“Sounds like they just arrested that ivory bitch,” Gretchen growled under her breath. “Good. I hope she pulls a gun from one of them and they make her a colander.”
Sam snickered over where he sat, his humor still not failing him. In his fingers, he fumbled with the canvas bag of books while trying not to give in to the excruciating throb in his right knee. He looked over at Richard, who slowly sat up. His eyes were wild and his hands shook uncontrollably while the women tried to snap him out of his apparent fugue state to lead them out the way he claimed he had discovered. But all Dr. Richard Philips could do was to cast his eyes into the maelstrom of the well, as if he knew what was below.
And he did.
Chapter 27
“Listen, Dr. Philips, we have run out of precious time. It’s only seconds before they pick up the smell of this place and figure out that there is a basement,” Nina urged. “Now where is the way out?”
He slowly looked at Nina with a face that carried no comfort. “You are not going to like it, Dr. Gould.”
“Oh, God, no,” she replied in defeat. “What? Just tell me.”
He pointed at the swirling pool, leading all three to look into the well.
“I don’t fucking think so!” Nina protested. “There is no way!”
“Sam?” Richard checked with the injured journalist who looked utterly lost.
“I second Nina’s sentiment,” Sam replied calmly, his eyes studying the menacing gape.
“Me too,” Gretchen added. “There is something in there.”
“Don’t need to hear that. Again,” Nina’s voice shrieked from behind Gretch.
“Look, it is our only way out. Do you expect the ocean to be void of life forms? Don’t be ridiculous. Naturally there would be things in there. It is the goddamn North Sea, people,” Richard reprimanded them so that they exchanged looks at his sudden control and command. “Besides, the thing you saw just below the surface last time is not a big sea creature,” he continued in a quivering voice that implied that he was not quite sure of his own statement.
“What is it then?” Gretchen asked.
“It is our only way out of here. It is a submarine,” he disclosed with a weary sigh.
The other three took a moment to work through the revelation. Suddenly more boots traversed the floorboards up top and appealed to their will to survive. Gretchen got up and dusted her jeans off, “Let’s get to it then.”
“Gretchen, I have a problem with closed spaces, remember?” Nina reminded her, recalling vividly the terrifying trips on the Wolfenstein expedition.
“I am aware, doll,” Gretchen replied, as she assisted Richard with the old pulleys furtively mounted to the rock wall under the pantry corner of the kitchen. “But then you’d have serious problems with a morgue fridge, wouldn’t you?”
“She’s right, Nina,” Sam agreed, doing his best to stay awake and moving. “We are sitting ducks here.”
“Sam, get in first with that leg,” Gretch suggested, but Richard almost immediately contradicted her idea. With almost frantic repudiation he contested the idea.
Pulling hard at the decades-old, thick, shipyard rope, he slowly hoisted the ugly silver hub up from the mouth like an enormous shark. Under them, tucked upside down in the water, a crane system was bolted to the rock. Intricately crafted in the efficient engineering of the Middle Ages with materials from the late nineteenth-century Industrial Revolution, the lever system worked like a hydraulic jack. It pushed the watercraft up as the ropes kept aside the docking arm.
Nina felt fear gripping her at the sight of the small hatch and the cylindrical vessel she would have to enter. A water coffin awaited her — again. Sam startled her to a stupor when he laid his hand on her shoulder.
“It’s not so bad,” he tried in vain, but she did not even afford him a scowl. “I’ll get in and you’ll see it’s fine.”
“No, Sam goes last,’ Richard insisted more aggressively.
“Who is going to drive this thing? It’s been down there for fucking eons!” Nina complained. “Its battery would not be charged, you guys! Look how small and cramped it is!”
“This is just the entry hatch, doll,” Gretch told her. “Believe me, this fucking thing is enormous! The rest of it lies under the water and rock, you’ll see. And by the way, if you look at the structural design of its docking bay, you’ll note that its propulsion was provided for by means of water-powered dynamo systems to generate electric charge.”
“Um, Gretchen,” Sam said casually, “you must subscribe to U-Boat Monthly, aye?”
Gretchen smiled, “No, man. My late husband was a structural engineer with a naval war craft obsession. I must admit, it rubbed off on me.”
“Come, Nina. And do hurry. I fear those men will discover us shortly,” Dr. Philips pressed the reluctant historian with a bad case of claustrophobia.
“Why not have Sam go first?” she asked.
“He is bleeding. And since we have to get in the water to get to the hatch, even just ankle deep, predators will come,” he explained as calmly as he could, but they all detected that same shiver in his voice that he had when he first woke. Suddenly Richard’s eyes remained on the churning water and it unsettled Gretchen just a tad.
“I’ll go first,” Gretchen said, giving Nina a wink. Nina sighed in relief and smiled. The boots had stopped right above the trapdoor.
“Over here! Bring the iron bar, sergeant!”
“Oh, crikey, shall we get a move on?” Sam pushed on. Gretchen stepped onto the slippery surface, finding her footing as the vessel bobbed on the currents under her. Nina looked on in horrified agitation. Gretch attempted to open the hatch, but could not. Richard swallowed hard and lunged forward onto the hollow hull sheeting to help Gretchen with the lid. A relentless thud, followed by a forceful hammering sound came from the steps of the trapdoor.
“Move!” Sam yelled. The trapdoor opened slowly, a streak of sharp light painting the crude rock beneath it. A pair of combat boots appeared on the first steps. In alarm Sam insisted, “Jesus Christ! Move! They are going to shoot us!”
Richard crawled in after Gretchen. Nina jumped without a moment to spare, knowing full well what the alternative was. Sam tossed her the bag with books. And then he limped over to the edge of the treacherous mouth. Behind him the tactical team poured in from above, not yet making sense of the terrain they were faced with, and some were held up by vomiting spells from the horrendous stench that assaulted their senses.
As Sam stepped into the shallow water to mount the rocking steel vessel, the blood from his leg blossomed into the shallow lapping tongues of foam and salt. Once more he looked back at the hit squad. He noticed that the woman who Nina rammed into the basement was gone. Thinking she had escaped, he placed his hands on the open hatch to lift his body over the rim. His eye caught sight of something lying on the wet rock near the rope pulley where they had found Richard out cold. It was a severed arm and ripped fabric strewn from the rope fixture to the edge of the mouth, stained with blood and chunks of meat.
A hand fell hard on his.
“Are you coming, Mr. Cleave?” Dr. Philips’ pale, odd face peeked over the rim of the hatch. He had gripped Sam’s wrist to keep him from falling into the rushing waves, and now was tugging fervently to get the journalist inside. His dark eyes stayed on the water as he helped Sam, which was more than disturbing to see.
“What the hell are you looking at? They’re going to fucking shoot us as soon as those flashlights shine over here!” Sam hissed anxiously. But as he plummeted over into the hatch, he saw what Richard was spellbound by and it turned Sam’s blood to ice in his veins. The hatch fell shut with a deafening clang, its old motors roaring in a low murmur among the din of the tumultuous current. They could hear the raining bullets clank against the sheeting as they sank beneath the North Sea waves below the cavern on which Nina’s house stood.