by Jack Du Brul
Vic signed if she was all right and she acknowledged that she was. Her heart refused to slow and her breathing had accelerated. Again, she looked around. This time she caught a flicker of movement. Something was out there, another patch of darkness that wavered just beyond her view. She strained to see it, beaming her dive light in its direction. Nothing.
Come on, girl. Get a grip.
And then it came, resolving out of the murk, driving at them with the speed of a torpedo. Lauren got a brief impression of something silver before it was upon them. Even with the distortion of the water, it was at least eight feet long, powerful. She screamed into her mouthpiece, choking as she took a mouthful of water.
Vic’s hand lunged out to grip her shoulder, the touch enough to calm her. She blinked and realized their attacker was one of the tarpon that regularly got caught in the canal. The monstrous fish with its underslung jaw broke off its investigation and carved a tight circle around them to return to its hunt for a way out of the freshwater trap.
Lauren gave Tomanovic an embarrassed shrug. She readjusted the equipment that had shifted during her violent thrashing, making sure to note her air consumption. She compared her gauge to his. They were about even.
She looked back at the doors above them. It was hard to believe that something that large could move, yet they began to swing outward on hinges that weighed nearly twenty tons apiece. She could feel the movement of water as newly installed hydraulic rams forced them apart. A freighter or tanker would be drawn out from within the lock by the mules in just a few minutes. After that the doors would reseal themselves and the water within the chamber would drain into Miraflores Lake to lower the level for the next vessel coming up the thirty-foot stair.
Once that next ship was secured inside the lock and the doors closed, more than eight million gallons of water would be sucked through the intake pipes to raise it up to the level of the Gaillard Cut. The rush would create a surge more powerful than the worst rip current, a force that neither Lauren nor Vic could ever hope to fight. They’d likely be crushed within the labyrinth of tunnels under the lock and their corpses would eventually flush through the system like so much trash.
It was time to find the submersible.
Keeping the dive lights angled downward so they wouldn’t show to guards and workers above, they began scouring the bottom of the canal, looking for anything out of place, some piece of evidence that ships were being intentionally diverted by something kept here at Pedro Miguel.
If she and Vic couldn’t find evidence, they’d all have to rethink their theory about what Liu Yousheng and Hatcherly were trying to accomplish in Panama. Maybe this really was an elaborate smuggling scheme that had nothing to do with the canal. It could be that was what was bothering Mercer, Lauren realized. The idea that his theory could be tossed out the window and he wasn’t in on the investigation. From their first night on the River of Ruin, she knew he was a man who valued his self-reliance and she doubted he’d accept someone else’s conclusions without investigating on his own.
That wasn’t a male thing, she thought. That was a scientist thing.
Get your head back in the game, Lauren.
Above them, the long dark shape of a freighter pulling from the lock cut the scarlet reflection on the water’s surface. At its stern was an area of roiling vortices as its prop thrashed to build up speed. The hull was coated in barnacles that would drop off by the time the ship exited the Gatun Locks on the Caribbean side of the canal. Like the tarpon, they couldn’t survive long away from their natural saltwater environment.
The area she and Vic had to survey was much larger than Lauren had anticipated, and they had about ten minutes before they needed to retreat away from the intake tunnels for the duration of the filling process. The shaft of light from their dive lamps drilled a cone through the murk that only reached twenty-five feet. By swinging side to side, they cut fifty-foot swaths back and forth across the bottom, eyes tracking the sweeping beams. Vic pointed out a couple of industrial shapes, old equipment dumped off to the side of the lock gates, but nothing resembling a submarine or large underwater propulsion platform.
They’d been under for twenty-two minutes. By working from the lock back toward the boat, they shortened the distance needed to return, giving them another twelve minutes, including a couple for decompression. Lauren began to feel the futility of their task. There wasn’t anything down here. Mercer had been wrong. She didn’t think Roddy Herrara had lied about his accident to cover incompetence, but whatever happened to him and the other pilots who’d been fired had nothing to do with this lock.
