Dirk Pitt18-Black Wind

by Cussler, Clive

  "This one mooring ring looks pretty mangy," she said, tugging at her

  left wrist. "If I could just get one hand free."

  "Maybe I can help." Dirk slid his legs toward Summer, leaning his

  torso at an angle along the concrete blocks for support. Raising one

  leg, he slid his foot along until the sole of his shoe met up with the

  face of the protruding iron. Applying as much pressure as he could, he

  pressed his weight hard against the top of the metal ring.

  Nothing happened.

  Shifting his foot so that his heel was against the ring, he pushed once

  more. This time, the ring bent a fraction toward Summer. Jamming his

  weight repeatedly against the stanchion, he gradually forced the ring

  to bend over nearly ninety degrees.

  "Okay, I'll need your help in pushing it back upright," he said. "Let's

  try it on the count of three."

  Slipping his foot to the backside of the ring, he counted to three,

  then pulled his leg toward him. Summer pushed with her manacled hand

  and they gradually shoved the ring back to its original vertical

  position.

  "Well, that was fun," Dirk said while resting his leg. "Let's try it

  again."

  For twenty minutes, they toggled the ring back and forth, the movement

  gradually becoming easier as the tensile strength of the old iron

  weakened. With a last strong kick by Dirk, the ring finally snapped

  off its concrete base, freeing Summer's left arm. She immediately

  twisted her hand around and dug into the small side pocket of her silk

  jacket and produced the porcelain-handled nail file.

  "I've got the file. Should I try on the handcuff itself or the mooring

  ring?" she asked.

  "Go for the ring. Even though it's thicker, it will be much softer to

  cut through than the hardened stainless steel handcuffs."

  Using the small file like a hacksaw, Summer began grinding away at the

  base of the mooring ring. Working the file with any degree of accuracy

  beneath the murky river water and fading cavern light would have been a

  Herculean task for most, but Summer's extensive diving experience gave

  her a leg up. Years of exploring and excavating historic shipwrecks in

  foul visibility had heightened her sense of touch to the extent that

  she could nearly tell more about a wreck from her hands than by her

  eyes.

  With some measure of hope, she felt the file cut rapidly through the

  outer layer of the rusty ring. Her confidence waned when the blade met

  up with the hardened inner core of the iron ring and progress slowed to

  a snail's pace. The rising water was now level with her chest and the

  pending urgency unleashed a surge of adrenaline. Summer worked the

  blade back and forth as fast as she could muster underwater, gaining

  ground millimeter by millimeter. Taking quick breaks from sawing, she

  placed her hands on the iron ring and pushed and pulled it to weaken

  the metal. Alternating sawing and prodding with an intermittent gulp

  or two of river water, she at last broke through the ring and freed

  herself.

  "Got it," she exclaimed with victory.

  "Mind if I borrow that file?" Dirk asked calmly, but Summer had

  already kicked and swum her way over and begun cutting into the ring

  grasping his right hand. As she worked the file, she mentally noted

  that it had taken her roughly thirty minutes to cut through the first

  ring and that the water level was now nearly to their shoulders. The

  water was rising faster than she anticipated and would be well above

  Dirk's head in less than an hour. Despite aching fingers and limbs,

  she rubbed the file ferociously against the iron.

  Dirk, waiting patiently as Summer filed away, began whistling the old

  1880s tune "While Strolling Through the Park One Day."

  "That's not helping," Summer gasped, then smiled to herself at the

  silly tune. "Now I won't be able to get that ridiculous song out of my

  head."

  Sure enough, he quit whistling, but the tune kept replaying over and

  over in her head. She was surprised to find it became a good sawing

  mantra that provided a rhythm to her hand movements.

  While strolling through the park one day,... With each syllable, she

  applied a cutting stroke to the iron, creating an efficient sawing

  cadence. in the merry merry month of May.

  I was taken by surprise by a pair of roguish eyes.

  In a moment my poor heart was stole away.

  The water level had now crept up over her chin and she found herself

  taking in gasps of air, then submerging briefly to keep the file

  clawing in one spot. Dirk was beginning to strain to keep his face out

  of the water while applying alternating tugs and shoves on the ring as

  Summer sawed tirelessly on. A muffled metallic ting finally echoed

  beneath them as the ring broke loose under their combined pressure.

  "Three down, one to go," Summer gasped, taking in a lungful of air

  after being submerged for several seconds.

  "Let me give you a breather," Dirk said, grabbing the file from Summer

  with his free hand. The release of his right hand gave him a few extra

  inches of breathing room, but it was not enough to file the last

  mooring ring without submerging. Taking a deep breath, he ducked under

  the surface and began filing rapidly on the ring that held down his

  left wrist. After thirty seconds, he bobbed to the surface, sucked in

  some fresh air, and plunged back under. Summer stretched her cramped

  fingers, then swam to Dirk's left side and waited for him to surface.

