by Jack Du Brul
One hundred and five million cubic yards of dirt had been excavated from the Gaillard Cut alone, fully half of all material unearthed for the canal project. An early description of the sheer volume of rubble removed to build the Panama Canal stated that if it were compacted into a column with the base the size of an average city block, it would climb to 100,000 feet. Or put another way, the overburden would fill a string of railcars long enough to circle the globe—three and a half times. As Juan Aranjo’s boat motored farther into the cut, Mercer felt that no guidebook comparison could possibly depict the awesome scale of the project. He’d seen many of the world’s engineering marvels, the Great Pyramids, the Coliseum in Rome, the Golden Gate Bridge, Hoover Dam, the Channel Tunnel. All of them paled next to this.
Towering to their right, they passed what remained of a particular hill that had been blasted to the exact shape of the step pyramid at Saqqara. Then they reached the actual continental divide. Mercer was astounded to think that he was in the middle of a mountain range that stretched from the tip of South America all the way to northern Canada. Walls of andesitic basalt rose in stepped-back cliffs five hundred feet above the placid water. These were the remains of Gold Hill and Contractor’s Hill, the highest mountains near the canal and yet the lowest the early engineers could find when they surveyed the route. Holes had been drilled into the rock and reinforced concrete plugs inserted to add stability, and still there was evidence that rockslides continued to occur. The canal was a little more than six hundred feet wide and it seemed the tops of these stone massifs weren’t much wider, looming like the sides of the artificial canyon this was.
From the deck of the small boat, he had to tilt his head all the way back as they motored between the shadows of these man-made cliffs. The recent rain had saturated the veneer of soil on top of the hills, so water cascaded down the faces of the hills in white horse-tail streaks.
“Pretty amazing, huh?” Lauren asked from the entrance to the cabin. The black microprene suit clung to her body like a second skin.
Mercer had to force himself not to stare. “I was just thinking that when they were digging the cut, the temperature must have been about a hundred and twenty degrees.”
“The heat was about that bad, yes, but what bothered them most were the landslides. Months of digging could be refilled in just one avalanche, burying steam shovels and train tracks and men. I read it was so unstable that not only would mud slide into the dig, but at times, the bottom of the cut actually bulged upward because of the weight of the mountains next to it.”
Mercer visualized the titanic weight of the two hills pressing into the soft substrata and causing an upthrust between them, like pinching two ends of a balloon to expand its center. It was rock mechanics on the largest scale.
They watched in silence for a few minutes. Lauren finally spoke. “On the drive over, you were kind of vague about what Vic and I are looking for down there.” Behind her, the Serb used a whetstone on the blade of his dive knife. “Care to give me something specific?”
“I’m not sure,” Mercer said. “Roddy told us that all the ships that suddenly went off course had been delayed coming out of the west lane at Pedro Miguel. He and the other pilots didn’t report anything wrong with the ships’ steering. No one had tampered with the auxiliary controls or anything like that. Roddy and I think that maybe something was attached to the hulls of these ships to cause the course changes.”
“A submersible?” she asked doubtfully.
“I know it sounds farfetched, but how would you go about changing the direction of a twenty-thousand-ton ship? Remember, none of the vessels that went off course were PANAMAX ships. They were smaller freighters passing through the canal at night. This would give a submersible the room to maneuver and, depending on how it was designed, the power to alter the course of such a vessel. The sub could be moved into position as soon as the lock doors open. The ship is then held up for a few minutes while the sub is attached. And when the time is right, it uses its engine to nudge the freighter off course.”
“Why go through all that when it would be cheaper, and easier, just to pay off a couple of canal pilots to cause these accidents?”
“If Liu does close the Panama Canal the subsequent investigation is going to be massive. He can’t risk those pilots being questioned and can’t kill them either because that would be more suspicious. Also, by staging a string of such strange incidents he’s created a pattern that would explain away an explosives-laden ship he intentionally rams into the canal’s bank.”
Lauren’s brow creased as she considered Mercer’s explanation. He could tell she was reluctant to believe his idea. Her nod was more to say that he should go on than that she bought the scenario. He saw that their relationship had suffered in some fundamental way because of his reaction to the torture. He didn’t know what he could do or say to reassure her that he was still thinking clearly. Nothing, probably, until he did finally come to grips with what Sun had done to him.
“I’ve got to hand it to Liu,” Mercer continued, putting aside her uncertainty. “He’s damned thorough. He’s planned dozens of moves ahead, and remains flexible enough to react to our presence. Every contingency I can think of, he’s already considered. Any investigation into a catastrophic explosion will show that American-trained canal pilots have a history of screwing up. Following the trail of gold he’ll pay to Panama only leads to a mine that looks legit. If the canal is closed for a couple of years, the fact that Hatcherly Consolidated has container ports and bought a rail line and has almost finished an oil pipeline will seem like a case of right place right time, not something deliberate.”
“It all seems so convoluted.”
