The force of the water suddenly decreased, indicating that the ferry was as usual reducing its approach speed. Gann then realised the ferry was actually going to sink beneath the surface of the strange milk.
He turned around to face the docking hatch when, to his utter amazement, a stream of bubbles began to escape from around its edges and it slowly opened. Gann’s reaction was immediate.
Mandrick stood with the two controllers, staring at the images on the OCR monitors. The screens appeared to be split, the bottom half white, the top black, with a murky white ferry in the middle dropping deeper into the white section. They all saw the blurred images of movement on the top of the ferry just below the cable struts.
‘Looks like someone getting out,’ the senior controller said.
‘It’s the emergency escape hatch,’ said his assistant.
‘We’re going to lose them in the milk,’ the senior controller said as he grabbed the mike. ‘Send in the divers. Now!’ he shouted into the handset.
Gann pushed himself towards the figure coming out of the hatch. He had no idea who it was but that did not matter. No one could survive the ferry now, and not just because it was the original plan that every prisoner should perish. A survivor could accuse Gann of the sabotage. With the power of the water at his back he struck the man forcefully, wrapping his arms around him and hauling him from the opening.The momentum and the force of the water carried them along the top of the ferry and off the end.
Stratton was just below the other prisoner when he felt him shoot from the hatch as if snatched by something passing overhead. But there was not a second to spare to consider what had happened. He pushed himself free of the hatch and up towards the cables. The ferry began to slow to a crawl, cancelling any thoughts he’d had about simply hanging on and hoping he could last until it reached the dock.
He hit the cables and grabbed hold of one, immediately dragging himself forward. He could make out a dim light ahead and pulled for all he was worth. He kept telling himself that the dock was within his range and he could make it. But suddenly the light ahead disappeared and everything became murky white. Stratton immediately remembered the ‘milk’ that was known to surround the prison most of the year round. The cable had dropped into it, dragged down by the weight of the flooded ferry.
Stratton’s lungs began to cry out for air. The lights had been a psychological hub, something he could have used to focus on and help blank out the pain. All he could do now was imagine them getting closer with each pull and simply keep going until he rose up into the dock or went unconscious.
He pulled in a rhythmic motion, one arm over the other, his legs trailing behind him. He fought the urge to increase the pace and concentrated on keeping the pulls firm and controlled.The last time Stratton had swum underwater for any distance had been many years before. Fifty metres was the distance he’d been required to swim that day, two lengths of the camp pool as part of a general diving-fitness test. And he’d had to collect a brick off the bottom of the five-metre deep end before finally surfacing. But on that occasion he’d had a chance to practise a couple of times. Even then he had only barely made it. This time he had the additional incentive of avoiding death - which had to be worth a few metres more.
His face began to tighten and the palpable increase in fear made him pick up the pace. He prayed the cable would rise out of the milk, which would mean he was very close. He wanted to see the lights again. They would give him hope for another few seconds. If not, this was it. Stratton was going to perish at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico after all. For a split second, in desperation, he almost let go of the cable to swim out of the milk. But his cold logic kept hold of him and refused to give his hands the permission. The cable led to air and dragging himself was quicker than swimming. It was that or die.
But the urge to open his mouth and suck in anything to relieve the increasing pain of oxygen debt only grew. His face tightened further and felt as if it was going to explode. His arms pulled faster, all discipline gone now. His fingers tingled, his temples throbbed. He had seconds to arrive in the dock or he was finished. His lungs were on fire, his heart pounding in his chest like a drum. His mouth started to open and his grip on the cable loosened. There was nothing left, no more oxygen, his last drop of will-power. The carbon dioxide saturating his body demanded that he open his mouth, insisting he draw in whatever there was. He entered the state of madness that accompanies a total lack of oxygen and he stopped, released the cable and inhaled.
The spasms began and he fought to hold on to his soul. The white changed to dark and he could see a light ahead. And then suddenly it all went quiet and serene. The pain that had tightened his face and body had gone and he drifted like a spirit in space, as if he had already left the water, all human senses gone. He could see himself, knew he had passed into another place and he did not care. The power that drove his life had ceased. Stratton was dead.
Chapter 9
Mandrick walked out through the hissing airlock of the OCR as it closed behind him and headed along a broad steel walkway suspended inside a black rock cavern. The OCR entrance hissed again seconds later as the senior controller emerged from it at a pace calculated to let him catch up with Mandrick before he reached the top of a broad stairway.The cavern echoed with the clatter of their feet as both men hurried along briskly. The controller, wearing a slender headset over one ear, listened intently as he followed Mandrick closely along a lower platform to another airlock door. A small red glass screen required Mandrick’s thumbprint which it analysed before turning green. As with just about every other door in the facility, any minor pressure difference on either side of it needed to be equalised before the air-seal was withdrawn and access permitted.
‘The standby diver’s brought in a body, sir,’ the controller said, pressing the earpiece closer to his ear to help cut out the sound of vents and metallic clunking that filled the everyday air in Styx. ‘And one more . . . alive . . . it’s Gann, sir.’
