by Joseph Badal
When they entered the captain’s cabin, Theo dragged the net, swam to the corner of the room, and inspected the strongboxes. Attached to the padlocks on the boxes were metal tags on which appeared the Nazi swastika and a series of numbers. Burger carefully looked at each of the tags.
She removed a lengthy piece of rope with carabiners at each end from her belt and attached one end to the handle of one of the strongboxes. She then ran the rope through the handles of two of the other strongboxes. Now that she had three of the boxes linked together, she handed the other end of the rope to John and pointed the spear gun at him. He had gotten pretty good at reading her signals. He hooked the carabiner end of the rope to the end of the cargo-net cable. Then Theo tugged on the cable three times. They swam up through the doorway and waited, while the rope grew taut with the weight of the strongboxes. John heard the clang of metal against metal when the strongboxes moved upward.
The rope rubbed hard against the side of the doorway while the strongboxes continued their inexorable climb. When the first box approached the hatch, Burger poked John in the back and pointed down. He guessed she wanted him to prevent the box from hanging up on the edge. John eased it through the opening and did the same for the other two boxes when they came within reach. Then they followed the boxes while they slid along the passageway.
When the boxes reached the staircase, he had to scramble to keep them from wedging against the steps. Just as soon as he’d free one, a second would get hung up on a step. He swam back and forth along the staircase to shepherd those boxes. The exertion took its toll. His ribs felt as though someone had stuck a knife in them. His breathing became labored. His shoulder still gave him a great deal of trouble. But every time he showed any sign of slowing, Burger prodded him with the speargun.
The strongboxes finally cleared the staircase and scraped through another hatchway to the main deck. The cargo cable slowly raised them toward the surface. John watched while the boxes danced lazily at the end of their tether and wondered if the winch and boom were strong enough to hold the load.
John waited with Burger next to the Sabiya. They swam in languid circles like two underwater predators that waited for unsuspecting prey. The pain eased slightly in his side and he was able to catch his breath. But his eyesight had grown fuzzy—one of the first signs he’d been at depth for too long.
The cable soon returned. Its weighted end hit the bottom and sent up a little puff of sand that immediately resettled. They reentered the Sabiya. John dragged the cargo cable along while she, his work partner and captor, trailed behind with the spear gun.
This time he knew the routine. They dropped into the captain’s cabin and roped up the remaining three strongboxes as before and attached them to the cargo cable. After that, with more pointing and prodding with the spear gun, Burger directed him to wrestle the heavy safe into the cargo net which she’d again carried into the cabin. With the safe in the net, John reconnected the net to the cable.
She yanked on the cable three times. But instead of directing John to follow the boxes and the safe through the hatch as she had before, she gestured that he should stay in the room. When he started to swim up toward the doorway, she blocked him with the speargun. The spear point penetrated his dive suit and about an inch of his right pectoral.
He fell backwards and, when he groped to steady myself, felt a cylinder about the size of a large tooth paste tube beneath him. It was one of the phosphorous flares Nick and he had brought down with them. He slipped it into the back of his weight belt. The wound in his chest was more irritating than painful, but it had started to send a rosy plume of blood into the water.
Burger alternately watched him and gazed up at the safe and strongboxes dangle as they inched toward the doorway.
She looked up once again, just when the cargo net got hung up on one of the hinges. She moved forward, as though to swim to the net, but stopped. John took advantage of Theo’s distraction and kicked toward her. He churned the water with his flippers. He now operated almost solely on adrenaline. Exertion, injuries, and too much time underwater had taken a heavy toll on his reserves. He knew this could be his last chance.
She must have sensed his advance, looked back, and swung the spear gun at his chest. But she was a fraction of a second too late. The shaft of the spear gun bumped against his left arm just when she squeezed the trigger. He heard the whoosh of the weapon eject its projectile and then the spear clang into a bulkhead.
Burger dropped the now-useless spear gun and grabbed for John’s breathing tube. She yanked it from his mouth and air bubbles exploded all around them. The woman was powerful and he was half-incapacitated. They struggled; each tried to throw the other off balance. John grabbed her upper arms, her hands gripped his neck. He could feel pain in his throat; his lungs screamed. He gathered what strength he had left and pushed her away, toward the spear she’d just fired. She spotted it and dove to retrieve it.
With her attention off him for that moment, John replaced his breathing tube. Then, he reached around behind his back and pulled the phosphorus flare from his weight belt. The flare had a pulltab ignition. While Burger picked up the spear and started to turn around, John kicked with his legs, propelled himself toward her, snapped off the pull tab, and inserted the flare between her weight belt and the small of her back. Before she could complete her turn, the flare sputtered to life and then burst into pyrotechnic brilliance.
John knew that phosphorus would burn wherever there was any oxygen. And there was a ton of oxygen in water. There was another aspect about burning phosphorous: Like a constant stream of sulfuric acid, it would burn a hole right through the human body.
The white-hot flare lit the room with incredible brightness. Burger seemed disoriented for a moment and then thrashed in the water like a speared fish. John guessed the flare now ate through her wetsuit and began to burn her flesh. The pain must have been horrific—so terrible it took her several seconds to pinpoint its source. Then she dropped the spear and reached back to extract the flare from her belt.
