"This one mooring ring looks pretty mangy," she said, tugging at her
left wrist. "If I could just get one hand free."
"Maybe I can help." Dirk slid his legs toward Summer, leaning his
torso at an angle along the concrete blocks for support. Raising one
leg, he slid his foot along until the sole of his shoe met up with the
face of the protruding iron. Applying as much pressure as he could, he
pressed his weight hard against the top of the metal ring.
Nothing happened.
Shifting his foot so that his heel was against the ring, he pushed once
more. This time, the ring bent a fraction toward Summer. Jamming his
weight repeatedly against the stanchion, he gradually forced the ring
to bend over nearly ninety degrees.
"Okay, I'll need your help in pushing it back upright," he said. "Let's
try it on the count of three."
Slipping his foot to the backside of the ring, he counted to three,
then pulled his leg toward him. Summer pushed with her manacled hand
and they gradually shoved the ring back to its original vertical
position.
"Well, that was fun," Dirk said while resting his leg. "Let's try it
again."
For twenty minutes, they toggled the ring back and forth, the movement
gradually becoming easier as the tensile strength of the old iron
weakened. With a last strong kick by Dirk, the ring finally snapped
off its concrete base, freeing Summer's left arm. She immediately
twisted her hand around and dug into the small side pocket of her silk
jacket and produced the porcelain-handled nail file.
"I've got the file. Should I try on the handcuff itself or the mooring
ring?" she asked.
"Go for the ring. Even though it's thicker, it will be much softer to
cut through than the hardened stainless steel handcuffs."
Using the small file like a hacksaw, Summer began grinding away at the
base of the mooring ring. Working the file with any degree of accuracy
beneath the murky river water and fading cavern light would have been a
Herculean task for most, but Summer's extensive diving experience gave
her a leg up. Years of exploring and excavating historic shipwrecks in
foul visibility had heightened her sense of touch to the extent that
she could nearly tell more about a wreck from her hands than by her
eyes.
With some measure of hope, she felt the file cut rapidly through the
outer layer of the rusty ring. Her confidence waned when the blade met
up with the hardened inner core of the iron ring and progress slowed to
a snail's pace. The rising water was now level with her chest and the
pending urgency unleashed a surge of adrenaline. Summer worked the
blade back and forth as fast as she could muster underwater, gaining
ground millimeter by millimeter. Taking quick breaks from sawing, she
placed her hands on the iron ring and pushed and pulled it to weaken
the metal. Alternating sawing and prodding with an intermittent gulp
or two of river water, she at last broke through the ring and freed
herself.
"Got it," she exclaimed with victory.
"Mind if I borrow that file?" Dirk asked calmly, but Summer had
already kicked and swum her way over and begun cutting into the ring
grasping his right hand. As she worked the file, she mentally noted
that it had taken her roughly thirty minutes to cut through the first
ring and that the water level was now nearly to their shoulders. The
water was rising faster than she anticipated and would be well above
Dirk's head in less than an hour. Despite aching fingers and limbs,
she rubbed the file ferociously against the iron.
Dirk, waiting patiently as Summer filed away, began whistling the old
1880s tune "While Strolling Through the Park One Day."
"That's not helping," Summer gasped, then smiled to herself at the
silly tune. "Now I won't be able to get that ridiculous song out of my
head."
Sure enough, he quit whistling, but the tune kept replaying over and
over in her head. She was surprised to find it became a good sawing
mantra that provided a rhythm to her hand movements.
While strolling through the park one day,... With each syllable, she
applied a cutting stroke to the iron, creating an efficient sawing
cadence. in the merry merry month of May.
I was taken by surprise by a pair of roguish eyes.
In a moment my poor heart was stole away.
The water level had now crept up over her chin and she found herself
taking in gasps of air, then submerging briefly to keep the file
clawing in one spot. Dirk was beginning to strain to keep his face out
of the water while applying alternating tugs and shoves on the ring as
Summer sawed tirelessly on. A muffled metallic ting finally echoed
beneath them as the ring broke loose under their combined pressure.
"Three down, one to go," Summer gasped, taking in a lungful of air
after being submerged for several seconds.
"Let me give you a breather," Dirk said, grabbing the file from Summer
with his free hand. The release of his right hand gave him a few extra
inches of breathing room, but it was not enough to file the last
mooring ring without submerging. Taking a deep breath, he ducked under
the surface and began filing rapidly on the ring that held down his
left wrist. After thirty seconds, he bobbed to the surface, sucked in
some fresh air, and plunged back under. Summer stretched her cramped
fingers, then swam to Dirk's left side and waited for him to surface.
