by John Hunt
Through tightly closed eyelids, Petur could sense the red glow of the bright spotlights shining from the Elijah Lewis. He blinked repeatedly and shallowly, which afforded him an opportunity to see some details for brief moments, through his barely open stinging eyes. He was on the spiral staircase, outside the OTEC, looking down on the platform that they had climbed onto from the Zodiac earlier. No one stood there now.
With great difficulty, he worked at the knot around his waist. He wanted that explosive as far away from himself and his OTEC as he could get it. The ammonia had somehow caused the knot in the fishing line to fuse. His sore fingers and shaking hands could not work the tangle. His lack of clear vision did not help him either. Wrapping some of the line partway around each hand, he pulled with all his remaining strength, but it would not break. The tightness of the line around his midsection prevented it from sliding either up over his head, or down off his legs.
Petur struggled to his feet and looked back in through the open hatch to the inside of the shaft. The ammonia continued to pour down in heavy volume, some splashing out and escaping into the outside air. He turned and began an arduous climb back up the spiral stairs. He had to get to the top to check on Jeff. Then Jeff could use his knife to cut this thing off.
He took one stride at a time, his eyes closed tightly. Only occasionally did he open them to check his bearings and his progress. It seemed like it took hours to make the climb, but in actuality it was less than three minutes before he glanced upward and found Heinrich Poll running down toward him.
“Heinrich, thank God!”
“You do not look well,” replied the German. He examined Petur quickly with his eyes. “We have got to get you cleaned off rapidly. You are covered in ammonia.”
Petur replied in a hoarse voice interrupted by nearly constant coughing, “This is uncomfortable. But we will be even more uncomfortable if this stuff here explodes.”
Poll looked down at Petur’s waist, noticing for the first time the two cylinders of blue and yellow liquid. He knew in a glance that the line was too heavy to break, and a quick examination of the knots assured him that they would be nearly impossible to undo.
“My toolbox is at the top of the stairs. Stay put; I will be right back.” Poll bolted up the stairs. In a moment, he was back, and sawing through the line with a blade. It was severed in an instant.
“Say bye-bye!” Poll said to the contraption, as he prepared to throw it into the ocean.
“No!” cried Petur. “If those things break, they’ll blow. We have to get them down near the bottom first.
Just then, Petur saw a figure fly out the door to the hallway a few steps above him. Poll gently placed the canisters down and leaped up the stairs to the man who was hanging on the rail. Petur knew it had to be Jeff, although through his stinging eyes, he could not tell what condition he was in. But he was alive.
Petur closed his eyes. He could hear Poll laughing loudly now and wondered what on Earth could be so amusing to him. With his ears still clogged with ammonia, he could not hear Jeff tell Poll that he was dead at the bottom of the shaft.
In a moment, Jeff and Heinrich stood beside him on the stairs. Jeff was examining the bomb’s design.
“This is very high tech,” he was saying to Poll. And I am not particularly good with bombs. How about you?”
Poll responded. “I sleep with them under my pillow. No, Mr. Baddori. I have no idea.”
Petur chimed in. “Let’s just get the damn thing away from us.”
Jeff agreed. “We probably have a couple more minutes. The guys who put these things here swam away underwater. They wouldn’t set it off until they are out, for the underwater concussion if this thing blew at the bottom of the OTEC would surely crush them.”
He wasn’t standing still as he said this, for he was off, running down the stairs. Poll held Petur under his arms and helped him down also. They were one spiral above Jeff as he neared water level. Petur looked over the stairs at him as he heaved the canisters with a mighty grunt more than forty meters from the side of the OTEC into the dark waters.
The canisters did not break as they hit the water. They clung together as a single unit and floated for a moment. The combined density of the device being only slightly greater than water, it slowly began settling lower, until it was completely submerged. Then, unobserved by the men above, the bomb began gently spiraling downward into the abyss.
