Devil's Gate

Kurt paused, and then spoke a half-truth. “I try not to worry about what other people think about me.”

“So you have no one to prove anything to?” she asked.

“I didn’t say that,” he replied.

“So there is someone,” she said. “Tell me who. Is it a woman? Is there a Mrs. Austin, or future Mrs. Austin, waiting for you back home?”

Kurt shook his head. “I wouldn’t be here if there was.”

“So who is it?”

Kurt chuckled. The conversation had certainly turned. “Tell me the secret you’re holding, and I’ll give you the answer.”

She looked disappointed again. “I suppose dinner ends as soon as I give you that?”

Kurt didn’t want it to end, but then again… “Depends on the secret,” he said.

She picked up her fork as if she could stall him just a little longer and then she put it down dejectedly.

“Yesterday you rescued a French diver,” she said.

“That’s right,” he said. “The guy had a hundred pounds of weight on his belt. Where you were reckless, he was just an idiot.”

“Maybe not,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“It was a setup,” she said. “While you and your partner were pulling him out of the water, another member of the French team was drilling a four-foot core sample out of the side of that rock. They’ve been bragging about it already.”

Kurt felt an instant burst of anger. He exhaled sharply and then grabbed his napkin and threw it on the table.

“You were right,” he said. “Time to go.”

“Damn,” she said.

He stood, left a handful of bills on the table, and took her by the hand. They headed for the exit.

“But what about your secret?” she said.

“Later,” he said.

With Katarina in tow, Kurt pushed the door open and stepped through. Something moved in the shadows. An object swung toward him from the right. He tensed himself in the instant he had, and then a bat or a club or a pipe of some kind slammed him in the gut.

Despite his strength, the blow jarred Kurt and knocked the wind out of him. He doubled over and crumpled to his knees.

22

PAUL AND GAMAY were rising fast in the Grouper. With all the ballast dumped on the bottom of the ocean, the sub’s nose pointed upward, and, the electric motor churning at full power, they rose at nearly three hundred feet a minute.

As the depth decreased, the pressure decreased. But twenty minutes into the climb they were still ten thousand feet below the surface, and the steady flow of water was increasing.

“The weakest part of the hull is the flange,” Paul shouted, noticing that the water was flowing in where the two sections of the submarine had been joined together like lengths of pipe.

“We have clamps, we can help seal it,” Gamay shouted back.

Paul reached over to the wall and tore down a Velcro-latched covering. Behind it was a set of tools that the sub’s designers thought might be useful to its occupants. Included in that package were four clamps. Large, sturdy, and designed to fit the particulars of the Grouper, they were not that much different from a standard screw clamp that one might have on a workbench at home except they worked on a ratchet system like a jack used to lift up a car. Apparently, whoever had designed the boat realized the flange between the two halves of the sub was the weakest part.

Paul ripped down one of the clamps and handed it to Gamay; he was too big to turn around and get back there to help her.

“You’ll find a spot on the flange with a notch in it, like the notch under a car for the jack. Slip the clamp on there. Once you get it locked, give it everything you’ve got to wrench it down. Then I’ll hand you another one.”

She nodded and took the clamp. Running her hand along the flange, she located the notch, lined the clamp up, and began to tighten it.

“Should I leave a little play, like when we do the lug nuts on the tires?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “Slam that sucker down as hard as you can.”

As Gamay worked, Paul sensed the Grouper rolling a bit. He glanced back at the control panel. They were still angled up at thirty-five degrees, but the sub was yawing to the right. He figured one of the control fins had been damaged and bent. He corrected their alignment and glanced back at Gamay.

He could see the strain on her face as she worked to get one final click on the first clamp.

“How are we doing?”

She slammed the handle home. “I think that one’s done.”

He looked over at the leak. It hadn’t stopped. If anything, it was a little worse. Looking past her, he could see water pooling at the tail end of the sub, maybe a gallon or two.

He grabbed another clamp as they passed nine thousand feet. “Here,” he said. “Hit the other side of the leak next.”

KURT AUSTIN FELL in what seemed like slow motion to him.

He’d seen the pipe coming his way. And from the corner of his eye he’d caught sight of a burly man swinging it like an amateur ball player, using a big wide arc, a slower swing than it could have been.

He’d been able to react fast enough to flinch and harden his body against the blow, but not enough to dodge it.

As he doubled over, most of his mind focused on the intense pain across his abdomen, with just enough left over to hear Katarina scream and to realize the next blow would likely cave his head in.

Even as his knees hit the ground he flew into action.

He saw legs and lunged for them, pushing hard off the ground and driving his shoulder into the man’s knee.

The joint hyperextended backward and gave out with a sickening snap. The thug let out a shout and fell backward. Kurt climbed onto him and slammed his fist into the man’s face, exploding his nose in a spray of blood.

A second shot shattered a cheekbone or an eye socket, and the man’s head snapped sideways, unmoving.

Whether he was dead or just unconscious, Kurt didn’t know or honestly care. He had bigger things to deal with, mainly a second thug that had jumped on his back and now had him in a sleeper hold.

“Get out of here,” he shouted in a raspy tone to Katarina.

He tried to pull the man’s arm loose, a natural reaction that was impossible to accomplish under the best of circumstances. In this case, with his abs screaming from the impact of the pipe, Kurt had no power or leverage, and the man knew it.

The arms tightened, cutting off the blood supply to Kurt’s brain.

Gasping for air, Kurt rolled and tried to slam the man against a van parked beside them. He pushed back and felt the impact. He did it again, but far weaker this time, and the man didn’t let go.

He groped around for a weapon of any kind, a rock or a stick. Then suddenly he heard a dull thud, and the