Текст книги "Black Wind"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

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Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 35 страниц)

The elevator was cramped with five bodies in it, which would work to their advantage. Dirk glanced at Summer and nodded ever so slightly, his sister acknowledging the silent message with a quick wink. She immediately grabbed her stomach and groaned, leaning forward as if she were about to vomit. The nearest guard, a chunky man with a shaved head, took the bait and bent down slightly toward Summer. Like a cat mistakenly pouncing onto a hot stove, she suddenly sprang her body upright, jerking her knee into the man's groin with all the might she could muster. The man's eyes nearly burst out of their sockets as her knee hit home and he doubled over in agony, a shriek of pain quivering from his lips.

Summer's move was all Dirk needed to neutralize guard number two. As all three guards' attention turned initially to Summer, he launched an uppercut that connected squarely on the man's jaw, nearly lifting him out of his shoes. Dirk watched from inches away as the man's eyes rolled to the back of his head and he slumped to the floor unconscious.

Guard number three took a small step back as the fighting broke out and attempted to raise the muzzle of his rifle at Dirk. Summer reacted by grabbing the shoulders of the man she'd kneed and shoving his hunched-over body toward the standing guard. The still-groaning bald man swayed heavily into his taller accomplice with just enough force to offset the other man's balance. It was enough time to allow Dirk to step over the fallen guard and let go a left cross that landed a glancing blow on the gunman's temple. The dazed guard tried to counter with a braced karate kick, but Dirk's right fist was already there, mashing solidly into the man's larynx. The guard's face turned blue as he fought to take in air and he dropped to his knees, grabbing his throat with both hands. Dirk grabbed the man's assault rifle and swung it around viciously, striking the stock against the face of the guard struggling with Summer. The blow threw the man against the back of the elevator, where he slid to the floor unconscious.

“Nice work, Smokin' Joe,” Summer praised.

“Let's not wait for round two,” Dirk gasped as the elevator descent slowed beneath their feet. He checked that the safety on the assault rifle was turned off, then prepared to leap out of the elevator as the doors opened. Only there was no where to go.

As the doors slid open, the muzzles of three AK-74s were thrust in, the compensators at the end of the gun barrels poking into their faces. A security guard sitting at a bank of television monitors had witnessed the fracas in the elevator over closed-circuit video and quickly dispatched a cadre of guards in the vicinity.

“Saw!” the guards yelled in Korean, their meaning perfectly clear. Dirk and Summer froze in their tracks, wondering what degree of hair triggers existed on the assault rifles pointed their way. Dirk gently dropped his rifle to the ground, detecting a stirring in the elevator behind him. Too late, he turned to see the third guard staggering from 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.

“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.

“A small skiff. I forgot that you slept through the scenic portion of the cruise.”

“Sorry I missed it,” Dirk replied, rubbing a small gash on the top of his head. “We'll to have to borrow a boat from Kang if we want to get off this rock. There was a small speedboat tied up behind his floating palace when we came in and docked. Maybe it's still there.”

“If we can untie it from the dock and drift it out into the cove undetected before starting it up, it may buy us some more time.” Summer shivered as she spoke, her body feeling the effects of the cool river dousing.

“Back in the water, I'm afraid. You know the way out, so lead on.”

Summer ripped the side seam of the silk dress up to her hip to allow more freedom for swimming, then slipped back into the cool murky water. Dirk followed as they swam and groped their way along the narrow winding cavern, moving toward a pale gray circular patch of light that faintly shimmered against the surrounding darkness. The murmur of distant voices gave them a momentary pause as they approached the cave's exit. Swimming around a tight bend, the oval mouth of the cavern opened up before them, the night sky twinkling with starlight while the glittering reflection of Kang's dockside floodlights danced about the water's surface. Dirk and Summer swam silently out of the cavern entrance to a small rock outcropping a few yards away. The algae-slickened boulders afforded a safely concealed vantage point from which they could observe the dock and adjacent grounds.

For several minutes, they hung quietly against the rocks, studying the moored boats and shoreline for signs of movement. There were three boats tied up to the floating dock that ran parallel to the shore. Just as Dirk recalled, a small green patrol speedboat was wedged between Kang's large Italian luxury yacht and the high-speed catamaran on which they had arrived. No signs of life were visible on any of the three boats, which were all tied up in a row bow to stern. Dirk knew that a small live-aboard crew would be present on the larger vessel.