Devil's Gate

Kurt swung again, this time a forehand coming in from the side. It took out the driver’s window, catching the driver in the side of the head. The Audi swerved hard this time, dropping back and moving toward the cliff, then swerving rapidly to the right. It hammered the rocky slope on that side of the road, flipped, and tumbled. It slid on its caved-in roof, shedding parts and glass for a hundred yards, but avoided going off the cliff.

“That’s go

The second Audi cut around the first one and began to accelerate. Kurt doubted the same plan would work twice. He looked ahead. Two more sets of lights were coming up the hill. They could have been locals or tourists, but they stayed abreast of each other, like one car trying to pass another and never actually making it. He was pretty sure what that meant.

“They’re trying to corral us,” he said over the wind that was pouring through the missing doorway.

For a moment he saw trepidation flicker across Katarina’s face, and then the young agent who had something to prove stood on the gas pedal and gripped the wheel like a madwoman. The little Focus shot forward as Katarina flipped her high beams on for good measure.

“I’m not stopping,” she shouted.

Kurt didn’t doubt that, but as he glanced ahead he guessed the drivers of the cars charging up toward them had no plans of stopping either.

23

FOR TEN SOLID MINUTES the Grouper continued to climb, but ever more slowly.

“We’re passing a thousand,” Paul said.

A thousand feet, she thought. That sounded so much better than sixteen thousand or ten or five, but it was still deeper than many steel-hulled submarines were able to go. She remembered a ride she’d taken with the Navy years ago on a Los Angeles — class attack submarine that was about to be retired. At seven hundred feet the side had dented in with a resounding clang. As she nearly jumped out of her skin, the captain and crew laughed heartily.

“This is our test depth, ma’am,” the captain had said. “That dent shows up every time.”

Apparently, it was an inside joke played on all guests, but it scared the heck out of her, and the fact that she and Paul were still three hundred feet deeper than that meant one thousand feet could be just as deadly as sixteen thousand.

“Nine hundred,” Paul said, calling out the depth again.

“What’s our rate?” she asked.

“Two-fifty,” he said. “Give or take.” Less than four minutes to the surface, less than four minutes to life.

Something snapped off the outside of the hull, and the Grouper started to shake.

“I think we lost the rudder,” Paul said.

“Can you control it?”

“I can try to vector the thrust,” he said, his hands working the two joysticks on the panel furiously.

She glanced to the rear. At least eighty gallons of water had filled the sub. The icy liquid had already reached her feet, causing her to pull them up toward her body.

A minute went by, and they began closing in on five hundred feet. A strange creaking sound reverberated through the hull, like a house settling or metal bending. It came and went and then came again.

“What is that?” she said. It was coming from above her head.

She looked up. The clamp on the top of the flange was quivering, the creaking sound coming from the hull above it.

She looked aft. The tail end of the sub was filled with water. A hundred gallons or more. Eight hundred pounds more than the front. All that extra weight twisted and pulled and bent the sub at the already weakened seam, trying to crack it in half like breaking a stick in the middle.

They had to level out before it ripped them apart. Had to spread the weight evenly even if it meant just climbing due to their buoyancy.

“Paul,” she said.

“Two hundred,” he called out.

“We have to level out,” she said.

“What?”

The hull groaned louder. She saw the upper clamp slip.

“Paul!” She lunged forward as the clamp shot away from the notch. It hit her in the back of the leg, and she screamed.

Her voice was drowned out by the sound of the second clamp being flung from its moorings and the furious dissonance of water gushing into the sub like it was blasting from a high-pressure fire hose.

HALFWAY DOWN the twisting mountain road to Vila do Porto, the game of chicken was on. Katarina kept her foot down on the accelerator. The cars coming up at them seemed undaunted. If anything, they’d accelerated also, and continued to charge shoulder to shoulder, their headlights blazing.

Kurt put a hand up to block the glare, trying to save some of his night vision. He glanced in the mirror; the single car behind them was closing in. He wondered if everyone had gone insane.

He flicked his eyes forward again, caught sight of a road sign and an arrow. It read “Hang Gliders — Ultralights.” He grabbed the wheel, yanked the car to the right.

“What are you doing?” Katarina shouted.

They skidded onto a gravel road, turned sideways for a moment, and then straightened, as Katrina spun the wheel madly in one direction and then the other.

Behind them the sound of screeching tires pierced the night. A slight crunch followed, not the massive impact Kurt was hoping for but a happy sound nonetheless.

“Keep going,” he said.

“We don’t know where this goes.”

“Does it matter?”

Of course it didn’t. And moments later the lights swung onto the dirt road far behind them, so there was no way to turn back even if it did.

“Up ahead,” Kurt said. “Head for the cliff.” “Are you crazy?” she shouted. “I can barely keep us straight as it is.” “Exactly.”

They rumbled along the gravel-strewn road. A massive cloud of dust billowed out behind them, not enough to block out the light completely but enough to obscure everything. He could imagine the Audi’s driver, blinded, getting pinged with rocks, sliding this way and that, as he tried to keep up.

Sometimes extra horsepower and bigger tires were bad. With standing water and gravel, this was the case exactly. At a high-enough speed, the Audi would become uncontrollable — it would literally begin to float on the tumbling rocks and pebbles underneath its tires — but the little Focus, with its ski

“Let him get a little closer,” Kurt said, sca

She nodded. She seemed as if she knew what he was thinking.

“Now punch it and turn.”

She slammed the gas pedal down, spi

“I said turn,” Kurt yelled.

She threw the wheel over, but the Focus skidded, and Kurt realized he’d overplayed their hand. He grabbed Katarina by the shoulder, pulled her into the passenger seat, and then dove out of the car through the open section where the door had once been, dragging her with him as he went.

They tumbled and rolled on the grass beside the road. The Audi shot by, missing them by a foot or two. The Focus disappeared off the cliff, and the Audi’s brake lights lit up.

“Too late,” Kurt said.

The Audi skidded through the dust cloud and then vanished, going over the edge at twenty miles an hour or so.

It was eerily silent for three seconds, and then twin explosions boomed through the night one right after the other.

The gritty air swirled around them. For a second it seemed as if they were alone.

“They’re gone,” Katarina said.

Kurt nodded and then glanced down the dirt road. White light could be seen filtering through the settling dust, moving toward them. Two cars remained.