The Crusader's gold jh-2

by David Gibbins

  The corner of a fin appeared out of the ice. Jack felt a nudge against his body. It had worked. Another chunk of ice floated past, and a large black form emerged beside him like an inquisitive seal. Costas’ eyes looked into Jack’s. “Am I glad to see you.”

  “Thank God you lost weight,” Jack said weakly. “I didn’t book a double room.”

  A spurt of red filled the water between them as Jack shifted in the confined space. “How’s the leg?” Costas asked.

  “That’s the least of my worries.” Jack peered at the water level above them. “Your oxygen,” he said urgently. “Cut your hose and we’ll have a few more minutes.”

  “No good,” Costas said. “My hose blew when the berg rolled. The shard of ice that cut it nearly decapitated me.” He struggled around until he was lying parallel to Jack, both of their heads now facing the ledge where the ice probe was embedded. The narrow confines of the chamber became even more apparent, barely large enough for the two of them festooned with all of their equipment. They were now completely submerged, slivers of ice from Jack’s efforts floating around them, and Jack could see the filaments from the coil tangled below. Costas leaned down to pull his fins up his calves and then hauled himself behind the probe. “It’s flashing amber,” he said. “The battery’s nearly dead. If we stick around here we’ll be on ice. Permanently.” He slid back down and struggled to remove something from the thigh pocket of his E-suit. “Here, hold on to this for me.”

  Jack took it, then stared back at Costas. “C-4 explosive?”

  “You got it. Always carry some in case of emergency.”

  “You’re going to blow us up.”

  “Beats the deep freeze.” Costas continued to delve in his pocket, then pulled out a miniature detonator transceiver. “I’m certain we’re inside the crevasse where Kangia and those Nazis saw the longship. The clear ice is meltwater that sealed up the crevasse. It’s weaker than the surrounding glacier ice, and fragmented when the berg shifted. We might be able to widen the crack. It’s the only chance we’ve got.”

  “What’s our decompression status?”

  “Not good. Our depth seems to be dropping. There must be an internal water level in the crevasse above us, below the level of the sea surrounding the berg. Somehow it’s filling up. At this rate we’ll be in the danger zone in less than five minutes.”

  “That’s about how much trimix I’ve got left.”

  “If we don’t freeze up first. With the coil dead the water’s already beginning to thicken. Time to get this show on the road.”

  Jack shivered violently. The water was as cold as he had ever known, colder than the deepest ocean depths. There was another ominous creak in the ice, and the crack above them closed in perceptibly. Costas rolled over and looked up, panning his headlamp along the silvery shimmer of exhaust bubbles that lined the ceiling. “That’s not what I wanted to happen,” he said quietly. A brief high-pitched alarm sounded from the probe, and the amber light went dead. “Nor was that.” He rolled back and picked up the axe from the floor of the chamber, feeding it towards Jack. “You’ve got a longer reach than me. The crack’s widest above the probe. I need you to push the C-4 as high up as you can. It’s already armed.”

  Jack held the brown packet in one hand and the haft of the axe in the other. Costas sank behind him and heaved up against his legs, forcing another pulse of blood from Jack’s thigh. Jack tried to ignore the pain and twisted his upper body so that his visor was up against the crack above the probe. With the rush of bubbles escaping through it he could only get a fleeting sense of its dimensions, but it was clearly a narrow chimney that extended high above them, a crack between the slabs of ice. He pushed the C-4 as far up as he could with his left arm, wedging it in the chimney. Then he pulled the axe up hand over hand and fed the wooden haft into the chimney, with Costas preventing him from sliding back. When he felt the haft meet resistance, he pushed up hard, dislodging the C-4 and thrusting it as high as he could into the chimney.

  “Okay. That’s as far as I can go.”

