Plague Ship (Oregon Files 5)

Linc studied the explosives and shrugged. They knew well enough not to touch it. If it had decided not to go off when it was supposed to, they weren’t going to give it any reason to do so now.

“It’s cuniflower?”

“Cuneiform. Perhaps the oldest written language on earth. It was used by the Sumerians, dating back five thousand years.”

“What the heck are they doing down here?” Linc asked.

“I haven’t the foggiest idea,” Cabrillo replied, reaching for his camera phone so he could take pictures of the tablets. “I know later cuneiform script had a more abstract look to it, like a bunch of triangles and spikes. This looks more like pictographs.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning these date to the very earliest uses of the language.” He checked the images captured by his camera and reshot a few of them so they were clearer. “These could very well go back fifty-five hundred years or more, and they’re in pristine condition. Most examples of cuneiform have to be pieced together from fragments as small as stamps.”

“Listen, man, this is all well and good, but it isn’t exactly helping our situation. Get some water, and I’ll finish looking around.”

Cabrillo had drunk from thousand-dollar bottles of wine, but nothing could compare to that first sip of water from the spring. He drank palmful after palmful, and could almost feel fluid coursing through his body, recharging his muscles and clearing the fog of exhaustion that had been clouding his mind. His stomach was sloshing by the time Linc finished his reconnoiter.

“Looks like we stumbled into the Responsivists’ love shack,” Linc said. He held up a box of condoms with only two remaining, a wool blanket, and a trash bag with a half-dozen empty wine bottles.”

“I was hoping you’d find a scuba tank and a couple of dive masks.”

“No such luck. I think we’re just going to have to swim for it and hope like hell one of us makes it.”

“Let’s head back into the main chamber. I don’t do my best thinking around explosive charges.”

Cabrillo considered inflating the trash bag with air and towing it behind them so they could each take a breath halfway down the tunnel, but its buoyancy would make it scrape along the roof of the submerged tunnel. The plastic would tear before they’d gone two feet. If they counterweighted it so it maintained neutral buoyancy, the drag would make their progress impossibly slow. There had to be a better way.

Linc handed him a protein bar, and for the next few minutes the men chewed silently, racking their brains to come up with a solution. Juan had shut off the light again. The faint glow coming from the far end of the cavern beckoned with both freedom and frustration. They were tantalizingly close, but the last obstacle seemed insurmountable. And then an idea hit him out of the blue that was so outlandishly simple, he couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it first.

“Any chance you recall the German words for sodium chlorate? It’s a toxic salt used as a pesticide.”

“Natrium Chlor. I remember seeing a jar or two of it back in the dispensary.”

“And you still have that second detonator pencil?”

“Yes.”

“We’re going to make an oxygen candle. While I’m gone, I want you to scrape up iron filings from the railroad track. When you mix the two and ignite them, the reaction produces iron oxide, sodium chloride, and pure oxygen. I’ll swim halfway down the tunnel and find someplace to fire it off. The oxygen will displace the seawater, and we’ll have a bubble where we can breathe.”

“More voodoo chemistry from your high school teacher?”

“Actually, I got this from Max. We have oxygen generators aboard the Oregon for when we rig the ship for fire or chemical exposure. He explained how the system works.”

Juan was going to need the flashlight, so he left Linc at the railroad track to scrape the shavings they would need with his knife. It took Cabrillo forty minutes to navigate his way back through the partially collapsed section of the tunnel, reach the dispensary, and return to the sea cave. In that time, Linc had managed to produce more than enough iron filings from the old rail.

Working under the beam of the now-dying light, Cabrillo mixed the chemicals in one of the empty wine bottles and wound the rest of the electrician’s tape around the glass while Linc took apart the detonator to reduce its explosive charge. When they were finished, Juan inserted the detonator into the top of the bottle and wrapped the makeshift oxygen generator in the plastic bag.

“Rube Goldberg would be proud,” Linc joked.

Juan kicked off his boots and pants at the edge of the quay and tossed his bush shirt aside. “Back in five,” he said, and lowered himself in the bath-warm water. The sea around him clouded with the dust that washed off his skin. Using an easy sidestroke, holding the bag and flashlight, he swam across the grotto to where he and Linc thought there was an exit.

Juan left the bag floating on the surface as he dove down, pressing hard with his legs and arms, the waterproof light turning the water turquoise. The salty water made his eyes sting, but it was a pain he had grown accustomed to over the years so he set it aside. At first, all he saw was jagged stone covered in kelp and mussels, but when he reached a depth of fifteen feet a yawning tunnel opened up in front of him. It was

easily fifty feet around, more than enough to accommodate a World War II-era submarine. When he turned off the torch, he could see the faint glow of sunlight at the very extreme periphery of his vision.

He returned to the surface and corralled the bag. He began taking deep breaths, filling his lungs to the maximum, purging as much carbon dioxide out of his system as he possibly could. When he began to feel light-headed, he thrust himself out of the water to clear his chest so he could take an even-deeper breath, filled his lungs, and dropped back into the gloom. He followed his flashlight beam downward and entered the tunnel. The tidal action that had created the cavern system kept the sides free of marine life. He counted the seconds in his head as he swam. He hit the one-minute mark and noted the sunlight was markedly brighter. He kept going, keeping his mind clear and his body relaxed as he went deeper into the tunnel. At a minute thirty seconds, he turned the flashlight to the ceiling. Ten feet farther, there was a concave space in the rock, a natural dimple, easily five feet across and a foot deep.

The bag had just enough air in it to keep it pressed to the ceiling. Juan felt through the plastic for the timing pencil and activated the detonator. He turned and started swimming away, keeping the same measured pace he’d used to enter the tunnel. He’d been under three minutes when he cleared the tunnel’s mouth and angled for the surface. He broached like a dolphin, coming halfway out of the water, expelling the air from his lungs in an explosive whoosh.