Intent on their search, Lauren and Vic didn’t notice that the huge doors had closed. In another three minutes, the valves that controlled flow into the chamber would open. The lane they were cutting across the canal was just beyond the danger point where it would suck them in.
Neither did they notice that they were no longer alone.
Six amorphous shapes had moved into position above them, hovering like wraiths. At a signal from one of them, the six swooped downward in pairs, slicing through the water with the ease of sharks.
Lauren was the first to feel that something was wrong. It was the same sixth sense that had anticipated the tarpon charge. She flipped onto her back and gazed upward just as the frogmen plunged down at her and Vic. They wore black wet suits. Four held knives while the other pair carried spearguns. Bewilderment immobilized her for just a moment before her combat training took over.
She flashed her light at her dive partner, alerting him, then reached for the knife strapped to her thigh. If not for the spearguns, Lauren would have pumped more air into her buoyancy compensator and rushed past them for the surface. Instead she dumped air and raced for the bottom. Vic dove with her, swimming on his back so he could watch their stalkers. He held his knife across his chest.
The two divers with spearguns halted their advance twenty feet off the bottom, taking up positions that covered their partners as they continued downward in pursuit. The angle of the hunt took everyone closer to the locks.
Lauren found rocky footing on the bottom, bracing herself for the rush of attack. As the distance closed, she saw that the divers were Chinese. A frogman lunged from above and to her right, a straight slash that she easily ducked because her flippers were wedged against a stone and gave her leverage. She swept her knife as the diver tried to twist away. Dark blood bloomed in tendrils from the gash in the man’s calf.
She swam after him. The wound slowed the Chinese diver enough for her to catch up. Unable to brace her body for a killing strike with her blade, Lauren slashed again, opening another cut below the man’s double tanks. He spun over to face her. Lauren parried his attack, the clash of metal on metal muted by the water. With her free hand she reached for his dive vest, found what she wanted and with a squeeze filled the bladder of his buoyancy compensator like a balloon.
The frogman shot upward like a rocket, effectively taking him out of the fight for a couple of minutes. Lauren panted through her regulator.
Tomanovic struggled with the other three Chinese divers. One of them was bleeding from his shoulder while the other two looked unscathed. They had Vic surrounded in a cordon large enough for one of the divers above to shoot the Serb with his speargun. Lauren stroked into the battle, coming up behind one of the Chinese. She feinted going for his air hose, and when he moved to protect it she pumped up his vest so he began to rise uncontrollably. This time she stayed behind her victim as they ascended toward the two armed divers, using him as a shield.
Had the Chinese been a larger man, stronger, she wouldn’t have been able to smother his writhing attempt at escape. She held on tight, steering them to slam into his partner. The blow barely distracted either man, but Tomanovic used those few seconds to back away from the men who’d nearly captured him.
Lauren was now embroiled in a fight that resembled an aerial battle from World War One. She and the two frogmen tumbled through the water, pursuing one ano
ther and fleeing at the same time, defending and attacking in a ball that continued to shrink as each tried to get an inside advantage. The speargun had been nullified by the closeness of the combat, but knives flashed in the glare from the wrist lights the Chinese wore. It seemed no one could get the advantage to end the struggle.
The second speargunner watched the squirming ballet, waiting for an opening.
Vic launched himself from the bottom of the canal, ignoring the two divers who came after him. The speargun swiveled at him when he was spotted and still he kept coming. The Chinese diver steadied his aim, waited until his quarry was less than five feet away and pulled the trigger.
The Serb had judged his attack perfectly, his experience almost allowing him to read the mind of the man with the gun. He anticipated the shot by a full second. The arrow left a silvery streak of bubbles in the water as it slid along the length of his body, missing his torso as he contorted to the side. It continued harmlessly into the depths, its power diminishing by the drag of the water.