  Jack sank down beside Costas, and the two of them struggled against the freezing brash until they were as far away from the ice chimney as they could get, pressed against each other in the opposite corner of the chamber. Jack reversed the axe and fed it back under his straps, and both men reached down to slide their fins into place. Jack wrapped his arms tight around Costas, their faces pressed visor to visor. “Wherever we’re going this time, we’re going together.”

  “Semper fidelis.”

  Jack shook his head. “You never cease to amaze me. Latin too.”

  Costas held up the transceiver between them. “Good to go?”

  “Good to go.”

  A violent tremor shook them, accompanied by a shrieking and tearing sound that set Jack’s teeth on edge. All around them the ice was a blur of vibration. The cacophony was rent by a deafening explosion and Jack felt his body pummelled as if by a thousand punches. He pressed his visor tight against Costas, protecting the vulnerable glass from the shards of ice that were flying around them. Almost simultaneously their headlamps burst and they were plunged into a bizarre, tremulous darkness, broken only by the blurry green of the digital readouts inside their helmets. Something huge thumped against Jack’s side and for an instant he felt he was about to be crushed, and then by a miracle it passed. He felt a rush of dizziness and realised they were tumbling, spinning round and round in a ferment of ice and water, utterly helpless as the crevasse rent asunder.

  “We’re getting shallower!” Costas yelled. “For God’s sake don’t hold your breath. Your lungs would blow in seconds.”

  Jack’s breathing began to tighten. In the swirling maelstrom there were no way-markers, no visual points of reference. He forced himself to concentrate on the digital readout inside his visor, his arms clinging tight to Costas and their legs intertwined. Jack could just make out a depth reading of ten metres, and they were rocketing upwards. The figures gave him something to grasp on to, and he was dimly aware that the danger of air embolism was compounded by the risk of the bends, of decompression sickness. They were coming up way too fast.

  Suddenly they were on the surface. It was light again, a steely, crepuscular light, and Jack could see beyond Costas to an awesome world of blue. They were floating in a vast cauldron of ice, at least the length and breath of Seaquest II, with sheer white walls rising all around them. Jack felt dwarfed by the enormity of it. He arched his neck and looked at the source of light far above. It was a thin sliver of grey where the ice walls nearly joined, a first link to the world outside. The grey was streaked with black and light blue, and seemed to be rushing past at enormous speed.

  “It must be one of those freak storms coming off the ice cap,” Costas said. “That’s what pushed the berg.”

  “A piteraq.”

  They clung to each other as they bobbed in the centre of the pool. Their decompression warning lights were flashing amber, indicating that they had pushed the envelope and were now in grave danger of the bends. Jack felt for any signs, a tingle in an elbow or a sudden surge of nausea, aware that the last six months away from diving might have reduced his resistance. He checked his trimix pressure gauge and saw the dial hovering at zero. “I’m out of air,” he said. “If there’s any more diving we’ll have to buddy-breathe.”

  “Hook into me.”

  Jack pulled the umbilical hose from the top of Costas’ cylinder pack and pressed the valve into an inlet under his helmet. With a sharp hiss his helmet filled up again with breathing gas, its makeup now close to atmospheric air as the computer adjusted the ratios to take account of their depth. Jack realised he had been running on empty, and he closed his eyes to concentrate on taking a few deep breaths.

  “That should give us about ten minutes,” Costas said. “I’d prefer to spend it ten metres deep to increase the decompression margin, but we don’t have that luxury. We’ll just have to wing it.”

  The movement in the water had died down dramatica
lly, leaving the surface preternaturally calm after the tumult that had ejected them from the icy tomb far below. “The crevasse must have opened up when the berg moved, shattering all the meltwater ice inside it,” Costas said. “Then the walls closed in again as the berg encountered resistance, probably the seaward edge of the threshold.” He looked round again, the scene now eerily still. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this. Let’s keep together.”