Like a pair of tag team wrestlers trying to floor Hulk Hogan, they
passed the file back and forth and ducked underwater, attacking the
iron ring with muscle and fervor.
As the minutes wore on, the water level in the cavern crept higher
and higher. Each time Dirk surfaced for a gasp of air, he felt himself
stretching farther and farther to raise his mouth and nose above water.
The handcuff shackle on his left wrist dug into his flesh as he
instinctively yanked hard to escape the clutch of the massive barge
weight.
"Save your strength for getting out of here," he told his sister as the
inevitable truth drew closer that they were running out of time. Summer
said nothing as she grabbed the file out of his hand and plunged back
beneath the surface. Dirk half-floated with his head tilted back, his
face just barely out of the water, drawing a few deep breaths. He
could feel the water wash over his face in ripples and stretched for
one last deep breath before pulling himself under. Grasping Summer's
wrist, he pulled the file out of her hand and began a last furious rush
at cutting through the iron. Feeling the gouge with his thumb, he
could tell that they had cut only a third of the way through. There
was just too far to go.
The seconds felt like hours as Dirk made a final effort to break free.
He could feel his heart beating like a bass drum as it struggled to
pump oxygen into his depleted blood. In the murkiness, he could feel
that Summer was no longer by his side. Perhaps she had finally taken
his advice and sought escape. Or perhaps she just couldn't b
ear to be
with him during his final gasp of life.
He paused from filing for a second to try pushing his weight against
the ring. He could generate little leverage, however, and the iron
ring held firm. Again, to the file he went, making furious strokes
with the flimsy metal blade. His ears began pounding with each beat of
his heart. How long had he been holding his breath now? A minute, two
minutes? It was difficult to remember.
Light-headedness fell over him as spots began to creep into his vision.
He exhaled what remaining air was left in his lungs and fought the
temptation to open his mouth and gulp in. His heart pounded stronger
and it became a mental fight against succumbing to panic. A light
current seemed to push him away from the mooring ring, but his hand
muscle grasped the file tightly in a death grip. A white veil was
being drawn across his vision and a distant voice inside was telling
him to let go. As he fought a last battle with the voice, his ringing
ears detected a deep thump and then a strange vibration rippled up his
arm and through his body just before his mind tumbled into a dark and
empty void.
*-.""
Summer knew that THEY were at least twenty minutes from filing through
the iron ring and that there would have to be another way to free her
brother. Abandoning Dirk, she dove to the cavern floor, searching and
groping for another tool or device, anything that would help break the
manacle. But the flat, sandy bottom yielded nothing, just the row of
mooring weights, one after the other. Kicking ahead with one hand
guiding along the blocks of concrete, she touched a large chunk of
concrete that had broken off one of the weights when it had been
dropped too close to another. Gliding beyond the debris, she reached
the last block, where she felt something flat and squishy like soggy
leather fall away in her hand. A harder piece beneath it was narrow
and curved, which she identified as the sole of a boot. A stick leaned
against it, which she started to grab, then let go in horror. It was no
stick, she could tell, but the femur bone of a skeleton that was still
wearing the boot. Another victim of Kang's savagery, the corpse had
long ago been left chained to the anchor. Recoiling, she turned to swim back toward Dirk and bumped her head square
into the fallen chunk of concrete. The broken piece was roughly square
shaped, weighing about ninety pounds. She surveyed the block with her
hands to get around it, then hesitated. It might be the answer, she
decided, and was the best she could do under the circumstances.
Kicking up for a quick breath of air, she dove back down and muscled
the block off the floor and up to her chest. On dry land, she would
have struggled mightily to lift the heavy weight, but underwater the
block was more yielding. Moving quickly, she shuffled down the row of
weights to her brother, fighting to keep the chunk balanced. Feeling
rather than seeing Dirk, she turned and backed into her brother,
pushing his body away from the block that held his left wrist. She
noted apprehensively that his body gave way rather limply, unlike his
normal stone like stature.
Lining herself up with the mooring weight as best she could, she took a
step and lunged forward, throwing herself and the broken chunk of
concrete at the iron ring. In a slow-motion haze, Summer floated
through the water with a slight ripple before the effects of gravity
took over. But her timing was perfect. In the fraction of a second
before her forward momentum was replaced by sinking gravity, the
concrete chunk hit home on the iron ring. An audible clang, muffled by
the water, told Summer that she was on target as she let go of the
block. The rusty mooring ring, weakened just enough by the frantic
filing, succumbed to the weight of the blow and snapped neatly off the
anchor.
