by GJ Fortier
But he didn’t stop there.
He whirled about and dove for the floor just as Rigby pointed his semi automatic at his back. Covington had his own weapon, or rather Jo Turner’s Sig Sauer, out and he began firing, not taking the time to aim. In the enclosed space, the sound was deafening as he unloaded the pistol into the near darkness. He immediately dropped the empty magazine to the ground and inserted another. There was no sound except for the ringing in Covington's ears as he allowed his eyes to adjust to the low light.
Rigby wasn't by the door any more. There were, however, three narrow streams of sunlight coming through the metal where he had been standing. Covington couldn't see Rigby at all from where he landed behind the bags of gardening supplies. Allowing himself to breathe again, he rose to his knees. Peering over the stacks of mulch and fertilizer, he saw a dark form crumpled on the floor. He walked slowly around, keeping the Sig trained on the center of the motionless form. He felt around for a light switch and flipped it on. Rigby’s eyes were wide in death as his lifeless hand still clutched the pistol. Covington smirked at his would-be assassin. “Enjoy your trip.”
The rush of adrenaline quickly wore off, and he felt the bite of pain in his shoulder. As he reached up and massaged the wound, there was the wetness of blood under his clothes again. He checked himself for additional wounds and was relieved to find none.
How in the world had Rigby missed? He shook his head at the man's still form.
Sighing heavily, he went back to the panel on the wall.
It had four rows of twenty control boxes stretching from wall to wall, each having two buttons, one red and one green. Next to them on the extreme left was a panel where there were three lights, one red, one white, and one green. Above them was a large frame with a heavy gauge switch in the OFF position. It was labeled “Master ON/OFF.” He pushed the lever to the ON position. The white lights on the smaller boxes below lit up.
27 The Flood
JIMMY WAS AWKWARDLY tinkering with the door controls to his office for several minutes, wincing occasionally from the pain in his wounded appendage, when Colonel Jim Talbot said, “We need to leave. Now.”
Ignoring the colonel, Eddie asked, “What about it, Jimmy?”
“There's no power getting to the controls.” He shook his head. “I can't release the magnetic lock. I'm telling you, it won't open until I programmed it to … in about seventeen hours.”
Eddie glanced at Talbot. “Well, that's just great!”
Talbot sighed. “I gave you ten minutes and it's been fifteen. This has just been a waste of time. Let's go, gentlemen. Now.”
As Jimmy rose, he gave Eddie a knowing look. “I'll be able to access my computer from the outside in under an hour.” He shot a suspicious look at the colonel. “And even if my hard drives get stolen, it won't make any difference. I've backed them up off site. I won’t lose a thing.”
Talbot scoffed at the obvious implication, but chose not to comment. He had his suspicions about what was going on and who might be behind it, and those suspicions were very similar to those of Eddie. He hadn’t even finished the thought when he heard an unfamiliar sound in the distance. A sound like something out of a World War II submarine movie.
Ahhwooogahhh!
It blared out over and over again, and then they heard something else. A male voice was speaking in a slow, calculated cadence, but they couldn't make out what he was saying.
“What the—?” Ghazini began.
“I have no idea,” Talbot said, looking as confused as they all felt.
The men started moving toward the sounds with Jimmy bringing up the rear. It wasn't long before they all realized that the din was leading them directly to the garage.
“That's outside the labs,” Eddie remarked, picking up his pace.
Ahhwooogahhh!
As they passed through the dressing room and into the garage, the automated voice's message was counting down every fifteen seconds. “Flood controls activated. Flooding will commence in six minutes.”
“Flooding?” Jimmy was wide eyed. “They're gonna flood the tunnel!”
Eddie shot an angry look at Talbot.
“Don't look at me,” he said innocently. “I'm down here too.”
“It was your general who ordered everyone out, wasn't it.” It wasn’t a question.
Talbot gave Eddie an angry look. “And if I had insisted that we leave when I got that order, we wouldn't be here right now.”
Eddie scoffed and started to respond, but Ghazini interrupted him. “Who cares whose fault it is? What do we do?”
