But the urge to open his mouth and suck in anything to relieve the increasing pain of oxygen debt only grew. His face tightened further and felt as if it was going to explode. His arms pulled faster, all discipline gone now. His fingers tingled, his temples throbbed. He had seconds to arrive in the dock or he was finished. His lungs were on fire, his heart pounding in his chest like a drum. His mouth started to open and his grip on the cable loosened. There was nothing left, no more oxygen, his last drop of will-power. The carbon dioxide saturating his body demanded that he open his mouth, insisting he draw in whatever there was. He entered the state of madness that accompanies a total lack of oxygen and he stopped, released the cable and inhaled.
The spasms began and he fought to hold on to his soul. The white changed to dark and he could see a light ahead. And then suddenly it all went quiet and serene. The pain that had tightened his face and body had gone and he drifted like a spirit in space, as if he had already left the water, all human senses gone. He could see himself, knew he had passed into another place and he did not care. The power that drove his life had ceased. Stratton was dead.
Chapter 9
Mandrick walked out through the hissing airlock of the OCR as it closed behind him and headed along a broad steel walkway suspended inside a black rock cavern. The OCR entrance hissed again seconds later as the senior controller emerged from it at a pace calculated to let him catch up with Mandrick before he reached the top of a broad stairway.The cavern echoed with the clatter of their feet as both men hurried along briskly. The controller, wearing a slender headset over one ear, listened intently as he followed Mandrick closely along a lower platform to another airlock door. A small red glass screen required Mandrick’s thumbprint which it analysed before turning green. As with just about every other door in the facility, any minor pressure difference on either side of it needed to be equalised before the air-seal was withdrawn and access permitted.
‘The standby diver’s brought in a body, sir,’ the controller said, pressing the earpiece closer to his ear to help cut out the sound of vents and metallic clunking that filled the everyday air in Styx. ‘And one more . . . alive . . . it’s Gann, sir.’
The door opened and Mandrick walked through while listening to the operations controller but without making any form of acknowledgement. He needed to act like a warden who had just experienced the worst catastrophe of his career, dealing with the horror of half a dozen souls lost, not all of them inmates, while at the same time maintaining calm and control. But he was having problems acting the horrified-warden part - acting was something he had never been any good at anyway. Mandrick had other things on his mind. Now that the deed was done something else was disturbing him, a premonition he’d had shortly after accepting the order to neutralise the new arrivals.Whatever had been achieved this day was going to give birth to even greater problems. And greater problems usually meant having to formulate proportionately more drastic solutions.
The two men made their way down a short flight of broad steps cut into the stone and reinforced with steel and concrete.Vegetation grew down the walls, large clumps of it in places. At the bottom was a bulky, robust steel door made of layers of riveted plates and covered in a dozen coats of thick red paint that had failed to prevent patches of corrosion. The area had become noticeably more humid, the walls moist and covered in mildew, the rock ceiling dotted with stalactites that dripped onto their opposite numbers on the uneven rocky surface beneath the metal-grid floor.
‘The ferry’s come to a stop below the dock,’ the controller reported as he moved ahead to open the door.
The door was an exterior access point and required a higher level of clearances as well as a series of preliminary safety and security checks.
‘Senior OC requires access to gate four Charlie,’ the controller said into his mike as he punched a code into a keypad on the wall. ‘Release four Charlie dock primary.’
After a brief pause a heavy clunk came from inside the door. The controller checked the pressure levels on several gauges beside the door as part of a mandatory procedure before punching in another code. ‘Pressures are equalised . . . Release four Charlie secondary.’
Another clunk and the controller grabbed a large wheel on the side of the door and, with a little difficulty at first, began to turn it. After a couple of heaves it practically spun around at only a light touch. When the dozen cleats that surrounded the frame were clear of the breaches the massive door moved perceptibly outwards as cold air rushed in through the seams. The controller gave it a shove to help the electric motor on the hinge and the door slowly opened.
Mandrick stepped through into a large cavern hewn out of the rock and reinforced by steel girders and concrete. Every surface seemed to be contaminated by some variety of kelp and mildew, some of the ceiling species several metres long. The two men paused on a steel-and-concrete landing facing a pool the size of a couple of tennis courts, its water gently lapping several inches below the edge. Four separate clusters of taut dirty-brown heavy-duty cables rose out of the water and passed over large wheels suspended from the ceiling before heading back down. A lone ferry was parked at the far end with the number ‘1’ stencilled on its surface in places. The water looked black, reflecting the dark rock, although it was crystal clear. The doomed ferry was visible several metres below a placard on the wall that had the number ‘4’ stencilled on it behind the strings of vertical cables. A diver was making his way around the ferry, a line attached to him, its other end held by a guard on the landing.
Mandrick looked along the landing to where a metal ladder curved from the jetty into the pool. Several men were gathered in a circle, one of them wearing a diving suit, a set of dive-tanks close by. The other men were prison guards, all bent over a body lying prone on the wet concrete. Standing back a little from the group was Gann, pulling off his bright yellow escape suit as he kept an interested eye on the group’s activities.
Mandrick glanced back to the number four ferry below the surface and saw the cables wobble as the diver pulled on the side door with some effort. He looked ahead at the group of men and walked towards them.
Gann’s gaze met Mandrick’s for a second as he closed in. The diver was giving cardiac massage to the man lying on the ground, pushing down on his chest in a quick rhythm.A guard stood aside to let Mandrick enter the circle as the dripping-wet diver halted the compressions long enough to feel for the man’s carotid artery. A guard kneeling the other side of the body looked into the diver’s face for signs of hope.The diver showed none as he recommenced his pumping action.
‘I can spell ya, Zack,’ the kneeling guard offered.
‘I’m OK,’ the diver replied.
A guard arrived and quickly placed a mask over the body’s mouth, turned on an oxygen bottle connected to it and squeezed a bag attached to the mask, filling the body’s lungs.
The man looked dead to Mandrick. His eyes were slightly open, water was trickling out the side of his mouth and his only movement was caused by the diver’s efforts. Mandrick was reminded of the first time he had given a man the same last chance for life. Three times he had gone through the process during his military days and had never won back any of them. All three had bled away beneath him. The diver was obviously a tenacious bugger, or something was inspiring him to hold on.