The Devil's Trinity

by Michael Parker

  Helen could see a series of illuminated digits on a screen. Below these was a combination wheel, similar to those found on safes. Beside the wheel was a red button.

  “The bombs that Marsh placed beneath the sea for us are the frontline of our war against the unbelievers, the Great Satan of America and the heretics who persecute Islam and the prophet, Mohamed.”

  His eyes glazed over and Helen realised he was switching mentally from his Western, democratised character to that of his terrorist masters in their Middle East hideouts. It was a sudden metamorphosis that Helen found both intriguing and appalling.

  “When I key in the correct figures,” he went on, pointing to the panel, “a lock is released. This will allow me to arm the bombs and commence a countdown to their firing. But to arm them, a satellite has to be in position above us. The computer behind this panel transmits a command to the satellite which will then arm all three bombs simultaneously by digital signal. It is vitally important that the bombs are all armed at precisely the same moment. Once the arming has been completed, I can then begin the countdown sequence by pressing this red button.” He reached up and touched the red button.

  Suddenly he felt a pain ring itself around his heart and he fell forward, clutching his chest. Helen instinctively made a move towards him, but stopped herself. Khan straightened and turned away from the console.

  “Once that button had been pressed,” he muttered breathlessly, “there is nothing on this earth that can stop the countdown. Victory will be ours.”

  Helen felt herself weaken and she began to shake uncontrollably. She was in the company of one of the most evil men on earth and she felt powerless to stop him. She leaned against the desk for support before she collapsed and felt something bulky press against her side. She glanced down at it and saw it was a heavy, paperweight cast in bronze.

  It was the Challenger.

  In that moment an uncountable number of things tumbled through Helen’s mind with such speed that she was unable to find time for cogent argument. She picked up the paperweight and hurled it with all her might towards the screen

  Khan ducked instinctively and put his hands up, crying out as he did so. The paperweight flew past his head and impacted on the glass. The screen immediately disintegrated with an implosive ‘plop’, and a fine, grey dust billowed out from the scarred and jagged gap.

  Khan’s face fell apart. He couldn’t believe what had just happened. He kept looking at the smashed monitor and then at Helen, his uncomprehending expression not changing.

  Suddenly, Helen felt very afraid, expecting him to hurl himself at her and beat her savagely in his blind fury. But unexpectedly, Khan’s expression changed. He seemed to relax and stood up straight. He reached up to the door, pushed it shut and locked it.

  “You know, my dear. We men still have a lot to learn.” He walked toward her. “I’m afraid my ego got the better of me. But not to worry, it’s only a monitor. It can be replaced.”

  He saw the look of dismay on Helen’s face. “And we also have a back-up,” he said. “It would be insane not to.”

  He took her arm and led her towards the cabin door. Pulling open the door he looked at her.

  “Now, go back to your cabin and stay there. If you become too much of a trial, I will have Malik deal with you. Do you understand?”

  He pushed her out and closed the door. Then he leaned back against it as the pain began to assail his chest. He staggered towards the desk where his tablets were and prayed to Allah that he would live to complete his glorious intifada against the great Satan, America.

  Helen found herself out on the windswept deck wondering if it had indeed really happened. The surf lifted itself above the handrails and drove into her. She felt cold and miserable as the ship heaved beneath her.

  “To have faith and hope is to survive,” she had told Marsh. And now it was all in vain.

  She looked at the grey, beckoning sea and pushed the thought from her mind.

  *

  Marsh sat slumped in his seat, the agony of despair and hopelessness weighing on him like a physical burden. He stared at the instrument panel without seeing it. The images in his mind were not those in front of him, but dark, coalescing images of revenge and despair. He wanted to reach up and tear the black heart from Hakeem Khan, from Malik, from Batista, from them all. But he could not; he had no hope. Even while his heart beat strongly within him, he knew this would be the end. He lifted his head and breathed in a sigh of deep despair and closed his eyes. Now there was only blackness where there should have been light.

  Beneath the dark waters he imagined the warmth of the sun in his mind; its caress like the touch of a woman. He rolled his head back and imagined the fragrance of flowers, of new mown grass, all offering a pleasure as tangible and apposite as the fear now crawling round in his belly.

  He blinked and shut the hallucinatory images from his mind, bringing it to bear on the dreadful predicament he was in. He knew there was no way out of his prison and he knew that there was no way Khan would return to rescue him from his misery. He was cocooned in an environment that was designed to support life yet ironically; it was holding him in a deadly embrace and eventually he would die.

  Marsh wondered what death would be like. Would he succumb to insanity before death took him? Would he grow weary and eventually suffocate in his own, exhaled carbon dioxide? Would he just fall asleep and not wake? Would he be given the last, immeasurable pleasure of being with Helen, even if only in a dream?

  He shook his head vigorously and snapped out of it and began to apply his mind to the problem again. He knew that to give up so soon was to accept the inevitability of death. He checked the power meters; the instruments that told him how much longer Challenger’s own batteries would last and how much oxygen was left in the cockpit.