She held it in front of her, seemingly confused by the flaming, star-bright object. White-hot light shot from one end of the flare. She spun around as though she tried to find the source of her continued pain. John saw that the flare had left fiery remnants of phosphorous embedded in her lower back. She dropped the flare to the floor and watched it burn, her face etched with agony. She opened her mouth in a silent scream—her breathing tube popped out—and John knew he stared at death. Then her body went limp. John saw the phosphorous had eaten into her spinal cord and turned her into a paraplegic just seconds before she died.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
John swam to the doorway. The cargo net was stretched to the point of tearing. The strongboxes had bunched around the hinge. He grabbed the bottom of the net, let his weight pull it down, and created just enough slack to pry it loose from the hinges. The net and its contents snapped upward and moved like an articulated caterpillar through the passageway to the staircase. With the safe added to the three strongboxes, maneuvering them through the staircase became even more difficult for John than it had been with the earlier load. He had to move quickly, continuously jockeying from the bottom step to the top step to keep the cargo line moving. His worsening vision made the job even more difficult. He knew what was happening to him and he knew he had to get out of the water as quickly as possible. But he had to keep the cable moving. As long as that line moved upward toward the Aphrodite, Leidner would assume everything was okay. He needed Leidner’s attention focused on the winch and cable.
John calculated it would take about fifteen minutes for the winch to raise the load up to the boat. He’d been underwater for over thirty-five minutes, right after a deep-water dive of similar duration. In addition to blurred vision, he began to feel pain in his joints, and weakness and numbness in his fingers and toes. He knew if he didn’t get out of the water, he could slip into a nitrogen narcosis
that would impair his judgement and perception. He knew that’s how divers died. He also knew he should allow for a decompression stop on his way to the surface, but he didn’t have the luxury to stop for more than about five minutes. He couldn’t spend more time underwater and he had to get to the boat before the net reached the surface. He was still lucid enough to realize he had to deal with Leidner while the man was occupied with the winch.
John surfaced on the far side of the Aphrodite. He grasped a line that hung from the fishing boat and stripped off his scuba gear. Then he dumped his tank and buoyancy control device and shed his mask and fins. His equipment disappeared below the water’s surface.
Mechanical groans from the winch covered any noise he made while he climbed part way up the ladder and peeked over the rail. Decompression sickness now wreaked havoc with his eyesight. Two Leidners—their backs to him—operated two sets of winch controls. Two of everything. He closed his eyes and shook his head to try to clear his vision. When he opened them again, there were still two men across the deck. He realized that waiting for his vision to clear would be futile. Time was running out.
Two Nicks still sat on the deck, tied up a few feet from where two Christos lay unconscious. When he peered over the rail, John saw Nick’s eyes widen. The hopeful looks on both his faces were unforgettable.
John climbed dizzily up the rest of the ladder, pulled himself over the rail, and stood on the deck. The two Leidners who leaned over the rail on the far side of the boat seemed to be miles away.
With each step he took, John expected Leidner to hear him and to turn around. If the man had a gun . . . . But thanks to the winch noise and Leidner’s total focus on the cable, John was able to walk right up behind him without being detected. Then he reached out and tapped Leidner on the shoulder.
The man jumped and screamed, “Aaggh.” He turned toward John and the look on his face went from absolute shock to deep despair—he knew he’d lost the game. He looked around as though he anticipated his Amazon to come to his rescue. Then Leidner recovered his arrogance and put on a superior scowl.
“I think we can come to a satisfactory monetary arrangement, Mr. Hammond.”
John slugged him in the mouth and knocked him back against the rail while the safe and strongboxes rose from the sea.
Leidner slid off the rail and down onto the deck. Blood leaked from his nose and mouth.
John staggered over to the winch’s control panel and shut down the lifting mechanism. He untied Nick and looked around for something to sit on. And then he collapsed.
When John came to, the same two Nicks hovered over him. They looked pale, but otherwise all right. “Christo?” he said.
“Not good,” Nick responded. “We’ve got to get him to the hospital.”
John groaned and closed his eyes. He felt dizzy and nauseous. He seemed to feel slightly better when he closed his eyes.
The next things he heard were footsteps, then the sounds of the boat’s engine, and Nick’s voice shouting for an ambulance to meet them at the dock.
John opened his eyes to test his vision. Still blurred. He saw Leidner tied to the metal boxes—a wonderful irony. Those boxes had become his ball-and-chain. Then everything went black.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
Zoë, Nick, Christo, and John had become a unit that had bonded and—for the most part—worked effectively together. So it seemed fitting for all four of them to be hospitalized. All for one and one for all. The Four Wounded Musketeers.
John knew he was damn lucky to be alive. If it hadn’t been for the fact the Greek Navy had a commando base on Samos equipped with a hyperbaric recompression chamber, he might have died.
