Free Submerged by Alton Gansky Page B

his father had given him—that and
faith.
    “You go on now, Perry. Do what your father
wants you to do. Nora will be here soon, and I’ll be fine.”
    Perry pulled a card from his pocket. “Here
are my numbers. You already know my cell number, but the other
number is different. It’s for a satellite phone, in case we end up
somewhere without cell phone coverage.”
    Anna took it and studied it. “I’ll let you
know if anything changes.” Tears were rising in her eyes.
    The sight of them broke Perry like a twig. “I
love you, Mom.”
    “I love you, son.” She pulled away,
ostensibly to put the card in her purse. Yet Perry knew she was
hiding her tears, not for her sake but for his.

    The dull thud of Perry’s heels echoed off the
walls of the hospital corridor. Walking from his father’s MICU room
had been the most difficult thing he’d ever done. As he rode the
elevator down to the first floor, he forced the image of his dying
father from his mind. Before him was a mission that might save his
father’s life. Perry had no idea how it could, no evidence to build
a case for such a belief, but he felt it nonetheless.
    One corridor turned into another, and Perry
tried to focus on what lay ahead, not on the one he’d left behind.
The task was impossible. No matter where he was in the world, he’d
be taking his father with him. The wide hall emptied into an
expansive lobby. Two men waited for him. They turned as he
approached.
    Jack started to say something but stopped
before the first syllable tumbled from his lips. Gleason wore the
expression of a broken man. Friends, Perry had learned, could not
remove a man from the sea of fear and pain, but they could join him
in it. Jack and Gleason had, by choice, plunged into the dark
waters without a second thought. It was then Perry realized he was
the richest man on earth.
    His friends asked questions without
words.
    “No change,” Perry replied. “Ready?”
    “Ready,” Jack and Gleason said in stereo.
    Three men marched from the hospital into the
Seattle night.

    Voices. Distant. Familiar.
    Henry Sachs was lost. He had traveled the
world and been in some of the most inhospitable terrains
imaginable, but he had never been lost. Now he was. He stood—or was
he lying down?—in a milky darkness. He could hear a beeping. Every
once in a while a voice meandered through the fog to reach his
ears, but the words were jumbled, muddled, discontinuous. He
struggled to make out the sentences. Perry? Anna?
    They were out there, wherever out there was.
And he was—where? He didn’t know. He didn’t know where he was, what
year it was, or how long he had been there. Had he died? Was this
death? If so, it wasn’t like anything he had imagined.
    Henry tried to move his arm but failed. Or at
least he assumed he failed. He couldn’t feel his arms or his legs.
He couldn’t feel anything.
    Breathing was hard. The white fog, the mist,
was intent on choking him . . . on filling his lungs until no more
air could be taken in. Drowning. He was drowning in something he
couldn’t identify.
    Faces appeared to him out of the haze, faces
familiar
    but out of time, faces he had known long ago,
in a distant place, in another era. Monte Grant . . . Cynthia
Wagner . . . Victor Zeisler . . .

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter8
     
     
    1974
     
    Henry Sachs stepped
from the car, a brand-new 1974 white Chevy Suburban, and
stretched his back. He had flown in from Seattle on a chartered
1971 Cessna 414 commuter that landed at a private airfield outside
the desert town of Tonopah. Despite the nagging pain in his lower
back, Henry had asked the pilot to take a couple “laps” around the
town so he could see it from the air. Henry was a few years over
the thirty mark, much too young to be having a pain in the back.
The seats were a well-padded leather, but he had been sitting too
long. Henry didn’t like sitting around.
    As the twin-engine plane circled the small
town of Tonopah, Henry could