The Third Gate jl-1

by Lincoln Child

  Five minutes later he was fast asleep, dreaming that he was standing atop a pyramid, alone and marooned, surrounded by an endless sea of heaving, steaming quicksand.

  9

  The following morning passed in a blur of activity. Logan met Rush for breakfast, as agreed. Afterward, Rush led him back to Green, where he was officially processed, issued an ID card, and given a twenty-minute orientation by a no-nonsense woman with a Home Counties accent. The entire process was efficient and clinical, with an almost military precision: clearly, this was a machine oiled and streamlined over many previous missions. At the end of the orientation, he was asked to hand over his cell phone, being informed he’d get it back at the conclusion of his stay. Once you’re on board with the project, you might find it hard to get calls out with any degree of certainty, Rush had written in his introductory e-mail. Now Logan understood why: Stone and his fanatical obsession with secrecy. Although it seemed unlikely that anybody’s cell phone would get a signal in such a remote wasteland.

  “You’ll be meeting with Tina after lunch,” Rush told him as they stepped back out into the narrow corridor.

  “Tina?”

  “Dr. Christina Romero. She’s the head Egyptologist. She’ll fill in the rest of the blanks, get you up to speed. She can be a bit prickly at times, and she has very strong opinions about looting grave goods, but she’s the best at what she does.” He hesitated a moment, as if about to say something. “Meanwhile, I thought you might like to see the work in process.”

  “Sure,” Logan replied. “Especially if it’ll give me some idea what I’m doing out here.”

  The two made their way past more offices, labs, and equipment sheds. Logan quickly became disoriented in the mazelike interiors. They passed lab-coated scientists, a machinist in coveralls, and-surprisingly-a burly, bearded man sporting boots and a cowboy hat.

  “Roustabout,” Rush said, as if that explained everything.

  They crossed through another pontoon-supported walkway, encased in Mylar and mosquito netting, floating just inches above the surface of the swamp, and the doctor pushed past another makeshift wall of vertical plastic panels. Logan followed suit-then stopped abruptly. Beyond lay a vast room. Along one yellow wall was a rank of lockers, perhaps two dozen, painted battleship gray. Along the opposite wall was a bank of instrumentation: rack-mounted servers, oscilloscopes, what appeared to be highly sophisticated depth finders and sonar devices, and a dozen still-more-exotic pieces of equipment. Leads, power cables, and data conduits snaked underfoot, all converging at the center of the huge space, where a large circular hole had been cut in the floor. This well-like hole was surrounded by a railing and more instrumentation.

  “This is Yellow,” Rush said, waving a hand, a note of pride in his voice. “The face of the dig.”

  He led the way toward the center of the room. Logan followed, picking his way carefully over the sea of cabling. Several people were arrayed around the central hole: some monitoring instruments, others in dive suits sitting on benches and conversing in low tones. A woman in a nurse’s uniform sat at a small medical station, typing on a laptop.

  Logan approached the hole and peered in gingerly. It was at least eight feet in diameter. He could see the brownish-green surface of the Sudd not eighteen inches beneath his feet. Its miasmic vapor rose like a fetid breath to his nostrils. Two ladders descended into its murky depths, along with several thick cables.

  Rush nodded toward the hole. “Our interface with the swamp. We call it the Maw.”

  “The Maw?”

  Rush smiled grimly. “Rather appropriate, don’t you think?”

  Logan had to agree that it was.

  On the far side of the Maw was a huge flat-panel monitor, connected to a bank of CPUs. On it was displayed something that looked to Logan like a cross between a chessboard and some kind of alien lottery ticket: a grid of squares, ten by ten, in a variety of colors. Some of the squares contained odd symbols; others, small logos and lines of text. Others were empty.

  Beside this monitor was an industrial rolling ladder, the kind used for stocking warehouse shelves. Standing atop it, hands folded over a barrel-like chest, stood a man, cigar in mouth despite the NO SMOKING signs posted everywhere. He was bald, his dome shining brilliantly under the large surgical-bay lights, and he’d clearly spent so many years in the sun that his skin was the color of chewing tobacco. Although he was no more than five feet tall, he radiated confidence and authority.

