by Jake Avila
The monstrous helicopter immediately surged forward, its steel skids clipping the top of a mango tree.
‘No, wait!’ screamed Mia. ‘Wait!’
Brrrrrappt!
The fury of the weapon was terrifying. More trees exploded, and great clods of grass and earth were thrown up in the air as Paomente desperately zigzagged. He had almost reached the line of trees when he just broke apart in front of Mia’s eyes. A cloud of red mist hovered over the area like smoke.
Mia had no time to process what had happened, for the helicopter turned its hateful snout towards Millie, still staggering along as fast as an injured septuagenarian was able. With Mia sprinting in its wake, and screaming ‘Stop! Stop!’ at the top of her lungs, the helicopter bore down on the little old woman.
Brrrrapppt!
Clouds of dirt and debris kicked up by the massive rotors obscured the view. When it cleared, Millie was gone, hidden somewhere in the long grass. Mia kept running as the helicopter settled nearby like a bloated spider. Ignoring jabbering cries, she ran on until she spotted Millie’s white hair and slid to a halt beside her.
The old woman was on her side, both legs shot away below the shins. Thick red blood pumped into the grass. Mia grabbed hold of the ragged, splintered stumps with her hands.
‘Tourniquet!’ she screamed at the man approaching. ‘Get a tourniquet!’
The Kopassus officer was immaculately dressed in a neat camouflage uniform. He wore an incongruously bright red beret with a smart gold insignia at a rakish angle. On his chest was a name badge which read ALATAS. Calmly, he unbuckled a black holster on his belt as he walked the last few steps. Withdrawing a pistol, he cocked it, and before Mia could protest, emptied the whole magazine point-blank into Millie’s head.
Covered in blood spray, Mia went into shock.
The officer reloaded his pistol. The bland look on his cheerful face incensed her.
‘What have you done?’ she screamed. ‘What have you done?’
Without changing expression, he smacked her savagely across the face, then with a closed fist, which made her ears ring. When she tried to cover up, he punched her in the solar plexus. Grabbing her by the collar, he stuck the hot barrel of the pistol under her jaw. She was dimly aware that his breath smelled of peppermint.
‘Call yourself a soldier?’ Mia said angrily. ‘You miserable little coward.’
She thought he was going to strike her again. Instead, he pushed her to the ground and lit a cigarette.
‘No more childish games, Doctor Carter. Tell me where Frank Douglas is.’
They’re working with Sura.
Mia’s insides heaved and abruptly she threw up.
Oh God, what had she done? Because of her, Millie and Paomente were dead. And if these murderous bastards went to the village looking for Frank Douglas, they would surely kill them all, too.
Wiping her mouth, she looked Alatas in the eye.
‘Frank Douglas died on the journey from Hufi. We left his body in the forest. I can show you where if you like.’
‘Bohong bitch!’ Wrenching her palm up, he ground his cigarette into her flesh. ‘I can tell you are lying.’
Chapter 30
On the pale water-worn limestone, they moved fast under the dense canopy. On either side of the dry river bed, trees as thick as a man fought for the light. Interspersed among them, like ghosts among the living, were the limbless white trunks of long-dead gigantic ancestors. Nash began to think about what he was going to do if the submarine wasn’t there, and his tension was mounting with every step.
‘I’m beginning to wonder if this isn’t some desperate fantasy.’ Sura gave voice to her misgivings. ‘Why don’t you explain what this is all about?’
‘Do you see all the dead trees? Something killed them at the same time.’
‘No shit, genius,’ Boerman snapped from the rear. ‘The gorge flooded.’
‘But what caused the flood?’
Nash directed their attention back up the river bed. From where they were standing, only the top of the cave arch was visible. They could make out the faint white line on the cliff face, and another glimpse through the trees on the walls of the gorge.
‘Those mineral deposits prove that where we are standing was once more than twenty metres deep. Given the fall of the gorge, how is that possible? What could have contained that depth of water?’
‘This isn’t show-and-tell, Mr Nash.’
‘In Fürth’s account, he thought the submarine had reached the end of the river.’
