The most terrible thing about it was that Coffey was going to do this in order to kill the NTIs. Monk understood why Coffey feared them - Coffey hadn't seen how the tentacle tried to communicate with them, how it played at making faces with Bud and Lindsey. Coffey couldn't possibly feel Monk's absolute certainty that there was no danger in these creatures. To Coffey, there was nothing but danger. Somehow, Monk had to get him off alone, had to explain it to him, keep him from making this terrible mistake.
But Coffey had already turned back to face the civilians. Of course it was the Brigman woman in front of the group, coming toward him. Her hands were reaching out toward him, open, in supplication. She was trying to be meek and persuasive. He almost laughed out loud as if she expected him to buy an act like that at this late date. "Coffey? Coffey, just think about what you're doing, OK? Just one minute, just think about what you're -"
But Coffey wasn't going to listen to this anymore. The need to listen politely to pure bullshit from meddling civilians was over. She was no longer an ally or even a neutral. She was the enemy. He reached out and grabbed her, threw her up against the wall. She gasped in fear.
Brigman and the others started to surge forward, but Schoenick was on them, the gun pointed right at them. "Get back!" he shouted.
Lindsey looked into Coffey's eyes and saw only rage and madness. He was pressed close to her, crushing her body against the wall. His voice was measured, dangerous: "This is something I've wanted to do since I first met you." His hands were out of sight, below his waist; she heard a tearing sound, and for a terrible moment thought that he was so insane he intended to humiliate and dominate her with rape.
Then he lifted his hand into view. He was holding something silvery-gray. A strip of duct tape. He laid the tape firmly across her mouth, pressed it tight all the way back to her ears. He was shutting her up. It would have come as a relief, except that she could breathe only through her nose. She had to calm herself deliberately to keep from panicking about her inability to breathe. She wanted to reach up and tear off the tape, but knew that was the most dangerous thing she could do.
Coffey pushed her into the galley, then went back and started ushering the others in. They pissed and moaned, but they obeyed. Coffey couldn't help thinking that if they'd done that before, there wouldn't have been a problem. They just didn't understand that Coffey was going to fulfill his mission. Period.
Hippy was the last one in. He stopped in front of Schoenick, rifle or no rifle, and tried to talk to him. "Your boss is going to pull the pin on fifty kilotons and we're all ringside." Coffey grabbed him and dragged him into the galley. Hippy kept talking. "He's having a full-on meltdown."
Schoenick didn't respond, but Monk was listening. "What's the timer set for?" asked Monk.
Schoenick answered. "Three hours."
Coffey snapped at them. "Shut up. Don't talk!"
"Three hours," said Monk. There was only one explanation for Coffey's irrational behavior. From the moment Coffey came into the room, Monk could see that he had most of the symptoms of HPNS. Coffey was out of control. It was frightening - the one thing Monk had thought he could count on in this world was Coffey. When everything else was falling apart, Coffey was always cool, Coffey was always thinking. But now Coffey was unreliable, even dangerous.
Still, Monk tried to reason with him. "We can't get to minimum-safe-distance in three hours." Monk was in terrible pain - he shouldn't be standing up yet. But screw the pain - Coffey was out of his mind, and Monk had to do something. "We can't go to Phase Three. What about these people?" The orders for Phase Three didn't include blowing the civilians to hell. Coffey took orders very seriously. It was unthinkable that he would exceed them now.
Coffey faced him, close. "Shut up. Shut up!" He was scared - Monk could almost taste the fear, Coffey was sweating it, rivers of it pouring down his face. "What's the matter with you?"
What's the matter with me, thought Monk, is that you aren't going to snap out of this. You aren't going to act like the real Coffey. So somebody else is going to have to do it.
How much of this could Coffey see in Monk's face? Whatever he saw, Coffey reached a decision. He reached out and took the pistol from Monk's hand. Monk knew what that meant. Coffey had determined that he was unreliable. He was no longer with the SEALS. He may not be inside the galley with the civilians, but he was no longer part of the mission. Even though he knew Coffey was not himself, this hurt him worse than the pain in his leg, it knifed through him. Coffey's cutting me off, Coffey doesn't trust me.
