“Can you increase your air volume?” asked Sandecker, concern obvious in his voice.

“Not without a fatal dose of the bends.”

“You’ll make it,” Giordino said hopefully. “You’re past the eighty-meter mark.”

“When our ascent drops to four meters, grab on with your hand assembly and tow us.”

“Will do.”

Giordino moved ahead and angled his vessel until the stern was pointing toward the surface and he was looking down on Pitt and Plunkett. Then he set his autopilot to maintain a reverse speed to maintain the same ascent speed as Big John’s housing. But before he could extend the robotic arm, he saw that the DSMV was falling back and the gap was increasing. He quickly compensated and closed the distance.

“Two meters a minute,” Pitt said with icy calm. “You’d better link up.”

“In the process,” Giordino anticipated him.

By the time the sub’s articulated hand system had managed a viselike grip on a protruding edge of wreckage, the compartment had come to a complete halt.

“We’ve achieved neutral buoyancy,” Pitt reported.

Giordino jettisoned the sub’s remaining iron ballast weights and programmed full reverse speed. The thrusters bit into the water and the sub, with the DSMV housing in tow, began moving again with tormented slowness toward the beckoning surface.

Eighty meters, seventy, the fight to reach daylight seemed as if it would never end. Then at twenty-seven meters, or about ninety feet, their progress stopped for the final time. The rising water in the engine room was coming in through new openings from newly ruptured pipes and cracks with the force of a fire hose.

“I’m losing you,” Giordino said, shaken.

“Get out, evacuate!” cried Sandecker.

Pitt and Plunkett didn’t need to be told. They had no wish for Big John to become their tomb. The manned housing began to descend, pulling the submersible with it. Their only salvation was the inside air pressure, it was nearly equalized with the outside water. But what fate gave them, fate snatched back. The flood couldn’t have picked a worse time to short out the emergency battery system, cutting off the hydraulic power for the exit hatch.

Plunkett frantically undogged the hatch and fought to push it out, but the slightly higher water pressure was unyielding. Then Pitt was beside him, and they put their combined strength into it.

In the submersible, Giordino and Sandecker watched the struggle with mounting fear. Negative buoyancy was rapidly increasing and the compartment was beginning to drop into the depths at an alarming rate.

The hatch gave as though it was pushed through a sea of glue. As the water surged around the frame and into the compartment, Pitt shouted, “Hyperventilate, and don’t forget to exhale on the way up.”

Plunkett gave a brief nod, took a quick series of deep breaths to eliminate the carbon dioxide in his lungs, and held the last one. Then he ducked his head into the water gushing through the hatch and was gone.

Pitt followed, overventilating his lungs to hold his breath longer. He flexed his knees on the threshold of the hatch and launched himself upward as Giordino released the robotic hand’s grip, and the final remains of the DSMV fell away into the void.

Pitt couldn’t have known, but he made his exit at forty-two meters, or 138 feet, from the surface. The sparkling surface seemed to be ten kilometers away. He’d have given a year’s pay for a pair of swim fins. He also wished he was about fifteen years younger. More than once, when he was in his late teens and twenties, he’d free-dived to eighty feet while snorkeling the waters off Newport Beach in California. His body was still in good physical shape, but time and hard living had taken their toll.

He swam upward, using strong, even strokes with hands and feet, exhaling in tiny spurts so the expanding gases in his lungs would not rupture the capillaries and force bubbles directly into his bloodstream, causing an air embolism.

The glare from the sun was dancing on the surface, sending shafts of light into the shallows. He discovered he was in the shadows of two vessels. Without a face mask, his blurred vision through the water could only discern vague outlines of their bottoms. One seemed like a large boat, while the other looked absolutely mammoth. He shifted his course so he’d surface between them and save a crack on the head. Below him, Giordino and Sandecker followed in the submersible, like a crew cheering on a channel swimmer.

He stroked alongside Plunkett, who was clearly in trouble. The older man looked as though all strength had drained from his muscles. It was obvious to Pitt that Plunkett was on the verge of blacking out. He grabbed him by the collar and pulled the Britisher behind him.

Pitt expelled the last of the air from his lungs. He thought the surface could never be breached. Blood was throbbing in his ears. Then suddenly, just as he was gathering all his physical resources for the final effort, Plunkett went limp. The Britisher had made a brave try before falling unconscious, but he was not a strong swimmer.

Darkness was circling Pitt’s vision, and fireworks began to burst behind his eyes. Lack of oxygen was starving his brain, but the desire to reach the surface was overwhelming. The seawater was stinging his eyes and invading his nostrils. He was within seconds of drowning and he damn well wasn’t going to give in to it.

He put his rapidly fading strength into one last thrust for the clouds. Pulling Plunkett’s dead weight, he kicked furiously and stroked with his free hand like a madman. He could see the mirrorlike reflection of the swells. They looked tantalizingly near, and yet they seemed to keep moving away from him.

He heard a heavy thumping sound as if something was pounding the water. Then suddenly, four figures in black materialized in the water on both sides of him. Two snatched Plunkett and carried him away. One of the others pushed the mouthpiece of a breathing regulator into Pitt’s mouth.

He sucked in one great gasping breath of air, one after another until the diver gently removed the mouthpiece for a few breaths of his own. It was plain old air, the usual mixture of nitrogen, oxygen, and a dozen other gases, but to Pitt it tasted like the sparkling dry air of the Colorado Rockies and a forest of pine after a rain.

Pitt’s head broke water and he stared and stared at the sun as if he’d never seen it before. The sky never looked bluer or the clouds whiter. The sea was calm, the swells no more than half a meter at their crests.

His rescuers tried to support him, but he shrugged them off. He rolled over and floated on his back and looked up at the huge sail tower of a nuclear submarine that towered above him. Then he spotted the junk. Where on earth did that come from? he wondered. The sub explained the Navy divers, but a Chinese junk?

There was a crowd of people lining the railings of the junk, most he recognized as his mining crew, cheering and waving like crazy people. He spotted Stacy Fox and waved back.

His concern swiftly returned to Plunkett, but he need not have worried. The big Britisher was already lying on the hull deck of the submarine, surrounded by U.S. Navy crewmen. They quickly brought him around, and he began gagging and retching over the side.

The NUMA submersible broke the surface almost an arm’s length away. Giordino popped from the hatch through the sail tower, looking for all the world like a man who had just won the jackpot of a lottery. He was so close he could talk to Pitt in a conversational tone.

“See the havoc you’ve caused?” He laughed. “This is going to cost us.”

Happy and glad as he was to be among the living, Pitt’s face was suddenly filled with wrath. Too much had been destroyed, and as yet unknown to him, too many had died. When he replied, it was in a tense, unnatural voice.