Crusader Gold (20 page)

The voice snapped him back into reality. He instantly realised what Costas meant. He dragged his left arm through the slurry and pulled out the knife he kept in a sheath on his chest, bringing the serrated edge up against the two hoses under his helmet. For an appalling moment he forgot which was trimix and which was oxygen, the narcotic effect of nitrogen at this pressure playing tricks on his mind. His head was nearly immobile and he was unable to see down to the hoses. He shut his eyes and resolutely grasped the left hose, bringing the blade to bear just under the point where it fed into his helmet.

“What’s left in your oxygen cylinder should fill the chamber long enough to clear the hole for another couple of blows,” Costas said. “But for God’s sake don’t breathe it. Eighty per cent oxygen at this depth would mean instant death.”

Jack slashed the hose and a huge geyser of bubbles erupted into the chamber.

The water rapidly lowered to chest level and he heaved himself up again, the severed hose dancing and hissing in front of him. He pulled the axe out of the brash and aimed it at the hole. With all his strength he swung against the ice, causing a large chunk to break free. He could see Costas pushing with all his might against the remaining barrier. Jack frantically pulled the floating chunk of ice aside and aimed another blow. Just then the hissing of his oxygen hose faltered, and the water level began to rise again, inexorably. He had one last chance. He lined up above the fracture line where the chunk had broken off, then relaxed completely, his eyes glued on the point of impact. He swung the axe back and brought it forward with all his might, causing a spray of brash as the blade skimmed over the rising water and slammed into the ice. Then he slumped back and began to pant uncontrollably, sending geysers of bubbles out of his exhaust as the water rose and submerged him again.

The corner of a fin appeared out of the ice. Jack felt a nudge against his body. It had worked. Another chunk of ice floated past, and a large black form emerged beside him like an inquisitive seal. Costas’ eyes looked into Jack’s. “Am I glad to see you.”

“Thank God you lost weight,” Jack said weakly. “I didn’t book a double room.”

A spurt of red filled the water between them as Jack shifted in the confined space. “How’s the leg?” Costas asked.

“That’s the least of my worries.” Jack peered at the water level above them.

“Your oxygen,” he said urgently. “Cut your hose and we’ll have a few more minutes.”

“No good,” Costas said. “My hose blew when the berg rolled. The shard of ice that cut it nearly decapitated me.” He struggled around until he was lying parallel to Jack, both of their heads now facing the ledge where the ice probe was embedded. The narrow confines of the chamber became even more apparent, barely large enough for the two of them festooned with all of their equipment. They were now completely submerged, slivers of ice from Jack’s efforts floating around them, and Jack could see the filaments from the coil tangled below. Costas leaned down to pull his fins up his calves and then hauled himself behind the probe. “It’s flashing amber,” he said. “The battery’s nearly dead. If we stick around here we’ll be on ice. Permanently.” He slid back down and struggled to remove something from the thigh pocket of his E-suit. “Here, hold on to this for me.”

Jack took it, then stared back at Costas. “C-4 explosive?”

“You got it. Always carry some in case of emergency.”

“You’re going to blow us up.”

“Beats the deep freeze.” Costas continued to delve in his pocket, then pulled out a miniature detonator transceiver. “I’m certain we’re inside the crevasse where Kangia and those Nazis saw the longship. The clear ice is meltwater that sealed up the crevasse. It’s weaker than the surrounding glacier ice, and fragmented when the berg shifted. We might be able to widen the crack. It’s the only chance we’ve got.”

“What’s our decompression status?”

“Not good. Our depth seems to be dropping. There must be an internal water level in the crevasse above us, below the level of the sea surrounding the berg.

Somehow it’s filling up. At this rate we’ll be in the danger zone in less than five minutes.”

“That’s about how much trimix I’ve got left.”

“If we don’t freeze up first. With the coil dead the water’s already beginning to thicken. Time to get this show on the road.”

Jack shivered violently. The water was as cold as he had ever known, colder than the deepest ocean depths. There was another ominous creak in the ice, and the crack above them closed in perceptibly. Costas rolled over and looked up, panning his headlamp along the silvery shimmer of exhaust bubbles that lined the ceiling. “That’s not what I wanted to happen,” he said quietly. A brief high-pitched alarm sounded from the probe, and the amber light went dead.

