by Chris Ryan
It was slippery underfoot. Max trod carefully. The last thing he wanted to do was trip. Nor did he want to come into contact with the walls or ceiling. They were close to his skin – there was very little room down here – and covered in a damp, sticky substance Max didn’t want to investigate further, and certainly didn’t want to touch.
Something dripped on to his face. He wiped it off quickly, but didn’t dare check the back of his hand to see what it was.
There was a constant, high-pitched squeak of rodents. Max was aware of them scurrying in the tunnel, their shadows changing shape in the moving torchlight. Now and then he felt something brush against his feet. He didn’t want to know what it was.
Max knew from the plans Hector had shown them that the sewer tunnel was about fifty metres long. It felt like twice that. He kept expecting to get used to the stench, but he didn’t. If anything, it grew worse, and with it grew his claustrophobia. He wanted to shout out, or run, but he couldn’t do either. All he could do was press on, weighed down by his dive bag, oppressed by his squalid surroundings …
Time dragged. Max felt as if he’d been in the sewer for an hour, but a glance at his watch told him it was only 23:20 hours. They’d barely been down here for ten minutes. He nearly slipped on something soft, and cursed under his breath. Then he gritted his teeth and continued walking along the stinking, revolting tunnel. The next time he checked his watch, it was 23:35 hours.
‘Jeez …’ Abby gasped from behind him. ‘How much further?’
‘I dunno,’ Max said, his teeth gritted. Even as he said it, he caught a whiff of something. It wasn’t fresh air, exactly, but it was a little less foul. ‘Not far, I don’t think.’
He was right. With each step they took, the air cleared a little. The sewer grew wider. Max felt a breeze.
‘I can see something,’ Lukas announced. Max peered past him, squinting in the semi-darkness. Sure enough, up ahead, there was a wall with a grille set in it. Moonlight streamed in through the holes in the grille. The stream of effluent was channelled into a hole at the end of the tunnel. They were able to step out of the stream and walk alongside it.
‘I don’t ever want to do that again,’ Sami said.
‘We’ve got to get back yet,’ Max told him. He approached the grille – it was rusty and grimy – and looked through it. They were just above the river. Immediately below them was a pipe discharging the sewage into the water. It extended for about a metre. From this height they would be able to jump past it. But first they had to remove the grille.
Sami, who was in charge of one of the welding kits, started to unpack it. Their plan was to burn a hole in the grille, then push themselves through. But Max told Sami to wait. He could see that the mortar around the grille was old and crumbling. He put his fingers through the holes in the grille and pulled. It immediately came loose. Lukas did the same on the other side of the grille and, in a matter of seconds, they managed to pull it away from the wall. The cadets crowded round the open cavity, breathing in lungfuls of fresh air.
Max could just make out the lights of the prison barge along the river. Weirdly, it seemed closer than it had done from the ninth floor. Max knew that was just a trick of perspective. It was going to be a long, difficult swim. ‘We can’t hang around,’ he said.
The cadets got to work. Lukas prepared the GPS equipment. On the flight to Beijing, Woody had given him detailed instructions about how to do this. Regular GPS signals did not work underwater, but they had an alternative.
‘You’ll have a GPS gateway unit,’ Woody had said. ‘You attach it to a fixed point and let it float in the river. It communicates with GPS satellites. Then you each have a wrist unit. The wrist units communicate with the gateway unit using acoustic signals that can propagate underwater. They’ll tell you your exact position as well as your depth and each other’s positions, which will appear as blue dots. This wrist units will have the location of the prison barge pre-loaded. It’ll appear as a red dot. You just have to follow that – the display will tell you how many metres you are from the target.’
‘And we couldn’t have had one of those in the lake?’ Lukas had said.
‘What would be the fun in that, big fella?’ Woody had winked at him.