Summer immediately grabbed Dirk's arm and felt down to the wrist, which
now dangled loosely. In a burst, she pushed her brother to the
surface, took a deep breath of air herself, then towed his limp body to
a small rock ledge, pulling him up and out of the water. She knelt by
his side to administer CPR when his body suddenly stirred, his head
turning to one side. With a groan, he expunged a small flood of water
from his mouth and replaced it with a heaving lungful of air. Rising
unsteadily to his elbows, he turned to Summer and gasped, "I feel like
I drank half the river. Remind me to stick to bottled water next
time."
The words barely gurgled out of his mouth when he leaned over and
retched a second time, then sat up and rubbed his left wrist. Eyeing
his sister, he was pleased to see she appeared unharmed and in good
spirits.
"Thanks for pulling me out," he said. "How did you finally get the
ring off?"
"I found a loose chunk of concrete and flung it against the stanchion.
Thankfully, I didn't take your hand off in the process."
"Much obliged for that," he muttered, shaking his head.
After catching their breath, they rested for nearly an hour, slowly
regaining their strength as Dirk purged the remaining water from his
lungs, inhaled moments before Summer broke the iron grip that had
nearly drowned him. What lit de sunlight that earlier wafted through
the mouth of the cavern had long since vanished with nightfall, leaving
them prone in the cave in near-total blackness.
"Do you know the way out of here?" Dirk asked once he felt fit to
move.
"The mouth of the cave is less than fifty meters away," Summer said,
"just a short distance to the east is Kang's dock."
"How'd we get in here in the first place?" he asked.
"A small skiff. I forgot that you slept through the scenic portion of
the cruise."
"Sorry I missed it," Dirk replied, rubbing a small gash on the top of
his head. "We'll to have to borrow a boat from Kang if we want to get
off this rock. There was a small speedboat tied up behind his floating
palace when we came in and docked. Maybe it's still there."
"If we can untie it from the dock and drift it out into the cove
undetected before starting it up, it may buy us some more time." Summer
shivered as she spoke, her body feeling the effects of the cool river
dousing.
"Back in the water, I'm afraid. You know the way out, so lead on."
Summer ripped the side seam of the silk dress up to her hip to allow
more freedom for swimming, then slipped back into the cool murky water.
Dirk followed as they swam and groped their way along the narrow
winding cavern, moving toward a pale gray circular patch of light that
faintly shimmered against the surrounding darkness. The murmur of
distant voices gave them a momentary pause as they approached the
cave's exit. Swimming around a tight bend, the oval mouth of the
cavern opened up before them, the night sky twinkling with starlight
while the glittering reflection of Kang's dockside floodlights danced
about the water's surface. Dirk and Summer swam silently out of the
cavern
entrance to a small rock outcropping a few yards away. The
algae-slickened boulders afforded a safely concealed vantage point from
which they could observe the dock and adjacent grounds.
For several minutes, they hung quietly against the rocks, studying the
moored boats and shoreline for signs of movement. There were three
boats tied up to the floating dock that ran parallel to the shore. Just
as Dirk recalled, a small green patrol speedboat was wedged between
Kang's large Italian luxury yacht and the high-speed catamaran on which
they had arrived. No signs of life were visible on any of the three
boats, which were all tied up in a row bow to stern. Dirk knew that a
small live-aboard crew would be present on the larger vessel.
A lone sentry finally emerged in the distance, walking slowly along the
shoreline. As he passed under a floodlight, Dirk could clearly see the
glint of an assault rifle slung under the man's shoulder. Casually,
the guard strode out onto the dock and alongside the three boats,
pausing for several minutes near the large yacht. Growing bored, he
strode back down the dock and onto shore, advancing along a stone
walkway toward the estate elevator, where he deposited himself in a
small security station at the base of the cliff.
"That's our man," Dirk whispered. "As long as he stays in that hut,
his view of the speedboat is overshadowed by the larger boats." "Now's
the time to steal it, before he makes the next round." Dirk nodded and
the two of them pushed away from the rocks and began swimming silently toward the dock. He kept an eye on the
guardhouse while mentally computing how long it might take to hotwire
the speedboat's ignition in the dark if the keys weren't conveniently
left in the boat.
Dirk Pitt18-Black Wind Page 34
