He got up beside the lift bar. Joe’s hands were curled up into balls from the cold. He pulled Joe’s right hand as far from the left as he could. He then lit the new flare and held up the strip of aluminum.
He pressed the pointed end of the strip into the narrow links of the hardened steel chain that held Joe’s hands together. Then he brought the oxygen bottle awkwardly to bear and turned the valve.
The jet of bubbles burst forth once again. He directed it toward the aluminum strip and Joe’s chains and the burning tip of the flare. Immediately, what looked like a jet of fire burst forth.
It was awkward work. Kurt felt like he needed three hands, but by holding the flare and the aluminum strip in one hand and the oxygen bottle in the other he was able to keep his little torch operation working.
While it seemed like the oxygen was burning, Kurt knew it was actually an oxidizer. It didn’t burn. It caused other things to burn hot and fast — in this case, the aluminum and, once a little cut appeared in Joe’s chain, the steel in the chain links.
The jury-rigged setup smoked and bubbled and snapped unevenly. For a moment it looked as if it would go out, but it stayed lit. After thirty seconds he pulled the torch away. The links were glowing red but not yet melted. He brought the torch to bear once again. After another fifteen seconds, Joe’s hands suddenly snapped apart.
He was free.
Kurt shut off the oxygen, thinking they might need it, and moved back into the sub.
Joe was all smiles. “I’d hug you,” he said, holding up his balled fists, “but I’m too damn cold.”
“How long we been down here?” Kurt asked.
“Thirty minutes,” Joe said.
That sounded right to Kurt. Thirty minutes at one hundred feet. They’d need at least one decompression stop. With Joe’s survival bottle largely untouched and what was left in his own, along with the green oxygen tank, Kurt was certain they could make it without any problem.
He slid Joe’s mask over his face and forced the swim fins on his feet. With the life raft and the ELT beacon under his arm, Kurt led Joe out of the sub.
Outside, he twisted the beacon until it began to flash, released it, and watched it shimmy toward the surface.
He looked to Joe and pointed upward. Joe nodded and began to swim, kicking slowly for the surface.
Kurt took one last look at the Barracuda and noticed something shiny on the ocean floor beneath the lights. The knife. The same knife once again. Another taunt from Andras.
Angrily, he reached out and grabbed it, and then he began to swim after Joe and the distant flashing light from the ELT.
THEY BROKE OUT INTO THE DAYLIGHT ten minutes later. Kurt tried to keep their ascent to one foot per second, as per the old Navy standard rules. But just to be sure, he and Joe stopped at forty feet for two minutes and then at twenty feet for three more.
Finally breaking into the sunlight was a glorious feeling. Kurt pulled the inflation cord on the raft. The CO2 charge filled and expanded the small raft in a matter of seconds. It unfolded and stiffened with full inflation.
“Ready for passengers,” Kurt said.
He helped Joe climb aboard and then pulled himself in.
Once they’d made it into the raft, lying still and flat was highly recommended. Kurt was pretty certain he could do nothing else.
He lay there breathing, aching and exhausted. He was surprised at how cold and numb he felt now compared to their time down below.
After several minutes with no sound but the slap of the water against the side of the raft, Joe spoke. “Where’s the driest place on earth?”
“I don’t know,” Kurt said, thinking. “The Atacama Desert maybe.”
“Next adventure we’re going there,” Joe said. “Or somewhere hot and dry.”
“I’m not sure the National Underwater and Marine Agency has a lot going on where it’s hot and dry,” Kurt said.
Joe shook his head. “Dirk and Al spent some time in the Sahara once.”
“True,” Kurt said. “I’m not sure they would recommend it though.”
“Hot and dry,” Joe said firmly. “I won’t take no for an answer.”
Kurt laughed. It really didn’t sound too bad right now.
He was painfully aware how close they’d come to dying. It wouldn’t have taken much to tilt the scales from life to death for either of them. Kurt knew his overconfidence about what their foes were doing was half the reason for that.
He looked over at Joe, who was finally beginning to show some color in his face.
“I was wrong,” he said to Joe.
Joe turned his head awkwardly. “What?”
“I was wrong about St. Julien,” Kurt added. “He’s a gourmet. He would never chow down at some all-you-can-eat buffet.”
Joe stared at him for a moment and then started laughing and coughing all at the same time. Kurt laughed too. He knew Joe understood what he was trying to say.
“We all screw up, Kurt,” he said. “You just do it bigger than the rest of us.”
Kurt nodded. It sure seemed that way.
He looked out over the surface of the water. Thirty yards away he saw the emergency locator beacon, riding the swells and flashing. He hoped rescue would come soon because there was still work to be done.
The way he saw it, Andras had screwed up even bigger than he had. He’d left Kurt alive and stirred the bitter embers of vengeance in his heart.
38
Off the coast of Sierra Leone, June 26
DJEMMA GARAND STOOD near the edge of the helipad on the false oil platform given the number 4. This platform contained the control center of his weapon and would be his command post if he ever needed to use it.
The control center sat three stories above the helipad, the glass enclosure of its main room jutting out like the bridge on a ship. At the moment Djemma’s attention lay elsewhere.
He stood, leaning up against a rail, in the shadows, his eyes hidden behind the ever-present green shield of the Ray-Bans he wore. Out in the center of the helipad, wilting under the blazing equatorial sun, stood the captured scientists from the various teams who had flocked to the lure he’d offered. The Azorean magnetic anomaly.
Djemma smiled at his own cunning. So far, all things were falling in line with his plan.
With the scientists forced to line up as if for inspection, he waited. Each time one of them tried to sit or get out of line, Andras or one of his men would march out and threaten them with reprisals far worse than standing in the sun. At all times a few men roamed the perimeter with machine guns in their hands.
Finally, when the moaning and complaining began to lessen, Andras came over to where Djemma rested in the shade.
“Leave them out there any longer and you’re going to fry their brains,” Andras said. “Which, if I’m not mistaken, isn’t what you brought them here for.”
Djemma turned to Andras. He would not respond to the man’s questions.
“There were thirty-eight experts in superconduction, particle physics, and electromagnetic energy on Santa Maria,” he said. “I count only thirty-three prisoners. Explain the discrepancy.”
Andras turned his head, spit over the side of the rig, and looked back at Djemma. “The French team took a core sample of the tower. It could have blown the whole operation before we made our move. I had to eliminate them. The Russian expert turned out to be a spy. She tried to escape twice. I killed her as well.”
Andras did not blink as he spoke, but he did not seem to like explaining himself.
“And Mathias?” Djemma asked.
“Your little key master forgot his place,” Andras said. “He questioned me in front of the others. I couldn’t allow that.”