The Storm (21 page)

“What does that mean?” Gamay asked.

“They’re going to flood the compartment with Halon,” the chief said. “It’ll suppress the fire and put it out.”

“What’s the drawback?”

“Halon’s toxic. And it requires a closed room to be effective. Once they activate it, the doors will shut and lock automatically. They’ll be trapped in there until the sensors determine that the fire is out and the room temperature has dropped below the reignition point.”

Gamay felt sick. She knew what that meant.

“It shouldn’t be a big problem,” the chief said. “Once the compartment is flooded, the fire should burn out in thirty seconds. The temp in there is two hundred and fifty-five now. By my calculations the cooldown time should take about ten minutes if everything goes according to plan.”

Ten minutes with Paul sitting behind a locked door in a cauldron of heat.
She could barely stand the thought. But another thought was worse.

“If everything goes according to plan,” she repeated. “The way things are going, that’s an awfully big assumption. What if the doors don’t shut? Worse yet, what if they don’t open?”

The chief said nothing, but she guessed from his body language that he had already thought of that.

DOWN IN THE ENGINE ROOM, Paul and Marchetti had begun fighting toward the far wall. It seemed to take forever to cross the cavernous space. In one section debris and burning fuel blocked their path. In another, steam was blasting from a broken waterline.

With Marchetti’s crewmen at their backs to keep them from getting cut off, they forged onward one yard at a time, beating the fire back as they went. Eventually they saw a path through.

“Hold the line,” Marchetti said. “Keep the fire back while I run through. I’ll signal you when I get there.”

Paul slid forward and grabbed the nozzle. “Okay, go!”

Marchetti let go, and it took all of Paul’s strength to keep the hose on target. As Marchetti lumbered forward, Paul washed down the flames to the left and then back to the right on a wide-pattern setting, drenching Marchetti purposefully in the process.

He watched as Marchetti made it through the first wave of flame and continued forward only to be suddenly obscured by a sideways blast of fire and smoke. Paul directed the hose into the blast and forced the flames back, but he still couldn’t see through.

“Marchetti?”

He heard nothing.

“Marchetti?!”

The smoke was so thick, Paul could barely see a thing. He was sweating inside the fire suit, and his eyes were stinging badly from the fumes and the salt of his own perspiration. He washed the walkway back and forth with the spray until he saw a dim light through the darkness. It was down low, close to the ground. Marchetti’s beacon.

“Marchetti’s down!” Paul shouted. “I’m going to get him.”

He shut off the nozzle, dropped the hose and ran forward. The crewmen swept in behind him, washing him down as he went.

He made it past the blast furnace of the open flame and reached Marchetti. Marchetti’s hood was blackened, his mask half off. It looked like he’d run smack into a protruding beam. Paul pressed the mask back onto Marchetti’s face and Marchetti coughed and came around.

“Help me up,” he said.

An explosion shook the engine room, and debris rained down on them from above. Paul lifted Marchetti to his feet, but he immediately stumbled back down to his knees. He put a hand out.

“No balance,” he said.

Paul heaved him up and kept him vertical. They trudged forward like two men in a three-legged potato-sack race. They reached the wall. The manual override beckoned.

“We’ve made it,” Paul shouted into the microphone. “Get out. We’re going to trigger the Halon.”

Paul reached for the handle, flipped the safety aside and put his hand on the override. He waited what seemed like forever. Another explosion rocked the engine room.

“We’re clear of the bulkhead,”
one of the crewmen finally reported.

“Now,” Marchetti said.

Paul yanked the handle down hard.

From eighty points around the room Halon 1301 blasted into the compartment at an incredible rate, hissing from the nozzles and flowing in from every direction. It quickly filled the room, smothering the fire. In places the flames jumped and flickered and seemed to cower in a desperate quest for survival. And then, as if by magic, they went out all at once.

Stunning silence followed.

It seemed unearthly to Paul. The raging flames, the explosions, the buffeting currents brought on as the fire sucked air in and expelled heat, all were gone. Only the thick smoke lingered, accompanied by the continued hissing from the Halon nozzles, the sound of dripping water and the creak and groan of superheated metal.

