Black Wind (Dirk Pitt 18)

the elevator while swinging the butt of his rifle toward his head. He tried to duck but the gun handle was too far along its way toward the top of his skull, where it collided with a thump.

For an instant, he saw a blinding light and shining stars, and, through the fog, an odd glimpse of Summer's feet. But that soon gave way to a fading darkness that turned to black as the curtain closed and he crumpled to the ground in a limp heap.

A throbbing jolt of pain shooting down from the top of his skull to the tip of his toes was the first evidence sent to his brain that he was still alive. As consciousness slowly seeped back to Dirk, his mind performed a physical inventory, denoting via neural signals which parts of the body were deviating from their normal state. Pain signals from his wrists, arms, and shoulders began registering as if they were pulling at a great weight, but were easily outclassed by the agonizing pangs from his head. More confusing to his senses was the feeling from his feet and legs that he was standing in a bucket of water. As the shroud of fog gradually lifted, he opened his eyes to a wet, dark, and gloomy cave.

"Welcome back to the land of the living," Summer's voice echoed through the gloomy cavern.

"You didn't happen to get the license number of the truck that hit me?" he said groggily.

"Yes, but I'm pretty sure he wasn't carrying insurance."

"Where the hell are we?" Dirk asked, his mind beginning to register the concepts of time and space.

"A side cavern, just off Kang's floating dock. That cool water nibbling at your navel is the River Han."

The bucket of water he thought he was standing in was in fact a cavern full of rising river water. His vision now cleared, Dirk could see through the murky light that Summer was spread-eagled and handcuffed to two large barge anchors. Large weights rather than actual anchors, they were nothing more than a three-foot-square block of concrete. The white blocks were slickened with a decade's coating of pale green algae, with a rusty iron mooring ring protruding from the top. Dirk saw that there were nearly a dozen of the weights aligned in a row across the floor of the cavern. He and Summer stood adjacent to each other, their arms stretched wide with each wrist handcuffed to adjoining blocks.

Dirk's eyes wandered about the dim cavern. In the fading dusk light that filtered through the mouth of the cave, he could see the distinct line on the wall that he was looking for. It was the high-water mark, which he noted uncomfortably ran two feet above their heads.

"Death by slow drowning," he said.

"Our Fu Manchu friend, Tongju, was most insistent," Summer replied grimly. "He even prevented one of the guards from shooting you so that we could wallow down here together."

"I must remember to send him a thank-you card." Dirk looked down and saw that the water was now sloshing around his rib cage.

"Water's rising pretty fast."

"We're near the mouth of the Han River, so there's plenty of tidal surge at work." Summer gazed fearfully at her brother. "I'd estimate that the water level has risen over a foot in the last hour."

Seeing the despair in his sister's eyes, Dirk's mind engaged in high gear to determine a means of escape. "We have another hour and a half, tops," he calculated.

"I just remembered something," Summer said, crinkling her brow. "I've got a small nail file in my side pocket. Might be like trying to kill a pterodactyl with a flyswatter, but it might help." "Sure, toss it over," Dirk replied.

"This one mooring ring looks pretty mangy," she said, tugging at her left wrist. "If I could just get one hand free."

"Maybe I can help." Dirk slid his legs toward Summer, leaning his torso at an angle along the concrete blocks for support. Raising one leg, he slid his foot along until the sole of his shoe met up with the face of the protruding iron. Applying as much pressure as he could, he pressed his weight hard against the top of the metal ring.

Nothing happened.

Shifting his foot so that his heel was against the ring, he pushed once more. This time, the ring bent a fraction toward Summer. Jamming his weight repeatedly against the stanchion, he gradually forced the ring to bend over nearly ninety degrees.

"Okay, I'll need your help in pushing it back upright," he said. "Let's try it on the count of three."

Slipping his foot to the backside of the ring, he counted to three, then pulled his leg toward him. Summer pushed with her manacled hand and they gradually shoved the ring back to its original vertical position.

"Well, that was fun," Dirk said while resting his leg. "Let's try it again."

For twenty minutes, they toggled the ring back and forth, the movement gradually becoming easier as the tensile strength of the old iron weakened. With a last strong kick by Dirk, the ring finally snapped off its concrete base, freeing Summer's left arm. She immediately twisted her hand around and dug into the small side pocket of her silk jacket and produced the porcelain-handled nail file.

"I've got the file. Should I try on the handcuff itself or the mooring ring?" she asked.

"Go for the ring. Even though it's thicker, it will be much softer to cut through than the hardened stainless steel handcuffs."

Using the small file like a hacksaw, Summer began grinding away at the base of the mooring ring. Working the file with any degree of accuracy beneath the murky river water and fading cavern light would have been a Herculean task for most, but Summer's extensive diving experience gave her a leg up. Years of exploring and excavating historic shipwrecks in foul visibility had heightened her sense of touch to the extent that she could nearly tell more about a wreck from her hands than by her eyes.

With some measure of hope, she felt the file cut rapidly through the outer layer of the rusty ring. Her confidence waned when the blade met up with the hardened inner core of the iron ring and progress slowed to a snail's pace. The rising water was now level with her chest and the pending urgency unleashed a surge of adrenaline. Summer worked the blade back and forth as fast as she could muster underwater, gaining ground millimeter by millimeter. Taking quick breaks from sawing, she placed her hands on the iron ring and pushed and pulled it to weaken the metal. Alternating sawing and prodding with an intermittent gulp or two of river water, she at last broke through the ring and freed herself.

"Got it," she exclaimed with victory.