Devil's Gate nf-9

by Clive Cussler

  Apparently, it was an inside joke played on all guests, but it scared the heck out of her, and the fact that she and Paul were still three hundred feet deeper than that meant one thousand feet could be just as deadly as sixteen thousand.

  “Nine hundred,” Paul said, calling out the depth again.

  “What’s our rate?” she asked.

  “Two-fifty,” he said. “Give or take.” Less than four minutes to the surface, less than four minutes to life.

  Something snapped off the outside of the hull, and the Grouper started to shake.

  “I think we lost the rudder,” Paul said.

  “Can you control it?”

  “I can try to vector the thrust,” he said, his hands working the two joysticks on the panel furiously.

  She glanced to the rear. At least eighty gallons of water had filled the sub. The icy liquid had already reached her feet, causing her to pull them up toward her body.

  A minute went by, and they began closing in on five hundred feet. A strange creaking sound reverberated through the hull, like a house settling or metal bending. It came and went and then came again.

  “What is that?” she said. It was coming from above her head.

  She looked up. The clamp on the top of the flange was quivering, the creaking sound coming from the hull above it.

  She looked aft. The tail end of the sub was filled with water. A hundred gallons or more. Eight hundred pounds more than the front. All that extra weight twisted and pulled and bent the sub at the already weakened seam, trying to crack it in half like breaking a stick in the middle.

  They had to level out before it ripped them apart. Had to spread the weight evenly even if it meant just climbing due to their buoyancy.

  “Paul,” she said.

  “Two hundred,” he called out.

  “We have to level out,” she said.

  “What?”

  The hull groaned louder. She saw the upper clamp slip.

  “Paul!” She lunged forward as the clamp shot away from the notch. It hit her in the back of the leg, and she screamed.

  Her voice was drowned out by the sound of the second clamp being flung from its moorings and the furious dissonance of water gushing into the sub like it was blasting from a high-pressure fire hose.

  HALFWAY DOWN the twisting mountain road to Vila do Porto, the game of chicken was on. Katarina kept her foot down on the accelerator. The cars coming up at them seemed undaunted. If anything, they’d accelerated also, and continued to charge shoulder to shoulder, their headlights blazing.

  Kurt put a hand up to block the glare, trying to save some of his night vision. He glanced in the mirror; the single car behind them was closing in. He wondered if everyone had gone insane.

  He flicked his eyes forward again, caught sight of a road sign and an arrow. It read “Hang Gliders — Ultralights.” He grabbed the wheel, yanked the car to the right.

  “What are you doing?” Katarina shouted.

  They skidded onto a gravel road, turned sideways for a moment, and then straightened, as Katrina spun the wheel madly in one direction and then the other.

  Behind them the sound of screeching tires pierced the night. A slight crunch followed, not the massive impact Kurt was hoping for but a happy sound nonetheless.

  “Keep going,” he said.

  “We don’t know where this goes.”

  “Does it matter?”

  Of course it didn’t. And moments later the lights swung onto the dirt road far behind them, so there was no way to turn back even if it did.

  “Up ahead,” Kurt said. “Head for the cliff.” “Are you crazy?” she shouted. “I can barely keep us straight as it is.” “Exactly.”

  They rumbled along the gravel-strewn road. A massive cloud of dust billowed out behind them, not enough to block out the light completely but enough to obscure everything. He could imagine the Audi’s driver, blinded, getting pinged with rocks, sliding this way and that, as he tried to keep up.

  Sometimes extra horsepower and bigger tires were bad. With standing water and gravel, this was the case exactly. At a high-enough speed, the Audi would become uncontrollable — it would literally begin to float on the tumbling rocks and pebbles underneath its tires — but the little Focus, with its skinny tires, dug right through the gravel down to the more solid ground.

  “Let him get a little closer,” Kurt said, scanning the terrain up ahead.

  She nodded. She seemed as if she knew what he was thinking.