Azid hauled himself into the rented boat, which had drifted from where they had temporarily abandoned her earlier. The night was completely black, with no moon and no stars shining through the thick clouds far above. It had taken several minutes of searching the area before they even knew which way to swim. But the boat was waiting for them, apparently undisturbed.
Each movement caused the bullet wound in his side to complain. He put his hand over the side and grasped his friend’s wrist. Khamil kicked one of his flippers vigorously, and with the help from above was soon halfway over the side. A shove with his one working and well-muscled arm put him all the way on board. Khamil lay panting and bleeding on the bottom of the boat.
Azid painfully pulled his own flippers off and tossed them into the sea. They sank downward to join the air tanks and other equipment that they had dropped before climbing into the boat. Reaching for his waist, he dug into a nylon bag and removed a waterproof black box with several rubber-covered switches and a button.
The device had worked perfectly ten minutes earlier. When still far from the boat, Azid decided that he had to blow the first bomb before it was discovered. He knew the men on the OTEC would be looking for it. Turning in the water to look toward the giant cylinder, he had flipped the switch on the left and pressed the button. Instantly, the two men in scuba gear had been rewarded with a resounding explosion emanating from high in the machine. There had been little visible effect outside the machine — just a dimming of the lights coming through the ring of portholes at the top — but Azid knew that the bomb would wreak havoc on much of the inner working of the device, and the ammonia would rapidly kill anyone inside.
Both men had also felt the impact of the explosion in the water. Despite this first bomb being much smaller than the second, and despite it being detonated high above water level, the transmitted power was enough to rattle their teeth. This further reinforced Azid’s certainty that they would have to wait until they were safely out of the water before triggering the next device. And so he had to wait, another ten full minutes, before toggling the next switch from the safety of the boat.
Azid helped Khamil to his feet, and, looking toward the OTEC, pressed the button.
The two men heard nothing. Azid pressed the button again. And again. A full minute passed. Azid swore. Then, from far below the water’s surface a terrible vibration emanated. The water around the OTEC suddenly erupted in a colossal broiling cauldron of foam and steam. Azid was knocked off his feet and fell face first on the deck as his boat was tossed about on the boiling water that swelled below them.
He struggled to his knees and peered over the beam of the rolling vessel. The air was a mass of steam and spray — shrouding the OTEC and the Elijah Lewis in a dense man-made fog. A salty rain poured forth from the sky in sheets, pelting the two Iraqis, but the two men stared silently through the night to see what they had wrought.
Gradually the steam cleared and the waves subsided, but darkness reigned supreme. No longer did bright beams pierce the night from the great spotlights on the deck of the ocean-going tug. No longer were the dimly lit portholes on the OTEC visible. Other than the widely scattered green and red navigation lights of the nearby pleasure craft — inadequate to brighten even a small room — nothing but empty blackness was visible on the gradually settling sea.
The radio signal from the triggering transmitter could not reach the explosive device through the water. But the pressure of the ocean, in itself, was sufficient to crack the canisters nearly concurrently, allowing the evil fluids to mix and react with hateful fury. The OTEC
shuddered and cried with the force of the explosion. In seconds, the OTEC keeled over sharply, and the three men standing on the metal platform near the top of the cylinder found themselves hanging onto the safety rail with limbs and torsos dangling freely over the sea. The sky was filled with water — spraying them from below, and raining down on them from above.
“Damn, that’s a big bomb!” Jeff shouted through the melee.
Petur looked down over the frothing waters below and begged and then ordered his OTEC to not tip further over. It did not comply.
The three men instinctively began scrambling up the stairs, heading for the high side, perhaps in the illogical hope of counterbalancing the capsizing machine. If that was their hope, their efforts were of course futile, as the heeling of the massive OTEC progressed. All three managed to work their way around to the far side of the cylinder before the lights from the Elijah Lewis flickered and died. They were now in complete blackness, unable to see even each other.