“Nor was that.” He rolled back and picked up the axe from the floor of the chamber, feeding it towards Jack. “You’ve got a longer reach than me. The crack’s widest above the probe. I need you to push the C-4 as high up as you can. It’s already armed.”

Jack held the brown packet in one hand and the haft of the axe in the other.

Costas sank behind him and heaved up against his legs, forcing another pulse of blood from Jack’s thigh. Jack tried to ignore the pain and twisted his upper body so that his visor was up against the crack above the probe. With the rush of bubbles escaping through it he could only get a fleeting sense of its dimensions, but it was clearly a narrow chimney that extended high above them, a crack between the slabs of ice. He pushed the C-4 as far up as he could with his left arm, wedging it in the chimney. Then he pulled the axe up hand over hand and fed the wooden haft into the chimney, with Costas preventing him from sliding back. When he felt the haft meet resistance, he pushed up hard, dislodging the C-4 and thrusting it as high as he could into the chimney.

“Okay. That’s as far as I can go.”

Jack sank down beside Costas, and the two of them struggled against the freezing brash until they were as far away from the ice chimney as they could get, pressed against each other in the opposite corner of the chamber. Jack reversed the axe and fed it back under his straps, and both men reached down to slide their fins into place. Jack wrapped his arms tight around Costas, their faces pressed visor to visor. “Wherever we’re going this time, we’re going together.”

“Semper fidelis.”

Jack shook his head. “You never cease to amaze me. Latin too.”

Costas held up the transceiver between them. “Good to go?”

“Good to go.”

A violent tremor shook them, accompanied by a shrieking and tearing sound that set Jack’s teeth on edge. All around them the ice was a blur of vibration. The cacophony was rent by a deafening explosion and Jack felt his body pummelled as if by a thousand punches. He pressed his visor tight against Costas, protecting the vulnerable glass from the shards of ice that were flying around them. Almost simultaneously their headlamps burst and they were plunged into a bizarre, tremulous darkness, broken only by the blurry green of the digital readouts inside their helmets. Something huge thumped against Jack’s side and for an instant he felt he was about to be crushed, and then by a miracle it passed. He felt a rush of dizziness and realised they were tumbling, spinning round and round in a ferment of ice and water, utterly helpless as the crevasse rent asunder.

“We’re getting shallower!” Costas yelled. “For God’s sake don’t hold your breath.

Your lungs would blow in seconds.”

Jack’s breathing began to tighten. In the swirling maelstrom there were no waymarkers, no visual points of reference. He forced himself to concentrate on the digital readout inside his visor, his arms clinging tight to Costas and their legs intertwined. Jack could just make out a depth reading of ten metres, and they were rocketing upwards. The figures gave him something to grasp on to, and he was dimly aware that the danger of air embolism was compounded by the risk of the bends, of decompression sickness. They were coming up way too fast.

Suddenly they were on the surface. It was light again, a steely, crepuscular light, and Jack could see beyond Costas to an awesome world of blue. They were floating in a vast cauldron of ice, at least the length and breath of Seaquest II, with sheer white walls rising all around them. Jack felt dwarfed by the enormity of it. He arched his neck and looked at the source of light far above. It was a thin sliver of grey where the ice walls nearly joined, a first link to the world outside. The grey was streaked with black and light blue, and seemed to be rushing past at enormous speed.

“It must be one of those freak storms coming off the ice cap,” Costas said.

“That’s what pushed the berg.”

“A piteraq.”

They clung to each other as they bobbed in the centre of the pool. Their decompression warning lights were flashing amber, indicating that they had pushed the envelope and were now in grave danger of the bends. Jack felt for any signs, a tingle in an elbow or a sudden surge of nausea, aware that the last six months away from diving might have reduced his resistance. He checked his trimix pressure gauge and saw the dial hovering at zero. “I’m out of air,” he said. “If there’s any more diving we’ll have to buddy-breathe.”

“Hook into me.”

Jack pulled the umbilical hose from the top of Costas’ cylinder pack and pressed the valve into an inlet under his helmet. With a sharp hiss his helmet filled up again with breathing gas, its makeup now close to atmospheric air as the computer adjusted the ratios to take account of their depth. Jack realised he had been running on empty, and he closed his eyes to concentrate on taking a few deep breaths.