“We don't have enough time to get to the generator room. It takes fifteen minutes to get through the tunnel,” Eddie lamented.
“We're gonna be trapped down here?” Jimmy asked.
“Aw, c'mon,” Ghazini said. “This is too much, man!”
“Will the blast door close?” Jimmy eyed the still-open tunnel on the far side of the room.
“It's been disabled,” Talbot told him. “But I don't know if that's good news or bad.”
“Why?” Jimmy asked.
“Because if it doesn’t close it could flood the entire complex,” Ghazini said.
“That's it,” Eddie said calmly. “They want to destroy any evidence that's left down here.”
“Well, they must be in here with us because the place was designed to be flooded from the inside,” Jimmy said.
“No, no,” Talbot piped up. “They tested the system once back in the fifties to make sure everything worked properly before they ever assigned any personnel for the inside. There's a control board somewhere over at the water treatment plant.”
Ghazini gave him a questioning look.
“Would you wanna be down here the first time they flooded it, not knowing if you were gonna get out or not?” Talbot said in answer to the unasked question.
“What difference does that make?” Eddie moaned. “We can't get half way out in six minutes!”
An image flashed in Jimmy's mind. “There may be a way! C'mon!” He was off like a shot across the large room.
Ghazini was fast on his heels with Eddie and Talbot in tow, all more than willing to entertain any plan that might get them out.
“I saw Tyler and some of the guards working on this while we were monitoring the cloning process,” Jimmy shouted as he ran. When he reached the far corner of the cavernous room, he painfully grabbed at the plastic that was loosely covering the tanker truck that had been stored there so many years before. Seeing where Jimmy was going, Ghazini grabbed the plastic, threw it back over the cab, shoved Jimmy through the driver’s door and climbed in behind him. Talbot and Eddie watched as they started frantically searching around the inside.
“Jimmy, what are you thinking?” Eddie yelled. “This truck hasn't run in decades!”
“Flood controls activated. Flooding will commence in five minutes,” they heard the voice announce over the intercom as the antiquated horn continuing to sound its warning.
“I hope that's four, fifty-nine, fifty-nine!” Talbot said.
“I can't find them! I can't find them!” Jimmy screamed as he looked at the other men, “Help me! I can't find them!” A wild look was in his eyes.
“Can't find what?” Eddie said as he jumped in the passenger’s side.
“The keys!” Jimmy shouted desperately. “We need the keys! I know it runs! I saw them move it!”
“Calm down!” Eddie thought for a moment. “Gotta be.” He reached up and flipped the visor down.
A single key fell into Ghazini's lap. Grabbing it, he slid it into the ignition and prayed. Talbot was standing beside the truck, shaking his head doubtfully as the automated warning blared in their ears in deafening succession. But they were all stunned when the old tanker's engine came to life on the first try. Ghazini smiled and pushed the gearshift into first, then let off of the clutch too fast and the engine stalled.
Talbot jumped in, pushing Eddie on top of Jimmy as the three gave their driver an alarmed loo
k. “Malik!” they said in unison. Their plea was barely audible above the siren's wail, but Ghazini didn't need any more motivation. He pushed the clutch in once more and turned the key. This time the engine turned over but didn't start.
“Oh, God help us!” Talbot said, crossing himself.
“Don't flood it, M!” Eddie instructed, trying unsuccessfully to keep his voice calm.
“What?” Ghazini didn’t understand the term. Since the advent of fuel injectors, flooding a vehicle’s engine was unheard of. Ghazini had never driven a vehicle with a carburetor.
“Get your foot off the gas!” Eddie shouted.
Ghazini complied and turned the key again. The engine turned over twice more without success and then, on his third attempt, it roared to life again.
“Let off the clutch slow,” Eddie said.
“I know how to drive!” Ghazini drew looks of astonishment from the other three at his unproven claim.
