Undersea Prison

by Duncan Falconer

  Durrani shoved the blade deep into Mani’s gut just below the sternum. Mani tensed as the cold blade entered him and his eyes widened in horror as he grabbed Durrani’s hand. Durrani clenched his jaw with the strain as he pushed the blade to one side. Mani’s knees started to give.

  Unable to hold Mani’s weight, Durrani pulled out the knife and let the doctor drop to the floor.The effort caused a bolt of pain to shoot through his body and he thought he might lose his balance. But he summoned all his will to remain strong and upright, long enough to focus on the next face in front of him and kill whoever it belonged to. The person did not move and Durrani steeled himself to take one step closer to repeat the deadly thrust.

  Christine stared at the half-naked man and the bloody blade in his hand. She might be weak and dazed but faced with the threat of death she would muster every ounce of strength to defend herself. She considered making the first move. The man was exhausted and in pain like her. But the knife gave him a serious advantage. Her heart pounded in her chest. Mani was moving at her feet, making gurgling moans, but she put him out of her mind at that moment. Adrenalin coursed through her veins.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ she stammered, trying to distract him. ‘I can help you,’ she said, even though she suspected he could not understand her. She kept her voice soft and tender, trying to sound compassionate and unafraid. ‘Please let me help you.’ She stared into his eyes, waiting for the change in them that would signal his thrust. She would try and block it, move aside and counter. Her instincts would take over and unleash all the power she had until he was beaten.

  But instead of tensing for the thrust Durrani remained still.

  Christine could sense his sudden hesitation and wondered if he had understood her.

  Durrani had indeed paused. He had fully intended to close the gap between them and thrust the knife deep into the blurred outline. But the voice stopped him, the voice of a woman, the first he had heard in a long time. He could not understand the words but he could hear the soft, pleading tones. Indelible memories returned. Since his incarceration with nothing to do but think he had experienced countless recollections of his mother, many of them tormenting. He had also been haunted by memories of the girl in the street when he’d been a boy, and in particular of the one he’d shot in Yakaolang while she pleaded for her brother’s life. Although they had been separate incidents, over the years those women had become one in his mind. And now she was standing in front of him, talking to him, pleading for him to recognise her.

  Christine could only guess at the sudden change that had come over the Afghan. She had not expected her words to alter his murderous intent. But, bizarrely, that was exactly what had apparently happened. ‘It’s OK,’ she went on, maintaining the same soothing tone. ‘I know how you feel. I understand . . . I do.’

  The room suddenly reverberated with the shriek of klaxons. Durrani snapped out of his trance. His grip on the knife tightened, his jaw clenched, his eyes narrowed. He came out of the fog and back into reality and stepped forward to make his thrust.

  The lights went out.

  Chapter 15

  The auxiliary lights came on in the OCR, triggering a cacophony of alarms, beeps and flashing warning lights as the controller and his assistant frantically moved between computer consoles, operating panels and monitors, trying to figure out what precisely was happening.

  ‘This is crazy!’ the senior controller shouted, his stress level rising perceptibly. ‘I’ve got pressure differentials spiking all over the goddamned place.’

  ‘There’s no power from the surface barge!’ the assistant called out.

  ‘What in God’s name is going on?’

  The controller flicked through CCTV cameras all over the prison. Many did not function, some showed quiet, empty corridors while others revealed water rushing in through doors and along passageways.

  ‘Where’s the breach?’ the controller demanded.

  ‘There’s more’n one, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Galley’s showing four bars below normal. If it continues to drop the walls’ll give.’

  ‘Holy cow! We got a serious drop in pressure on level four. I can’t stabilise it.’

  ‘There’s no compensation control. Do we have comms with the terminal?’

  The assistant grabbed up a radio handset and pushed a pre-set frequency button. ‘Mother one, this is Styx, copy!’

  The speakers remained silent.

  ‘Mother one, this is Styx!’ the assistant repeated. ‘We have an emergency situation, do you copy?’

