There was a hitch to his plan, however: getting through one of the intake ducts without being chopped into chum. His first hurdle wouldn’t be the propeller blades themselves, but rather the protective mesh screen on their outside. Still, that was little comfort. If he lost control and found himself trapped against the mesh, the force would pull him through like tomato sauce through a sieve.

“I’m a quarter mile out,” he reported.

“Watch yourself,” Lambert said. “Keep an eye on your current gauge. By the time you feel those pumps drawing you in, it’ll be too late.”

“Got it.”

He swam on.

HEkept a steady pace and a steady watch on his OPSAT, checking his Distance-To-Target against Speed-Through-Water.

DTT: 310 METERS/STW: 2.8 MPH . . .

DTT: 260 METERS/STW: 2.8 MPH . . .

DTT: 190 METERS/STW: 2.8 MPH . . . STW: 2.9

MPH . . . STW: 3.0 MPH . . .

“My speed just increased,” Fisher reported. Still six hundred feet away and the intakes were already creating their own riptide. Fisher felt the prickle of fear on his neck. With each foot he drew closer, the more he would pick up speed.

“Stop kicking,” Grimsdottir ordered.

“Already have.” In the few seconds they’d been talking, his speed had increased to 4.5 mph—on land, a slow jog; in water, a fast clip.

He clicked on his light and looked down. A few feet below his belly, the seabed was rushing by, a dizzying blur of white sand and rocks. At this rate, he’d hit the intake screen at twenty mph. He clicked off his light. Don’t think; just do.

“Grim, anytime you want to shut them down is fine with me.”

“Relax, I’ve run the simulations backwards and fore-wards.”

Fisher checked his OPSAT: DTT: 90 METERS/STW: 10.2 MPH . . .

“Hold it . . . hold it . . .” Grimsdottir said. “Remember, Sam, I can loop a system casualty for at most seventy-five seconds before the backups kick in. Twenty seconds after that the intakes will be back up to full power.”

“Got it.”

DTT: 60 METERS/STW: 16.8 MPH . . .

“Hold it. . . . Now! Shutting down!”

Immediately, Fisher heard the roar of the intakes change pitch and begin to wind down. He felt the riptide loosen its grip on his body. The OPSAT readout scrolled down from fifty meters, to thirty, then twenty. His speed dropped past eight mph.

He reached up and switched on his task light.

Suddenly, the mesh screen was there, a massive gridlike wall emerging out of the darkness. Fisher kicked his legs out just in time for his fins to take the brunt of the impact. Still, the draw of the current was strong enough to plaster him face-first against the mesh. Through it, cast in the red glow of his light, the propeller was slowly winding down, each blade a massive scmimitar-shaped shadow.

Fisher let out the breath he’d been holding.

Grimsdottir’s voice: “Sam, you there?”

“I’m here.”

“The clock is ticking. Backups will start coming back on-line in fifty seconds.”

From his waist pouch Fisher withdrew an eight-foot long cord. Nearly identical to the burn-ties he’d used during his penetration of the Newport News shipyard, this cord was coated with a water-resistant adhesive.

He mashed the cord against the mesh in a rough circle, then jammed his thumb into the chemical detonator and backed away. Two seconds passed. The oval-shaped flash of white light lasted eight seconds. When the bubbles cleared, Fisher finned ahead, hand outstretched, and grabbed the severed section of mesh. He gave it a quick jerk and it came free. He tossed it away.

“Time check,” he said.

“Forty seconds.”

He swam through.

18

ONCEthrough the gap, Fisher instantly realized they’d all misread the schematics for the ducts. Unlike a ship’s propeller, where each blade was mounted alongside its neighbor on the shaft, here they were mounted one behind the next lengthwise along the shaft, like threads on a screw. Worse still, looking down the shaft, he counted eight blades rather than four. The setup made sense, he realized, given their purpose was to provide suction, not propulsion.

“Got a problem here,” Fisher radioed. “How much time?”

“Thirty seconds.”

He grabbed the edge of the first blade and pulled himself beneath it, then finned ahead, weaving and ducking his way beneath and over blades two, three, four, five.

“Fifteen seconds, Sam.”

Beside him, the barrel-sized shaft emitted an electronic buzz, then a series of steel-on-steel clanks as the propellers gears began to re-engage. He ducked under blade six, then veered right and arched his body, feeling the trailing edge of the blade seven scrape his thighs.

“Eight seconds . . . seven . . . six . . .”

He put all his strength into his legs and kicked. He felt rather than saw the propellers begin to move, as though he’d been shoved from behind by a crashing wave.

“Starting up . . . power’s at twenty percent.”

“I’m through.”

“Don’t slow down. The maintenance shaft is fifty feet down the tunnel. Should be a circular opening in the roof. It won’t be marked; you’ll have to feel your way. If you don’t reach it in time—”

“I know, I remember.” Into the desalinization tank for boiling.

“Power at fifty percent.”

Already, the roar of the propellers was nearly deafening. Beyond his mask he saw only froth. He angled his body upward. His outstretched hand touched corrugated metal.

“Power at seventy-five percent,” Grimsdottir called. “There should be a ladder jutting from the maintence shaft, Sam. Coming up quick now . . . Thirty feet . . . twenty-five . . .”

With his hand thumping over the ribbed steel of the roof, Fisher had sense of his speed. He switched on his light, hoping to catch a glimpse of the ladder as it approached, but the swirling bubbles had reduced visibility to zero. He switched off the light. He’d have to do it by feel and reflexes alone.

“Fifteen feet . . . You’re dead on track, Sam. Almost there . . .”

For a split second the froth cleared and he caught a glimpse of something, a horizontal steel bar. He latched onto the rung with both hands and was jerked to a sudden halt. Pain shot through his wrists, up his arms, and exploded in his shoulder sockets. His legs, fully caught in the slipstream, felt impossibly heavy. One of his fins was ripped from his foot, then the next.

Climb, Sam, climb!

He reached up, hooked his hand on the next rung, and pulled. Then again, and again. The draw on his legs lessened. He kept climbing, one rung at a time, until suddenly, his head broke into a pocket of air. Just as abruptly, the drag on his legs disappeared.

He took in a few lungfuls of air until his heart rate settled; then he clicked on his task light and looked down. A few inches below his bottom foot, the water in the duct was rushing by as though driven by a fire hose—which, in essense, it was.

He keyed his subdermal: “I’m in the shaft, all limbs and digits accounted for.”

“Good work, Sam,” Lambert replied.

“Any alarms, change of routine?”

Grimsdottir said, “None. I’m tapped into the hotel’s security and maintenence frequencies. They read the intake shutdown as a routine glitch. Check in when you reach your first waypoint. That’s where the real fun begins.”