  He knew that if the oxygen content fell below a dangerously low level, the automatic valves of the oxygen bottles would bleed a steady amount of life giving gas into the bubble’s atmosphere so that life could be sustained until an orderly recovery or rescue could be carried out.

  But if the submersible’s power became low and unstable, there was a risk that the bottles could eventually pressurise the cockpit and kill him.

  He began to shut down various systems that were no longer need to conserve battery power. He extinguished the low grade cockpit lighting, relying instead on the glow from the instrument panel.

  After about two minutes of technical distraction, he found himself devoid of ideas and things to do. He knew the was no hope of anyone finding him on the sea bed, so his last hours would be painfully slow and would probably end in insanity.

  “Damn you Khan!” he shouted suddenly. “Why didn’t you just put a bullet in me?”

  His shoulders sagged and he slumped back in his seat. That was the first sign of the loss of control. How long would it be, he wondered, before he was clawing at the smooth walls of the bubble in a manic, pitiful attempt to escape? He let his mind drift again, peering out into the deep, mindful yet mindless.

  How long Marsh sat in torpid despair, he didn’t know, but suddenly he sat up straight. The diving tanks! God in heaven, why didn’t he think of it?

  Marsh kicked himself for not thinking of it earlier but put that down to his state of mind. He forced himself to think clearer now because he believed this would be his best chance of getting out of this alive. By blowing the water from the diving tanks and the decompression chamber, he would lighten the load and greatly increase lift, and the upward thrust of the air, less the weight of the water, should overcome the force of the clamps.

  He began switching Challenger back on to full power. He knew he was taking a chance because of the drain on the batteries, but it was his only hope. Once the computer signalled that all systems were operational. Marsh keyed in the commands that would open the air valves. He listened to the rush of compressed air leaving their cylinders and flowing into the diving tanks and the decompression chamber.

  All at once t
he sea boiled around him as the Challenger purged herself of the surplus sea water, and something moved beneath him as the enormous thrust of air fought to break the power of the clamps.

  “Come on, damn you” he mumbled through clenched teeth. “Come on!”

  He could feel Challenger straining at every limb to break free of the deadly grip of the clamps.

  “Come on,” he urged again. “Get up, get up!”

  He moved his body, pounding the seat with his own weight as if to add impetus to the mighty struggle going on beneath him.

  “For God’s sake, Challenger, break free damn you! Break free!”

  The noise of the rushing air reached a crescendo of sound and then began to subside until finally the pressure in the tanks and the decompression chamber reached that of the air cylinders.

  “No, don’t stop now!” he beseeched her. “Not now! Please, not now!”

  Challenger seemed to give one last desperate heave and then succumbed to the awesome strength of the clamps.

  She didn’t move.

  “No. Oh God, no” Marsh looked around him imploringly. “Please Challenger, please. Don’t let me down. Please.”

  But Challenger had lost the battle, surrendering herself to the deadly embrace of the clamps.

  Marsh stopped shouting and cursing. His mouth fell open as tears streamed down his face. He could taste the salt on his lips and he kept blinking the wetness from his eyes. His head fell forward into his hands and he kept asking ‘why?’

  He cried alone in his tiny world; a ball of encircling light, holding life like a baby in the womb, suspended in dark waters. He cried until there were no tears left to cry and soon his mind closed down and he drifted off into the merciful world of sleep.

  *

  Marsh woke in a sleepy haze, his mind unable to focus at first on his surroundings. Sleep had robbed him for a moment of the ability to recognise or be aware of anything. But quite soon, recognition dawned on him and the awful truth of his dilemma swung down on him like the sword of Damocles.

  He was aware of condensation building up on the inside of the smooth polymer. It gathered in small droplets of water; like pearls in a polymer oyster. He glanced at the power meters and saw there was little left in Challenger now. Soon the valves on the oxygen bottles would open. He reached up and closed the valves, prepared now to suffocate in his own exhaled air as the oxygen fell below the danger level. Once the carbon dioxide was concentrated enough inside the bubble, he would drift off in to an eternal sleep.

  Marsh thought of pleasant things, but mainly the yard back at Freeport. He thought about the Helena, their own submersible that was still not quite ready for sea because their mechanic had not yet completed fitting the explosive collar.

  The explosive collar!

  Marsh sat bolt upright. Could he do it, he wondered?

  He opened the valves on the oxygen bottle, switched to manual and immediately felt an uplifting sensation as his brain responded to the sweet, life giving air.

  “Careful, Marsh,” he counselled himself. “It may not work.”

  He thought about the collar and how it might have been disconnected. It was unlikely that it would have been done outside the cockpit because the collar was designed to form a watertight clamp that engaged on the firing socket. Once fitted there was no chance of water seeping into the cockpit.

  The screened, wiring circuit that connected the collar to the firing button was encapsulated and ran through the centre of the ‘thorax’ to the rear of the instrument panel. Therefore it would have been simpler, and quicker, to have disconnected the collar inside the cockpit.

  Beside the firing panel was a small bank of capacitors. When the circuit was energised by pressing the first button, it initiated a charge to the capacitors. After a ten second delay, the firing circuit would be closed and a red light would come on above the firing button. When this was pressed, the capacitors would discharge down the firing lines, into the collar and detonate it. The shaped charge inside the collar would explode and sever the polymer cockpit from the submersible.

