by J B Cantwell
“Soldiers!” Abrams bellowed. “Get out there! Get …”
But he didn’t finish his thought. A bullet caught him in the back of the head before he could say another word.
I stared dumbly for a quick moment, then pulled on my helmet and hooked it to the suit.
“Everybody get ready!” I shouted, tossing helmets in their direction. “We’re leaving now!”
I crawled toward the door on the other side of the room, which was swinging violently on its hinges now.
Alex paused, but I gave him the biggest shove I could manage. “Move it!” I called into the mic. “There’s no saving me now!”
I wondered if the other two could hear me, and if so, what they would think about what I’d just said.
But this was no time for being bashful.
I crawled ahead as the bullets continued to barrage the interior of the boat. Then, as I made it halfway out the door, an explosion at the bow of the boat threw me two feet off the floor. My body hit the edge of the doorway, and I knew I’d be fighting a long string of nasty bruises if we made it out of here alive.
“Are you all okay?” I shouted. Nobody answered. “Hey!” I called. A handful of muffled voices crackled through my earpiece, and I realized the horrible truth.
They couldn’t hear me.
I turned back and motioned to them desperately to follow me. The bow of the boat was on fire, something I only vaguely recognized as a threat. I had to focus. I had to get them out.
Alex was first. I tightened the strap around his helmet and yelled into my microphone. “Go!”
He shook his head, motioning to the side of his head. We were flying blind.
I put my hands on his shoulders and shoved him toward the side of the boat. He understood and moved in that direction, waiting for the rest of us.
Idiot!
“Go, go, go!” I yelled, more to myself than anything.
A spray of bullets hit the wall of the boat behind our heads. There was no time.
I grabbed onto Hector’s helmet, tightening it one last time. Then Kyle’s. I watched as their dark forms thrust over the side of the railing, where Alex crouched waiting for me.
“Go!” I yelled again, gesturing for him to get himself over the side of the boat. But he refused. He crouched there, waiting, then held out one hand.
A new round of bullets sprayed above.
I took it.
We went into the water together. For a moment, I lost my grip of his hand, and fear flooded through me. I dared to shine my headlamp for just a moment and saw him struggling just a few feet away from me. I jetted over to him and turned him around. Then, as the bullets began to pierce the surface of the water, I clicked my headlamp off again and we sank down together.
I didn’t know what had happened to Kyle and Hector, but then I saw another headlamp flare to life. It was Hector’s. He turned around and around, searching for us. In the distance, I saw Kyle jetting toward us.
But Hector.
The next round of bullets found him, the shooter clearly drawn to the shining beacon of his headlamp.
“Turn it off!” I screamed. “But I was too late. I saw his body buckle as bullets found his torso.
“No! Hector!”
I moved to jet toward him, but Alex held me back. The shooter was still firing. It would be suicide to join Hector, his lamp still shining brightly as he began to sink. I tried to fight Alex, still wanting to get to him despite this danger, but his strength won out in the end.
I felt Kyle’s hand on my shoulder from my left, and together the three of us watched as Hector slowly sank into the depths of the lake. Alone.
How long would he survive? Was he already dead?
It didn’t matter now. There was nothing we could do for him.
Tears of frustration and terror rolled down my cheeks as another explosion rocked the boat above us.
That was it. Our ticket out of this. Our ticket home. Losing its battle against the explosions that had destroyed it past the point of no return.
I didn’t know if the captain had survived the gunfire or the explosions, but even if he had, he would be dead soon enough.
We all would.
Together, we slowly sank farther into the lake, holding each others’ hands to keep from losing one another.
We stayed that way, clutching together as the hulk of metal sank before us. The fires extinguished as they met the water, and soon we were enveloped in the complete darkness of night, our vessel gone forever.
We were lost.
EPISODE 4
Chapter One
I was blind.
My eyes searched the dark water, hoping to see a face I knew. Any face at all. Even though both Alex and Kyle held my hands tightly, I felt desperate and alone. But it would be suicide to turn on our lamps at this shallow depth. I squeezed them hard.
Were the three of us still alive? Hector had been taken down so suddenly, so violently.
But the feeling of Kyle and Alex’s hands pressed together with mine told me that yes, we were alive. I steadied my breathing as we sank down together, a trio of promise, or of failure. It remained to be seen.
The gun I held against my belt was useless now in the deep of the lake, but there was no one to fire it at, anyway. What could I do? Send a bullet up toward the sky? It would never make it through the friction of the water. And if it did, the chances that it would find an enemy craft were almost nil.
And the grenades. We each had two of them. Waterproof. But where should we go? What should we do with them?
“Can you guys hear me?” I tried tentatively.
No answer.
It was just as I’d feared when we first hit the water; my communication systems were fried, leaving me with only my senses of touch and sight to survive.
After several long minutes in the dark, we hit the bottom of the lake. 210 feet. Not far enough to kill us, but far enough for me to panic. We had only trained in the shallows, had only planned for fifty feet below.
