by John Hunt
Jeff knew there was pretty much nothing that Captain Stouffer would be able to do. It was up to Petur now to save the OTEC and his own life.
“You’ve been shot!” one of the engineers stated plainly in a pronounced German accent.
Jeff looked down at his left shoulder to see a large crimson patch growing slowly on his shirt.
“Indeed I have.” Jeff replied. Then he picked up the flashlight, stuffed his pistol back in his pants, and bolted up the stairs, two and three at a time. By the time he reached the top, he was out of breath. His lungs, damaged by the Russians, were no longer up to the task. His recent blood loss probably was not helping much either.
He ran down the short hallway and turned quickly into the wide corridor. Light came in from the door to the condenser level. He rushed within to find the chamber fairly well lit. He heard the gentle hum of what had to be a generator echoing within the structure. Heinrich Poll leaned over the metal safety railing to look down into the depths of the shaft far below.
“Heinrich!” called Jeff as he approached.
The German project director turned with a start, revealing a powerful spotlight with a long electrical wire attached.
“Mr. Baddori. Mr. Bjarnasson is at the bottom. He has found something.”
Petur was halfway down the deep cylinder when Jeff rushed off after the second invader. The faint light trickling from the portholes far above was just sufficient to identify which way was up. It did nothing to illuminate the ladder on which Petur was descending. He felt carefully for each rung, never convinced the next one was going to be there until his foot rested on it securely.
His foot slipped once, and his chin struck hard against a rung on the ladder before his hands got a solid hold and stopped his fall. He felt a gritty sensation in his mouth, and several particles. Petur wondered if some flecks of sand or rust got into his open mouth at the time of impact. He spit out some grainy material. His tongue searched around for more of the grit, but it felt as if it was not his own mouth. Several of his back teeth were now rough and sharp. He realized what the gritty material was: pieces of his back teeth that fractured when his chin was smashed. Blood from the laceration on his chin slowly dripped down his neck and onto his chest. He wiped the wound with the back of his hand. The blood felt warm and sticky. He spit out some more small shards of his teeth and cursed the darkness as he continued downward.
It seemed an interminable descent. Petur imagined that the shaft was infinitely deep and that this expedition was his own personal torment in hell. But he pushed the foolish notion aside and plodded onward, rung by rung. The air was getting thicker. It smelled of oil, salt, and chemicals.
He developed a rhythm in his climbing, and so it came as a small shock when his probing foot suddenly found solid metal flooring. Petur settled onto the broad, circular ledge within the shaft, far below the water level. Under the ledge, he knew, was housed a thousand meters of telescoping metal cylinder. In the middle of the ledge, the shaft, now greatly narrowed, continued down another fifty meters.
Petur figured that there was little chance that something lowered to here from the condenser level would have found that central shaft by luck. He therefore carefully felt his way around in the darkness in search of anything that lay on the floor.
It did not take long before his hand found a loose tangle of thick fishing line. He felt around in the darkness a bit more and soon found his target: two tubes taped together, with wires coming from each end entering a small box attached to the middle. As he cautiously turned the contraption in his hands, he felt the contents of the canister shift, and he knew it was liquid.
A flash of light penetrated the near-complete darkness, and Petur looked up toward the top of the shaft. Like a headlight in the distance on a foggy night, the spotlight above was better at pinpointing its own location than finding objects in its beam. Petur ducked against the wall rapidly, for he did not know if it was friend or foe that peered down from above. In a moment, the light turned away and only the faint glow from the portholes remained.
Petur coiled the fishing line in the dark and then used some of it to tie the canisters of explosive to his hip. It wasn’t comfortable, but he would need his hands free for the long climb back up. It took him a full minute of fumbling along the wall to locate the metal ladder again. Petur sighed and shook his head at the thought of starting back up in the blackness. He chuckled slightly as he considered that this time, he navigated the ladder with some unknown explosive strapped to his hip.
