Seize the opportunity,
he thought.
Dewey moved. While his captors stared momentarily at the interior of the pumping station, he stepped through the entry alcove, out of the line of sight of the door, toward the tangle of piping. He broke right, stepping along the cement floor of the station, then ducked against the wall, moving toward the back of the room.
He suddenly heard the frantic words of one of the divers in Arabic over the radio.
As long as Dewey was against the wall, he was vulnerable. If he could make it to the far side of the pipes at the center of the room, it would be difficult for the terrorists to get a clean shot. He kept moving along the wall, but looked back, seeing the tip of the rifle emerge from the side of the entrance, now more than twenty feet from where he crouched. The shorter diver was following him, moving in for a shot. More frantic words from the diver echoed on the radio. Suddenly, Esco’s voice barked into the radio, also in Arabic, interrupting the diver. Dewey pressed forward, then turned. He watched as the diver turned, stepped back toward the door. Esco had told the diver to stop.
The bomb.
It was the bomb that had brought them down here. Dewey was now expendable.
Dewey watched from the back of the station as the diver slung the rifle over his shoulder and the pair struggled to move the bomb into place. Dewey sidled to the back of the station, where he knew lay his only chance of survival. There he came upon a large black locker. He pulled the door open, revealing an underwater welding unit, a pair of emergency air tanks that could be attached to the valve at the waist belt of the Kevlar suit, and a long combat knife.
He picked up the knife and stuck it in his suit’s utility belt, then slipped back into the forest of pipes.
Esco barked more words in Arabic, then cleared his throat and let out a maniacal laugh. “Chief,” he said, reverting to English. “In case I don’t have the chance to say this in person, I want to thank you for your help. Your mother would be proud of you.”
Then Dewey felt it. Imperceptible at first, like a puff of cold wind. He felt the air tug at his lungs. The feeling grew stronger, until he understood what was happening. He was no longer getting air from his tube. He yanked at the air tube that connected to his steel helmet.
“Is that you I hear coughing, Chief?” asked Esco, laughing. “Just swim to the surface. There’s plenty of air up here.” The sound of his chuckle rattled in the helmet.
They’d left the communications link intact but shut off the oxygen line. The good news was that the diving suit’s air valve had a safety catch to prevent pressurized seawater from rushing into his suit and crushing and drowning him simultaneously. The bad news, he had no air. Within a few minutes, he’d pass out. Soon after that he’d suffocate within his mask. He knew he couldn’t scale the ladder in time.
Suddenly, Dewey felt himself yanked violently to the side by a sharp tug on his cable. They were trying to reel him in from the deck above, using the mechanical winch. His steel boots suddenly left the ground and he was ripped sideways. Frantically, he drew the knife and cut the cable, air tube, communications wire, and all. He dropped back to the seabed, untethered to the platform above.
Across the pumping station, halogen lights on the helmets of the divers moved out of the alcove, heading for the elevator. Dewey hurried out of the pipe network after them, his chest tightening. But time was passing. He was suffocating.
He came upon the taller of the two men as he opened the door to the elevator. Dewey lunged at him and wrestled him, slow-motion style, to the seabed. Looking up, he saw the shorter terrorist train the APS at him. Then he heard it, like a snapping twig; the click of the rifle’s trigger. With all of his strength Dewey swung the big man fully around, letting him fall atop him now, so that his back faced the weapon as it launched. The explosive crack of the APS thundered through the water as the needle-like projectile sliced through water and plunged into the back of the big diver. Dewey looked into the man’s helmet, at his eyes, which bulged. He watched as the helmet filled with blood and lethally pressurized ocean water.
The shooter tried to fire again, but the weapon failed. He dropped and lumbered in slow-motion through the freight elevator door.
Struggling to follow, Dewey now knew what it meant to suffocate. He began to feel the pain that oxygen deprivation causes, in the head at first, then pulsing through the body. He tried to breathe one last gulp
of air but could not. His helmet was empty. He watched as the second diver entered the cage.
