But the big, round water tank was like a toboggan on snow. There was little friction between its smooth metal sides and the watery mud. This allowed the truck to slide down the slope with barely any resistance. The cab dug in a little, causing the vehicle do a slow pirouette as it went down the hill. But it remained on its side, and Bell continued to cling tightly to the steering wheel as he understood that this delicate balance could shift, and the truck could begin to flip at any moment.
That didn’t come to pass, and the truck slid sedately to the bottom of the canal, where pooled rainwater quickly flooded the footwell where Bell sheltered. He scrambled up to the seat and then had to hoist himself out of the cab using the steering wheel as a foothold and climbing out the passenger’s side. He sat in the window of the door with his legs dangling into the truck. The engine pinged and popped as its block cooled in the water with steam venting from a crack in the radiator.
Bell was shaken, and the adrenaline spike left his mouth dry and his stomach knotted. It took a few seconds to remember he was still a target. He rolled off the side of the truck and dropped to the soggy ground. He pulled his .45 from a slender holster at the small of his back and looked around the truck’s torn fender. The rim of the man-made canyon was several hundred feet above him and at least a thousand feet away. For an expert marksman, the shot wasn’t a challenge, but there was no one above him peering down through a telescopic sight of a sniper rifle. He saw no one at all. The truck that had forced him off the road was gone.
Wary, Bell watched for several minutes, checking left and right to see if someone was trying to outflank him. There was nothing, just the constant rain. Behind him, the far rim of the canal was too distant for a marksman to make an accurate shot in these conditions.
He turned back to where his truck had been shoved off the road and was looking at the exact spot when the explosion came. The earth along the ridge lurched upward like a muscle in spasm. And then, in a line stretching many hundreds of feet, the ground erupted as a string of explosives linked by a fast-burning fuse were touched off. Seconds later, Bell heard and felt the concussive whoomph of the simultaneous blasts.
What followed next was the true horror. A slab of the hill detached itself from the earth and began to rumble down into the canal in an avalanche of mud and dirt and rock that looked as thick and wide as the horizon itself. It thundered toward Bell with the force of a tsunami and the throaty roar of a hundred locomotives.
When it hit, he would be smeared like paste and buried under twenty feet of rubble and muck. He couldn’t outrun the wall of accelerating debris and thought he had a better chance bracing himself behind the truck. But he knew that was a losing proposition. The avalanche would strike the tanker like a sledgehammer on a child’s toy.
Then came inspiration born out of desperation. While the truck would tumble and rattle and likely get broken up, there was a chance the water tank would survive. Bell scrambled around the vehicle, trying not to think about what was coming. The cap for filling the tank was located on top of it and was big enough to feed a large-diameter hose through it, like those for locomotives.
The landslide had a deeper rumble than the storm, a sound like the growl of a predator on the hunt, and it seemed to fill all five of Bell’s senses.
He undogged the filler cap’s locked lid and dove inside. Gravity slammed the lid closed, and Bell had just seconds to jam the pistol into the front of his pants and ball himself around it while lying in the residual water pooled at the tank’s bottom. Moments later, the wall of mud and rock hit the bottom of the canal, gushing outward and slamming into the overturned Gramm-Bernstein. Bell crashed into the rear bulkhead, taking the impact with his feet and backside.
Unbeknownst to him, the tank was ripped from its mounts by the initial blow. The wave of earth buried the rest of the truck, tearing it apart so thoroughly that it looked like it had gone through a woodchipper.
But the tank was somewhat spared. Its volume of air meant that it was lighter than the surrounding muck so that as it was borne along, spinning and tumbling, it also rose up through the quagmire with each passing second.
Bell took the pounding of his life. He was flung like a puppet, bouncing off the walls, and was battered by the sloshing water like he was caught in a hurricane at sea. It was all made worse because of the darkness, an inky black deeper than any night. Had he left his gun in its holster, the pummeling his body was taking would have driven the weapon so hard into his kidneys his urine would be red for months. Through it all, he kept his hands cradling the back of his head and never uncoiled his body.
