Adam Baker - Terminus

‘Come on,’ said Donahue. ‘Give me a hand.’

They put their shoulders to the Coke cabinet and shunted it against the curtained entrance gate.

They stood back. The vending machine gently creaked and rocked as hands clawed it from behind.

Donahue leaned against the tiled wall for support. She held her head like she was waiting for pain to pass.

‘Sure you’re okay?’

‘Stop asking.’

Lupe unslung the Remington and handed it to Donahue.

‘You better take this.’

‘Thought you’d want to hang on to it,’ said Donahue.

‘Galloway is itching to start a war.’

‘You think?’

‘The guy is totally transparent. He wants to snatch Nariko’s nine milli and provoke another stand-off. Me against him. Not what we need right now. You look after that thing, okay? Keep it close.’

Donahue took the gun. She checked the safety. She checked the chamber.

‘Don’t be pointing that thing at me, though,’ said Lupe. ‘I’m done being a prisoner.’

Nariko flipped latches and threw open the lid of an equipment trunk stamped MARINE DIVISION. Folded drysuits and three full-face diving helmets. She lifted a heavy steel helmet, pulled away its protective polythene sleeve and examined the neck ring.

‘Used this stuff before?’ asked Cloke.

‘Fished plenty of bodies out the river. Jumpers. Flew upstate and helped a mine rescue one time.’

‘A mine?’

‘Half-assed coal operation. Seven guys trapped in a flooded tunnel. Local cops thought they might have found an air pocket.’

‘Find any of them alive?’

‘No.’

Cloke snapped open a lock knife. He sliced through nylon rope and pulled tarp from a wooden pallet. A stack of fibreglass air tanks.

Nariko kicked off her boots and dropped her pants. She stripped to underwear, tied loose hair in a ponytail and pulled on a heavy trilaminate drysuit. Tight neck seal, tight cuffs. Cloke helped check the chest zipper. He hefted a weight belt and buckled it round her waist.

‘Give me the gun.’

Cloke handed her the Glock.

‘Will that thing fire underwater?’

‘No idea,’ said Nariko. ‘Hope I don’t find out.’

She tucked the pistol into her weight belt.

Cloke popped two tabs of IOSAT potassium iodide from a foil strip.

‘Open your mouth.’

‘I’ve had my dose,’ said Nariko.

‘Have some more.’

He put the pills on her tongue and held a bottle of water to her lips. She swigged.

‘Don’t hang around down there. Ten minutes, at the very most. Make a swift survey of the site, then get out the water and back in the boat quick as you can.’

She nodded.

‘But don’t rush. Poor visibility and a lot of snarled metal. Don’t get caught up.’

Cloke laid the aluminium rebreather frame on the floor. A snarling rat sprayed on yellow fibreglass. He unclipped the cowling. Two AL80 diluent tanks strapped to the back. Black marker on duct tape: NITROGEN and HELIUM. A small green liquid oxygen cylinder between them, alongside a lithium hydroxide CO 2scrubber cartridge.

Final check of the breathing loop. He checked psi gauges. He checked valves. He clipped the protective cowling back in place.

He helped Nariko shoulder the heavy trimix pack and adjust nylon harness straps.

Gauntlets secured by lock rings. She held out her arm while Cloke buckled an LCD depth gauge to her wrist.

Nariko bent forwards as Cloke lowered a steel helmet over her head. A pig-snout manifold. Halogen lamps at each temple, visor secured by heavy hex bolts. He clamped the helmet to the neck ring and span lock nuts. He equalised pressure and adjusted oxygen. Faint hiss and rubber-crackle as the suit filled with air. Nariko’s ears popped.

Cloke gave a good-to-go fist knock on the helmet.

Nariko checked her wrist screen. Green. Gas mix and tank pressure flashed nominal. Five hours of breathable air.

She gestured A-OK.

Cloke clipped a Motorola radio to her weight belt. He ran the jack cable up her back to a socket in the helmet.

He stepped back and spoke into his radio.

‘Can you hear me?’

‘Five by five.’

‘Ready?’

‘Yeah.’

She lumbered across the ticket hall and headed for the stairs. She walked hunchbacked, centre of gravity thrown by the tanks strapped to her back. Cloke walked beside her, holding flippers, offering a guiding arm.

She walked past Donahue. She walked past Lupe, Wade and Sicknote. They watched her pass, silent and solemn like she was a shackled death row inmate making their final journey to the execution chamber.

Tombes spoke into his radio.

‘God bless, Cap. Stay safe.’

Cloke took Nariko’s arm and helped her descend the steps. She gripped the handrail and leaned forwards so she could see her feet over the visor rim. Her breathing rasped loud inside the helmet.

She reached up and triggered the headlamps. The twin halogen beams lit the dark stairwell noonday bright. Grime-streaked tiles, chipped concrete steps.

She was spooked by black water waiting to receive and engulf her. She rolled her shoulders, told herself to shape up.

Cloke knelt and helped her step into flippers. He tightened ankle straps.

He spoke into his radio.

‘You set?’

Thumbs up.

‘Let’s get this done.’

Lazy flipper strokes. Nariko enveloped in amniotic silence, as if she were drifting at the furthest edge of the solar system, the point where the light of a pinprick sun yielded to interstellar darkness.

She was sheathed in a deep-water drysuit, but could still feel an insidious chill, the gentle squeeze of water pressure.

She spooled a white paracord guideline.

She reached behind and adjusted the knurled knob of the buoyancy dump valve. Urethane bladders tethered to her back-mount bled shimmering bubbles like globules of mercury.

Her breath roared loud and hot inside the helmet. A steady Vader-rasp of exertion. She heard the reassuring solenoid click of the rebreather apparatus inject fresh oxygen into her suit.

Helmet lights lit the tunnel floor. Quartz-halogen beams shafted through the sediment haze. The lamps illuminated a vista of concrete dusted with ochre rail silt, the sleeper-sill of the track bed, the inert third rail that used to hum with a death-dealing six hundred volts.

Scattered garbage. Crack pipes. Pennies. A dead rat.

She checked her wrist gauge. VR3: a crude dive computer strapped to her left wrist. An LCD screen encased in pressure-proof acrylic and steel. A depth/oxygen/psi readout. The screen winked green. Three bars charting gas levels within the suit:

A soothing computer voice gave a thirty second update.

‘Depth: three metres. Atmosphere: good. Four hours, fifty three minutes remaining.’

The green light and voice alert were a redundancy designed to cut through the stupor of hypoxia or nitrogen narcosis. A warning for a diver succumbing to the lethal euphoria of a failing nitrox mix. Even if they could no longer read gauge numbers, even if their vision narrowed and they headed for blackout, a flashing screen and urgent voice would urge them to act on instinct and head for the surface.

‘What’s my time?’

‘Coming up on eight minutes,’ said Cloke. ‘How’s it going down there?’

‘I’m doing okay.’

Nariko’s voice, tight and intimate within the confines of her helmet.

The rockfall. Tumbled slabs of ferro-concrete bristling with rebar. Twisted girders. The splintered stump of an ailanthus tree.

Yellow metal near the tunnel floor. Nariko ducked beneath a girder to get a closer look. A school bus, half crushed beneath a titanic block of masonry.