  As if on cue, the silence was rent by a shattering concussion, and ice and water disintegrated in another shuddering blur. Jack became aware of a curtain of ice falling around them, jagged spears that sliced into the water like shrapnel. He concentrated all of his energy on holding Costas tight, knowing that if the hose that was his sole remaining lifeline were to rip out he would drown. He flashed back to the body in the ice, to his hallucination, then woke to a worse reality. They were dropping with sickening speed, sliding down a whirlpool of grinding ice, as if they were being sucked back to the frozen warrior and the place that had nearly been their nemesis. The water was falling away so fast that they were dropping through air, suspended half in and half out of the water, tumbling weightlessly against the chunks of ice that were splintering around them. Costas pulled Jack closer, straining against the centripetal force of the whirlpool, and pressed his visor hard against Jack’s. “The water’s being sucked down as the crevasse opens,” he yelled. “Hold on tight. I might be able to reverse the flow.”

  Suddenly the water billowed up around them and they were immersed deep within it. For a terrifying moment Jack felt the air crushed out of his lungs by some force that was working against the vortex, propelling them back upwards. Then they erupted out of the water, bouncing on a plume of brash that threw them high into the cleft above the cauldron. They crashed into a wall of ice and slid upwards, each scrabbling desperately with one free hand for some kind of hold. Then they began to slide back downwards, out of control, until they hit a ledge that held them precariously on the wall. As they crouched dripping together on the icy platform, the plume of brash and spray dropped back into the seething cauldron at the base of the crevasse far below them.

  “What the hell was that?” Jack panted, peering down a sheer drop of at least thirty metres.

  “The C-4,” Costas said exuberantly. “We were ejected from that chamber before I had a chance to blow it, but it came in useful after all.” He shoved the detonator transceiver into his thigh pocket. “Right. I’m cold and hungry. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Better make it fast. Take a look at that.”

  They peered down in horrified fascination at the ice chasm far below. It was beginning to narrow again, the walls compressing the slurry of ice and pushing it upwards. As the larger chunks were caught in the vise they exploded with a shattering resonance, sending lethal shards far up the crevasse. They knew that being caught in the maelstrom this time would mean instant death, their bodies shredded by the flying ice and then crushed as the crevasse caught them like a meat grinder. Relentlessly, terrifyingly, the gap was closing in on them, advancing like some living thing, its deadly maw spewing a geyser of splintering and shattering ice, moving with alarming speed up the cleft even in the few moments they had been watching.

  “This is it,” Costas yelled above the din. “No second chance this time.” They swivelled on the ledge and faced upwards. The skylight at the top of the crevasse was about fifty metres away, rushing streaks of grey now clearly visible on a background of blue. Suddenly the clouds parted and a dark shape appeared, blotting out the cleft, a blinding spotlight aimed directly at them. Then it veered away violently, trailing something that streamed out behind and whipped over the crack.

  “It’s the Lynx,” Costas shouted excitedly. “They’re trying to drop a winch.”

  “I told them to stay away. They’re pushing their luck against that wind.”

  “They could hardly do nothing.”

  “There’s no way they’ll get that cable down here. They must be waiting, hoping we can get to the entrance of the crevasse.”

  Jack glanced down. The gap was now terrifyingly close, no more than twenty metres below them, the shards of exploding ice almost reaching the ledge. He looked up again. The crevasse was glassy smooth, offering no handholds. The euphoria at seeing the helicopter suddenly turned to cold dread. It was another nightmare, a return to his brush with death years before in the flooded mine shaft, where the end of the tunnel had been in sight but no matter how frantically he tried to swim for it he seemed to stay the same distance away.

  Jack suddenly felt as if he were being pressed into the wall. He looked up again, then it dawned on him. “The crevasse. Isn’t it supposed to be vertical?”

  “Holy shit. The berg’s rolling!”

  There was a huge lurch and everything went still. The cleft had seized up, no more than ten metres below them. Through the skylight they were looking directly at the promontory where they had visited the old Inuit the day before. Jack found himself thinking that it was going to be a perfect day, that the wind was leaving the land washed in sparkling light. Then he felt the dread again. They had to reach the crack or they would die. When the berg rolled again the skylight would drop underwater, taking them into the abyss as it toppled off the threshold, sealing their fates in an instant.

