Devil's Gate

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I have far more pleasant plans for you.”

She spat toward his face, but he stepped easily out of the way. “Why do you all try the same tricks?” he asked. He stood back, and kicked her for good measure.

Stepping away, he turned to the pilothouse. “Start the engines.”

As the diesels rumbled to life beneath the deck, Mathias, the key master, came toward him. Mathias was not one of Andras’s men; Djemma had put him aboard, perhaps to watch Andras.

“You gave them the key,” Mathias said. “What if they escape?”

Andras laughed. “I almost hope that they do. It would make things more interesting,” he said. “But they won’t,” he added. “At least, not both of them.”

“Why?”

“Because people have to pay for their crimes, and death is not much of a punishment.” Andras glared at the key master with fury in his eyes. He felt a particular mix of hatred and respect for Kurt Austin. He had suffered his own pain at Austin’s hands once upon a time.

Satisfied that Mathias had been put in his place, Andras turned toward the bow.

Mathias grabbed his arm, turning him. “I will inform Djemma. He will not find this so amusing.”

Andras’s eyes narrowed to slits. “It wasn’t done for amusement.”

“Then for what? I see no purpose to it.”

“There is purpose in everything I do,” Andras assured him. “This, for example.”

In the blink of an eye, Andras raised a tiny pistol and fired it. The report was no louder than a cap gun. There was no shouting, no wailing in pain, or even much reaction on the part of Mathias. Only a suddenly limp appearance to his face as a tiny hole appeared in the center of his forehead. He stumbled back, cross-eyed and shaking, but not dead, not yet.

As the key master backed into the railing, Andras pulled the trigger again. Mathias tumbled backward, falling overboard and splashing noisily in the water.

He disappeared for a second and then bobbed to the surface, supported by the gray life jacket he wore. A trickle of crimson blood flowed from two small holes in his head, but he didn’t move or even tremble.

Andras put the pistol away, raised the shotgun for all to see, and bellowed at the top of his lungs, “Anyone else have a problem with authority?” He looked around from face to face.

No one spoke, and Andras glanced at the boat’s pilot.

“Let’s go,” he said.

The engines roared, and the motor yacht moved off. The two powerboats quickly joined it, and the three vessels raced off to the north, trailing long wakes out behind them.

THIRTY FEET BELOW THE SURFACE and dropping, Kurt held his breath as he and Joe rode the Barracuda down. As the pressure grew in his ears and the light from above started to fade, Kurt tried to calm himself. A plan was forming in his head, but first he had to fight off the natural reaction of fear and panic, knowing those things would kill him as quickly as anything else.

Without goggles, everything around them was a hazy blur, but it was a yellow-green blur, which meant that the Barracuda’s lights were still on. And that meant the shotgun blasts hadn’t taken out her electrical system. And even though she was full of water, Joe had given her instruments and controls that were waterproof up to great depths.

If he was right about their location, the seafloor would catch them near a depth of a hundred twenty feet, and then Kurt would take his shot at turning that floor into something other than a receptive grave.

It wouldn’t be easy, but they had a fighting chance. In fact, the way Kurt figured things, their odds were almost even. It really all depended on just how the Barracuda landed.

He pi

It rose up at them faster than Kurt expected. He braced himself and was slammed forward as the nose of the little sub thumped the floor like a giant lawn dart.

The impact jarred him, but he kept his wits and immediately went into action.

With his hands still cuffed to the Barracuda’s lift bar, Kurt swung the rest of his body outside the sub, kicking and pulling. In seconds he saw Joe doing the same thing, following his lead as promised.

Their only hope was to create an air pocket to breathe in while the rest of the plan materialized. And the only way they could do that was to get the Barracuda over on its back and get the oxygen flowing from the sub’s compressed-air tanks.

Then the i

The only problem was, even though the Barracuda had hit nose down, the sub’s weight heavily favored its lower half, where the main systems rested: the engine, the batteries, the impeller. And though the sub had hit the ocean floor almost vertically on its nose, it was already trying to fall backward.

The only force keeping it from settling keel down came from Kurt and Joe’s efforts, but they would wane in less than a minute.

Kurt kicked hard and yanked and pulled. He could feel his lungs burning already. If they could just get the sub a few inches past vertical, the weight would become their ally.

Straining with everything he had, Kurt’s feet found the silty ground and dug in. His left foot slipped through the muck and then jammed against a jagged rock, giving him some leverage.

This time as he pulled, the tail of the sub moved and began to fall toward him. He pulled again, getting both feet onto the rock’s surface and leaning all his weight into it.

Finally, the nose slipped backward and the tail fell toward them, and Kurt had to duck inside to avoid getting hit by the wing. The sub settled slightly askew, and propped up at a thirty-degree angle by the ruined canopy.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough to rule phase one of his plan a success. But with his lungs screaming and his head pounding, he and Joe had precious seconds to get the air flowing or it would all be for nothing.

Neither he nor Joe could possibly reach the switch with their cuffed hands, but their feet were a possibility. Kurt stretched for the panel, pointing his toe and pressing near the oxygen switch time and again.

Each time nothing happened, and he felt his movements getting weaker and less coordinated. He fought the urge to open his mouth and inhale. He fought the shakes and tried one more time. He must have hit the light switch because everything went dark for a second and then lit up again.

By now his legs and arms felt as if they were made of lead, and he couldn’t get them to do what he wanted them to do. His mind began to work against him as his subconscious whispered Give up.

The thought made him angry, and he willed himself to make one more attempt, tensing what was left of his muscles. Before he could move, a sudden rush of bubbles came pouring into the cockpit.

Kurt could see only the turbulence at first, but as the bubbles began to fill the upside-down cockpit he saw an air pocket forming above him in what would have been the foot well had the sub been right side up. He twisted his body, stretched his neck, and pushed his face into the rapidly forming sanctuary.

Exhaling a huge cloud of carbon dioxide, he sucked at the air. He coughed and sputtered as he breathed in some water, but he didn’t care, he kept gulping. The air was life, another chance to roll the dice instead of dialing up a big fat seven on the bottom of the ocean.

As the bubble filled with air, he blinked away the salt water and looked around. The smiling face of Joe Zavala was next to him.