Black Storm (30 page)

He shouted back down the tube, knowing it was a risk, but those behind couldn't hear otherwise: “Corporal, you there?”

“Yea, Gunny.”

“Everything okay back there?”

“Yea, Gunny.”

“I'm running into some water up here. Hold up while I investigate.”

“Roger that, Gunny.”

Gault pushed himself forward, keeping track of each thrust. If he could get to 150 yards and still have an air space, they could probably make it. But he could feel the pipe slanting down faster now. That was bad news. The sharper the slope, the more chance water would fill the lowest bend. And it was rising fast now, up to his cheeks, over his mouth when he laid his head back down to rest. So instead he had to keep his head lifted, craning up, to keep his lips and nose where they could suck the dank, still air.

He came to a sudden halt, blouse snagged by one of the cable holders or straps or whatever they were that stuck down from time to time. While he was freeing himself the water sloshed, getting in his eyes, and he inhaled some through his nose and choked, coughed. Faintly he heard Blaisell yelling after him, asking if he was okay. He yelled back Yeah, to hold everybody where they were.

At what he figured at 140 yards in, he had no more than an inch of air space left at the top of the pipe. He was almost sitting up, or as close to it as he could come, jackknifed halfway through a sit-up with his rump hard against the bottom and his face jammed up into the cable-work. He took a breath and held it and squeezed himself slowly around, aiming flashlight and eyes down the pipe.

Just ahead, he saw where water met steel. He floated, face submerged, as he thought about it. Figuring three hundred meters across the river, which was only a guess, it could be more, it could be less, he had another ten yards past that meeting point to the centerline of the river. Past that the pipe ought to start angling up again. The water had to be the same height on the far side, right?

He figured that at most, he'd have to go twenty yards underwater before he came up in the air pocket on the other side. He thought he could make that. He was breathing hard already, but he should be able to make it twenty yards.

On the other hand, what if he figured wrong? What if it kept going down instead of heading back up again? Or if he ran into some kind of anti-intrusion barrier?

It might be that the smart thing to do was turn back. It would be harder going back than coming in. They'd be pulling themselves uphill with their arms, instead of pushing downhill with their legs. It'd be slow. But they could do it, and nobody would drown.

But then they'd still be on the wrong side of the river. And thinking of the Tigris again, the way it foamed and roared in flood, and the darkness, and the lights at the AA battery, he figured they had maybe an even chance of getting across without losing somebody.

While if he screwed up here, or guessed wrong, the only one who wouldn't make it through the water plug would be him.

He rolled slowly over to his back again, bringing his nose back up into the narrow tapering slice of air at the top, and floated there sucking at it as his hands moved
around his uniform. He got the hank of ranger cord and started backing out. It was as slow as he'd feared, humping yourself uphill backward. But he finally saw the glow of Blaisell's flash ahead, making luminous circles in the pipe as the light reflected down toward him.

Talking toward his feet, he explained the plan. The corporal would take the hank of cord as Gault spun it out behind. Blaisell would lash it around his upper body, and hand the rest of the hank on to the man behind him. The seven-strand nylon was good for a breaking strain of 550 pounds. That should be sufficient not only for tug-signaling, but to help pull anyone through who was having trouble. The faster they got through, the less chance of problems.

“I'll be real fucking glad when we're out of here, Gunny.” Blaisell's mutter echoed down the pipe.

“If it don't suck, it ain't duty, Blaze. How's the others doing?”

“I don't know. I can only talk to Sarsten. He wants to know, quote, ‘what the fooking holdup is.'”

“Pass the word back I've got solid water up here, but I don't think it's more than ten or fifteen yards through. I'll go first. Same as when the doc went through the chute. One tug, okay; two tugs, come on; three tugs, I'm in trouble. Don't follow me if I get in trouble. If you can't pull me back out, cut the line and pass the word for everybody to creepy-crawl back out. Then it's the staff sergeant's turn at team leader.”

