As the captain nosed the bow toward the approaching wave, the three men and two women took up positions in front of the net. Roy sided up to Pitt and whispered out of earshot of the others.
"A game effort, Mr. Pitt, though we both know this old derelict isn't going to make it."
"Never say die," Pitt whispered back with an odd look of confidence.
The rumbling bellow from the moving water grew louder as the wave approached within five miles.
There were just minutes to go before it would strike the boat. The occupants all braced for the worst, some praying silently while others contemplated death with grim determination. Against the roar of the water, nobody detected the sound of the approaching helicopter. The Kamov was barely a hundred yards off the port flank when Wofford looked up and blurted, "What the heck?"
All eyes darted from the approaching wave to the helicopter and back and then did a double take.
Dangling beneath the chopper on a twenty-foot cable was a white cylindrical object that swayed just a few feet above the waves. The object was clearly taxing the lifting ability of the helicopter, and everyone but Pitt figured that the helicopter pilot had lost his mind. At this dire point in time, why would he be trying to transport some machinery to the fishing boat?
A broad grin spread over Pitt's face as he recognized the bulky object twisting beneath the helicopter.
He had nearly tripped over it while leaving the Vereshchagin just a short time ago. It was the research ship's decompression chamber, on board as a security measure in case of a diving accident. Giordino had hastily realized it could act as a submersible for the fishing boat's crew to take haven in. Jumping to his feet, Pitt waved at Giordino to lower the chamber to the boat's stern deck.
With the seiche wave bearing down on the boat, Giordino moved in rapidly, hovering high over the stern until the swaying chamber stabilized. With a sudden dip and a crunch, the one-ton chamber descended from the sky and collided with the deck. The four-person hyperbaric chamber took up the entire rear deck space and pushed the boat's stern down several inches deeper into the water.
Pitt quickly unhooked the attached cable then jumped to the side rail and waved a thumbs-up gesture toward the helicopter. Giordino immediately swung the helicopter up and away from the boat, settling in a hover a short distance away to observe the impact.
"Why did he dump that here?" Tatiana asked.
"That big ugly bobber is your ticket to safety," Pitt replied. "Everybody in, there's no time to lose."
Glancing forward, Pitt could see that the fast-moving wave was just a mile away. He quickly unhinged the sealed lock and swung open the heavy circular door to the chamber. Theresa was the first to climb in, followed by Wofford and Roy. Tatiana hesitated, grabbing a leather satchel before stepping in behind Roy.
"Hurry up," Pitt prompted. "There's no time to check luggage."
Even the brash captain, staring awestruck at the looming wall of water, abandoned the wheel and scrambled into the chamber after the others.
"Aren't you joining us?" Tatiana asked as Pitt began to close the door.
"It will be tight enough with five people in there. Besides, someone's got to seal the chamber," he replied with a wink. "There's blankets and padding in the rear. Use them to protect your heads and bodies.
Brace yourselves, it will be here quick."
With a metallic clang, the door clapped shut and Pitt twisted the locking mechanism closed. A strange silence suddenly enveloped the occupants, but it lasted for less than a minute. Then the wave was upon them.
Theresa sat opposite a thick porthole window and looked out at the mysterious man who had arrived from nowhere to save them. She saw Pitt reach into his duffel bag and remove a dive faceplate and backpack with a small tank attached. Quickly strapping the equipment on, he stepped up onto the side gunwale before a deluge of water obscured the viewport.
The chartered fishing boat was still fifteen miles from Listvyanka and the western shoreline when the seiche wave hit. Those aboard had no way of knowing that they were struck by the leading force of the rolling wave, its peak cresting as high as a three-story building at impact.
From his perch two hundred feet in the air, Giordino looked on with a sickening helplessness as the wave piled into the black fishing boat. Its throttle was still set at full, and Giordino watched as the aged boat tried valiantly to climb up the vertical wall of water. But the rolling force of the water overpowered the rotted hull timbers and the old wooden boat seemed to melt away, disappearing completely under the tall wave.
Giordino desperately scanned the surface for signs of Pitt or the decompression chamber. But as the waters fell to a subtle calm again, only the bow section could be seen floating on the surface. The old fishing boat had split in two from the force of the wave and only the bow section had survived the initial onslaught. The stern deck, with the compression chamber, had vanished from sight. The black-hulled wreckage of the bow bobbed only momentarily, its masthead swaying across the sky before it, too, disappeared in a gurgle of bubbles to the bottom of the frigid lake.
-4-
"Hang on!" Theresa called over the sudden roar from the wall of water.
Her words echoed in the chamber as its occupants were violently tossed about. The entire chamber jerked upright as the striking wave lifted the fishing boat on end. The three men and two women clung frantically to the welded railings of twin bunks, trying to keep their bodies from becoming flying missiles inside the chamber. Time seemed to stand still as the boat stalled in its attempt to climb the face of the wave. Then a loud cracking noise reverberated beneath their feet as the fishing boat broke in two. Free of the lighter and more buoyant bow, the stern section slowly slid back vertically into the trough of the wave just as the brunt of its force rolled onward.
For Theresa, the impact seemed to occur in slow motion. The initial sensation of sinking on end predictably gave way to the tumbling force of the wave thrusting the chamber over on its back. Arms, legs, and torsos flailed about the chamber as it flipped over amid a chorus of cries and gasps. The minimal light that flared through the view port quickly dimmed, then vanished altogether, thrusting the interior into a frightening blackness.
Unseen by its victims, the wave had flipped over the entire stern section of the fishing boat, pinning the chamber beneath it. The flooded engine compartment, aided by the weight of the engine and driveshaft, easily drove the inverted chamber toward the lake bed. Though the force of the wave surged past above them, the wreckage and chamber continued to descend under its own weight. Instead of becoming a life preserver, the decompression chamber had turned into a coffin, plunging its victims toward the cold depths of the Siberian lake.
The heavy steel chamber was built to withstand the force of thirty atmospheres, or the pressure found at a depth of one thousand feet. But the lake depths exceeded three thousand feet where the fishing boat broke up, which would cause the chamber to implode before ever reaching the lake floor. Under its own weight, the encapsulated chamber would float freely on the surface and would be still buoyant even with five people inside. But pinned against the inverted stern section, the chamber was headed to the bottom.
As the light dimmed from the view port, Theresa knew that they were sinking deeper into the lake. She recalled Pitt's words at the last minute, calling the chamber a "bobber." It must float, she deduced. There was no apparent water leakage in the chamber, so another force must be driving them to sink.