“Shoulder got banged up. Nothing broken.”
He groped under the pilot seat for a flashlight and switched it on, keeping the beam low to avoid blinding Kalliste. Her face was about a foot from his. She brushed the hair away from her eyes and looked around. “What the hell happened?”
“The Sancho Panza sank and hit us on its way down.”
She snapped out of her daze. “The shadow coming from above? My God! The captain and his son. Rodriguez. They must have been killed. How could this have happened?” She paused.
“Those loud thuds we heard were explosions.”
“The boat couldn’t — wait, did you say explosions?”
“The ship must have been attacked. We can’t do anything about that. We have to help ourselves.”
He cupped his hands around the light to minimize reflection and held it close to the cabin wall. After moving the light back and forth several times, he sat down again.
“Remember that trouble we had finding the wreck? Well, it found us this time. We’re leaning up against the hull.”
“Will we be able to get back to the surface?”
“Looks that way. The lights in the control panel are glowing. We still have power. The fathometer dial shows us at two-hundred-forty-seven feet. Both lateral thrusters work. The one on the left side seems okay. The right must have been knocked off in the collision. Pumps that regulate the pontoons are in working order, though. I could eject water from them and give Falstaff the buoyancy needed to make the ascent, and then level off using the remaining thruster.”
“But that presents another problem. We won’t have a support ship.”
“Got that covered. Remember the fishing boats we passed on the way in? We’ll call for help.”
He rummaged in a gear bag and pulled out what looked like a hand radio. The device would broadcast an SOS and their position. He handed the transmitter and flashlight to Kalliste and began to work the controls. The hum of the pontoon pumps was like music to his ears. Even more encouraging was the submersible’s slight rocking motion as it gained buoyancy and lifted off the bottom.
Falstaff rose a few feet and came to a thumping stop under the ship’s overhang. Using alternate bursts from the lateral thrusters, he wriggled the submersible free. He ran the good thruster in reverse to balance off the loss of the other, and Falstaff began a wobbling ascent.
“Hang in there. We’re going to be okay,” he said.
“I’m not so sure about that,” Kalliste said.
She pointed the flashlight at their feet. The beam reflected off sparkling ripples. Hawkins leaned over and stuck his hand into frigid water that was only a couple of inches deep, but flowing in fast. He had designed Falstaff to be as watertight as humanly possible. His computations never took into account being T-boned by a salvage ship.
“The impact must have cracked a seal,” he said.
“What can we do?”
“Keep moving. Try to stay ahead of the leak.”
“I don’t mean to be pessimistic, but even if we get to the surface the submersible will sink under us.”
“I’ll blow the pontoons. There should be enough buoyancy to keep us afloat until help arrives.”
It would be a tight squeeze. The cold water was lapping at their shins by the time the fathometer marked them at the one-hundred-fifty-foot mark. He gritted his chattering teeth and kept his eyes glued to the dial.
One hundred feet.
Kalliste was using every ounce of stubbornness in her body, but the cold was eating away at her resolve. Hypothermia was setting in. Hawkins was shivering, and her teeth were clacking.
“Matt, the water is at my knees.” Her voice held a panicked edge.
“Promise me something, Kalliste.”
“Yes. Anything,” she said through chattering lips.
“That we’ll have dinner together back in Cadiz.”
She turned to Hawkins in the pale light, incredulous at his calm grin even with the prospect of death staring him in the face.
“I can’t believe I’m here with a crazy man. Yes, of course we’ll have dinner.” She brushed the hair out of her face again. “But I will have to look better than I look now.”
Hawkins placed his arm around her shoulders.
“You look like a Greek goddess.”
“Oh!” she said.
Her startled reaction had nothing to do with his attention. Falstaff had popped to the surface where it was lifted high by a swell and dropped back down between the angry waves.
By then, the water was at waist-level.
And all around them was darkness.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Hawkins had switched on the Mayday transmitter but he knew that help could be hours, possibly days, away.
Falstaff bobbed in two-foot-high seas and the sphere was half-full of seawater causing a shift in the center of gravity. The submersible was inherently unstable on the surface because of the weight of the batteries behind the passenger space. The rocking motion created even more waves inside the sphere, making it look like wine being swished around in a glass.
Seconds after the pontoons emptied, the submersible tilted over backwards. The control panel lights blinked out. The water was under their chins. The choices were stark.
They could drown now, or crawl out of the submersible and drown in minutes. Hawkins figured he had been living on borrowed time since the explosion in Afghanistan that had nearly ended his life. But he felt bad for Kalliste, whose only offense against the sea was to uncover one of its long-held secrets.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” he said.
“Out to where?” Kalliste said.
“I’ll tell you when we get there.”
Doing his best to stand up in the small, curved space, Hawkins undid the clasps holding the hatch in place and boosted Kalliste through the opening. Crawling out beside her, they clung to the battery housing as the sea sloshed through the hatch opening and the submersible’s angle grew more pronounced.
“I’m slipping off!” Kalliste shouted.
Hawkins held onto the housing with one hand and reached down with the other. He could barely bend his cold fingers, but he managed to grab her wrist, stopping her descent into the ocean. The waves pulled at her feet. He didn’t have the strength to haul her back up onto the sphere. His arm was being yanked from its socket, but he ignored the pain and summoned his last reserve of strength.
“Climb!” he yelled.
“Wha—?”
“Climb out of the water or we’re gonna have to postpone that dinner.”
She managed a garbled reply. “You’re crazy!” Given the insanity of their situation he probably would have agreed. Especially after he heard a voice in the darkness shouting their names.
“Matt! Kalliste!” They were suddenly bathed in light. The voice called out again. “Hold on! For God sakes, don’t let go!”
The light become brighter as it moved closer and was within a couple of feet of the rolling sphere when Hawkins lost his hold on the housing. He and Kalliste slid off into the sea and went under the waves. Hawkins still had his fingers locked around Kalliste’s wrist in a death grip. Using a combination of kicks, and wild thrashing with his free arm, he got her back to the surface.
The voice again. Nearer this time.
“Swim! Swim!”
Another voice joined in.
“Over here! Come!”
Kalliste started to slip below the surface. Hawkins grabbed her around the waist and flailed in a clumsy attempt to swim.
Hands reached down, grabbed Kalliste under the arms and lifted her into the darkness behind the blinding light. He heard his name called again. He reached out. As he felt the strong grip around his wrists, Hawkins rose from the sea, his body slithering over a rubbery wet surface. There was the sound of a zipper being closed.