He swam past the gunman and somersaulted so that he hung inverted just above his target, keeping himself protected from the two divers with knives and at the same time giving him access to the speargunner’s air hoses. He sliced through the first one before the man realized Vic was still nearby. The Serb was just feeling for the second hose through the torrent of bubbles when an unimaginable pain exploded in his groin. A knife had been thrust nearly to the hilt from above. The blade entered below his testicles, ripping open his scrotum, cutting apart the large nerve cluster and scraping along the cradle of his pelvic bone.
He’d forgotten about the sixth diver, the one Lauren had launched toward the surface. He’d come back and exploited Vic’s vulnerable upside-down position.
Like an octopus that uses ink to escape a predator, the diver Vic had almost cut off from his air supply slipped away in the clouds of blood that pumped from the juncture of Vic’s legs. The man whirled, finding his adversary hanging limply in the water. Tomanovic was still alive but wouldn’t be for long as the lifeblood billowed from his body. Centering his aim, the Chinese frogman moved in to smash the butt of his empty speargun into Vic’s face mask hard enough to shatter the glass.
He’d clamped a hand over the air venting from his severed hose and was about to assist his partners still battling Lauren when a dull boom echoed through the water. He’d been stationed at the lock long enough to know what the sound meant. A ship was about to be lifted. The floodgates were opening to fill the chamber.
Disregarding the safety of his partners, he started swimming away as fast as he could, the two others holding formation with him.
In the odd rendering of time that is combat, the sixty seconds Lauren had been struggling with the other pair of divers had felt like an hour. As long as she stayed close to the speargunner, she wouldn’t be shot and the other with the knife couldn’t come in on her. Not that she’d gotten away unscathed. A couple of slices like razor cuts had split her suit and skin.
She felt the vibration pulse through the water and suspected what was about to happen. The other two knew it as well and tried to disengage. Rather than take the opening presented as the gunner turned to fin away, Lauren thrust-kicked after him, realizing for the first time how close they’d drifted to the locks.
All the Chinese were swimming toward the largest of the old machines dumped near the lock and the clarity of her adrenaline high allowed her to see that it wasn’t old at all, only painted oxide red. It was a modern diving bell, a pressurized chamber that permitted the frogmen to remain underwater for hours. The piece of junk next to it wasn’t an antique either. What she’d thought was a large-spoked wheel on one side of the truck-sized artifact was actually an enormous impeller on a specialized submersible. Mercer had been right!
The surge hit so strongly that it nearly stripped her mask over her head. In an instant she lost her forward momentum and was being drawn backward. The two Chinese were only a couple of feet ahead of her and they too were caught in the pull. The mechanical gates that controlled flow had cracked open. The current was already stronger than any Lauren had faced.
She couldn’t help looking back at the intake tunnel that was sucking her in like some horrible mouth. For a couple of seconds Lauren futilely resisted the force with her arms and legs. She swam faster than the Chinese divers and in a moment all three came abreast of each other. Yet it was a race to remain stationary. The gates opened farther and the current doubled, then doubled again. There was no way to resist it. They were caught, like flotsam in a whirlpool, and no amount of struggling could fight the pull. One of the frogmen dumped his weight belt in hopes he could float free. The second it took to slap at the buckle cost him several feet.
Lauren knew what she had to do.
They were twenty feet from the opening, accelerating toward it each second. There was no way she could prevent herself from going in. She could only hope to survive the ride. She committed herself by breaking her swim rhythm and grabbed for the diver next to her. Her grip slowed the beat of his leg. An instant of panic caused him to stop swimming altogether. Lauren torqued her body, bringing them broadside to the surge with him closer to the lock. Like a pair of kites caught in a sudden updraft they lost all control, flailing, pulled backward even faster than before. They smashed into the slower diver and all three tumbled in the jet of water. Lauren maintained her position behind them by holding on as tight as she could.
The rush of water sounded like a liquid hurricane. Lauren pressed her mask against the shoulder of the man in front of her and clamped her jaw on her mouthpiece.
