Undersea Prison (39 page)

He headed across the room, operated the door which needed his help to open and stepped out into the corridor. Water several inches deep flowed past him from the steps above.

The alarms dimmed as a voice broke through them. ‘ABANDON THE FACILITY!’ it called out in a relatively calm voice. ‘ALL PERSONNEL TO THE ESCAPE BARGES ON LEVEL TWO!’

Mandrick exhaled philosophically. He had done it. It was something he had, bizarrely perhaps, looked forward to for a long time. This was what he called power. He had single-handedly brought Styx to an end, the implications of which would spread around the globe. Some would rejoice, some would despair, while others would be horrified or even amused.

He looked down at the dirty, frothy water swirling around his feet, feeling the chill of it soaking into his socks. He smiled and headed up the stairs.

 

Several prison guards ran along a cell-block corridor that was ankle deep in water, flinging open cell doors and yelling for the inmates to get out. The Afghans needed no interpretation to understand the events taking place. Panic was the overriding emotion as prisoners and guards hurried together in the direction indicated by illuminated emergency arrows. A handful of prisoners following a guard turned a corner only to be struck by a torrent of water that washed them back. All save one, a man who was struck unconscious when his head hit the wall, managed to regain a footing and cling to the walls. They pulled themselves and their unconscious comrade along the corridor to a metal stairway that led out of the water and to the next level.

 

Stratton was running up the broad tunnel from the scrubber room when the klaxons first sounded. He paused at the entrance to the steeper, narrower tunnel that led to the upper level, noting the significant increase in the volume of water running down the guttering. As he headed up it he could only wonder what the hell Hamlin had done.

Stratton arrived at the access-level door that had a huge ‘5’ painted on it to find it firmly shut. He pulled on the handle but it was like trying to move a mountain. Hamlin had got it wrong. The seals had collapsed, showing an equalising of pressure, but the door was firmly shut. Water was seeping in through a small gap in the seal at the bottom. He remembered the emergency manual overrides fitted to all access-level doors in the event of a pressure failure and found the small slot behind some fungus on the wall high and to the right of the door frame. He felt for the recessed hexagonal nut but without a key he would never be able to turn it.

Sounds came from behind him, penetrating the rhythmic toll of the alarms, and Stratton jerked around to see several figures approaching. It was the group of miners, led by the guard who had saved his life.

The guard went straight for the door and yanked on the handle. Unable to budge it he pulled his radio handset off the clip on his lapel and held it to his mouth. ‘OCR! This is Zack on mine access to level five,’ he shouted. ‘I need the access door opened!’

There was no reply.

‘Come on,’ the guard said agitatedly. ‘OCR. Open mine access level five. Come on, guys. Hear me!’

 

In the OCR the senior controller was preparing to abandon his post when he heard the call. His self-preservation urge was to get going but his conscience would not allow him to and he stepped back into the communications console, picked up the mike and hit a button on the control monitor. ‘Zack. As far as I can tell all emergency manual overrides have been activated. Do you have your key?’

‘Yes,’ Zack shouted, feeling around the back of his waist belt and finding the heavy handle.

‘When you get through head for the barges. I’ll see you there.’

‘Secure yourselves!’ Zack shouted as he unhooked the handle from the back of his belt. ‘Get away from the door! There could be a lotta water on the other side.’

Stratton noted the way the water was gushing fiercely from under the bottom of the door and pushed one hand behind several pipes up to his elbow, grabbing it tightly with the other. Prisoners scurried to find secure points.

Zack inserted the end of the key, which was like an old crank-starter, into the slot and positioned it over the hexagonal nut. He put all his weight against the handle, which took several jerks to get moving. When it eventually did it turned easily.

There was a grinding sound inside the door as the guard furiously wound the handle that operated a system of low-ratio gears. For every spin the lock moved barely a millimetre inside the door. It was taking an age. Every man strengthened his grip on his strongpoint in anticipation of the deluge to come. Just when it seemed as if the mechanism had failed and the guard’s efforts were in vain the door burst open in front of a massive wall of water.The door slammed into the wall, almost coming off its hinges, and the sea crashed into the narrow corridor as if a dam had burst.

