Текст книги "Gideon's War / Hard Target"

Автор книги: Howard Gordon

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Gideon's War and Hard Target

Gideon was swimming toward Kate. Again her body jerked...

Now Kate was sinking—drifting sideways and sinking. Gideon saw that not only had her umbilical snapped, but a gash had appeared in the bladder of her buoyancy control device. The BC worked by inflating or deflating the bladder with the air hose, depending on whether you wanted to float uhatÑ€†p or sink down. But her weighted belt was now pulling her downward. If she didn’t regain consciousness, she’d sink slowly to the bottom, six hundred feet below. Her helmet contained valves to keep it from venting all the air in the event of a hose failure, so she wouldn’t drown immediately. But eventually the oxygen would give out and she’d suffocate. Gideon immediately vented his own BC and began swimming down after her as fast as he could.

Just as his fingers were about to close around her arm, he jerked to a stop. He’d reached the end of his own umbilical. Below him Kate disappeared into the blackness as though carried by an invisible elevator.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

“LOWER ME,” GIDEON SHOUTED. “Lower me now!”

“What depth?” Big Al asked.

“Until I tell you to stop,” Gideon shouted. “Kate’s umbilical broke and she’s dropping like a rock.”

Timken’s voice broke in: “Chun?”

“Just like he said, sir,” Chun said. “Better drop him or you’ll lose her.”

Gideon felt the resistance of the umbilical give way as Big Al began paying out the umbilical with the winch.

It seemed that he was already in the dark. But as he slid deeper, the dark became an impenetrable black force. He swam as hard as he could.

“Gideon, you’re already at fifty meters,” Big Al said. “I’m going to have to start changing your air to heliox soon. You need to slow down so I can adjust—”

Gideon interrupted. “Just keep paying out the umbilical.”

“Sixty meters. Seventy.”

The pressure in Gideon’s ears was agonizing. He tried to clear them, but he couldn’t blow hard enough or fast enough. He was already deeper than he’d ever been.

“Eighty meters. Gideon! Are you sure—”

“Keep going, dammit!”

The world had gone completely black. He couldn’t even see a slight haze of gray above him now. And the water was cold, terribly cold. He kept looking around him, the dim white cone of light from his helmet piercing weakly into the darkness. Kate was nowhere to be seen.

But for some reason, it didn’t bother him. He heard a song being hummed, some half-remembered melody he couldn’t identify. Was he humming it, or was it just a voice in his head? It didn’t matter. Nothing really mattered. He laughed. Suddenly he wasn’t worried about anything.

“Ninety meters. Jesus Christ, Gideon!”

He realized dimly what was causing this feeling of pleasant disconnectedness. He was getting narced. Applying Martini’s Law, he was seven martinis to the wind.

Focus. Gideon willed himself to concentrate.

“Gideon, there’821 T‡s only a hundred meters of line.”

And then he saw her—a smudge of yellow below him. It was her helmet. All he needed was another few feet.

Closer. He could see the valves on her helmet, torn straps on her harness where the umbilical had ripped free. She still had the bailout bottle, though. They’d be able to make it.

Her helmet had a large handle on top. He wasn’t sure what its function was—whether for hauling divers out of the water, or for allowing an assistant to take your helmet for you. But whatever it was for, it would be perfect for him to grab hold of her.

He swam hard toward her, reaching for her with each stroke. His muscles were screaming now, and he could feel the CO2 building up in his blood from all the exertion.

Closer. He was almost there . . .

Just as his fingers were about to close around the handle, he felt a gentle tug on his back and his body swung around. He’d gone as deep as his umbilical would allow.

Kate continued to fall. She was more buoyant at this level because of the air that remained in her helmet, so she was falling very slowly now. But still she was sinking.

Gideon rotated his body around the pivot where the umbilical attached to his harness. He continued stroking with his hands, trying desperately to swing his feet toward her.

And then, he felt a thud against his foot. He was touching her.

