“You set them.”
“Yes.”
“How long ago?”
“I don’t know, ten minutes, maybe less.”
“For how long?”
“Thirty minutes.” Bennett looked up at Manville. “Couldn’t we get away in time?”
“From the city? How do you switch it off?”
“You don’t,” Bennett said, sounding surprised. “No one ever said anything about switching it off.”
Manville laughed, without mirth. “No fail-safe, once again. Naturally.”
Tony Fairchild said, “Can we get to the explosives, switch them off manually?” Beside him, the new inspector was looking ashen-faced and terrified.
Manville said, “They’re underwater, in the tunnels. We’d need divers, we’d never get divers here in time.”
One of the policemen in the office suddenly noticed something and spoke up. “That telephone,” he said, “is off the hook.”
They all stared at it. Tony strode to the table, picked up the receiver, listened, reacted, and turned to say, “I heard him hang up.”
Manville said to Bennett, “Curtis?”
Bennett nodded.
Fairchild said, “George? Is there really no way to stop it?”
Kim said, “I can go.”
14
Kim had never been so frightened in her life. All she could see in her mind’s eye was that great boulder of hard gray water rolling at her from Kanowit Island, surrounding her, submerging her, beating her into a rag doll.
She was now wearing the other diver’s wetsuit and goggles and headlamp and flippers and air tank, thanking heaven he was a small man so it more or less fit. She moved strongly through the black tunnels. The water filling the tunnels was clouded, already beginning to mix with dirt from the temporary cross-tunnels. In a little while, you wouldn’t be able to see down here at all. Of course, in a little while, there would be no down here.
The more she thought about the urgency of the job, the need for speed and efficiency, the more anxious she became. And she knew that could be fatal. She’d almost fallen down the ladder into the water, unable to control her feet in flippers on the ladder rungs. And she didn’t want to dive or fall into that water, because who knew what debris might be in there, to cut her or knock her out.
And now, when she should be concentrating on swimming forward, finding the bombs, defusing them, all she could think about was the destroyer wave off Kanowit Island, all she could do was feed her fear.
George hadn’t wanted her to come down here. None of them had wanted her to do it, none of them would have asked her to risk her life to save theirs — to save everyone’s. But who else was there?
For about two seconds there had been the idea of convincing the other diver of the peril of the situation, and having him come down here, but everybody agreed he wouldn’t understand the danger and would most likely just swim through the tunnels and out the breached seawall and away.
So it had to be her. George had said it wouldn’t be necessary to disarm all six bombs, even if there’d been time, and there surely was not that much time. “These three,” he’d said, pointing them out on the construction plans, and Kim concentrated on what she had to do when she got down below.
It was simple, if she could only remember it. Through the first cross-tunnel, then down that water tunnel a little way to the right, and that would be number one. Back, find the next cross-tunnel, take it, pass through the next main tunnel to go to the next main tunnel, and to the left, and that would be number two. Then back the way she’d come, all the way back, past the ladder, down a different tunnel, another left into a cross-tunnel, another right, and there would be number three. And then, as quickly as possible, scoot back to the ladder and up.
“The other three,” George had said, “will do some damage, but there won’t be enough pressure to build up the soliton wave. As long as you’re out of the water once they start to go off, you’ll be all right.”
Be all right. She didn’t see how she could possibly be all right, she didn’t see how any of them could be all right.
There. In the increasingly murky water, there it was, on the floor, next to the wall, looking like a flattened footlocker. On an elastic loop around her wrist was the padlock key Bennett had dug out of the desk drawer, and when she hunkered beside the box to try the key, it worked.
How much time was left now? Ten minutes? Less?
Her hands fumbled when she pulled the wire-clippers from her belt. “Just cut the wires between the timer and the detonator,” George had told her. “It’s a very simple device. Cut the wires, and move on.”
The wires. She squeezed the wire clippers, and the wires were tougher than she’d expected. More time wasted. She had to cut the wires one at a time. At least that worked.
Clippers back into utility belt; don’t drop them!
The headlamp glow reflected back at her more and more from the dirty water. She slid along the right side of the water tunnel, finding the cross tunnel mostly by feel, moving on.
What if the water becomes too dirty to see in at all? How can I move fast if I’m blind?
It took more swimming than it felt to her like it should have, more than she could afford, but then her fingers brushed something hard against the wall and she felt along its outline. The second box. Knowing how to do it now, she moved more quickly, but reminded herself not to hurry, not to make any mistakes. Her heart pounded inside the wetsuit as she manipulated the clippers, then slid them back into her belt and kicked out and away, reversing course, swimming as strongly as she could back the way she’d come.
Oh, how she wanted to climb that ladder when it came dimly into view, but no, not yet, there was more to be done. One more. Without disabling one more, she’d only have weakened the soliton, not prevented it. Maybe only a hundred thousand would die rather than millions — that was some victory, she supposed. But not an entirely satisfying one. Especially given that the dead would include her. And George.
She swam past the ladder and on down the dark tunnel, only able to see the side of the tunnel she was nearest to. Her own movements agitated the water, mixing it more quickly with the dirt in the side tunnels. It was like swimming in a sewer. Like swimming in a nightmare.
She kept her head down, kicked harder, took the turns George had shown her. Box number three was there where it was supposed to be, but she couldn’t see it at all, had to open the padlock by feel, grope around inside it for the wires. She found them and braced the clippers against them, shifted her grip for greater leverage — and the clippers slipped from her hand.
She fumbled for them, grabbed at them, and missed.
For a second she couldn’t breathe. Just a second, but it was the most painful second of her life, physically painful, like she was being crushed from all sides at once. She forced herself to take air in, forced herself to focus. You’re going to die down here, she told herself, and strangely it succeeded in calming her down.
She stretched her arm out, groped along the bottom of the open box, praying, and when her fingers made contact with the rubber-sheathed grips of the clippers she seized them.
No more time. The wires had to be cut, and no time to do it one by one. Grimacing, she forced the jaws of the clippers together around the wires, squeezed hard with both hands. She’d have sworn she could hear the clippers bite shut as the wires split. It was done. She’d done it.
But the relief she felt was short-lived. For even if the explosives that were left wouldn’t create a soliton wave, they would be more than enough to snuff out the life of one unfortunate diver caught in their path. She’d miraculously survived one underwater explosion already — no one beat the odds twice.