You fucked up,
he thought.
You should’ve gone for the spare oxygen tank.
Pain consumed him and he felt helpless. The sight of the terrorist climbing into the freight cage intermingled with blackness as his mind began to shut down. At that moment, Dewey remembered his family farm in Maine. He’d always imagined he’d die on the farm. He thought of the fields, wheat-colored and dry.
“Help me, God,” he said aloud.
And it was then, from somewhere within himself, where rational thought is secondary and raw, native instinct is the master; where true bravery either flourishes or is altogether absent; where a man’s will to survive is either surrendered or burns like an inferno, Dewey found inner strength.
He plunged toward the freight cage. The terrorist, unfamiliar with the lift, worked at the switch to start the elevator’s ascent. Dewey flung the door open, grabbed the man’s shoulder, and pulled him down. The diver kicked the suffocating, weakened Dewey away, but Dewey grabbed again, this time holding his opponent’s leg. Slowly, the diver managed to stand, too strong, too fresh with oxygen.
Desperately, with his free hand Dewey pulled the knife and plunged it into the air valve just above the man’s belt, the one place unprotected by the suit’s thick Kevlar. Blood shot out into the water like dye. The loss of pressure crushed the terrorist in a swift, excruciating moment as water poured into the suit.
Dewey was delirious. More than three minutes had passed since he’d taken a breath.
Mechanically, he walked back to the pumping station, through the alcove, past the spiderweb network of pipes and cables, to the locker in back, reaching it as his vision blackened. He took the emergency oxygen tank and screwed it to the air valve at his waist. A sharp hiss, then a quieter flowing sound followed. He breathed in. It was the sweetest breath he’d ever taken. For several minutes, he simply breathed, like a starving man at an unending feast.
Finally, he walked out of the pump station. He walked to the bomb;
a padlock held the steel cap in place. He moved back to the dead terrorists and searched each one for the key, finding nothing. He moved from the divers to the ladder and began his ascent. Up top, he knew, Esco and the terrorists would be waiting for the elevator, having lost contact with their men. Waiting for
him.
He began climbing the rungs of the ladder, plotting his response.
SAVAGE ISLAND PROJECT
Savoy exited the dam and walked down the hill, past the administration building. After the small grocery store, the houses for Savage Island’s workers started, row upon row of squat cement capes.
He walked down the street until he came to number twenty-two. On the side of the small house, a basketball hoop was attached to a makeshift pole made out of the shucked log of a pine tree. Savoy knocked on the front door. No answer. He knocked again. Still no answer. He paused for a moment, looked around, took a step back, then kicked the door in.
After removing the metal plate, Mirin and Amman climbed inside the small opening at the base of the section of dam that housed the turbine. Once inside, they crawled through the rotors toward the end of the cylinder that housed the turbine. The smell grew stronger as they got closer. After a few more feet, the two men climbed into the enclosed chamber at the face of the turbine. This was the cavity through which water would have been coursing, were the turbine open to the sea.
They could stand now. Mirin walked to the end of the turbine. Against the wall stood four large oil drums, connected by a thick white cable.
On the side of the steel drums, in red paint, read the word:
OCTANITROCUBANE-9
.
At the first turbine row, Mijailovic realized he’d forgotten his headlamp. The floor was dimly lit by a halogen light on the side of the elevator. He walked to the wall and felt for the auxiliary light switch. He opened a small steel box and flipped the switch. The floor lit up brightly, revealing a pair of bright yellow parkas piled on the floor near the elevator. He glanced at them, then walked a little more quickly toward the turbine row.
The turbines were all shrouded in bright blue tarps. Beneath each tarp lay a collection of ladders, tools, and equipment. Pulling aside the tarps, he found each turbine in some state of dismemberment and repair.