The door opened and Mandrick walked through while listening to the operations controller but without making any form of acknowledgement. He needed to act like a warden who had just experienced the worst catastrophe of his career, dealing with the horror of half a dozen souls lost, not all of them inmates, while at the same time maintaining calm and control. But he was having problems acting the horrified-warden part - acting was something he had never been any good at anyway. Mandrick had other things on his mind. Now that the deed was done something else was disturbing him, a premonition he’d had shortly after accepting the order to neutralise the new arrivals.Whatever had been achieved this day was going to give birth to even greater problems. And greater problems usually meant having to formulate proportionately more drastic solutions.
The two men made their way down a short flight of broad steps cut into the stone and reinforced with steel and concrete.Vegetation grew down the walls, large clumps of it in places. At the bottom was a bulky, robust steel door made of layers of riveted plates and covered in a dozen coats of thick red paint that had failed to prevent patches of corrosion. The area had become noticeably more humid, the walls moist and covered in mildew, the rock ceiling dotted with stalactites that dripped onto their opposite numbers on the uneven rocky surface beneath the metal-grid floor.
‘The ferry’s come to a stop below the dock,’ the controller reported as he moved ahead to open the door.
The door was an exterior access point and required a higher level of clearances as well as a series of preliminary safety and security checks.
‘Senior OC requires access to gate four Charlie,’ the controller said into his mike as he punched a code into a keypad on the wall. ‘Release four Charlie dock primary.’
After a brief pause a heavy clunk came from inside the door. The controller checked the pressure levels on several gauges beside the door as part of a mandatory procedure before punching in another code. ‘Pressures are equalised . . . Release four Charlie secondary.’
Another clunk and the controller grabbed a large wheel on the side of the door and, with a little difficulty at first, began to turn it. After a couple of heaves it practically spun around at only a light touch. When the dozen cleats that surrounded the frame were clear of the breaches the massive door moved perceptibly outwards as cold air rushed in through the seams. The controller gave it a shove to help the electric motor on the hinge and the door slowly opened.
Mandrick stepped through into a large cavern hewn out of the rock and reinforced by steel girders and concrete. Every surface seemed to be contaminated by some variety of kelp and mildew, some of the ceiling species several metres long. The two men paused on a steel-and-concrete landing facing a pool the size of a couple of tennis courts, its water gently lapping several inches below the edge. Four separate clusters of taut dirty-brown heavy-duty cables rose out of the water and passed over large wheels suspended from the ceiling before heading back down. A lone ferry was parked at the far end with the number ‘1’ stencilled on its surface in places. The water looked black, reflecting the dark rock, although it was crystal clear. The doomed ferry was visible several metres below a placard on the wall that had the number ‘4’ stencilled on it behind the strings of vertical cables. A diver was making his way around the ferry, a line attached to him, its other end held by a guard on the landing.
Mandrick looked along the landing to where a metal ladder curved from the jetty into the pool. Several men were gathered in a circle, one of them wearing a diving suit, a set of dive-tanks close by. The other men were prison guards, all bent over a body lying prone on the wet concrete. Standing back a little from the group was Gann, pulling off his bright yellow escape suit as he kept an interested eye on the group’s activities.
Mandrick glanced back to the number four ferry below the surface and saw the cables wobble as the diver pulled on the side door with some effort. He looked ahead at the group of men and walked towards them.
Gann’s gaze met Mandrick’s for a second as he closed in. The diver was giving cardiac massage to the man lying on the ground, pushing down on his chest in a quick rhythm.A guard stood aside to let Mandrick enter the circle as the dripping-wet diver halted the compressions long enough to feel for the man’s carotid artery. A guard kneeling the other side of the body looked into the diver’s face for signs of hope.The diver showed none as he recommenced his pumping action.
‘I can spell ya, Zack,’ the kneeling guard offered.
‘I’m OK,’ the diver replied.
A guard arrived and quickly placed a mask over the body’s mouth, turned on an oxygen bottle connected to it and squeezed a bag attached to the mask, filling the body’s lungs.
The man looked dead to Mandrick. His eyes were slightly open, water was trickling out the side of his mouth and his only movement was caused by the diver’s efforts. Mandrick was reminded of the first time he had given a man the same last chance for life. Three times he had gone through the process during his military days and had never won back any of them. All three had bled away beneath him. The diver was obviously a tenacious bugger, or something was inspiring him to hold on.
The man with the air bottle checked his watch. The rule in the prison for cardiac massage was eight minutes. Mandrick had done his three for about a minute each, not much more. He’d known the men were dead before he had started but he had continued anyway. He’d had the time and people were watching. Maybe that was why this guy was still doing it.
‘Sir,’ the controller said and Mandrick turned around to look at him. ‘Diver’s inside the ferry and it isn’t good. He counts four prisoners and Palanski - all dead.’
Mandrick looked back at Gann to find the man staring at him. He looked as if he was asking him for some kind of acknowledgement. Whatever doubts Mandrick had had about Gann’s insanity were gone. The man was deranged, to say the least.