He heard a familiar accented voice echo down the shaft. It was very muffled. But it was certainly Heinrich.
“Heinrich, I am down in the shaft! Can you hear me?” Petur called upward as loudly as he could. The echo of his voice was deafening in the confines of the metal cylinder.
To the German engineer at the top, the words emanated from the shaft as if they had come from a megaphone: loud, echoing and almost uninterpretable. Heinrich ran over to the edge and aimed his spotlight back over the precipice. He saw nothing before, but this time he looked more intently and as reward saw the light reflect from Petur’s face a football field’s length below.
Petur called up to the light that shined from above. “Heinrich, there is a bomb here. I am bringing it up!”
Petur was unaware of just how unfocused his voice was by the time it got to the top.
“Petur, hurry up, man!” It was Jeff’s voice. More words followed.
Petur heard the urgent tone but couldn’t catch the words. He doubled his effort and lost interest in his safety. He rushed to get his explosive payload to the top. To this point he had not thought about the effect of the bomb on his own body. He had only worried about the effect of this liquid on his OTEC and therefore on the Project as a whole. But now, as he felt the weight of the canisters on his waist, he imagined the damage to him if this thing went off. He shook his head as he realized he wouldn’t even feel the blast as he tore into unrecognizable shreds.
Petur looked upward again at the circular light coming from above. He was making progress, and the spotlight now appeared more like sunlight. The glow filled the whole opening at the top. The salty stale air began to irritate his eyes and made his lungs feel heavy. It was just like in his recurring dream. But this time, Petur was sure that he was not sleeping.
Jeff stood looking down the shaft. He was very impatient, but he could do nothing but wait. He held the spotlight and aimed down the shaft at the opposite wall. That way it would not be shining too brightly in Petur’s eyes as he worked his way up.
Heinrich had gone off to adjust the emergency generator and to get the communications system on line. Jeff was eager to communicate with Commander Grover. He wanted those P-3 Orions back in the air again. The Arabs hadn’t torpedoed the OTEC this time, but they would need some way to get away once it sunk. He thought it was unlikely that they would rely on routine air transportation off the Islands. No, those two had swum underwater to where one of the pleasure boats waited for their return. They would head straight out to sea, away from Paradise 1. Then they would meet up with larger transportation far off shore. The P-3s would be able to find either a surface vessel or a submarine — and sink it.
Jeff called down the shaft again. “You doing all right down there, pal?” What he really wanted to say was, “Hurry up, or we are going to die when that bomb is triggered!” But he refrained, although it took effort.
Petur’s voice came up from below, more comprehensible now as he moved up the shaft.
“Take a chill pill, Baddori! It’s not like this is a walk in the park!”
Jeff clenched his jaw, resigned to being powerless for the moment. Something else was bothering him too. Something else was very wrong here.
25. A Righting
JEFF WAS NOT sure, afterwards, of the sequence of events. Either he had just considered the possibility of another bomb, which then exploded, or the explosion occurred first, and prompted him to consider its existence. In any event, the small canis
ter of blue liquid taped behind an ammonia-condensing pipe on the condenser level by Akheem Azid twenty minutes earlier exploded in a violent burst of light, steam, and shrapnel.
The explosion threw Jeff forcibly against the condenser level’s bulkhead, over three meters from where he had been standing. His back and left shoulder absorbed most of the impact. This would have been more tolerable had he not just been shot in that shoulder. Pain coursed through his arm and up his neck. His eyes stung, his ears rang, and his nose filled with a painful acrid smell like chemical floor cleaner.
He rubbed his eyes with the fingers of his right hand, doing his best to remove the tears brought on by the intense stinging under his eyelids. He felt like he had been maced. It took another moment before he even attempted to take his first breath, and it did not come easily. It felt as if a steel I-beam was sitting on his chest. His throat burned as he inhaled. The air was strange and tasted bitter.
