“I’m still locked up,” Joe said.
“I know,” Kurt said, studying the key. “Hold on.”
He took a deep breath, went back into the water, and tried again. This time, he tried both cuffs but to no avail. The key could be forced in, but it didn’t slide in smoothly and it wouldn’t turn a millimeter once it was in.
Suddenly, he remembered Andras telling Kurt his answers were “good enough for half.”
It hadn’t made sense at the time, but now it did. He’d given them one key. It matched Kurt’s handcuffs but not Joe’s. That was exactly the man Kurt remembered, never content just to defeat his foes but almost needing to torture those he’d vanquished, to cause pain before landing the killing blow.
Whatever other reasons Andras might have had for giving Kurt a chance to escape, this twisted little game had to be part of it. He could imagine Andras watching the scene play out in his mind and snickering.
Like some malevolent deity in Greek mythology, he’d granted Kurt a chance at life, but Kurt could only accept that gift at the expense of leaving his best friend to die.
No way on earth Kurt was going to let that happen. He went back inside, popping up once again.
“I think you’re misunderstanding the concept here,” Joe said. “When you come back in, I’m supposed to be free.”
“We have a problem,” Kurt said. “The key doesn’t fit.”
Joe stared at the key and then at Kurt. “The guy used a different key on mine. I saw it. The cuffs are different.”
Kurt stuffed the key in his pocket and began looking around in the cockpit for a tool to break Joe loose. He found a pair of screwdrivers, a set of Allen wrenches, and some other instruments — all of them miniaturized out of necessity to fit in the tiny cockpit of the sub.
“Anything in here that we could use for leverage?” he asked. Joe had built the sub. He’d know it far better than Kurt.
“Not really,” Joe said.
“What about the lift bar?” Kurt asked, referencing what Joe was cuffed to. “Can we remove it or release it somehow?”
Joe shook his head. “Not without taking half the sheet metal off first.”
“Can we break it?” Kurt asked, though he already knew the answer.
“It’s the hardest point on the sub,” Joe said, beginning to shiver from the cold water. “It’s welded right to the frame. It’s designed to support the sub’s entire weight when lifted out of the water.”
The two men stared at each other.
“You can’t get me free,” Joe said, voicing a dreaded realization.
“There’s got to be a way,” Kurt mumbled, thinking, and trying to fight what was becoming a mind-numbing cold.
“Not with anything we have on board,” Joe said. “You should go. Don’t stay down here and drown with me.”
“Why? So you could come back and haunt me?” Kurt said, trying to keep Joe’s spirits up. “No thanks.”
“Maybe there’s a boat on the surface or a helicopter,” Joe said. “Maybe someone got our message.”
Kurt thought about that. It seemed unlikely. And if Joe was right about how long the air supply would last on full blast, Kurt doubted they had more than fifteen minutes or so to wait. Not enough time for someone to get to them even if he could call for help.
He needed a different answer, a third way between leaving Joe to drown and dying down there alongside him. What he needed was a hacksaw or a blowtorch to cut through the lift bar or, better yet, through the chains on Joe’s cuffs.
And then it dawned on him. He didn’t need a full-on blowtorch, just something that burned hot and sharp. He remembered the green tank he’d seen in the Constellation’s cockpit when he’d rescued Katarina. Green tank meant pure oxygen. Pure oxygen burned hot and sharp. Modulated just right, that could be his cutting torch.
He flipped open a small compartment door. Inside were the Barracuda’s emergency supplies. Two diver’s masks, sets of fins, and two small air tanks; ones he now wished contained one hundred percent oxygen but were filled with standard air.
Twenty-one percent oxygen and seventy-eight percent nitrogen didn’t burn, but at least it could be breathed.
He pulled them out.
Behind the tanks he found a packet of flares and an emergency locator transmitter, an ELT. An uninflated two-man raft completed the kit. Enough to save them if they could get free.
Kurt took one air tank and strapped it to Joe’s arm like a blood pressure cuff. He turned the valve and put the regulator up by Joe’s mouth.
“Breathe through your nose until the air in the Barracudaruns out, then start drawing on this,” he said.
Joe nodded. “Where are you going?” he asked. “Are you going to the surface?”
Kurt was pulling on a pair of small swim fins.
“Hell no,” he said. “I’m going to the hardware store to get us a cutting torch.”
Joe’s gaze narrowed. “Have you lost your mind?”
“Years ago,” Kurt said, pulling the mask down. He strapped the emergency air bottle to his own arm and turned the valve. “But that doesn’t mean I’m crazy.”
He took a test breath off of the yellow tank’s regulator.
Joe’s eyebrows went up. “You’re serious?”
Kurt nodded.
“I hope it’s not too far away, then,” Joe added.
Kurt hoped not as well. He knew roughly where they were when they’d been captured. He thought he could make it.
He put the regulator in his mouth and ducked his face into the water to look for one more thing that he’d need to pull it off. He found it and then submerged.
“Hurry back,” Joe said, but Kurt was already moving.
37
IF JOE HAD SAID ANYTHING ELSE, Kurt didn’t hear him. He dropped down out of the Barracudalike a man swimming from the mouth of a cave and began kicking forward with powerful strokes.
The fins weren’t full-sized, but they helped immensely, and with the mask on he could see clearly. But he still had to make a guess as to his whereabouts. He took out a piece of equipment he’d grabbed from the dash of the Barracuda: the magnetic compass.
It was just a dial in a sealed ball half filled with kerosene. As long as it hadn’t cracked or broken, it would still perform its only function. And that was to point toward the most powerful magnetic source around. Normally, that would be the north magnetic pole. But in this case Kurt guessed it would point toward the magnetic tower of rock.
Though he was quite certain the whole thing was a fraud of some kind, the magnetism emanating from the tower was real. Whether it was being generated by some type of device implanted within the rock that sent out an electromagnetic current or was just a result of highly charged minerals being positioned in the right place, he couldn’t say.
He lit one of the flares and held the compass out. It spun and dipped and slowly came onto a heading. The speed with which it centered told him it was reacting to something very strong, and he felt certain that it was pointing toward the tower.
Knowing he and Joe had been traveling basically to the east before they’d been caught, he triangulated in his head a direction to swim and lit out for the Constellation.
Five minutes later he came upon one of the ships in the graveyard. Two minutes after that he spotted the triple tails of the old aircraft. He pumped his legs hard, knowing both that time was running short and that he needed to keep as active as possible to delay the onset of hypothermia.
He ducked through the gaping hole in the aircraft’s side, swam forward surrounded by the bubbles he was exhaling, and made it to the cockpit.
A skeletal form sat in the copilot’s seat, still strapped in and stripped of everything organic. Only the plastic of the life vest, a pair of rusted dog tags, and the nylon-and-metal seat belt holding him in remained. Another few years and even the bones would be gone.