That was until a particularly hard tumble dashed his forehead against the water tank, and he lost consciousness.
The big cylinder finally came to a rest as the tidal wave of mud and rock lost its momentum by spreading across the bottom of the cut in a two-story pile of debris that covered dozens of acres.
Bell didn’t awaken for more than an hour, and, when he did, he wished for a coma’s sweet embrace. He ached. Everywhere. His head and neck especially. He lay in the pooled water, soaked through to the skin with a depth of cold that seeped into his very bones. He was shivering in an absolute blackness that felt as heavy and cloying as molasses.
He touched the lump on his forehead. His hand came away wet, to be expected, warm and sticky and smelling like an old penny. He was bleeding. And he had no idea where he was. He was in a metal tank of some sort, but beyond that . . .
He had no idea how he’d gotten here. He remembered nothing.
The panic hit, sending a jolting shock across every nerve ending in his body. For a moment it felt like he had the worst case of sunburn in his life. His heart rate accelerated dangerously as adrenaline flooded his system with a near overdose of chemicals. He breathed in rapid gulps that filled his lungs but provided no oxygen.
He’d lost his memory. He didn’t know where he was or who he was. Total amnesia.
But then he fought the panic, forced himself to regain rationality. It was okay that he’d lost it for a second, he told himself. He was only human, and the reaction had been a natural one, but now he had to focus. He got a handle on his nerves, his skin cooled, his heart slowed, and he took slow, even breaths.
He now knew his name and said it just to hear if it sounded right. “Isaac Bell.”
Yes, that was it. It sounded natural and right. He was Isaac Bell. He was a detective, and he had a wife named Marion. He was currently on an assignment in Panama. He remembered leaving his hotel that morning, Marion staying in bed because of the rain, his herculean effort not to join her under the covers. After that, there wasn’t much. He had no recollection of how he’d gotten himself inside a metal cylinder.
And then it started to come back to him. Or parts of it. He remembered driving the truck, the crash, going over the side of the Culebra Cut. Maybe there was another vehicle. And some explosions. He vaguely remembered seeing a boat swallowed in the mist.
His truck, the one he’d been lent by Sam Westbrook, was a tanker for supplying the steam shovels and other boilers needed along the canal with water. He was inside its tank. That had to be it. He had no idea why he’d climbed into it, but at least he knew where he was. The panic attack subsided further.
The tank was almost perfectly level, with about eight inches of water pooled at the bottom. He regretted not bringing the little flashlight Court had given him. By feel, he found his submerged pistol. He drained it, pulled the magazine, and blew water from the weapon’s inner workings. He racked the slide a few times, shedding even more water, before returning the magazine and securing the Colt in his holster.
He wondered why the water was so cold. The truck sat in the sun all day, every day. The water should be hot. Even with the daylong rainstorm, the tank’s contents would at least be lukewarm. The water here was icy almost. And then the answer hit him. Bell realized that the water had cooled to the ambient surrounding te
mperature. The truck wasn’t lying on its side out in the open. It had been buried.
He slapped at the steel walls and they returned a dull tone in response. There wasn’t one place that gave even the faintest hollow echo to indicate that it wasn’t covered in dirt. While he had no idea how deeply he was buried, at this point it didn’t matter.
He located the filler cap. Using the puddle as a guide, since his own sense of balance was still recovering, Bell found the cap was only halfway up one wall. But its metal lid was jammed, and no amount of pushing would get it open.
Isaac Bell was well and truly buried alive.
20
While Bell was not a man to give in to panic, the past little incident notwithstanding, he had to admit his current predicament was more than a little unsettling. He took stock of the things he could control. He had enough water to last him a week or more, though it probably was teeming with parasites. He had no food, but that wouldn’t be a problem for a while. He stripped out of his wet clothes and laid them out on the tank above the waterline. His body couldn’t generate enough heat to dry his clothes. It was best to let them air-dry.
