Gesturing for Remi to follow, Sam scrambled down the rope, shifted his weight back and forth to get a swing going, then nodded to Remi, who jumped off onto the catwalk, followed by Sam. They knelt down together.
“You think he meant it?” Remi whispered.
“I doubt they have enough explosive to bury us, but they can certainly seal the main entrance. Did you check for an opening up there?” he asked, nodding at the tangle of roots.
She nodded. “It was nothing but a crack—no wider than a couple inches, and a good six feet to the surface.”
“But you saw daylight?”
“Yes. Sun’s going down.”
“Well, exit or not, at least we’ll have an air shaft—but they’ve got the damned bottle.”
“One thing at a time, Sam.”
“You’re right. Let’s get off this catwalk before the—”
As if on cue there came a whump from the main cavern, followed by two more in quick succession.
“Down!”
Sam pushed her to the ground and lay on top of her. A few seconds later they felt a gust of cool air wash over them. A cloud of dust billowed through the tunnel and filled the cavern, the heavier particles peppering the surface like rain. Sam and Remi looked up.
“Ah, alone at last,” Remi murmured.
Sam grinned, stood up, brushed himself off, and pulled her to her feet. “You want to stay for a while?”
“No, thanks.”
“Well, then we better get busy on our escape pod.”
Remi put her hands on her hips. “What’re you talking about?”
Sam unclipped the flashlight from his belt and shined it in the water, illuminating the sub’s hull. “I’m talking about that.”
“Explain, Fargo.”
“I’ll check to be sure, but chances are we can’t go out the way we came, and no one knows exactly where we are, so we shouldn’t count on rescue. That leaves one option: down the river.”
“Oh, you mean down the river that killed one of Kholkov’s men and sucked him into limbo? That river?”
“It goes somewhere. That tunnel is a good fifteen feet in diameter and the water’s moving fast and steady. If it narrowed anywhere down the line we’d see backflow or signs of a higher tide line on the walls. Believe me, it dumps out somewhere—either aboveground in a lake or pond, or into another sea cave.”
“And you’re sure about this?”
“Reasonably.”
“There’s a subjective judgment if I’ve ever heard one.” Remi chewed her lip for a moment. “What about this: You work your engineering magic with one of the tanks and blow a hole in the ceiling crack.”
“Not enough power, and we might bring the whole roof down on us.”
“True. Okay, we can wait for daylight then set the root tangle on fire. It’ll be a smoke signal—” She caught herself and frowned. “Scratch that. We’d asphyxiate long before help arrived.”
“You’ve done as much cave diving as I have,” Sam said. “You know the geology. That river’s our best chance. Our only chance.”
“Okay. One problem, though: Our escape pod is full of water and sitting fifteen feet below the surface.”
Sam nodded. “Yes, that’s a problem.”
After checking to make sure the main cavern was in fact sealed, they returned to the secondary cave and got to work, first retrieving their gear from the bottom, then scrounging through the Kriegsmarine crates for any odds and ends that might be of use. In addition to a well-stocked toolbox of mostly rusted tools they found four lanterns and a dozen stubby votivelike candles that lit at the first touch from Sam’s lighter. Soon the pier and surrounding water was dimly lit by flickering yellow light. While Remi sorted through their remaining gear and conducted an inventory of the toolbox, Sam stood at the edge of the pier, staring distantly into the water.
“Okay,” Remi said. “We’ve got two air tanks, one two-thirds full, a second completely full; two flashlights, both working, charge unknown; my camera’s shot but the binoculars are fine; the revolver is dry, but I can’t vouch for the bullets; two canteens of water and some slightly soggy beef jerky; a first-aid kit; your Gerber Nautilus multitool; one dry bag that’s in good shape, one that’s Swiss cheese; and, finally, two cell phones that are dry, working, almost fully charged, but useless inside here.”
“The motor?”
“I dried it out as best I could but we won’t know until we try it. As for the gas tank, I didn’t find any holes and all the valves are sealed, so I think it’s fine.”
Sam nodded and went back to staring at the water.
