by Bob Finley
From his higher vantage point, he looked across the cavern and noticed some kind of activity up near the penthouse. It was too far away to be sure, but it looked like there was some kind of fight going on up there. And, whoever that was up on the penthouse porch looked a whole lot like a woman. At least, the body language did.
"Janese!" he blurted. But then, what was going on out on the catwalk that had her so intently transfixed? It had to be Marc. The rest of the group was with him, and she wouldn’t be that concerned about anybody else in this miserable death trap. What were they doing? Then he caught a glimpse of erratic but hard-to-see movement up against the roof itself. The TRAP team, of course. None of the guards would be skilled enough to move around up there. He watched intently for a moment. Whatever movement there was seemed to be in just one direction...the penthouse.
"Coming down!" he called to Wojecki, and jumped from the top decking. He’d remembered just in time to jump, not dive as he usually did, because of the VIKING's proximity to the pool’s edge. As it was, he splashed into deep water, anyway, but within two or three strokes was in water he could stand up in.
"Come on! Hurry!" he said urgently to Wojecki, and started toward the rendezvous point with his group.
"What’s wrong?!" Cy surged after him, alarmed at the sudden rush.
"We have to get to the penthouse. Quick!"
“Why?”
"‘Cause I think the last bus is leaving, and not everybody knows where the ticket window is!"
Cy had more questions he’d like to have asked, but charging through deep water with a rifle held over his head didn't leave him enough breath to ask them. So he just concentrated on not being left behind.
When they rejoined the rest of the hostages, Kim cut off their explanations of why they hadn’t found a safe passage.
"It doesn’t matter anymore. What does matter right now is that we get to the penthouse just as fast as we can. Don't ask questions. Just do it!" And when he immediately wheeled around and headed in that direction, nobody argued with him. They just fell in behind him and forced their bodies through the rising water with all the speed they could muster.
It took two or three precious minutes for them to get to where they could see the penthouse porch, and to be sure that the people up there weren’t some of Jambou’s thugs. Kim was the first to begin calling out to them, but then everybody quickly joined in, yelling as if it were an emotional release for them to be doing something that didn’t include sneaking and hiding. Kim saw Marc when he recognized them. And when the elevator began its descent, he knew his boss had to be the one bringing it down to them. With the water getting a little shallower on the back side of the cavern, they picked up their speed and arrived just before the elevator.
"We’re glad you could drop in," Kim quipped to his boss.
"We’re glad you all came by. I wish you could stay, but we were just leaving," Justin replied. "But, if you’d like, you could come up for just a moment."
"What’s up," Kim asked quietly as the rest of the hostages were clambering up into the elevator. Justin had stopped it so that the floor was just above water level.
"The clock has just about run down," Marc said just as quietly. He didn't want to upset the others any more than necessary. So, to break the news to them gradually, he filled them in on Jambou's escape as the elevator began to rise. Bill Layton was the first to understand the implications.
"How far away from here can he get before Leo can't pick up his transmissions anymore? When he gets out of range won’t that trigger the nuclear explosions?"
"I don’t know," Marc admitted. "But that was the good news." The looks on their faces made him hurry on out of compassion. "The bad news is that the minisub he escaped in seems to have developed some kind of mechanical problem." No one asked the obvious question. It would only confirm their own worst fears. "The George Washington says the minisub is in a power dive that will most likely take it beyond its crush depth."
"You mean he got away, but he's going to die because of a mechanical problem?!" Wojecki interrupted.
"Looks like it," Marc answered.
"When? I mean, how soon?" Frank Sheppard asked, understandably upset.
Marc Justin looked at his wristwatch. When he raised his eyes back to theirs, they were all watching him. He sighed.
"Just about now," he said, tiredness etching his face. He saw their shoulders sag and shared their despair.
"No, he’s not," Kim said evenly.
Marc looked at his assistant. He saw, not despair, but calm assurance.
"What do you mean? Do you know something we don’t know?"