The truck lurched and nearly stalled again, jerking back and forth. Jimmy howled in pain as Eddie’s body crushed his sprained wrist. Slowly, they began to roll more smoothly as Ghazini turned the oversized wheel. Not having power steering, it seemed to Ghazini as if the truck was fighting him. “Jeez, this thing is hard to turn.”
“Let me drive!” Eddie shouted, grabbing the wheel.
“I got this!” Ghazini protested as the truck began to pick up speed. It rolled to the left in a wide arc and they all held their breath as the long front end narrowly missed clipping the corner of the wall of the tunnel. Ghazini hit the gas and the engine sputtered, coughed and backfired as they started down the three-plus mile tunnel to the generator room.
They heard the voice on the intercom fading behind them as they went. “Flood controls activated. Flooding will commence in four minutes.”
“Go! Go! Go!” Jimmy shouted as he tried to squeeze out from under Eddie.
The heavy truck's acceleration was agonizingly slow, but they were picking up speed as they proceeded down the slope of the tunnel.
“C'mon you lard ace!” Jimmy yelled as Ghazini shifted into second gear.
Eddie looked at the speedometer as it crossed the twenty-five-mile-per-hour mark. “We're not gonna make it.”
“Give it more gas!” Talbot shouted.
“It's on the floor,” Ghazini shot back.
“Just drive, M,” Eddie stated calmly with a steadying hand on the dashboard, knowing that their fate was in God's hands.
“I can't breathe!” Jimmy protested.
Eddie rolled his eyes. “If you can talk, you can breath.”
“Easy for you to say. You don't have a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound dead weight sittin' on ya.”
“Seriously?” Talbot said incredulously. “You wanna make jokes now?
Eddie couldn’t contain his smile as he stared into the distance at the pitch black ahead. “Turn on the headlights,” he said, keeping his voice even.
Ghazini's eyes danced around the steering column. “Where are they?”
“On the front of the truck,” Jimmy quipped.
Eddie threw his weight back on to the young Canadian. “I thought you couldn't breathe.”
“Yer gonna break my arm again,” Jimmy said in genuine distress.
Talbot couldn't help a chuckle. “That ought'ta shut him up for a while.”
“It's a knob on the dash to your left. There's a button on the floorboard by the clutch for the high beams.”
Ghazini found the black knob and pulled it, illuminating at least some of the darkness. The truck was picking up speed, and Jimmy decided to keep any further comments to himself. He did, however, make a mental note to remind the others later that he was the one who saved them by remembering the truck. Assuming they made it out at all.
The needle on the speedometer continued to steadily climb. Forty. Forty-five. Fifty. Fifty-five …
“That's it, that's it,” Talbot said.
The man's voice on the intercom had faded into the distance behind them, but the horn continued to blast as they accelerated ahead. They were all thankful that the tunnel, which looked a good deal smaller from inside the large truck, was a straight shot.
“Just keep your foot on the floor, M,” Eddie said evenly.
Talbot began counting off sections as they passed the yellow stripes. After the tenth section, he started to eye the openings near the ceiling warily. “We're at a thousand yards.”
“How many to go?” Eddie checked his watch.
Talbot quickly did the math. “About forty-eight hundred.”
Eddie knew that the first and last thousand yards of tunnel had none of the pipes used in the flooding. But it had taken them just over a minute to reach that mark. He glanced at the speedometer. It read seventy miles per hour and climbing slowly as they continued down the grade, deeper into the ground. They would reach the mid point and the drain in just under a minute, and then the tunnel would begin its steep incline. From there, they would need to travel over a mile to get above the level of the pipes. Eddie calculated that they would have less than two minutes to get there. Silently, he began reciting the Lord's Prayer.
They all fell silent as the tunnel began leveling off and they came to the drain. As they crossed over the metal grates, the sound that the tires made was an unsettling reminder that they were only half way out. But seconds later, they were back on bedrock and the tunnel began to rise steadily into the distance. Conversely, their speed began to rapidly decrease. Ghazini kept the accelerator on the floor, but to no avail. “C'mon!” he urged the old truck.
“Lord, help us.” Talbot listened to the engine as it began to protest against the strain.
