Dark Rule (COIL Book 3), page 10
Nicholas poised himself like a linebacker and nodded. Next to him and behind him, the flood controllers were overwhelmed with water, many of them forced aside like toys in a child's tub.
Nathan saw his window open just wide enough. Closing his eyes, he tucked his head and ducked into the flood. He dragged himself through the door—the water warmer than he expected—and fought to move past waist level into the chamber. Suddenly, hands were on his legs giving him enough thrust to get one foot far enough on the outside of the door.
An instant later, he was all the way through, and the door behind him slid shut. The roaring in his ears and tearing pressure of rushing water was gone. And Nathan suddenly realized he hadn't taken a deep enough breath for what was to follow.
The door to the ocean stood open before him, so he went to that first, since it had to be closed before the pumps could empty the chamber of water. It was then that he discovered what had jammed the door open—a giant conch—intentionally placed during Niles' departure in the submersible. But removing the crustacean shell was no easy task, especially as Nathan's mind was focused on his burning lungs. Turning from the conch, Nathan swam to the top of the dive chamber in search for a pocket of air, even a single breath—anything!
Bubbles escaped his lips. Frantically now, he searched the ceiling. There was no air! He was about to drown. Pushing away from the ceiling, he consigned himself to death. His mind no longer seemed to function without the right amount of oxygen, and he was near unconsciousness.
He would be in the presence of his Lord and Savior in a few minutes. It wasn't a troubling thought. Nathan had believed in the complete redemptive work at the cross for some years now. This was an end he was ready to face.
*~*
Chapter Eleven
Marlon was so utterly shocked to bump into an object under water that his first instinct was to draw a diving blade and turn on the whale shark that intended to swallow him. But before he blunted his blade on the thick plastic bubble, it dawned on him that he was looking into the confines of Gilgal, rising from the deep.
The closer Marlon peered into the hovering city, the more he realized something had gone drastically wrong inside. Though Marlon's own life had hung in the balance as he'd circled the Materia explorer ship while waiting for Patrick Gibson, whatever tragedy had caused a degree of flooding within Gilgal now seemed to require Marlon's urgent attention.
Immediately, Marlon oriented himself with his past experience and charts he knew of Gilgal, and kicked with his flippered feet straight down the dome toward the city's foundation, under which he knew lay the submersible chamber. Turning under its belly, he had only to swim thirty yards with his gear still in tow before he came upon the port that was jammed open by a large conch shell—Niles' doing, by his own confession. Whatever else was happening inside, Marlon attributed it to other damage Niles had caused to Gilgal as well.
But then Marlon spied Patrick near the ceiling of the chamber. Marlon let go of his dive bag to settle on the chamber floor, and surged up to the man who was without scuba gear whatsoever. As Marlon grabbed hold of Patrick's arm, it seemed to frighten the agent, but Marlon thrust his safe second air regulator into Patrick's mouth. Patrick's eyes bulged, and he seemed to cough for the first few breaths, but the man had extreme mental discipline, Marlon noticed, for not lapsing into panic. Another few seconds, and Patrick would've been a drifting corpse!
When Patrick seemed to have recovered adequately, Marlon gestured toward topside. The two shared air as they left the chamber. Marlon took up his bag of dive gear once again as they rose to the surface.
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Nathan exhaled carefully as he ascended, his head breaking through the surface above Gilgal before Marlon's. His immediate concern was for the Materia's location—whether it was close or far away from Gilgal—and discovered the explorer vessel was about one hundred and fifty yards northwest.
Marlon's masked face joined him, and together they stood on top of the dome of Gilgal in five feet of water, varying a few inches now and then according to the fluctuations of the vertical drive turbines.
"I've never been happier to see someone I've killed!" Nathan laughed, his nerves still unsettled over his unlikely rescue—only by God's providence. "Can you spare a rebreather there? I'd say you had enough for a platoon."
"Didn't know how long I'd be waiting for you, so I took what I could off the Materia and sunk the rest." Marlon handed him a dive mask, flippers, and a rebreather with four hours of dive time remaining. "What does the rising of Gilgal mean?"
