by Jake Avila
‘I’m so sorry, Nat. Forgive me.’
The purging of denial left him momentarily empty, unable to think, respond or act until the super-chilled water cresting the collar of his drysuit made him gasp. The shock of it seemed to galvanise his will and free his paralysed limbs. Turning on his helmet dive lights, Nash realised he was just five metres below the closed bulkhead door. Was he going to let another woman die?
‘Mia!’ he roared, ‘Hold on!’
He climbed with a will, desperate to atone, only to be confronted by the horror of Boerman’s vengeance. Where once there was a door handle, only a raw stump of metal remained. The Afrikaner must have pounded it off with a lump hammer.
Again, Nash roared, this time in frustrated anguish. The bulkhead door was totally impossible to open from this side.
Incredibly, there was a muffled return cry.
‘Rob, are you there?’
Its source was a small, ragged hole in the bulkhead near floor level. Boerman had also severed a gate valve, designed to give crew trapped underwater a chance of escape under pressure by flooding the compartment. It had been done so Mia would slowly drown.
‘Mia,’ he called though the hole.
‘Rob, where are you?’
He directed his dive light carefully through the hole.
‘I see you!’ she shouted. ‘Oh God, help me!’
‘Mia, listen – can you open the door?’
‘I’m tied to something! I’m trying to get free, but these cable ties are cutting me to pieces.’
Nash pressed his forehead to the cold steel. Even if he found a way to plug the hole and slow the water down, the door would soon be impossible to open. Mia’s only hope was to escape via the top bulkhead door, but in order to reach it, she needed to be able to climb.
‘Rob? Are you still there?’
Somehow he had to reach the top bulkhead door from the other side and climb down to free her. The only access was via the hole Boerman had cut in the hull, which was twenty metres above their heads, but the Afrikaner knew full well it was his only option, and would simply pick him off.
‘Rob, I’m scared. Don’t leave me!’
‘Mia, listen to me. I’m coming to get you from the other side, but you have to find a way to get free.’
‘I’m fucking tied up,’ she sobbed angrily. ‘Didn’t you hear me?’
‘When the water comes in, stay with the air, all the way to the top. Breathe to the very last lungful, do you hear me? And then hold your breath for as long as you can. Because I might have to let the pressure equalise before I can open the door.’
Nash’s ears popped as air was squeezed into the end of the compartment by the rising water. It was close now, gurgling and hissing, finding its way into every crack and crevice.
‘Rob, I can’t get free!’ she shrieked. ‘Just shut up and say goodbye!’
The insistent water was sloshing around Nash’s neck. He was choking with grief and impotent rage, but he knew that if she was to have any chance, he had to stay calm, right to the very end.
‘Mia, you’re going to get free and I will see you at the top. One more thing . . . Do Not try and open this door or the water will crush you – do you understand? You have to go up. You can do it. I know you can.’
‘Rob –’
With a glug, the hole went under. Nash thought he heard a shout of terror as the first spout of water jetted into her compartment. The thought of Mia trapped in there by a couple of cheap fucking cable ties was driving him mad, and an involuntary sob racked him as he cut off the sleeve of his drysuit and wedged it into the hole to try and buy her a few more minutes.
He reassured himself the pony tank was still attached to his weight belt. Its miserable 540 litres of compressed air would have to save both their lives now.
With water now swirling about his ears, Nash pressed his pursed lips against the rough bulkhead to suck in every last precious lungful of air. Then, with a silent goodbye to Mia, he flipped over and pushed back down the flooded passageway. Hand over hand, he dragged himself down, kicking his feet in a steady swimmer’s beat.
Swimming clear of the submarine, he encountered a milky green fizz which blocked any clear indication of the surface. But it no longer mattered, for Rob Nash was not going there.
His plan was not really a plan – rather, speculative ambition. In fact, the only thing that exonerated it from the realm of the suicidal was the belief that survival was theoretically possible, as opposed to certain death at the hands of a professional killer above.
