With the half-inflated bag acting as a sail, Mercer worked with the current as best he could and squeezed a half knot from the roughed-up ADS.
For the next thirty minutes Mercer wouldn’t let himself think about anything but keeping his body as still as possible and the pressure on the foot pedal constant, although thoughts of Tisa swirled at the periphery of his concentration.
The ash had yet to penetrate this deep, leaving Mercer almost fifteen feet of visibility even with his warped visor. The cliff seemed to build itself as he approached, first just a suggestion, then a solid segment and finally a towering wall that had no end. He reached out and touched one rocky projection, reassuring himself that it was real. Making it this far was a victory, but now the real work began. He checked his depth. He’d drifted down another two hundred feet, well past the suit’s limit.
The emergency bag afforded him almost neutral buoyancy, otherwise what he had in mind would have been impossible. He didn’t have the strength and the suit certainly didn’t have the flexibility. He jammed his foot against the cliff, searching for a toehold. Once he was reasonably stable he kicked upward, scrabbling along the rough stones for a place to grip with his pincer. His kick rose him eight feet but he fell back four until the claw found purchase.
He found another foothold and kicked upward again, gaining only six feet but losing nothing when his pincer closed around a narrow ribbon of ancient lava. Just two awkward lunges in the bulky suit already cramped his legs. Mercer checked his oxygen. He had plenty so he made the mix a bit richer, giving his muscles more of what they needed.
In short fits and starts Mercer scaled the cliff. Sometimes he’d gain ten feet with a single lurch; other times he’d lose five. It was frustrating and agonizing. His body ran with sweat and with his arms trapped in the suit he couldn’t wipe the salt from his eyes. His shoulders and thighs were on fire yet he steadily gained. And as he climbed higher the pressure on the gas in the lifting bag decreased. When it expanded it increased his buoyancy, making each halting leap that much easier.
After a half hour he had to rest. He could barely fill his lungs and his heartbeat was out of control, hammering so hard it was almost arrhythmic. His feet were sodden with the sweat that had pooled in the suit’s lower extremities.
Five minutes before he felt he could go on, Mercer leapt again, clambering to find a handhold for his mechanical claw. He didn’t dare look at his depth gauge. He didn’t want the disappointment of discovering he hadn’t climbed as far as he thought or the encouragement that he’d climbed farther. He continued his measured pace, taking the good jumps with the bad but always ascending.
He checked the time again and was dismayed to see another thirty minutes had passed. The surrounding water was still black, the cliff face as featureless. He hadn’t seen a single fish or aquatic plant. He couldn’t stop himself from looking at his depth.
Two hundred fifty feet.
He’d climbed almost a thousand in an hour, but his pace had slowed. Those final two hundred fifty feet would take an hour all by themselves. The damaged bag had expanded as far as it would twenty minutes ago so it wasn’t providing any additional lift. The rest would be up to him.
He kicked off again, gaining a dozen feet, but couldn’t find anything to grab on to. He started to fall away from the cliff and punched up the motors, thrusting the suit back into the mountain. His helmet hit with an ominously soft plink. He’d scratched a deep gouge into the faceplate. Tiny fissures grew off it like crystals under a microscope.
His foot connected with the rock and even before he was sure he had solid footing Mercer thrust himself upward, grabbed an outcrop and used just his arm to keep climbing.
More cracks appeared in his visor.
He found a rhythm, an exhausting series of movements that taxed him and the suit to the extremes of their capabilities. But he did not stop. And when he found a plateau that ran along the cliff in a shallow incline he bounced along it like Neil Armstrong had bunny-hopped on the moon, his boots kicking up gouts of mud with each heavy impact. His cracking visor pinked and tinged with every step.
At fifty feet the shelf petered out and he was tempted to set the emergency release that would open the suit and let him swim free. Instead he turned back to the cliff, methodically planted his foot and kicked upward.
Mercer didn’t sense daylight until he was twenty feet from the surface and his suit was being battered by wave action. It was time.
He found a secure perch on the cliff and locked the claw around a rock. He took a deep breath and in one sudden snap wrenched his left arm out of the suit’s sleeve. The pain of the near dislocation was like a knife under his shoulder blade and across the top of his back.
When the agony turned into numbness, he reached into the pocket of his overalls. By feel he flipped open his cell and dialed Ira’s direct line. He brought the phone as close as he could to his mouth. He was just shallow enough for the signal to bounce off one of the nearby cell towers.
“Ira, listen to me,” he shouted when the ringing stopped. “It’s Mercer.”
“Mercer? Where are you? You sound like you’re talking from the bottom of a barrel.”
“Close enough. The bomb is planted. It goes off in, shit, fifty minutes, but I have a problem. Luc Nguyen has taken over the Petromax Angel. They boarded from another boat that either came from the island or broke the quarantine. Jim McKenzie is part of his group. He’s the one that turned on the hydrate pump in the Pacific.”
“Where’s that ship now?”
“I assume they took off. I don’t know. I jumped — well, I was pushed overboard.”
“Are you on La Palma?”
“Not quite. I’m calling you from one of the diving suits. I’m about twenty feet under the surface.”
“What?”
“I don’t have time to explain it. Right now I’m directly above the nuke. You have to get a chopper off that Aegis cruiser you said was standing by.”
“It’s going to take a few minutes to coordinate.”
“I’m not going anywhere. In case we lose this signal I’m going to pop to the surface in exactly thirty minutes. Tell the pilot I’ll be the guy holding the cell phone. Can’t be too many of them around here.”
Ira smiled. “I’ll tell him the model in case there are more than one of you out there. Don’t worry, Mercer. We’re coming for you.”
Ira kept his line open, but as Mercer suspected he lost the signal a few minutes later and couldn’t get it back.
Now that he’d stopped climbing, he shivered in the suit, his sodden clothes and hair sticking to his body like a clammy skin. He played with the climate system but couldn’t get heat. All his exertion had nearly drained the suit’s batteries. He just stood slumped in the aluminum shell and waited for time to trickle by. He was too wasted to even worry about Tisa at the moment.
She’d said she loved him. It wasn’t an ambiguous moan at the height of passion. She’d said the words to his face. Mercer knew he’d get her back, if for no other reason than for him to tell her he loved her too.
When his deadline approached, he began to hyper-extend his lungs, building up oxygen to the point he felt he was going to pass out. Then he hit the emergency release located awkwardly along his right wrist where it couldn’t be accidentally activated.
The suit split along the back and filled in a rush of frigid water that momentarily pinned Mercer. He kicked free and stroked for the surface, allowing a trickle of air to escape his lips as he rose.
Ash formed a thick ceiling at the surface. He hit it and began to claw his way through, kicking frantically as mud closed in around him. It was like struggling through quicksand. He fought and twisted and was certain he was sinking. His chest burned. There was no way to know if he was one inch or ten feet from the top.