Park Skarda-April Force: Emerald Part 25

Pressing her suit flat against the deck, she used her manipulator fingers like climbing crampons to crab sideways towards the rail. When she reached it, she hauled herself to her feet, reaching out and grabbing Skarda, pulling him toward her as he followed her.

"Still with us?"

"I'm here..." His voice was faint. "I think I'm getting a little more air now. They must have damaged the oxygen circulator when they bled the air out. I'm woozy, though...hard to think..."

"Stay with me! I'm betting the torpedoes are still operational. The mechanisms wouldn't have decayed any in the anoxic environment. If I wrap a cable with a loop in it around the tail fins, you can grab it with your manipulator when it shoots out of the tube. It'll take you straight to the surface."

Skarda frowned. Something didn't add up. He fought to focus on what she was saying, but the meaning seemed to evaporate into nothingness. Bright spots of light blinked at the edges of his vision. Willing his mind to focus, he dissected her words, one by one.

Then a sickening realization hit him. "Who's going shoot a torpedo for you?"

Her emotionless reply filled him with dread. "Better that one of us gets out than none. Somebody's got to stop them. And you're in no shape to make it into the torpedo room. Besides, I've fired a torpedo before in training exercises. Have you?"

It felt like his head was filling with blood. His senses swam. "No...but you have the skills to stop them. I don't! You should go."

Her voice came back to him in final, abrupt tones. "It's up to you to save the day, Park. We don't have much air left. You're going to have to make it to the starboard bow fin by yourself. Can you do it?"

In the dark water between them the silence hung heavy.

"Park...you know I'm right. It's the best way. Can you make it to the bow fin?"

His voice came back to her, raw with reluctance and dread. "I can do it."

"Good. Let's get a move on."

Helping him rotate to his feet, she raised her bulky arm, laying the claw-like manipulator against the side of his helmet. He lifted his own arm, resting his manipulator against hers. Their eyes met in silent communication.

In her black gaze he saw depths of emotion he'd never seen before.

But not a trace of fear.

"Go," she said softly. "Good luck."

And then she was climbing up the planks of the deck, using the railing like a mountaineer's rope, rising up the length of the U-boat toward the opening they had cut in the bow.

For a few heartbeats, Skarda stayed rooted in place, pinning her with his light, watching her bulky shape disappear into the gloom. His heart sank. Despair flooded his mind.

But he knew she would want him to have none of that now.

Emotions could come later, when the work was done.

Finally, firmly gripping the rail, he put one foot in front of the other, heading for the bow.

___.

The exploding points of light had vanished like spent fireworks, but now the edges of Skarda's vision were turning black, like solid walls closing in on either side of him. It was getting harder and harder to concentrate. Cold claws of panic clutched the back of his neck. Blood pounded like raging surf inside his skull. Focus seemed so hard.

He'd made it to the section of the hull above the bow fins. Just below them his light picked out the black holes of the torpedo tubes, three of them stacked one atop the other. He knew he was supposed to get to the bow fin. Somehow. In his swimming vision it looked big enough to hold him, but then suddenly he wasn't sure. Suddenly the whole plan seemed absurd and it would be easier just to let go, to let the current grab him and suck him down into the black depths of the sea.

"Park! How are you doing?"

April's voice in his ear jerked him back to reality. With grim determination he narrowed his focus, straining to force his brain into coherency.

"I'm here," he responded. "I'm at the bow fin." The sweep of his light showed ladder rungs affixed to the hull. "I'm climbing down now."

"Okay. I'm inside the torpedo room. Twenty torpedoes here. They fire with compressed air, so I'm a.s.suming they'll still work. I'm wrapping a cable around one now. I'm going to load it into the top tube. That's the top tube. Get ready, okay?"

"Okay."

Carefully, he climbed down the rungs, placing each foot down with deliberate care and hanging on to the last one while he stretched himself out over the fin. The tube opening was just below him, just out of reach. He hauled the bulky suit forward, still holding onto the rung. By leaning over the edge of the fin and thrusting out his arm at full length, he could grab the cable when the torpedo fired.

Or try to.

"All right," April said. "Ready to go. I'll give you a countdown. On three I'll hit the firing b.u.t.ton. Get ready."

"April-"

"No time, Park. Here we go. One...two...three!"

With an explosion of bubbles the torpedo erupted from the tube. Skarda reached out, seeing the steel cable whipping crazily, the makes.h.i.+ft loop flas.h.i.+ng past him- His manipulator claws clacked together, missing it.

The torpedo shot toward the surface in a stream of bubbles.

Panic seized him. His lungs labored and suddenly he realized he was gasping inside his helmet, desperately trying to suck in the nitrogen-oxygen mix.

"I missed it!" he called out. His voice seemed to come from far away, from the mouth and throat of someone who wasn't him. His arms and legs felt like they had been molded from lead.

"Park! You have to hold on! Park!"

April's voice startled him. His body jerked. He'd been dreaming of Sarah, seeing her so fresh and beautiful, sitting on the sand with the tide swirling all around her, the sunlight caressing the soft lines of her face.

"Park!"

With all the effort he could muster, he wrenched his mind back to reality, to April's insistent voice.

"I'm here."

The relief in her voice was unmistakable. "Okay. Let's try it again. Just concentrate and you can do it. I'm counting on you, Park."

"Okay."

"Same tube, okay?"

"Okay."

Forcing himself forward, he leaned further off the bow fin. In his ear came April's countdown: "One...two...three!"

Bubbles exploded. He reached out, seeing the corks.c.r.e.w.i.n.g cable. His manipulator claws shot forward, the aluminum fingers snapping shut on the loop.

