Undersea Prison (21 page)

‘It’s there, Palanski! You know where it is. All you have to do is grab hold and pull it. Forget the pain. You’ll have years to remember it.’ Stratton was becoming stressed, his mind chasing ahead to what little he could do even if he did get free of his chains.The first problem was going to be everyone else. If Palanski did release them there would be half a dozen men thrashing around in an ever-decreasing space. It didn’t look good and Stratton was starting to try and come to terms with the fact that he was not going to survive this one.There was just too much to overcome. The water was now up to his shoulders.

A high-pitched scream made him look over his shoulder to see Ramos going absolutely frantic, yelling insanely as he forced his mouth up above the rising water as far as it could possibly go. The water began to pour into it and he spat it out as quickly as he could.

Stratton looked back at Palanski in time to see him take a deep breath and disappear below the surface. He watched the swirling space that Palanski had occupied a second earlier, knowing that he himself would soon be beneath the water.

Ramos was spitting and gurgling as the water finally covered his mouth. He stretched to take another breath and his eyes bulged as he held on to the last few precious seconds of his life. He shook violently as he made a final Herculean effort to free his hands and then the water covered his eyes. Bubbles broke the surface around Ramos’s head and he went still.

Stratton looked up at the ceiling but what he was seeing in his head was the chain-release mechanism, having studied it and every other device in the ferry and the prison that had anything to do with escape. It was a ring-shaped handle inside a tube in a box, not the most convenient design, low to the deck, intended to prevent easy access by a seated prisoner. Palanski had to get close to the floor and reach inside before he could grip the ring and pull it towards him.

As the water touched Stratton’s chin he put his head back a little. He was cold but that was the least of his problems. His mind singled out the smell of the sea, an indication of how tuned his senses had become as adrenalin coursed through his body.The shouting had all but ceased. Stratton wondered how many prisoners were already dead.Those that still lived were, like him, coming to terms with the approaching end.

The water reached Stratton’s mouth and as he automatically stretched his neck and head up to hang on for as long as he could he felt his hands move up an inch from the seat, enough for him to forget his imminent death for a moment. He took a breath, dropped his head below the water and felt between his thighs for the hook in the seat. Palanski had not managed to pull the handle all the way and had only partially released the securing cable. Stratton yanked on it with all his remaining strength. It suddenly came up another inch and he unhooked his chains and burst to the surface. A second later the man beside him appeared, spluttering and gulping for air. None of the others, including Palanski, joined them.

All Stratton could think of now was that he’d been given a little more time, only seconds perhaps, and that he had to find a way to survive this. He believed in his theory that there was always a solution, the only limitations being his inability to find it.

 

The airlock door to the OCR hissed and clunked as it opened inwards and Mandrick entered. ‘What’s the situation?’ he calmly asked the senior controller who was standing at the console looking at a row of monitors. A couple of them showed murky, poorly lit exterior images. A white blob in the distance was the slowly approaching ferry.

‘We think it could be flooded,’ he said, looking vexed.

‘It’s rolling heavy,’ the assistant controller offered.‘The buoyancy’s way off. See how low in the water it is? It’s almost in the milk,’ he said, referring to the bizarre white phenomenon that covered the sea bed like a mist in that part of the Gulf.

‘Anything from the surface?’ Mandrick asked.

‘Nothing.They say it’s pretty calm up there. If anyone makes it to the surface they’ll see ’em . . . It’s gonna go into the milk,’ the senior controller said, stepping closer to the monitor.

Mandrick came alongside him to scrutinise the monitors. ‘It’s still moving.’

‘Slow but coming on.’

‘How long before it reaches the dock?’ Mandrick asked.

‘Four, maybe five minutes.’

Mandrick looked at the other monitors, one of them showing the arrivals dock where two men dressed in thick wetsuits were hurriedly donning tanks, aided by other guards. ‘If it
is
full of water it won’t be able to surface in the dock. Isn’t that right?’