Two of the prisoners and the other guard, who’d been at the rear of the column, immediately lost their hold and were swept away down the corridor, their cries quickly muffled as the water slammed them into the walls before engulfing them.

Zack was struck on his side by the initial impact and although he managed to cling to a pipe for a few seconds he soon lost his handhold. Stratton automatically stretched a hand out to him and caught hold of his harness strap. Stratton’s arm around the pipe felt like it was going to rip out of his shoulder as the guard thrashed around in a desperate effort to grab anything that was fixed to the wall. The most powerful initial thrust of the water was quickly spent and as Zack gripped a bracket Stratton released him.The panting guard looked Stratton in the eye and gave him a nod.

Without wasting another second Zack got to his feet. ‘Get going!’ he shouted to everyone in front of and behind him. ‘Move! Move!’

The prisoners needed no encouragement as they scrambled through the door.

Stratton joined the group, hurrying up the inclined corridor where it met a main-line tunnel running across its path, water splashing along it. Cardboard cartons and various wrappings covered the surface as if the intruding ocean had emptied out a storeroom of some kind.

Zack stopped at the junction to guide his men in the direction of the flashing emergency arrows. ‘That way, that way. Go! Go!’

The men scurried around the corner, looking like half-drowned cats, exhausted but with plenty of energy left to save their own lives.

As Stratton reached the junction he saw a sign below one of the emergency lights that indicated the hospital was in the opposite direction to the escape barges. He took a moment to consider his options. They were basically to forget the mission and save himself without further ado. Or risk a couple more minutes to try and find his target. Gann had said that Durrani was in the hospital - where he might still be. Or the Afghan might already be on his way to the escape barges. Gann had implied that the tablet had been found. But no one had expected this level of mayhem. Anything could have happened. Stratton was suddenly feeling lucky. Perhaps Hamlin’s diversion might work in his favour. He might still be able to complete his mission after all.

Stratton moved off in the direction of the hospital.

‘Hey!’ the guard shouted.

Stratton paused to look back, wondering if Zack was coming after him. But the guard had not moved and was simply looking at him curiously. ‘The barges are this way,’ he said.

‘I know.’

Zack looked bemused as Stratton continued on his way. He shook his head and turned to follow his men.

‘Hey, Zack,’ Stratton shouted.

The guard looked back at him.

Stratton was standing in the near-darkness in knee-deep water with trash floating all around him. ‘Thanks,’ he said.

Zack remained confused by Stratton’s choice of direction but acknowledged the prisoner’s gratitude with a wave of his hand.

Stratton disappeared and Zack caught up with his men. They climbed several ladders and stairways, scurried along a corridor through an open pressure door, and met up with several more prisoners and guards coming from another direction. Together they surged through a doorway leading into what a sign above described as the escape room.

It was a large cavern containing two open airlock doors. A couple of guards stood outside each, ushering men through. The airlocks were short passageways into two escape barges.These were rudimentary vessels made of riveted plates of steel, their interiors lined with simple benches and dozens of large gas cylinders fixed into brackets against the walls. The floor was covered in rough wooden decking below which the bilges were visible. There were no portholes.

‘Find a seat and strap yourselves in,’ a guard ordered.

Anxious Afghan and Western prisoners, all dripping wet, some bruised and injured, sat side by side, fastening seat belts around their waists. A guard vomited up part of his fear. Several dripping-wet CIA men ran in and joined their enemies as the klaxons continued to wail, adding to the urgency of the collective desperation.

The operations controller emerged from one of the barges and walked towards Zack who was standing outside the entrance to the other vessel. ‘Are you full?’ he asked.

‘Almost,’ Zack said. ‘How many do you think we’re down?’

‘Rough count I’d say we were down eighteen prisoners, five guards, two service staff. Anyone seen the doc?’

There was no reply.

Hank Palmerston squelched into the hall ahead of a handful of prisoners and a guard, all of whom looked exhausted and bedraggled. ‘I got two people trapped in C cell,’ Hank said angrily. ‘Your fuckin’ door won’t open.’