It felt like his arm was being jerked out of its socket and then he was accelerating toward the surface, gyrating to and fro with the powerful thrust of the torpedo, seeing nothing but a vortex of bubbling turbulence.

"I got it!" he yelled into his microphone.

Looking up, he could see the blue-white expanse of the surface rus.h.i.+ng at him, the water growing brighter and gaining color-blues, then yellows and reds as he rose. Schools of fish broke apart as he zoomed upward, darting away in fear.

And then his helmet was filled with a burst of suns.h.i.+ne and wavelets lapped at him as the torpedo shot straight up into the air. He let go and it splashed down twenty feet in front of him, disappearing beneath the surface.

With his last bit of strength he uncoupled his helmet, gulping in gasps of air. Debris from the exploded dive boat littered the surface, heaving gently. He thrashed his way to a splintered plank of wood, grabbing it like a life preserver.

Gradually his head cleared. The late afternoon sun beat down on his face. An overpowering surge of raw animal strength rushed through him as his lungs and bloodstream flooded with oxygen.

He was alive.

But at the same time horror clutched at his brain. He'd left April at the bottom of the sea.

To die.

He knew her simple philosophy: live each day to the fullest, defeat your enemies. Until the day they defeated you. And then it was over.

But it didn't make it any easier.

"April!" he shouted into the intercom, but there was no answer. Even if she were still alive, the distance was too great for the electronic link to function.

Slowly he let his gaze pan around the surface of the sea, seeing the water, the few cirrus clouds high in the afternoon sky, a lone seagull soaring toward sh.o.r.e a mile-and-a-half away.

First Sarah. Now April.

He fought down a urge to vomit.

He knew he had to go on. He knew he had to rescue Flinders, to stop Tomilin and the Atlantean cult from destroying the world.

But right now his will had fled and he felt paralyzed, unable to move.

Devastation closed around him like a black hood.

BOOK THREE.

FORTY-EIGHT.

Black Sea APRIL panned her lamp around the torpedo room, seeing nothing but the breech ends of the torpedo tubes, the jumble of pipes and gyro equipment, and the folded crew bunks.

Nothing that could help her escape.

She knew she had only a few minutes of air left. A thought nagged at her, something that had occurred to her when they'd first entered the submarine, but which she'd pushed aside with the discovery of the bars. The thought of death didn't frighten her. But it just wasn't her way to give up. She would fight until the last breath of oxygen entered her lungs. But then, if she joined the German corpses floating in anoxic darkness at the bottom of the sea, so be it.

Once again, the nagging thought skittered across the fringes of her mind.

And then she had it.

The floating corpses they had found were sailors, not officers. It was the officers who had executed them. Which meant that the officers had arranged for some means of escape! She cudgeled her brain, forcing herself to remember anything she'd learned about World War Two U-boats.

Then in a rush it came to her. The U-boat crews had access to primitive aqualung devices-little more than breathing bags-that could be used to escape from sunken submarines. For an emergency ascent, a sailor could inflate the bag with extra oxygen to help him shoot to the surface.

A couple of minutes of air left.

Without the thrusters, it was harder to maneuver the bulky suit in the confined s.p.a.ce, so she pulled herself aft by locking her manipulators on the bunk rails and door frame, shooting ahead with each pull. The beam of her halogen lamp swept over the corpse of the first sailor they had found. Pus.h.i.+ng the body aside, she dragged herself through the hatch into the officers' bunk room. Her light flashed across the wooden hutch and the open isomer cases, then fell on a tall, narrow metal cabinet beside it, s.h.i.+ning with a dull gleam. She remembered noticing it before, but had disregarded the cabinet after they'd found the bars.

Grasping a bed frame, she hauled herself toward it, wrenching the door open. Inside, at the bottom of the cabinet, sat a metal box marked Gegenlunge.

Lunge...! Lungs!

She ripped away the top.

What looked like a life jacket with a hose and mouthpiece attached floated up into the room, followed by several others.

___.

Bobbing on the surface, Skarda unfastened the waist couplings of his ADS, freeing himself from the suit and letting it sink away into the sea. Physical exhaustion and the shock of losing April had turned his brain into a black blank slate. His arms felt like lead weights as he dragged himself further over the block of wood that was his life raft.

With an automatic reflex he reached for his Stealth to contact OSR, but then he realized the smartphone had been lost when the dive s.h.i.+p blew up. A pair of seagulls swooped overhead, then wheeled away, heading for the Crimean coast.

At least he knew which direction to paddle in.

Then, next to him, an object bobbed to the surface, glinting with bright highlights in the late afternoon sun.

An ADS helmet!

Skarda's heart flip-flopped. Hope flowed into him like a healing drug. Beneath the glossy curve of the helmet he could see April's long dark hair, obscuring her face as her chin rested on her chest.

But she wasn't moving.

Back-paddling, Skarda maneuvered the raft to her side, rolling off into the water. With trembling fingers he uncoupled the helmet, tossing it aside. She still wasn't responding. Brus.h.i.+ng a length of her hair aside, he saw that the skin of her face had turned a mottled blue. He shoved himself closer, leaning over her as best he could while treading water. Then he tilted her head back, pinching her nose shut and covering her mouth with his, blowing deep breaths into her lungs, over and over and over.

Moments later she made a sharp choking noise. Her chest heaved. Then her black eyes opened and she jerked her head, looking into his eyes. "Hard to kill," she said in a croak. A grin split her lips.

Skarda's eyes filled with relief and wonder. His heart hammered in his throat. "How did you get out of there?"

She lifted her manipulator arms. Clasped in each was an inflated aqualung. "I found these in the officers' quarters," she said. "I wired a few to my suit, held onto these, and up I came. Now help me get out of this thing. We've got a world to save and we're running out of time!"