Black Storm (26 page)

Too bad Jake wasn't going home. He had a sudden image of the way the ATL's head had looked, the sweetish-coppery odor of blood and brain fluid. The oil stink of kerosene as he'd poured the stove fuel out, shaking it gurgling over the bodies. The way the flame caught and grew and merged into a yellow roar that filled the room with heat and light.

A painful blow to the back of his head knocked his NVGs askew. He crouched under the projection that came down from the roof. A bent metal bar, jagged, and
he touched the back of his head to feel his own blood, as slick-slippery on his fingers as Zeitner's had been.

 

TWENTY MINUTES
on, they came to the chute. It was at another intersection, this one with a dead-ended drain leading off to the right, a body-small oval-shaped feeder leading off to the left, and the remains of what looked like a bedstead, complete with springs, caught and hanging on a rusty projection of corrugated steel where they met. Blaisell had halted when he reached it, looking down. Gault aimed his flashlight where the corporal pointed, motioning to the rest of the file to hold up.

The sewer dropped into darkness, and his light found no bottom. The water, which had become deeper and more turbulent with each feeder, poured out over it in a dark curve. A hollow continuous roar filled their ears, and spray and mist filled their mouths and glistened in icy beads on their skin. Gault blinked into the black, trying to piece together a map from the shadows, trying to come up with something better than grabbing his balls and jumping in. Once one of them went down this thing, they'd be committed. He couldn't see any way of coming back up, not this steep, not with that much water going down. He glanced back and saw their faces studying him, weary and drawn, the men's cheeks dark with stubble and the camo paint that after days in the field caked solid in the creases and lines of their weathered skin, Maddox's exactly the same except for the lack of beard.

Okay, he wasn't too proud to ask for help. “Any ideas?” he asked Vertierra. The RTO just shook his head, looking down the throat of the monster.

They were all three standing there looking down when somebody ducked under his arm. It was Dr. Maddox. “Oh, a chute,” she said. She pointed her light down it, then above and around. “How do you guys descend these?”

“I'm thinking about that very topic.”

“I do some rock climbing. I'd just rappel down.”

He looked at her. “What would you use for gear?”

“Gear's nice, but you don't have to have it.”

“What about the line?”

“I'd leave it here, and use it on the way back.”

“Okay, that sounds good. Want to give it a try?”

She looked surprised. “Me? You want me to go first?”

“You sound like you know what you're doing. Sure.” Blaisell, who was curled up in the little side feeder, made a face behind her. Just for that, Gault told him, “Corporal, you anchor the Major. Anything happens to her, your ass is history, copy?”

“Right, Gunny.” He rolled out of his niche, grinning.

 

SHE FELT
like a kid who's just been dared to do something. Fine, she
wanted
to do something. Sitting still in the dark, feeling closed in, was almost more than she could take. As long as she could distract herself, it was standable. Whenever she let herself think about where she actually was, she started sweating again.

So that now when Gault uncoiled the line from around his waist and handed it over she held it to her flashlight, seeing what she had. Green woven strapping, about five-eighths or a little more, not rope but better, covered with nylon sheath; a bit stretchy but more than strong enough. She bent over and clambered back up the sewer and wrenched at the bedstead till she got a piece of iron free. About three feet long, and pretty sturdy. She waded back and braced it in one of the side feeders and tested it with a tug. The pull set it. All right. She clove-hitched the strapping to it and let the current drag her back through the team. They pressed against the walls to let her pass, and she came to where the concrete ended and tightened up, legs sticking out over the edge while she looked things over. The water funneled past her with a roar, cresting up over her back and shoulders and spraying an icy shower over her head.

“Maybe one of us should do this,” Nichols said, glancing at Gault. “Not the doc.”

Gault looked at her, but she didn't bother to respond. She was wrapping the line around her body. She kept it high, under her right armpit, around her back; up under her left armpit and across her chest, then across her back once more. Rock climbing, she'd have done it different. Just attach her figure eight to her harness, jump over the edge, and rap on down. Here she didn't have a harness or a figure eight, or the right boots, or the rest of her climbing rack, but the instructor at Seneca Rocks had shown them how to body rappel, and she thought she could do it. Unless the rope slipped, or the makeshift anchor pulled out.

