“That’s gonna leave a mark,” Kurt said.
The second Audi cut around the first one and began to accelerate. Kurt doubted the same plan would work twice. He looked ahead. Two more sets of lights were coming up the hill. They could have been locals or tourists, but they stayed abreast of each other, like one car trying to pass another and never actually making it. He was pretty sure what that meant.
“They’re trying to corral us,” he said over the wind that was pouring through the missing doorway.
For a moment he saw trepidation flicker across Katarina’s face, and then the young agent who had something to prove stood on the gas pedal and gripped the wheel like a madwoman. The little Focus shot forward as Katarina flipped her high beams on for good measure.
“I’m not stopping,” she shouted.
Kurt didn’t doubt that, but as he glanced ahead he guessed the drivers of the cars charging up toward them had no plans of stopping either.
23
FOR TEN SOLID MINUTES the Grouper continued to climb, but ever more slowly.
“We’re passing a thousand,” Paul said.
A thousand feet, she thought. That sounded so much better than sixteen thousand or ten or five, but it was still deeper than many steel-hulled submarines were able to go. She remembered a ride she’d taken with the Navy years ago on a Los Angeles — class attack submarine that was about to be retired. At seven hundred feet the side had dented in with a resounding clang. As she nearly jumped out of her skin, the captain and crew laughed heartily.
“This is our test depth, ma’am,” the captain had said. “That dent shows up every time.”
Apparently, it was an inside joke played on all guests, but it scared the heck out of her, and the fact that she and Paul were still three hundred feet deeper than that meant one thousand feet could be just as deadly as sixteen thousand.
“Nine hundred,” Paul said, calling out the depth again.
“What’s our rate?” she asked.
“Two-fifty,” he said. “Give or take.” Less than four minutes to the surface, less than four minutes to life.
Something snapped off the outside of the hull, and the Grouper started to shake.
“I think we lost the rudder,” Paul said.
“Can you control it?”
“I can try to vector the thrust,” he said, his hands working the two joysticks on the panel furiously.
She glanced to the rear. At least eighty gallons of water had filled the sub. The icy liquid had already reached her feet, causing her to pull them up toward her body.
A minute went by, and they began closing in on five hundred feet. A strange creaking sound reverberated through the hull, like a house settling or metal bending. It came and went and then came again.
“What is that?” she said. It was coming from above her head.
She looked up. The clamp on the top of the flange was quivering, the creaking sound coming from the hull above it.
She looked aft. The tail end of the sub was filled with water. A hundred gallons or more. Eight hundred pounds more than the front. All that extra weight twisted and pulled and bent the sub at the already weakened seam, trying to crack it in half like breaking a stick in the middle.
They had to level out before it ripped them apart. Had to spread the weight evenly even if it meant just climbing due to their buoyancy.
“Paul,” she said.
“Two hundred,” he called out.
“We have to level out,” she said.
“What?”
The hull groaned louder. She saw the upper clamp slip.