“It is, and that’s the beauty of it. It’s too complex to be plausible and yet there’s no other explanation.” He paused. “Anyone with enough motivation and explosives could blow up anything in the world. The trick is getting away with it. That’s what separates a lunatic from a calculated terrorist. We’re not dealing with suicidal fundamentalists. These are rational people who want to survive the attack and enjoy their rewards. That’s why it has to be so complex. Liu’s got this operation planned to the final detail and is weeks, maybe only days from pulling it off.” His eyes bored into hers. “Lauren, do you realize that if I hadn’t been suspicious about how Gary Barber died the investigation would have ended in the jungle with that police officer you don’t like. No one would have any idea that a Chinese company, ostensibly owned by their government, was about to shut down the Panama Canal in such a way that the United States would be unable to react.”
“Señor,” Juan Aranjo interrupted.
Mercer looked up. Like an oasis of technology in the middle of a primeval jungle, the Pedro Miguel Lock lay just ahead. Their little boat was now on the Pacific side of the continental divide so the terrain had flattened into gentle slopes covered in golden grass and palms. On the east bank a shantytown of corrugated buildings abutted the chain-link fence that stretched along this section of the waterway. Laundry swayed from lines stretched across the squatters’ village, and behind it was the railroad and the trans-Panama highway. Closer to the side-by-side locks sat a mooring site for the small boats pilots used to reach the ships they were to guide, several parking lots, and two long warehouses. These structures were maintenance sheds for the electric trains that towed vessels through the locks. The trains ran on tracks laid on the edges of each thousand-foot-long lock chamber and on the sixty-foot-wide wall that divided the two concrete basins. Up to six of these engines, called mules, were needed to guide their unwieldy charges into and then out of the locks so that neither was damaged. It was up to the canal pilots to coordinate a ship’s own motive power with that of the mules, and to maintain proper tension on the heavy towlines to see the vessel transit the lock safely.
A tanker had just passed out of the right lock, giving Mercer a view down the length of the chamber to the tops of the mitre doors that held back Lake Gatun. They closed inward in the sh
ape of a flattened V so the angle helped spread the tremendous load they held at bay. From Roddy he’d learned that the doors were sixty-five feet wide, seven feet thick, and were hollow so that they floated to make opening them easier. Each individual gate weighed upwards of seven hundred tons. And here at Pedro Miguel, both lock chambers had two sets of doors on the downstream end so that if one were somehow broached, there wouldn’t be a catastrophic failure that could conceivably drain the lake.
From the low vantage of Juan’s boat, Mercer couldn’t accurately gauge the scale of this amazing system, nor could he see the mile-long Miraflores Lake beyond. On the far end of that lake was a pair of double locks built in stair-step fashion that raised or lowered ships a total of fifty-five vertical feet from the level of the Pacific Ocean.
As he watched, the freighter in the left-hand lock began to rise perceptively, levitating as gravity dumped eight and a half million gallons of water into the chamber. In just a few minutes, the level within the lock reached that of the cut and the massive doors swung outward. The mules heaved on their lines to pull the ship out. Once the steel hawsers were cast away from the vessel, white water erupted at its stern as its huge propeller powered it away.
Mercer looked down at Lauren once again. “We’re here. We’ll wait for twenty minutes or so for the sun to go down a bit more and then put you and Vic in the water.”
“Okay.”
Juan knew his role as tour guide and began pointing out features for Mercer to shoot with his camera. Not that there was any film in it. He tried to determine if there was any unusual activity going on at the lock, but all seemed normal. A continuous procession of ships lumbered by. None of them were cruise liners or PANAMAX freighters because it was getting late and the sun would be down by the time they reached the Gatun Locks on the other side of the country.
Mercer dutifully acted like he was burning through pictures, all the while his stomach tightened with tension. He hated that he was asking Lauren and Vic to do something of which he himself was incapable. It wasn’t in his nature to let others put themselves at risk, but this was too important to trust his rudimentary diving skills. All during the wait he checked on her as much as he dared without acting too unusual. Her outward calm didn’t seem to be hiding anything more than a natural sense of anxiety.
After twenty-five minutes, Lauren said the angle of the sun was right for their dive. The surface of the canal was a flickering sheet of reflected sunlight, as if the water had turned to flame.
“A cargo vessel is about to come out of the right lock,” Mercer informed her out of the corner of his mouth. “Its bulk will prevent anyone at the lock from seeing you scramble over the side as long as no one’s on the ship’s wing bridge. I’ll keep watch, and as soon as I say go, get yourselves into the water.”
Vic stood behind Lauren on the short stairs rising up from the cabin so he could help her maneuver off the boat with the big air tank on her back. A belt of lead weights draped from her waist and a buoyancy compensator hung from her neck. Lauren and the Serb had already pulled on hoods that matched their dive suits and had their masks in place. Both carried their flippers, which they would slip on their feet once they were safely under water.
Taut muscles in Lauren’s arms and shoulders made slender crests in her suit. From behind the mask, her eyes were steady. “When water flushes through the lock’s access pipes,” she said, “we’ll face some pretty tough currents that’ll cut into our bottom time. Even at minimal consumption these tanks have a maximum of sixty minutes of air. Scubapanama didn’t have any of the bigger ones I wanted.
Vic and I’ll be back exactly forty-five minutes after we go in, and that’s pushing it far beyond what’s safe. Understand?”