Gradually, he caught up with the flow of tears and he looked out at the blurry chaos in front of him. He knew that Heinrich Poll’s generator was still working, for the place was still lit, albeit dimly. He looked in his immediate vicinity, and noted that everything looked fairly intact, although shards of metal and insulation material lay scattered about haphazardly. He could not see the far side of the condenser level, for a thick spray of liquid spewed from the far wall as if from a fire hose. Much of the liquid poured into the deep shaft. Some turned rapidly into a dense yellow fog — which turned the place into a morbid gas chamber. Jeff knew with certainty that the liquid was ammonia. He also knew that he could not survive here for more than a few more moments.
He struggled to his feet with difficulty, and, shielding his eyes as well as he could, searched for his flashlight. Amazingly, it was directly by his side. A flick of his finger assured him that it was still operational. Jeff moved as rapidly as he could to the circular hole in the floor.
He did not know what he would find when he shined the light down the shaft. He was not sure of the source of the blast. If it was the bomb Petur had carried on his hip, Petur would now be dead, his body liquefied and splattered throughout the OTEC. But Jeff did not think that it was that bomb. The blast had come from another bomb — planted by the second Arab — on this level.
“Petur! Petur!” Jeff cried down the deep shaft. The thick yellow mist, which his stinging eyes could not penetrate, filled the shaft.
Jeff heard no response. The ringing in his ears was gradually replaced by the hiss of ammonia turning to steam, and the crash of the still-liquid portion, which hammered the wall of the shaft. It hit the wall somewhere immediately below the top of Petur’s ladder, where Jeff now stood.
Jeff knew that the deluge of ammonia below must be drowning Petur. He searched desperately around the room for a rope, a wire — anything that might help him rescue Petur. But his vision was terribly obscured by the mucous and tears that now completely filled his eyes, causing his lids to swell and turn red. He could discern nothing to assist him.
In desperation, Jeff threw himself over the railing, and began to work his way down the ladder. His left arm could bear no weight at all now, and hung limply by his side. He moved down several rungs until the stream of ammonia lashed against his lower legs. It took only a few more rungs to learn that he would not be able to climb further down.
The ammonia seared his lungs now, and with every breath, Jeff knew that it was injuring his airways and burning his mucous membranes. He coughed constantly. The ammonia gas forced the oxygen from the air, and suffocated him. He began to feel lightheaded. In complete despair, trying to resign himself to the loss of his friend, he reached for the rung above and began the painful, albeit short climb back to the top. Each rung he climbed was a new danger, as he climbed with only one functional arm. Twice he lost his precarious balance, flailed with his hand, and grasped the next rung up just in time to avert the long fall down the shaft.
Finally, Jeff made it to the top rung and reached upward to the safety rail. In only a few more breaths his lungs and his mind would succumb to the toxic, swirling, yellow fumes. With great effort, he rolled under the rail and onto the grated metal floor of the condenser level.
Climbing to his feet, he turned to look down the shaft with one last ounce of hope. But he saw nothing but the powerful rush of ammonia streaming against the wall below, and the yellow mist rising upward. Jeff shook his head in dismay, and ran out into the corridor and then out of the OTEC into the dark night.
The fresh air affected him as a glass of cold water affects a man lost in the desert for a week. The burning in his mouth and nose began to ease and his eyes teared less. The oxygen slowly started reaching his brain. He felt a hand pounding him reassuringly on the back.
“Mr. Baddori, breath deeply.” It was Poll’s voice. “We thought you had been trapped. Thank God you are alright!”
Jeff still could not think straight, but the shadowy fog in his mind began to lift gradually and he remembered that one bomb, now likely attached to Petur’s broken body, was still submerged in ammonia at the bottom of the OTEC. He had to cough, but the pain in his lungs increased sharply when he did.
