Timeless (24 page)

“Topside, lower the cable,” Quinn said. Should the load become unstable as it lifted, he didn’t want to lose it. The ship’s crane would hold it until they could move it ashore.

In the dull glow of the canister lights a steel cable snaked down from above and landed close to the gear basket. Quinn retrieved it and tugged it toward the load. He looped the heavy steel shackle through the one fastened to the top of the woven straps surrounding the load and securing it.

Quinn picked up the manifold. If the connections were loose and the air pumped through the lines, they would shoot off and injure one of them if they stood too close. “Step back, Struthers. Topside, give me air on line one.”

“Roger.”

The hose grew taut and jerked as the air shot through it and hissed as it entered the pontoons. Almost there. They’d get this bugger topside in a few hours.

As the pontoons filled, they had to be monitored constantly to ensure they didn’t work free of their rigging, get twisted, or spring a leak. Going into the third hour, Quinn checked the connections one more time.

“What’s it going to take to get this fuckin’ thing to rise?” Struthers asked from his position a few feet to Quinn’s right.

“It may break free any minute,” Quinn said. He motioned Struthers to take the manifold. He stepped along one side of the load to check the pontoons, then moved around to the front. He gave the straps a tug, testing them.

The stone slid forward, dragging the bottom of the meshing against the boulder beneath it. The drop gaped before it. Quinn grasped one of the Kevlar straps with both hands. Not strong enough to redirect it, he stumbled forward. One booted foot hit a partially buried rock, and he tripped. The stone shot out over the edge of the precipice, leaving him dangling from the strap by one hand. “Bloody hell—” the words jerked from him as his heart leaped. A black pit stretched beneath his dangling feet.

He heard Struthers yelling. “Topside- topside, she’s broken free and shifting out over the drop-off. Quinn’s caught in the webbing. Pull her up.”

“Roger.” The steady voice sounded flat compared to Struthers’ high-pitched yelling.

The steel cable, already taut, jerked the straps tight around his hand. His heavy work glove kept the Kevlar from cutting his fingers, but it squeezed it against the stone with bruising force. A yelp of pain broke from him as he grasped the edge of the air pontoon and jerked, trying to free himself. If he could get loose, he’d drop down to the loch bed.

The load swung to the right, back across the barren plateau of mud they’d been working on for days. Quinn braced one boot against the stone and pushed. “Topside, you’re going to have to release some of the air and bring her down. My hand’s caught and I can’t get free.”

Logan’s voice came over the radio. “Roger, Quinn.”

Air bubbles shot out around him blinding him.

Quinn heaved against the strap and his hand, nearly numb from the pressure, came free of the glove. The water, just a few degrees above freezing, burned his skin. The water’s buoyancy floated him down to the seabed. He landed on his knees and looked up. The stone barreled toward him. He rolled out of the way. Air bubbles shot into his face at the same time the displaced water shoved him over the side of the precipice. His light went out. “Jesus Christ—”he breathed. Why the fucking hell could he not get free of this twenty-ton sodding rock? “Struthers, I’m hanging over the side next to the load.”

Dangling from his umbilical, his back against the wall of the abyss, he rocked back and forth until he managed to turn around. The sudden quiet inside his dive hat had him momentarily going still. His gas had stopped. “Topside, my gas has been compromised. I’m going on my emergency bottle.” Silence met his announcement. His bare hand ached with the cold and the strong squeeze it had sustained. His fingers clumsy and uncooperative, he reached up and turned the knob that would feed him gas from the tank on his back.

Don’t panic. Don’t panic
. Struthers would be here any moment.

Quinn felt across the mud before him looking for handholds to climb up the face of the crater. The emergency bottle would only last a few minutes, and he’d run out of air if he fooled about too long. He unlatched the weight belt from around his waist and let it drop. His strokes strong, he swam upward to the sea floor. Cold had already started to leach the warmth from his suit. His hot water supply wasn’t working, either. Was the umbilical sliced through, then? Gripping it with both hands, he gave it a strong tug. Nothing. “Shite.”

Bubbles drizzled from the exhaust hoses fastened to the pontoons. The canister lights at the original site shone fifteen meters away, the lights of the bell another two, at least.