“That should give us about ten minutes,” Costas said. “I’d prefer to spend it ten metres deep to increase the decompression margin, but we don’t have that luxury. We’ll just have to wing it.”

The movement in the water had died down dramatically, leaving the surface preternaturally calm after the tumult that had ejected them from the icy tomb far below. “The crevasse must have opened up when the berg moved, shattering all the meltwater ice inside it,” Costas said. “Then the walls closed in again as the berg encountered resistance, probably the seaward edge of the threshold.”

He looked round again, the scene now eerily still. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this. Let’s keep together.”

As if on cue, the silence was rent by a shattering concussion, and ice and water disintegrated in another shuddering blur. Jack became aware of a curtain of ice falling around them, jagged spears that sliced into the water like shrapnel. He concentrated all of his energy on holding Costas tight, knowing that if the hose that was his sole remaining lifeline were to rip out he would drown. He flashed back to the body in the ice, to his hallucination, then woke to a worse reality.

They were dropping with sickening speed, sliding down a whirlpool of grinding ice, as if they were being sucked back to the frozen warrior and the place that had nearly been their nemesis. The water was falling away so fast that they were dropping through air, suspended half in and half out of the water, tumbling weightlessly against the chunks of ice that were splintering around them. Costas pulled Jack closer, straining against the centripetal force of the whirlpool, and pressed his visor hard against Jack’s. “The water’s being sucked down as the crevasse opens,” he yelled. “Hold on tight. I might be able to reverse the flow.”

Suddenly the water billowed up around them and they were immersed deep within it. For a terrifying moment Jack felt the air crushed out of his lungs by some force that was working against the vortex, propelling them back upwards.

Then they erupted out of the water, bouncing on a plume of brash that threw them high into the cleft above the cauldron. They crashed into a wall of ice and slid upwards, each scrabbling desperately with one free hand for some kind of hold. Then they began to slide back downwards, out of control, until they hit a ledge that held them precariously on the wall. As they crouched dripping together on the icy platform, the plume of brash and spray dropped back into the seething cauldron at the base of the crevasse far below them.

“What the hell was that?” Jack panted, peering down a sheer drop of at least thirty metres.

“The C-4,” Costas said exuberantly. “We were ejected from that chamber before I had a chance to blow it, but it came in useful after all.” He shoved the detonator transceiver into his thigh pocket. “Right. I’m cold and hungry. Let’s get out of here.”

“Better make it fast. Take a look at that.”

They peered down in horrified fascination at the ice chasm far below. It was beginning to narrow again, the walls compressing the slurry of ice and pushing it upwards. As the larger chunks were caught in the vise they exploded with a shattering resonance, sending lethal shards far up the crevasse. They knew that being caught in the maelstrom this time would mean instant death, their bodies shredded by the flying ice and then crushed as the crevasse caught them like a meat grinder. Relentlessly, terrifyingly, the gap was closing in on them, advancing like some living thing, its deadly maw spewing a geyser of splintering and shattering ice, moving with alarming speed up the cleft even in the few moments they had been watching.

“This is it,” Costas yelled above the din. “No second chance this time.” They swivelled on the ledge and faced upwards. The skylight at the top of the crevasse was about fifty metres away, rushing streaks of grey now clearly visible on a background of blue. Suddenly the clouds parted and a dark shape appeared, blotting out the cleft, a blinding spotlight aimed directly at them. Then it veered away violently, trailing something that streamed out behind and whipped over the crack.

“It’s the Lynx,” Costas shouted excitedly. “They’re trying to drop a winch.”

“I told them to stay away. They’re pushing their luck against that wind.”

“They could hardly do nothing.”

“There’s no way they’ll get that cable down here. They must be waiting, hoping we can get to the entrance of the crevasse.”

Jack glanced down. The gap was now terrifyingly close, no more than twenty metres below them, the shards of exploding ice almost reaching the ledge. He looked up again. The crevasse was glassy smooth, offering no handholds. The euphoria at seeing the helicopter suddenly turned to cold dread. It was another nightmare, a return to his brush with death years before in the flooded mine shaft, where the end of the tunnel had been in sight but no matter how frantically he tried to swim for it he seemed to stay the same distance away.