Sura sighed. ‘And then he heard explosions and they continued on –’
‘But not for several days, quite possibly more, because he had no way of telling the time.’
‘And your point is?’ grumbled Boerman, slapping a mosquito feeding on his neck.
‘When we flew in, just after the gorge narrows, I spotted an old collapse, a huge landslide now covered in trees. The Hoosenbeck resurgence appears downstream of it.’
Sura nodded. ‘I walked right through it.’
‘What if the SS fixed explosives to the walls of the gorge behind the submarine?’
Sura’s eyes lit up. ‘To create a dam. It makes sense!’
Nash nodded. ‘And then they waited for the water to rise like a lock. That is how Heider was able to get the submarine into the cave.’
Boerman looked aggravated. ‘So where did all the water go, huh?’
‘We’re almost there.’
Nash began walking again. Sura came up alongside him.
‘Are you saying the dam collapsed and swept the submarine away?’
‘No, the dam was eroded later over time.’
‘Then I don’t understand.’
‘Cast your mind back to seventy-odd years ago, when this gorge was flooded for more than a kilometre. Can you imagine how much all of that weighed?’ He did a quick calculation. ‘Let’s call it forty million tonnes, bearing down on this very rock.’
‘Seems solid enough to me,’ said Sura.
‘Limestone is actually riddled with subterranean pockets. Existing voids would have expanded as the water forced its way in through cracks, and steadily dissolved the weakest stone. Years passed, until a critical mass was reached, when the weight of all that water became too much for a large cavity to support.’
Ahead, on his left, Nash saw the vegetation thinning out. He had spotted it on the way in and, with the lure of the cave, hadn’t paid it much attention.
‘And then?’ Boerman demanded. ‘Come on, man, finish it.’
Nash came to a halt and turned around. ‘And then, in one catastrophic event, the roof of the cavity collapsed. As millions of tonnes of water poured into the void, the level of the dam dropped suddenly. The steel hawser tethering the submarine snapped like string, and it was swept out of the cave, down the gorge . . . into this!’
Boerman and Sura stared in amazement as Nash pointed through the trees. Adjacent to the main river channel was a sinkhole. Jammed with huge logs, shrouded in hanging vines, it was almost completely camouflaged. Making their way cautiously to the crumbling edge, they peered into the gloomy depths and Sura gave a small cry. For there, emerging vertically like some mythical sea monster from the depths, was the rusting bow of an enormous submarine.
With eight torpedo doors and a hull three storeys high, the huge scale reminded Nash of nuclear leviathans he’d seen at Pearl Harbor, but the bizarreness of its last-century oriental curves in this exotic jungle location made it appear like a relic from a forgotten civilisation.
Boerman took Sura’s hand and kissed it several times.
‘You did it, liefling. I knew you were right all along!’
Sura was blushing like a bride. ‘Of course, we must thank Mr Nash, too.’
Was the compliment his eulogy?
With his usefulness at an end, Nash braced himself for a surprise push in the back.
Instead, Boerman bent down and picked up a fist-sized chunk of limestone. He lobbed it into the ju
mble of logs and vegetation and they listened to it rebounding off timber and steel, until the sound of it shattering on the rocky floor echoed up. The Afrikaner whistled appreciatively.
‘That’s one deep hole.’
Sura looked quizzically at Nash. ‘I don’t understand. This sinkhole is not only deep, it is also dry. How can the Hoosenbeck possibly resurface just a few hundred metres downstream of this location if the two are connected?’
Nash gratefully seized the lifeline. ‘You can’t think in terms of straight lines of fall. Limestone gives rise to complex hydrological systems – multiple passages funnelling underground rivers which can flow intermittently, depending on rainfall. The discharge from the Hoosenbeck Cavern is currently bypassing this sinkhole.’
Sura’s eyes narrowed. ‘What do you mean, currently? Are you saying this sinkhole floods when it rains? That it is connected to the Hoosenbeck?’
He nodded quickly. ‘The Dutch speleologists would have encountered this sinkhole when they explored the valley. It must have been full at the time, or they would have discovered this submarine.’
‘They came in March, the end of the wet season,’ Sura murmured.
Boerman glanced up at the sky, now studded with plump white clouds.