Kyle flipped on his head lamp. For a moment, I gestured frantically for him to turn it off, looking around as if I would find the enemy waiting for us right here at the bottom. But we were deep enough now that it would be difficult for the Canadians to pinpoint our location.
Unless they have sonar.
I was sure that they did. It hadn’t been brought up as an issue in training. We had all stupidly thought that we’d be able to approach the great pipes without being noticed, that our boat wouldn’t be seen. We had planned on the cover of darkness to hide us. But now that we were actually here, it was only a matter of time before they were on top of us again.
I flipped on my headlamp and motioned to the others.
We have to get out of here. We have to go now.
I saw their mouths moving, speaking to one another.
They can hear each other.
“I can’t hear you,” I said, tapping the side of my helmet. They looked at me for a moment, then seemed to understand.
I pulled down the map of the lake from my lens. How much air was in our jet tanks? Enough to complete the mission and make it back to shore?
No. Not nearly.
We had been depending on the boat to pick us up when the job was done. But now that boat sat at the bottom of the lake, everyone on board presumably dead.
Kyle motioned for us to get moving and put his hands on his jets.
No.
I grabbed his arm. We needed to discuss this. And, technically, I was still in charge.
We would have to abort. There was no way we would be able to make it back. I oriented myself with my lens’ compass and held out my arm, pointing west. It was our only chance.
But he refused.
Kyle turned away from me then, saying something into Alex’s ear. He was insisting we complete the job.
Alex paused, looking back and forth between me and Kyle, weighing his options.
I pointed once again, this time more vigorously. We had to go back
. Our best chance of being picked up was to head west.
But then his eyes met mine and he shook his head, making a slashing motion against his throat.
They would kill us if we went back.
My stomach sank like a rock. I knew he was right.
The entire mission would have been seen as a waste simply because we would refuse to die carrying it out. So we were dead either way. The Service would never allow such cowardice among its soldiers.
But for a moment, I stopped to think, too.
This could be our chance. Our escape. We were so close to Canada. We could get out of our commitments to the Service once and for all. Rip out our chips. Beg for asylum. Beg for our lives.
Suddenly, a memory flashed into my mind: the Stilts being wiped completely off the map. The Volunteers, dead, their headquarters now at the bottom of the river.
The only way to help the Volunteers, if any of them had been left alive, was to see this mission through.
Canada would have to wait.
Finally, I nodded my head and kicked in his direction, firing up my jetpacks as I did so.
We would have to finish the mission, then escape on foot if we were lucky enough to survive.
It took us about ten minutes to reach the edge of the great pipe. I wondered if the enemy would see us as anything more than fish. There were big fish in these lakes, weren’t there?
Maybe. But that didn’t mean that the Canadians were stupid. In fact, at this point, they seemed far smarter than our side.
We would have to run like we had never run before.
Slowly, the pipe opening came into view. It was twenty feet tall, enormous. Kyle looked back to us, and his face looked relieved to find us there behind him.
A current was gradually pulling us now toward the opening. I motioned to the others that we should move deeper, away from the suction. They both nodded, and we all headed down.
After about fifty feet, we could no longer feel the pull of the pipe, and we stopped moving. They were talking to each other again, their words lost on me. They were deciding, looking up at the pipe and pointing to different parts of the opening.
Alex turned to me and signed, pointing to himself and then up to the top edge of the pipe. Then, he pointed to me and off to the left. Kyle had already turned and started swimming away to the right.
The whole thing was risky, leagues more dangerous than what we’d trained for. We would be incredibly lucky to make it out of the water alive.
Alex signed with his hands, flashing them at me once, twice, then motioned to his jets. Twenty seconds, that was how long we would need using our jets to make it far enough away from the explosions. Far enough to survive the blasts. Once set, there would only be thirty seconds before they exploded.
I took a deep breath and nodded. He took my hand again and then held it up to his heart.
Be safe, he mouthed.
Please let me see him again. Please.
Tears of frustration and desperation sprang to my eyes. He let go of my hand, and I squeezed the handholds of my jets and headed in the direction of my detonation point. It was beyond dangerous for me to do this while off communication. I would need to set it and then bolt in the other direction, hoping that, somehow, we would all be free and clear before any of the grenades went off.
Far above, I saw bright white lights shining down into the water. So much for them thinking we were fish. They were searching for us right now.
I pressed the levers harder, anxious to make it to the left edge and get the whole thing over with. Bullets flew through the water like rain, spraying all over, searching. They were made for water, weapons that our government didn’t have, or didn’t allow us to have.
As always, we were expendable.
The Canadians weren’t just looking anymore. They were taking their chances, which to them was nothing more dangerous than firing a handful of guns in our direction.
They would hit us eventually. And they knew it.
I reached the edge and had to kick my jets into high gear just to stay out of the flow of the pipe. Only once I reached the western edge did I release the handles, holding myself steady in the water with my flippers as I ripped the two grenades from my belt. Somewhere above, an alarm sounded, muffled to my ears.
