Devil's Gate

“What happened?” Kurt asked, realizing he had never actually taken his last shot at getting the air on.

Joe smiled and contorted his body, bringing a foot up out of the water. It was bare. No shoe, no sock. He wriggled his toes.

“Just like turning the tap off in the bathtub,” he said.

Kurt felt a laugh trying to break through. He didn’t have enough air for it yet, but the feeling was grand.

“I couldn’t hit the switch,” Kurt said. “I was blacking out.”

“You must have been short on air,” Joe said. “Long rambling conversations with lunatics on the surface will do that to you.”

Kurt nodded. Next time he’d just keep his mouth shut and breathe through his nose. With the Barracuda’s air starting to feed into his body, he felt his strength returning.

“Never thought I’d owe my life to your gorilla-like feet,” he said. “Good work.”

Joe laughed, then turned serious. “The vents are full open, and the system is trying to compensate for the bleed-off. That’ll keep us in this little oasis for a while, but the supply won’t last. Maybe twenty minutes before it’s exhausted.”

Kurt looked around. The Barracuda rested at an odd angle, and while Kurt and Joe were able to keep their heads and shoulders in the air pocket without too much trouble their hands were still cuffed outside, and the bubbles were streaming out of an upturned corner of the cockpit.

Kurt took a breath, ducked his head down, and swung it outside. He looked around in the muted green light. There, dangling just beyond his reach, was the key, and the knife that Andras had stabbed into the Barracuda’s hull.

He had no idea why Andras would give them such a chance — maybe just to taunt them, maybe for some other sick reason — but Kurt didn’t care at this point. He swung around, kicked his shoes and socks off just as Joe had, and stretched for the lanyard.

He touched it but couldn’t grasp it on his first attempt.

He ducked his head back inside for another breath and then tried again. This time, he caught the lanyard with his toes and tangled it up around his foot. Then he brought up his other foot and kicked the knife firmly but with control.

It moved but didn’t break loose. A second kick jarred it free, and Kurt reeled it in, gripping the length of thin twine as forcefully as his toes could.

He ducked his head back into the cockpit, reveled in another deep breath, and brought his foot to the surface.

Joe laughed. “I make you an honorary King Kong.”

“I’ll take it,” Kurt replied. “But neither one of us is going to undo these cuffs with our feet.”

Kurt took another breath, ducked his head back outside again, and swung around. With great effort he bent his knee and twisted his hip. It was awkward, but in a moment he’d brought his foot up beside their hands and the lift bar.

He felt the edge of the knife first and then the twine of the lanyard. He grabbed it and held tight.

Shifting his head back inside, he took another breath. He had the key in his hand. They were one step closer.

“Are you free?” Joe asked.

“Not yet,” Kurt said. “I’m not exactly up to speed on playing Houdini. But it’s only a matter of time.”

Unable to see his hands from inside the cockpit, he had to go by feel. He reminded himself to be careful; above all else he could not afford to drop the key like some bungling idiot in a bad movie.

He slowed his breathing a bit and felt for the keyhole on the cuffs. Despite the cold water that was rapidly numbing his fingers, he could feel an indentation. He angled the key, jiggled it a bit, and slid it into place. It turned, and the cuff on his left hand clicked.

His left hand was free. He slid it out and was then able to slide the loose cuffs under the lift bar and bring them back into the cockpit.

“Voilà!” he said, raising his hands like an amateur magician for Joe to see.

“Beautiful,” Joe said.

“And for your next trick?” Joe asked.

“I will release the amateur cochampion of the greater southern Azorean islands boxing league.”

Joe laughed. “Make it quick, my hands are getting numb.”

Kurt nodded. The water temperature around them was probably no more than 60 degrees. Hypothermia would set in fairly soon.

He ducked outside, went to work on Joe’s cuffs, and found there was a problem. He jiggled and forced the key in, but it wouldn’t turn. He tried again, but had no better luck. Pulling the key out, he surfaced back in the air pocket.

“I’m still locked up,” Joe said.

“I know,” Kurt said, studying the key. “Hold on.”

He took a deep breath, went back into the water, and tried again. This time, he tried both cuffs but to no avail. The key could be forced in, but it didn’t slide in smoothly and it wouldn’t turn a millimeter once it was in.

Suddenly, he remembered Andras telling Kurt his answers were “good enough for half.”

It hadn’t made sense at the time, but now it did. He’d given them one key. It matched Kurt’s handcuffs but not Joe’s. That was exactly the man Kurt remembered, never content just to defeat his foes but almost needing to torture those he’d vanquished, to cause pain before landing the killing blow.

Whatever other reasons Andras might have had for giving Kurt a chance to escape, this twisted little game had to be part of it. He could imagine Andras watching the scene play out in his mind and snickering.

Like some malevolent deity in Greek mythology, he’d granted Kurt a chance at life, but Kurt could only accept that gift at the expense of leaving his best friend to die.

No way on earth Kurt was going to let that happen. He went back inside, popping up once again.

“I think you’re misunderstanding the concept here,” Joe said. “When you come back in, I’m supposed to be free.”

“We have a problem,” Kurt said. “The key doesn’t fit.”

Joe stared at the key and then at Kurt. “The guy used a different key on mine. I saw it. The cuffs are different.”

Kurt stuffed the key in his pocket and began looking around in the cockpit for a tool to break Joe loose. He found a pair of screwdrivers, a set of Allen wrenches, and some other instruments — all of them miniaturized out of necessity to fit in the tiny cockpit of the sub.

“Anything in here that we could use for leverage?” he asked. Joe had built the sub. He’d know it far better than Kurt.

“Not really,” Joe said.

“What about the lift bar?” Kurt asked, referencing what Joe was cuffed to. “Can we remove it or release it somehow?”

Joe shook his head. “Not without taking half the sheet metal off first.”

“Can we break it?” Kurt asked, though he already knew the answer.

“It’s the hardest point on the sub,” Joe said, begi

The two men stared at each other.

“You can’t get me free,” Joe said, voicing a dreaded realization.

“There’s got to be a way,” Kurt mumbled, thinking, and trying to fight what was becoming a mind-numbing cold.

“Not with anything we have on board,” Joe said. “You should go. Don’t stay down here and drown with me.”

“Why? So you could come back and haunt me?” Kurt said, trying to keep Joe’s spirits up. “No thanks.”

“Maybe there’s a boat on the surface or a helicopter,” Joe said. “Maybe someone got our message.”

Kurt thought about that. It seemed unlikely. And if Joe was right about how long the air supply would last on full blast, Kurt doubted they had more than fifteen minutes or so to wait. Not enough time for someone to get to them even if he could call for help.

He needed a different answer, a third way between leaving Joe to drown and dying down there alongside him. What he needed was a hacksaw or a blowtorch to cut through the lift bar or, better yet, through the chains on Joe’s cuffs.