  “Now punch it and turn.”

  She slammed the gas pedal down, spinning up more dust and rocks and pulling away from the Audi. But the Audi driver must have mashed his pedal as well because his car now surged toward them.

  “I said turn,” Kurt yelled.

  She threw the wheel over, but the Focus skidded, and Kurt realized he’d overplayed their hand. He grabbed Katarina by the shoulder, pulled her into the passenger seat, and then dove out of the car through the open section where the door had once been, dragging her with him as he went.

  They tumbled and rolled on the grass beside the road. The Audi shot by, missing them by a foot or two. The Focus disappeared off the cliff, and the Audi’s brake lights lit up.

  “Too late,” Kurt said.

  The Audi skidded through the dust cloud and then vanished, going over the edge at twenty miles an hour or so.

  It was eerily silent for three seconds, and then twin explosions boomed through the night one right after the other.

  The gritty air swirled around them. For a second it seemed as if they were alone.

  “They’re gone,” Katarina said.

  Kurt nodded and then glanced down the dirt road. White light could be seen filtering through the settling dust, moving toward them. Two cars remained.

  “They’re headed this way,” Kurt said.

  He took Katarina by the hand and led her back away from the road. “Come on,” he said. “We can’t run, but we can still hide.”

  PAUL PULLED GAMAY toward the cockpit of the Grouper. She was clutching her leg as if she’d been injured.

  “I’m okay,” she said.

  Behind her, the sub was filling with water.

  He turned to look at the depth gauge. 150. 140.

  The needle continued to turn, but it moved slower and slower. Despite the props turning at full rpm, despite all the ballast being gone, the Grouper struggled to ascend. 135.

  The gurgling water was filling the sub. It had reached the halfway point and was rapidly climbing toward them. Paul turned back to the controls. He angled the Grouper straight up, trying to maximize the vertical component of the propeller’s thrust. It gave them a slight kick, but as the water began to swirl around his legs he could feel their momentum failing.

  The needle touched 130, went just below it, and then stopped.

  The Grouper was standing on its tail now, the propeller straining to keep it going. It wasn’t going to be enough.

  The water churned around Paul’s waist, Gamay clung to him tightly.

  “Time to go,” he said.

  Gamay was struggling to keep her head above water as the sea filled the little submersible like a bottle.

  “Take a breath,” he said, pulling her up, feeling her shiver in the chill of the water. “Take three deep breaths,” he corrected. “Hold the last one. Remember to exhale as you ascend.” He saw her doing as he’d said, tilting her head back to suck in one last breath as the water covered her face. He managed to inhale once more, and then he went under. In a few seconds he’d reached the hatch. With the pressure now equal inside and out, the hatch opened easily.

  He pushed it back and helped Gamay escape. As soon as she was free he shoved her upward, and she began kicking for the surface.

  The Grouper was already dropping. Paul had to get himself free. He pushed off as the hull of the submarine slid out from under him. He kicked for the surface, trying to use smooth, long strokes.

  The neoprene suits helped; they were buoyant. Witho
ut weight belts, they were almost as buoyant as life preservers. The desire to live helped. And the fact that they’d been at depth breathing compressed air helped. He exhaled slightly as he surged upward, hoping that Gamay remembered to do the same. Otherwise, the compressed, pressurized air would expand in the chest and explode the lungs like an overinflated balloon.

  A minute into his ascent, Paul could feel his lungs burning. He continued to kick hard and smooth. Around him, he could see nothing but a watery void. Far below, a fading pinprick of light marked the Grouper as it plunged back into the depths.

  Thirty seconds later he exhaled a little more, the pressure on his chest building. He could see light above but no sign of Gamay. At two minutes his muscles were screaming for oxygen, his head was pounding, and his strength waning.

  He continued to kick, but ever more slowly. He could feel his muscles beginning to spasm, his body shaking, convulsing.