Unclipping the pony tank, Nash slid its regulator into his mouth. At his current depth of fifty-four metres, one cautious breath consumed ninety litres, or one-sixth of his air supply. Instantly, his lungs began to burn, and he had to clamp down on a coughing fit. While the compressed air he was breathing was proportionally identical to its surface composition, its partial pressure had increased, meaning the percentage of gas he was absorbing had increased to dangerous levels. Not only was the nitrogen hit on his nervous system equivalent to consuming seven full-strength beers; the concentrated oxygen searing his alveoli was a precursor to a convulsion. His precious air supply was now a toxic soup.
It was now that he caught his first blurry sight of the exit passage – a black maw, swallowing driftwood and other debris. He had a scant second to register that the ledge from which he’d free-dived had been swept clean of rocks before the incredible power of the Hoosenbeck swallowed him, too.
It was a giant water slide – a moment of negative g, followed by sickening acceleration. Nash clutched the pony tank to his chest and curled into the tiniest ball he was capable of forming. Such was the velocity of his descent, he thought he was about to be dashed into the floor of the passage. A second later, he was hurled upwards, in an out-of-control fun park ride, somersaulting end over end.
Teeth clamped around the regulator, he breathed again. The stubborn drag told him the pony was nearly spent. He almost lost it when a violent surge sent him spinning sideways. For a moment, his legs were extended, and he snatched them back in as the wall of the passage grazed his foot.
He knew the passage had widened into a great chamber, for his speed and rate of spin decreased. Nash tentatively opened his eyes to a black nothing. His head torch was gone. So, too, his mask. Tumbling slowly end over end, he felt like an astronaut, untethered from his spaceship, drifting deeper into space. Somehow the Beatles’ ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ began playing on some synaptic sitar. Oxygen toxicity? In the icy water, he could only surrender to the void like an embryo floating in a vast stone womb.
He began to accelerate again, and a sudden series of S-bends flung him all out of shape. Legs akimbo, desperately clutching the cylinder, he sucked in a last puff of air and the pony was dead. Releasing it, he heard a savage clank as it impacted the invisible rocks hurtling past. The incredible speed was unrelenting, a limestone sleigh ride from Hell which went on and on . . .
He was becoming hypoxic. Lungs burning, his diaphragm went into involuntary contractions as the carbon dioxide build-up demanded autonomic respiration. His whole body, every last cell, was ablaze . . .
And then, suddenly, the pain vanished. Was replaced by pure elation. And, in its thrall, Natalie came to share the penultimate moment with him. His Natalie, with that mysterious smile, her peach-curve chin, her beautiful smell of frangipani and coconut cream. He felt her soft hands stroking his face, and in that loving embrace, he understood she now forgave him everything, and he was so joyful, because now at last he could surrender. Now he could let go and just breathe . . .
‘Robert . . . Robert . . . Robert!’
He froze, as she shook him violently.
Nash blinked in surprise. Natalie was demanding that he live. She was turning away, ascending into the light, and all he could do was follow . . .
Where once he had erupted from the Sepik like a creature spawned in Hell, this time he was reborn. Risen to the surface of the Hoosenbe
ck in a boil of green-white water.
Oh God, how that first breath hurt. Exquisite agony. And then, the deep sucking gasps, the sounds of air, of white water, of rain and birds calling.
Nash slowly side-crabbed towards the bank. Weak and exhausted, he grasped hold of some reeds and pulled himself out. It took him a moment to recognise where he was, for the water levels had changed so dramatically. It was the resurgence pool, two kilometres downstream of the sinkhole.
And then he remembered Mia.
Tearing off his drysuit, he began to run.
Chapter 40
Nash was half-drowned, half-naked and barefoot, but he ran the bank of the flooding Hoosenbeck as if in training for an Olympic 1500 metres on a rubberised track. He vaulted rotting logs and ankle-breaking boulders, scrambled over slippery ledges, ploughed unthinkingly through thick kunai grass. A large green python barely had time to rear, as he sailed over it. When his T-shirt snagged a vicious hooked vine it ripped it open, leaving three bloody lines down his chest.