The absence of flame seemed almost too good to be true, and neither Paul nor Marchetti moved a muscle as if doing so might break the spell. Finally Marchetti turned toward Paul. A smile crept over his face, though Paul could barely see it through the smudged, soot-covered face mask.

“Well done, Mr. Trout. Well done.”

Paul smiled too, proud and relieved at the same time.

And then a shrill electronic beeping began, accompanied by the strobe light on the back of Marchetti’s SCBA. Seconds later Paul’s own strobe began flashing and chirping. The two alarms combined into an annoying cacophony.

“What’s happening?” Paul asked.

“Rescue beacons,” Marchetti said.

“Why are they going off now?”

Marchetti looked glum. “Because,” he said, “we’re running out of air.”

CHAPTER 29

KURT AUSTIN HELD THE AWKWARD POSITION HE’D LANDED in as long as he possibly could. Even after the vehicles drove off, even after the rumbling of their engines had faded and he was left with only the sound of flies buzzing in the dark, he remained still.

They zipped here and there, settled for a moment and then buzzed around again. Even when they landed on him and crawled on his face, Kurt did all he could not to flinch in case someone was watching. But eventually he had to move.

With a glance up to the circular opening high above, he slid one arm to the side, rolled over slowly and then propped himself up. From there he managed a sitting position and eased back until he was leaning against the wall. Every movement brought new levels of pain, and once he’d settled against the wall he decided to stay there for a minute or two.

He checked his leg. Something hit it during the shooting, but he found no bullet hole and figured it was a piece of the wall blasted off when a shell ricocheted. His shoulder hurt like crazy, but it seemed to move okay.

He reached over and checked Joe, shaking him gently.

Joe opened his eyes halfway like a man coming out of a deep sleep. He moved a few inches, grunted and generally appeared confused. Looking around at their surroundings didn’t seem to bring any clarity.

“Where are we?” he asked.

“You don’t remember?”

“Last I remember, we were being dragged by a truck,” he said.

“That was the high point of our journey,” Kurt said, looking up. “Literally.”

Joe forced himself to sit up, an act that seemed to cause as much pain for him as it had for Kurt.

“Are we dead?” Joe asked. “’Cause if not, this is the worst I’ve ever felt while still alive.”

Kurt shook his head. “We’re alive all right, at least for now. We’re just stuck at the bottom of a well without a rope or a ladder or any other way out.”

“That’s good,” Joe said. “For a second I thought we were in trouble.”

Kurt looked around, taking note of the other bodies in the sand. Two of them seemed to have been there for a while. The stench emanating from them was horrendous, almost enough to make him gag. The third was the guy he’d shoved over the edge just prior to being tossed in himself. A large gash split the man’s forehead. His neck was bent at a grotesque angle. He wasn’t moving.

Kurt was surprised to be alive. “I guess the sloping pile of sand and dropping feet first helped. It looks like this guy hit his head.”

“Plus we dropped from a little lower,” Joe said. “Or, at least, I did. What about those other two?”

“No idea,” Kurt said, looking at the bodies half covered with flies. “Must have made the boss angry.”

“If we ever leave NUMA,” Joe said, “remind me not to work for an egomaniacal dictator, madman or other type of thug. They don’t seem to have adequate channels for working out grievances.”

Kurt laughed, and it felt like he was being stabbed. “Oh, that hurts,” he said, trying to stop. “No more jokes.”

He looked up at the narrow opening above. A small circle of blazing orange sky lay beyond.

“We’ve got to figure a way out of here or we’ll be next on the flies’ menu. Think you can stand?”

Joe stretched his legs. “My ankle is pretty stiff,” he said. “But I think I’ll be all right.”

Using the wall for balance, Kurt got to his feet. He felt light-headed for a second, but it cleared quickly. He offered a hand and helped Joe up. In the five-foot-wide circle of the well they stretched and flexed their legs.

It seemed like the well had been dug in sections. The top part was lined with adobe bricks to a depth of about twenty feet. Below that it was raw dirt all the way down.

“Think we can climb out?” Joe asked.

Kurt put his hand on a protruding stone and put some weight on it to test its strength. It crumbled in a disappointing shower of dust and rubble.