  ‘Styx,’ a voice crackled over the speakers. ‘This is mother one, come in.’

  The senior controller grabbed the handset from his assistant.‘Be advised we have a serious emergency down here. I’m talking very serious. Remain on standby, OK?’

  ‘Can you describe the nature of the emergency?’

  ‘We’re flooding on just about every level as far as we can tell! Stand by.’

  The controller hit a speaker button on the phone and punched in a couple of numbers.

  Mandrick looked around at the flashing red light on his desk phone, took another glance at the computer monitor to see how the virus was spreading, walked over and picked up the phone. ‘Mandrick.’

  ‘Warden. We have a crisis situation.’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘The pressure’s out of control. We’re flooding. The perimeter’s been breached in several places. We could be heading for total perimeter failure. We’re not sure how or where it started. Maybe C cell. The equalisers aren’t compensating. We’ve got a negative pressure migration to levels three and five which we are currently unable to control.’

  ‘What about the access doors on those levels?’ Mandrick asked casually, his voice booming over the speakers in the operations control room.

  ‘When the pressure equalised most of the doors popped before I could set all the manual overrides. We need people to physically close them,’ the controller said, looking at a monitor that showed a torrent of water gushing along a corridor. ‘Right now I don’t see how that’s possible.’

  ‘Your prognosis?’ Mandrick asked as he reached for his waterproof bag.

  ‘Well . . . the mains-power outage isn’t good. It’s like the barge has shut down.’ The controller looked at a computer monitor that mirrored the one in Mandrick’s office.‘The auto system has failed or is about to. It looks to me as if the program’s erasing itself. I don’t understand how we can have so many unrelated failures all happening at the same time.’

  Mandrick was also curious since his virus program was only designed to affect the pressure compensators. ‘Did you say that the surface power’s been cut?’ he asked, certain his virus was not supposed to cause anything like that to happen.

  ‘Yes, sir. We’re running on UPS auxiliary, emergency systems only.’

  ‘Can we consolidate?’ Mandrick wanted to know. The controller looked around the room at the orchestra of complaining systems monitors and at his assistant who gave him a dour look before shaking his head. ‘I’d have to say that’s a negative, sir,’ the controller finally said. Despite the seriousness of the emergency he was well aware of the implications of making such a firm decision. He could already see himself facing the judicial inquiry and being grilled for the reasons behind such a catastrophic assessment. ‘If we move now we might be able to get everyone to the barges.’

  ‘I understand,’ Mandrick said, pouring himself a Scotch, taking a sip and then knocking it back, wincing as the fiery liquor coursed down his throat. ‘Give the order to abandon the facility.’

  The controller looked at his assistant just in case there was anything to suggest that the order was premature. Nothing was forthcoming.

  ‘Did you hear me, controller?’ Mandrick asked, his voice echoing in the OCR.

  ‘Will do, sir . . . and sir?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Good luck.’

  ‘You too,’ Mandrick said, replacing the rec
eiver and picking up his bag. He paused to take a last look around, imagining the room flooded and wondering how long it would be, if ever, before anyone set a foot - or a fin - inside it again.

  He headed across the room, operated the door which needed his help to open and stepped out into the corridor. Water several inches deep flowed past him from the steps above.

  The alarms dimmed as a voice broke through them. ‘ABANDON THE FACILITY!’ it called out in a relatively calm voice. ‘ALL PERSONNEL TO THE ESCAPE BARGES ON LEVEL TWO!’

  Mandrick exhaled philosophically. He had done it. It was something he had, bizarrely perhaps, looked forward to for a long time. This was what he called power. He had single-handedly brought Styx to an end, the implications of which would spread around the globe. Some would rejoice, some would despair, while others would be horrified or even amused.

  He looked down at the dirty, frothy water swirling around his feet, feeling the chill of it soaking into his socks. He smiled and headed up the stairs.