At the last turbine, the tarp had already been removed. He smelled a faint but pungent smell. It seemed sour, acrid, chemical. It reminded him of something. What?
I know that smell,
he thought.
Savoy moved quickly through the small house. Inside the front door, a television flickered. On the screen, a blond female read the news. The room had a small table stacked high with books and magazines. Savoy flipped through them.
Time, Newsweek, Match, Playboy,
and some sort of political magazine in Arabic. Behind the table stood two large reclining yellow Naugahyde chairs.
He walked into the first bedroom and found a neatly made bed. A dresser held a photo of an older, dark-haired Middle Eastern woman.
He walked across the hall. This bedroom was the polar opposite of the first. The sheets were off the bed, piled in the corner of the room. The mattress was pulled off of the bedsprings. He stared for a moment. Then he walked back to the other bedroom and to the neatly made bed. He reached down and pulled the mattress away from the bedspring and threw it onto the floor.
Laid out on top of the boxspring was a set of engineering drawings.
A chill ran down his spine as he studied them. He recognized the arrangement of the turbines. The plans had been hand-drawn but were precise. Arabic script filled the margins. They were schematics of the dam. He searched for the first-tier turbine row. Several large red marks were drawn on one of the turbines.
Savoy ran to the kitchen and pulled the phone from the hook. He dialed Mijailovic’s satellite phone and let it ring.
Outside the fourth turbine, Mijailovic shone his flashlight on a slat of metal lying on the ground. Above it was an opening in the turbine. He climbed inside the opening. He moved slowly ahead on his hands and knees, his hands navigating the edges of the dimly lit tunnel. There, inside the turbine column, the smell grew stronger.
He suddenly recognized the smell that was coming from in front of them, down the turbine cylinder. It was the small of the burning wells. The infernos.
The Gulf War. Desert Storm. 1993. The well fires. Kuwait. Long before Mijailovic had joined KKB, he worked for Hulcher Company, one of the private contractors brought in by the Department of Defense to help put the fires out.
The memories raced in Mijailovic’s head. Smoldering infernos fueled by chemicals that wouldn’t go out. The chemicals were so destructive they contaminated the oil, then devoured the steel of the oil derricks and tubing that ran down into the ground.
“My God,” he said to no one. “I missed something.”
He heard the sound of metal banging against metal, a door opening or a latch being shut.
Someone was ahead.
Should he leave? Could he get out in time to warn everyone? He felt for his sat phone. He’d left it in his parka.
He started to crawl back toward the opening. The first step was to evacuate the dam. No, not the first. The first was to run like hell until he was on safe ground.
Then Mijailovic heard another sound. Voices. Two of them. He closed his eyes; he knew what he had to do. He turned around and moved toward the noises.
Less than fifty feet away, Mirin continued his furious work. He lifted a small box from the side of the barrels. He pulled the top off.
“I hear something,” Amman said, panicked.
Mirin said nothing. He continued his work. Inside the box was a rainbow of wires. Carefully, he pulled the green wire from the bunch.
“Hurry, brother.”
“Relax,” Mirin replied. “Almost done.”
He cut the plastic coating from the end of the wire and peeled it back.
Back at unit twenty-two, Savoy gave up on Arnie and dialed a new number.
“Operations,” answered a voice.
“This is Terry Savoy. Who am I speaking to?”
“Al Durant.”
“Is Arnie with you?”
“No. He hasn’t been back.”
“Okay. Listen to me. I want you to order an evacuation of the dam, immediately.”
“Are you kidding?”
“No, I’m not kidding. Hit the facility evacuation alarm. Get everyone out of there immediately. Do you hear me? Sound it now. I want to hear it before I hang up this phone.”
“Yes, sir.”
Savoy listened as Durant dropped the phone on the desk in front of him. He heard some voices mumbling in the background. Suddenly, a new voice came on the line.
“Terry, this is Bob Hauser, foreman in charge over here. Did I hear right? You want an evacuation?”