Chapter 48 - The Sound of Ripping Steel
"Take them down," Thomas said into his collar mic.
He didn't finish the sentence.
Arthur didn't wait. He didn't try to wrestle the soldiers; he threw his entire two-hundred-pound frame horizontally across the spanner handle, using his momentum to snap the calcified lock ring on the valve stem.
A sound like an artillery shell firing cracked through the chamber as the iron bolt sheared clean off.
The five-sided valve wheel spun with violent, screaming velocity. A jet of icy river water exploded from the packings around the stem, knocking Arthur off his feet and throwing him into the flooded trench.
Above us, the two tactical operators fired.
The sharp, concussive cracks of suppressed rifle rounds slapped against the limestone walls, chipping shards of gray rock into the air. But Caleb had already grabbed the heavy surveyor’s iron tripod that lay half-submerged in the silt and swung it with both hands into the steel support strut of the catwalk staircase.
The rusted fifty-year-old metal screamed. The lower section of the iron staircase buckled, tearing loose from its concrete footings with a deafening screech of ripping bolts.
Thomas lunged backward, catching the handrail as the stairs fell into the surging water, splashing a wall of spray over the electrical junctions along the wall.
*BZZZZT.*
The main industrial lights died instantly, plunging the entire underground complex into absolute, pitch-black pandemonium illuminated only by the frantic strobe of muzzle flashes from the upper catwalk.
"Nathan! The crawlway!" Arthur's voice cut through the darkness, sputtering water from his lungs. "Behind the drainage pipe! Get Caleb out!"
I reached through the roaring spray, my hands catching Caleb by the collar of his jacket. The water in the trough was rising fast—six inches, twelve inches, swirling around our thighs with terrifying force as thousands of gallons of river current poured through the reopened bypass channel.
"Dad! Grab my hand!" I screamed into the darkness, waving my torch beam until I caught the gray silhouette of Arthur struggling against the current near the churning valve.
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He wasn't trying to escape. He was wedging the two-foot iron spanner directly into the gear teeth of the main sluice wheel, locking it open forever.
"I’ve got it locked!" Arthur roared, his face drenched, his eyes wild with the fierce, stubborn fury of a man who had spent his entire life defending six inches of topsoil. "Get into the pipe!"
