“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.
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. Th
e 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 lol
led to the side, the light vanished, and Paul Trout’s last thought was Where’s . . . my . . . wife?
24
THE DUST AND THE DARKNESS gave cover as Kurt led Katarina across a grassy field on the cliff side. The approaching cars moved slowly, picking their way along the gravel road. Both cars had front-end damage, and one of them had only a single working headlight. The little game of chicken had worked out in Austin’s favor, both damaging the vehicles and delaying them.
As they approached, Kurt imagined the drivers wondering where their comrades had gone to. Or, for that matter, where their prey had gotten to and how they’d escaped in the underpowered little rental car.
Lying flat in the grass, Kurt waited for the cars to pass. Once they had, he and Katarina resumed their move across the grass, arriving at a cyclone fence.
Kurt looked through the fence. A small hangarlike building stood dark and quiet on the other side. A sign read “Ultralight Charters $50 Per Half Hour.”
“Climb over,” he said to Katarina. “Quietly.”
She put her hands on the top of the fence, stuck her toes into one of the diamond-shaped spaces, and scaled up and over in two quick steps. Kurt was glad to be on the run with an athlete.
He followed, dropping down quietly beside her.
“Where are your shoes?” he asked.
“You mean my expensive Italian stilettos?”
“Yeah. Your shoes.”
“They kind of fell off when you threw me out of the moving car.”
He noticed her dress was torn, and she had bleeding abrasions on her bare elbow and forearm. His own knee and shoulder were bleeding as well, and he could feel the small particles of gravel that had been ground into the palms of his hands. Still, it was better than being dead.
“I’ll buy you a new pair if we get out of this alive,” he said. “Keep moving.”
They sprinted across the grass and ducked behind a large exposed tank like one might see at a propane filling station. From the smell, Kurt knew it contained AvGas, 100 octane fuel for small propeller-driven aircraft like the ultralights.