  Several prison guards ran along a cell-block corridor that was ankle deep in water, flinging open cell doors and yelling for the inmates to get out. The Afghans needed no interpretation to understand the events taking place. Panic was the overriding emotion as prisoners and guards hurried together in the direction indicated by illuminated emergency arrows. A handful of prisoners following a guard turned a corner only to be struck by a torrent of water that washed them back. All save one, a man who was struck unconscious when his head hit the wall, managed to regain a footing and cling to the walls. They pulled themselves and their unconscious comrade along the corridor to a metal stairway that led out of the water and to the next level.

  Stratton was running up the broad tunnel from the scrubber room when the klaxons first sounded. He paused at the entrance to the steeper, narrower tunnel that led to the upper level, noting the significant increase in the volume of water running down the guttering. As he headed up it he could only wonder what the hell Hamlin had done.

  Stratton arrived at the access-level door that had a huge ‘5’ painted on it to find it firmly shut. He pulled on the handle but it was like trying to move a mountain. Hamlin had got it wrong. The seals had collapsed, showing an equalising of pressure, but the door was firmly shut. Water was seeping in through a small gap in the seal at the bottom. He remembered the emergency manual overrides fitted to all access-level doors in the event of a pressure failure and found the small slot behind some fungus on the wall high and to the right of the door frame. He felt for the recessed hexagonal nut but without a key he would never be able to turn it.

  Sounds came from behind him, penetrating the rhythmic toll of the alarms, and Stratton jerked around to see several figures approaching. It was the group of miners, led by the guard who had saved his life.

  The guard went straight for the door and yanked on the handle. Unable to budge it he pulled his radio handset off the clip on his lapel and held it to his mouth. ‘OCR! This is Zack on mine access to level five,’ he shouted. ‘I need the access door opened!’

  There was no reply.

  ‘Come on,’ the guard said agitatedly. ‘OCR. Open mine access level five. Come on, guys. Hear me!’

  In the OCR the senior controller was preparing to abandon his post when he heard the call. His self-preservation urge was to get going but his conscience would not allow him to and he stepped back into the communications console, picked up the mike and hit a button on the control monitor. ‘Zack. As far as I can tell all emergency manual overrides have been activated. Do you have your key?’

  ‘Yes,’ Zack shouted, feeling around the back of his waist belt and finding the heavy handle.

  ‘When you get through head for the barges. I’ll see you there.’

  ‘Secure yourselves!’ Zack shouted as he unhooked the handle from the back of his belt. ‘Get away from the door! There could be a lotta water on the other side.’

  Stratton noted the way the water was gushing fiercely from under the bottom of the door and pushed one hand behind several pipes up to his elbow, grabbing it tightly with the other. Prisoners scurried to find secure points.

  Zack inserted the end of the key, which was like an old crank-starter, into the slot and positioned it over the hexagonal nut. He put all his weight against the handle, which took several jerks to get moving. When it eventually did it turned easily.

  There was a grinding sound inside the door as the guard furiously wound the handle that operated a system of low-ratio gears. For every spin the lock moved barely a millimetre inside the door. It was taking an age. Every man strengthened his grip on his strongpoint in anticipation of the deluge to come. Just when it seemed as if the mechanism had failed and the guard’s efforts were in vain the door burst open in front of a massive wall of water.The door slammed into the wall, almost coming off its hinges, and the sea crashed into the narrow corridor as if a dam had burst.

  Two of the prisoners and the other guard, who’d been at the rear of the column, immediately lost their hold and were swept away down the corridor, their cries quickly muffled as the water slammed them into the walls before engulfing them.

  Zack was struck on his side by the initial impact and although he managed to cling to a pipe for a few seconds he soon lost his handhold. Stratton automatically stretched a hand out to him and caught hold of his harness strap. Stratton’s arm around the pipe felt like it was going to rip out of his shoulder as the guard thrashed around in a desperate effort to grab anything that was fixed to the wall. The most powerful initial thrust of the water was quickly spent and as Zack gripped a bracket Stratton released him.The panting guard looked Stratton in the eye and gave him a nod.

