Everyone glanced at Ramos who was looking agitated. ‘I don’t like small spaces,’ he said, his lips quivering.
‘Ain’t you spent most of your rat life in a cell?’ Gann asked.
‘Not at the bottom of the fuckin’ sea,’ Ramos mumbled.
‘Don’t worry yourself about it,’ Gann said, amused. ‘You’ll soon be in an even smaller, deeper space.’ Gann took a handset off the wall and put it to his mouth. ‘Control, this is ferry four, come in.’
A speaker crackled for a few seconds before a voice broke from it. ‘Ferry four, control hears you. That you, Gann?’
‘Yeah. We’re ready to push from the platform. That’s five packs plus two guards, total seven persons.’
‘Copy, you’re ready to push, seven up. Stand by, ferry four . . .’
‘Oh, I almost forgot the emergency procedures,’ Gann said as he hung the handset back onto its hook. ‘If in the event of an incident, like a fire or the cables snap and we sink like a stone’ - Gann glanced at Ramos and others who were beginning to look uncomfortable, enjoying their unease - ‘your chains’ll be disconnected from your seats by me or Mr Palanski. Anyone panics or gets outta control I’ll zap you or knock you out,’ he said, pulling a zapper from his belt with one hand, a blackjack with the other and holding them up. ‘Whichever, chances are you’ll get left behind. I got no time for assholes. If we have to bale out you’ll be directed to the emergency escape room through that door over there where your cuffs’ll be removed and you’ll put on escape suits and go to the surface one at a time.’
‘’Scuse me,’ said the large neo-Nazi. ‘Can I ask a question . . . please?’
‘Since you asked so nicely,’ Gann replied.
‘I thought you said we’d be the size of a Buick if we go straight up to the surface.’
‘That’s only if we’re down on the bottom of the ocean more’n a few hours. If that’s the case we’ll stay in here and wait to be rescued by a special sub.’
The prisoners looked at one another, mumbling their concerns and dissent.
‘I said I’m the only one who talks,’ Gann grumbled.
Everyone shut up, already conditioned to their guard’s potential to cause suffering.
The vessel jerked heavily as the cables above began to move and there was a long creaking sound outside like the tearing of sheet metal. Ramos started to tremble violently, his breathing quickening. He pulled on his chain in the hope that it might disconnect from the hook in the seat. Gann walked down the row and stopped in front of him. ‘I’m warnin’ you, Ramos. You fuck aroun’ and I’ll zap yer.’
‘I . . . I can’t take this shit! Let me outta here!’ Ramos shouted. ‘I told ’em I couldn’t go down to that place but they wouldn’t believe me.’
Gann gritted his teeth as he held the zapper in front of Ramos’s face.‘I’m warnin’ you, wetback. Settle down.’
Ramos ignored him as if his only obstacle to safety was the hook securing his chain to the seat.
Gann pressed the button on the device and a bright blue and white spark connected the tips of the chrome terminals an inch from Ramos’s nose.
But Ramos could not be deterred, his claustrophobia more powerful than Gann’s paltry threat. ‘Lemme outta here! I gotta get outta here!’ he screamed. ‘LEMME OUT!’
‘Prisoner’s outta control,’ Gann called out, as if formally declaring the way clear for his legal solution. Without further hesitation he rammed the terminals of the zapper into Ramos’s throat where it clicked loudly in time with the high-voltage pulses.The two prisoners on either side of Ramos leaned away as he howled and shook violently. A short zap would have sufficed but not for Gann. He held the device firmly against Ramos’s neck for an age. Palanski cringed as he watched. Some of the prisoners found it amusing.
Ramos had gone silent by the time Gann removed the zapper, his body shuddering, his head back, eyeballs rolled up, tongue hanging out, foamy saliva dribbling from the sides of his mouth.
Gann leaned over the Mexican to observe him like a crackpot indulging in an experiment.‘He’s OK,’ Gann declared, none too confidently. ‘That’s how they usually go.’
