Undersea Prison (43 page)

Stratton spun the tap open as quickly as he could and pushed his face into the highest part of the bell, pressing his lips to the metal ceiling in search of the gas. A pocket of air quickly grew and he gulped in a breath, at the same time pulling Christine up alongside him. She took in a lungful of air while choking violently. Now their faces were pressed together in the ever-increasing air pocket.

The water level gradually dropped and the bell, which had initially been leaning at an angle, moved upright as it became buoyant. Stratton felt around in the darkness in order to find out more about Hamlin’s rudimentary construction and its operating system. ‘You OK?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ Christine said finally after clearing her throat. ‘I didn’t think we were going to make it that time.’

‘You get used to that.’

‘Do you have a sense of humour apart from at times like this?’

‘I’m best when I’m scared shitless.’

The bell started to ascend but it did not travel far before coming to a creaky halt as the cable below went taut.

Stratton felt around the bell’s interior from top to bottom. ‘I’ve got to believe Hamlin put some kind of light in here. He had good attention to detail.’

Christine helped him search. ‘I’ve found a wire . . . it splits and there are clips on the ends.’

‘Now look for a battery.’ Stratton felt around the base of the bell where Hamlin would have put anything heavy to help keep the vessel from inverting. ‘I have it,’ he said.

She grabbed his arm, found his hand and put the clips in it. He attached one to a terminal and as soon as he touched the other a small halogen light flickered on at the top of the bell. The tiny space was flooded with light.

Stratton secured the clip and looked at Christine who was staring at him. He smiled. ‘Welcome aboard the
Nautilus
.’ He pointed to an inscription scrawled on the bulkhead.

They proceeded to examine the bell and its contents. The outer shell was little more than metal plates fixed to struts of angle iron, some welded, other parts bolted together with rubber in between that acted as a seal. Struts also formed a bench that Stratton sat on to get a clearer perspective on his surroundings. Christine sat opposite him.

The cross-struts gave the framework its strength and all in all Stratton was impressed. ‘You have to hand it to the old man,’ he said.

Two large gas bottles were lashed either side of the small chamber. ‘These are our breather mixes - argon and oxygen,’ Stratton explained, feeling the cylinders’ cold metal skins.There was a smaller bottle lashed beside one of them with a valve on the end which he turned on briefly to check that it had gas. ‘This is pure oxygen. We’ll need that to increase the oxygen percentage as we ascend.’

A metal container was secured under one of the brackets and Stratton untied it to see what it was. It contained liquid and he removed a cap on the side, smelled it and put it to his lips. ‘Water,’ he said, offering Christine some. ‘Just a sip.’

She took it from him and relished a mouthful of the refreshing liquid. ‘I don’t know how much sea water I’ve drunk,’ she said, taking another small sip.

Stratton removed a plastic bundle from one of the struts and tore it open. ‘Blankets,’ he said, handing them to her. She took them eagerly and immediately wrapped one around herself.

A white plastic board was fixed to the bulkhead. It had two columns of figures written on it in indelible ink. ‘This looks like an ascent table,’ he said. ‘Just five stop numbers and a time beside each . . . Give me your watch.’

Christine screwed the cap back onto the water container and checked the timepiece on her wrist. ‘It’s broken,’ she said, examining the broken glass.

‘Hamlin wasn’t wearing one. Check that box.’

She leaned down and opened a metal box tied to one of the braces between her feet. ‘Pliers, screwdriver . . . and a watch,’ she said, holding it out to him.

Stratton inspected it. It was a waterproof digital model and appeared to be working.‘You’re not claustrophobic, I hope.’

‘I’ve got too much else scaring the crap out of me . . . What’s next?’

‘We figure out how to head up.’

He looked down at the milky water surrounding their feet. ‘This milk doesn’t help any . . . I’m going to turn the gas off for a moment while we figure this out.’ He reached up for the tap and closed it. The hissing ceased.

‘Why’s the water white?’

‘A Gulf of Mexico phenomenon,’ Stratton said, squatting down and reaching into the water to feel around the drum. ‘Some kind of mineral washed down from the coast . . . The key to going up is obviously this cable drum . . . There’s something clamped to the cable stopping it from unrolling . . . Hand me those pliers.’