The worst of it was, Monk knew Coffey was right not to trust him. Any commander who was taking actions like these could not expect Monk to obey his orders. Monk might be a SEAL, but he was a human being first, an American, a citizen, a person. A person who didn't collaborate with soldiers who meant to set off nuclear devices on their own authority, in order to destroy strangers who meant no one any harm.
Coffey went to the door of the galley, moved Schoenick aside, and addressed the civilians. "Everybody just stay calm. The situation is under control." Then he backed out of the room, closed the watertight door, and dogged it down. He looked at Schoenick. "If anybody touches this door, kill them." Since the only person who could touch the door was Monk, the meaning was pretty clear. Coffey had lost confidence in Monk's loyalty.
Coffey left the room, heading back to the sub bay, closing and sealing hatches behind him.
Inside the galley, they did the only thing they could do.
They talked to Schoenick through the door. "Schoenick," said Lindsey. "Your lieutenant is about to make a real bad career move."
Hippy was more direct. "The guy's crazier than a shithouse rat!"
Then the voices became a cacophony of pleading, demanding, explaining.
Schoenick paid no attention to the voices inside the galley. The only voice he heard was Monk's, there outside with him, as Monk leaned against the wall. "We're going to lose it, man," Monk said.
"Shut up!" said Schoenick.
Monk could see how torn up Schoenick was. Of all the men on the team, Monk knew that Schoenick was least able to make independent decisions. But this time he had to. "The shockwave will kill us. It'll crush this rig like a beer can."
"Shut up, man!" Schoenick demanded. "What're you talking about?"
"We got to stop him!"
"Shut up!"
Monk shut up. But now Bud's voice came clearly from inside the galley. "Schoenick, you don't have to follow orders when your commanding officer's out of his mind."
Inside the galley they had stopped yelling all at once. Now they were taking turns. Lindsey gave it another try. "Schoenick, listen, he's about to make war on an alien species, Schoenick, just when they're trying to make contact with us. Please!" No answer. Surely the silence on the other side was a good sign. She spoke softly to Bud. "I think I'm reaching him."
Bud shook his head. He didn't think so. He'd seen a lot of soldiers in his life, and he didn't think Schoenick was going to be persuaded very easily.
Then the wheel on the door began to turn. He was letting them out. "See?" said Lindsey.
The door opened. Only it wasn't Schoenick who came in. It was the tallest human on Deepcore. Jammer. And he was holding Schoenick's assault rifle.
"Is everybody OK?" he asked.
They acted like he had returned from the dead. They froze there, all of them, just looking at him. It was Hippy who finally acted. Grabbed the assault rifle out of his hands and charged through the door into the other room. Schoenick was lying on the deck, unconscious - Jammer must have taken him by surprise and put him out of commission - at least for the moment. Hippy pointed the gun at Monk, who was sitting on the deck, weak with pain.
Monk waved him away. "I'm the least of your problems," he said.
Bud had come through the door right behind Hippy. He put a hand on Hippy's shoulder to calm him down - Monk wasn't against them, Bud knew that.
"I'm all right," said Hippy.
Now he turn
ed back to the door where Jammer was standing, pretty much filling all the available space. He was the sweetest sight Bud had ever seen. Not just out of the coma, but standing up, looking like himself, looking fine. Our secret weapon - so damn secret we didn't even know we had it. The one guy Coffey didn't bother to lock up in the galley. "How you feeling, big guy?"
"OK, Bud. I just figured I was dead back there, when I saw that angel coming for me."
"Uh." Angel. Still another shape for the NTIs? "Yeah, OK." No time to explain to Jammer all that had happened since then. The guy already knew the only thing that mattered right now: which side he was on. "Yeah, why don't you tell us about it later."