The vessel shunted again and this time there was a perceptible feeling of movement that gradually increased as the craft gracefully pulled out of its holding bay. As it left the guide tray it dropped, taking up the slack in the cables. Everyone experienced that lost-stomach feeling, to the point where several of the prisoners groaned.
Gann tapped Ramos on the side of his head, still unsure if he had done any serious damage - not that he cared much. He gave up and shrugged. ‘You got the picture, guys,’ he said, walking back along the row. ‘No fuckin’ around or you’ll get the same.’
Stratton focused on a map board at the other end of the bench row. The ferry’s position was indicated on an angled line marked at regular intervals like a metro map, except the lit beads were depth markers between the surface platform and the prison’s arrivals dock. A bright green LED light indicating the surface platform extinguished and a blue one blinked on further down the line.
Gann stopped in front of a bank of valves and gauges that displayed the internal and external ferry pressures, air-storage volume, air quality, and the carbon dioxide, nitrogen and oxygen percentages of the air. He tapped a couple of the gauges, noting with satisfaction that the internal pressure was several pounds per square inch lower than outside. As he turned around to check on the prisoners his eyes drifted to the line of relief valves in the ceiling, three in total. A drop of water fell from one onto a prisoner’s head, causing the man to look up curiously.
‘Lemme know if that turns into a fire hose,’ Gann said, with a wink.
The prisoner wasn’t amused and looked up as another drip fell onto his face.
Gann walked to the front of the cabin to Palanski. ‘Did you check the escape suits?’
Palanski was looking at Ramos who, although still in a daze, appeared to be recovering. He raised an eyebrow at the request. ‘That’s the senior man’s job.’
‘I only asked in case.’
‘I can do it if you want.’
‘Nah. I’ll check ’em.’
Palanski moved aside. Like most of the prison guards, Gann intimidated him.
Gann unlocked the six dog hasps around the emergency escape-room door. Stratton watched as he tugged at the handle, unable to shift it. Both men looked up at a gauge on the wall above the door. ‘Fuckin’ room ain’t equalised,’ Gann mumbled as he turned a valve beside the gauge that allowed air into the escape room. Seconds later the door popped slightly towards him and he turned off the valve and pulled the door fully open.
He stepped inside and as he turned to close the door he caught Stratton staring at him. Stratton looked away and Gann watched him a little longer before closing the door. Stratton looked back to see a couple of the dog hasps turn to secure it.
Gann went to a rack containing more than a dozen bright yellow packs with ESCAPE SUIT written on them in large letters. He took one of the packs, pulled open the seal, removed the bright yellow suit and draped it over the side of the rack. He opened a red box on the wall. Inside were a couple of small air cylinders. He removed one, checked that the contents gauge was green and that the full-face mask was secured to the end of its high-pressure tube. He turned the bottle valve, put the mouthpiece in his mouth, took a quick guff to ensure that it was working and placed it on the shelf beside the escape suit.
He faced the emergency escape tube which was basically a large pipe welded vertically to the ceiling and big enough for a man to crawl up inside. The bottom end, covered with a hatch, was just below his waist. He checked a gauge to ensure that the pressure inside the tube was the same as the ferry’s and squatted to take hold of the hatch wheel. He turned it a couple of times and the heavy hatch dropped open on its hinge and returned almost all the way back up on a pair of robust springs designed to counter its weight.
Gann got onto his knees, pushed the hatch fully open against its springs and poked his head up inside to take a look at the narrow space that was illuminated by an internal lamp. A hatch covered the other end of the six-foot- long tube, the brass wheel at its centre wet with condensation. A breathing umbilical was secured halfway up and he crawled sufficiently inside to reach up and press the spring valve inside the teat. An instant gush of air revealed that it was working and he inspected the small collection of valves and gauges that operated the flooding system. Satisfied that everything was in working order, Gann manoeuvred his large frame out of the awkward space and got to his feet.
He looked around to make sure there was nothing else he needed to prepare for his murderous plan and took a deep breath to steel himself. This was by far the biggest job he had ever taken on.