  Dr. Rush made his way around the Maw and stopped at the base of the ladder. “Frank?” he said to the man atop it. “There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

  The man on the safety ladder looked down at them. Then he peered carefully around the room, scrutinizing everything, as if to assure himself everything was under control. Then at last he descended the ladder, puffing on the cigar.

  “Jeremy, this is Frank Valentino,” Rush said. “Dive and dig site honcho.”

  Valentino took out the cigar, looked meditatively at the soggy end, then put it back in his mouth and held out a meaty paw.

  “Frank, this is Jeremy Logan,” Rush continued. “He arrived with me last night.”

  Valentino’s look grew slightly more interested. “Yeah, I heard of you,” he said. His voice was remarkably deep and free of accent. “The spook doctor.”

  For a moment, Logan stood utterly still. Then, quite abruptly, he spread his palms outward and leaned toward Valentino. “Boo!” he said.

  Valentino shrank back. “Madonna,” he murmured, crossing himself. Out of the corner of his eye, Logan saw Rush suppress a smile.

  In the background, behind the low chatter of the engineers and divers, Logan could hear the squawk of an occasional electrified voice coming over a radio on the far side of the large monitor. It sounded again: “Romeo Foxtrot Two, on descent.”

  “Romeo Foxtrot, roger,” said a man seated at the radio console. “Your signal is five by five.”

  Rush gestured at the Maw. “Until the actual tomb is located, this is where all the exploratory and cartographical work is based.”

  “But the Sudd is so vast,” Logan said. “How did you know where to establish the site?”

  “Tina Romero can explain. Suffice it to say that the location was initially established as a square, several miles to a side. Scholarship and, ah-other considerations-narrowed that down to one mile.”

  “One square mile,” Logan repeated, shaking his head in admiration.

  Rush directed Logan’s attention to the huge flat panel. “What you see there is a reproduction of the ground along the bottom of the Sudd: the square mile beneath us, broken into a ten-by-ten grid. Using a GPS satellite to ensure pinpoint accuracy, we’re exploring each square in turn. Divers go down to scour the site, explore any hits.”

  “Romeo Foxtrot, Echo Bravo,” said the radioman. “Give me an update.”

  After a moment, the radio squawked again. “Romeo Foxtrot. At minus thirty feet and descending.”

  “Bubble status?”

  “Eighty-two percent.”

  “Watch that bubble, Romeo Foxtrot.”

  “Roger.”

  “What you’re hearing are communications from the current dive team,” Rush explained. “They dive in pairs for safety’s sake. And they use special equipment to maintain their orientation. You can’t imagine what it’s like to descend into the Sudd-completely black, the mud and quicksand around you like a suffocating blanket, no way of telling up from down…” He paused.

  “You talked about scouring the site,” Logan said. “About exploring hits.”

  “Yes,” Rush said, glancing back at him. “You see, this was once the site of a prehistoric volcano. Even in Narmer’s day, the volcano was long gone. But traces of it remained behind in the form of subterranean lava pipes. Our belief is that the pharaoh selected a suitable lava tube for his tomb and had his workers expand and fortify it as necessary. Once it was sealed, the encroaching muck and water of the Sudd would do the rest. Anyway, whe
n we first move to a new section of the Grid, the thing that must be done initially is to blast away the accretion of silty deposits from the swamp bed.”

  “That’s Big Bertha’s job,” Valentino said with a smile. He jerked one thumb over his shoulder, where-in the shadowy depths of the hangarlike space-Logan could make out a hulking machine that looked half Zamboni, half snowmobile.

  “Narmer thought his tomb would remain hidden away for all time,” Rush said. “But he could never have imagined the technology we’re bringing to bear-remote-sensing radar, scuba gear, global positioning devices.”

  “This is Romeo Foxtrot,” the harsh metallic voice intruded. “The bubble mechanism’s acting a bit flaky. Status stands at forty-three percent.”

  The radioman looked over at Valentino, who nodded. “Depth?” he said into the radio.

  “Thirty-five feet.”

  “Keep a close watch,” said the radioman. “Abort if it drops below twenty-five percent.”

  “Roger that.”