Bud led the way out of the mess hall into the corridor. He ran down to the door leading into the sub bay. It was sealed. It wouldn't budge. "He's got it tied off with something," Bud said. So Coffey didn't trust even Schoenick to be able to keep them in. He must have been a hell of a soldier when his brain was in gear. He and Lindsey tried to open it, putting their whole strength into trying to turn the wheel. Didn't move. "We're not going to be able to budge it."
"Now what?" Lindsey asked. "This is the only door to sub bay."
Right. Right. They were trapped inside trimodule-C and the control module. Since the wreck, all the other hatches led to water.
So, if water's the only route to sub bay, somebody's going to have to swim. And since the water's so cold the only reason it doesn't freeze is the pressure, it better be somebody who can swim fast and knows right where to go. He ran back to the mess hall and dropped down the ladder to level one, into about two feet of water. Right under him was the emergency lockout hatch. It was designed for exactly this problem - a way out of the trimodule if they couldn't get to the moonpool. He opened it.
Just like the moonpool, the water was held down by the pressure of the air above it. Real good design, putting this here, Lindsey. Good thinking.
She was still with him. So were One Night and Catfish. "What are you doing?" Lindsey demanded. She knew exactly what he was doing, of course. He wasn't pulling off his boots to go wading.
"I'm going to free-swim to hatch six. I'm gonna get inside. Then I'm gonna open the door from the other side."
"Bud, this water's freezing," said Lindsey.
Not much he could do about that. All the heated suits were in the sub bay. "Then I guess you better wish me luck, huh?" It's got to be done, so why argue about how hard it's going to be?
"Wish us luck," corrected Catfish.
"You coming along?"
"Looks that way." It wasn't something Catfish wanted to do, but he was going to do it anyway.
Bud didn't know whether he wanted Catfish to come. Nice to have another man with him when he got there - if he got there. Pretty bad to have them both die if it didn't work. But it was Cat's decision, not his.
Catfish handed One Night his wallet and the chain he always wore around his neck. "Here, in case I don't die." He turned to Bud, who was stripping his coat and belt off. "Come on, Bud. Let's go, partner, I ain't got all day."
Bud heard the fear in his voice. I know the feeling, Cat.
Bud dropped down into the hatch, caught the rim, and hung there on his hands for a second. The water was so damn cold it knocked the breath out of him. But that meant they had no time to waste. Every second of this meant his body was going to get all the more convinced that it was dying and it'd start shutting down on him. He took one last look up at Lindsey, then took a deep breath and dropped down through.
There was enough light in the water to see - if he had been wearing a mask or helmet. When you get used to wearing something over your eyes all the time, you forget that human eyes were meant to work in air, not liquid. All Bud could see was bright blurs here and there; he was pretty sure which blur was his destination, but what if he was wrong?
No time to worry about that. He had to avoid tangles of cable and twisted steel, had to move through the water. He swam with all his strength. The harder he worked at it, the warmer his body would be. Big, powerful strokes. It took maybe forty seconds to reach the hatch, but it felt like he'd used up all the breath he ever took in his life. Cat was right with him. For a split second it felt like the hatch wasn't going to move - was this one of the ones that buckled and jammed in the crash? Then, with Catfish helping him, it came open. Dropped down.
Catfish backed away. That was right - Bud was the first one into the water, so he should be the first one to go up for air. Bud pulled himself through the opening.
They weren't home free yet. There was a lot of water inside. Was there any air at the top? Or just another hatch? Six feet straight up, and Bud found the air - a two-foot bubble of tetramix. Catfish splashed to the surface right after him, gasping and sputtering. "That was worse than I thought," said Catfish, "and I thought it was gonna be bad." Bud could hear it in the way he was breathing that swim took everything Catfish had. And still he had waited his turn through the hatch. Good man.
They reached up, tried the wheel on the hatch above them.
"Come on, yank on it," said Catfish.
This one was jammed. No way. And no time to keep trying it, either. The cold was going to get to them.
"Have to - have to go to the moonpool," Bud said. "It's the only way."
That meant an even longer swim, all the way under and back up into the pool. Catfish had just found out his limitations. "Can't make it, partner. Sorry."
"OK, Cat. You head on back."