He looked down, thrust his foot into the strap of her bailout bottle harness. And with that, she came to a stop.

“I got her!” he shouted. He was so narced up now that he couldn’t contain himself.

“Is she all right?” Big Al said.

But Gideon didn’t answer. He took a shallow breath, not wanting to move. He had a single toe looped under the strap. Just a breath of current might dislodge her. She felt light as a feather.

Big Al’s questions went unanswered as Gideon pulled her slowly upward until he was able to grasp the handle on top of the helmet. Then he pulled her around so he could see her face. She wasn’t moving, and her face was gray. He quickly turned the valve on the bailout bottle. He could hear the hiss as the air shot into Kate’s helmet.

“Come on!” he shouted. “Breathe!”

“Gideon, talk to me!” Big Al said. “What’s going on down there? Is she okay?”

“Her bailout’s working. But it’s straight atmospheric air. We’re too deep for atmospheric. We’re gonna have to deco her up to the damper as fast as we can.”

“I’ve already started switching you to heliox,” Big Al said. “Don’t want you getting messed up down there, too.”

“Speak English,” Timken said. “I don’t understand a word you’re saying.”

“You know what the bends are, Timken?” Big Al barked.

“Of course I know,” Timke822ဆn said. “The oxygen in your blood starts bubbling because you decompress too fast.”

“Nitrogen, actually. But, if you don’t shut up and let me do my job—”

A desperate gasp on the radio stopped him mid-sentence.

“She’s breathing!” Big Al exhaled his relief when he heard Gideon’s voice.

Deep below the surface, Kate’s eyes blinked open. She stared at Gideon, disoriented. Her lips moved. “Where am I?”

“You’re okay,” Gideon said. Then, to Big Al, he said, “Look, I don’t have deco tables in my head—not for dives this deep. How much decompression time will she need?”

“I don’t know. We’ve never gone atmospheric this deep.”

“Well, she’s only got forty cubic feet of air in the bailout.”

“What about yours?”

“My bailout got torn off when I dove through the wave line.”

“Shit,” Big Al said. “Lemme check the decompression tables.”

Kate was still staring at him, a moonstruck expression on her face.

“We don’t have time. Just pull us to seventy and pause for five,” Gideon said. “And then pull us to . . .”

And then, suddenly it came to him, how they could pull off their mission and defuse the bombs.

“Then pull us to fifty, pause for another five, then bring her to forty and pause for fifteen. I’ll stay with her to make sure she’s okay. Meantime, you can drop another umbilical and we’ll get her hooked up to heliox before her bailout dies. Okay?”

Gideon's War and Hard Target

“Got it,” Big Al said. “You okay, Kate?”

“Huh?” Kate said. It was obvious that she was in trouble. But they couldn’t rush her up without serious danger of the bends.

“All right, Chun,” Timken said. “I want you dropping to wherever they are so you can keep an eye on them.”

Big Al’s voice broke in. “I can’t do that. I’ve got to switch Gideon to heliox so he doesn’t get totally narced down there. You have to adjust the mix every time they move. I can’t keep on top of Chun’s air mix, too. Somebody will end up dead.”

“He’s right,” Chun said. “A lot of things can go wrong at seventy meters. With only one dive tender, we’re already pushing it.”

“Listen to me carefully, Gideon,” Timken said. “I get even a whiff that you’re doing something funky down there, we’ll cut the cables and let you fall to the bottom of the fucking sea. Are we clear?”

“Crystal.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

BY THE TIME GIDEON and Kate had decompressed their way back to forty meters, Kate was still looking bleary and listless. He kept having to remind her where she was.

He swam for a while against the current until finally the piers came into view. Swimming while holding on to Kate was extremely hard work . As he had hoped, the bottoms of the cradle braces were visible just above him. He pulled himself up the umbilical until he was even with the brace, a large steel strut attached to a steel collar around the pier.

He scanned it for wires or bombs or blocks of explosive. Nothing.

