Kholkov considered this for a moment. “You’re sure there was nothing?” he asked the divers.
Both men nodded, and Kholkov turned to the man who’d suggested the river tunnel. “Take Pavel, rope yourselves off, and search the tunnel for any sign of them.”
The man nodded, moved to the end of the pier, and began uncoiling a rope.
“Search the sub,” Kholkov ordered the divers, who both replaced their regulators and dove.
Sam watched their lights move along the hull until they stopped at what he assumed was the cockpit dome. The lights wobbled and shifted and there came a faint clinking of metal on metal. After three more minutes, one of the men broke the surface and pulled the regulator from his mouth.
“It’s a Marder,” the man said. “The
There were five more minutes of muffled metal-on-metal banging, then silence for a few moments, then suddenly a giant bubble burst on the water’s surface.
The minutes ticked by until finally both divers broke the surface again. One of them gave a hoot and lifted an oblong object from the water.
“Bring it!” Kholkov ordered. When they reached the pier he knelt down and took the object, which Sam could now see was an all-too-familiar loaf-shaped wooden box. Kholkov studied the box for a full minute, turning it this way and that, peering closely at its surface, before carefully lifting the lid and peeking inside. He closed it and nodded.
“Good work.”
From the river tunnel, a shout: “Help! Pull us in, pull us in!” Several of the men rushed down the pier and began hauling the rope hand over hand. After ten seconds a man appeared at the end of it. Lights panned over him. He was semiconscious, half his face covered in blood. They pulled him onto the dock and laid him flat.
“Where’s Pavel?” Kholkov demanded. The man mumbled something incoherent. Kholkov slapped him across the face and grabbed his chin. “Answer me! Where’s Pavel?”
“The rapids . . . the line got cut. . . . He hit his head. I tried to reach him, but he was gone. One second he was there, then he was gone. He’s gone.”
“Damn it!” Kholkov spun around, paced halfway down the pier, then spun back. “Okay, you two carry him and get back to the lagoon.” He pointed to the other man. “You and I will set the charges. If they’re not already dead, we’ll bury the Fargos alive! Get moving!”
“Okay. One problem, though: Our escape pod is full of water and sitting fifteen feet below the surface.”
Sam nodded. “Yes, that’s a problem.”
After checking to make sure the main cavern was in fact sealed, they returned to the secondary cave and got to work, first retrieving their gear from the bottom, then scrounging through the Kriegsmarine crates for any odds and ends that might be of use. In addition to a well-stocked toolbox of mostly rusted tools they found four lanterns and a dozen stubby votivelike candles that lit at the first touch from Sam’s lighter. Soon the pier and surrounding water was dimly lit by flickering yellow light. While Remi sorted through their remaining gear and conducted an inventory of the toolbox, Sam stood at the edge of the pier, staring distantly into the water.
“Okay,” Remi said. “We’ve got two air tanks, one two-thirds full, a second completely full; two flashlights, both working, charge unknown; my camera’s shot but the binoculars are fine; the revolver is dry, but I can’t vouch for the bullets; two canteens of water and some slightly soggy beef jerky; a first-aid kit; your Gerber Nautilus multitool; one dry bag that’s in good shape, one that’s Swiss cheese; and, finally, two cell phones that are dry, working, almost fully charged, but useless inside here.”
“The motor?”
“I dried it out as best I could but we won’t know until we try it. As for the gas tank, I didn’t find any holes and all the valves are sealed, so I think it’s fine.”
Sam nodded and went back to staring at the water.
After ten minutes of this, he cleared his throat and said, “Okay, we can do it.” He walked over and sat down beside Remi.
“Let’s hear it,” she said.
He started explaining. When he was done, Remi pursed her lips, tilted her head, and then nodded. “Where do we start?”
It started with a tense, claustrophobic crawl for Sam. He had no trouble with either confined spaces or water, but had no love for the two combined.
Wearing only his mask and a dive belt, he first did a series of practice dives to expand his lung capacity, then spent a full minute on the surface doing deep-breathing exercises to oxygenate his blood to its maximum.
He took a final breath, then dove to the bottom. Flashlight extended before him, he wriggled through the sub’s dome hatch and turned aft. He knew from his cursory study of Kriegsmarine subs back in the Pocomoke, the nose section of a Marder-class boat held only a seat and some rudimentary steerage and diving controls. What he was looking for—the scuttle valves—would be in the tail section. Pulling and pushing himself along the interior piping, he felt the cylindrical walls close around him, felt the darkness and the water pressing him, crushing him. He felt the hot bloom of fear in his chest. He quashed it and refocused:
“You okay?” Remi called.
“Define okay.”
“Not mortally wounded.”
“Then, yes, I’m okay.”
The next part of the plan took three hours, most of which they spent sorting and splicing the rope the Germans had left behind, about half of which was either completely rotted or so weakened Sam wasn’t willing to trust it. They would get only one chance at what they were attempting, he told Remi. If they failed, they would have to turn to her signal fire idea and hope help would arrive before the smoke killed them.
After four hours, at nearly two A.M. according to Sam’s watch, they were almost ready. They stood at the edge of the pier, studying their handiwork.
Two quadruple-braided lines, one secured to the sub’s bow and the other to its stern cleats, rose from the water to the ceiling, where Remi, superb climber that she was, had threaded each through a catwalk ceiling eyelet. From there, each line dropped down again and was tied off to a cable under the catwalk planking. The vertical support cables were themselves connected, midpoint to midpoint, by a carefully constructed spiderweb of rope. To one of the cables—the farthest one from the lines secured to the sub—Sam had lashed one of their scuba tanks.
“So,” Remi said. “Let’s review: You shoot the tank, the blast sheers the cables, the catwalk drops, the sub pops to the surface, and the water drains out. Is that it?”
“More or less. The tank won’t explode, but it’ll take off like a rocket. If I’ve rigged it right, the torque should part the weakened cables. Beyond that, it’s all math and chaos theory.”
Estimating the weight of the sub and the water inside it, as well as the combined weight of the catwalks and the shearing limit of the cables, had given Sam a headache, but he was fairly confident in his process. Using the ancient and rusted but still-serviceable hacksaw they’d found in the toolbox he’d cut halfway through eleven of the eighteen vertical catwalk cables.
“And gravity,” Remi added, curling her arm in his. “Win or lose, I’m proud of you.” She handed him the revolver. “It’s your mouse-trap. You get the honors.”
They climbed behind the protective bulwark of crates they’d assembled at the far end of the dock and made sure everything was snug around them, save Sam’s firing slit.
“Ready?” he asked.
Remi cupped her ears and nodded.
Sam braced his gun hand on his opposite forearm, took aim, and pulled the trigger.
The gun’s report was instantly overwhelmed by a
One hour turned into two as Sam and Remi rode the rapids, the sub caroming off the walls, vaulting over boulders, and tossing from one side to the other in the water. Occasionally they would find themselves in wider, calmer parts of the river, allowing Sam to open the dome and let in some fresh air to supplement the oxygen Remi was intermittently pumping into the space via their remaining scuba tank.
Almost like clockwork every few minutes the sub slammed into a jumble of boulders and they would find themselves beached, the sub either lying on its side or perched above the rapids, balanced like a teeter-totter. Each time either they would dislodge themselves by gently rocking from side to side until the sub slipped back into the channel or Sam would have to open the dome and push and lever them free using his plank paddle.