‘Yes, sir,’ the senior controller acknowledged. ‘It’ll be too heavy. Soon as it comes beneath the pool we’ll stop it. The divers’ll open it up right away and get some air in there.’

‘What’s your guess?’ Mandrick asked him.

The controller shrugged as he stared at the monitor. ‘I don’t want to even begin to.’

 

Stratton and the surviving prisoner faced each other, illuminated by a dim emergency light, their heads pressed against the ceiling, the water at their chins.

‘Any ideas?’ the man asked, placing his hand against the relief valve, which was still letting in water, in a vain attempt to stop it.

‘Top of my list is the emergency escape tube. Or we can try and get air in here using the console.’

‘I don’t know anything about the console but I can check out the escape tube.’

‘If you can get up inside it there should be a breathing hose.’

‘I’ll come back and let you know,’ the man said as he took a deep breath and disappeared.

Stratton couldn’t help thinking how a promise to return was not something he would have expected from a desperate prisoner. He headed along the cabin, the bodies of the dead men in their seats under his feet. He stopped above the console where high-pressure air pipes entered the cabin from the tanks outside and then he ducked below the water to search for anything he could use to break one of them.The escaping air would increase the cabin pressure and stop the leaks. It might even reverse the flooding to some extent. But all he could find was the empty chain that the wrench had been attached to. He broke the surface to find the air gap even smaller and grabbed the air pipe in the hope it was loose. But it was solidly fixed to the bulkhead and with no tools he would die trying to break it with his hands.

The other prisoner resurfaced, choking and gulping for air. He looked for Stratton, saw him at the other end of the cabin and made his way over to him. ‘The hatch is shut tight. I tried to turn the wheel but I couldn’t even budge it.’

That meant the outer hatch was open. There was a hand-crank mechanism for closing the outer hatch but Stratton was not sure exactly where it was located. If they could close it they would then need to drain the tube before opening the lower hatch. To do that they would need to operate the control valves which were located somewhere on the side of the tube.They simply did not have the time.

‘What’s next on your list?’

‘This is all I have left,’ Stratton said, gripping the wheel that operated the hatch of the docking system.

‘We take a breath, open it and then what?’ the man asked.

‘Follow the cables to the dock.’

‘That easier than heading for the surface?’

‘Depends how close we are to the dock.’

They held their lips to the ceiling as the water lapped at their cheeks.

‘The valve’s stopped leaking,’ the man observed, his lips beside it.

‘We’ve got enough air for another minute. We go or we stay,’ Stratton said, gripping the wheel.

The man glanced at him. ‘I’m going for the surface,’ he said after some thought.

‘Take your boots off,’ Stratton suggested as he ducked below the surface.

The man followed Stratton’s lead and they removed their boots and socks. When they surfaced they both gripped the escape-hatch wheel.

‘Which way you going?’ the man asked, unsure of his choice.

‘The dock.’

The man thought about it some more and for a second he found the funny side of it. ‘Decisions, decisions, ’ he quipped.

‘I hope it’s not your last,’ Stratton said sincerely.‘Good luck.’

‘Name’s Dan,’ the man said.

‘John.’

‘Good luck to you, John. Hope to see you again.’ They tugged at the wheel and it began to turn.Water seeped in through the seal, the flow increasing with each revolution of the wheel. Stratton took a final deep breath as the air gap disappeared.

 

Gann filled the narrow escape chamber, his eyes blinking in the murky water, air escaping from the sides of his mouthpiece with every exhalation as he heaved up the outer escape hatch. After the initial effort it opened easily and the remaining air in the tube combined with the bubbles escaping from Gann’s mouthpiece and made its way up into the gloom. He looked up to see the ferry cables illuminated by the dim light from inside the tube and felt around his body for the air bottle attached to the nylon harness looped around his neck. He found the valve on the end of the bottle and followed the hose to the attached mask and mouthpiece.