‘And it’s due any time.’
‘Then we need to move quickly.’ Sura put her hand on the Afrikaner’s broad shoulder. ‘Jaap, run back up, fetch rope and two harnesses.’
‘Two?’ The big man paused.
‘Mr Nash is going to assess the situation with you.’ Before Boerman could argue, she snapped her fingers. ‘Hurry!’
The Afrikaner took off at a run and Nash breathed again. As long as the threat of inundation remained, his dive skills had currency.
Sura took out her pistol.
‘Sit down there, Mr Nash – yes, right by the edge – and please, don’t try anything stupid.’
She made herself comfortable on a fallen log and checked her phone for a signal. In the silence, he became aware of the faint sound of running water in the sinkhole far below. Yes, somewhere down there was his escape route.
Sura coughed and bared her little white teeth in a smile.
‘You’re an interesting man, Mr Nash. In many ways you remind me of myself.’
Nash raised his eyebrows.
This is going to be interesting.
‘We’re both dreamers who think big, and are prepared to take risks to achieve our goals.’
‘We are nothing alike,’ he promptly replied. ‘I don’t kill people for money.’
‘Oh, really? How do you explain what happened to your wife? Wasn’t her death a direct result of your ambition?’ Sura looked like a cat focused on its next meal. ‘It’s what drives you, isn’t it, Mr Nash? You deconstruct the mysteries of the earth to be the first.’
A white-hot rage ignited within him and Nash found himself bellowing, ‘You don’t know shit! You have no fucking idea about me or her, so shut your fucking mouth!’
Satisfied she’d drawn blood, Sura nodded calmly. ‘There is one key difference between you and me. While I am true to myself, you have allowed conscience to distort who you are. Guilt has weakened the courage of your convictions. That is why you are afraid, and I am not.’
A thudding of boots saved Nash from replying. Boerman arrived, festooned with rope, his big chest heaving with exertion. Sensing something had just happened, he looked inquiringly at Sura, who said irritably, ‘Well, what are you waiting for?’
Boerman petulantly flung a climbing harness at Nash’s feet.
‘Come on, hotshot, put it on!’
After fastening it to the nearest stout tree, the Afrikaner gave the rope a few tugs before launching outwards off the lip. In a hiss of hot nylon, he plummeted twenty-five metres in a single drop. Alighting smoothly on the topmost wedged log, he used it as a runway to pick up speed in one great bound, soaring across the chasm to land on another dead tree near the submarine’s bow. Here, he tested the integrity of the stack, jumping from log to log, with booming thuds that echoed around the sinkhole. Then he unhooked himself from the rope, barked a warning and, like a major league pitcher, flung the descender skywards to Nash, who snatched it painfully out of the air.
Sura watched on as he clipped himself to the rope.
‘Watch your step, Mr Nash, and remember your friends.’
It took him four attempts to land the gut-wrenching swing to the log jam. Nash had made the mistake of looking through the latticework of slippery tree trunks to the rocky floor of the sinkhole, a dizzying 100 metres below.
‘You’re afraid of heights, too?’ Boerman chortled delightedly. Standing unroped on a mossy log, he confidently thumped the hull of the submarine with a closed fist. ‘We need to climb around to the other side to access the deck. It will be easier to get down that way.’
Sura called down a warning to be careful.
‘Ja, ja!’ he yelled up. ‘I heard you the first time.’
The big man spotted a crack in the rusted steel plate. Wriggling his fingers inside, he used it to lunge up and grab hold of the bottommost torpedo door. Nash watched in ghoulish fascination as Boerman hauled himself bodily around the huge curvature of the hull. Without a safety rope, there was no room for error and, crazy as it was, there was something magnificent about it.
‘I’m on the deck!’ the Afrikaner eventually shouted down. ‘Get your bleddy ass up here!’
Even with a rope, Nash took his time. With slippery surfaces and hard jagged edges, any kind of fall was potentially lethal. He was catching his breath, just above the topmost torpedo door, when Boerman’s big arm looped down.
‘You’re like a fucking old woman!’ he bellowed in frustration. ‘Take my hand!’