He began swimming again. It took nearly five minutes before he finally reached the second pier. The cluster of white cables was the first thing he saw. It split into twelve sets of two wires.

“What are those?” Kate said vaguely.

Gideon’s pulse sped up. “Just fish,” Gideon said. It was nearly impossible for him to write on his slate while holding on to Kate, but he finally managed.

“Doesn’t look like fish,” she said, studying the explosives. Gideon slapped the slate urgently against the mask of her helmet.

PLEASE DON’T TALK! he’d written.

“Huh?” she said, then seemed to lose interest.

“Where’s the umbilical?” Gideon said. “Kate’s in trouble here. I think she may be hallucinating.”

“I’m not hallucinating,” she said, grinning at him. “That is not a fish—”

“Kate!” Gideon said. “Just relax, okay? We’ll have some better air for you in a few minutes.”

“Okay,” she said happily.

“She’s narced to the gills,” Gideon said. “Hurry with the umbilical.”

“On its way down,” Big Al said.

Kate’s bail out bottle was in the red zone by the time Gideon managed to locate the new umbilical and hook it up.

“How long you gonna stay down there?” Timken said.

“Look, she just went to a ridiculous depth. We had to bring her up way too fast,” Gideon said. “I need to keep her here another ten minutes just to make sure she doesn’t get up to twenty meters and then suddenly crash.”

“You got five,” Timken said, “then I’m pulling you both up.”

Distracted by Kate’s situation, Gideon had been unable to look at the explosive charges placed on the cradle strut—much less to work on defusing them.

But he finally had the chance.

Kate and Gideon were hanging suspended a few feet below the strut. Several of the explosive charges were visible now.

Kate looked at them fixedly. She still seemed to be trying to figure out what they were. Gideon swam between her and the explosive charges, then held one finger up in front of his lips.

Kaessñ€†te frowned in concentration. Then suddenly she blinked. “Oh!” she said. “Yeah. I’m starting to remember.”

“Remember what?” Timken demanded.

There was a long pause. Gideon grabbed Kate by both arms and stared straight into her face, trying to project every ounce of urgency he could muster without saying anything.

Finally Kate nodded. “Nothing,” she said. “It’s okay, I got a little narced there. I’m getting straightened out, I just need a couple more minutes. When I get back to the cradle, I’ll be fine. We’ll get everything welded up and we’ll be set.”

Gideon smiled. He felt like giving her a huge hug. But there was no time.

He turned toward the nearest explosive charge and studied it. This was going to be tricky.

Kate squeezed his hand encouragingly.

Gideon nodded, trying to cover his own uncertainty, then turned to study the first charge.

Horst’s most important lesson to him had boiled down to this: “Observe the bomb. See the bomb. Know the bomb. Know everything. . . before you cut the first wire.”

So Gideon studied the bomb. There were twelve shaped charges, each attached to one of the twelve bolts that matched the ones he had seen up on the cradle. Each charge appeared to be identical, consisting of a plastic drinking cup inverted over the bolt head. Inside the drinking cup was a pound or so of plastic explosive. The base of the explosive would have been hollowed out into a cone. The cone likely contained a copper slug. When the charge was detonated, the resistance of the water, combined with the shape of the charge, would blast the superheated copper in a jet that would shoot straight through the bolt, acting like a cutting torch jet and simply dissolving the entire bolt.

By detonating all twelve charges in sequence, the bolts would disappear, and the immense weight of the cradle would twist the strut and then shear it away. And that would be the end of the rig.

Sticking out of the top of the closest drinking cup was a thin metal tube—a detonator. Two wires came out of the tube. If that had been all there was to it, the problem would have been easy. Snip the wires, the circuit would be cut, and it would be impossible for the detonator to fire.

