Black Wind (Dirk Pitt 18)

"Mind if I borrow that file?" Dirk asked calmly, but Summer had already kicked and swum her way over and begun cutting into the ring grasping his right hand. As she worked the file, she mentally noted that it had taken her roughly thirty minutes to cut through the first ring and that the water level was now nearly to their shoulders. The water was rising faster than she anticipated and would be well above Dirk's head in less than an hour. Despite aching fingers and limbs, she rubbed the file ferociously against the iron.

Dirk, waiting patiently as Summer filed away, began whistling the old 1880s tune "While Strolling Through the Park One Day."

"That's not helping," Summer gasped, then smiled to herself at the silly tune. "Now I won't be able to get that ridiculous song out of

my head."

Sure enough, he quit whistling, but the tune kept replaying over and over in her head. She was surprised to find it became a good sawing mantra that provided a rhythm to her hand movements.

While strolling through the park one day,... With each syllable, she applied a cutting stroke to the iron, creating an efficient sawing cadence. in the merry merry month of May.

I was taken by surprise by a pair of roguish eyes.

In a moment my poor heart was stole away.

The water level had now crept up over her chin and she found herself taking in gasps of air, then submerging briefly to keep the file clawing in one spot. Dirk was beginning to strain to keep his face out of the water while applying alternating tugs and shoves on the ring as Summer sawed tirelessly on. A muffled metallic ting finally echoed beneath them as the ring broke loose under their combined pressure.

"Three down, one to go," Summer gasped, taking in a lungful of air after being submerged for several seconds.

"Let me give you a breather," Dirk said, grabbing the file from Summer with his free hand. The release of his right hand gave him a few extra inches of breathing room, but it was not enough to file the last mooring ring without submerging. Taking a deep breath, he ducked under the surface and began filing rapidly on the ring that held down his left wrist. After thirty seconds, he bobbed to the surface, sucked in some fresh air, and plunged back under. Summer stretched her cramped fingers, then swam to Dirk's left side and waited for him to surface. Like a pair of tag team wrestlers trying to floor Hulk Hogan, they passed the file back and forth and ducked underwater, attacking the iron ring with muscle and fervor.

As the minutes wore on, the water level in the cavern crept higher

and higher. Each time Dirk surfaced for a gasp of air, he felt himself stretching farther and farther to raise his mouth and nose above water. The handcuff shackle on his left wrist dug into his flesh as he instinctively yanked hard to escape the clutch of the massive barge weight.

"Save your strength for getting out of here," he told his sister as the inevitable truth drew closer that they were running out of time. Summer said nothing as she grabbed the file out of his hand and plunged back beneath the surface. Dirk half-floated with his head tilted back, his face just barely out of the water, drawing a few deep breaths. He could feel the water wash over his face in ripples and stretched for one last deep breath before pulling himself under. Grasping Summer's wrist, he pulled the file out of her hand and began a last furious rush at cutting through the iron. Feeling the gouge with his thumb, he could tell that they had cut only a third of the way through. There was just too far to go.

The seconds felt like hours as Dirk made a final effort to break free. He could feel his heart beating like a bass drum as it struggled to pump oxygen into his depleted blood. In the murkiness, he could feel that Summer was no longer by his side. Perhaps she had finally taken his advice and sought escape. Or perhaps she just couldn't bear to be with him during his final gasp of life.

He paused from filing for a second to try pushing his weight against the ring. He could generate little leverage, however, and the iron ring held firm. Again, to the file he went, making furious strokes with the flimsy metal blade. His ears began pounding with each beat of his heart. How long had he been holding his breath now? A minute, two minutes? It was difficult to remember.

Light-headedness fell over him as spots began to creep into his vision. He exhaled what remaining air was left in his lungs and fought the temptation to open his mouth and gulp in. His heart pounded stronger and it became a mental fight against succumbing to panic. A light current seemed to push him away from the mooring ring, but his hand muscle grasped the file tightly in a death grip. A white veil was being drawn across his vision and a distant voice inside was telling him to let go. As he fought a last battle with the voice, his ringing ears detected a deep thump and then a strange vibration rippled up his arm and through his body just before his mind tumbled into a dark and empty void.

