Deep Fire Rising Page 24

  He met up with Tisa at the stern loading ramp. “Anything?”

  She shook her head. “What time is it?”

  “Jesus, Tisa, not that again.”

  She wasn’t stung by his tone and said gently, “No, I mean how much time before he detonates the explosives?”

  Mercer didn’t bother looking at his watch. “It could come at any time.” He hopped onto the hood of the nearest car, an old Audi, then climbed onto the roof. He scanned the hold, looking for the safest place to wait out the explosion. To plant charges that would blow out the bottom of the ferry, Donny must have gained access to the machinery spaces below the car deck, like he’d boasted. Logically there would be areas at the very bow and stern he couldn’t reach, nor would he need to. Enough plastique near an amidships fuel bunker would turn the ferry into an inferno. Surviving that was their first priority.

  He jumped off the car and looked into other vehicles. A nearby Fiat was unlocked. He opened the rear door. “Inside, quick.” Mercer shoved the front seats forward and motioned Tisa to fold herself onto the floor. He got in after her and covered her body with his own. “Keep your eyes shut and your mouth open—it will keep the pressure wave from blowing out your eardrums.”

  Mercer knew the wait would be intolerable. The minutes would drag by like molasses as the inevitable approached, not knowing if the initial blast would erupt right below them.

  But it wasn’t. They waited only seconds before the ship lurched under them, a jarring rattle that shoved the Fiat into an adjacent ten-wheeled tanker truck. Then a second explosion rocked the ship, a brutal onslaught much worse than the initial blast. A fuel tank? Mercer wondered, even as a third charge detonated near the ferry’s bow.

  After the roaring echo died away, he chanced opening his eyes. The lights high in the ceiling had gone out, leaving the hold in the muted glow of emergency lamps. There was no fire he could see, no telltale flickering. For that he was thankful, yet over the chorus of car alarms he heard something just as deadly when he levered open the Fiat’s door—the unmistakable rush of water pouring into the ferry. Fire alarms had gone off and several red strobe lights pulsed urgent warnings in time with the Klaxon.

  He stepped from the sedan and knew the ferry was doomed. Mercer had to give Randall credit for placing his explosives at the bow. Traveling at fifteen knots, the vessel’s forward motion would act like a pump to force seawater into her bilges and engineering spaces. Against such a torrent, there was no way to swim out through the torn hull plating. If they waited for the ship to equalize enough to make their escape, the ferryboat would likely be resting on the bottom of the Aegean.

  “What are we going to do?” Tisa asked as she stood at his side.

  “I’m working on it,” Mercer said absently as the merest outline of a plan formed in his mind. He slapped the polished steel tank of the fuel truck parked next to the Fiat. It returned a dull ring. Full. Plenty of mass.

  The stern door was twenty-five feet wide and nearly as tall, covered with horizontal ripples to improve traction for vehicles struggling into or out of the boat. The large hatch was held closed by tension maintained on cables connected to large drum-shaped motors mounted high on the wall. Although the ship had lost power, the cables remained rigid. In theory, it would be possible to force open the door if Mercer could cut the cables. The doors had reminded him of castle gates and he thought the fuel tanker would make the perfect battering ram.

  The driver had left the cab door unlocked and Mercer swung himself onto the seat. Already he could feel the ship tilting toward the bow. The truck reeked of stale cigars, sweat, and garlic. A porn magazine lay open on the passenger seat. The key wasn’t in the ignition or atop the sun visor. Mercer reached under him to feel along the floor, then checked the glove compartment and the small trays built into the plastic dashboard. Nothing. There was a map pocket built into the door panel. He reached in and came out with a hand covered in dark, sticky goo.

  Cursing, he smeared the gunk on the seat and leapt back to the deck. The ship’s list was even more pronounced, maybe ten degrees.

  “So much for driving us out of here,” he said to Tisa, who watched him silently, “but I’m not through with the truck yet.”