Kim smiled grimly and reached behind him. He pulled out the little magic box that he and Wojecki had built.
"You know that Cy and I built this communicator to keep Leo from electrocuting us." He held it out so they could all see.
"Yeah? And?" Justin prompted, sensing just the slightest beginning of hope.
"Well, that’s not all I programmed it to do." Now, Kim’s eyes were alight. He was in his favorite department. Toys.
"What else will it do?" Janese Cramerton chimed in.
Kim looked a little sheepish. "Cy didn’t know about this." He looked at Wojecki. "I wasn’t absolutely sure I could trust you. I'm sorry."
Wojecki didn't seem fazed by the confession. "Hey, no problem. I didn’t trust you all the way, either." They both smiled, relieved.
"We are a little short on time, here?" Justin reminded them.
"Sorry," Kim said, though he didn’t really sound like he was. "I used Yoko’s computing and communications capabilities...Yoko’s the ship's onboard computer," he explained to the blank looks around him, "to intercept the signals Jambou's chest-implanted transmitter was sending to Leo... to the computer. Then I asked Yoko to write a short program to analyze and duplicate the tonality of the signals. Also, because I had already routed any signals that originated inside the mountain through Yoko and then back to Leo, to fool him into ‘thinking’ that there had been no interruption of signals, and therefore no breach of security, not only could I delay and escape from Leo's electrocutions, I also had a delay mechanism that would give us a few seconds to play with if Jambou's heart transmission should completely stop. Like, if he died."
They were all still listening intently, trying to follow the convoluted tale.
"So, if Jambou actually dies, Yoko senses the missing transmission and kicks in her own duplication of it, so Leo never misses a beat. Right?" Justin finished for him.
Kim glared at him. "You’re stealing my thunder, bossman," he complained.
"So, even if Jambou is dead, the computer on the ship makes Leo think he’s alive? And the nuclear bomb...bombs...don’t explode?" Janese summarized.
"You got it!" Kim smiled broadly. "Unless, of course..." His face just as quickly collapsed into somberness.
"Unless, what?" they all chorused together.
"Unless...something goes wrong."
"Like what?" Sheppard asked anxiously.
"You don't want to know," Justin interrupted. "There’re lots of things that can go wrong with any plan. Right now, though, we're going to assume that Kim...and Cy...knew what they were doing, and we’re going to work on getting out of..."
He'd always wonder what small mistake had caused the guard to miss a fairly easy head shot. But at the instant that the rock chips exploded against his left ear, all he could think about was ducking. Then several shots arrived almost at the same time. If it hadn’t been for Jambou’s paranoia in building an elevator cage that...unless a lucky bullet just happened to sneak through one of the small openings in the heavy mesh...could withstand small arms fire from the cavern floor, they would have been sitting ducks and a massacre would have ensued. As it was, the flying debris from the rock wall and the whining ricochet of frustrated bullets were enough to keep their lust for adventure sated for a while. The roof of the elevator was less than fifteen feet from the penthouse porch when a bullet shot the elevator
motor dead. The cage jerked violently to a bouncing stop. Had he been a few seconds earlier answering the fire, the TRAP member supposedly covering their passage would have saved the day. Instead, though he drove the assailants back into their tunnel across the cavern, the occupants of the elevator were still exposed. His call for help brought a rush of bodies from the penthouse. With the firepower directed at the far tunnel, the next sniper to stick any part of his body out was guaranteed to lose it.
Strickland quickly organized a rescue party to rappel down to the cage roof and extract the occupants. As the last one was scrambling over the railing, a sudden, stunning blast of heat assailed them. In less than a second, every person on the porch was seared with first degree burns to whatever skin was exposed. A shimmering cloud of stinking, choking smoke and vapors blasted across the ceiling of the cavern and rolled in on them like a shock wave from a bomb blast. To a person, they whirled to stare in the direction from which the heat had come. And were the first to ever witness a lava eruption from inside a volcano.