*-.""

Summer knew that THEY were at least twenty minutes from filing through the iron ring and that there would have to be another way to free her brother. Abandoning Dirk, she dove to the cavern floor, searching and groping for another tool or device, anything that would help break the manacle. But the flat, sandy bottom yielded nothing, just the row of mooring weights, one after the other. Kicking ahead with one hand guiding along the blocks of concrete, she touched a large chunk of concrete that had broken off one of the weights when it had been dropped too close to another. Gliding beyond the debris, she reached the last block, where she felt something flat and squishy like soggy leather fall away in her hand. A harder piece beneath it was narrow and curved, which she identified as the sole of a boot. A stick leaned against it, which she started to grab, then let go in horror. It was no stick, she could tell, but the femur bone of a skeleton that was still wearing the boot. Another victim of Kang's savagery, the corpse had long ago been left chained to the anchor. Recoiling, she turned to swim back toward Dirk and bumped her head square into the fallen chunk of concrete. The broken piece was roughly square shaped, weighing about ninety pounds. She surveyed the block with her hands to get around it, then hesitated. It might be the answer, she decided, and was the best she could do under the circumstances.

Kicking up for a quick breath of air, she dove back down and muscled the block off the floor and up to her chest. On dry land, she would have struggled mightily to lift the heavy weight, but underwater the block was more yielding. Moving quickly, she shuffled down the row of weights to her brother, fighting to keep the chunk balanced. Feeling rather than seeing Dirk, she turned and backed into her brother, pushing his body away from the block that held his left wrist. She noted apprehensively that his body gave way rather limply, unlike his normal stone like stature.

Lining herself up with the mooring weight as best she could, she took a step and lunged forward, throwing herself and the broken chunk of concrete at the iron ring. In a slow-motion haze, Summer floated through the water with a slight ripple before the effects of gravity took over. But her timing was perfect. In the fraction of a second before her forward momentum was replaced by sinking gravity, the concrete chunk hit home on the iron ring. An audible clang, muffled by the water, told Summer that she was on target as she let go of the block. The rusty mooring ring, weakened just enough by the frantic filing, succumbed to the weight of the blow and snapped neatly off the anchor.

Summer immediately grabbed Dirk's arm and felt down to the wrist, which now dangled loosely. In a burst, she pushed her brother to the surface, took a deep breath of air herself, then towed his limp body to a small rock ledge, pulling him up and out of the water. She knelt by his side to administer CPR when his body suddenly stirred, his head turning to one side. With a groan, he expunged a small flood of water from his mouth and replaced it with a heaving lungful of air. Rising unsteadily to his elbows, he turned to Summer and gasped, "I feel like I drank half the river. Remind me to stick to bottled water next time."

The words barely gurgled out of his mouth when he leaned over and retched a second time, then sat up and rubbed his left wrist. Eyeing his sister, he was pleased to see she appeared unharmed and in good spirits.

"Thanks for pulling me out," he said. "How did you finally get the ring off?"

"I found a loose chunk of concrete and flung it against the stanchion. Thankfully, I didn't take your hand off in the process."

"Much obliged for that," he muttered, shaking his head.

After catching their breath, they rested for nearly an hour, slowly regaining their strength as Dirk purged the remaining water from his lungs, inhaled moments before Summer broke the iron grip that had nearly drowned him. What lit de sunlight that earlier wafted through the mouth of the cavern had long since vanished with nightfall, leaving them prone in the cave in near-total blackness.

"Do you know the way out of here?" Dirk asked once he felt fit to move.

"The mouth of the cave is less than fifty meters away," Summer said, "just a short distance to the east is Kang's dock."

"How'd we get in here in the first place?" he asked.