A small circle of light bobbed in the distance. Struthers. He could unhook the umbilical and start walking and meet him halfway, but with his light out and the drop-off only feet away, if he fell back over the side he’d not be able to make it back up.

“Move your ass, man,” Quinn yelled. Nothing, no answer came to his urging. All he could do was wait. Would Struthers reach him in time? Or would his gas run out?

CHAPTER 22

“Regan, what is it? What’s wrong?” Hannah asked as she tried to keep pace with her.

Regan quickened her strides, her heart racing. “I have to go out to
Grannos
. Quinn’s in trouble.”

“How do you know that?”

“I just do.”

Hannah grasped her arm and pulled her to a stop. “What did you see in the lab? You went white, and you looked as though you might weep.”

God, what could she tell her? “I can’t talk about it right now. I have to go.” Chill bumps broke out on her skin, and she shivered.

Hannah’s expression mirrored the concern that gnawed at her. “I’m coming too, then.”

Regan nodded and hurried down the hill to the dock. She spied the skiff left there to travel to and from Grannos and broke into a trot. She climbed into the skiff and waited while Hannah settled on the seat beside her. Starting the motor, she spun the boat toward the
Grannos
.

As they approached the vessel, Gordon Murdock, one of the divers, broke away from the two other divers and came to the side. He caught the rope Regan tossed him and tied it to the aft rail. Regan climbed the ladder he slid into place.

“What’s happened to Quinn?”

His brows rose beneath a shaggy tuft of sun-bleached hair. “How’d you know somethin’s happened, lass? Did someone radio you?”

Regan shook her head and started toward the dive control unit perched above the SAT system on a platform. Since it was manned twenty-four hours a day, whoever was inside would know what was happening.

Regan paused at the door as she took in the tense tableau. Sebastian Nicodemus and his assistant, Andrew Argus, stood to one side of the room. What were they doing here? What was happening?

“Come in, Quinn.” Logan spoke into a microphone, his tone holding a note of forced calm though his features looked tense. Rob’s worried gaze met hers. Her heart plummeted, and she braced a hand on the door facing.

Hannah laid a hand on her arm.

“Topside, I’m almost to the stone. I’m following Quinn’s umbilical but he’s still nowhere in sight.”

“Who’s with him?” Regan asked around the knot in her throat.

“Struthers. Bruce is in the bell,” Rob said, his voice hushed. “His radio is out. His depth is the same as the stone but we don’t know his location. His umbilical could be severed.”

“He’ll be with the stone,” she said, her voice dwindling to a whisper. It was always the stones. Were they trying to kill them both? The water at that depth remained just a few degrees above freezing, and without the hot water being pumped through his umbilical to his suit; the helium would leach the heat from his body quickly. He could die of hypothermia if they didn’t reach him soon. God, why was she thinking about all this?

He would be fine.

He had to be.

Minutes ticked by. Regan’s muscles grew tighter, her breathing shallower.

“I’ve found him.” Struthers came over the radio.

Regan started at the sudden sound.

The release of tension in the room was palpable. Regan slumped back against the wall her legs rubbery with relief.

“His umbilical is trapped beneath the sodding stone. He’s connected to his emergency bottle. We’ll return to the bell so he can switch out the emergency line. He looks in good shape but he’s bloody cold.”

Logan jerked the mike to his mouth. “Roger. Move your arse, Struthers. He’s going to be hypothermic by the time you get there.”

“Roger. We’re moving.”

“Come on. Come on,” Regan whispered. Anxiety squeezed her chest making it hard for her to draw a full breath. Minutes dragged on until time seemed to have stopped.

Rob braced his hands on the counter and bent at the waist, his features taut with worry. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! Move, man,” he yelled.

*****

Quinn focused on the distant lights of the bell as they trudged across the twenty-one meter distance that separated them from the bell. His lungs pumped like bellows, and he made a conscious effort to breathe shallow for fear the emergency bottle would run out before he reached it. Every few moments violent shivers racked him. The heliox he breathed compounded the problem. It made it impossible for his body to maintain its own temperature without assistance. If he could make it to the bell, he could plug the hot water supply into the port on his hip and it would gradually warm him.