  He’d earlier tucked the Beretta into the waistband of his pants and now drew it as he approached the cables securing the loading ramp. He’d counted his shots and knew there were four left. “Go get the ax I wedged into the door we came through,” he ordered and placed the automatic’s muzzle an inch from the thick cable.

  Mercer fired one deliberate shot, angling the barrel so the ricochet wouldn’t come back at him. The nine-millimeter slug cut through half of the inch-thick wire braid. He aimed again and fired a second time, cutting through half of the half that remained. Tisa returned and stayed at Mercer’s side as he crossed athwartships to repeat the procedure with the second cable, nearly severing it with his last two bullets.

  She handed him the ax. Mercer had to brace his feet. The ship was down by the head and the angle continued to grow. In a few minutes, any cars not firmly held by the nonskid deck would begin to fall toward the bow. He hefted the ax and chopped at the cable. The metal vibrated with each hit, sending painful shivers up his arm even as he cut a dozen strands with each blow. He chopped again and again using a smooth rhythm learned long ago in the forests of Vermont, where he and his grandfather had cut trees for firewood to heat their home for the winter.

  The seventh strike did it. The cable parted with a writhing snap as the sudden release of tension yanked the stay through several pulleys. Without wasting a moment he returned to the first cable and managed to shave off three strokes to part the wire. With the ship sinking by the bow, the stern door remained firmly in place, held fast by gravity.

  Toward the front of the ship, a compact car with bald tires lost its fight with the ever-increasing deck pitch and the vehicle skidded into the automobile in front of it. The momentum caused this car to begin to slide forward. In seconds, half the port-side row of cars were in motion, careening down the inclined deck in a chain reaction. Their slide ended with cars crashing into the bow doors. Mercer distinctly heard the slosh of water amid the crunch of metal. The hold was beginning to flood quicker than he’d hoped.

  Perfect.

  They returned to the tanker truck. “Tisa, I want you to go around and find as many blankets as you can, plastic sheeting too, tarps, things like that.”

  “Okay.” She was off without questioning his odd request.

  Mercer turned his attention to the valves that controlled the fuel in the giant tanker. The valves required a special tool, which he found in a storage bin mounted to the chassis in front of the back wheels. He opened one of the valves and a jet of gasoline arced from the tank in a noxious golden stream. The stream was powerful enough to climb as high as the stern doors before falling to the deck and running back under the tanker. It sluiced down the deck in sheets, mixing with the water bubbling up at the distant bow. The stench made Mercer’s head spin.

  A car on the starboard side lost its battle with gravity and smashed into the ferry’s prow.

  “Are you all right?” he shouted, fearing for Tisa.

  “I’m fine. What’s that smell?”

  “Gasoline. I’m emptying the tank.”

  “Oh.”

  Mercer opened a second valve, doubling the flow. He had no idea how long it would take so he moved down the line of trucks. The next rig was an eighteen-wheeler, and the cab was unlocked. The ferry hadn’t settled enough to overcome the truck’s massive weight, but as Mercer climbed in he saw the parking brake had been set and the transmission left in gear. Once he had everything in place he planned on launching the truck down the sloping deck then easing the tanker after it. For his scheme to work he needed plenty of open deck if the tanker’s momentum was going to be able to smash open the stern door.

  Tisa returned a few minutes later with her arms full of sleeping bags and a roll of plastic. She had to brace her hip a
gainst the tanker’s front fender to stay upright. “I got what you wanted,” she called to Mercer, who had remained up at the valve controls. “Will you tell me why now?”

  “Get near the cab,” he ordered. More than two-thirds of the gasoline in the truck had drained down into the growing pool of water filling the forward section of the sinking ferry. Mercer noticed that the air had cooled dramatically and realized the engines had long since been silenced. He cranked the valves closed and joined Tisa near the driver’s door.

  “Water weighs eight pounds per gallon, seawater a little less. I estimate this tanker holds five thousand gallons and I’ve drained about three thousand.”

  “Leaving two,” Tisa said.

  “Leaving air,” Mercer corrected. “Three thousand gallons worth of air, or buoyancy equal to twenty-four thousand pounds. Factoring in that the remaining gas is also lighter than water, I estimate that this tank is more than buoyant enough to make the entire truck float like a piece of Styrofoam.”

