Part 25 (2/2)

Forcing himself forward, he leaned further off the bow fin. In his ear came April's countdown: ”One...two...three!”

Bubbles exploded. He reached out, seeing the corks.c.r.e.w.i.n.g cable. His manipulator claws shot forward, the aluminum fingers snapping shut on the loop.

It felt like his arm was being jerked out of its socket and then he was accelerating toward the surface, gyrating to and fro with the powerful thrust of the torpedo, seeing nothing but a vortex of bubbling turbulence.

”I got it!” he yelled into his microphone.

Looking up, he could see the blue-white expanse of the surface rus.h.i.+ng at him, the water growing brighter and gaining color-blues, then yellows and reds as he rose. Schools of fish broke apart as he zoomed upward, darting away in fear.

And then his helmet was filled with a burst of suns.h.i.+ne and wavelets lapped at him as the torpedo shot straight up into the air. He let go and it splashed down twenty feet in front of him, disappearing beneath the surface.

With his last bit of strength he uncoupled his helmet, gulping in gasps of air. Debris from the exploded dive boat littered the surface, heaving gently. He thrashed his way to a splintered plank of wood, grabbing it like a life preserver.

Gradually his head cleared. The late afternoon sun beat down on his face. An overpowering surge of raw animal strength rushed through him as his lungs and bloodstream flooded with oxygen.

He was alive.

But at the same time horror clutched at his brain. He'd left April at the bottom of the sea.

To die.

He knew her simple philosophy: live each day to the fullest, defeat your enemies. Until the day they defeated you. And then it was over.

But it didn't make it any easier.

”April!” he shouted into the intercom, but there was no answer. Even if she were still alive, the distance was too great for the electronic link to function.

Slowly he let his gaze pan around the surface of the sea, seeing the water, the few cirrus clouds high in the afternoon sky, a lone seagull soaring toward sh.o.r.e a mile-and-a-half away.

First Sarah. Now April.

He fought down a urge to vomit.

He knew he had to go on. He knew he had to rescue Flinders, to stop Tomilin and the Atlantean cult from destroying the world.

But right now his will had fled and he felt paralyzed, unable to move.

Devastation closed around him like a black hood.

BOOK THREE.

FORTY-EIGHT.

Black Sea APRIL panned her lamp around the torpedo room, seeing nothing but the breech ends of the torpedo tubes, the jumble of pipes and gyro equipment, and the folded crew bunks.

Nothing that could help her escape.

She knew she had only a few minutes of air left. A thought nagged at her, something that had occurred to her when they'd first entered the submarine, but which she'd pushed aside with the discovery of the bars. The thought of death didn't frighten her. But it just wasn't her way to give up. She would fight until the last breath of oxygen entered her lungs. But then, if she joined the German corpses floating in anoxic darkness at the bottom of the sea, so be it.

Once again, the nagging thought skittered across the fringes of her mind.

And then she had it.

The floating corpses they had found were sailors, not officers. It was the officers who had executed them. Which meant that the officers had arranged for some means of escape! She cudgeled her brain, forcing herself to remember anything she'd learned about World War Two U-boats.

Then in a rush it came to her. The U-boat crews had access to primitive aqualung devices-little more than breathing bags-that could be used to escape from sunken submarines. For an emergency ascent, a sailor could inflate the bag with extra oxygen to help him shoot to the surface.

A couple of minutes of air left.

Without the thrusters, it was harder to maneuver the bulky suit in the confined s.p.a.ce, so she pulled herself aft by locking her manipulators on the bunk rails and door frame, shooting ahead with each pull. The beam of her halogen lamp swept over the corpse of the first sailor they had found. Pus.h.i.+ng the body aside, she dragged herself through the hatch into the officers' bunk room. Her light flashed across the wooden hutch and the open isomer cases, then fell on a tall, narrow metal cabinet beside it, s.h.i.+ning with a dull gleam. She remembered noticing it before, but had disregarded the cabinet after they'd found the bars.

Grasping a bed frame, she hauled herself toward it, wrenching the door open. Inside, at the bottom of the cabinet, sat a metal box marked Gegenlunge.

Lunge...! Lungs!

She ripped away the top.

What looked like a life jacket with a hose and mouthpiece attached floated up into the room, followed by several others.

___.

Bobbing on the surface, Skarda unfastened the waist couplings of his ADS, freeing himself from the suit and letting it sink away into the sea. Physical exhaustion and the shock of losing April had turned his brain into a black blank slate. His arms felt like lead weights as he dragged himself further over the block of wood that was his life raft.

With an automatic reflex he reached for his Stealth to contact OSR, but then he realized the smartphone had been lost when the dive s.h.i.+p blew up. A pair of seagulls swooped overhead, then wheeled away, heading for the Crimean coast.

At least he knew which direction to paddle in.

Then, next to him, an object bobbed to the surface, glinting with bright highlights in the late afternoon sun.

An ADS helmet!

Skarda's heart flip-flopped. Hope flowed into him like a healing drug. Beneath the glossy curve of the helmet he could see April's long dark hair, obscuring her face as her chin rested on her chest.

But she wasn't moving.

Back-paddling, Skarda maneuvered the raft to her side, rolling off into the water. With trembling fingers he uncoupled the helmet, tossing it aside. She still wasn't responding. Brus.h.i.+ng a length of her hair aside, he saw that the skin of her face had turned a mottled blue. He shoved himself closer, leaning over her as best he could while treading water. Then he tilted her head back, pinching her nose shut and covering her mouth with his, blowing deep breaths into her lungs, over and over and over.

Moments later she made a sharp choking noise. Her chest heaved. Then her black eyes opened and she jerked her head, looking into his eyes. ”Hard to kill,” she said in a croak. A grin split her lips.

Skarda's eyes filled with relief and wonder. His heart hammered in his throat. ”How did you get out of there?”

She lifted her manipulator arms. Clasped in each was an inflated aqualung. ”I found these in the officers' quarters,” she said. ”I wired a few to my suit, held onto these, and up I came. Now help me get out of this thing. We've got a world to save and we're running out of time!”

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