After ten minutes of this, he cleared his throat and said, “Okay, we can do it.” He walked over and sat down beside Remi.
“Let’s hear it,” she said.
He started explaining. When he was done, Remi pursed her lips, tilted her head, and then nodded. “Where do we start?”
It started with a tense, claustrophobic crawl for Sam. He had no trouble with either confined spaces or water, but had no love for the two combined.
Wearing only his mask and a dive belt, he first did a series of practice dives to expand his lung capacity, then spent a full minute on the surface doing deep-breathing exercises to oxygenate his blood to its maximum.
He took a final breath, then dove to the bottom. Flashlight extended before him, he wriggled through the sub’s dome hatch and turned aft. He knew from his cursory study of Kriegsmarine subs back in the Pocomoke, the nose section of a Marder-class boat held only a seat and some rudimentary steerage and diving controls. What he was looking for—the scuttle valves—would be in the tail section. Pulling and pushing himself along the interior piping, he felt the cylindrical walls close around him, felt the darkness and the water pressing him, crushing him. He felt the hot bloom of fear in his chest. He quashed it and refocused: Scuttle valve, Sam. Scuttle.
He shined his flashlight left, right, ahead. He was looking for a lever, a raised cylindrical fitting in the hull. . . . And then, suddenly, there it was, ahead and to the left. He reached out, grasped the lever, and heaved. Stuck. He drew his dive knife, wedged it between the lever and hull, then tried again. With a squelch and spurt of rust, the lever gave way. Lungs pounding, he turned to the opposite valve, repeated the process, then backed out and finned to the surface.
“You okay?” Remi called.
“Define okay.”
“Not mortally wounded.”
“Then, yes, I’m okay.”
The next part of the plan took three hours, most of which they spent sorting and splicing the rope the Germans had left behind, about half of which was either completely rotted or so weakened Sam wasn’t willing to trust it. They would get only one chance at what they were attempting, he told Remi. If they failed, they would have to turn to her signal fire idea and hope help would arrive before the smoke killed them.
After four hours, at nearly two A.M. according to Sam’s watch, they were almost ready. They stood at the edge of the pier, studying their handiwork.
Two quadruple-braided lines, one secured to the sub’s bow and the other to its stern cleats, rose from the water to the ceiling, where Remi, superb climber that she was, had threaded each through a catwalk ceiling eyelet. From there, each line dropped down again and was tied off to a cable under the catwalk planking. The vertical support cables were themselves connected, midpoint to midpoint, by a carefully constructed spiderweb of rope. To one of the cables—the farthest one from the lines secured to the sub—Sam had lashed one of their scuba tanks.
“So,” Remi said. “Let’s review: You shoot the tank, the blast sheers the cables, the catwalk drops, the sub pops to the surface, and the water drains out. Is that it?”
“More or less. The tank won’t explode, but it’ll take off like a rocket. If I’ve rigged it right, the torque should part the weakened cables. Beyond that, it’s all math and chaos theory.”
Estimating the weight of the sub and the water inside it, as well as the combined weight of the catwalks and the shearing limit of the cables, had given Sam a headache, but he was fairly confident in his process. Using the ancient and rusted but still-serviceable hacksaw they’d found in the toolbox he’d cut halfway through eleven of the eighteen vertical catwalk cables.
“And gravity,” Remi added, curling her arm in his. “Win or lose, I’m proud of you.” She handed him the revolver. “It’s your mouse-trap. You get the honors.”
They climbed behind the protective bulwark of crates they’d assembled at the far end of the dock and made sure everything was snug around them, save Sam’s firing slit.
“Ready?” he asked.
Remi cupped her ears and nodded.
Sam braced his gun hand on his opposite forearm, took aim, and pulled the trigger.
The gun’s report was instantly overwhelmed by a whump-whoosh, a flash of light, the shriek of rending steel, and a thunderous splash.
Sam and Remi peeked their heads above the bulwark but for ten full seconds could see nothing but a fine mist filling the cavern. Slowly it cleared. They climbed out and walked to the edge of the pier and looked down.