‘Thanks, but I’ll pass.’
A few minutes later, he reached the big man, crouched on the nose of the pneumatic catapult track. It was a precarious perch. Nash’s stomach contracted at another lethal drop to the circular waterproof hangar door.
‘Kom, we use it for a ladder.’
The garish smudge of rust across the left side of Boerman’s face made him look like an extra from a Mad Max movie. Unencumbered by rope or common sense, he climbed swiftly down through the remnants of the track mechanism, which had once flung five-tonne torpedo bombers into the air. The steel was treacherous. Sections which looked strong enough to support a car suddenly snapped in Nash’s hand.
‘What’s happening?’ Sura’s voice floated down.
‘Almost at the hangar!’ Boerman roared. ‘The door is closed!’
‘Be careful –’
There was a sharp snapping sound. In a shower of debris, the Afrikaner plunged several metres, landing feet first on the nose of the conical hangar door. Its steeply sloping sides offered no purchase, and Boerman’s boots slipped on the flaking rust. Slamming down hard on his side, he inexorably slid towards the edge, and Nash willed him to fall, but with a last desperate grab, Boerman managed to grasp a handle near the edge of the door and swung wildly to and fro like a pendulum.
Biceps bulging, the Afrikaner slowly hauled himself up. Nash inwardly cursed. Boerman was one of those people fate would simply not take care of.
‘Still here, Nash.’ Boerman grinned up at him. ‘I’m still fucking here!’
It took Nash ten minutes to negotiate the treacherous conical door on his backside, and his arms were shaking until he reached the secure handholds of a triple twenty-five mm anti-aircraft cannon mounted on the hangar roof.
A short distance below, Boerman was standing on the face of the offset conning tower.
‘Hopefully, we can get in this way,’ he said, before striding up to the top.
Something peculiar then struck Nash about his now-uninterrupted view to the stern. The entire deck was curved like a roller coaster track. He realised the submarine had bent like a giant banana from the tremendous force of crashing into the sinkhole floor, which must have cracked open the hull below.
He was heading over to Boerma
n when the rope abruptly pulled up taut. Nash realised he’d reached the end of the line.
‘Unclip your ass,’ jeered the big man. ‘Or I’ll come and get you myself.’
Tiptoeing along the horizontal conning tower, Nash lay down beside Boerman and craned his head over the parapet. A set of fixed pressure-proof binoculars stared back at them. It was easy to imagine the Japanese captain scanning the horizon for enemy ships, unaware the greater threat lay beneath his feet. Stumps of periscopes, and the remains of radar cones, also projected from the deck. Boerman then performed another outrageous feat of free climbing, trying to get the hatch to open while hanging upside down.
When at last he conceded, puffing and panting, they went back along the conning tower and continued the terrifying climb down through the rusting steel framework. The rear section, which had spent more time underwater, was severely corroded. At times, they literally had to kick footholds in the rust until, at last, they were able to stand without danger of falling on the flattened, bulging stern.
Nash eagerly surveyed the carpet of young tree ferns growing strongly in the shallow silt of the sinkhole floor. There were no older plants except for plucky dwarf specimens clinging to the walls above, suggesting inundation was indeed a regular event. There were several promising overhangs in shadow, suggesting caves and passages, but it was the small stream bubbling its way down to the low point which pointed to the location of the main exit passage he was expecting.
‘After you, Nash.’
With mounting excitement, Nash clambered down over the split-open pressure hulls and mangled propellers to reach solid ground.
It was only now they were able to appreciate the behemoth above their heads. Boerman whistled, for it was truly an astonishing sight. Foreshortened, the gigantic submarine looked like a tinplate toy lost down a drainpipe after a storm. Nash had to remind himself that the chaotic tangle of twigs wedged tightly around its bow were actually massive trees. It looked disturbingly like a giant set of Jenga. If one log went, several hundred tonnes of timber were poised to follow.
A gaping crack in the submarine’s hull, forty-five metres above their heads, drew their eyes. Floor plating was spewing out, and severed pipes looked ready to fall. Chunks of broken metal dotting the floor of the sinkhole suggested this was a regular occurrence.