Up and about again, he prowled the Greek Army Hospital. He visited Nick’s room, directly across the hall from his own. Nick had suffered a serious concussion, but was too hardheaded to realize it and too tough to give it much credence. He looked as good as new to John. Although recovering nicely—in the hospital for observation only—Nick had found that the staff treated him like a hero. He got more attention than he needed, but enjoyed every bit of it, nonetheless.
“Hey, Nick,” John said when he entered his room. “Let’s look in on Christo and Zoë.”
“I just got back from their rooms,” Nick said. “Besides, I feel a little dizzy.” He groaned and the two nurses in the room immediately cooed over him.
John did a quick about-face to hide his smile. God forbid that Nick’s wife, Ariana, shows up now and catches her husband enjoying himself, he thought.
Christo was in critical condition. He’d lost a lot of blood and his gunshot wound had become infected. The beating Theo Burger had given him had ruptured his spleen and damaged one of his kidneys. He was so sedated that conversation was out of the question. John looked at his face, partially covered with an oxygen mask, and didn’t like the death-like color of his skin.
John said a prayer for Christo before he left the room.
Zoë’s room, in a wing of the hospital separate from the rest of them, was his last stop. Her doctor had assured him there was nothing physically wrong with her. In the U.S. she would probably have been tagged with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but John didn’t believe this to be the problem with Zoë. Of course, she’d been through a terrible ordeal, one that would affect even the strongest person. But he believed her emotional condition was grounded more in historical context.
In Greek legend, women commited suicide rather than submit to rape. John knew that a national holiday was even based on an incident when all the women of a village threw themselves off a cliff rather than submit to a marauding enemy army. In Greek culture, blame lies with a violated woman. No wonder Zoë was in a near-catatonic state.
But John hoped another aspect of Greek culture might offer salvation to Zoë—its belief in revenge. Her eyes clearly communicated a sickness in her soul. Each time he saw her, that sickness had become more and more evident. He was losing her; of that he was certain. He knew he had to do something drastic. He had to break her out of her emotional prison.
MAY 13
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
It took John a couple hours to drive to the Pythagorio docks in a borrowed car, locate the Aphrodite, find his knapsack, and return to the hospital. Zoë’s doctor seemed pleased with his suggestion that “Zoë might benefit from a drive around the island.” A nurse helped dress her and move her out to the car.
On the drive to Vathi, Zoë remained in her own world. She wouldn’t talk or even look at John. But she communicated despair through her posture and her seeming inability to connect with her surroundings. A pathetic figure, she slumped in her seat; she leaned her head against the window. Dark circles accentuated the dullness in her eyes and her lack of interest in her appearance was obvious. Her hair was a tangle of out-of-control curls and she wore no makeup. She looked like a forlorn waif in her clothes. For the first time, John realized she had lost a great deal of weight.
The ride back to Pythagorio lasted fifteen minutes. He drove past the block of buildings that had been destroyed by explosions and wondered again what motivated Leidner. After he parked the car near the police station, John reached over the back seat and grabbed his knapsack. He rummaged in the bag, felt the grip of the 9mm pistol, and wrapped his hand around it. He slipped the pistol behind his back, under his jacket, in the waistband of his trousers. Zoë never once looked at him, but continued to stare out the passenger-side window. He walked around and helped her out. She moved listlessly, shuffled her feet, never took her gaze off the pavement directly in front of her. She showed no interest in where they were or where they were going.
John took Zoë’s hand and guided her into the station. Their entrance caused an immediate silence to fall over the office. Their reputation had preceded them—the man who’d captured the murderer Leidner, and the woman who’d been silent under torture. They’d become folk heroes on Samos. Policemen pac
ked the station. Since the destruction of the police building in Vathi, the Pythagorio station appeared to have become the headquarters.
John moved Zoë to a chair, then crossed the room and talked with a man in a suit. “As you can see, Miss Vangelos is not well,” John said. “I thought if she could see her torturer locked up in a prison cell . . . .” He hunched his shoulders in a “who knows” gesture.
Those men in the room who spoke English translated for the others. Many men nodded their heads and murmured among themselves.
“Of course, Mr. Hammond,” the man in the suit said. “If you think it would help Miss Vangelos recover.” He snapped an order to one of the uniformed cops.
John assisted Zoë to stand and hooked his arm in hers. The uniformed policeman escorted them through a steel door to the jail cells at the back of the building. There were six cells—three on each side of a central aisle. A jailer sat at the head of the aisle.
The sight of the cells seemed to penetrate Zoë’s mental fog. She clung to John as a small child might cling for safety to a parent. He intentionally obstructed her view of the only occupied cell—Leidner’s. He asked their escort if they could be alone with the prisoner for just a few minutes. The man hesitated, then signaled the jailer to leave the cell area. After they closed and locked the door behind them, John slowly stepped aside so that Zoë could see Leidner.
At first, she showed no sign of recognizing the man who’d orchestrated her father’s death, her own kidnapping, beating, and rape. But then her face became animated for the first time in days. Fire returned to her eyes and her face became flushed. She stepped to the cell and wrapped both her hands around its bars. She didn’t speak. She just glared at him, while he slowly rose from his cot and, seemingly pushed back by the hatred in her eyes, moved to the far end of the cell.