  Without wasting another second Zack got to his feet. ‘Get going!’ he shouted to everyone in front of and behind him. ‘Move! Move!’

  The prisoners needed no encouragement as they scrambled through the door.

  Stratton joined the group, hurrying up the inclined corridor where it met a main-line tunnel running across its path, water splashing along it. Cardboard cartons and various wrappings covered the surface as if the intruding ocean had emptied out a storeroom of some kind.

  Zack stopped at the junction to guide his men in the direction of the flashing emergency arrows. ‘That way, that way. Go! Go!’

  The men scurried around the corner, looking like half-drowned cats, exhausted but with plenty of energy left to save their own lives.

  As Stratton reached the junction he saw a sign below one of the emergency lights that indicated the hospital was in the opposite direction to the escape barges. He took a moment to consider his options. They were basically to forget the mission and save himself without further ado. Or risk a couple more minutes to try and find his target. Gann had said that Durrani was in the hospital - where he might still be. Or the Afghan might already be on his way to the escape barges. Gann had implied that the tablet had been found. But no one had expected this level of mayhem. Anything could have happened. Stratton was suddenly feeling lucky. Perhaps Hamlin’s diversion might work in his favour. He might still be able to complete his mission after all.

  Stratton moved off in the direction of the hospital.

  ‘Hey!’ the guard shouted.

  Stratton paused to look back, wondering if Zack was coming after him. But the guard had not moved and was simply looking at him curiously. ‘The barges are this way,’ he said.

  ‘I know.’

  Zack looked bemused as Stratton continued on his way. He shook his head and turned to follow his men.

  ‘Hey, Zack,’ Stratton shouted.

  The guard looked back at him.

  Stratton was standing in the near-darkness in knee-deep water with trash floating all around him. ‘Thanks,’ he said.

  Zack remained confused by Stratton’s choice of direction but acknowledged the prisoner’s gratitude with a wave of his hand.

  Stratton disappeared and Zack caught up with his men. They climbed several ladders and stairways, scurried along a corri
dor through an open pressure door, and met up with several more prisoners and guards coming from another direction. Together they surged through a doorway leading into what a sign above described as the escape room.

  It was a large cavern containing two open airlock doors. A couple of guards stood outside each, ushering men through. The airlocks were short passageways into two escape barges.These were rudimentary vessels made of riveted plates of steel, their interiors lined with simple benches and dozens of large gas cylinders fixed into brackets against the walls. The floor was covered in rough wooden decking below which the bilges were visible. There were no portholes.

  ‘Find a seat and strap yourselves in,’ a guard ordered.

  Anxious Afghan and Western prisoners, all dripping wet, some bruised and injured, sat side by side, fastening seat belts around their waists. A guard vomited up part of his fear. Several dripping-wet CIA men ran in and joined their enemies as the klaxons continued to wail, adding to the urgency of the collective desperation.

  The operations controller emerged from one of the barges and walked towards Zack who was standing outside the entrance to the other vessel. ‘Are you full?’ he asked.

  ‘Almost,’ Zack said. ‘How many do you think we’re down?’

  ‘Rough count I’d say we were down eighteen prisoners, five guards, two service staff. Anyone seen the doc?’

  There was no reply.

  Hank Palmerston squelched into the hall ahead of a handful of prisoners and a guard, all of whom looked exhausted and bedraggled. ‘I got two people trapped in C cell,’ Hank said angrily. ‘Your fuckin’ door won’t open.’

  ‘I didn’t build the goddamn place,’ the controller shouted back. He walked over to a wall between the two airlocks where a systems panel displayed various valves and gauges.

  ‘We gotta get that door open,’ Hank persisted, following him.

  ‘You had the brief when you got here. When the power failed their door should’ve gone to manual override. They have a key in the room.’