"They're relocating the city." Nathan strapped the rebreather onto his back and tugged on the flippers. "They have two problems: their horizontal drive turbine is malfunctioning, and the submersible chamber is jammed open. That's what I was supposed to be fixing when I decided to try to breathe water."
"Yeah, I saw the conch. So, we're two men with two problems." Marlon looked over his shoulder. "Our heads might be two dots in the water to them, but I wouldn't stay up here for long. You attack the conch. Where's this horizontal drive?"
"Under the power section. From what Mr. Niles has said, I don't think he's damaged it—or even knows it exists—so I'm guessing there's just some ocean debris clogging it."
"Okay, I'll check it out. Then what?"
"I'm kind of winging it." Nathan smiled, still trembling from his near death experience. "With three of us, we could probably retake the Materia come nightfall, if we use our heads. I figure Mr. Niles will take advantage of the jammed-open chamber, so when he leaves in the submersible, we board the Materia."
"All right, but three of us?"
"Chen Li is with us. Gilgal is moving on. We need to shut down the jammers and get on a sat-phone."
"Patrick, to be honest with you, I'm just a no-good—"
"No." Nathan spit on his mask to keep it from fogging, then inhaled through his nose to seal it tightly to his face. "You and I don't know one another too well, but trust me when I say I'm not the one you need to confess your sins to. That's between you and God. He's the One who gave His life for you. For now, we're a team. In one hour, we meet back here, the three of us, to make a plan to retake the Materia. Can you handle that drive?"
"I'll do my best."
They submerged together, then separated over the dome to attend to their individual tasks, Marlon trailing his dive gear. As Nathan swam below the dome, he considered how his recent experience was a sign from God. The Lord obviously intended him to continue His work on earth since He'd provided a rescue.
He returned to the chamber and worked for several minutes on the conch before it came out in pieces. The door closed with such force that Nathan was glad he wasn't in front of it as it sealed. The red light flashed on the wall as the water pumped out, and Nathan knelt to shed his dive gear. When the inner chamber door opened, Li was the first to rush in, already in a wet suit.
"If I didn't know any better," she said slyly, "I'd say that was Marlon I saw through the dome. You said he was dead!"
"Dead to Niles, but alive and thankfully an asset to us."
"Praise God, you've done it, Patrick!" Nicholas grasped Nathan's elbow and pumped his hand heartily. "You've saved us all!"
"Give me a few more hours, and I'll have a new submersible for you as well. No point in moving on without the safety of a rover."
"Oh, you will, will you?" Li guffawed. "Mr. Niles is just going to roll out the red carpet for you and give you his rover?"
"You need another submersible for safety reasons, Nick." Nathan said, ignoring for the moment but appreciating Li's sarcasm. "My guy will have your horizontal drive cleared in a few minutes. Come midnight, Lord willing, I can deliver that submersible. There are lives to consider."
"Now, don't you tell me—"
"Nick." Monroe interrupted Nicholas. "With the horizontal drive functional, we can navigate where we need to, set Gilgal down for a recharge, and come back to the coordinates at midnight. We do need at least one submersible. This could set us up for years to come."
"Assuming you let me disable the jammers so you can determine GPS coordinates." Nathan nodded with the men, knowing he was asking them to communicate with satellites and risk exposure again. "I'll do my best. If you must seclude yourselves from the world and God's plan of spreading His Word—"
"Don't preach to me, Patrick!" Nicholas raised his chin. "I know God's sanctifying call. No one will detour us."
"So be it. Midnight, then." Sometimes, Nathan reflected, he met pockets of Christians who refused help, refused rescue, or even freedom from bondage. All he could do was assist them and let them go.
Nathan was given his shirt and a wet suit, but he left his shoes behind. As the chamber filled with water, he and Li stood in their dive gear, facing one another. It was moments like this, with confidence in God, that Nathan thanked His Lord he was His servant. And sharing such a moment with a stunning agent . . .