Petur was standing straight, his head up high and legs spread apart, with one foot on the broad bulwark of the cylinder and one on the metal grating of the stairs. The OTEC was now at a forty-five-degree angle, and Petur had just about given up hope that it could right itself. He was about to lose another of the expensive machines, and for a moment he even considered letting himself go down with his ship. But then he realized that his ship was the Island Project, not the OTEC, and he called to Jeff to work on a plan of escape.
“Jeff, you got a plan?”
Jeff replied from the darkness a few steps away. “Yeah. We’re going to swim like hell to prevent the suction from dragging us down too.” He paused for a minute. “I’m sorry, Petur. It was my job to prevent this.”
But Petur missed the apology, for he stopped listening. Instead, he concentrated on his balance. His foot slipped and he fell to his knees, painfully.
It was neither by foresight nor planning that the OTEC was saved from its precarious position. In fact the saboteurs, unknowingly, had created the conditions whereby their target could survive. With the OTEC moments from completing its capsize, the ammonia, which had previously laden the higher levels, finished draining downward into the cylinder far below water level. There, it served as ballast, and began pulling the giant machine vertical once again.
“I think it’s starting to right itself!”
“I believe you are right, Mr. Bjarnasson!” chimed in Poll, eagerly. “He’s coming back upright.” Poll had quickly picked up the masculine-gender usage from the crew of the tugboat.
At first slowly, very slowly, the great machine struggled to stand tall. With increasing confidence, the OTEC accelerated its recovery until the three men clinging to its side began to feel like ammunition in a slingshot. It overran the vertical, and Petur, for a moment, thought it just might capsize in the other direction. But it slowed and recovered. In the end, it succeeded at stabilizing, and once again towered majestically above the dark seas.
Petur was breathing heavily. He stood firmly planted on the metal stairs, in the dark, proud. This was the first time that his life had ever been in significant danger, and he found that he was exhilarated.
“Well, it sure is nice to get back in the fresh air, isn’t it, Jeff?” Petur joked. He had to speak loudly into the darkness, for the sea around the OTEC was still bubbling from the superheated steam created by the explosion.
Jeff still felt the burning in his throat, the aftereffect of the ammonia’s assault. But now that he had time to think about it, the fresh sea air indeed felt therapeutic in his tired lungs.
“Petur, I like this beast, but is it okay if we all get off now?”
Petur looked over to where the Elijah Lewis had been. He could make out nothing in the darkness. He searched for even a faint light, but through the unnatural mist surrounding him, he could perceive only emptiness.
“Do you think she’s alright?” Petur asked no one in particular.
Poll spoke up. “The blast was far below us. The tug just got a little shaken around. Give them a moment. If I know anything about maritime engineers, we will be flooded in light any moment.”
And at that moment, two broad and bright beams flashed out through the mist, dancing off the tiny particles of water suspended everywhere in the air around them. The men on the OTEC were momentarily blinded by the sudden assault on their eyes. But they were able to see a spectacular display of glimmering colors from the water’s refraction of the powerful light.
Moments after the Elijah Lewis’s spotlights were turned back on, the cheers of a dozen men on the tug, and hundreds more people on the nearby pleasure craft, filled the night with boisterous celebration. For the OTEC was floating high on the quieting seas, and the spotlights’ illumination of the fog around the top of the giant cylinder created a magnificent glowing halo that encircled it like a deity’s crown.
The OTEC surely looked heaven sent.
26. Abuse
THINGS HAD BEEN going better than he could have imagined. Juan Marcos, smug, was sitting in a broad wicker rocking chair, sipping at a glass of ice water while he looked out from his porch over the city of Tijuana. For twelve months, he had been working in this endeavor. Salingas’ plan, though complex, was on the clear path to success. Yet no one, anywhere, had the slightest notion that the Mexican government would soon be toppled.
He called over to his son. “So, what new plans do you have today?” His remaining son seemed to have a talent for this trade.