A river of angry, roiling red-and-yellow lava burst out of the tunnel across the cavern, four feet high and ten feet wide. Those of Jambou’s guards who ran terrified before it only got as far as the first dozen steps of the curving stone staircase before they were overrun and devoured by the seething mass. The clothing of the last ones out of the tunnel mouth burst into flame, as did their hair. They spun, stumbled and fell, screaming, before the onslaught of the 2,000 degree river of magma. It majestically descended the steps, taking them two and three at a time, and dripped in great gouts like hot, thick molasses over the edges, falling in a glowing waterfall to the cavern floor below. As the first of it struck the cold sea water lapping the back wall, it erupted with a thundering roar into steam, as it boiled the water on contact.
"Quick, get inside," Strickland ordered and began shoving bodies through the door. As soon as everybody was in, he turned to them. He was obviously back in command.
"Okay. This place is gonna go any second. There's only one way out, and that's the way we came in." He pointed generally in the direction of the hostages, who were all huddled up together. "Tyrone, Monk, take point. First one there readies the gear. Hostages in the rockin’ chair. Everybody else brings up the rear. Alright, listen up." His tone of voice affected even the civilians. "We’re gonna have to take these people out with us. There’s enough of us to buddy-breathe all of ‘em. We won't be able to cover much distance, but we’ve got to get clear enough for a pick-up, if there is one." He paused.
"Now. You civilians. Any of you ever dived before?" Janese, Wojecki and Kim raised their hands. "Okay. You know how to buddy breathe? Good. The rest of you. You’ll be assigned to somebody. Do exactly what he tells you, even if you don’t think you can. If you don’t, you die. Is that clear?" There were nods from scared faces. "Alright, then, let’s move out!"
"Hold up," Justin said, loudly enough for everyone to hear him. He didn't want half of them off doing their thing.
Strickland turned to him. "What is it?" he demanded shortly.
"Two things: there’s a short-wave radio over there," he nodded toward the console. "You can call in help so there’ll be a pick-up waiting for you, and it won’t take but a second to do it." Strickland wasted no time. He looked at one of his men and pointed at the radio. The soldier jumped to it, obviously familiar with the equipment.
"Second: I’m not going with you." There was an instantaneous roar of objections, especially from Kim and Janese. He raised both hands to silence them. He looked at Strickland, who seemed to be expecting the explanation.
"I won’t leave my ship," he said, simply. "I’ve got to try to get her out of here."
"I'm going with him," Kim stridently interjected.
"No, you’re not," Justin said firmly. "These people are our clients. We're not going to desert them. It's up to you to get them out and home safely. I’m holding you responsible."
"Marc, you...!"
"I said, no. I won’t argue about it. Now, your job is here. Mine is," he gestured over his shoulder, "out there." The pain on his friend’s face was hard to bear. He knew he had to be firm. He walked over and put one hand on the smaller man's shoulder. "Just do it. Okay?" Several seconds passed. Finally, still holding his boss’s gaze, Kim quietly said, "Okay. But you’ll find her motor running and keeping station with what used to be the wall of the pool." Marc nodded his thanks. Kim, pressed for time now, quickly told Marc about the loss of the SQUID.
“Just as well,” Marc reassured him. “We’re too shorthanded to take her out, anyway.”
The soldier had finished with the radio and rejoined the group. Strickland turned to Marc, appraising him.
"You sure?"
Marc nodded. Major Strickland snapped a quick salute, which Marc returned before he had time to think. Old habits die hard.
"Good luck."
"You, too. Get my people out. And thanks." The group started to file quickly out of the room and into the hallway.
"By the way," Strickland said over his shoulder as he was the last one to reach the door.
Marc turned. "Yeah?"
"Out there on the catwalk?"
"Yeah?"
"And the elevator?"
"Yeah?"
"And now, this?"
"Yeah, what?!"
"I'm gettin’ tired of rescuing your butt." He grinned and was gone. Marc Justin smiled and shook his head. He started for the door to the cavern. Then, on second thought, he came back, picked up the daypack, zipped it shut, and shouldered the load of diamonds.