  “Big Bertha does the scouring,” Rush resumed. “Then, the grid square is examined for hits-holes or tunnels in the swamp bed. If there aren’t any, the square is marked as explored and we move to the next square on the Grid. If tunnels are found, they’re flagged as Search for the next team of divers.”

  “Might find a sinkhole,” said Valentino. “Might find nothing. But we got to check each one. Sometimes the tunnels, they branch out. Then we have to map it-map it all.”

  Rush nodded at the monitor again. “And the results are recorded on that-and on the main cartographic display in the Operations Center-with archaeological precision.”

  “Found anything yet?”

  Rush shook his head.

  “And how much of the Grid have you explored so far?”

  “Forty-five percent,” Valentino replied. “By tonight, Madonna willing, fifty percent.”

  “That’s fast work,” Logan said. “I had assumed-”

  He was interrupted by a loud voice over the radio. “This is Echo Bravo. There’s a problem with my regulator.”

  “Check the purge valve,” the man at the radio said.

  “I did. Nothing.”

  Logan glanced quickly at Rush.

  “It’s probably nothing,” the doctor said. “As you can imagine, diving in these conditions is tough on equipment. In any case, the respirators are designed to fail open-even if one malfunctions it will keep delivering air.”

  “Echo Bravo to base,” came the voice. “I’m not getting air!”

  Immediately, Valentino walked over to the radio and took the handset himself. “This is Valentino. Use your backup second stage.”

  “I am! I am! I’m getting nothing. I think the dust cap is blocked!” Even over the radio, the panic in the man’s voice was evident.

  “Romeo Foxtrot,” Valentino said into the radio, “do you see Echo Bravo? His regulator’s malfunctioning and his octopus is apparently detached. You need to share air. Do you see him? Over!”

  “Romeo Foxtrot here,” came the other amplified voice. “No sign of him. I think he’s purging, heading topside-”

  “Oh, Christ,” said Rush. “Forsythe is panicking. Forgetting the rules.” He turned to the nurse. “Get a crash cart and an emergency team here-right now. And bring the water seal.”

  “What’s the problem?” Logan asked.

  “If he remembers his basic training, nothing. But if he panics, holds his breath as he surfaces…” Rush fell silent a moment. “For every thirty-three feet you descend, the air in your lungs loses half its volume to pressure. They were at thirty-five feet at last report. If he surfaces with all that air in him-”

  “It will expand to twice its size,” Logan said.

  “And rupture his lungs.” Grim faced, Rush hurried to the medical station, where the nurse was talking rapidly into a phone.

  10

  They gathered around the dark, yawning circle of the Maw: tense, tight-lipped. At Valentino’s clipped order, additional lights were snapped on overhead, throwing the shivering, quaking surface below into sharp relief. As Logan stared down at it, it seemed to him that the Sudd was a living thing, its brownish surface the skin of some vast beast, and that their perching on it like this was an act of monumental folly…

  And then one of the cables leading down into the mire jerked spasmodically, and a strange gargling noise sounded over the radio.

  Valentino ran back to the transmitting station. “Echo Bravo? Echo Bravo! ”

  “Romeo Foxtrot here,” came the disembodied voice. “Still no sign of him. It’s black as hell down here, can’t see a thing-”

  With a clatter, two white-clad medics appeared at the entrance to Yellow, each pushing large carts full of medical equipment.

  There was another jerk on the cable as the radio sounded again. “Romeo Foxtrot to base, I see him. I’ve got hold of him. Surfacing now.”

  Suddenly, the mottled surface of water and decayed vegetation began to churn and heave. A moment later, a black-gloved hand abruptly broke the surface, grasping a rung of one of the ladders. This was followed by a neoprene hood and mask. Despite the air of crisis, Logan was momentarily arrested by the strangeness of the image: the emerging diver seemed like an insect, struggling to break free from some primordial ooze.

  Beside him, Dr. Rush had been waiting, tense and silent, like a coiled spring. Now he dashed forward and-with the help of one of the medical technicians-began to free the man from the Sudd’s grip. The diver had his arm around a second neoprene-clad man, who was struggling weakly. The two were pulled up out of the Maw and onto the floor of the Staging Area. Both were covered head to foot with matter the consistency of oatmeal. The room suddenly reeked of decay and dead fish.

