Robin Cook - Abduction

“We can see that on the monitor,” Larry said urgently. “Can’t you stop it?”

“How?” Louis pleaded through tears. He glanced at the remaining hose. There wasn’t much left. He froze. He had no idea what to expect. The last loops whipped out of the bell and for a brief moment the lines went taut. Then to Louis’s utter horror they were torn from their housings and disappeared down into the trunk and out into the unforgiving sea.

“Oh, my god!” Louis cried as he struggled to turn off the gas supply manifold.

“What’s happening down there?” Larry demanded.

“I don’t know,” Louis cried. Then to add to his terror the vibration and rumbling started again. Frantically he reached out to grab whatever he could as the diving bell shook as though it were a salt shaker in the hand of a giant. He screamed, and as if in answer to a prayer, the shaking lessened to a mere trembling. At the same time he became aware of a sizzling sound and a red glow that penetrated through the view ports.

Letting go of the death grip he’d had on the high-pressure piping, Louis twisted to glance out one of the view ports. What he saw made him freeze anew. Over the nearby ridge, which the divers had so recently scaled, came a surreal cascade of glowing, red hot lava. The leading edge sputtered and popped and smoked as it turned the icy water into steam.

When Louis recovered enough to find his voice, he threw his head back to look up into the camcorder lens.

“Get me out of here!” he shrieked. “I’m in the middle of a goddamn erupting volcano!”

The van’s interior had become quiet. A sense of shock hung over the room. The only noise came from the deck-mounted motors driving the winches that were hauling up the diving bell and the life-support lines. Moments before, utter pandemonium had prevailed as it became apparent they’d lost two divers in some kind of pyroclastic catastrophe. The only consolation was that the third diver was okay, and he was on his way up.

Mark took a long, nervous drag on his Marlboro. Oblivious to the new rules, he’d reached for his cigarettes by reflex at the first rumblings of trouble, and now that the extent of the tragedy had rapidly unfolded, he was chain-smoking out of pure anxiety. Not only had he managed to lose a hundred-million-dollar submersible with two trained operators plus two experienced saturation divers; he’d also lost the president of Benthic Marine. If only he hadn’t encouraged Perry Bergman to make the dive. For that he was solely responsible.

“What the hell are we going to do?” Larry asked in stunned bewilderment. Even he was smoking although he was supposed to have given it up six months before. As the diving supervisor he, too, felt responsible for the disastrous outcome.

Mark sighed heavily. He felt weak. He’d never had a single loss of life on his watch in his entire career, and that included hairy diving operations in some dicey locations like in the Persian Gulf during Desert Storm. Now he’d lost five people. It was too much to think about.

“The bell is passing through five hundred feet,” the winch operator called out to no one in particular.

“What about the drilling operation?” Larry wondered aloud.

Mark took another long drag on his cigarette and almost burned his fingers. Angrily he stubbed it out, then lit another.

“Get ready to launch the camera sled,” Mark said. “We got to look at what’s going on down there.”

“Mazzola was pretty clear,” Larry quavered. “As we were pulling him up he said the whole top of the seamount as far as he could see was molten lava, bubbling up from behind the ridge. And we’re recording almost continuous tremors. Hell, we’re sitting on a live volcano. Are you sure you want the sled down in that kind of an inferno?”

“I want to see it,” Mark said slowly, “and I want to record it. I’m sure there’s going to be one hell of an inquiry about this whole mess. And I want to look at the area where the canyon or hole was that the Oceanus disappeared into. I’ve got to be sure there’s no chance…” Mark did not finish his sentence. He knew in his gut it was hopeless; Donald Fuller had dropped the submersible down into a volcanic vent just prior to its erupting.

“Fair enough,” Larry conceded. “I’ll have the crew get the sled ready to go. But what about the drilling? I hope you’re not thinking of sending down another dive team if and when this volcano quiets down.”

“Hell no!” Mark said with emotion. “I’ve lost interest in drilling into this freaking mountain, especially now that Perry Bergman is no longer with us. It was his foolhearty obsession, not mine. If the camera sled confirms that the vent hole or whatever it was is filled with fresh lava, and we can’t find any trace of the Oceanus, we’re getting the hell out of here.”

“That sounds good to me!” Larry said. He stood up. “I’ll get the sled ready and in the water ASAP.”

“Thanks,” Mark said. He leaned forward and buried his head in his hands. He’d never felt worse in his life.

Suzanne was the first to recover enough from the terror of the precipitous descent to find her voice. Hesitantly she said, “I think we’ve stopped! Thank God!”

For a time that had seemed an eternity to its three terrified occupants, the submersible had fallen like a stone down the mysterious shaft. It was as if they had been sucked down an enormous drain in the bottom of the ocean. During the plummet the Oceanus had been totally unresponsive to the controls no matter which Donald Fuller manipulated.

Although initially the plunge had been straight down, the boat had eventually begun to spiral and even carom off the walls. One of the first such collisions destroyed the outside halogen lights. Another stripped off the starboard manipulator with a grinding crunch.

Perry had been the only one to scream during the ordeal. But even he fell silent once the helplessness of their situation had sunk in. He could only watch helplessly as the digital depth recorder whirred into the thousands. The numbers had flashed by so quickly, they’d become a blur. And when twenty thousand feet approached, all he’d been able to think about was the chilling statistic he’d heard earlier: the crush depth !

“In fact, I don’t think we’re moving at all,” Suzanne added. She was whispering. “What could have happened? Could we be on the bottom? I didn’t feel an impact.”

No one moved a muscle, as if doing so might disturb the sudden but welcome tranquillity. They were breathing shallowly in short gasps, and beads of perspiration dotted their foreheads. All three were still holding on to their seats for fear the plunge would recommence.

“It feels like we stopped, but look at the depth gauge,” Donald managed. His voice was raspy from dryness.

All eyes returned to the readout that only moments earlier had inexorably held their gaze. It was moving again, slowly at first but then rapidly gathering speed. The difference was that it was moving in the opposite direction.

“But I don’t feel any movement,” Suzanne said. She exhaled deeply and tried to relax her muscles. The others did likewise.

“Nor do I,” Donald admitted. “But look at the gauge! It’s going crazy.”

The readout device had returned to its previous furious whirring.

Suzanne leaned forward slowly as if she thought the submersible was precariously balanced and her movement might tip it over an edge. She peered out the view port, but all she could see was her own image. With the outside lights sheared off from collisions with the rock, the window was as opaque as a mirror, reflecting the interior light.

“What’s happening now?” Perry croaked.