  “The axe!” Costas shook him. “The axe!”

  Jack snapped back into reality. With his left arm still around Costas, he reached back and drew the axe from its straps. His hand was sticky with blood where it had brushed his thigh and the axe nearly slipped away, saved only by Costas’ iron grip. They dangled the axe together down the slope, then flung it in a wide arc to lodge in the ice ahead of them.

  “It’ll hold,” Jack panted. “Pull yourself up.” He tensed his body, his fins still planted on the ledge but his elbows and knees ready to find any undulation in the ice, anything that might stop him from sliding. They heaved up on the haft, then shook it frantically until it was loose. For a few seconds they would be totally without anchor, held only by the tension of their bodies against the ice. Costas looked Jack full in the eyes and nodded. Jack let the axe slide down again and heaved. It arched overhead, skimming the back of the crevasse, then slammed into the ice a metre and a half ahead of them. As Jack craned his head up to free the axe for another blow, he saw a black-clad diver dangling from a cable no more than a hundred metres beyond the berg. He realised that the noise he was hearing was the din from the Lynx’s twin turboshafts.

  There was another lurch, and a rumble from the cleft behind them. The noise of the helicopter was drowned out by an immense creaking in the ice. The walls of the crevasse narrowed. The axe was poised but there was no more room to swing it. Another lurch brought up a surge of brash from the cleft, washing over them, then everything happened at once. The skylight was lost in a foment of water, a sucking whirlpool that rose up towards them, and suddenly they were sliding uncontrollably, plummeting towards the skylight as it angled into the abyss. Jack hit the incoming seawater with an immense crash, the axe trailing behind him, then was pulverised by the force of the water cascading down from the maw of the crevasse. The icy brash that had so nearly been their nemesis pushed them out of the berg, ejecting them in a frenzied tumble just as the walls of ice crushed together and sealed the crevasse for the last time.

  It was not over yet. Jack saw a vast wall of sculpted white advancing on them, extending as far as he could see in every direction. Already the crevasse was far below, marked only by a trickle of bubbles rising up the side of the berg, framing the black immensity of the abyss. As the berg rolled, Jack had the illusion that he was rocketing upwards, yet his body told him exactly the opposite. “It’s pulling us down,” he yelled to Costas, his voice contorted. “Inflate your suit and swim for it!”

  Jack pressed the inflator and began to fin hard, his left arm gripping Costas’ shoulder. His depth readout showed they were hardly moving at all. They were still in the grip of the berg, being sucked down. He looked up and saw the s
un shimmering off the waves, tantalizingly close. He felt the cold again in the pit of his stomach. Having survived the iceberg, they were about to die within sight of the surface. This could not be happening. He began to hyperventilate, to outstrip the oxygen remaining in Costas’ cylinder. His breathing began to tighten.

  “I’m ditching your tanks.” Costas was breathing heavily, a great plume of bubbles encircling his exhaust, and he finned furiously as he disconnected Jack’s redundant hoses and flipped the quick-release buckle on his cylinder packs, sending the oxygen rebreather and the console backpack with its empty trimix cylinders plummeting into the depths. “I’m doing the same to mine,” he panted. “We’ve only got about a minute’s air left anyway and it isn’t doing us any good. Get ready to disconnect your hose. Stop finning now and when I say so take five deep breaths.”

  “I’m holding on to you,” Jack said, his breath coming in short gasps. “If you go down, I’m going with you.”

  Costas disconnected his rebreather and it dropped out of sight. With his left hand he flipped the quick-release on his backpack and held it in place, and with his right hand he found the disconnect to the hose under his helmet. Already they were plummeting down, sucked deeper and deeper by the rolling iceberg, their chances receding with every metre they dropped into the abyss.