Gideon circled around the drinking cup, looking to see if there was anything else he needed to know. If it was simply a matter of cutting the wire—well, this was a best-case scenario. Twelve quick snips with the wire cutters Big Al had on his dive belt and he’d be done. But if there was anything here that he was missing—security circuits, trap circuits, anything of that nature—one snip might blow him and Kate both to bits.

Then he traced the second set of wires, one entering through each side of the cup. It was undoubtedly some kind of security circuit—but without cutting open the cup and tracing the course of the wires millimeter by millimeter, there was no safe way of figuring out its precise function. It might be a monitor circuit to alert them up top that the detonator had been removed. It might be a redundant hidden detonator. Or it might be a decoy. There were a lot of possibilities.

If he just pulled the detonators out, there was a reasonable chaned ñ€†ce the charge would blow. If it did, the shock wave would liquefy his organs and kill him in about one ten-thousandth of a second.

There was no time to perform a full diagnostic analysis on the charge. He’d have to take a chance that simply cutting the wires would disarm the bomb.

Without hesitation, he reached out and snipped the wire.

After a moment, he realized he was still alive.

“I’m getting tired of waiting,” Timken said. “I’m pulling you up to the cradle.”

“Hold on,” Gideon said, cutting the second wire.

“No! I’m not holding on! Pull ’em up, Prejean.”

“I can only pull one of them at a time,” Big Al retorted.

“Then pull Gideon first.”

Gideon turned furiously toward Kate. He pointed at the charges and made a snipping motion with the cutters, then pointed at her.

She stared back, wide-eyed.

“You’ll be fine, Kate!” he said, trying to sound calm.

He tried to snip one more wire before Big Al pulled him up—but he felt a jerk and was already moving upward through the dark water before the jaws of the pliers could close.

There was nothing more he could do. He let the wire cutters drop from his grasp. They flipped end over end, their yellow rubber handles tracing an erratic path through the water, slowly disappearing from his view as the reflected light from his headlamp faded. Kate made a grab for them.

Gideon couldn’t see whether she had caught them or not. She had been swallowed in the darkness.

Major Royce was gripping the console of the C-17 cockpit to keep from being thrown to the deck by the brutal buffeting of the airplane as he watched the radar monitor. The eye of the storm was going to pass over the Obelisk. But only just barely.

“What do you think?” Major Royce asked the meteorologist, who was on loan from the USS Blue Ridge, the navy’s Seventh Fleet command boat. “How long’s our window?”

“The sweet spot, when the wind’s really dropped? Maybe ten, fifteen minutes.” The meteorologist was a lieutenant junior grade who had obviously never flown through a typhoon before and now looked completely terrified. He’d staggered to the head about five times already. The rest of the Deltas smiled as they heard his retching. Royce felt bad for the kid. He’d been through some rough flights over the years, but nothing like this.

Gideon's War and Hard Target

Royce looked at his watch. They were set to Time Zone Golf....

“We’ll be there before the bomb blows. Question is, will the eye be there in time?”

Royce glanced at the meteorologist. “Where’s the eye, Lieutenant?”

“Pardon me, siheyñ€†r,” the navy man said. “I need to hit the head again.”

Great, Royce thought, as the meteorologist rushed past him to puke.

Kate had been feeling more like herself. But she was far from 100 percent. Even under the best circumstances, some nitrogen narcosis occurred at this depth. And she was still feeling the residual effects of what she’d just been through.

She grabbed for the cutter, but it slid through her grip and disappeared into the blackness like some comical little sea creature, heading down to graze on shrimp corpses at the bottom of the sea.

She looked at the twelve upended drinking cups, then mustered whatever little strength she had in her shaky limbs and dove after the plunging tool.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

“SIR! SIR!”

Timken turned and looked as his demolitions specialist, Rashid, burst through the door from the rig and into the dive control station.

Timken was in a foul mood. He’d been out here for thirty minutes getting rained on and blown all over the place. And every time that big clunk shuddered through the rig, he felt like he was taking one step closer to the grave. “What are you doing?” Timken said. “I told you to stay with the bomb controls.”