What did they know?
I stuck the grenades to the smooth concrete with giant suction cups twice the size of the weapons, themselves. I pulled the pins, praying that the others had already pulled theirs as well.
Then I cranked on the handles of the jets and, after clearing the force of the current, headed back in the direction where Alex and I had last met. Slowly, as I got farther and farther away, the volume of the alarm quieted.
Please be there. Please be there.
Five, six, seven …
This was nuts. I was lost without the ability to communicate. I was shooting in the dark.
Twelve, thirteen, fourteen …
I desperately kicked with my fins, trying to put as much distance between myself and that pipe as I possibly could.
Eighteen, nineteen …
I stopped, turning. Where were they?
Twenty.
After a few tense moments, I saw a headlamp in the distance headed my way.
I let go of the breath I had been holding without realizing it. And then he was before me.
And it wasn’t Alex.
Kyle had let go of his jets now, and I saw a long trail of blood following him.
He was hit. Two holes, one in his arm, one in his shoulder. He was doubling over now, sinking, his mouth moving, saying words I couldn’t hear. I saw blood spatter from his mouth into the interior of his face plate.
That bullet on his shoulder had come straight down into him. It had punctured his shoulder, but then kept on going, ripping apart his insides with as much force as a grenade might’ve had.
I searched around, desperate to find Alex. Was he okay? Was he still in one piece?
Kyle’s hands went limp in mine. I grabbed his shoulders, shaking him, but I was too late. His eyes were open, lifeless.
A sob escaped me, and I looked up one more time, hoping to find my friend. My love.
And the pipes exploded, knocking me backward with such force that I couldn’t catch my breath.
I lost my grip on Kyle, and I saw his body sinking to the lake floor far below.
The bullets were gone now. Maybe even the people firing them had been killed by the blasts.
But that didn’t matter to me. Only one thing mattered to me.
And he was nowhere in sight.
Chapter Two
We hadn’t agreed on a place to meet if things went haywire. Alex had only motioned east, twenty seconds. He hadn’t said what depth. He hadn’t said how far.
I started to sweat inside my helmet, though the water was cold, even with my thick wetsuit to warm me. Now that the job was done, and my panic was subsiding, I was aware of things like the cold.
Where should I go?
Nowhere, I decided. I was far enough away that I couldn’t hear the alarm anymore, couldn’t tell if it had been taken out along with the pipe. The Canadians were probably looking for us, for me, but I didn’t dare turn off my headlamp. It was my only lifeline to Alex. If he couldn’t find me, I wasn’t sure what I would do.
My mind instantly went to the thought that I would surrender. And then immediately shifted back to my original goal.
Make it out alive.
Get to the end of the year.
Destroy the transmission buildings.
Somehow.
Then I could start thinking about Canada, could start thinking about anywhere, really. Anywhere else.
I looked at my depth monitor. Fifty-five feet. We hadn’t planned on a particular depth, but in our training we’d been told that we would be working at no more than fifty feet below the surface. I kicked my flippers a few times and rose up to fifty. I searched the water around me, even shone my headlamp up to the surface, trying to see
if the danger of another boat had tracked me down.
Nothing, though. I spun around and shivered. I wouldn’t be able to stay still for too much longer without risking hypothermia.
Occasionally, a fish or two would flit across my vision, startling me as I held vigil, looked desperately into the black of the water for my lost friend.
He’s been hit. It’s just like Kyle. He’s out there somewhere. Bleeding out.
Suddenly, I felt sure of this. I gripped the handles of my jetpacks and sped back toward the pipe, sinking deep enough to keep the enemy from seeing me. I was pointing my light down now, expecting to see Alex slowly sinking to the bottom. Soon, the remains of the piping system came into view. We had blown apart the entire structure, and the suction we had felt when we’d first arrived was gone now, the system dismantled.
I never saw him coming.
Hands on my shoulders.
I screamed, whipping around, trying to identify my attacker, my hand reaching desperately, uselessly, for my gun.
But it was him. Alex.
A sob escaped me, and I moved in to hug him. He pushed me away, though, and I saw the urgency on his face. He knew something I didn’t.
Suddenly, I saw what he saw. Bullets raining down on us again, though at much slower speeds at this depth. Underwater, there was a big difference between twenty feet and fifty.
But it was only a matter of time. Maybe they would send down an underwater missile now that their system was already destroyed. What would they have to lose? They could blow up the whole lake if they wanted to.
He pointed in a direction. Was it west?
It didn’t seem to matter, and we didn’t have enough time to care.
Alex pointed down, and we both let ourselves sink again, trying to get as far away as we could from the remains of the pipe, and from those who protected it.
All the way to the bottom. Somewhere down here was Kyle. Hector. A dark nightmare.
I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath, but as my feet hit the floor, I let it out, then gulped in air. Alex took my hand, and I looked up.