“Three-quarters of an hour. Gotcha.”
She touched his arm. “I mean it, Mercer. Expect us in forty-five minutes, but if we’re not back in sixty, we ain’t coming back. There is no leeway in these numbers. If you don’t see us in one hour, you won’t see us at all. Promise me you’ll get your butt out of here.”
Mercer held her gaze for a second, nodded, then raised his camera to study the freighter through the long lens.
The ship’s captain and canal pilot must have stationed themselves on the far side of the vessel because only a pair of Panamanian soldiers acting as guards stood at the wing-bridge rail. One waved down at the little boat and Mercer turned the camera away, not wanting to give them any reason to remain. The rest of the four-hundred-foot ship appeared deserted.
Mercer watched the two bored troopers surreptitiously and the instant they moved away from the rail to return to the air-conditioned comfort of the bridge, his voice cracked, “Now!”
Tomanovic moved so fast he was nearly carrying Lauren and her sixty pounds of gear as he lunged up the steps. When he reached the gunwale, he grasped her around the middle and spun around so that when he tumbled over the side he shielded her body with his. They hit with a small splash and a boil of bubbles. A few moments later, two gloved hands rose from the water and gave the divers’ circular okay signal by touching thumb to index finger.
The hands vanished and the water churned slightly as the two finned away. Mercer pulled Lauren’s Rolex from his pocket and noted the time. Forty-five minutes, she’d said. They’d be back up at seven-eighteen.
The sensation was like falling into a bottomless bathtub because the water was blood warm. Lauren twisted in liquid space and tucked her knees to her chest to slip on her flippers before adding air to the buoyancy compensator. She and Vic found their equilibrium at the same time and both slid toward the surface to give Mercer a signal that they were all right. She bled a little air from the vest, allowing her to drop back into the void. They leveled off at forty feet, deep enough for much of their exhausted breaths to dissipate. She immediately equalized the pressure in her ears and behind her face mask. Through the murky water, Lauren could feel the throbbing engine and thrashing propeller of the freighter passing abeam of them.
Because she was used to ocean diving, it took her a few moments to get used to the difference in buoyancy the freshwater gave her and its silty taste. Visibility was pretty bad, maybe twenty feet, but would give her enough warning if there was anything in the water with them. There was little current this far from the locks, yet Lauren was prepared for the suck of water once one of the chambers began to fill.
Together, she and Vic began swimming in easy strokes toward the lock.
Her PADI instructor once told her that scuba was the sport for the lazy. Do nothing fast and don’t waste energy you might need later. It was advice she’d never forgotten.
Using just the strength in her supple legs, she kicked through the milky emerald water toward the distant concrete structure. Vic stayed at her side. Above them, the setting sun had turned the surface into a distant plane of crimson mercury. Below lurked an impenetrable gloom.
Mercer’s assurance that he was okay rang in her mind. She wouldn’t have gone in the water if she didn’t believe him. He was up to this mission, yet she still harbored a lingering doubt. He had been damaged in that torture chamber in some way he refused to acknowledge. It was a male thing, she felt, the unwillingness to admit pain. She’d seen it in her father, her brothers, and all during her military career, especially in Kosovo. Like most men, Mercer would stupidly spend days or weeks working it out himself rather than save time by talking.
Lauren wanted to help him. She remembered him talking about his childhood in Africa and knew he was capable of expressing his feelings. If she could—
Focus, damnit, she admonished herself, concentrating on her breathing. She had her own priorities right now.
After ten minutes of swimming, a shadow formed in front of her and Vic. Like coming across a sunken building, they approached huge walls of cement that quickly filled their vision. The front of the twin locks.
Vic jerked a thumb downward. Lauren nodded and the two sank farther into the abyss, coming up on the bottom at fifty-five feet. The fl
oor of the canal was barren stone, swept clean by the remorseless tidal action of the locks filling and draining. It looked like a desert. Not a piece of trash, leaf, or stick in sight. The bottom of the locks sat on a massive concrete foundation ten feet above them. The steel doors were like those guarding a giant’s castle, utterly impregnable.
Flanking each set of doors were culverts formed within the cement, each bigger than a subway tunnel. These eighteen-foot-diameter pipes were the inlets through which water entered the lock. Feeding off them inside the lock’s walls were fourteen evenly spaced branches, each large enough to accommodate an automobile. These cross-passages stretched under the chambers themselves, and from them a total of seventy separate stem valves rose into the floor of the lock to evenly distribute the flow of water. The apertures in the lock’s floor in which the stem valves sat were ostensibly the smallest component of the whole mechanism and yet each was four feet square. All this piping could fill a 110,000-square-foot lock at a rate of two feet a minute. The billions of gallons that drain from the canal each year are replaced by seven feet of annual rainfall recharging Lake Gatun through the Chagres and other rivers.
Lauren hung suspended, mesmerized by the scale of what she was seeing. Age had darkened the concrete to a dull black, but the main feeder pipes were darker still, somehow malevolent, like haunted caves from a child’s nightmare. Despite the warm water, a chill ran up her spine and she whirled around, certain she was being watched.