"Never know when a little mad money might come in handy," he said to no one in particular. He recrossed the room, wrestled the heavy door open and stepped out onto the porch.
The sulfuric fumes and heat were so bad at this height in the cavern, and the smoke so thick, that he dug into a back pocket and tied a bandanna around his face.
"Some outlaw," he thought to himself. "Stolen diamonds in my saddlebags and no horse to get out of town on."
He thought about trying to climb down the elevator housing but the metal was already so hot he could hardly touch it. He looked down. The water was rising fast...he guessed it must be twenty feet deep down there now...if he could see it clearly.
He knew that, if the metal of the elevator was too hot to touch, the metal girders of the ceiling superstructure must be also. Besides, if any had shaken loose, eighty feet was a long way to fall. Even sixty feet, if the water had actually risen that much. He looked around, trying to think ‘outside the box’. He walked all around the porch, carefully studying everything he saw, trying to convert it to his needs.
His eyes fell on the fiber optic cables that Janese had climbed the wall to reach, so she could install Kim's magic box. And he remembered that there'd been an overhead crane above the pool where the VIKING lay. Overhead cranes took a heavy duty electrical cable. And all cables converged on the penthouse, from whence all blessings flowed. He looked up over the penthouse door, and then along the wall toward the elevator. There! A bunch of cables snaked through the penthouse wall in a thick bundle. One of them ran down to the elevator. Several more shot off in different directions. But one thick one, rubber-coated, pointed straight across the cavern in the direction of the crane. And no good electrician would waste cable. He'd run it in as straight a line as he could to its terminator. He dashed back into the penthouse and searched the walls for electrical switches. Sure enough, it was there. Labeled ‘CRANE’. Since he could assume it was in the ‘UP’ position, he flipped the lever to its opposite position and had the pleasure of hearing power hum inside the box. Quickly regaining the porch, he climbed up on the railing, reached over and took hold of the elevator housing that was bolted to the wall, and shimmied up it to the level of the ceiling ten feet above. In the gloom of the smoke hanging up under the ceiling, he traced out what he hoped was the crane’s electrical supply cable and, without another thought, grabbed it in both hands. He took a deep breath and, coughing, wished he ha
dn't. And swung out over...nothing.
His passage across the ceiling wasn't easy. Girders, ducting, and other maintenance paraphernalia kept obstructing and hindering his progress. But, since he had nowhere else to go and nothing else to do, he doggedly kept at it. The heat made his hands sweat so that he almost fell twice. And some of the metal girders were so hot that he already had formed and broken blisters on the palms of his hands. But going back wasn’t a very attractive option, and quitting wasn't an option at all, so he kept on keeping on.
And, finally, he was there. Two pairs of wire cables dropped away from his roost toward the water below...and his ship...he could barely see its shape through the smoke, lying there, waiting for him. A large metal hook should have been at the far end of the cables, but he didn't see one. Then, through the fog of his exhaustion, he realized that the water must have risen so high that the hook, which would normally have been lying on the cavern floor by now, must actually be under water. Through the haze and heat he could barely see the Squid where she’d slipped her mooring lines and grounded herself inextricably across the cavern. There would be no time to retrieve her.
He hooked one leg over a strut, while he unzipped his coveralls to the waist. Then he hung upside down, holding the bag of diamonds in his teeth by the strap, and stripped off his tee shirt. Reversing the preparations, he slipped the daypack back on as best he could and, wrapping the tee shirt tightly around one of the wire cables, he gripped it with both hands, wiped his dripping forehead on his sleeves, and slipped his leg off the strut.
He knew he was yelling at the top of his lungs on the way down, but he didn't really remember anything else. Except that it was fast! He hit the water shoulders first, with his legs in the air, and hoped he was over deep water and not the cavern floor. Not that it would matter, he remembered. The water there must be four fathoms by now.