Free Abduction by Robin Cook Page A

they jettisoned their rebars. Finally with some continued kicking their descent slowed and stopped.
Richard pointed upward and the two started swimming. Despite the heavy work of breathing they were swimming hard. The strange sinking episode had unnerved them, and to make matters worse, they were beginning to feel the heat through their suits. The two were even with the top of the cliff when a sudden sustained vibration swept up from the depths like a shock wave. For a few seconds both men were mildly disoriented. They had trouble breathing and swimming at the same time. The shaking was similar to what they had experienced in the diving bell on the descent, only much worse. They realized this was an underwater earthquake, and both of them intuitively sensed they were at or near the epicenter. For Louis, the quake was even more violent. At the moment of impact he'd been frantically hauling in the tethers, which had gone suddenly slack. He'd been forced to let go of the lines to keep himself from being impaled on one of the many wall-mounted protrusions. Richard recovered enough to take a breath although doing so was painful. The pressure wave had bruised his chest. As an experienced diver, his first response was to check on his buddy, and he frantically searched by spinning around. For a heart-stopping second he could not find Michael. Then he looked down. Michael appeared to be clawing his way up through the water. Richard reached down to lend a hand. When he did, he realized that they were both sinking--and sinking fast. With no other way to decrease his weight Richard joined Michael in an attempt to swim upward. In desperation they even discarded their lights to free their hands. But they made no progress. If anything, they seemed to be going down. Then they plummeted, caroming off the rock wall as they were inexorably sucked into the abyss.
Inside the bell Louis had recovered his balance enough to grab the tethers, which were still slack. Quickly he pulled in a loop, but before he could get it over the rack, there was a sudden tug in the opposite direction. At first he tried to hold the lines from going out, but it was impossible. Had he held on, they would have pulled him from the bell.

Louis cursed as he frantically got out of the way of the hoses, which were now being yanked out of the
bell at a furious rate. It was as if Richard and Michael were lures that had been taken by a gigantic fish. "Bell diver, are you all right?" Larry's voice asked. "Yeah, I'm all right!" Louis yelled. "But something crazy is going on! The hoses are going out at a hundred miles an hour!"
"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,