"That's a pretty tall order, Patrick." Li donned her mask. "Shutting down the jammers and delivering a rover? A very tall order."
"We serve a tall God." Nathan smiled. "He specializes in tall orders."
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Trevor Niles pushed the joystick straight forward and forced the submersible to dive at such a steep angle it made Stajner strain against his chest harness in the copilot seat. But Stajner didn't complain. Now that he thought about it, Niles realized no one had spoken to him directly even as the Materia crew had readied the submersible for the most important dive yet. Their lack of communication meant they now shared his destiny, his desire, his determination. And they feared him. He wouldn't stop until he ruled the empire he wanted; the underwater bubble city of Gilgal would be his own! It wasn't too much to ask for. Fantasizing, he pictured the clientele and the millions he would preside over. All his!
The afternoon sun on the surface was quickly left behind, and Stajner flipped on the rover's bow lights. Niles was ready for a fight, but he hoped the Gillies took their defeat as the Christian cowards he knew they were. Those who resisted, would die. Those who wanted to share his reign, would die—like Captain Sardan and Guntari.
"We're at depth, sir," Stajner said twenty minutes later.
So busy was he contemplating his triumphal entry that Niles had nearly plowed straight into the sea floor! He eased back on the joystick and leveled the submersible. His own genius surprised him sometimes—this time particularly in regard to the conch he'd found and jammed into the door of Gilgal's dive chamber. Now the Gillies were trapped inside their habitat until he deemed it time to make the chamber operable again. There were rulers, he thought, and there were the ruled. He was definitely a ruler.
"Maybe we've drifted off course in an ocean flow." Stajner twisted in his seat to look around. "Usually the lights of Gilgal are visible within one hundred meters."
Niles wasn't too concerned. The Gillies might've powered down their lights to hide in the darkness of the ocean, but it was only a temporary state of hiding. Their fall was inevitable. After more than a two month siege, the castle was about to be claimed once and for all by its rightful king!
In widening circles, Niles piloted the rover in search of Gilgal. Since he hadn't come upon the dome yet, he surely must have been thrown off course during the dive. Seriously, he chuckled to himself, how far could a sunken city run?"
"I don't believe it!" Stajner cursed and wiped condensation from the glass. "Are those the sub-chambers? Where's the city?"
Now, Niles felt like puking. Sure enough, a large circle on the ocean floor, like a shadowy eclipse, marked where Gilgal had once rested. The twelve sub-chambers that had been attached to the central dome now lay dark and alone on the ocean floor. Gilgal had vanished!
"It isn't possible . . ." Niles looked directly up, suspecting Gilgal might drop from the surface and crush them. But that was absurd; Gilgal had no piloting capabilities, no drive, or thrust! They had to be there somewhere!
Refusing to be defeated, Niles continued down the Reef to the southeast. If Gilgal had somehow moved, perhaps it had followed the current and was still nearby. Or it had slid off the continental shelf even farther, and had imploded under crushing pressures. The surface would be strewn with debris if that were the case, and he'd seen no debris.
The longer Niles searched, the more he felt his hatred rise. Fools had done this. Religious fools! Christians, no less. Men and women who believed in a great Being in the sky had outsmarted him time and again. These Christians were nothing like the Christian converts on the island of his birth, Zalzuna, whose communist rule easily shut the mouth of any confessor. Once Niles had ventured into the world from the island, he'd expected to find a similar breed. He'd even targeted Christians because he knew they were weak. Christians weren't smarter than he was, nor more crafty, by any means. Yet, they boasted that a Spirit watched over them, and if Niles hadn't shown that such ideas were complete fiction, he might've begun to believe it.
"They think they've won," Niles mumbled, not caring if Stajner heard him. "They think I won't go after them—or others like them. I'll make them pay. I'll find them, or trap them, wherever they are. Maybe not the Gillies, but there are other Christians. I'll get them . . ."
Boiling with anger and defeat, Niles turned back, and began the ascent to the Materia. He wished he didn't have to face the crew under such a defeated state—again. At least he could use their own frustration with the Christians to reignite their fervor for another enterprise elsewhere. No one would deter his destiny to rule!