“That’s what I’m saying, sir. The alert circuits just went off.” Rashid was a bespectacled young man, a chemist by training.

“What do you mean?” Timken said.

“They’re cutting the wires.”

“All of them?”

“Just two. So far.”

“Will the bomb still take out the rig?”

“With ten charges? Yes, sir.”

“Get back to the drilling platform. Stay with the detonation equipment!” Timken shouted.

“Yes, sir.” Rashid ran back into the bowels of the rig.

Timken knew that Gideon had already just been pulled up to the cradle. If he was the one who had cut the two detonation circuits, then he couldn’t do any more damage. But if it was Kate who had done the damage, then he needed to pull her up now. He whipped around toward Big Al. “Haul them up!” he shouted. “Haul them up now! Both of them!”

Big Al shouted into his microphone, “They’re onto you, Kate. Do what you got to do and do it fast!”

Timken drew his Makarov to shoot the Cajun, who turned and tackled him onto the deck like a linebacker blitzing a quarterback. Big Al was no spring chicken—but he outweighed Timken by a good seventy-five pounds. All Timken could do was cover his face as the bigger man battered at him with fists the size of canned hams.

Then Timken growled. Leaving his face momentarily unguarded, he levered his Makarov and fired. A huge fist slammed into his face. He fired again and Big Al grunted, his face a mask of /p> t‡pain.

Timken kicked the bigger man away, jumped to his feet, and hit the handle on the winch again, pulling Kate upward. A display counter on the winch showed their depth. Although Gideon Davis was being pulled toward the surface, Kate Murphy was now hovering at the exact depth where his people had placed the bomb last week.

His suspicion was confirmed—this whole dive had been a ruse. Maybe the rig was going to fall apart. But the likelihood that the rig manager would interpret some engineer’s report and predict the precise time it would fail? It had seemed plausible when he was looking at all that complicated shit and Parker had been so damn insistent. Now that he was standing here in the sobering rain, looking at the depth counter on the dive winch, he knew he’d been fooled.

“Chun, we’re aborting the mission,” he said. “Go ahead and kill the woman. I’ll take care of Davis topside.”

“Might be easier if you just cut both their umbilicals, sir,” Chun said.

“Good point,” Timken said. He pulled a knife from its mount on his tactical vest and sliced through Kate’s umbilical. Cutting the air hose was easy, but he could see he wouldn’t be able to sever the steel cable that was used to raise and lower the divers.

He looked around, saw an axe in an emergency fire box on the wall. He smashed out the glass, grabbed the axe, and with two swift blows severed Kate’s and Gideon’s umbilicals. The cables fell away, whipping lazily in the air, splashed into the water, and were gone.

Timken stared over the side for a moment, then smiled. He pressed the mic button on his waist and said, “Stand by, Chun. I’m hauling you up.”

“You’ll need to deco me so I don’t get the bends,” Chun said. “Take me up ten meters and leave me there for five.”

“Roger that,” Timken said, pulling back on the winch handle.

Gideon felt the pressure drop inside his helmet a moment before the tension went out of his line. Then he saw Kate’s severed umbilical coiling and sinking beside him, like a dying serpent. He tried to breathe, but there was no air.

Rather than surfacing, he began diving toward Kate. He saw her swimming up toward him, and when he reached her, she grabbed his helmet and yanked him toward her, pressing her helmet flush against his. Only then did he realize what she was doing. With their helmets pressed together, the sound waves could pass from one helmet to the other and they could talk.

“My bailout bottle!” she shouted. Though her voice sounded compressed and muffled, he had no problem understanding her. “I still have some air left. Grab my octo!” Gideon grabbed the fluorescent pink mouthpiece on her shoulder. The problem was that the octo was only good for a few minutes of emergency oxygen.

He realized then that they only had one chance. Where was Chun? He looked around the cradle. The water around them had gone a dull gray. It was obviously dawn above them, the sun lighting the sky enough to send a few meager rays down to where they stood.

