Following the curve of the hull to the bottom, Sam could immediately see there was no torpedo attached, but only a cockpit tube lying on its side, the viewing dome half buried in the sand. He kicked down the length of the hull to the dome, laid the flashlight in the sand, and set to work on the unlatching bolts. They were frozen in place.
Time, Sam, time . . .
His lungs began to burn. He wrapped both hands around a bolt, braced his feet on the hull, and heaved. Nothing. Tried again. Nothing.
Through the water he heard muffled voices again, this time closer. He clicked off the flashlight, looked up, got his bearings, then kicked off the sub and swam toward the far wall. The pier’s pilings appeared in the gloom and he slipped between them and turned right, following the wall. Clearing the pier, he let himself float upward and gently break the surface.
Across the cavern and down the adjoining river tunnel he could see lights dancing off the walls—Kholkov and his men at the end of the pier; they’d be coming here next. Ten feet to Sam’s left the root/ vine tangle hung just above the surface; close up it was even larger than he’d estimated, as big around as a fifty-five-gallon drum. He sidestroked to it, dug around a moment, and found Remi’s rope. He started climbing.
A minute later and fifteen feet higher his reaching hand found Remi’s foot, which was resting in a loop. He gave it a reassuring squeeze and got a wiggle in reply. He placed his
foot inside a loop, did the same with his right hand, then got comfortable.
“Luck?” she whispered.
“No. Locked up tight.”
“Now what?”
“Now we wait.”
Their wait was short.
Kholkov’s men moved fast, using generally the same ferry-rope system Sam and Remi had used to reach the second pier. Peering through the vines, Sam counted six men. One of them stalked down the pier, shining a flashlight over the crates, into the water, and down the catwalks.
“Where the hell are they?” he barked.
It was Kholkov himself, Sam realized.
“You four, flush them out!” Kholkov ordered; then he nodded at the other man and said, “You, with me!”
As Kholkov and one man searched the crates, the others lined up at the pier’s edge and started firing short, controlled bursts into the water. After nearly a minute, Kholkov called, “Cease fire, cease fire!”
“There’s something down there,” one of the men called, shining his light into the water.
Kholkov walked over, looked a few moments, then pointed to two of the men. “That’s it! Get your gear and have a look.”
The men were back in five minutes, and five minutes after that they were diving under the water.
“Search the cavern first,” Kholkov ordered them. “Make sure they’re not hiding somewhere.”
In a cloud of bubbles, the men disappeared beneath the surface. Sam watched their lights move over the bottom, under both piers, and along the walls, before finally both men resurfaced.
“Not here,” one of them reported. “There’s no place to hide.”
Sam let out the breath he’d been holding. They’d missed the sunken gear.
“Perhaps they went down the river tunnel,” the man standing beside Kholkov suggested.
Kholkov considered this for a moment. “You’re sure there was nothing?” he asked the divers.
Both men nodded, and Kholkov turned to the man who’d suggested the river tunnel. “Take Pavel, rope yourselves off, and search the tunnel for any sign of them.”
The man nodded, moved to the end of the pier, and began uncoiling a rope.
“Search the sub,” Kholkov ordered the divers, who both replaced their regulators and dove.
Sam watched their lights move along the hull until they stopped at what he assumed was the cockpit dome. The lights wobbled and shifted and there came a faint clinking of metal on metal. After three more minutes, one of the men broke the surface and pulled the regulator from his mouth.