With the roar of the waterfall plunging into the sinkhole growing louder, Nash forced himself to slow down as he pushed through fringing vegetation. He was desperate to get to Mia, but somewhere Jaap Boerman was waiting.
Creeping through a thicket of waist-high ferns, Nash’s eyes widened at the sight of the tattered remnants of the Kopassus camp, now wedged on a tongue of land between the sinkhole – now three quarters full – and the fast-running Hoosenbeck. The wreckage of the burned-out gunship lay like the crumpled remains of a cremated whale amid a carnage of charred and scattered bodies.
It was impossible to tell which one was Frank Douglas.
Nash forced his grief back down, determined that his sacrifice would not be in vain.
Cautiously he made his way through the camp, eyes peeled for movement. Not a tent was left standing, but Sura’s whiteboard and chairs were bizarrely standing intact, and the generator was still powering the arc lights, which had fallen into the mud. It was then that Nash trod on something in the mud. It was a small mattock the soldiers had been using to chop rough storm-water channels away from the waterlogged camp. Not much of a weapon, but better than nothing.
Near the block and tackle, Nash spotted a bright yellow roll of detonator cord, suspended on a tent pole spool lashed between two chair legs driven into the ground. A line of det cord snaked along the ground before plunging over the sinkhole edge.
A chill passed through him. True to his word, Boerman was wiring the sub.
Nash cautiously approached the edge and peered down through the tattered foliage. He was horrified to see the water had almost reached the access hole in the submarine. Once it poured inside, the section above Mia’s compartment would rapidly fill, and any chance of rescue would be dashed. The line of yellow det cord also ran down through the hole. Nash placed a hand on the block and tackle. It was quivering, the thin cable under immense strain.
Partially obscured by the overhang, swaying twenty metres above the jumbled log pile, Boerman was using a jumar to haul himself up. The big man was moving slowly. Perhaps fatigue had finally set in, or maybe he thought the fight was over.
Some instinct made him look up, and his blue eyes widened in shocked disbelief. It was obvious what the Afrikaner’s next move had to be. The det cord was in front of his face, and one shot at close range from his pistol would blow them all to Hell!
With a cry of rage, Nash slammed the mattock down hard on the cable where it lay taut on the steel frame.
Boerman had just freed his pistol when the cable severed. Nash was staring into his eyes when the big man plunged. Fear, dismay and regret, perhaps for thwarted revenge, crossed his face in that split second. For one dreadful moment, it seemed the Afrikaner’s obscene luck would not desert him, for he fell neatly through the tightly packed log jam. But then, right on the waterline, he struck a partially submerged log with an awful thwack. Perhaps fate was determined to make sure of it, for a remnant branch punched up through his chest to transfix him like a vampire.
There was no time to organise a rope. Still clutching the mattock, Nash sprinted back around the sinkhole towards the cargo net winch, which offered the fastest route to the water.
Without hesitation, he launched over the edge. Plummeting thirty sickening metres through the log pile, he slammed into the water with a great stinging crack which numbed both feet. Regaining the surface, he swam through the chop, negotiating the additional hazard of shifting logs as the lower parts of the jam became buoyant.
Water was pouring over the edge of the access hole. Sliding over the jagged lip, Nash reversed position to drop into the churning pool below. In a couple of strokes, he crossed the inverted passageway, and climbed up to the floor hatch, which appeared as a darkened window. The infernal line of yellow det cord marked Boerman’s route to the torpedo room. Had he also found time to sabotage the forward bulkhead door on the lower deck?
Hauling himself inside the inverted floor hatch, Nash clung on to the horizontal ladder and lowered himself down. His feet didn’t quite reach the bulkhead, so he dropped the last half metre.
The bulkhead door was closed, but its circular handle was intact!
‘Mia!’ he bellowed, desperately hoping she was alive to hear him. ‘Hang on!’
Dropping to his knees, he tried shifting the handle. Boerman had opened this door and later closed it, but try as Nash might, it would not budge.