Then came the realization that sent his heart back into overdrive. Water and food meant nothing if he couldn’t get air. He had no idea how long he’d been out, but there was only a finite amount of oxygen in the tank and no way to dispense with the excess carbon dioxide.
He allowed himself two deep, calming breaths and then regulated his breathing by allowing himself small sips of air only. He knew his only hope was a quick rescue.
Had anyone seen the accident? Would they come to investigate? Even if a survey team came out to assess the damage, the tank was somehow buried. They wouldn’t be able to reach him until it was dug up, and that could take weeks. He had hours at most.
Bell popped the magazine out of the .45 and offered a silent apology to John Moses Browning because he was going to use the pistol’s butt like a hammer against the tank’s interior. It hit with a dull thud. Not the sound he needed. There was a narrow flange around the filler cap. He rapped it with the gun and it delivered a satisfying chime.
For some reason the only song that came to mind was the popular rag “Sailing Down the Chesapeake Bay,” and so that’s what he tapped out again and again, pausing only after two hours to get into his still-damp clothes. They weren’t perfect, yet he soon felt warmer.
He switched arms regularly and tapped out the tune again and again. A hundred times, five hundred? He didn’t know, but he could tell the air was growing more fouled. His mind grew fuzzy, and while he couldn’t see anything save Stygian darkness, he felt his optic nerves constricting as if his vision were fading.
He didn’t know he’d nodded off until he woke with a start after just a couple seconds. He hit his gun against the flange. He couldn’t remember the tune he’d been playing, so he began tapping in Morse code. Dot-dot-dot. Dash-dash-dash. Dot-dot-dot.
S.O.S.
It was never an abbreviation for anything, merely a Morse phrase that was easy to remember and transmit, but many believed it stood for “Save Our Ship” or “Save Our Souls.” For Bell, it was a plea to whoever was out there.
Search Out Survivor.
He blacked out several more times, yet as soon as he yanked himself back to consciousness he’d begin tapping again, though any semblance of code was soon lost. He could no longer remain upright enough to reach the flange, so he lay on his side, just above the murky water, and tapped the Colt’s butt against the tank wall, a sound that grew weaker and weaker until it went silent altogether.
* * *
Isaac Bell awoke in Heaven. The light was painfully bright, and the creature hovering over him was too beautiful to be anything other than an angel. He could open his eyes just a fraction of an inch. This particular seraph had cascading blond hair, eyes as bright and sharp as colored glass, and such a look of worry that tiny wrinkles had formed between her brows. He immediately believed it was the power of her concern that brought him back from the abyss.
He wished, though, that he’d returned in a better state. His head pounded, and his body felt like he’d gone twenty rounds with the current bare-knuckle-boxing champ. Surely he should be at peace.
Maybe this wasn’t Heaven. It couldn’t be. He hurt too damned much. But the angel . . .
He drifted off again before the angel realized he’d awakened.
The next time Bell clawed his way to consciousness it was dark, but he could see the moon’s glow through a gauzy curtain. He was thirsty and sore yet somehow knew he was safe. He was in a bed, the sheets were crisp and the blanket smelled of detergent. The pillow beneath his head was like a cloud, and that thought brought memories of the angel. While he wanted to get up and search for her, struggling to turn his body even a little was too much and he gave up the idea and let sleep envelop him once more.
When he came back the third time, it was early morning. The light was soft, and the angel was there once again, dabbing his head with a cool compress, her hair tamed in a ponytail that snaked down over her shoulder and almost brushed the bed.
She saw he was awake and cried out his name as he croaked hers.
“Isaac.”
“Marion.”
“I’ve been so worried,” she said as joyous tears welled up in her deep green eyes. She leaned over to kiss his face, and he could taste the salt on her lips.