Enrico Marcos walked over to the front of his father and leaned back on the railing of the porch. He was dressed in a lightweight gray suit with no tie, and the top button of his shirt was open. He smiled at his father, revealing crooked teeth, already yellowing from his chronic smoking of cigarettes.
“Tijuana is ready to explode. There will soon be an overwhelming drive to change the status quo. I can ignite it at any moment.”
“Enrico, it is not yet time. The others are not yet ready. You are too efficient.”
“You know that I will always do your bidding, with all my energy.”
“Yes. I know. Remind me from time to time, however.”
Enrico frowned for a moment. His father’s confidence had never been the same since the fiasco with Cruzon. The evil manipulations of Jeff Baddori had almost destroyed Juan Marcos. Baddori was responsible for his brother’s death as well — a crime for which he would pay dearly. For now, his father needed more reassurance of loyalty. Enrico would provide those verbal reassurances whenever requested. Inside, though, the loyalty was tenuous at best.
The enormously obese man looked up at his son. “Can you keep the fires burning and delay the explosion?”
The son nodded. “I think so. It is just a matter of carefully paying heed to the general mood of the people. I can back down for a week or two, then start inciting anger once again.” He was smiling.
With the Marcos organization reactivated, Enrico found that he had an expansive network of people working for him. No longer were they growing, packaging, or transporting drugs, however. Now they were being paid to socialize. His men and women were paid to talk with people in bars. They began chants at the Jai Alai Fonton, denigrating various prominent, but less-than-perfect, government officials. They wrote messages on construction sites, and they made thousands of telephone calls. They passed out fliers, pretending to work for established political parties. The established parties’ agreement on the matters discussed, when they would usually be divided, gave credence to the positions that they were promulgating. The mission was to point out the failures of the current system of government, yet without offering any solutions. As a whole they destructively fueled the fires of general discontent.
The newspapers and television were very important assets. The written word had been easy to use, for the major paper was already owned by one of Juan Marcos’s new partners. Television had been a different story. That had required a great deal of money and power brokering. But the two local channels had recently been adding to
the grassroots efforts of Marcos’s troops.
Tijuana had become a dangerous place for politicians to show their faces. Though not a stranger to presidential assassinations in the past, Tijuana was now actively avoided by national government officials. They were aware of the growing discontent there, although perhaps not aware of the degree. The president and his top people were unwilling to come anywhere near. Only the vice president felt comfortable traveling to Tijuana. In fact, for some reason, he was considered a hero in the area. Enrico smiled again as he thought of the effort he had put into making that man a hero. The rest of Mexico was not far behind Tijuana.
“Father, what have you heard from Salingas? You tell me only bits and pieces.”
The elder man pursed his lips. “I have to keep some information to myself, now, don’t I? If you knew everything, then you would have little further need for me.” The older man was serious.
Enrico swore loudly. “That is idiotic. I would never attempt to fill your shoes. You always trusted me before, and I have never betrayed that trust. Can you not trust once again?”
Juan Marcos was completely silent. His earlier happy reveries had been shattered as his son revealed his insecurities. The two stayed silent for several minutes.
After a time, Enrico asked pleadingly, “What do I need to do to prove my fidelity?”
His father shook his head and said, almost in a whisper, “Nothing. Nothing at all. It is I who is failing here, not you. I will get better as time goes by.”
“I know you will. You do well to not show this side of you to many others. It is a weakness that is best kept unobserved.”
The fat man had to silently acknowledge that his son was correct, but nonetheless could not appreciate a son speaking of a father’s failings so openly.
“It is best that you leave me now, Enrico. My mood is deteriorating rapidly. Come by again this evening for dinner. You will eat with me.”
Feeling dismissed, Enrico turned and strode away stiffly. Despite what he had said to his father, he knew that the man had little value now. Indeed he was a hindrance — a risk. But it was his father with whom Salingas had dealt. And therefore, only his father would be placed in a governmental position of authority after the current government was tossed out. He would have to accept his father’s foibles, for now.