He clenched his teeth against their urge to chatter until his jaw ached. God, he was fucking cold. His muscles grew stiff and difficult to move. It took so much effort just to walk.
Keep going. Get to the bell.

He’d have a hot shower as soon as he got topside, and he’d feel better. Pushing the gas in and out of his lungs grew harder with each breath. God damn it, it was hard enough to breath seven atmospheres down without this shite.

The effort to put one foot before the other grew harder, but his shivering had almost ceased.

The light from inside the bell cast a weak spotlight on the floor of the loch. His feet weighed ten pounds each and the edges of his vision grew fuzzy.

Just a few meters farther. The effort to force the gas in and out of his lungs took all his will. He stumbled, his movements weak, clumsy. His legs no longer wanted to cooperate. Struthers grabbed the back of his hot water suit and jerked him toward the open hatch beneath the bell. He shoved him upward through the hole.

Bruce’s face looked pasty in the bell light’s glare. Quinn tried to grasp the edge of the hatch opening but his fingers wouldn’t work. Bruce dragged him over the edge and laid him on his side in the scant space between the hatch opening and the wall. “Topside, I’ve got him, but he looks bad. His fingers are blue and so are his lips,” Bruce said.

Quinn lay helpless as the man removed his dive hat and the emergency gas bottle from his back.

Struthers surfaced inside the chamber. “Give me the emergency umbilical,” his voice came over the radio. “We need to get back on the system and get him warm.”

Bruce grasped the mask and handed it to him. Struthers dropped back through the opening to secure the device. He returned in a few seconds and climbed into the bell.

He removed his dive hat, unplugged the hot water line from his hip, and transferred it into the port on Quinn’s hip.

The heated water running through the tubing in his suit barely made an impression. “Than-s,” Quinn said his tongue clumsy and uncooperative. The look the Struthers and Bruce exchanged did not reassure him.

Bruce closed the hatch and locked it.

Quinn looked down at his bare hand. It did have an unnatural bluish cast to it. “I los- m’ glove.”

Bruce squatted beside him, and grasping his hand, held it between both of his. Quinn felt nothing.

*****

“You have to get him out of there,” Regan said to Rob. “He needs to be airlifted to a hospital. If he’s hypothermic and he’s warmed too quickly, his heart will become arrhythmic and he could die of a heart attack.”

“We can’t remove him from the system. He’s saturated to a depth of seventy-one meters. ‘Twill take us four days just to get him out of the system.”

“But by then—“ Regan didn’t bother to finish her thought. Dizzy she eased into a seat at the radio. “Do they have a portable defibrillator inside the unit?”

“No. Electronics don’t do well inside the pot because of the heliox. One spark could start a fire that would kill them all.”

Regan blinked against the tears burning her eyes. Rob’s frown looked so much like Quinn’s her throat threatened to close. She dropped her head in her hands.

“Quinn’s tough, he’ll be fine,” Rob said. He sounded as though he tried to convince himself as much as her. He turned to look over his shoulder at Nicodemus and his assistant. Something in his expression alerted her to an undercurrent that passed back and forth among the men.

What had happened?

Nicodemus motioned to Argus, and the man scurried to open the door. Nicodemus paused to face Rob. “Now that your brother has returned to the bell, we’ll return to shore. Should he need any medical treatment, let us know. A helicopter can be summoned at any time to transport him to hospital.”

“A helicopter won’t help him. We can’t bring him out of the SAT system to transport him until he’s decompressed.”

Nicodemus’s features tensed. “’Twas ultimately your decision to add more air pressure to raise the stone. I’m sure your brother will understand.” He gave a shrug. “These are the risks you take in choosing this kind of work.”

Rob’s features grew tense, and his eyes held a look that sent a shiver down Regan’s spine. He appeared ready to spring at the man.

Argus stepped between them. “You’ll keep us informed of your brother’s condition?”

At Rob’s continued silence, the two men turned and left the control van.

Regan looked up at Rob. “What did he make you do?”

Rob’s throat worked as he swallowed and his eyes avoided hers. “Not a thing. Not a goddamn thing. But if something happens to Quinn—”