‘I didn’t build the goddamn place,’ the controller shouted back. He walked over to a wall between the two airlocks where a systems panel displayed various valves and gauges.

‘We gotta get that door open,’ Hank persisted, following him.

‘You had the brief when you got here. When the power failed their door should’ve gone to manual override. They have a key in the room.’

‘Well, something ain’t working.’

The controller ignored Hank as he checked various gauges.

‘You’re just gonna leave ’em there?’ Hank growled.

‘They’re probably already dead.’

‘That ain’t good enough.’

The controller left the panel and walked past him. ‘Zack. Your barge leaves now. I’ll wait as long as I can before I push off.’

Zack ushered his guards into his barge and prepared to close the airtight door.

‘Are you gonna help my guys or not?’ Hank asked angrily.

The controller walked over to a guard, pulled a crank key off his belt and held it out to Hank. ‘I’ve got a job to do.
You
go save ’em.’

Hank took the handle and looked back at the entrance to the room. The water was flooding in.

‘C cell’s on level one but as you know you’ve got to pass through level three to get to it from here,’ the controller said, trying to maintain his calm. ‘Before you go you might want to consider the chances that you’ll make it back here.’

‘You ain’t gonna wait?’

‘I’ll wait as long as I can!’ the controller shouted at the top of his voice. ‘That means when I think the remaining escape barge is at risk by staying here we’re cutting loose! With or without you. Is that clear?’ he shouted, his face red.

Hank looked at the other guards, realised that he was being unreasonable and lost some of his steam. ‘Do you know where Mandrick is?’ he asked in a more subdued voice.

‘At his own presidential escape pod if he has any sense. It’s easier to get to him from C cell than back here but if you do get your guys out you won’t all fit in it. My guess is that Mandrick’s already gone, anyway.’

Hank wasn’t just frustrated because of his missing people.The flooding prison had also drowned his future. Everything he had worked for was about to be washed up on the beach and he knew who was behind it. He gripped the crank handle firmly as if it had become a weapon and hurried out of the room.

The controller faced Zack who was waiting for any changes to his orders. ‘Get going.’

Zack walked into the airlock and with the controller’s help closed the outer watertight door. He marched down the short connecting corridor and into the barge. ‘Let’s go,’ he said and the nearby guards closed the inner door and screwed the cleats home, making it watertight. ‘Everyone make sure you’re secure in your seats. It’s gonna be a bumpy ride.’ Zack went to the instrument panel and turned several dials as gas hissed from pipes along the ceiling. He concentrated on a series of gauges as their needles climbed.

‘Listen up. This is how it’s gonna work. When the barge releases it’s gonna float straight to the surface. Like I said, it’ll be a bumpy ride. The barge might go up at an angle which is why you stay strapped into your seats. There’s a drag cable on the bottom to stop it inverting - if it works. If you start feeling a little weird don’t worry about it. When we hit the surface we’re gonna remain at Styx depth pressure inside here. The barge’ll expand a little but the system’s designed to compensate for the pressure. Anyone starts getting pains, live with it. We got no medical aid for the bends on board. On the surface we wait for the emergency crews who should already be waiting for us. We’ve got enough air to last twenty-four hours. That’s more than enough for the crews to attach a decompression system to that docking hatch,’ Zack said, pointing to a hatch in the roof. ‘We’ll all stay in here, in our seats until the barge decompresses. We got a little water, no food, and a bucket latrine over there so sit tight and relax. Breathe easy. Any of you Talibutts speak English translate what I said for the others.You can also pass it on that if any of you guys wanna fuck around, try any of your suicide shit, I’ll kill yer.’

‘And you’ll have a little help too,’ said one of the burly white prisoners, eyeing the Afghans with a sour grimace.

‘The emergency team’ll be accompanied by armed guards,’ Zack went on. ‘So if any of you are thinking this could be a good time to make a break for it, forget it. They’ll shoot to kill anyone trying to escape.’