Deception Point Page 107

Rachel fell onto her back against the cockpits rear wall. Half gunmerged in sloshing water, she stared straight up at the leaking loft, hovering over her like a giant skylight.Outside was only night and thousands of tons of sea pressing down.Rachel willed herself to get up, only her body matt-up dead and heavy. Again her mind reeled converse in time to the icy grip of a frozen river.Fight, Rachel her mother was shouting, reaching down to pull her out of the water. Grab onRachel closed her eyes. Im sinking. Her skates felt like lead weights, dragging her down. She could see her mother lying spread-eagle on the ice to disperse her own weight, reaching out.Kick, Rachel Kick with your feetRachel kicked as high hat as she could. Her body rose slightly in the icy hole. A spark of hope. Her mother grabbed on.Yes her mother shouted. Help me lift you Kick with your feetWith her mother force from above, Rachel used the last of her energy to kick with her skates. It was just enough, and h er mother dragged Rachel up to safety. She dragged the soaking Rachel all the way to the snowy bank before collapsing in tears.Now, intimate the growing humidity and heat of the sub, Rachel opened her eyes to the blackness around her. She heard her mother whispering from the grave, her voice clear even here in the sinking Triton.Kick with your feet.Rachel looked up at the dome overhead. Mustering the last of her courage, Rachel clambered up onto the cockpit chair, which was oriented almost horizontally now, like a dental chair. Lying on her back, Rachel bent her knees, pulled her legs back as far as she could, aimed her feet upward, and exploded forward. With a wild scream of desperation and force, she drove her feet into the center of the acrylic dome. Spikes of pain diaphysis into her shins, sending her brain reeling. Her ears thundered suddenly, and she felt the pressure equalize with a violent bloom. The seal on the left side of the dome gave way, and the huge lens partly di slodged, swinging open like a barn door.A torrent of water crashed into the sub and drove Rachel back into her chair. The ocean thundered in around her, swirling up under her back, lifting her now off the chair, tossing her upside down like a sock in a washing machine. Rachel groped blindly for something to hold on to, but she was spinning wildly. As the cockpit filled, she could feel the sub come a rapid free fall for the bottom. Her body rammed upward in the cockpit, and she felt herself pinned. A rush of bubbles erupted around her, twisting her, dragging her to the left and upward. A flap of hard acrylic smashed into her hip.All at once she was free.Twisting and tumbling into the immortal warmth and watery blackness, Rachel felt her lungs already aching for air. Get to the surface She looked for light but saw nothing. Her world looked the same in all directions. Blackness. No gravity. No sense of up or down.In that terrifying instant, Rachel realized she had no idea which way t o swim.Thousands of feet beneath her, the sinking Kiowa chopper crumpled beneath the relentlessly increasing pressure. The fifteen high-explosive, antitank AGM-114 Hellfire missiles still aboard strained against the compression, their copper liner c sensations and spring-detonation heads inching perilously inward.A hundred feet above the ocean floor, the powerful shaft of the megaplume grabbed the remains of the chopper and sucked it downward, hurling it against the red-hot crust of the magma dome. Like a box of matches igniting in series, the Hellfire missiles exploded, tearing a gape hole through the top of the magma dome.Having surfaced for air, and then dove again in desperation, Michael Tolland was suspended fifteen feet underwater scanning the blackness when the Hellfire missiles exploded. The white germinate billowed upward, illuminating an astonishing image-a freeze-frame he would remember forever.Rachel Sexton hung ten feet below him like a tangled marionette in the wate r. Beneath her, the Triton sub fell away fast, its dome hanging loose. The sharks in the area scattered for the open sea, clearly sensing the danger this area was about to unleash.Tollands exhilaration at seeing Rachel out of the sub was instantly vanquished by the realization of what was about to follow. Memorizing her position as the light disappeared, Tolland dove hard, clawing his way toward her.Thousands of feet down, the shattered crust of the magma dome exploded apart, and the underwater volcano erupted, spewing twelve-hundred-degree-Celsius magma up into the sea. The scorching lava vaporized all the water it touched, sending a massive pillar of steam rocketing toward the surface up the central axis of the megaplume. Driven by the same kinematic properties of fluid dynamics that powered tornadoes, the steams vertical transfer of energy was counterbalanced by an anticyclonic vorticity spin that circled the shaft, carrying energy in the opposite direction.Spiraling around thi s column of rising gas, the ocean currents started intensifying, twisting downward. The fleeing steam created an enormous vacuum that sucked millions of gallons of seawater downward into shock with the magma. As the new water hit bottom, it too turned into steam and needed a way to escape, joining the growing column of exhaust steam and shooting upward, displace more water in beneath it. As more water rushed in to take its place, the vortex intensified. The hydrothermal plume elongated, and the idealistic whirlpool grew stronger with every passing second, its upper rim moving steadily toward the surface.An oceanic black hole had just been born.Rachel felt like a baby in a womb. Hot, wet darkness all engulfing her. Her thoughts were muddled in the inky warmth. Breathe. She fought the reflex. The flash of light she had seen could only have come from the surface, and yet it seemed so far away. An illusion. Get to the surface. Weakly, Rachel began swimming in the direction where she had seen the light. She saw more light now an eerie red glow in the distance. Daylight? She swam harder.A hand caught her by the ankle.Rachel half-screamed underwater, almost exhaling the last of her air.The hand pulled her backward, twisting her, pointing her back in the opposite direction. Rachel felt a familiar hand grasp hers. Michael Tolland was there, pulling her along with him the other way.Rachels mind said he was taking her down. Her heart said he knew what he was doing.Kick with your feet, her mothers voice whispered.Rachel kicked as hard as she could.130Even as Tolland and Rachel broke the surface, he knew it was over. The magma dome erupted. As soon as the top of the vortex reached the surface, the giant underwater tornado would begin pulling everything down. Strangely, the world above the surface was not the quiet dawn he had left only moments ago. The noise was deafening. Wind slashed at him as if some kind of storm had hit while he was underwater.Tolland felt delirio us from lack of oxygen. He tried to support Rachel in the water, but she was be pulled from his arms. The current Tolland tried to hold on, but the invisible force pulled harder, threatening to tear her from him. Suddenly, his grip slipped, and Rachels body slid through his arms-but upward.Bewildered, Tolland watched Rachels body rise out of the water.Overhead, the brim Guard Osprey tilt-rotor airplane hovered and winched Rachel in. Twenty minutes ago, the Coast Guard had gotten a report of an explosion out at sea. Having lost track of the mahimahi helicopter that was supposed to be in the area, they feared an accident. They typed the choppers last known coordinates into their navigation system and hoped for the best.About a half mile from the illuminated Goya, they saw a field of burning wreckage drifting on the current. It looked like a speedboat. Nearby, a man was in the water, waving his arms wildly. They winched him in. He was stark naked-all except for one leg, which was co vered with duct tape.