She squinted past Brian and desperately concentrated on the shadowy shape farther along the line: Harry. He was dimly visible in the murk, kicking down into the black void, so near and yet so far away. Twelve or fifteen feet separated Rita from Brian; count six feet for the kid, and maybe twelve feet between him and Harry: thirty or thirty-five feet altogether, separating her from her husband. It seemed like a mile. As long as she thought about Harry and kept in mind the good times that they would have together when this ordeal ended, she was able to stop screaming into her face mask and continue swimming. Paris. The Hôtel George V. A bottle of fine champagne. His kiss. His touch. They would share it all again if she just didn’t let her fears overwhelm her.
Harry glanced back toward Rita. She was still where she should be, following Brian along the communications line.
Looking ahead again, he told himself that he was excessively worried about her. In general, women were supposed to have greater endurance than men. If that was true, it was especially true of this woman.
He smiled to himself and said, “Hang in there,” as though she could hear him.
Ahead of Harry, when they were perhaps a hundred fifty feet down the dark tunnel, Roger Breskin finally paused for a rest. He performed a somersault as though engaged in a water ballet and turned around on the line until he faced Harry in a more natural position: head up and feet down.
Five yards behind Roger, Harry also paused and was about to do a somersault of his own when Roger’s halogen lamp winked out. Two lights still glowed behind Harry, but the beams were diffused by the cloudy water and didn’t reach him or Roger. He was enveloped in darkness.
An instant later Breskin collided with him. Harry couldn’t hold on to the communications wire. They tumbled down and away into the blackness, at a descending angle toward the tunnel wall, and for an instant Harry didn’t understand what was happening. Then he felt a hand clawing at his throat, and he knew that he was in trouble. He flailed at Breskin, putting all his strength into the blows, but the water absorbed the energy of his punches and transformed them into playful pats.
Breskin’s hand closed tightly around Harry’s throat. Harry tried to wrench his head away, pull back, but he couldn’t escape. The weight lifter had an iron grip.
Breskin drove a knee into Harry’s stomach, but the water worked against him, slowing and cushioning the blow.
Harder and sooner than he had expected, Harry’s back thumped against the tunnel wall, and pain coruscated along his spine. The bigger man pinned him against the ice.
The two remaining halogen lamps—one held by George and one by Pete—were far above and about twenty feet farther toward the center of the tunnel, vaguely luminous ghost lights haunting the cloudy water. Harry was essentially blind. Even at close range, he could not see his assailant.
The hand at this throat slipped higher, pawed at his chin. His face mask was torn off.
With that strategic stroke, Harry was denied his breath and what little vision he’d had, and he was exposed to the killing cold of the water. Helpless, disoriented, he was no longer a threat to Breskin, and the big man let him go.
The cold was like a fistful of nails rammed hard into his face, and his body heat seemed to pout out as though it were a hot liquid streaming through the resultant punctures.
Terrified, on the verge of panic but aware that panic might be the death of him, Harry rolled away into the darkness, grappling behind himself for the precious mask that floated at the end of his air hose.
A second after the lamp went out at the head of the procession, Rita realized what was wrong: Breskin was the would-be killer of Brian Dougherty. And a second after that, she knew what she had to do.
She let go of the line and swam out of the amber light from George Lin’s lamp, which glowed behind her and silhouetted her for Breskin. Praying that George wouldn’t follow her and blow her cover, she soon came up against the wall of the tunnel, the smooth curve of … ice.