Blaisell said he had it. Gault rested for a few seconds, staring at the overhead. He wanted to say a prayer, but he couldn't think of any. Finally he just thought, Please don't let this thing be flooded more than twenty yards. That seemed to be about the extent of his needs on earth just now.

He braced his heels and started inching downward again. The water rose, cold and dark, over his shoulders, up to his neck. He turned his flashlight off and stuffed it inside his blouse so he could use both hands. The water
rose over his ears, and he heard through it distant clunks and thuds, transmitted through the steel, as the others got moving. His breath gasped in the narrow confines. The water splashed and rose, to his forehead, above his head. He positioned his lips just above the water, in the narrow gap that remained between the cold rubber-smelling cables. Checking his watch, the tritium-glowing numerals distinct in the dark, he took three deep breaths, sucking each all the way into his lungs, and held the last one.

He rolled slowly, belly down, and began pulling himself rapidly along the conduit, into the dark.

 

THIRTY YARDS
behind him, Maddox lay shuddering, eyes open, staring at the steel and listening to the hollow indecipherable roar coming down the tube. Voices, but she couldn't make out what they were saying.

What the fuck were they doing up there? Being in here was bad enough, without at least the illusion of movement.

She couldn't believe she'd followed these fools into this. Crawling under a river through a thirty-inch pipe. Unable to raise her arms or sit up. She tried to stay calm, but inside her skull her mind was screaming. She bit her lips to keep from sobbing, and couldn't feel her teeth. She was hyperventilating. Getting dizzy. She tried to control her breathing, telling herself she could still get out. Nothing lay between her and the surface but her pride. But the terror seemed to turn and bite its own tail, and spiral faster and faster until her mouth was dry and she was gasping for breath again.

Her hand moved over her body, into her BDU pocket. She felt the lumpy hardness of the autoinjector kit. Ten milligrams of Valium would take her through this. Just jam it into her thigh and she could relax. And that knowledge, that there was something she could do, helped her not do it.

The roaring slowly died away, and she heard the river
once more. It whispered to her from the far side of the steel. She felt the cold through the metal. It seemed to want her. She shivered again. Why the
fuck
weren't they moving?

Then she heard Nichols, explaining something about ranger cord. She took a deep breath and tried to listen, tried to understand what he was telling her. Something about water. Something about tying herself on the line.

When she understood, she closed her eyes.

 

MOUTH SEALED
tight, Gault pulled himself as rapidly as he could through complete and utter blackness. The water was icy cold around him. He felt his muscles shudder, cramping up. He was losing heat fast. But he had to keep going. Too late to go back. Worming backward, like when he went back to talk to Blaze, your boots caught on the stringers, your elbows rammed into the cable clamps. The human body wasn't designed to be rammed backward through a thirty-inch pipe. He'd never make it back to the air space.

The only way now was forward, and he pushed himself grimly on, locking his toes on the cables and pushing, head down, sometimes ramming his face into unseeable projections. His hands were down by his crotch. He couldn't put them above his head, and he needed them to keep paying out the cord. If it got caught on something, they were all in shit city. Images flew through his head as he started to lose it. Started to run out of breath.

That
had
to be twenty yards by now. But when he came up and opened his eyes they were still underwater. His straining lips found nothing but cold liquid.

He ducked his head again and pushed along. His heart began to hammer. This was too far. The attachments wouldn't be able to make this. Well, maybe the commander, he'd said he was a diver, but the doc wasn't going to. No way. Tony had trouble in the water too; he
never mentioned it, but Gault had seen his face back in the sewer when they came to the deep places.

No, no, no…this was just too far. His lungs started to ache. He ignored them, levering himself farther into the dark. Too far. Knowing it was over, he was dead. There just wasn't any air space. He'd rolled the dice and crapped out…. He was out of air, he couldn't hold his breath any longer…his fingers tingled madly, his legs started to thrash and kick, he was done. This was it.

