The moment he saw the rocket launcher come down, he released a burst at the opening.
A hail of bullets poured in from the man on the ground. Sam flattened himself against the rock, but not before he saw the rocket launcher fall. He had wounded the man who held it.
Sam heard sounds of gunfire from a new direction, in the distance, and he imagined a firefight wherever the extra exit tunnels emerged. He wondered how many of the old men would be slaughtered by Frick. It renewed his determination. Taking a terrible chance, he tossed his coat out from the rock, drawing a hail of bullets. He took the moment to focus on the fallen rocket launcher and to fire at it. With a near blinding flash it exploded a few yards from the shooter. As he ran for the small, steel portal, Sam could see the mangled body.
This wasn't going the way he had planned.
As quickly as possible, Haley, Ben, Nelson, and Stu donned bulky diving suits, known as dry suits, designed to keep the moisture out and warmth in. Haley, like many marine biologists, was an experienced diver, and they were ready in a third of the time that might normally be required by the inexperienced. They pulled the dry suits over their clothes, while more explosions came from above. All Haley could think about was Sam.
She cursed herself for letting him stay.
When ready, they dropped the sea sleds in the sea and did a large scissor step into the water, which Haley discovered was at least twenty feet deep. They each grabbed a sled, pulled the triggerlike throttle, and started down into a round rock bowl, cored by a corrugated pipe of at least ten feet in diameter. The pipe was the only exit.
Haley and the others had gone through the same steel portal at the rear of a cave and into a rough tunnel carved from the rock. Fortunately, the lights still worked. Sam didn't want to be stuck feeling his way around in the blackness with no light. Behind the steel door he looked for a crossbar and found it. A stout board slipped through two steel holders affixing the door in the closed position. It was a common but brilliant idea. If they had no more antitank rockets, they might be stymied for long enough to enable Haley and Ben to escape.
When Sam came to a fork in the tunnel, he took the left, as Ben had said. The right-hand fork probably had led the others to the surface.
Sam climbed down a circular stairwell of cut stone that seemed endless. When he got to the bottom, he found another much smaller vault carved in the rock, its floor primarily seawater.
Off the main vault was a side vault, housing a closetlike chamber. Just in front of the chamber they had laid out two sets of dive gear and a couple torpedo-shaped sleds. He had seen but had never personally used the latter. Another explosion rocked the stone around him, its blast forcing air and debris into the vault.
So much for his head start.
Without warning Sam was plunged into darkness, able to see nothing, neither the gear nor even the water. He could not hope to don the intricate dive gear.
He was trapped.
CHAPTER 40
Each sea sled had a bright light that lit the inside of the pipe, the bottom of which was covered with a sprinkling of sand, which stirred from the quiet whir of the propellers as they skimmed over the rippled surface, their chests just inches from the sand. It was claustrophobic and the thought that you couldn't just rise and burst from the surface into the clean salt air was never far from consciousness.
The divers entered single-file and continued for about three minutes, then broke into open water at a depth of about sixty feet.
Ben turned parallel to the beach, obviously intending to come up a good distance from the lodge. Would they be shot like fish in a barrel? Haley worried about that, and she worried even more about Sam.
Based on his memory, Sam felt for the pile of dive gear and turned on the air to one tank. Pushing the purge valve, he verified that it had some air and hoped it was full.
Feeling the second tank, he unscrewed the regulator and opened the valve, creating an eerie, very loud hissing sound as the tank began to empty.
The shoulder straps on the buoyancy compensator doubled as a backpack. Sam slipped it on over his pants and shirt and managed to find the mask by the tank and some fins.
Once he had the tank, mask, and fins on, he fired the Uzis in the direction of the water, hoping to scare someone with the sound.
'We need more lights,' he heard someone shout from above. All his diving had been for sport, and usually in the tropics, and no one had ever shown him how to turn on a sled.
Given that he had as little as a minute or two, he knew he had to get in the water and get out of sight. He pulled on the fins, sucked the mask tight to his face to make sure he had a seal, and sat on the edge of the rocks. In the water with the sled he tried the trigger throttle. Nothing. There was no time to grope in the darkness and guess at where the switch might be. Going into the cold ocean with no dive suit and no light was foolish, but it was his only choice. He kicked in a direction he thought was down, until he hit the bottom, then swam with his hands touching the bottom, until he hit a rock sidewall. It was pitch black and he could see nothing. The cold felt worse than he had imagined; he didn't know how long he could stay conscious this time around.
Feeling along the rock, he hoped for an opening. The rock disappeared and it felt like metal. As his fingers ran along the corrugated metal wall, he thought about meeting his Maker. Even if he made it out to the sea, he wasn't at all sure he would be able to remain down long enough.
Without doubt the cliffs would be rimmed with shooters.
Frick and Khan had remained in the lodge by the shattered trunk.
'Maybe we should go down,' Khan said.
'Anderson had months or years to prepare security here,' Frick said. 'There have to be other exits, some on land, some in the sea. I think they'll come up in the ocean and a boat will come. That's why we heard about boats and divers on President Channel. It's the reason nobody notices large groups driving vehicles in and out. It's why I sent men to the bluff. Let's get a report first.'
When the report came, Frick didn't like what he heard. No live bodies and apparently no significant research materials-written or otherwise-anywhere in the cavern that they could find. The search was continuing.
'So where the hell did they go?' he asked his man.
'Down into a stone stairway,' the man radioed back, breathless. 'It goes to a pool, looks like the sea. There's no usable diving equipment. There are tanks, but the valves are all open and they're empty. We can't pursue. Repeat, we-'
'I heard you,' Frick growled. It was just as he'd thought, although he hoped his men would catch up before they completed their exit. 'Khan?'
'Yo.'
'Get men down the bluff. If anybody comes to the surface in front of the bluffs, cut 'em to pieces-unless it's Ben Anderson. Him we have to swim for.'
'At this late date, what good will shooting divers do us?' Khan asked.
'It'll make me feel a hell of a lot better. I want Chase dead. He won't forget.'
'All right. But then we take what we have and we leave,' Khan said.
'I'll take the sheriff's boat around from West Sound. You go by land. We should get them one way or the other.'
'After that, I've had enough,' Khan said. 'If the men find something, I'll bring it.' He paused. 'There's one other thing. McStott's back on the octopus. Said he told you about it before, but now he has proof that it's got the genetic markers. Could be at least part of the formula.'
'He also said it could take a long time to learn anything from it,' Frick said.
'Look where we're at,' Khan said. 'You wanna leave it behind?'
'So what do we need? Just a good-size piece of that ugly bastard?'
'That's what he says.'
Frick snapped his ringers. 'Wait a minute. You suppose that's where they're going?' He thought for a second. 'I bet they are. Kill the octopus and hide the carcass, and the secret's safe. Call the foundation and tell them to stop