“I don’t understand.” And he didn’t. Marion should be in Los Angeles. And then a sickening thought rushed in on him so hard and fast that he levered himself upright and grabbed her arm. “How long was I out?”
In their relationship, it was Isaac who usually had all the answers, so for a moment Marion delighted in having information he did not. But she couldn’t let his questions go unanswered for too long. That would just be cruel.
“Not even a day, my dear.” She handed him a glass of water, which he drank sparingly despite his obvious thirst.
Then he almost spit it out. Bell was defined by logic. It was the underpinning of his life, yet right now nothing made sense, and he felt suspended back between wakefulness and sleep. “What? How is that possible? What the devil is going on here?”
“Easy, Isaac. I came to Panama with you, remember? You promised me a getaway at the Hotel Del, but then you had to come here, and I joined you.”
Bell took some more water and looked around. It was clear he was in the private room of a hospital, maybe the big one on Ancon Hill. The gauzy veil he’d noted the night before was mosquito netting that had been draped around his bed. It was pulled back now, and Marion sat in a straight-backed chair at his side.
Out the window he could see the serrated fronds of some palm trees.
“Right,” he finally said, recalling the voyage and their room at the Central overlooking the unnaturally green lawn.
“Felix Ramirez found me last night having dinner with the Webbs when word reached the city that you’d been rescued from an avalanche. He stayed with us all night and only left earlier this morning because of his work at the hotel. He said he would try to come by later.”
“Wait. An avalanche? I was in an avalanche?”
“That’s what they told me.”
“I don’t remember that at all.” He pointedly touched the gauze-swathed lump on his forehead. “I don’t remember much at all, actually. What happened?”
“I’ll let someone involved tell you all about it. Give me a moment.”
She rose. She was wearing an all-white outfit that was open at the throat and with wide sleeves so she wouldn’t overheat in the tropical climate.
Bell stared out the window as the sun slowly crept over the distant hills. He tried yet couldn’t recall details of the day before. While his brain rarely failed him, all he could recollect was eating breakfast alone and driving for a bit. He didn’t know his destination. Marion related that Felix had said he had a meeting, b
ut he couldn’t remember where or with whom. He didn’t know if he’d kept the appointment. And he certainly didn’t remember any avalanche.
Bell felt an icy panic grip his stomach. His mind was everything. What if . . .
Two men came into the room with Marion. One was Sam Westbrook, the young railroad scheduler, and the other was a doctor, judging by the white lab coat and stethoscope coiled in one of its pockets.
“Mr. Bell,” Sam said earnestly, his panama hat held in his hands in front of him. “Boy, is it good to see you. That sure was something.”
“Just a moment,” the doctor said. He was a ginger with a thick beard who looked like he knew his way around a gymnasium. “Mr. Bell, I’m Dr. Hamby. How are you feeling?”
“Beat up but okay.”
The doctor stepped between Bell and the window and peered closely into his eyes. Bell held still while Hamby moved his head to the side, allowing the light of the rising sun to strike Isaac in the face. Both pupils contracted at the same time and the same amount.
Bell winced and turned away quickly.
“Good. Very good,” Hamby said and moved back toward the door. “Sorry about that, but it’s the most accurate way to tell if you’re concussed. How’s your memory?”
“He doesn’t remember the crash,” Marion answered for her husband. “Is that common?”
“Actually, yes,” the doctor reassured her. “There’s a French psychologist by the name of Théodule Ribot who’s written on the subject. It’s called retrograde amnesia, meaning one forgets things on a gradient from newest memories to oldest. Oftentimes, the victim of a trauma doesn’t remember the trauma itself and sometimes bits and pieces of its immediate aftermath. Does that sound like what you’re experiencing?”
“I . . . I think so,” Bell said. “I remember being in a tank of some sort. It was utterly black in there. But I don’t remember an avalanche or . . . Wait. The tank was mounted on the truck you let me use, Sam.”
The Saboteurs Page 17