Now, Lukas was unpacking the gateway unit. It had a waterproof case, three thick black antennae, and was attached to a lanyard several metres long. Lukas tied one end of the lanyard to the metal grille, which they had propped up against the wall, then powered up the unit. Its face glowed. Lukas lowered it by the lanyard into the river. When it hit the water, the current pulled it downstream. The lanyard became taut. Lukas gave each cadet a wrist unit. Max clipped his to his left wrist. The face was much larger than a regular watch and it had two buttons. One was a panic button: if activated, it would alert the others that the wearer was in distress. The other was a power button. Max pressed it and the face of his unit lit up. It displayed a great deal of information: time, depth, temperature, position. It took a few seconds to connect to the gateway unit. When it did, a red dot appeared. That was the barge. That was their objective.
The cadets donned their rebreathing gear. Max and Abby strapped their welding units to a chest harness. Sami secreted his sat phone in a waterproof pouch and inserted this into a tight wetsuit pocket. Max checked that the handgun was safe and did the same, then clipped the chain cutters to the chest harness. They stashed their empty dive bags by the sewage stream. Then they turned to each other.
‘Okay,’ Max said. ‘Let’s recap on the plan. We swim in pairs. Lukas and I will go first. Abby and Sami, follow after about a minute.’
‘Don’t you love it when he takes charge?’ Abby said. But her wisecrack fell flat. Maybe it was something to do with the tremor in her voice.
‘We head for the barge in as straight a line as possible,’ Max continued. ‘If we meet another boat, we avoid it by diving deeper. We only break the surface in an absolute emergency. Once Lukas and I are at the prison barge, I’ll use the welding kit to burn a hole in the hull and scuttle it. Hopefully, that will give Prospero the opportunity to escape. I’ll hand over the weapon, and our job is done. Any problems, Lukas and I will swim to Sami and Abby’s position. Sami has the second welding kit, so he can have another go at breaching the hull if I don’t manage it for any reason. Once that’s done, we return to the hotel. We get out of our dirty wetsuits, into our clean clothes, chimney up the laundry chute …’
‘… looking forward to that,’ Abby said.
‘… and we’re in bed by dawn.’ He looked out towards the river again. ‘I’m making it sound simple, right?’
Nobody spoke.
‘Any major problems – and I mean problems that threaten to compromise the mission – we activate the panic buttons on our wrist units. If that happens, we all return immediately to this location.’
‘If we can,’ Lukas said.
‘Yeah,’ Max agreed. ‘If we can.’
‘I am very scared,’ Sami said.
‘Me too,’ said Abby.
‘Same,’ said Lukas.
‘We’d be crazy if we weren’t,’ Max said. His stomach was turning over and his limbs were cold. ‘Remember,’ he said, ‘nobody knows we’re coming or what we’re doing. We have the element of surprise.’ He checked his wrist unit. ‘It’s one minute to midnight,’ he said. ‘Let’s make a start.’
He clambered over the ledge and prepared to jump.
10
Panic
The water was colder than Max expected. There was a warm stream where the effluent from the sewage pipe merged with the river water, but Max avoided that with a shudder. He swam away from the island with three powerful strokes, then concentrated on depth. Four metres down would be enough, he decided.
It was entirely dark. The moonlight didn’t penetrate the water, and blackness seemed to press in on him. Max could barely see his hand when he held it just in front of his mask. His wrist unit glowed faintly. It was the only way he could navigate, or even o
rientate himself. The red dot that indicated the prison barge was on the top edge of the display. The blue dots that showed the other cadets were clustered on the bottom edge.
He heard a muffled, bubbly splash. A few seconds later, there was a tap on his shoulder. He twisted round to see an indistinct shadow he assumed was Lukas. He tapped his mate on the arm in return, then twisted again in what he thought was the direction of the barge, and swam.
Lukas stuck close. Even with the wrist units, it would be hard to locate each other underwater if they became separated. Max really didn’t want that to happen. This was nothing like the lake swim they’d undertaken in training. The current was strong. It seemed to pull the energy out of Max’s muscles. The welding unit was heavy and made movement more difficult. He was strong and fit, but this was going to be a true challenge.