Christine gave him the tool and he reached down to find the clamp and figure out how to release it. He felt a clip of some kind which he took a grip on before pausing. ‘I can’t feel how this clamp works.’ He decided to pull on the clip, which felt as if it was moving out of a hole in the block secured around the cable. The clip came away and the block opened and fell off the cable. The drum immediately started to turn.

‘We’re going up,’ Stratton said, looking perplexed.

‘That’s good, right?’ Christine asked, wondering why he appeared to be so concerned.

The drum turned easily, paying out the cable as they rose. Stratton checked the ascent table.‘There’s no depth here.’

‘How do we know when to stop?’

‘There has to be a depth gauge.’

Christine quickly inspected the contents of the box. ‘Nothing.’

‘There must be something,’ Stratton said, checking around the nooks and crannies of the small space with increased desperation. ‘It’s one of the essential factors in decompression.’

‘What else could you use if you didn’t have a depth gauge?’ she asked, unsure exactly what she was looking for.

‘I don’t know.There must be something. Hamlin had to know the decompression stop depths.’

The white water around their feet disappeared and was replaced by clear water. The drum was suddenly visible as they rose out of the milk, rotating quickly as it paid out the cable.

‘We’ve got to stop it!’ Stratton said, lowering himself to apply pressure to the drum with his foot in an effort to put the brakes on. It had no effect and he stood on it with both feet. Christine jumped down alongside him and together they tried to stop the drum from turning. But the cable continued to pay out.

‘This is not good,’ Stratton said, looking around. ‘We’re missing something. The answer is staring us in the face.’ No sooner had the words left his mouth when there was a heavy clunk and the drum stopped turning, bringing the bell’s ascent to a halt.

They climbed off the drum and Stratton crouched to inspect it.‘You sweet and brilliant man,Tusker Hamlin . . . It’s another clamp. And there are others attached to the cable around the drum. We don’t need a depth gauge. The cable’s pre-set for every stop.’

Christine slumped back down onto her cross-brace and pulled her blanket back round her. She offered one to Stratton who took it and did the same.

He consulted the table, checked the watch and hit a button on the side of it. ‘Four and a half hours. Then we move up to the next stop.’

She exhaled noisily. ‘Is it going to be this easy?’

‘I doubt the decompression will be perfect. There’s always risks even with the most sophisticated set-ups. It’ll be a resounding success if we’re barely alive by the time we see daylight . . . We’re going to have to watch each other for any symptoms. There’ll also be a carbon dioxide build-up. We’ll have to flush the air every so often.’

‘What are the signs?’

‘Discoloration - the lips, for instance. Light-headed-ness. Talking crap.’

‘I think I’ve suffered from it before,’ Christine said, trying to match his humour. But there were too many fears for her to keep it up for long. ‘Is there enough air for the two of us? Hamlin planned this trip for one.’

Stratton shrugged.‘My maths doesn’t extend to cubic litres and oxygen consumption at partial pressures. Sorry.’

He decided to set the tap to a gentle flow of air. ‘If these bottles are full we should have enough.’

‘How come you know so much about diving?’

‘Ever heard of the SBS?’

‘You were a courier?

‘A what?’

‘SBS is a courier company - isn’t it?’

‘No, I wasn’t a courier . . . It’s like your navy SEALs.’

‘Oh. OK. Makes sense,’ Christine said, wrapping her arms around herself, feeling the cold.

Stratton moved to the end of his strut and lifted his blanket to make some room. ‘Sit over here. We need to keep warm.’

‘Not the old Eskimo ploy,’ she said, moving across the bell to sit beside him.

‘The lengths I go to to use that line.’

They pulled their legs out of the water, propped them on the opposite strut and adjusted the blankets. Stratton put an arm around the girl and they got as comfortable as they could.

‘What happened to Durrani?’ he asked.

‘He killed Mani and I think he intended to kill me. But he hesitated for some reason. I guess he was in a lot of pain. Then the lights went out. I punched him in the chest with everything I had. He must’ve been in bad shape. When the lights went back on he was lying on the floor, gasping for air . . . I’ve never seen anyone die up close before today.’