  Like a pair of tag team wrestlers trying to floor Hulk Hogan, they

  passed the file back and forth and ducked underwater, attacking the

  iron ring with muscle and fervor.

  As the minutes wore on, the water level in the cavern crept higher

  and higher. Each time Dirk surfaced for a gasp of air, he felt himself

  stretching farther and farther to raise his mouth and nose above water.

  The handcuff shackle on his left wrist dug into his flesh as he

  instinctively yanked hard to escape the clutch of the massive barge

  weight.

  "Save your strength for getting out of here," he told his sister as the

  inevitable truth drew closer that they were running out of time. Summer

  said nothing as she grabbed the file out of his hand and plunged back

  beneath the surface. Dirk half-floated with his head tilted back, his

  face just barely out of the water, drawing a few deep breaths. He

  could feel the water wash over his face in ripples and stretched for

  one last deep breath before pulling himself under. Grasping Summer's

  wrist, he pulled the file out of her hand and began a last furious rush

  at cutting through the iron. Feeling the gouge with his thumb, he

  could tell that they had cut only a third of the way through. There

  was just too far to go.

  The seconds felt like hours as Dirk made a final effort to break free.

  He could feel his heart beating like a bass drum as it struggled to

  pump oxygen into his depleted blood. In the murkiness, he could feel

  that Summer was no longer by his side. Perhaps she had finally taken

  his advice and sought escape. Or perhaps she just couldn't b
ear to be

  with him during his final gasp of life.

  He paused from filing for a second to try pushing his weight against

  the ring. He could generate little leverage, however, and the iron

  ring held firm. Again, to the file he went, making furious strokes

  with the flimsy metal blade. His ears began pounding with each beat of

  his heart. How long had he been holding his breath now? A minute, two

  minutes? It was difficult to remember.

  Light-headedness fell over him as spots began to creep into his vision.

  He exhaled what remaining air was left in his lungs and fought the

  temptation to open his mouth and gulp in. His heart pounded stronger

  and it became a mental fight against succumbing to panic. A light

  current seemed to push him away from the mooring ring, but his hand

  muscle grasped the file tightly in a death grip. A white veil was

  being drawn across his vision and a distant voice inside was telling

  him to let go. As he fought a last battle with the voice, his ringing

  ears detected a deep thump and then a strange vibration rippled up his

  arm and through his body just before his mind tumbled into a dark and

  empty void.

  *-.""

  Summer knew that THEY were at least twenty minutes from filing through

  the iron ring and that there would have to be another way to free her

  brother. Abandoning Dirk, she dove to the cavern floor, searching and

  groping for another tool or device, anything that would help break the

  manacle. But the flat, sandy bottom yielded nothing, just the row of

  mooring weights, one after the other. Kicking ahead with one hand

  guiding along the blocks of concrete, she touched a large chunk of

  concrete that had broken off one of the weights when it had been

  dropped too close to another. Gliding beyond the debris, she reached

  the last block, where she felt something flat and squishy like soggy

  leather fall away in her hand. A harder piece beneath it was narrow

  and curved, which she identified as the sole of a boot. A stick leaned

  against it, which she started to grab, then let go in horror. It was no

  stick, she could tell, but the femur bone of a skeleton that was still

  wearing the boot. Another victim of Kang's savagery, the corpse had

  long ago been left chained to the anchor. Recoiling, she turned to swim back toward Dirk and bumped her head square

  into the fallen chunk of concrete. The broken piece was roughly square

  shaped, weighing about ninety pounds. She surveyed the block with her

  hands to get around it, then hesitated. It might be the answer, she

  decided, and was the best she could do under the circumstances.

  Kicking up for a quick breath of air, she dove back down and muscled

  the block off the floor and up to her chest. On dry land, she would

  have struggled mightily to lift the heavy weight, but underwater the

  block was more yielding. Moving quickly, she shuffled down the row of

  weights to her brother, fighting to keep the chunk balanced. Feeling

  rather than seeing Dirk, she turned and backed into her brother,

  pushing his body away from the block that held his left wrist. She

  noted apprehensively that his body gave way rather limply, unlike his

  normal stone like stature.

  Lining herself up with the mooring weight as best she could, she took a

  step and lunged forward, throwing herself and the broken chunk of

  concrete at the iron ring. In a slow-motion haze, Summer floated

  through the water with a slight ripple before the effects of gravity

  took over. But her timing was perfect. In the fraction of a second

  before her forward momentum was replaced by sinking gravity, the

  concrete chunk hit home on the iron ring. An audible clang, muffled by

  the water, told Summer that she was on target as she let go of the

  block. The rusty mooring ring, weakened just enough by the frantic

  filing, succumbed to the weight of the blow and snapped neatly off the

  anchor.