  Tisa’s eyes lit up. “When the hold fills with water, the truck will float up and smash open the door. We’ll rise to the surface.”

  Mercer nodded. “Provided the cab doesn’t flood first.”

  Tisa held up her bundle. “That’s what this is for.”

  “You got it.”

  They worked side by side, tearing sleeping bags into strips to stuff into the air vents, and using a roll of duct tape they found in the glove compartment to tape over the gaps around the windows and along the passenger door, sealing off where the brake, clutch, and gas pedals came through the floorboards, and anyplace else they thought water could enter the cab. Through it all, they ignored the sounds of the ship sinking deeper into the water and the growing surge of water creeping up the deck. The remaining automobiles on the port side slid down into the pile of smashed vehicles at the bow.

  By the time they finished most of the car alarms had gone silent because their electronics had been shorted by the advancing seawater.

  “I think we’re set,” Mercer pronounced. “I need to clear the deck behind us so I can control our slide down. We can’t allow the truck to get tangled in that pileup down there. I’ll be right back. I’ll be coming back fast so stay on the passenger side but keep your foot on the brake.”

  Stepping out of the cab and looking down the three-hundred-foot length of the ferry was like standing atop a ski jump. And at the bottom lay a pile of mangled automobiles pressed against the bow in a cauldron of water that swirled ever higher. The creeping surface spurted in foaming geysers as air pockets trapped within the tangle of cars erupted. The view was disorienting. So far none of the trucks, with their numerous tires and better traction, had started their inexorable slide.

  Mercer had to grip the tanker’s bodywork with one hand and lean far back on his heels to keep his footing as he made his way down the inclined deck. Once at the truck’s front bumper, he dropped to his backside and crawled like a crab until reaching the rear of the eighteen-wheeler. On his feet once again, he clung to the trailer’s side and slowly eased his way along its length. He finally reached the tractor and clambered along it until he could open the driver’s door. He reached up for the handle, and as soon as he released the catch the door flew open with a violent jerk. Keeping his body partially outside the truck, he reached across the seat and jimmied the gearshift into neutral.

  The truck shuddered as the strain of keeping it in place fell solely on the parking brake. The tires gave a single chirp as the eighteen-wheeler slid a fraction of an inch. Mercer wiggled farther out of the cab, took a shallow breath, and popped the brake release.

  The truck dropped away like an avalanche of metal, smashing into the school bus in front of it, sending it into a moving van until the whole string of oversized vehicles raced for the bow. Mercer had just barely dropped clear as the semi hit the bus and he watched as the wall of trucks vanished into the gloom. He lay on the sloping deck like a fly stuck on sticky paper, his arms and legs spread flat.

  With precise movements he turned onto his stomach, peered once more over his shoulder to see that the deck had become a steep featureless wall and began to climb up to the tanker, still holding tight, although it wouldn’t be for long. If its tires slipped now, the truck would roll right over him.

  He climbed upward, his fingertips exploiting every irregularity in the deck to give him purchase. Once he reached the truck, he could feel the bodywork juddering as it wanted to succumb to gravity. Mercer climbed into the cab, placing his foot on the brake before Tisa took hers away. Without waiting, he cranked the transmission into neutral and took away just a fraction of the pressure he kept on the brake pedal. The truck moved an inch or two before he jammed in the pedal again.

  Keeping the rig straight and his motions smooth, he eased the truck down the deck. It seemed to take forever and they were almost at the top of the pile of wrecked vehicles when the ferry lurched suddenly and a gout of water erupted from the pool at the bow. The truck slammed into the rear of the semitrailer and immediately water began to surge around the front wheels.

  It was strange to consider that the water level wasn’t rising. The apparent upward advance came because the ferry was sinking. In minutes, roiling water lapped at the side windows and continued to climb even higher. Mercer recalled the feeling of diving in Bob, although this was a far cry from the high-tech submersible. Tisa reached for his hand.