‘How’d you get so beaten up?’

‘That bastard Mandrick.’

‘What’s the deal with him?’

‘Works for the crooked corporation that owns Styx. They were making money from the mine, cheating Uncle Sam. Small potatoes. But a good enough reason for us to shut down the interrogation cell before it became an embarrassment . . . Mandrick kept all the dirt on a small computer. He liked insurance. It was all the proof I needed. But I blew it . . . Doesn’t matter now, though. We got what we wanted in the end. At the risk of sounding mercenary, this works out pretty good for us.’

‘Glad someone’s happy.’

Christine looked at Stratton. ‘He has what you came for.’

Stratton had not forgotten.

‘He’ll get picked up when he surfaces,’ she said. ‘The feds still want him.’

‘That’s not good for me, though. The feds’ll get what I came for . . . But he knows they’ll be waiting for him. That’s why he’s still down there. That pod’s designed to decompress at depth. He’ll surface when it’s done . . . You have any idea what time it is?’

‘It was around four p.m. when I went to see Mandrick. Dinner’s at six but I wanted to see him a couple of hours earlier. It couldn’t have been more than an hour after that when the alarms went off.’

‘That means it’ll be dark when we surface. He needs it to be dark.We’re ten miles off the coast. Not a problem if you’re wearing the right gear. He’ll be miles out of the area by dawn. On the road by late morning.’

Christine had nothing consolatory to offer.

‘Unless we’re there when he surfaces,’ Stratton added.

‘He must’ve started his decompression long before us.’

Stratton had already thought of that.

She wondered what was going through his mind. ‘Why do I get the feeling you’re planning on taking another risk before we’re even done with this one?’

‘I want to finish what I came for.’

‘I’ve been around special ops for a few years now and I’ve never met anyone like you before.What drives you?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Fear of failing? No. I have that but I’m not in your league.’

‘I get as scared as the next person. I suppose I just don’t know when to quit until I’m in over my head. Then I have to figure how to get out. So far I’ve been lucky.’

‘You’ve solved one puzzle for me.’

‘What’s that?’

‘I’ve wanted to be like you all my life. But I never made it because deep down I didn’t really believe you existed . . . Thanks.’

‘You hitting on me?’

‘Could be my last chance. This is the new me. It’s your fault. I see what I want and now I’m going for it.’

They chuckled together.

‘We should relax and save our air,’ Stratton said. ‘Try to sleep. I’ll stay awake.’

Christine rested her head comfortably against him, enjoying the closeness despite the circumstances. He placed the palm of his hand against the side of her head.

She mused thoughtfully for some time but her eyelids soon grew heavy as the events of the day drained her. Seconds after closing her eyes she fell into a deep sleep. It seemed to her as though only a few minutes had passed before the digital clock chirped.

She sat up, wondering where she was for a second.

Stratton took the pliers and reached down into the water. He jiggled with the clamp and a few seconds later the drum began to roll and the bell ascended.

He adjusted the gas, adding some oxygen to the mix, breathing in and out deeply, hoping he might spot any dangerous symptoms before they incapacitated him. He had experienced decompression sickness before during a familiarisation exercise in an RAF decompression chamber before a week of HALO jumps with the SAS. The team had been inside a large chamber containing chairs and tables and had been invited to occupy themselves with a variety of games such as kit construction or drawing pictures. In Stratton’s case he’d had to continually subtract seven from four hundred.

It was odd the way some had reacted differently to others. And at different periods of the decompression process. Some people had lasted barely a minute before they’d begun to act strangely, drawing wildly or becoming hysterical. One of the guys had started to do a little jig. Assistants wearing oxygen masks had been on hand to give oxygen immediately to anyone who showed signs of going under. Stratton had concentrated everything he had into subtracting his numbers and when the decompression had reached a dangerous level the pressure had been reversed and the exercise brought to a stop. When Stratton had reviewed his maths afterwards he’d found that he’d only made a couple of mistakes and had wondered if that was down to poor arithmetic or if he had started to succumb.