But Chun was nowhere to be seen.

There was a tiny bit of air in the helmet, but itr. �€† was already going stale. Gideon’s lungs were beginning to scream. He yanked his helmet off and sucked in a breath from Kate’s octo.

The air coming from the bailout bottle was feeble—the pressure in the bottle barely greater than the pressure of the water around them. But it was enough for him to suck in two quick lungfuls of air to revive his strength.

Time to move. Without a word, he handed the octo to Kate, unstrapped his weight belt and propelled himself in the direction where he’d last seen Chun. His natural buoyancy at this level was quite strong, and it only took a few kicks for him to cover ten or fifteen meters, until he saw a slash of light in the darkness ahead. Closer, and he made out a dark shape, hovering. It was Chun. Gideon could tell from the direction of Chun’s headlamp that he was facing away, and he tried approaching Chun from behind. But the water was so turbulent that Chun was spun around before Gideon reached him.

The big Korean’s eyes widened. He was quick, unsheathing his dive knife from its scabbard. Gideon grabbed Chun’s wrist with both hands. Gideon was strong—but not stronger than Chun.

The one advantage Gideon had was that he felt completely at home in the water. It was obvious to him that Chun did not.

Gideon inverted himself so that his legs were pointing skyward and wrapped them around the umbilical. By twisting one ankle over the other, he was able to put a kink in Chun’s umbilical, cutting off his air. Feeling his airflow die, Chun panicked and made a grab for the umbilical, letting go of the knife.

Within seconds the water was clouded with Chun’s blood. The big man’s body went limp.

Gideon released the knife and fumbled with the snaps on Chun’s helmet, his lungs on fire, pulled it off and settled it around his head.

Gideon blew the excess water out of the helmet and adjusted it to his head. Air! It had the acrid rubbery smell of hoses. But right now it smelled as fresh as the air on top of a mountain in the Rockies.

Seconds later he felt a pair of arms lock around him. It was Kate. Her eyes looked as big as plates as she stared at the now-dead Chun, his hair floating in a corona around his broad face. Gideon was wearing Chun’s helmet now. That was a good first step to making it safely back to the rig. But if they were going to be hoisted to the surface, he needed the hoist cable attached to the webbing of his suit. Gideon pulled the caribiner from Chun’s load-bearing harness, reattached it to his, then stabbed the bladder on Chun’s BC. As the air escaped from the BC in a rush of bubbles, the big man fell away, leaving a pink trail in the water behind him.

Kate was gasping now, having exhausted the last scraps of air in her bailout. He pointed to the fluorescent pink octo on his shoulder. She tore off her helmet and began sucking in air from the octo. He wanted to ask her if she had succeeded in disarming the explosives. But there was no way for them to communicate without being heard topside by Timken. And with their arms occupied holding on to each other, it was impossible to use their slates.

Timken’s voice intruded on them. “I’m pulling you up now, Chun.”

“Roger,” Gideon muttered, hoping that the scratchy quality of the communication link would disguise the fact that he was not ChunHe �€†. Apparently it worked, because Gideon felt a tug as the winch began pulling him to the surface.

There was no time to consider what his strategy would be once they cleared the water and came into Timken’s view. The good news was that Kate, Chun, and Gideon all wore identical wet suits and identical helmets. Gideon and Chun shared similar builds. With the driving rain and wind Timken would be unable to tell it wasn’t Chun until Gideon was quite close to the rig.

The main problem would be that Timken would want to know why Chun was dragging Kate from the water. Gideon figured he’d have to play that one by ear.

And then they were clear of the water.

The wind slammed them like a hammer. Gideon estimated that it was blowing at well over a hundred miles an hour. The wind swept them up into the air, clawing at them, trying to strip off his mask and his vest, trying to rip Kate from his arms.

Gideon locked his arms and legs around Kate, tight as vises. Hold on! He wanted to scream it at the top of his lungs. But he couldn’t. Not without giving himself away. Hold on!