  The oily water passed over the hood, rising above the roof. The cab was completely submerged.

  “The moment of truth.” For some reason he couldn’t explain, Mercer was whispering.

  Tisa replied in kind. “For what?”

  “To see if this old girl has some fight left in her.”

  The cylindrical tank felt the first hint of buoyancy and the truck shuddered as it shifted against the wreckage. The shriek of metal seemed amplified by the water, a tearing sound worse than any Mercer had ever heard. But no matter how buoyant, the truck couldn’t break free of the other vehicles.

  “Come on, come on,” Mercer urged under his breath, noting the cloth stuffed into an air vent was glistening with moisture. “Float, you pig, float.”

  Without warning the truck did a sudden pirouette and fell onto its side. The tanker pulled its bumper free, allowing the vehicle to scrape against the canted deck as it remained level with the steadily rising tide of water.

  An explosion outside the hold shook the entire ferry. The volume of water flooding the ship doubled. Held at sea level by the air trapped in its tank, the truck remained in one place as the ship sank into the abyss at an ever-increasing speed. She was near vertical now and Mercer could imagine her blunt stern raised high, her propellers gleaming in the moonlight.

  Mercer wondered grimly how many hapless victims remained near enough to the doomed ship to be sucked under when she vanished beneath the waves.

  Tisa cried out and lunged at a toggle switch on the dash that had broken away, allowing water to dribble in around the cracked plastic. She held her hand over the weeping gash. The blankets at Mercer’s feet were sodden. As the truck floated up from the bow, there was just enough light penetrating the dark waters for Mercer to count the support girders lining the wall. He estimated the stern door was at least seventy feet above them. Water found more openings into the cab.

  “Are we going to—”

  “It’ll be close,” he answered, not needing her to finish the question.

  The ship continued to fill with water. The auto deck wasn’t the only space flooding. Her bilges and upper decks too were drowning, a few passengers too slow or too disoriented to escape after the initial explosion dying silently in the black water. The ferry was actually lower in the water than Mercer thought, and sinking faster than he believed possible. The truck was fifty feet from hitting the stern door when her stern rail vanished under the waves, leaving the sea littered with hastily launched lifeboats and hundreds of wailing passengers.

  The water in the inverted cab was up to Mercer’s knees.
Tisa braced her feet against the dash to keep them dry. The truck sloshed across the hold because the ferry corkscrewed as she sank. Mercer couldn’t tell how far they were from hitting the door.

  “Tighten your lap belt,” he said unnecessarily. He and Tisa were buckled as tight at they could be. “Get into the crash position they teach you on airplanes. It’ll protect you from whiplash.”

  They ducked down, holding their chests to their knees. The position was uncomfortable for Mercer, but he lacked a tenth of Tisa’s flexibility.

  Outside the ferry, water pressure exploited the smallest entrances into the ship, forcing air from any voids with increasing fury. The last and greatest empty chamber on the ship was the car deck. Air trapped at the still-sealed stern had formed a taut bubble that needed just a tiny more impetus to blow open the eight-ton ramp. The gasoline tank was made of heavy-gauge noncorrosive steel and hit the door at nearly seventeen miles per hour. The truck’s upward rush ended in a savage impact that whipped Mercer and Tisa brutally, though none of the windows cracked.

  “What happened? Are we free?”

  Mercer didn’t say anything for a moment, his optimism fading with each passing second. The ramp hadn’t been blown open. “No, damn it. We’re not light enough to force open the door. We’re trapped.”

  Water continued to pour into the cab. It was up to Mercer’s waist and climbing. He could feel pressure building in his ears. They were probably forty feet below the surface by now and falling by the second. He knew there were two choices: wait for the water to slowly fill the cab or simply break a window and end it quick.

  There was no light for him to see Tisa, but he could feel her hand in his. She gave him a squeeze. She also understood their options.

  “Just do it,” she whispered with eerie calm, as if she’d known it would come to this all along.

  “I’m sorry, Tisa.”

  “It’s not your fault. You did everything you could.”