Clive Cussler - Devil's Gate

THE TIRES OF THE RENTAL CAR squealed on the macadam of the mountain road. Kurt looked behind them. Two sets of lights had suddenly appeared and were getting closer at every turn.

“We should have gone back into the restaurant,” she said.

He’d considered that, but there were only ten or so people in the building, and maybe a pair of cooks in the back. Not enough to really make it a secure location, and too many lives to endanger.

“Keep going,” he said. “We’re dead if they catch us up here. The best thing we can do is get to the city. We can find the police down there.”

Katarina kept her foot on the gas, whipping the car through the turns as she’d done on the way up the hill. It kept them ahead. But two long straightaways allowed the larger, more powerful Audis to catch them.

Another series of hairpins gave them some breathing room, but if Kurt remembered it right, the longest straight section was coming up.

“Do you have a weapon?” he asked.

Katarina shook her head.

Unfortunately, neither did he. The Azores had strict policies regarding guns and such. Perhaps that was a good thing. Otherwise, the thug at the top of the hill might have had a Lugar or a Glock instead of a pipe.

Still, it led to problems here and now.

“We’re coming up on another straight bit,” she said.

They rounded the curve, and Katarina stomped on the gas, but the Audis all but leapt toward them, moving up fast in the rearview.

Suddenly, the window shattered on Kurt’s side, and the sound of bullets punching holes in the sheet metal rang out. Kurt ducked down. So much for the no-gun policy.

Katarina began swerving back and forth, trying to keep the pursuers off them. As she did, Kurt spotted something sliding around in the backseat: the pipe he’d been hit with.

He grabbed it, glanced in the side mirror, and had an idea. The lead Audi was just a few feet back on his side.

“Hit the brakes,” he shouted.

“What?”

“Just do it.”

Katarina shifted her weight, gripped the wheel, and slammed her foot on the brake pedal. As she did, Kurt threw open his door.

The rental car’s tires dug into the asphalt, screeching, streaming white smoke. The Audi’s driver was taken by surprise; he hit his brakes late, took the rental car’s door clean off, and then rumbled over it.

Shocked and confused, he didn’t notice Kurt leaning out of the car, holding on to the garment handle above the door and swinging the pipe with a backhand like Rafael Nadal’s.

The blow smashed in the windshield. A thick spiderweb of cracks spread out over the driver’s half, completely blocking the view. The Audi swerved away and then came back as if it would ram them.

Kurt swung again, this time a forehand coming in from the side. It took out the driver’s window, catching the driver in the side of the head. The Audi swerved hard this time, dropping back and moving toward the cliff, then swerving rapidly to the right. It hammered the rocky slope on that side of the road, flipped, and tumbled. It slid on its caved-in roof, shedding parts and glass for a hundred yards, but avoided going off the cliff.

“That’s gonna leave a mark,” Kurt said.

The second Audi cut around the first one and began to accelerate. Kurt doubted the same plan would work twice. He looked ahead. Two more sets of lights were coming up the hill. They could have been locals or tourists, but they stayed abreast of each other, like one car trying to pass another and never actually making it. He was pretty sure what that meant.

“They’re trying to corral us,” he said over the wind that was pouring through the missing doorway.

For a moment he saw trepidation flicker across Katarina’s face, and then the young agent who had something to prove stood on the gas pedal and gripped the wheel like a madwoman. The little Focus shot forward as Katarina flipped her high beams on for good measure.

“I’m not stopping,” she shouted.

Kurt didn’t doubt that, but as he glanced ahead he guessed the drivers of the cars charging up toward them had no plans of stopping either.

FOR TEN SOLID MINUTES the Grouper continued to climb, but ever more slowly.

“We’re passing a thousand,” Paul said.

A thousand feet, she thought. That sounded so much better than sixteen thousand or ten or five, but it was still deeper than many steel-hulled submarines were able to go. She remembered a ride she’d taken with the Navy years ago on a Los Angeles — class attack submarine that was about to be retired. At seven hundred feet the side had dented in with a resounding clang. As she nearly jumped out of her skin, the captain and crew laughed heartily.

“This is our test depth, ma’am,” the captain had said. “That dent shows up every time.”

Apparently, it was an inside joke played on all guests, but it scared the heck out of her, and the fact that she and Paul were still three hundred feet deeper than that meant one thousand feet could be just as deadly as sixteen thousand.

“Nine hundred,” Paul said, calling out the depth again.

“What’s our rate?” she asked.

“Two-fifty,” he said. “Give or take.” Less than four minutes to the surface, less than four minutes to life.

Something snapped off the outside of the hull, and the Grouper started to shake.

“I think we lost the rudder,” Paul said.

“Can you control it?”

“I can try to vector the thrust,” he said, his hands working the two joysticks on the panel furiously.

She glanced to the rear. At least eighty gallons of water had filled the sub. The icy liquid had already reached her feet, causing her to pull them up toward her body.

A minute went by, and they began closing in on five hundred feet. A strange creaking sound reverberated through the hull, like a house settling or metal bending. It came and went and then came again.

“What is that?” she said. It was coming from above her head.

She looked up. The clamp on the top of the flange was quivering, the creaking sound coming from the hull above it.

She looked aft. The tail end of the sub was filled with water. A hundred gallons or more. Eight hundred pounds more than the front. All that extra weight twisted and pulled and bent the sub at the already weakened seam, trying to crack it in half like breaking a stick in the middle.

They had to level out before it ripped them apart. Had to spread the weight evenly even if it meant just climbing due to their buoyancy.

“Paul,” she said.

“Two hundred,” he called out.

“We have to level out,” she said.

“What?”

The hull groaned louder. She saw the upper clamp slip.

“Paul!” She lunged forward as the clamp shot away from the notch. It hit her in the back of the leg, and she screamed.

Her voice was drowned out by the sound of the second clamp being flung from its moorings and the furious dissonance of water gushing into the sub like it was blasting from a high-pressure fire hose.

HALFWAY DOWN the twisting mountain road to Vila do Porto, the game of chicken was on. Katarina kept her foot down on the accelerator. The cars coming up at them seemed undaunted. If anything, they’d accelerated also, and continued to charge shoulder to shoulder, their headlights blazing.

Kurt put a hand up to block the glare, trying to save some of his night vision. He glanced in the mirror; the single car behind them was closing in. He wondered if everyone had gone insane.

He flicked his eyes forward again, caught sight of a road sign and an arrow. It read “Hang Gliders — Ultralights.” He grabbed the wheel, yanked the car to the right.

“What are you doing?” Katarina shouted.