After thirty seconds it was clear they had the direction wrong. The current was knocking them off-track and the red dot was gradually circling the face of the wrist unit. As one, Max and Lukas readjusted their trajectory. It meant swimming into the current at a steeper angle, which in turn made the dive a tougher prospect. Max steeled himself for a long, gruelling swim.
It almost felt like they weren’t moving. As they were practically blind, they had nothing to measure their progress against. All they could do was rely on their wrist units, which showed them approaching the barge at a painfully slow rate. After fifteen minutes, they’d barely covered half the distance. After thirty, their rate seemed to have slowed even further. Max’s muscles burned and he realised he was panting through the rebreather as his tiring body called for more oxygen.
He had just checked the time again – 00:44 hours – when the hull of a boat appeared right in front of them, moving fast. Max and Lukas pulled back in panic as the hull slid past them in a cloud of bubbles and murky river water. The cadets peered at each other through the gloom. Lukas would surely be thinking the same as him. Any closer and they’d have been hit by the hull. Chance of survival? Practically zero. He checked his wrist unit. He’d been so focused on the red dot, he’d stopped paying attention to the depth gauge. They were only two metres from the surface. They needed to get lower.
Max’s heart was thumping as he and Lukas moved to a depth of five metres. He felt the pressure build up in his ears. A glance at his wrist gauge told him that Sami and Abby were still together, but well behind them. He hoped they were staying deep too. It was the only way they could be sure of avoiding a collision.
Distance to the target: thirty metres. They powered forward. Max was beginning to wish he’d eaten more at dinner. Energy was leaching from his body. He was finding it difficult to keep up with Lukas. But he kept going. There was no turning back now.
Distance: twenty metres. Max sensed a vessel passing overhead and felt the disturbance of the current. It occurred to him that, whatever the vessel was, it was close to the barge. Too close? Had the authorities felt the need to increase the security around the boat? Did they know someone was coming to make a rescue attempt?
Fifteen metres. Lukas was right by him. He still couldn’t see the barge in the dark water. Instinctively, he touched the underwater welding kit clipped to his chest, preparing himself to make use of it.
Ten metres.
That was when it happened.
Was it the noise he heard first? A piercing, wailing siren, muffled under the water but still loud. Or did he see the lights, so bright above the river that they illuminated the almost impenetrable gloom? He knew, instantly, that they were spotlights, several of them, directed towards the water surrounding the barge and moving in a criss-cross pattern. He twisted round to look at Lukas, whose response was identical to Max’s. They each slammed the panic button on their wrist units. The units vibrated. The screens turned red for a second. Then they shut down. In a rush of panic, Max unclipped the welding unit from his chest. He needed to move fast, and it was a hindrance. As soon as he let go of it, it sank to the bottom of the river. Max realised suddenly that he’d made a terrible error. The welding unit wasn’t just a cutting tool. It could have been a weapon, and now it was lost.
Big, big mistake. Because just then then the divers arrived.
Max felt like he was back at the lake near Valley House, surrounded by the Watchers. But he soon realised that Hector, Woody and Angel had gone easy on them. It was impossible to tell how many frogmen there were. All Max knew was that they were numerous – and aggressive. He felt an iron fist in his stomach, and an elbow cracked against his right cheek. The rebreather mask was ripped from his face, surrounding him in a fierce underwater cloud of bubbles. An arm grabbed him from behind, clutching his throat. And the pressure in his ears decreased as his attackers forced him to the surface.
Max broke through into the open air with a noisy gasp. A searchlight shone from the boat directly into his face, blinding him. All he could hear was shouting: angry, aggressive Korean voices, some of them screaming at him from very close, others from further away, perhaps on the barge. He heard Lukas yelling his name, but his mate’s voice was becoming more distant. They were plainly being separated.