She pushed that from her mind and edged around on the perch, fighting the pressure of the water, and asked them to shine their lights down after her. She turned hers off and buttoned it into her shirt. She found the end of the line and put two knots in it—one to warn her the end was coming up, the other a couple of yards from the end itself. If she got to those and there wasn't any bottom, she was going to have to climb back up, or more realistically, they were going to have to haul her back up. She gave them the idea: one yank, everything's okay; two yanks, come on down; three yanks, pull me back up.

Then she turned quickly, before she had a chance to get scared, braced her boots, and started down.

The first step or two her head was clear, but then she was suddenly underwater and the sheer force of falling tons almost knocked her off her feet. She tucked her chin against the roar and buffet, fighting to stay upright. She couldn't stay here, that was for sure. She let go a little with her right hand and the strapping slid around her and she walked on down. After four or five bounces her head came out of the sewage and she snatched a breath, though a mouthful of the sewer flow came with it. She could practically taste the pathogens going down. For sure fecal
Escherichia coli,
the pseudomonas fam
ily, the vibrios, the Aerobacters, salmonella…beaucoup protozoans and helminths, echinococcus, cryptosporidium, giardia…. If there was tidal backflow from the river, bilharziasis was a possibility too. Well, she had the Cipro. She made a mental note to give everybody a good heavy dose.

All this time she'd been bouncing down, or rather, getting slammed around by the water while her head was being bashed into the top of the pipe. She missed her climbing helmet. There wasn't much air room. The lights from above glared in her eyes, but they gave her a little visibility. Enough to see where, a few feet below her boots, the air space ended altogether.

She hung there on the line, looking down at it and feeling more and more like she just couldn't do this.

The curving fall plunged down and outward till it hit the opposite side of the drain, what was the ceiling a few yards above, what was here the slanted wall at her back. Leaving no air bubble between them, and giving no guarantee one existed beyond. She'd never been in a drain before, or a sewer, or whatever this place was. She didn't think a four-by-six oval would neck down that radically. A blood vessel wouldn't, but she had to admit she didn't know what kind of rules applied here, or if, whatever they were, they'd been followed.

She clung there, staring at it, smashed and buffeted by the icy water. Sometimes it submerged her, and she gasped and coughed. When you were in doubt on a rock face you could hang. Take your time, recover, think it through. She couldn't hang here. She was losing feeling in her hands. Plus, the team was waiting on her.

Thinking of them, she finally took a deep breath, then another—oxygenating her bloodstream—and kicked off and let go everything but the line.

The current grabbed her instantly and snatched her off her feet. She shot downward boots first, into blackness. The strap whipped through her gloves with frightening speed. She felt the first knot and almost instantly after
ward the second. She only just got a glove on the tag end. She gripped desperately hard, flailing with her legs, kicking to find footing before she lost her grip and was swept away.

Then she had it, the hard slick concrete against the soles of her boots. She got her other glove on the strap, pulled upright, and stood sideways, leaning against the pressure. Her upward-straining lips found nothing but the cold foul rushing fluid that submerged the rest of her body. She struggled desperately to tiptoe, heart hammering, out of air and at the end of her strength. If she didn't let go, she'd drown here. If she did let go, she'd never be able to make it back against the current.

Without warning, her face broke free into darkness and cold spray-laden air.

She panted for several minutes, recovering her breath and letting the shakes work themselves out of her arms.

She went several yards down the larger drain before she found a place to anchor the line. Here the drain made a sharp left, not a planned one, she thought, judging by the ragged edges where the cut section had been set off. In the glow of her combat flashlight, pale cones hung down from the joint. She touched one with a gloved finger. It was a stalactite, but not hard; soft and friable, damp, detaching at her touch to drop into the stream that foamed and tugged around her chest. She found a knob of concrete and tied the rope off with a half hitch, then tugged hard twice. An answering tug came back.