‘I think we got something,’ the diver called out excitedly.
Gann’s expression blackened as his eyes snapped to the man lying at their feet. The diver’s fingers were deep into his neck to one side of his throat. ‘Yeah - we got a beat,’ he said. ‘Weak but I’m sure of it. The gurney on its way?’ he called out.
‘Doc’s on his way down,’ the controller informed everyone.
‘Way to go, Zack,’ one of the guards said, patting the diver on the shoulder.
Mandrick glanced at Gann who was staring at the lone survivor. Mandrick’s initial thought was what the odds were on him being the fed. Even if it was it would not be smart to kill him now. No matter how much of an accident it looked. It would seem far too suspicious. Mandrick’s prime objective was survival and he did not want to do anything that implicated himself in too obvious a manner. He had pushed it way too far as it was. One man was easy enough to keep an eye on. And there was always the possibility that he had suffered serious brain damage.
‘Anyone know his name?’ the diver asked.
The senior controller flicked through his file of the incoming prisoners, pausing at each picture. ‘Charon,’ he said. ‘Nathan Charon.’
‘Come on, Nathan,’ the diver said. ‘You can make it. Breathe. That’s it. All right. He’s back.’
Stratton opened his eyes to see a chequered steel mesh with bright lights spaced at uneven intervals set into the ceiling behind it. Fatigue tugged heavily at his eyelids but he fought to keep them open. The feeling of utter exhaustion lay on him like a lead shroud and he wondered how long he had been lying there. He fought to remain conscious, trying to remember what had happened and how he had ended up in what seemed like a small, clean hospital room. He knew who he was and that he had been on a submersible cable-car heading for an undersea prison. But other recent memories appeared to be missing or fractured. He remembered the ferry flooding and his desperation to get out of it. From the point of leaving the ferry he was unable to piece together the snippets of sounds and images he retained into a coherent pattern of events. He could see the face of a man and hear his voice while water lapped around his neck. The face of another prisoner appeared and Stratton remembered opening the hatch with him. After that it was all a confused blur.
He wanted to look around the room to see if there were other occupied beds but his head felt as if it was bolted to the pillow.
Stratton could hear a tapping noise as if it was floating around in his head all alone. He was unsure if it was a memory or if it was really happening. As he fought to collect the jumble of images speeding through his mind the tapping seemed to get louder. He couldn’t lie still any longer and, desperate for clarity, fought to activate the muscles in his neck and turn his head. He slowly rolled it to one side but his eyes would not readily refocus and he looked back up at the ceiling.The mesh was clear but when he turned to look at the room again it was as if his eyes were jammed and unable to adjust.
Fear crept through him as he suddenly wondered what other parts of him no longer functioned. He broke into a cold sweat at the thought of being an invalid and concentrated on moving his arms.They rose up off his stomach where they came into focus and he let them back down with a feeling of relief. Next he had to see if he still had his legs. With a supreme effort he raised his head off the pillow until he could see two ridges under the sheet going from his hips to small mounds at the ends of them. They moved from side to side at his will and he dropped his head back with another heavy sigh of relief.
Stratton began to scan the rest of his body with his mind, tensing various muscles and then relaxing them. Suddenly, the ceiling light he had been staring at was replaced by the face of a beautiful dark-haired woman looking down at him. Her complexion was pale, her eyes and lips dark within the shadow of the light behind her. He was sure she was real only because he could suddenly smell her, a fresh soapy aroma. It was odd because his sense of smell had never been particularly acute. Perhaps he had been reborn, or he was in heaven and this was an angel.
‘You’re back, then,’ she said, without a trace of emotion, looking at one of his eyes and then
the other in search of something.
Stratton could only blink up at her.The total absence of a smile or any trace of cordiality ruled out paradise.
‘What’s your name?’ she asked. Her voice was soft but at the same time strong, and her accent was American.
Stratton started to open his mouth but found it difficult, his lips sticking as if they had begun the process of healing together.
The woman moved out of his sight to reach for something and when her face returned she put a straw to his mouth. ‘Have some water.’
He took a sip, feeling the cold liquid pass through his mouth and down his throat like the first rains along a parched river bed.
‘Do you remember your name?’ she asked again.
A dim alarm throbbed inside his head as his training and years of experience warned him never to talk unless he was compos mentis. Then he realised he couldn’t remember the answer to her question anyway. He knew his real name but he also remembered that he had a cover. The false identity was just beyond his reach. He thought he saw it flit across his mind but he couldn’t get hold of it. He found the image of the man sitting in the back of the prison truck. He saw Paul and Todd. And then the name was suddenly there in front of him. Nathan Charon. Then it was as if the effort had triggered the bursting of a bubble of information inside his head as other elements of his assignment fell into place.
Stratton decided to ignore the woman’s question until he had gathered more information on who she was and on his own situation. One of the most important questions he needed an answer to was whether or not he still had a mission. Where on Earth he was would be a good start.
He tried to bend his arm to bring it under his shoulder but what should have been a simple effort proved difficult. He felt eighty years old.
‘You want to sit up?’ she asked.
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