“Okay. Right now the water’s stopped rising, I think.”
“And?”
“Booth had that other shaft blocked off with a piece of sheet metal, remember? So I’m proposing to swim back down this shaft, out into the magazine, and open those big doors. That will let a wave of water in and put pressure on that flap. Then it’ll-”
“Jim?”
“Wait. Then it’ll push that flap out; and we can-”
“Jim!”
“What?” Why was she interrupting him? He was trying to get them out of this trap.
“That won’t work,” she said patiently. “There couldn’t be any water up in this shaft if the magazine wasn’t already flooded. There won’t be any wave of water.”
He looked up. She was a dim figure up in the haze at the top of the shaft. His mind was whirling. Of course she was right. What the hell had he been thinking? Shit. He was losing it.
“How close are you to the ladder?” she called.
“A couple of feet, but I’m not rising anymore.”
“I’m going to pull this rag and let some more air out. As soon as the water lifts you to the ladder, climb up to where I am. I’ll get off it and wedge in up here so we don’t lose it. Maybe we can dislodge this brickwork above the top of the door. It’s all crumbly, like in the rest of the tunnels.”
“And then?”
“There’s four feet of brickwork above the flap door. If we can make a hole, we’re out. But I’ll need you for that. We need brute force to get it done.”
“So I’m a brute now?”
“You were a Marine, weren’t you?”
He laughed, making a surreal sound in the shaft. “I’m gonna report you to the commander of political correctness down in Quantico,” he said.
“Yeah, right, and she’ll probably gum me to death. Can you reach the ladder yet?”
He was closer, but not quite close enough. But then he realized he could probably do what she had done, for that short a distance. He positioned himself and began to back-walk up the shaft. His clothes felt heavy as his body came out of the water. He had put the Maglite into his shirt pocket to free his hands, and it was bobbing its feeble beam everywhere.
“Got it,” he said, grabbing the bottom rung of the ladder. The bottom, which had been hanging vertically, pulled out at an angle as he grabbed it, reminding him of the tower jump ladder back in the Nat.
“Okay,” she said. “Let me get off it; then you climb up.”
He waited while she maneuvered above him, and then she told him to come on up. He climbed the ladder, first with his arms and then with both feet and arms, showering water back down into the shaft. When he reached the top, he stopped, puffing with the exertion of breathing the warm, wet air. From this position, he was able to shine the fading beam down onto the bottom of the flap door. There were eight rivet heads out in the middle of the bottom part of the door. He kicked out at the flap. Predictably, it hurt his foot. Whatever it was, it was solid. He could hear the sound of air whistling past some obstacle above the door.
“Look above it,” she said, and he raised the light. He saw the familiar sight of ancient brickwork, the mortar between the joints eroded a half inch into the joints, the bricks uneven in shape and alignment. He climbed a little higher on the ladder and felt the bricks, placing himself face-to-hip with Branner’s hunched body. He pushed on the bricks. They didn’t move.
“I don’t know,” he said wearily. “There are probably several courses there. Feels pretty solid to me.”
“Pull, don’t push,” she said, adjusting her position. Her legs were wedged across the shaft and her head was right up at the top of it.
Jim took a deep breath and got very little out of it. The air seemed denser, more moisture than oxygen. He pulled at the most exposed brick. He couldn’t be positive, but he thought it did move this time.
“We sure could use a pry bar,” he said. Although not exactly an echo, his voice came right back at him. “I’ve got a knife, but it’s much too small.”
He eased himself back down the ladder two rungs to look at that latch area again and then noticed that his feet were wet. No, not wet-submerged. He pointed the light down, looked, and swore. The water had risen all the way up the ladder. As he stared, the black water rose above his ankles and onto his shins. Branner saw it, too.
“What do we do!” she wailed.
“Plug the airhole again, quick!”
As she reached across to stuff the sleeve back into the crack, the ladder shifted and she lost her perch against the wall. She fell clumsily past the ladder and down into the water, nearly knocking Jim right off the ladder. The rag patch disappeared. Jim swung sideways to avoid being hit and then went upside down on the ladder before he could regain his balance. While Branner thrashed around in the water below him, he scrambled back to the right side of the ladder and climbed back to face the flap door. The flashlight was barely putting out a yellow glow.
He looked down. The water seemed to be coming up faster now, and the whistling noise was louder. Branner was rising with it, hanging on to the ladder but not getting on it. In a few moments, the water would rise all the way to the top of the shaft and would snuff them out. Desperate now, he reached out from the side of the ladder and kicked the flap door with all his strength. It clanged in the darkness, but the latch, or whatever it was, held. The water was up to his hips now, and he could see Branner’s face only as a gray blob just beneath his hip.
“Get underwater!” he shouted. “Take a deep breath and go deep. Do it! Now! ”
He heard her take a huge breath and then the blob disappeared from sight. He pulled the Glock out of his waistband holster, shook it to clear any water out of the barrel, then swung aside and opened fire on the back of the latch. The noise was punishing as he emptied the gun at the back plate of the latch, which was almost submerged. Squinting his eyes and leaning as far out to one side as he could, he fired again and again, shutting his eyes each time a bullet blasted back at him or went spanging around the brickwork. Twice, he felt a lash of burning pain on his upper back, but he kept firing. The last two rounds blew water everywhere as the level came up past the back plate, and then he was squeezing on empty. He dropped the Glock and lunged again with his right leg, smashing it against the flap once, twice, three times. Branner surfaced alongside him, gasping for air. She realized what he was doing and joined in, kicking with all her might at the flap door as the water rose completely over its top. And then it let go.
In one small tidal wave, they both were swept into the hole where the flap had been, but then their hips got jammed in the ladder rungs and neither of them could get through.
“Wait, wait!” Jim shouted. “Let the water get out!” Even as he said it, he had to summon all his strength not to keep scrambling to get out. He grabbed the side wall to keep the flap from coming back down and cutting off their hands, and then they waited for another minute as the water subsided to a steady waterfall over the coaming of the flap. Then Jim disentangled his legs from the ladder and dropped out onto a tiled floor. He turned around and helped a trembling, white-faced Branner out. Her eyes were huge with fright and she held on to him with a desperate grip as they sank down onto the floor. There was light in the room, light that was coming from under a door. He could see a maze of pipes and valves along one wall. There was a wall of old lockers on the opposite wall.
Branner gulped down fresh air and then removed her hands, looking at them. They were darkened with something. “You’re bleeding,” she said. “Let me see.”
“Ricochets,” he said. “Doesn’t feel like anything went in.” He bent his head while she surveyed his upper back and arms.
“You’ve got three tears in your shirt; I need more light to see how deep they are.” She wiped her hands off on his shirt. “Another fucking door! Where the hell are we now?”
“Out of that goddamned shaft, and that’s all I care about. This is modern construction. Try the door.”