  Summer immediately grabbed Dirk's arm and felt down to the wrist, which

  now dangled loosely. In a burst, she pushed her brother to the

  surface, took a deep breath of air herself, then towed his limp body to

  a small rock ledge, pulling him up and out of the water. She knelt by

  his side to administer CPR when his body suddenly stirred, his head

  turning to one side. With a groan, he expunged a small flood of water

  from his mouth and replaced it with a heaving lungful of air. Rising

  unsteadily to his elbows, he turned to Summer and gasped, "I feel like

  I drank half the river. Remind me to stick to bottled water next

  time."

  The words barely gurgled out of his mouth when he leaned over and

  retched a second time, then sat up and rubbed his left wrist. Eyeing

  his sister, he was pleased to see she appeared unharmed and in good

  spirits.

  "Thanks for pulling me out," he said. "How did you finally get the

  ring off?"

  "I found a loose chunk of concrete and flung it against the stanchion.

  Thankfully, I didn't take your hand off in the process."

  "Much obliged for that," he muttered, shaking his head.

  After catching their breath, they rested for nearly an hour, slowly

  regaining their strength as Dirk purged the remaining water from his

  lungs, inhaled moments before Summer broke the iron grip that had

  nearly drowned him. What lit de sunlight that earlier wafted through

  the mouth of the cavern had long since vanished with nightfall, leaving

  them prone in the cave in near-total blackness.

  "Do you know the way out of here?" Dirk asked once he felt fit to

  move.

  "The mouth of the cave is less than fifty meters away," Summer said,

  "just a short distance to the east is Kang's dock."

  "How'd we get in here in the first place?" he asked.

  "A small skiff. I forgot that you slept through the scenic portion of

  the cruise."

  "Sorry I missed it," Dirk replied, rubbing a small gash on the top of

  his head. "We'll to have to borrow a boat from Kang if we want to get

  off this rock. There was a small speedboat tied up behind his floating

  palace when we came in and docked. Maybe it's still there."

  "If we can untie it from the dock and drift it out into the cove

  undetected before starting it up, it may buy us some more time." Summer

  shivered as she spoke, her body feeling the effects of the cool river

  dousing.

  "Back in the water, I'm afraid. You know the way out, so lead on."

  Summer ripped the side seam of the silk dress up to her hip to allow

  more freedom for swimming, then slipped back into the cool murky water.

  Dirk followed as they swam and groped their way along the narrow

  winding cavern, moving toward a pale gray circular patch of light that

  faintly shimmered against the surrounding darkness. The murmur of

  distant voices gave them a momentary pause as they approached the

  cave's exit. Swimming around a tight bend, the oval mouth of the

  cavern opened up before them, the night sky twinkling with starlight

  while the glittering reflection of Kang's dockside floodlights danced

  about the water's surface. Dirk and Summer swam silently out of the

  cavern
entrance to a small rock outcropping a few yards away. The

  algae-slickened boulders afforded a safely concealed vantage point from

  which they could observe the dock and adjacent grounds.

  For several minutes, they hung quietly against the rocks, studying the

  moored boats and shoreline for signs of movement. There were three

  boats tied up to the floating dock that ran parallel to the shore. Just

  as Dirk recalled, a small green patrol speedboat was wedged between

  Kang's large Italian luxury yacht and the high-speed catamaran on which

  they had arrived. No signs of life were visible on any of the three

  boats, which were all tied up in a row bow to stern. Dirk knew that a

  small live-aboard crew would be present on the larger vessel.

  A lone sentry finally emerged in the distance, walking slowly along the

  shoreline. As he passed under a floodlight, Dirk could clearly see the

  glint of an assault rifle slung under the man's shoulder. Casually,

  the guard strode out onto the dock and alongside the three boats,

  pausing for several minutes near the large yacht. Growing bored, he

  strode back down the dock and onto shore, advancing along a stone

  walkway toward the estate elevator, where he deposited himself in a

  small security station at the base of the cliff.

  "That's our man," Dirk whispered. "As long as he stays in that hut,

  his view of the speedboat is overshadowed by the larger boats." "Now's

  the time to steal it, before he makes the next round." Dirk nodded and

  the two of them pushed away from the rocks and began swimming silently toward the dock. He kept an eye on the

  guardhouse while mentally computing how long it might take to hotwire

  the speedboat's ignition in the dark if the keys weren't conveniently

  left in the boat.