He turned toward the German, and rasped through his swollen vocal cords, “Everybody needs to get off this thing now!” Talking caused a fit of coughing. “There’s another bomb at the bottom of the shaft, and it is going to be triggered any second!” Then, staring far down to the black sea below, he turned away again and leaned against the rail. He rubbed the mucous and stinging tears from his eyes again. Quietly, embarrassed, and saddened, he added, “Petur fell down the shaft. There is no way he could have survived.”
Jeff heard an unusual thing, then. Behind him stood Poll, laughing in a hearty German manner.
Petur had just been moving his hand to the next rung up the shaft, while commenting to Jeff far above that this was no walk in the park, when, suddenly, the light that Jeff was holding was extinguished and a blast shook the shaft. Petur grasped the rungs of the ladder tightly. The roar of the explosion was deafening, and for a moment, Petur thought that the bomb tied to his waist had exploded. But he felt no pain, and could still feel the canisters, intact, hanging against his thigh.
He knew then with certainty that another bomb had been planted above at a higher level in the OTEC. He hoped Jeff was okay up there, and he looked back up to the faint glow at the top of the shaft. But the glow, like the flashlight before, was extinguished, and Petur could see nothing at all.
He listened intently and heard the sound that he ardently hoped he would not hear. Rushing down toward him was a flood of fluid. Petur knew that it was not water coming down toward him in a tumult, but toxic ammonia. In a moment, it would crash against him, rip him from the ladder and cause him to hurtle to the bottom of the shaft where he would be smashed like a rag doll.
He curled his head under his arm in an attempt to shield his eyes. Then the ammonia did smash into him, but it did not tear him from the ladder. The pressure was great, but the volume of ammonia was not overwhelming, and Petur found it surprisingly easy to hold on to the ladder. Most of the flood was slightly to his side, but nonetheless, he was drenched in the chemical, and his clothes became heavy and wet. His eyes stung from the poisonous attack. His lungs complained from the heaviness as he took a breath.
Reaching around wildly, he sought the next rung up. His only hope was to fight through the blast of ammonia and get to the top. Another breath entered his lungs, and this time he felt its searing effects as the ammonia ate at the tissue lining his air passages. His hands became as slippery as grease from the ammonia acting on the fat in his skin cells — as the chemical reaction created what was essentially soap. It caused him to lose his grip on the rung above, and his body swung around freely, as the river of ammonia forcibly pivoted him until his back was against the shaft wall. His right hand and foot still held their grip on the rungs, as he hung, spread-eagled. His forearm muscles screamed in complaint as he strained to tighten his slippery fingers to keep
his grip.
He now had no opportunity to breathe, for his face was fully submerged in the heaviest portion of the tumult. Petur struggled to pull himself toward the ladder, but the increasingly powerful rush of ammonia was holding him in place. As his anxiety rose, he searched the shaft wall with his left hand. As he expected, the wall was nothing but smooth metal.
With a sudden change in its flow, the liquid propelled his right foot off its rung, and Petur found himself hanging by one hand. The explosive canisters still dangled from his waist, and now were weighing him down like an anchor. He wished he could free them and let them fall, but he knew he could not.
The flood of ammonia continued aggressively, but his face was clear now, and Petur was able to take another, searing, breath. It filled his lungs with pain. His eyes were squeezed tightly closed against the onslaught, and his ears were filling with the noxious liquid. Still, somehow, his brain was working. He used his left hand to search around again, now that it was hanging in a new position. The wall was no longer smooth here. A metal protuberance surrounded by a shallow relief in the metal beckoned to his hand, which grasped it eagerly. It was a lever, and it moved in Petur’s grip.
Hope returned, and Petur released his other hand from the ladder’s rung. He fell rapidly downward, but his handhold on the lever stopped his fall. The sudden weight on the end of the lever caused it to turn until it was aiming almost straight down. Now Petur held it in a death grip. The soapy layer on his hands caused him to slide to the lever’s end, and he was within a finger’s breadth of falling when suddenly the lever turned one more degree. This motion released a latch on a hinged watertight door, which then, freed from its lock, opened outward widely, pulling Petur with it.