  All Marsh had to do now was to figure out a way of reconnecting the collar to the firing panel.

  He needed a tool or something with which he could remove the front of the firing panel. He looked around the interior for something he could use. The smooth, contoured features stared back at him. Everything in there had been designed for ease of handling, simplicity. No sharp objects. Helen had proclaimed it was the only place she could safely work where she wouldn’t snag her nylons.

  He ran his hands beneath the seat, then opened up a small, virtually unnecessary toolbox and found it was empty. It didn’t surprise him. He continued the search and thought about Richard the Third who offered his Kingdom for a horse. What Marsh would have given for a simple screwdriver.

  He sat there for a while thinking furiously, playing with the watch on his wrist. Then realised he might have the answer there in his hand; or more correctly, on his wrist.

  He removed the watch and placed it on the floor, then stamped on it with his foot. It smashed immediately and he picked it up. Ignoring the little shards of glass, Marsh pushed the entire works through the back of the watch. As they popped out, the steel back dropped on to the floor. This was to be Marsh’s screwdriver.

  One by one, even with his hands trembling and sweating, Marsh removed the facia screws from the panel until it swung free and revealed the wires in the firing loom.

  It was as he had suspected; the loom had been cut!

  Marsh began working on the cotton bindings of the loom until he could strip away the braided steel armour of the loom, exposing the cables. He then began to strip back the insulation of the two cables leading up to the capacitor bank.

  Marsh knew that all the return circuits in the Challenger’s systems were coded blue and that none of them were switched. After twenty minutes, with his fingers raw and bleeding, he had managed to connect the return cable from the capacitors to the blue cable running from the firing panel. Then he gently lifted the power cable from the panel and touched it against the exposed copper wire that supplied the bank of capacitors. Nothing happened for a moment, and then he heard the sweet, soft, high pitched whine rising in crescendo as the capacitors charged up.

  Marsh was almost crying by now and shaking nervously. Sweat poured from his forehead into his eyes. He stopped, took in several deep breaths and then let the power cable drop away from the charging circuit.

  The capacitors were now full charged.

  At the rear of the firing panel, Marsh could see the metal, braided firing lines which ran through the loom to the explosive collar. He reached in and pulled them clear and looked at the severed ends. He knew he still had time before the charge in the capacitors began to decay, but his fingers were sore and bleeding, making him wonder how much time he had before the strength in his hands began to decay too. And his eyes were stinging now because of the sweat running from his forehead.

  Using the watch back again, he paired back the insulation to expose their bright, copper conductors He attached one to the capacitor bank and brought the other cable to within a fraction of the cables that ran from the firing button.

  His hands began to shake again. He breathed in, concentrated and carried on. Marsh knew it was vital that once he had made contact, he had to keep the cables together long enough for the energy now stored in the capacitors to discharge along the firing lines to the explosive collar.

  Then he was ready.

  And he prayed.

  Oh, how he prayed.

  Slowly, he brought the ends together and held them fast. There was just time to reflect that he was not strapped into his seat when he heard the dull ‘crump’ as the shaped charge in the collar exploded and severed the thorax from the Challenger.

  For what seemed like an eternity, nothing happened. Then the bubble moved and began to lift. Slowly at first, shaking off the pull of gravity and the pressure from the sea above it as the air inside exerted its own
force and went in search of its own pressure level above that black, forbidding sea.

  It moved up rapidly, gaining speed and momentum at the same time. It also began to roll to one side as Marsh lost his balance and fell. As he tumbled he could just see the Challenger, clamped to the sea bed and looking like his launch platform. It faded from view as the gathering light intensified until the cockpit bubble broke through the surface like a shot from a cannon.

  It spun in the air and crashed down on to the surface. Marsh felt a terrible blow to his head as the bubble fought back against the pull of the sea and bobbed upright.

  Marsh’s last memory of that moment before he passed out was of the blessed, beautiful sky; beautiful but menacing with huge, black clouds.

  The bubble settled and canted over gently under the pressure of the wind. The automatic beacon switched on, punching out its distress signal on the international distress frequency. And the Gulf Stream current carried the odd looking craft towards the Florida Channel and the vast, open reaches of the Atlantic Ocean.

  Chapter 18

  On the bridge of the Taliba, Captain de Leon glanced up from his map table as the F-16 flashed by in the distance. To him it was just a silhouette; a momentary transition of life in an otherwise empty, darkening sky. It jogged his memory and he thought about the hurricane. They were running from it, but the wind was well up to gale force and he wondered what conditions would be like on the rig.

  He left the bridge and went to his cabin. There was little he could do or even needed to do. The officer of the watch was quite capable. He thought he would freshen up and probably return to the bridge within the hour. Then he could fret about the gathering storm.

  The Taliba had been battened down for storm conditions and the helicopter had been made ready to fly off if Khan thought it prudent to do so. It looked so vulnerable, shackled to the forward heli-pad. De Leon gave it little more thought as he pulled off his shoes and lay down on his bunk. Within a few minutes he was asleep.