  The spasms passed. The surface shimmered above, but Paul could no longer tell how far away it was. The light faded. The shimmering blue he could see narrowed to a small spot as his arms and legs became too heavy to move.

  All movement stopped. His head lolled to the side, the light vanished, and Paul Trout’s last thought was Where’s… my… wife?

  24

  THE DUST AND THE DARKNESS gave cover as Kurt led Katarina across a grassy field on the cliff side. The approaching cars moved slowly, picking their way along the gravel road. Both cars had front-end damage, and one of them had only a single working headlight. The little game of chicken had worked out in Austin’s favor, both damaging the vehicles and delaying them.

  As they approached, Kurt imagined the drivers wondering where their comrades had gone to. Or, for that matter, where their prey had gotten to and how they’d escaped in the underpowered little rental car.

  Lying flat in the grass, Kurt waited for the cars to pass. Once they had, he and Katarina resumed their move across the grass, arriving at a cyclone fence.

  Kurt looked through the fence. A small hangarlike building stood dark and quiet on the other side. A sign read “Ultralight Charters $50 Per Half Hour.”

  “Climb over,” he said to Katarina. “Quietly.”

  She put her hands on the top of the fence, stuck her toes into one of the diamond-shaped spaces, and scaled up and over in two quick steps. Kurt was glad to be on the run with an athlete.

  He followed, dropping down quietly beside her.

  “Where are your shoes?” he asked.

  “You mean my expensive Italian stilettos?”

  “Yeah. Your shoes.”

  “They kind of fell off when you threw me out of the moving car.”

  He noticed her dress was torn, and she had bleeding abrasions on her bare elbow and forearm. His own knee and shoulder were bleeding as well, and he could feel the small particles of gravel that had been ground into the palms of his hands. Still, it was better than being dead.

  “I’ll buy you a new pair if we get out of this alive,” he said. “Keep moving.”

  They sprinted across the grass and ducked behind a large exposed tank like one might see at a propane filling station. From the smell, Kurt knew it contained AvGas, 100 octane fuel for small propeller-driven aircraft like the ultralights.

  Hidden behind this tank, Kurt watched the two remaining Audis crawl toward the cliff. They stopped near the spot where the cars had gone over, leaving their remaining lights on. Two men got out of each car. One of them carried a flashlight; the other three carried short-barreled assault weapons of some type.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Katarina whispered.

  “Don’t move,” he said. “They can’t see us here. I don’t want them to hear us either.”

  The men with the guns moved toward the edge of the cliff and peered over. A fire must have been burning down below because the smoke and dust were lit up, turning the men into silhouettes.

  “Looks like they went over,” one man said.

  Kurt couldn’t hear the initial reply, but then the man with the flashlight moved to the edge.

  “Get me a scope,” the man with the flashlight said. When the order was not followed rapidly enough, he barked louder. “Come on, we don’t have all night.”

  As the man spoke, Kurt recognized the voice as belonging to the thug on the Kinjara Maru.

  “So you’re not dead,” Kurt mumbled. He’d thought there was something suspicious about the explosion on the water that took the hijackers’ boat. It had seemed a little too convenient. A little too perfect of an ending for what appeared to be a sophisticated operation.

  “You know these people?” Katarina asked.

  “I know that man’s voice,” Kurt said. “He was part of a hijacking that took place a week ago. We thought he’d blown himself up by accident. But obviously it was a trick meant to make us think he did.”

  “So these men are after you?” she said.

  He turned to her. “You didn’t think they were after you, did you?”

  She seemed offended. “They could have been. I’m a very important member of the Russian scientific establishment. I’m quite certain they’d get more ransom money for kidnapping me than they would for you.”

  Kurt smiled and fought back a laugh. She was probably right about that. “Didn’t mean to offend you,” he said.

  She seemed to accept that, and Kurt turned back toward the thugs at the cliff’s edge. They were perfectly backlit in the smoke. If he’d had a rifle, he could have taken them all right now, knocking them down one after the other like ducks in an arcade. But all he had was the metal pipe and the knife that the thug now hunting them had left behind on the Kinjara Maru.