Ghazini couldn't understand what was happening outside the cab. He felt the truck being buffeted by wind and, in between the rising and falling pitch of the siren, they could hear an odd sort of whistling all around them. “Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?” Eddie asked just as his ears popped from the growing pressure.
Jimmy was holding his nose, also trying to find relief. The pipes that fed the water from the river to the tunnel were long, nearly a mile in places, and they were filled with air that needed to go somewhere as the water moved through them.
“What now?” the colonel asked, his sinuses aching as the truck’s ancient engine began to sputter.
“Please God—”Jimmy said, checking his watch. They were rapidly running out of time.
The colonel turned his attention to the passenger side mirror. In the gray distance behind them, he could see a horizontal pillar of dark water appear at nearly ceiling level. It crashed against the opposite wall and disappeared into a cloud of mist. “We should have stayed in the lab,” he said, eying the tunnel ahead. Suddenly, another pillar appeared just ahead of them. It pummeled the opposing wall and roared like a freight train as water began hitting the truck.
Ghazini had no time to react as the force of the water pushed the truck into the wall. Bang! The impact was followed by the screech of rubber and metal as it made contact with the rock. The steering wheel jolted violently out of his hands. He fought to regain control as they passed through the rush of water. They continued to lose speed as the aged drive train fought against the steady upward grade of the tunnel. Wisps of steam could be seen escaping here and there from under the hood while droplets of oil and antifreeze began to dot the glass of the windshield before them.
Ghazini searched for the windshield wiper control but couldn't find it. Giving up, he focused on the tunnel ahead. “How much further?”
“Too far!” Talbot said.
“Just drive.” Eddie kept his voice calm.
There was another explosion of water as they passed under an opening. Brown liquid spewed into the tunnel behind them.
“Sixteen!” Talbot shouted. He had been counting down the last sections as they passed. “We've got another three hundred yards to go.”
As they reached the middle of the next section, the old truck's valiant attempt to carry them to safety c
ame to an end. As it began to shudder violently, the engine died. A cloud of steam billowed from the engine compartment from every possible exit.
“Perfect!” Eddie shouted.
“That's all we’re gonna get,” Ghazini said as they rolled to a stop. He stomped on the break but the only thing that happened was the truck began to roll backwards. “Um, guys—”
“Jump!” Eddie shouted as Ghazini and Talbot opened their doors.
Taking care not to be hit by the door, Talbot dove out, hitting the floor like a gymnast and rolling away. He was followed by Eddie, who had Jimmy by the belt, as Ghazini made his escape on the opposite side. They saw the truck pick up speed and slowly cross the tunnel towards the wall to their left.
“How much fuel is in there, Jimmy?” asked Eddie.
“I don't know. It felt pretty sluggish. From all the sloshing around, I'd say that it's at least half full.”
The truck was about fifty yards away and rapidly approaching the wall. “Run!” Eddie yelled.
It impacted at an angle and the tanker began a violent skid along the side, tearing a light fixture out of the wall as it did. A shower of sparks erupted when the conduit supplying the light with power broke off and punctured the tank.
BOOM!
The explosion knocked the men off their feet. As they watched, an orange fireball engulfed the tunnel. In the same instant a column of water erupted from the pipe that was between the expanding ball of flames and the four fleeing men, deadening the concussion with the pressure of the air and water rushing into the passageway. They quickly picked themselves up and scrambled up the incline, passing under a pipe just as another column of water burst forth from it.
There was less than a hundred yards to go now. The three younger men were outdistancing Eddie. Continuing to pump his legs, he watched as Jimmy and then Talbot passed the last pipe with Ghazini on his heels. Eddie could feel the wind in front of him, carrying with it the scent of a spring rain.
All at once, a pillar of brownish liquid burst forth, knocking him off his feet just fifteen yards behind the others. They watched in horror and feared that Eddie would be swept away in the torrent. But Eddie, filled with adrenaline, was quickly on his feet again. He dashed to the wall on his left where the current wasn't as strong and scrambled beneath the deluge to the other side, and to safety.