The immediate shock of the attack wore off. Max started to struggle, to flail about with his arms. Bad move. He took another blow in the face. And another. He started to feel woozy. The burst of energy from the adrenaline rush was ebbing away. He swallowed a mouthful of river water and coughed violently, his head still spinning.
He tried to call out Lukas’s name, but his voice wasn’t working. He felt like he was drowning. He felt another blow to the stomach. Another to the head.
He passed out.
When he woke – seconds, minutes or hours later – he was no longer in the water. He was lying on something hard. His head throbbed. Somebody had their hand around his throat. They were screaming into his face, but his vision was blurred and he couldn’t see them.
There was nothing on his back. His rebreathing apparatus must have been removed. But he was still wet, so he couldn’t be long out of the water. He tried to inhale. It was difficult because of the hand round his throat, but he managed half a noisy lungful. His vision cleared a little. An angry uniformed North Korean official was right in front of him, shouting incomprehensibly. Max tried to work out where he was. He appeared to be on the deck of a boat. The prison barge? He assumed so. The official swiped him round the face, which seemed to make him even angrier. He held up the back of his hand to show that it was covered in blood. His own blood. Max could feel it flooding from his nose.
He was pulled up to his knees. His eyes rolled and he almost collapsed again. But he managed to stay upright. There were five or six officials. Maybe more. Some of them were speaking on mobile phones. All of them were looking in Max’s direction. He was aware of searchlights on the deck. They were pointing at the river, zigzagging in a random search pattern.
Searching for others.
Lukas had been captured. He had to be – he had been right by Max. His thoughts turned to Abby and Sami. What was their location? Were they safe? Did they know what was happening? Max and Lukas had hit their panic buttons, and they had agreed that this was a sign they should return to the island. But would they act on that? Could they act on it?
More thoughts crowded into his head. How had their attackers known they were coming? Had he and Lukas tripped some sort of intruder alert? It didn’t seem likely. He hadn’t noticed any cables in the water – and anyway, such alerts would be activated by river fish. But there was only one other option: the Korean authorities were expecting them. How? Had somebody tipped them off?
Who?
Max was in no position to worry about it any longer. Yet another blow to the head knocked him back down to the deck.
He was out cold.
Abby and Sami’s wrist units had vibrated simultaneously. They immediately stopped swimming and instinctively locked arms so they didn’t become separated by the current. Their faces almost touching, they stared at each other through the dark water in alarm. It was a look that
said: what’s happening? What do we do?
The faces of their wrist units had turned red. They stared at them. The blue dots that indicated Max and Lukas were almost exactly on top of the red dot of the barge. Then, as if somebody had switched off a light, they disappeared. Either their units were broken, or someone had switched them off.
Their instructions were clear: in the event of anyone activating the panic alarm, they were to return to the hotel immediately. They nodded at each other, twisted around in the water and powered back the way they came.
But it was apparent within seconds that their way was blocked. Searchlights pierced the water above them. The hulls of three boats passed above them. Sami even thought he caught a glimpse of other divers up ahead. Abby must have seen them too, because she grabbed his arm and pointed in a different direction. She was obviously thinking the same as Sami. They were compromised. Somebody knew about them. And it seemed that the way back to the hotel was likely to be under heavy surveillance.
They needed to see what was happening. They couldn’t do that underwater, but breaking the surface here would be madness. They had to head for the river’s edge, where they could surface in the shadow and camouflage of the high bank. And they had to do it now.
Side by side, they cut through the water, away from the searchlights and the shadowy figures of the other divers. When they reached the river wall – algae-covered and slimy – they hesitated. Even here, breaking the surface was a risk. But it was one they had to take. They nodded at each other and slowly raised their heads above water.
The sight made them sick. Five or six boats surrounded the prison barge, each with a couple of high-powered searchlights beaming down into the water. More boats had established a cordon around the hotel island, making access impossible for Abby and Sami. Worst of all, the prison barge was moving. It had unmoored from the pier and was slowly sliding downstream.