Deception Point Page 107

Rachel fell onto her back against the cockpits rear w each(prenominal). Half submerged in sloshing water, she stared straight up at the leaking edible bean, hovering over her wish a giant sky precipitate.Outside was unaccompanied night and thousands of tons of maritime printing press down.Rachel willed herself to get up, but her consistency felt dead and heavy. Again her principal reeled backward in time to the icy grip of a frigid river.Fight, Rachel her experience was shouting, scope down to pull her out of the water. Grab onRachel closed her eyes. Im sinking. Her skates felt like lead weights, dragging her down. She could see her suffer lying spread-eagle on the ice to disperse her own weight, reaching out.Kick, Rachel Kick with your feetRachel kicked as best as she could. Her body rose passably in the icy hole. A spark of hope. Her mother grabbed on.Yes her mother shouted. care me lift you Kick with your feetWith her mother pulling from above, Rachel used the last of her vim to kick with her skates. It was just enough, and her mother dragged Rachel up to safety. She dragged the soaking Rachel all the authority to the snowy bank before collapsing in blasts.Now, inside the growing humidness and heat of the sub, Rachel opened her eyes to the obtuseness approximately her. She heard her mother whispering from the grave, her articulatio clear even here in the sinking Triton.Kick with your feet.Rachel looked up at the dome overhead. Mustering the last of her courage, Rachel clambered up onto the cockpit chair, which was point almost horizontally now, like a dental chair. Lying on her back, Rachel bent her knees, pulled her legs back as far as she could, aimed her feet upward, and exploded forward. With a wild scream of desperation and force, she drove her feet into the center of the acrylic dome. Spikes of chafe shot into her shins, sending her brain reeling. Her ears thundered suddenly, and she felt the pressure equalize with a violent rush. The seal on the left side of the dome gave way, and the grand lens partially dislodged, swinging open like a b door.A torrent of water crashed into the sub and drove Rachel back into her chair. The ocean thundered in around her, swirling up under her back, lifting her now off the chair, tossing her teetotum down like a sock in a backwash machine. Rachel groped blindly for something to hold on to, but she was spinning wildly. As the cockpit filled, she could go through the sub begin a rapid free fall for the bottom. Her body rammed upward in the cockpit, and she felt herself pinned. A rush of bubbles erupted around her, tailspin her, dragging her to the left and upward. A flap of hard acrylic moneyed into her hip.All at once she was free.Twisting and tumbling into the endless hotness and watery b overleapness, Rachel felt her lungs already aching for air. Get to the scrape up She looked for light but saw nothing. Her world looked the same in all directions. Blackness. No grav ity. No sense of up or down.In that terrifying instant, Rachel realised she had no idea which way to swim.Thousands of feet beneath her, the sinking Kiowa chopper dented beneath the relentlessly increasing pressure. The fifteen high-explosive, antitank AGM-114 red region missiles heretofore aboard strained against the compression, their copper liner cones and spring-detonation heads inching perilously inward.A atomic number 6 feet above the ocean floor, the powerful shaft of the megaplume grabbed the remains of the chopper and sucked it downward, cast it against the red-hot crust of the magma dome. Like a box of matches igniting in series, the Hellfire missiles exploded, tearing a gaping hole through the top of the magma dome.Having surfaced for air, and then(prenominal) dove again in desperation, Michael Tolland was suspended fifteen feet underwater see the blackness when the Hellfire missiles exploded. The w encountere flash billowed upward, illuminating an astonishing imag e-a freeze-frame he would remember forever.Rachel Sexton hung ten feet below him like a mired marionette in the water. Beneath her, the Triton sub fell forward fast, its dome hanging loose. The sharks in the area scattered for the open sea, intelligibly sensing the danger this area was about to unleash.Tollands exhilaration at perceive Rachel out of the sub was instantly vanquished by the realization of what was about to follow. Memorizing her puzzle as the light disappeared, Tolland dove hard, clawing his way toward her.Thousands of feet down, the shattered crust of the magma dome exploded apart, and the underwater volcano erupted, spewing twelve-hundred-degree-Celsius magma up into the sea. The scorching lava vaporized all the water it touched, sending a massive pillar of steam rocketing toward the surface up the central axis of the megaplume. Driven by the same kinematic properties of liquified dynamics that powered tornadoes, the steams vertical transfer of energy was coun terbalanced by an anticyclonic vorticity spiral that circled the shaft, carrying energy in the opposite direction.Spiraling around this column of rising gas, the ocean legitimates started intensifying, involved downward. The fleeing steam created an enormous vacuity that sucked millions of gallons of seawater downward into contact with the magma. As the new water hit bottom, it too turned into steam and needed a way to escape, connection the growing column of exhaust steam and shooting upward, pulling to a greater extent water in beneath it. As to a greater extent water step on it in to take its place, the whirl intensified. The hydrothermal plume elongated, and the towering whirlpool grew stronger with both passing second, its upper rim moving steadily toward the surface.An oceanic black hole had just been born.Rachel felt like a child in a womb. Hot, wet darkness all engulfing her. Her thoughts were muddled in the inky-black warmth. Breathe. She fought the reflex. The flash of light she had seen could only have come from the surface, and yet it seemed so far away. An illusion. Get to the surface. Weakly, Rachel began swimming in the direction where she had seen the light. She saw more light now an eerie red glow in the distance. daylight? She swam harder.A legislate caught her by the ankle.Rachel half-screamed underwater, almost exhaling the last of her air.The hand pulled her backward, twisting her, pointing her back in the opposite direction. Rachel felt a familiar hand grasp hers. Michael Tolland was there, pulling her along with him the other way.Rachels mind said he was taking her down. Her heart said he knew what he was doing.Kick with your feet, her mothers voice whispered.Rachel kicked as hard as she could.130Even as Tolland and Rachel skint the surface, he knew it was over. The magma dome erupted. As soon as the top of the vortex reached the surface, the giant underwater tornado would begin pulling everything down. Strangely, the world above the surface was not the quiet dawn he had left only moments ago. The noise was deafening. Wind slashed at him as if some pleasing of storm had hit while he was underwater.Tolland felt delirious from lack of oxygen. He tried to support Rachel in the water, but she was being pulled from his arms. The current Tolland tried to hold on, but the invisible force pulled harder, threatening to tear her from him. Suddenly, his grip slipped, and Rachels body slid through his arms-but upward.Bewildered, Tolland watched Rachels body rise out of the water.Overhead, the margin champion Osprey tilt-rotor airplane hovered and winched Rachel in. Twenty minutes ago, the Coast Guard had gotten a report of an explosion out at sea. Having lost train of the Dolphin helicopter that was supposed to be in the area, they feared an accident. They typed the choppers last cognise coordinates into their navigation system and hoped for the best.About a half mile from the illuminated Goya, they saw a field o f burning wreckage drifting on the current. It looked like a speedboat. Nearby, a man was in the water, waving his arms wildly. They winched him in. He was stark naked-all except for one leg, which was covered with duct tape.