Cory
, he thought.
Cory. It's Dad
. His dead son's face alive again before his sealed eyes. Flashes of bloody light painting the dark like distant artillery by night. He turned his body awkwardly, shoving with numb spasming hands against the cold painted steel, and pushed his mouth with despairing force up against the overhead.

He sucked air from an echoing space about four inches high, enough to push his whole face into. Which meant he could have come up a little earlier. He couldn't tell how far he'd gone. It felt like more than twenty yards. Anyway he should only be about a hundred to a hundred and fifty yards from the far shore now. He gasped down the air with a moaning sound that echoed in the rippling darkness. Brought his watch up at last when his heart slowed down to something like normal, and was astonished to learn from its luminous hands he'd been underwater for forty-five seconds. That didn't sound like too much. The doc should be able to make that.

He pushed himself a few meters farther on, noting that the water dropped steadily. Soon he'd be out of it entirely and crawling through dry pipe again. Judging that was far enough, he braced his feet, wrapped the cord around his hands, and gave it two hearty pulls.

 

WHEN THEY
passed the word back to him, Tony Vertierra was already gasping for breath. It was as if those who had gone ahead had breathed the life out of the dark air. Taken all the oxygen, leaving only a cold staleness that he
sucked at again and again but that did not satisfy the emptiness inside his lungs, and the terrible fear in his heart.

He lay on his back, holding his head up from the icy water, and felt the line go tight against his back. For a moment he braced himself, eyes closed in the dark. He didn't want to put his head under. He couldn't put his head under. Not here.

Because it seemed like he'd been here before. Though he knew that was impossible. He'd never been deep under the Tigris, cramped so tight he couldn't raise his hands more than a foot in front of his face.

The line tightened again, insistent, calling with the peremptory insistence of duty.
Hijo de la gran puta
, he thought. The terror suddenly seemed too big to fit inside his chest, and he gasped and gasped at the air that was not good air and then, with a refusing paroxysm, pulled his head backward and under and began pushing blindly and spasmodically along through the submerged lumen of the tube.

Then, all at once, Tony Vertierra remembered. What up to now somehow had gotten lost, or had been too much to remember. That he had not known, or not known what to do with. Although it was all down there, deep down under the wavering black water.

Black, nothing but black in front of his open, staring eyes.

 

IT HAD
begun not with the helicopters, but with shots. The Sunday market, the market square. His family were potters, and as a small boy he had sat with his mother on the market blanket as she sold the goods they baked, the bowls and tall squarish pots for storing cornmeal. It was the hungry time, before the corn was harvested, and they sold their pots not for money, but for dried corn. It was still on the cob, and his mother and his aunts soaked it in lime and water and made their own
maza
for the tortillas.

But that day, instead, the shooting began, and his mother had grabbed for his hand and they ran. Leaving the pots, their stall, everything but her few remaining coins, which she pushed hurriedly into her zipper purse and dropped down the front of her
huipil
. They had to reach the ravine. It was where the villagers had always hidden when there was trouble.

But then shooting came from there too. The village was surrounded. Smoke roared up from the fields. The corn was burning. The people stopped then. They saw the soldiers coming up the street from Petán. Petán was the next village. Then A Tun saw a man with them. The man was wearing a black hood. You could not see his face. As he walked, he pointed at this man, at that woman. The soldiers shot them immediately and they whirled around and fell down, just as in the game the children played.

The man in the hood saw them, and pointed in their direction.

His mother had lifted him then and dropped him into the well. Held him for a long moment, her thin hard hands gripping his so tightly as she whispered,
Match'aw taj, dih
.

Don't speak, dear.

And he had clung to her, too frightened even to look down; but she'd looked up, and let go, pushed his clawing hands away. And suddenly he was falling, out of her arms, down into the wet and narrow darkness. Where he'd struggled to keep his head above the water for hours, unable to hold to the slick stones for long, not knowing, then, how to swim. Surrounded by the dark and the smell of the water, the smell of death. While from above, faint, as if from another world down to the World Under that his grandfather had told him stories of, came the shouts and screams and the crackle of shooting.