Timken was working the winch, pulling Chun to the surface. The winch strained as Chun’s head cleared the water. Then the wave he was in fell away and suddenly the wind caught the big man and snatched him up in the air like he was on some kind of insane amusement park thrill ride.

Within seconds, Chun was snatched a good forty feet into the air.

Timken saw a flash of auburn. What the– Then he realized what it was: Chun was bringing the rig manager with him! He couldn’t see her face, couldn’t make out whether she was alive or dead. But it was definitely her.

“What the hell are you doing, Chun?” he shouted. “Why are you bringing her up?”

Chun was whipping in the wind now, spinning and diving crazily, but he didn’t respond.

“Chun!” Timken shouted. “I can’t hear you! Drop the woman!”

Timken kept winching Chun in. As Chun grew closer to the sheltering bulk of the rig, the wind lessened and he fell out of view. Within seconds, though, he reappeared. Now he was only a few yards beneath the platform. Timken’s jaw dropped when he saw a pair of angry green eyes staring up at him through Chun’s helmet. How in the world had Davis gotten onto Chun’s umbilical?

Timken didn’t belabor the question: he just wanted Kate and Gideon dead. He released the winch handle and his hand swept to the pistol on his hip when he felt his legs pulled out from beneath him.

Big Al was alive. Barely. The pain in his gut where Timken had shot him was searing. Prejean had regained consciousness only to feel the life draining painfully from his body. But he wasn’t dead yet. And seeing Kate held aloft by Gideon prompted a brief but fairly miraculous reprieve.

He rolled over, grabbed both of Timken’s ankles, and yanked with every ounce of his waning strength. Timken hit the ground hard and his pistol flew from his hands and disappeared. Animated by a wave of anger and protectiveness, Big Al struggled to his feet and slammed down the handle of thimk�€†e winch.

As Kate and Gideon came closer to the deck, Timken roared and jumped to his feet. He was a somewhat smaller man than Big Al, but he knew how to fight. His fists slammed into Big Al’s body. Big Al felt his vision narrowing, his blood pressure dropping, and warm wetness spreading down the front of his chest. The world receded until there was nothing but the winch handle. He pressed both his hands together, then forced his big belly onto the handle. He thought distantly, At least I’ll leave two hundred and eighty-five pounds of dead Cajun meat hanging on this goddamn handle! It might give them just enough time to get to the rig.

Then Kate and Gideon swung toward him, Gideon grabbing hold of the railing with one hand.

Come on, chérie! Big Al tried to say. But the words wouldn’t come to his lips.

And then Big Al felt a great wave of darkness rising up from the sea, hunting him, seeking him, and finally overwhelming him.

Gideon practically threw Kate onto the platform. She fell over the railing, smacked onto the deck, and rolled.

Meanwhile Gideon continued to rise. Big Al Prejean was slumped over the winch controls, his chest bloodied, his eyes rolled back into his head. The winch pulled the umbilical up over a pulley on the end of a ten-foot-long crane arm that extended out over the water. Gideon rose until his neck whacked painfully into the crane arm and the winch stalled.

Gideon hung helplessly, suspended nearly ten feet out from the deck, struggling to free himself. He reached up and tried to unclasp the carabiner that attached him to the umbilical, but it had been sucked up into the pulley at the end of the crane and he couldn’t get his fingers around it.

Realizing that Big Al was either unconscious or dead, Timken shoved the big man out of the way and slammed the handle up. With a sharp jerk, Gideon began descending toward the sea again. Timken was going to drop him to the water, then cut off the air and let him drown.

Kate, however, had other plans. She hopped up, jumped on Tim-ken’s back, and sunk her teeth into the side of his neck. For the moment none of Timken’s men were near the dive station. But Gideon was pretty sure Timken’s roar of anger and pain would draw them soon. Timken whipped around, releasing the handle of the winch and slung Kate off his back.