Bud took a few quick breaths to hyperventilate, then dropped back down under the water. Catfish watched him go, disgusted with himself for not being in better shape, for letting Bud down. He slammed the heel of his fist into the wall of the module. If anything happens to Bud cause I'm not there...
Down under hatch six, Bud oriented himself and swam deeper, toward the moonpool entrance. The lights marked it clearly it was the garage door for the submersibles and the ROVs. Easy to see it, not so easy to get to it. Only trouble was, it was about nine miles ahead of him. No. No, just five strokes, six, seven. Getting colder, weaker. Push harder, get more heat into the muscles. I'm losing a pound a second under here. Got to recommend this as a weight-loss technique. A real incentive to exercise.
Wherever he could, he grabbed onto pipes and pulled himself along. Under the pool. Took only half his life. He swam upward. It'd be nice if he could get to the top silently, but there was no way in hell his body would let him do that. He splashed up, gasped for breath. But he was lucky. Coffey was making some noise of his own, sitting there on the deck, playing with the chain from the winch, passing it through his hands. It clicked in the gears overhead. Once the first air came into his lungs, Bud got control of himself, breathed silently. A couple more breaths. Then he swam over to where Cab One hung over the water. Out of Coffey's line of sight.
He reached up to one of the metal bars of the cradle, tried to pull himself up. His fingers were so cold they didn't want to respond. He gripped anyway, pulled himself up. It felt like he was ripping away sheets of muscle inside his arms. But he got up out of the water, pulled himself onto the deck beside the moonpool. He had never been so cold, so exhausted in his life. He wanted to rest, needed to. But he couldn't.
He looked around for the door. It was pretty clear. Given where Coffey was and where he was, he didn't have a chance of getting to the door without Coffey seeing him. And once Coffey saw him, he wouldn't have a chance at all. The man had a gun. Even if he hadn't, Coffey wasn't worn out and frozen from swimming in a T-shirt in sub-freezing water at twenty-one hundred feet. All this way, all this work, and he was no closer to opening the door than he had been when he was on the other side of it.
Coffey sat there, pulling on the winch chain, trying to keep from crying, not making it. Why was he crying? That wasn't rational, that suggested he wasn't in control. But he was in control, he'd done everything right, every single thing. He'd followed orders perfectly. But he didn't have any orders about what you do when you suddenly got a tentacle thicker than you
r body coming up out of the deep and you realize these guys have power that makes our stuff look silly except you got a nuclear warhead and a delivery system and you can take them out right now only you don't have any orders. There's nobody to tell you that this is the right thing, nobody to say, All right, Coffey. This is what's right for your country, this is what's right for us, so do it. Instead he had these other guys, these other civilians telling him not to, telling him he's crazy, well he wasn't crazy, he was maybe stressed, maybe a little bit of HPNS, but he was still functioning just fine because if he wasn't how did he get control of these people so easy? Only now he was down here and he was alone. Why did you go off and leave me when I needed you? I never would have left you, never, I was with you forever, just you and me, and you married that asshole and when it came right down to it you preferred him and I wasn't worth shit to you and I made Darrel Woodward into a brain-damaged moron for you, Mom, I did everything you wanted and you left me down here all alone in the water with this goddam warhead and I'm supposed to know whether to send it down into hell or not.
In the control module, One Night and Jammer were busy taping Schoenick to a chair. They knew enough about SEALS to know that if they didn't tie him down pretty tight, he could wipe his way through them with his bare hands in ten seconds flat. The only one there who would know how to stop him was Monk, and even if they could trust him to help, he was crippled up with his broken leg.
Lindsey was at the video monitor, watching the sub bay. The same view Coffey had a while ago when he heard Lindsey and Hippy talking about modifying Big Geek. She'd been staring at Coffey, trying to figure out what was going on in his mind. Everything was ready to go but still he wasn't going. Maybe he'd change his mind. Maybe he'd come back to his senses, realize that he just couldn't nuke a bunch of peaceful NTIs with no provocation whatsoever.
The Abyss Page 28