Gann made ready to swap breathing devices. He hoped he had calculated the distance correctly and that he had enough air to get to the dock once he left the safety of the tube. But there was one major thing bothering him, despite the dangers of the moment, and that was Palanski.

When the time came to be questioned about his actions Gann had planned to say that the ferry flooded so quickly that he’d charged into the emergency escape room to organise the suits and escape tube while Palanski was supposed to free the prisoners. By the time Gann got his suit on the ferry was almost completely flooded. When he went back to find Palanski there was no sign of him and the water was already above the heads of the prisoners, who had obviously drowned.

The big problem was how he was going to explain Palanski’s injuries. He had never intended to give Palanski a beating. Palanski wasn’t supposed to have attacked him. The only way that Gann could resolve this problem was to go back into the ferry to remove Palanski’s body entirely. He could open the outer docking hatch and adjust his story to make it appear that Palanski had not unchained the prisoners as ordered and had in fact panicked and opened the escape hatch, killing everyone. There were a few holes but it was better than leaving Palanski’s corpse inside the ferry. If he hurried he might be able to get away with it.

Gann took a deep breath, removed the mouthpiece attached to the escape tube and pulled the full-face mask over his head. Holding the top of the mask firmly against his forehead he exhaled through his nose in order to remove the water in the mask by forcing it out of the bottom. He managed to do this after a couple of breaths, having learned the technique in the diving course he had attended as part of his pre-prison officer training.

He pulled himself out of the tube but did not take account of the motion of the ferry moving through the water. As he emerged he was forced against the side of the hatch, which he grabbed in a moment of panic. He had not reckoned on how travelling at even a slow speed underwater could create such a force. He looked ahead to see if the dock was close, discovering in the process that the ferry was almost in the milk. It was like some strange underwater snow scene. He’d seen the strange substance from the prison windows but it looked even more surreal from this close. Above the white blanket in the distance was a collection of hazy lights; the ferry cables led to the largest cluster, which marked the entrance to the dock. He gauged it to be a hundred yards or so.

The force of the water suddenly decreased, indicating that the ferry was as usual reducing its approach speed. Gann then realised the ferry was actually going to sink beneath the surface of the strange milk.

He turned around to face the docking hatch when, to his utter amazement, a stream of bubbles began to escape from around its edges and it slowly opened. Gann’s reaction was immediate.

 

Mandrick stood with the two controllers, staring at the images on the OCR monitors. The screens appeared to be split, the bottom half white, the top black, with a murky white ferry in the middle dropping deeper into the white section. They all saw the blurred images of movement on the top of the ferry just below the cable struts.

‘Looks like someone getting out,’ the senior controller said.

‘It’s the emergency escape hatch,’ said his assistant.

‘We’re going to lose them in the milk,’ the senior controller said as he grabbed the mike. ‘Send in the divers. Now!’ he shouted into the handset.

 

Gann pushed himself towards the figure coming out of the hatch. He had no idea who it was but that did not matter. No one could survive the ferry now, and not just because it was the original plan that every prisoner should perish. A survivor could accuse Gann of the sabotage. With the power of the water at his back he struck the man forcefully, wrapping his arms around him and hauling him from the opening.The momentum and the force of the water carried them along the top of the ferry and off the end.

Stratton was just below the other prisoner when he felt him shoot from the hatch as if snatched by something passing overhead. But there was not a second to spare to consider what had happened. He pushed himself free of the hatch and up towards the cables. The ferry began to slow to a crawl, cancelling any thoughts he’d had about simply hanging on and hoping he could last until it reached the dock.

He hit the cables and grabbed hold of one, immediately dragging himself forward. He could make out a dim light ahead and pulled for all he was worth. He kept telling himself that the dock was within his range and he could make it. But suddenly the light ahead disappeared and everything became murky white. Stratton immediately remembered the ‘milk’ that was known to surround the prison most of the year round. The cable had dropped into it, dragged down by the weight of the flooded ferry.