“Nope.”

“Maybe we can wedge ourselves up?” Joe said. “Use our hands and feet and sort of force ourselves upward.”

Kurt stretched his arms out. He could just barely touch both walls. “We’ll never generate enough force to go up like that.”

He looked around. In addition to the three bodies, the well seemed to be a repository of junk and trash. Tin cans, plastic bottles, even a thin bald tire sat piled and strewn about. Small bones were everywhere. Kurt guessed they were from animals that had fallen in or someone’s dinner tossed down here when they were finished with the edible parts.

Kurt looked at the tire, then at the walls, then at the dead men.

“I have an idea,” he said.

He searched the thug he’d shoved over the edge, pulling a knife, a Luger-style pistol and a set of compact binoculars from the man’s kit.

He found a canteen on his belt. It was three-quarters empty. He took a swig, no more than a mouthful really, and handed it to Joe.

“To your health.”

Joe drank the other mouthful as Kurt pushed the junk aside and dug the old tire out of the sand.

“Tidying up?” Joe asked.

“Very funny.”

He dropped down beside the other dead men, holding his breath and sending the flies swarming. He untied the rope that bound them together. “We’re gonna need this.”

“Don’t suppose they have a grappling hook on them?”

“No,” Kurt said. “But we don’t need one.”

He piled the bodies up in the center of the well, stacking them one on top of the other.

“Sit down,” Kurt said.

“On the dead guys?”

“I put the fresh guy on top,” Kurt said.

Joe hesitated.

“They’re dead,” Kurt said. “What do they care?”

Finally Joe sat down. Kurt lifted the narrow tire and set it vertically against Joe’s back like he was hanging a wreath. Next he sat down with his back to the tire and to Joe.

“Put your feet on the wall and push.”

As Joe complied, Kurt felt the rubber tire pressing into his back. He put his own feet against the wall on his side and pushed. He felt the tire between them compress slightly. He felt plenty of pressure on his back and feet, pressure that would allow them to wedge themselves up the shaft of the well, and he still had six to eight inches of flex in his knees.

“Flex those abs, and let’s see if we can do this,” he said.

As Joe flexed and pressed harder, Kurt did the same. He felt the pressure in his back, both upper and lower, where the tire was being pressed into him. With a minimum of effort, they rose up off the pile of dead men.

“This might actually work,” Joe said.

“You, then me,” Kurt told him. “One foot at a time.”

The first time Joe moved his foot they almost fell, tipping to one side. They steadied themselves, and Kurt pressed hard with his left foot and forced them upward about nine inches. He quickly moved his right foot to a new position.

Joe’s next move was steadier, and soon they were inching their way up, making steady if unspectacular progress.

“I forgot to tell you,” Joe said, grunting with the effort but apparently unable to keep himself from talking, “before we got bounced in that drafting room I saw a chart with currents and such. It covered the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea and half of the Indian Ocean.”

He and Kurt pushed off in unison, raised themselves six inches and repositioned their feet one at a time.

“Anything unusual on it?” Kurt asked, his own words sounding strained as they came out through a clenched diaphragm.

“Didn’t … exactly … have time to study it,” Joe said. “But it makes me … wonder about something.”

They moved again.

“What?” Kurt asked, keeping his responses short.

“If Jinn’s using his little beasties … to erode some dam … why did we … find them in the Indian Ocean … a thousand miles from land?”

Kurt allowed a portion of his mind to consider the question, keeping most of his concentration on the task at hand. “Good question,” he said. “Dams block rivers … Rivers run to the sea … Maybe the little bots were swept down to the ocean accidentally, after all.”

He tried to think of dams that emptied into the Indian Ocean or the Persian Gulf, but nothing major came to mind.

They paused with their legs in a semilocked position.

“Either way,” Kurt added, “we’ve got to get out of here. Whatever this lunatic’s goals are, they’re not good for anyone but him.”

By this point they’d reached the second section. The joking and laughing stopped because the climb was getting harder.

Kurt felt his back and abs and legs beginning to burn. He gritted his teeth and kept moving.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Joe grunted. “Wouldn’t want to start over, though.”