Their target was eighteen feet in diameter but luck would have it that they were just to the right of the opening so they were drawn in at an angle. Lauren ducked her head as they were swept inside and felt the jolt as the first diver in line had his skull split open by the impact with the pipe’s concrete lip. The fountain of blood caught in the dive lights swirled in countless back-eddies.
Just one scrape against the lining of the tunnel would be enough to peel flesh down to the bone so Lauren fought the men, not the current, always keeping her body protected as they scuffed along the conduit. It was like holding on to a mattress while falling down a cliff. Disoriented by the endless tumble, she lost all sense of direction. The bubbles from her regulator danced like dervishes.
A light swept ahead and Lauren saw that amid the wild flurry of motion the draw of water being sucked down into the cross-culverts was pulling them across the tunnel. They’d already passed at least half of the fourteen inlets. It was only a matter of time before one of them pulled them in.
Like an animal working at a piece of meat, the torrent tossed them wildly and still Lauren managed to keep the two Chinese in front of her. Either the one in the middle, who she could feel was still breathing, didn’t understand her intentions or was too paralyzed by fear to resist. A roar like a subway rushing through the darkness filled her head. As they flipped again, the wrist light showed they careened scant inches from the left side of the pipe. Lauren had two seconds to brace herself. One of the ten-foot cross-culverts was just ahead and she knew this one was going to grab them.
When they hit the rim of the ninety-degree angle, the staggering collision blew her mouthpiece from her lips, her lungs emptying in a gust of pain. The corpse of the partially decapitated diver took most of the impact, the pressure of two people behind forcing the last of his blood to erupt from the ruin of his skull. The middle diver absorbed the rest of the blow, his rib cage shattering like glass.
Pressure held them to the concrete wall for an instant before the current yanked them in again. They dropped a short distance in a wrenching swoop as Lauren’s lungs ached to breathe. She couldn’t feel her mouthpiece but knew it was waving around her like a tentacle. The tunnel leveled out and an instant later they flashed beneath the first of the stem valves that fed water into the bottom of the lock chamber.
One of the bodies was pulled from her grip and forced up throu
gh the opening.
The water had lost part of its force, giving Lauren the courage to let go of the second corpse with one hand to snag her regulator. Her lungs were on fire. She could see the mouthpiece curling in front of her, but couldn’t coordinate her movements to grab it.
The end of her flipper hit the top of a lifter valve sunk partially into the floor of the tunnel and was torn off her foot. The hit sent a bolt of agony from her ankle. The last reserve of air she’d managed to hoard escaped in a silent scream. They streamed by another valve. Lauren could feel the counterforce of water entering the culvert from the second feeder tunnel located in the seawall dividing the two locks. Her forward progress slowed further. She lunged for the regulator again, forgetting all about her scuba training and the proper technique for retrieving a lost mouthpiece.
She needed air. The darkness spreading across her vision was in her head, not the surrounding water. Her lungs convulsed, a sharp draw that felt like her diaphragm had torn. She was about to drown.
One last desperate reach and she found the regulator. Gripping it tight, she shoved it past her greedy lips. The first taste of air almost made her cough. The second was like heaven.
Then the body, which had drifted below her, smashed into the third valve and the regulator was jerked from her mouth. She hadn’t realized she’d been drawing breath from the frogman’s tank. His body, and its life-giving regulator, vanished behind her and again she found her lungs nearly empty. The current pushed her closer to the tunnel’s ceiling.
She reached the center valve, banged hard against the edge of the opening with her air tank, and was suddenly floating in water that seemed as tranquil as a pond. She’d made it! She was inside one of the great lock chambers, eight hundred feet down its length from where she’d entered. Above she could see the silvery reflection of high-intensity lamps mounted above the facility. She just wanted to lay there and watch the dance of light on the underside of the water. Her back ached, her ankle screamed and she was so dizzy she could no longer think. Just lay here for a minute.