Nash tried loosening the friction by banging around the handle with the head of the mattock. There was no time to listen for an answering sound. At any moment, the water following the route he had just taken was going to pour in from above.
Locking his hands on either side of the handle, Nash centred his entire being on turning it. He drew upon every reserve of strength left in his body, and the flesh of his palms burned and tore as, shouting out to God, the universe, even Natalie, from somewhere the power came . . .
It gave!
Frantically, Nash spun the stubborn wheel.
He barely had time to whip his head back as the massive bulkhead door flew up in his face, its steel edge missing him by inches, as a belch of tightly compressed air blasted up through the hole, dragging a column of churning white water and Mia Carter in its wake.
In the near-darkness he only just managed to grab hold of her before she fell back through with the gout of expelled water. Mia was a dead weight and, clutching her limp body, he feared that he was too late, but then she jerked in his arms.
‘Hang in there!’ he yelled, turning her on her side to let her vomit.
She had just begun to suck in air when water began pouring down upon their heads. The top compartment was overflowing!
‘We gotta go!’
Hauling Mia upright, Nash leaned her against the wall, which was really the floor. Then he jumped up to grab the horizontal ladder, locked his legs under her arms and, with a roar, lifted her up.
‘Grab the ledge!’ he screamed. ‘Come on, Mia!’
With a sob, she flung out an arm, and then another, and hung there by her armpits. Dropping down, he seized her lower legs and pushed her up and over with a splash into the top compartment. Here she waited for him, half-drowned, and half-blinded by the light streaming in through the upper third of the access hole.
‘Almost there.’
Taking her under the shoulders, he pulled her through the hull and out to freedom.
Holding Mia in open water with the sky overhead and the rain at last abating, Nash could have been forgiven for thinking the worst was over. But escaping the dark clutches of the submarine was only a momentary respite.
‘Rob, I’m hypothermic,’ she slurred, barely audible over the din of the waterfall. ‘I’ve got to get warm.’
She was indeed desperately cold, with pale skin and a worrying bluish tinge to her lips. It would take at least a couple of hours for the sinkhole to fill to the brim, and there were no ropes, even had they the strength to climb them.
Swimming Mia around the h
ull, Nash dragged her up on the nose of the hangar door. It was here that he discovered the state of Mia’s wrists. Deep cuts and lacerations showed where she had rubbed away cable ties and flesh on the rusting metal.
He hugged her close to share his body heat, and tore strips off the sleeves of her shirt to bind the wounds on her wrists. Clinging together, they watched the waterfall tumble into the sinkhole.
Mia put her chilled lips against his.
‘I thought I was dead.’ She stared into his eyes. ‘When you grabbed me, I was gone.’
He kissed her several times. ‘I’ve got you now and I’m not letting go.’
He felt her stiffen. ‘Boerman . . .?’
‘Will never hurt you again.’
She nestled in more tightly before looking up at him again.
‘I’m sorry about Frank.’ Nash listened to her account of his final moments. Seeing the pain in his eyes, she pushed her frozen cheek against his. ‘He really loved you.’
‘I know.’
The water was now lapping their feet, and Nash pulled Mia to her feet.
‘We’ve got to keep moving.’
For the next hour they kept ahead of the fast-rising water, making their way along the steeply sloping catapult ramp, until they were standing on the very nose of the I-403. Although the exertion had temporarily warmed Mia, it would still be a long while until the sinkhole filled, and now there was a greater threat. In the swirling water, the log jam had become a deadly unstable mass of shifting tonnage.
‘What are we going to do?’ Mia asked fearfully, as one of the massive logs thudded against the hull, rolled over and slid under another. ‘We’ll be crushed.’
A voice echoing down made them flinch.
‘You mekim wanem?’ What are you doing?
Above them, a young Papuan man was clinging onto the edge of the block and tackle. He was dressed in old khaki trousers, a grubby blue T-shirt and a bandana, and his expression was somewhere between fear and curiosity.
‘Indonesian soldia putim hia!’ Mia yelled, miming the act of shooting. She then interlaced her fingers and held her hands up. ‘Plis helpim!’