Deception Point Page 105

127The newt fellMichael Tolland staggered to his feet on the inclined down and peered over the anchor spool at the frayed winch line of reasoning where the Triton used to hang. Wheeling toward the stern, he scanned the piss. The Triton was just direct emerging from under the Goya on the current. Relieved at least to go for the wedge intact, Tolland eyed the hatch, wanting nonhing more than to foregather it rude up and Rachel climb erupt unscathed. But the hatch remained closed. Tolland wondered if maybe she had been knocked place by the violent f t step to the fore ensemble.Even from the deck, Tolland could see the Triton was riding exceptionally low in the water-far below its normal diving trim waterline. Its sinking. Tolland could non imagine why, but the reason at the moment was immaterial.I bedevil to get Rachel out. Now.As Tolland stood to dash for the edge of the deck, a shower of machine-gun shoot exploded above him, sparking off the heavy anchor spool overhead. He dropped back to his knees. Shit He peered around the spool only broad enough to see Pickering on the upper deck, taking aim comparable a sniper. The Delta soldier had dropped his machine gun while climbing into the unredeemed helicopter and Pickering had apparently recovered it. Now the director had scrambled to the soaring make.Trapped behind the spool, Tolland looked back toward the sinking Triton. Come on, Rachel Get out He waited for the hatch to impolite. Nothing.Looking back to the deck of the Goya, Tollands eyes deliberate the open area between his position and the stern railing. Twenty feet. A long way without any cover.Tolland took a deep breath and start up his mind. Ripping off his shirt, he hurled it to his right onto the open deck. magical spell Pickering blew the shirt full of holes, Tolland dashed left, down the inclined deck, banking toward the stern. With a ill-judged leap he launched himself over the railing, off the back of the ship. Arcing high in th e air, Tolland encounterd the bullets whizzing all around him and knew a single graze would make him a shark feast the instant he hit the water.Rachel sacristan snarl like a wild animal trapped in a cage. She had tried the hatch again and again with no luck. She could memorise a tank somewhere infra her filling with water, and she sensed the hitman gaining weight. The darkness of the ocean was inching higher up the transparent dome, a minacious curtain rising in reverse.Through the lower half of the glass, Rachel could see the void of the ocean beckoning like a tomb. The empty vastness beneath threatened to swallow her whole. She grabbed the hatch mechanism and tried to twist it open one more time, but it wouldnt budge. Her lungs strained in a flash, the dank stench of profusion carbon dioxide acrid in her nostrils. Through it all, one recurring position haunted her.Im going to die alone underwater.She scanned the Tritons control panels and levers for something that could h elp, but all the indicators were black. No power. She was locked in a dead steel crypt sinking toward the butt of the sea.The gurgling in the tanks seemed to be accelerating now, and the ocean rose to within a fewer feet of the top of the glass. In the distance, crosswise the endless flat expanse, a tidy sum of crimson was inching across the horizon. Morning was on its way. Rachel feared it would be the last lightsomeness she ever saw. Closing her eyes to block out her impending fate, Rachel mat the terrifying childhood images rushing into her mind.Falling through the ice. Sliding underwater.Breathless. otiose to lift herself. Sinking.Her mother calling for her. Rachel RachelA pounding on the alfresco of the sub jolted Rachel out of the delirium. Her eyes snapped open.Rachel The voice was muffled. A ghostly face appeared against the glass, upside down, dark hair swirling. She could barely make him out in the darkness.MichaelTolland surfaced, exhaling in relief to see Rachel moving inside the sub. Shes alive. Tolland swam with sizable strokes to the rear of the Triton and climbed up onto the submerged locomotive platform. The ocean currents felt hot and leaden around him as he positioned himself to grab the bankers bill portal screw, staying low and hoping he was out of range of Pickerings gun.The Tritons hull was to the highest degree entirely underwater now, and Tolland knew if he were going to open the hatch and remove Rachel out, he would have to hurry. He had a ten-inch draw that was diminishing fast. at a time the hatch was submerged, opening it would send a torrent of seawater gushing into the Triton, trapping Rachel inside and sending the sub into a free give to the bottom.Now or never, he gasped as he grabbed the hatch hustle and heaved it counterclockwise. Nothing happened. He tried again, throwing all of his force into it. Again, the hatch refused to turn.He could hear Rachel inside, on the other side of the portal. Her voice was sti fled, but he sensed her terror. I tried she yelled. I couldnt turn itThe water was lie across the portal lid now. Turn together he shouted to her. Youre clockwise in at that place He knew the dial was clearly marked. Okay, nowTolland braced himself against the stabilise air tanks and strained with all his energy. He could hear Rachel below him doing the same. The dial turned a half inch and ground to a dead stop.Now Tolland saw it. The portal lid was non set evenly in the aperture. Like the lid of a shock absorber that had been placed on crooked and screwed down hard, it was stuck. Although the rubber seal was justly set, the hatch-dogs were bent, meaning the only way that door was opening was with a weld torch.As the top of the sub sank below the surface, Tolland was filled with a sudden, overwhelming dread. Rachel Sexton would not be escaping from the Triton.Two thousand feet below, the crumpled fuselage of the bomb-laden Kiowa meat cleaver was sinking fast, a prisoner of g ravity and the powerful drag of the deepwater vortex. wrong the cockpit, Delta-Ones lifeless body was no longer recognizable, disfigured by the crush pressure of the deep.As the aircraft spiraled downward, its Hellfire missiles still attached, the glowing magma dome waited on the ocean floor like a red-hot landing pad. at a lower place its three-meter-thick crust, a head of boiling lava simmered at a thousand degrees Celsius, a volcano waiting to explode.128Tolland stood knee-deep in water on the engine box of the sinking Triton and searched his brain for some way to publish Rachel.Dont let the sub sinkHe looked back toward the Goya, wondering if there were any way to get a winch connected to the Triton to keep it near the surface. Impossible. It was fifty yards away now, and Pickering was standing high on the bridge like a Roman emperor with a ancient seat at some bloody Colosseum spectacle.Think Tolland told himself. Why is the sub sinking?The mechanics of sub buoyancy were p ainfully simple ballast resistor tanks pumped full of either air or water change the subs buoyancy to move it up or down in the water.Obviously, the ballast tanks were filling up.But they shouldnt beEvery subs ballast tanks were equipped with holes both topside and underneath. The lower openings, called flooding holes, always remained open, while the holes on top, vent valves, could be opened and closed to let air escape so water would flood in.Maybe the Tritons vent valves were open for some reason? Tolland could not imagine why. He floundered across the submerged engine platform, his hands seek one of the Tritons ballast trim tanks. The vent valves were closed. But as he felt the valves, his fingers found something else.Bullet holes.Shit The Triton had been riddled with bullets when Rachel jumped in. Tolland at one time dove down and swam beneath the sub, running his hand carefully across the Tritons more important ballast tank-the negative tank. The Brits called this tank the down express. The Germans called it put on lead shoes. Either way, the meaning was clear. The negative tank, when filled, took the sub down.