Several minutes later Blaisell emerged into the air space, weapon slung over his back, coughing and sputtering. He wiped his face, blinking at her. Finally he muttered, “I'll take point,” and headed down the sewer.

The gunny came next. He looked carefully around, then bent and found the line again and gave it two more tugs.

They came through one after the other, with Ted silent and angry-looking, scared-looking. She smiled at him, but he turned his eyes from her and spat.

Lenson came up not even breathing hard, as did
Sarsten. The SAS gave her a smile as he moved past, and a hug around the waist that almost pulled her off her feet. “Good leadership, Major.”

“Thanks.” She didn't care for the hug, but maybe it was a guy thing. A teammate kind of thing, like in football. They hugged each other after a touchdown, didn't they?

Vertierra emerged looking shaken. He stood, then slipped and went down and came up again with the same shocked expression unaltered. The water was so high and he was so short he had to crane his head back to breathe. She pressed his arm, asked if he was all right. He nodded silently, face turned away, and went on.

Nichols came last. When he got his footing, he panted for a moment, recovering, then shook himself like a dog till spray flew off his short hair. “Who took this line through?” he said. When she said she had, he said, “Good work.”

She was shivering hard and her head hurt, actually the adrenaline was ebbing and everything was starting to hurt, but his remark lit a warm little pilot flame of pleasure. She said “Thanks,” making it offhand, and bent under the surface to check the line one last time. She wanted to make sure it'd be there when they came back. It seemed solid, and she turned, glad
that
was over, and began once more wading downstream.

Not too long after that, she saw the tiny distant shimmer of gray daylight, very small, and very bright.

 

THE TIGRIS
was broad and looked calm at first because it was so big, but when Gault looked closer it was roiling and muddy, full of power and debris. Upstream, a bridge lay crumpled, waves cresting over it as if over rocks in rapids. Black smoke rose in the distance above the far bank, and again, closer in, to their right. The sky was gray but it wasn't raining.

He was glad of that. If it had been, not one of them would have gotten through that sewer alive. He looked at
the river again, estimating it at two fifty or three hundred meters across, an amazing thing in a land he'd thought of, before he got here, as parched desert. Then rolled slowly back from the steel-pipe screen that barred their exit, moving back into what, to any observer, would be the shadowy recesses of the sewer outfall. He checked his watch again. Twilight in three hours.

The rest of the team was sitting half in, half out of the flood, backs curled into the curve of the sewer and boots braced against the bottom. They held their weapons against their chests, or tucked them behind their heads to keep them out of the water. Ted's face was gray. His beard stubble looked shockingly dark against it. He'd lost his Daniel Ortega sunglasses in the chute, and he blinked into the dirty light, shivering like a wet kitten. Nobody said anything, so Gault didn't either. He got his camo kit out of his wet gear and smeared fresh green over his face and the backs of his hands. Vertierra was doing the same. When they were cammied up again, he let the current take them back to the grating. They lay there limply, like floating masses of wet garbage shoaled up against the bars, and he looked out again, slitted cold gaze examining everything that lay before them in the failing light of late afternoon.

Their eyes were only millimeters above the level of the river. It swept steadily past, cold and brown and filled with eddies and turbulence. He couldn't see above them on the embankment, on this side. The collapsed bridge lay about seven hundred meters upstream. Downstream, the river made a bend to the left and passed out of sight. For a moment he thought he heard voices; then decided it was just the roar of the river, the endless rushing clamor that was really all they could hear.

Beside him Vertierra shifted uneasily. Gault floated motionless, accepting the discomfort and cold, and lifted his eyes.

The river foamed along the far bank. Shallower there, then, probably submerged rocks. A concrete embank
ment rose above it fifteen or twenty feet. At the top of the embankment stood tiny figures that after a moment he recognized as fishermen. Above them were palm trees, then buildings. They were set back from the river's edge. Sizable, modernistic concrete structures of six or eight stories. Others rose behind them. They all seemed the same age and style. A brick chimney towered beyond the buildings, tapering against the gray sky like a pointless minaret. Even farther upstream, farther north, the gray stacks of a power plant rose. No smoke came from them.