*~*
Chapter Twelve
Silently, Nathan and Marlon climbed aboard the Materia by way of the stern dive platform. They didn't have long to take over the ship, not with Niles due back soon when he didn't find Gilgal where he thought he would. There were men and women on the helipad near the tail of the two-man chopper, but the late evening crowd was nowhere else on deck.
"Captain Sardan was using his electrical codes as leverage to keep himself alive," Marlon said quietly as they walked into the vehicle hangar. Nathan, Marlon, and Chen Li had spent the last hour of darkness treading water a short distance away from the Materia, waiting and planning these very moves. "Once he left the power activated to dive to Gilgal, he became expendable to Niles. That's my guess as to why Niles blew him up."
"I think you're on to something there." Nathan pointed at the upper deck. He wasn't used to talking much during an operation. "Just get those jammers turned off and make that call to my people. Li can't hold off Niles forever."
Marlon nodded and, still in his wetsuit, bounded up the stairs to the bridge above deck three. Nathan, however, descended the stairs cautiously and prayerfully, knowing that which lay ahead would require much more than his own careless tongue to end the conflict on board. God Himself was the only One who could bring true peace to the rebellious hearts on the Materia.
On deck two, Nathan moved uncontested through the engine room to the four-man cabin in the bow. Two men were lounging in their bunks when he stepped into the doorway. One of them was the goon from Nathan's first day on board who he'd bested in the dive locker.
Both men set down their magazines and looked at one another, then swung their feet off their bunks. They paused before standing when Nathan raised his hand.
"Now, you know it'll take a lot more than you two to take me down. Hear me out." Nathan glanced down the corridor, wary of more men who could become potential problems, especially when he was as tired as he was. "Niles has been thwarted. Gilgal has a drive engine and they've flown the coop. They got tired of the assaults and took off, probably never to be found again."
"You're lying, Patrick," one man said. "Gilgal is a city. I've seen her. Cities don't have drives."
"If you don't like the drive scenario, then the city vanished from the sea floor. Those are your only two options. Believe what you want." Nathan shrugged. "The point is, Niles' plan blew up in his face, and now the authorities are on the way."
"Yeah, right. The authorities don't even know we're anything but explorers."
"Really?" Nathan chuckled. "You're one of those aboard who still thinks I crashed my plane by accident? Near one of the only vessels within fifty miles? Come on. Neither of you believes that, anymore."
Both exchanged looks.
"Where's Mr. Niles?"
"He's about to be arrested." Nathan placed his hands on his hips. "There was an underlying conflict here. Are you guys aware of it?" They looked on with uncertainty. "No matter how misplaced the Gillies' determination was to be separate from the world, they're still Christians—God's people. Evil certainly wins a lot of battles in this world, but how can you expect to take on the Creator of the world and win? Christians were targeted here, and that means God was targeted."
"I don't believe that garbage."
"Sure, you do. Deep down, you've known you were no accident, that there was some purpose for your life. You each have a conscience, which science can't explain. You both stand accused or excused as individuals. Maybe you've grown a little calloused, but some part of you has questioned the afterlife. Here you've risked your lives to take something below the water. You've stared death in the face, so you've both thought about death. When you stand alone before God, do you think you'll throw some good deeds at a perfect God's feet and demand heaven based on those deeds?"
"Patrick, you're out of your mind. You're as crazy as those Gillies."
"Be quiet and listen." Nathan gave them a fierce stare, a daring look. Though he hadn't rehearsed this conversation, it was one he'd had with countless captive audiences around the world during some of the worst missions to rescue God's people. "Both of you have some ugliness inside of you that can't be solved by penance or the claim of anything good in you or your past. It's time to take account and call out to God for forgiveness. He made a way through Jesus on the cross. All that sin you're carrying—it's time to hand it over to a wrathful but also a merciful God." He checked his watch. "I'd say you have ten minutes before the authorities get here from the coast."