  “Hose them down,” Valentino ordered.

  But even as a team rushed to blast the muck from the divers, Dr. Rush was shifting the injured man to a waiting stretcher. He plucked the mask and hood from his face, then-with a scalpel-slashed the neoprene suit open from neck to navel. The man moaned and thrashed on the stretcher, bloody foam flecking his lips.

  Quickly, Rush placed a stethoscope on the man’s bare chest.

  “He panicked,” the other diver said as he came over, wiping his face and hair with a towel. “A rookie mistake. But diving in that shit, you forget-”

  Rush raised a hand for silence. He moved the stethoscope around the chest, listening. His movements were jerky, almost violent. Then he straightened. “Extravasation of air,” he said. “Resulting in pneumothorax.”

  “Doctor,” said the nurse, “we can take him to Medical, where the-”

  “There’s no time!” Rush snapped as he pulled on a pair of latex gloves. The man on the stretcher twitched, clawing at his throat, gargling inarticulately.

  Rush turned toward the medics. “A needle aspiration would be insufficient. Our only option is a thoracoscopy. Give me the chest tube, stat!”

  Logan looked on with mingled surprise and apprehension. Up to this point, Ethan Rush had been the epitome of calm assurance. But this-the sudden, almost frantic movements, the impatience and barked orders-was a Rush he had not seen before.

  While one of the medics turned to his crash cart, Rush swabbed an area beneath the diver’s left arm with iodine and a topical anesthetic, and then-with another swipe of the scalpel-made a two-inch incision between the ribs. “Hurry up with that chest tube!” he said over his shoulder.

  The medic brought it over, unwrapping it from the sterile covering. Rush knelt before the struggling man and carefully threaded it into the incision he had made. He checked the placement, grunted, then rose.

  “Chest drain,” he rapped.

  Another medic trotted over, pushing a floor stand that held a white-and-blue plastic device that, to Logan, looked like a blood-pressure monitor on steroids. It had several vertical gauges, and two clear plastic tubes led away from its upper housing.

  “Suction-control stopcock?” Rush barked.

  “On.”

 
; “Fill water seal to two millimeters.”

  “Yes, Doctor.”

  As the medic added water to the device, Logan saw the reservoir chamber turn blue. Meanwhile, Rush attached one of the plastic tubes to the line inserted into the injured diver’s chest. Logan glanced over at the diver: his struggles were weaker now, his movements erratic.

  “Catheter in place,” Rush said. “Initiating suction. Setting pressure at minus twenty cm H 2 O.” He snapped a switch on the device, then began turning a stopcock on the unit’s housing. Instantly, the liquid in the suction control chamber began to bubble. Rush turned the stopcock farther; the bubbling increased. The tube leading from the incision in the diver’s side began to fill with mingled water and blood.

  “If we can get the fluid out of the thoracic cavity quickly enough, the lungs might reinflate,” Rush told the medical tech. “There’s no time to operate.”

  The large room fell silent except for the hum of the machine and the bubbling of water draining from the tube.

  Rush looked from the man on the stretcher to the water seal and back again in growing agitation. “He’s becoming cyanotic,” he said. “Increase vacuum pressure to negative fifty mmHg.”

  “But such a high level-”

  Rush rounded on the tech. “Damn it, just do it.” Then, walking briskly around the stretcher, Rush opened the now-motionless diver’s mouth and began administering artificial respiration. Fifteen seconds passed, then thirty. And then, quite suddenly, the diver’s limbs jerked; he coughed up blood and water and then took a deep, ragged breath.

  Slowly, Rush straightened. He looked at the diver, then at the water seal. “Dial it back to negative twenty,” he murmured.

  He glanced around at the assembled faces, then pulled off the gloves. “Keep an eye on the collection chamber,” he told the nurse. “I’ll go prep medical for a thorough evaluation.” And without another word, he turned on his heel and strode out of the Staging Area.

  A s lunchtime approached, Logan found that his feet-he’d been wandering around the facility, trying to get his bearings-had brought him unbidden to what appeared to be the medical center. If there were really only a hundred and fifty people on the project, Medical seemed to him larger than necessary-until he recalled how far they were from any kind of help.