“If we don’t do that, we’ll never get out of here alive.”
Adebowale slowed his ascent, just a little higher than either Sam or Tom. He fumbled with his buoyancy control device to release air, and make himself neutrally buoyant again. It wasn’t enough, and he started to struggle to keep from being sent straight up.
Sam released air from his own buoyancy control device, making him neutrally buoyant and then held the back of Adebowale’s tank to stabilize him.
“Thanks,” Adebowale said, and then glanced up at the elevator stuck between levels. “Have you got any ideas to fix that?”
Sam said, “Tom and I were just discussing the pros and cons of using C4 to send it to the bottom of the shaft.”
“You can’t do it,” Adebowale said, forcefully. “General Ngige’s men would suspect a prison break, and if we’re lucky would come down here and kill all three of us.”
Sam asked, “And if we’re not lucky?”
Adebowale bit on the regulator. “They’ll suspect what we were going to try and do, and blow the tunnels immediately — sending the entire content of Lake Tumba into the mine, drowning everyone.”
It was the first time Sam had considered the consequences of destroying the elevator. He thought the worst case scenario was that their mission would be compromised and they would have to regroup and make another attempt in a few days.
Sam expanded the computer projection of the entire B mine. “All right, forget about detonating the elevator. Do you have any other plans how we can get out of here?”
Adebowale stared at the map, and Tom moved closer so he, too, could get a better idea. Adebowale spoke with his usual level of calmness and confidence. More like a boy scout planning a walk in a park, than a man preparing a final ditch chance of avoiding the terror of running out of air hundreds of feet below ground, he pointed toward a horizontal shaft nearly all the way to the bottom. “We’ll descend to this level here. From there we’ll follow this tunnel until we reach a vertical shaft.”
Sam mentally followed the directions given and stopped. “This map doesn’t show any vertical shaft in that area, and certainly none that reach high enough to pass the immovable elevator.”
“Even so, it’s there,” Adebowale confirmed.
Tom asked, “Why wasn’t it noted on the map?”
Adebowale said, “Because there isn’t a second elevator shaft in this mine.”
Sam studied the markings on the map. There was nothing to even hint that a second vertical shaft would one day be built in that section of the mine. “Then what the hell is it?”
Adebowale adjusted the angle of his sea scooter so it faced downward again. “It’s the ventilation shaft.”
Of course, the ventilation shaft would be placed at the opposite end of the mine to the elevator shaft, allowing for a natural circulation of air. Sam saw Adebowale accelerate with his sea scooter, and descend toward the bottom of the elevator shaft.
Sam didn’t wait to discuss the options with Tom. He switched the sea scooter up to its third, and fastest speed setting, and the electric machine whirred into life. No longer following the map, Sam raced to keep up with Adebowale.
Sam asked, “You still there, Tom?”
Tom said, “Right behind you.”
At the bottom of the elevator shaft, Sam turned left to follow Adebowale along a horizontal tunnel. At the end of the short tunnel he watched Adebowale dip his scooter downward and descend another level.
“You certain you know where you’re going Adebowale?” Sam asked.
Silence.
Sam continued to follow. “Adebowale, can you hear me? Why are you descending when we need to ascend?”
More silence.
Sam and Tom both raced to keep up. The vertical drop brought them to a depth of a hundred and thirty feet. They would run out of air quickly at that depth, not to mention what it was doing for their residual nitrogen levels. SCUBA diving 101 implores divers to plan their dive so they start at the lowest depth first and then slowly ascend. By descending to a hundred feet, then ascending to forty feet, only to now drop to a hundred and thirty feet, was comparative to shaking up a can of soda to make it fizz — only in this case it wasn’t a soda drink, it was the nitrogen bubbling in their bloodstreams.
At the bottom of the shaft, Sam turned left again and then stopped. There at the end of the short tunnel rested Adebowale’s sea scooter. Neutrally buoyant, it floated mysteriously in the middle of the tunnel, without a rider.
Sam glanced around the small tunnel, but Adebowale had disappeared.
Chapter One Hundred and Eight
The ventilation shaft had three massive turbo-fans. The one on the surface hundreds of feet above was the largest and most powerful, whereas the two inside the vertical tunnel were smaller. All three were used to drive fresh air to the bottom of the shaft, then out into the lowest tunnel to create a circulation of air through the tunnels and back up the elevator shaft. Adebowale recalled hearing somewhere, that the reason the ventilation shaft always reached the lowest point of any mine was because it needed to flush out any residual toxins from the air that would otherwise bundle together and form a dead zone. Of course, all of that was academic. What mattered now, was how to get through the second massive turbo-fan that blocked his ascent.
He’d slipped through the first turbo-fan easily enough. It had amazed him. At ten feet in diameter, the massive blades were larger than him and were able to be feathered. This meant the blades changed their angle and pitch as they spun. It also allowed the mine operators to change the direction of the airflow if they needed to extract a poisonous or flammable gas, instead of pumping oxygen rich, fresh air into the mine. When he first looked up at it, all the blades were completely folded, and years of debris and mold made the turbo-fan look no different than the rest of the tunnel’s ceilings. Of course, it was easy to get through because he could simply move the angle of the blades and slip through. There was no choice of whether or not to bring the sea scooter, so he had to abandon it.
He ascended rapidly, without any fear of an acute decompression sickness. He didn’t have time to ascend slowly, taking the necessary decompression stops. Adebowale didn’t even wonder what would happen to Sam and Tom. What did it concern him whether they lived or died? They had served their purpose. He felt no guilt or happiness in leaving them. He didn’t have time to explain what needed to happen. Besides, what he was about to do was bigger than them, bigger than him — it was the most important single thing a human being could do for the world. He was going to categorically change the future of the human race.
He stopped after ascending approximately eighty feet. His movement was stopped again by an obstruction in the shaft — this time, by the second turbo-fan. This one was almost identical to the first, but there had been so much corrosion to the blades that they no longer feathered.
Adebowale pulled on the first blade, the same as he had done with the first, but nothing happened. He swam to the furthermost edge of the propeller, trying to use the increased leverage to move it. With his legs pressed against the metal sides, he pushed hard with his legs and pulled with his arms. The massive muscles of his arms strained, but nothing happened.
He tried each of the other blades and found none of them could be coerced to move. Adebowale removed his dive knife and used it to chip away at the rust where the fan-blade normally swiveled. He tried to move the fan again, but it was rusted solid.
Frustrated, Adebowale jammed the knife into the rusted section and then removed his dive tank. The aluminum tank moved quickly through the water. With the regulator still in his mouth he rammed the heavy dive tank into the knife. On the first attempt, the knife split just past the handle. Adebowale felt the rush of adrenalin sending him berserk. This wasn’t how he was going to die — trapped in an old ventilation shaft, stuck beneath a rusty propeller blade. He pulled back on the tank and rammed it into the same section again, and again. He lost track of how many times he struck the damned blade, but eventually he rammed the dive tank into the weakened edge of the fan-blade and it simply drove right through.