“Never had any doubt,” Remi murmured.
The Marder-class mini submarine UM-77, having spent the last sixty years of its life lying on the bottom of a sea cave, now sat perfectly upright on the surface, water gushing from its scuttles.
“Beautiful,” was all Sam could say.
CHAPTER 20
With a reverberating gong that both Sam and Remi felt in their heads, the sub glanced over another boulder, tipped hard to port, then snapped upright and nosed over, plunging back into the river’s main channel. Water sluiced over the acrylic dome, obscuring Sam’s view for a few moments, then cleared. He clicked on the flashlight and shined it over the bow, but could see only rock walls flashing past on either side and whitewater crashing over the nose cone. The deadly seriousness of the experience notwithstanding, it was a lot like a ride at Disney World, Sam decided.
“You okay back there?” he called.
Remi, lying behind the cockpit seat, arms braced against the hull, shouted back, “Peachy! How long have we been going?”
Sam checked his watch. “Twenty minutes.”
“My God, is that all?”
After recovering from the mild shock that their plan had actually worked, Sam and Remi had climbed into the water and hung from the sub’s bow line, lifting the nose a few more inches off the surface and allowing the rest of the water to drain out. Remi had then crawled inside and closed both scuttles.
From there they’d had little work to do: check the sub for leaks and shore up the inside with a few carefully positioned planks from the catwalk. The fifty-gallon ballast tanks—a four-inch pipe running lengthwise down the port and the starboard side—were full and nicely balanced the sub.
Satisfied they were as prepared as possible, they’d caught four hours of sleep huddled together on the pier in a circle of lanterns. At dawn, they’d risen, eaten a breakfast of tepid water and damp beef jerky, then piled a few essentials into the sub and climbed aboard. Using a catwalk plank, Sam had paddled the sub to the mouth of the river tunnel, then closed the hatch and held on.
So far the sub’s reinforced aluminum hull was holding up well, but they both knew geology was also on their side: While the tunnel walls were still jagged, the rocks and boulders in the channel itself had long ago been smoothed by erosion, leaving no sharp edges to rip the hull.
“Brace yourself!” Sam called. “Big rock!”
The sub’s nose slammed squarely into the boulder, rose up and over the crest, then veered left. The current caught the tail section and spun it around, slamming the hull against the wall.
“Ouch!” Remi shouted over the rush.
“Okay?”
“Just another bruise for my collection.”
“We’ll get you a Swedish massage when we get back to the Four Seasons.”
“I’ll hold you to that!”
One hour turned into two as Sam and Remi rode the rapids, the sub caroming off the walls, vaulting over boulders, and tossing from one side to the other in the water. Occasionally they would find themselves in wider, calmer parts of the river, allowing Sam to open the dome and let in some fresh air to supplement the oxygen Remi was intermittently pumping into the space via their remaining scuba tank.
Almost like clockwork every few minutes the sub slammed into a jumble of boulders and they would find themselves beached, the sub either lying on its side or perched above the rapids, balanced like a teeter-totter. Each time either they would dislodge themselves by gently rocking from side to side until the sub slipped back into the channel or Sam would have to open the dome and push and lever them free using his plank paddle.
Nearing their third hour of travel, the sound of rushing water suddenly faded. The sub slowed and began spinning lazily.
“What’s happening?” Remi called.
“Not sure,” replied Sam.
He pressed his face to the dome and found himself staring up at a vaulted, stalactite-encrusted ceiling. He heard a scraping sound and looked left just in time to see a curtain of vines close over the dome like the swaying carpet arms inside an automated car wash. Sunlight burst through the dome, filling the interior with a yellow glow.
“Is that the sun?” Remi said.
“You bet it is!”
The hull scraped over sand, slowed, then came to a gentle halt. Sam peered ahead. They’d run aground in another lagoon.
“Remi, I think we have arrived.”
He unlatched the dome and swung it open. Cool, salt-tinged air rushed through the hatch. He draped his arms outside, letting them hang, then leaned his head back and let the sun wash over his face.