  Kurt watched as the man stepped to the edge with a scope in his hand. He stared through it for a long moment and then changed angles a bit. Kurt guessed he was now looking at the second car.

  “They’re dead,” one of the other thugs said. “All of them.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” the lead man said.

  “That’s a long way down,” the thug replied. “No one’s going to survive that.”

  The lead man turned and pushed his subordinate back against the car in a menacing fashion. A pretty ballsy move, considering he was the only one without a weapon. Obviously these men did not question him.

  “You’re right,” the leader said. “No one could have survived such a fall. Unless they didn’t take it.”

  He slapped the night vision scope in the man’s hand. “There are no bodies in or around that car,” he said.

  “Damn,” Kurt whispered. Where their biggest problem had seemed like a long walk back to civilization, they now had a much more pressing issue: these thugs would not leave the plateau until they’d found him and Katarina or until police units came — perhaps half an hour away or more.

  He doubted they could hide that long.

  As the lead thug turned and began spraying his light across the grassy field, Kurt ducked back down behind the fuel tank. When the beam of light pointed off in another direction, Kurt grabbed Katarina’s hand again. “Hope you’re not afraid of heights.”

  They scrambled across the open space and made it to the dark hangar. After quietly forcing the lock with the pipe, they slipped inside.

  “What are we going to do?” Katarina asked.

  “You got fifty dollars?” he said, sneaking over to one of the ultralights and unscrewing the gas cap.

  “Not on me,” she said. “Why?”

  “We’ll have to leave an IOU,” he said, grabbing a helmet and handing it to her.

  “We’re going to fly out of here?” she guessed.

  He nodded.

  She smiled so broadly, he swore it lit up the room. “I always wanted to try one of these things,” she said.

  He checked the tank to make sure it held some fuel. Seeing it was half full, he screwed the cap back on, moved to the hangar door, and began pushing it open slowly.

  OUTSIDE NEAR THE CLIFF, Andras and his men were fanning out. Andras had grab
bed a Glock 9mm that he now held in his left hand, and the flashlight was in his right. One of his men was making his way along the edge of the cliff, another going in the opposite direction.

  Andras guessed his quarry had moved inland. It opened up the terrain and would force him and his men to consider many more hiding places. It would be the better tactic, he thought. And having encountered this man from NUMA once, Andras knew that, if anything, he was very smart.

  It would make it all the sweeter when he killed him.

  His light played across the ground. Had Andras feared they were armed, he would have been walking in the dark using the night vision scope. But his targets had shown no weaponry during the chase except for a lead pipe and their own wits, so he knew he could safely proceed.

  He was rewarded when something caught the light: a woman’s shoe, dusty in places, but the red patent leather was unmistakable. Ten feet away, he saw another one. He whistled to his men, and as they gathered he shone the light around, spotting the cyclone fence and the building beyond.

  “Surround the building,” he said. “They’re inside.”

  His men dashed to the fence and began to climb. As they did, a sound like a lawn mower starting spilt the quiet of the night.

  Andras hopped the fence and shone his flashlight toward the building just in time to see one of the ultralights come rumbling out and begin accelerating across the grass.

  “Shoot them,” he ordered.

  Two of his men dropped down and opened fire as the buzzing ultralight sped away. In a moment, it exploded, and flames engulfed the nylon wing.

  Too easy, he thought. And he was right.

  AS THE FIRST ULTRALIGHT began to zoom across the grass, Kurt and Katarina climbed into a second one and started it up. Kurt hoped the noise and movement of the first one would mask their departure in the other direction.

  He sent the decoy to the right and seconds later turned his own craft to the left. Even as he pushed the throttle he heard the gunfire. A moment later he saw a flash cross the grassy plain that served as the ultralight’s runway. Just enough light to see by.