Jack slid on his hands down the rails of the stairway to the main deck level, swung open the hatch, and stood in the full glare of the sunlight on the foredeck below the bridge, cursing himself for having forgotten his sunglasses. In front of him the new red derrick was swung off to starboard, its cable taut where the submersible was held over the side of the ship. Jack grabbed a hard hat from the bin beside the hatch and went over to the rail. Looking down he could see the submersible awash in the azure blue of the Mediterranean. Out of the water it was ungainly, its manipulator arms making it look like some giant insect, with racks of compressed air cylinders and piping on either side. In the water it was another story entirely. A streamlined yellow carapace covered the pressurized bathysphere and double-lock chamber, a crucial feature that allowed divers to enter and egress. The vectored-thrust propellers allowed an extraordinary precision of movement and position holding, perfect for archaeological work and the task ahead of them almost a thousand meters below on the seabed.
Macalister came alongside him, and they both watched as the submersible rose higher and Costas came into view through the Perspex viewing dome. Jack glanced at his watch. The journalists would be having their second briefing now, and soon afterward be expecting to set up their cameras. Before that the submersible would have to be raised out of the water and placed on its cradle on the deck in order for Jack to get inside. Then it would be winched out again. If this was going to be in full view of the world’s media, they needed everything to run as smoothly as possible and not allow filming until they were in the water again and certain that everything was good to go.
Macalister pressed the earphone he was wearing and bent down to listen more clearly and then straightened up, gave a thumbs-up, and made a whirling motion with his hand, looking back at the derrick operator. He turned to Jack. “That was Costas, and he’s ready to come up. He said it was crucial to trial it, and the issue’s resolved.”
“You mean he got itchy feet, and just couldn’t resist taking it for a joyride.”
Macalister grinned, and signalled again to the derrick operator.
The cable creaked, and the motor screeched. There was a sudden lurch, and the cable began paying out rapidly from the derrick, coiling in the sea around the submersible. Jack glanced back in alarm and saw the derrick operator frantically pulling the emergency hand brake. Jack looked at the submersible. At least it was buoyant, not dependent on the winch to keep it afloat. But as he watched, the top of the submersible dipped beneath the waves, and then was submerged. Jack’s heart began to pound. Something was wrong.
“It’s the cable,” Macalister shouted. “The coils have fallen on top of the submersible, weighing it down.”
Jack stared at the cable. At least fifty meters had been paid out. If the weight of the cable forced the submersible down to a depth of ten meters, then the volume of air in its ballast tanks would be halved and it would sink of its own accord. It would come to a halt only when it reached the maximum extent of the cable. Jack tossed off his hard hat, grabbed another intercom headset from its stand, and put it on. “Costas, do you read me?”
“Loud and clear.”
“Blow the ballast tanks. There’s a malfunction in the derrick, and about fifty meters of coiled cable has dropped onto you.”
“No can do, Jack. Something’s jamming the valve.”
Jack stared at the wavering form of the submersible just beneath the surface. He could just see where a coil of cable had caught around the manifold linking together the rack of compressed air cylinders on one side. The submersible suddenly sank deeper and the coil disengaged, swirling around with the rest of the cable in the water below the derrick. “Okay,” Jack said. “A coil of cable was caught around it. Try now.”
“Still no good. The drag from the cable must have somehow closed the external valve.”
Jack turned back to the derrick operator. “Can you hold it?” he shouted.
The man gave a thumbs-up, his other hand still on the brake. “I should be able to hold it once it reaches the maximum extent already paid out. That’s fifty-seven meters from the top of the derrick. But I can’t guarantee for how long. After that, it’s a thousand-meter payout.”
Jack turned back to the water. The submersible was nearly out of sight now, sinking more rapidly, the cable unwinding and straightening out above it. Two men with tool kits rushed up to the derrick, removed the panel over the electronic controls, and tried to isolate the problem.
Beside Jack the two safety divers were quickly finishing kitting up. Jack cupped his hand over the mike so that Costas could hear against the noise. “You’re going to come to a halt at about fifty meters depth. The divers should be able to free the valve. Failing that, you can do an emergency egress through the double-lock chamber, and they’ll escort you to the surface. You copy that?”
“Copy, Jack. But there’s another problem. It’s also cut off my breathing air. The carbon dioxide levels in the bathysphere are already in the red. I’ve only got a few minutes before blackout.”
Jack stared at the two safety divers, his mind racing through the options. They had just zipped up their E-suits and were donning air cylinders. The cable suddenly became taut, and the derrick jolted. “Okay,” he said into the mike. “The divers are less than a minute away from entry. Do you copy?”
There was a pause, and Costas’ voice when it came through sounded distant. “Copy that. I’m on the way out, Jack. My legs and arms are tingling.”
Jack stared at the cable, watching the water shimmer off it. In the space of a few minutes, a routine equipment check had turned into a deadly crisis. He felt his breathing and heart rate slow, as if he were making time itself slow down to stretch out the seconds so that he could run through all the options. The divers had only the compressed air tanks they used for shallow-water safety checks and maintenance. It would take too long now to rig them up with mixed gas or rebreathers. With compressed air, they were limited to fifty meters, maybe twenty meters beyond that in an extreme emergency, but no more. If the cable ran free again and the submersible plummeted beyond that depth, there was only one option left for rescue, one that he would never allow another member of his team to take.
And then it happened. The derrick screeched and the cable began to feed out again. Jack ripped off the headphones and glanced back to the derrick operator, seeing where the others had leapt forward to help him try to hold the brake, their tools cast aside. The cable was falling fast, dropping the submersible far beyond air-diving depth now. Jack turned, feeling as if he were in slow motion. His vision tunneled, his metabolism slowed as if he were already in dive response, his system anticipating what his brain was telling it and doing all it could to maximize his chances of survival. He blew on his nose to clear his ears, keeping his nose pinched, and with his other hand scooped up the weight belt of one of the divers, holding it tight and bounding to the edge of the deck beside the cable. He was barely conscious of those around him, of Macalister’s shocked face, of the two divers too stunned to move, of voices behind yelling at him not to do it.
He stared into the abyss. All he thought of was the darkness, and Costas.
He breathed fast, gulping in the air, took a final deep lungful, and jumped.
CHAPTER 14
Jack had just enough time to cross his ankles and arms to present minimal resistance before he hit the water, his right hand pinching his nose ready to equalize the pressure in his ears and sinuses and his other hand wrapped around the diver’s weight belt he had grabbed just before leaving the deck. He knew that the cable from the derrick to the submersible was only a few meters away, and with the dead weight of the belt he would plummet directly on target without having to angle sideways.