Chapter 76 - Fire on the Ice
A rocket-propelled grenade skimmed across the surface of the black water, skipping off an ice floe fifty yards to our starboard side before exploding in a massive geyser of steam, slush, and shattered ice.
The shockwave rocked our launch on its side, the jet-drives screaming as they ingested air before biting down into the water again.
"Return fire!" Agent Lin yelled through the hatch intercom to the two marshals manning the mounted .50-caliber machine gun on the aft deck.
The heavy gun roared to life with a bone-jarring cadence: *thump-thump-thump-thump*.
Tracer rounds ripped through the freezing night, shredding the wheelhouse of the *Borealis*. Glass shattered, searchlights burst into showers of blinding white sparks, and the trawler’s deck crane shuddered as its hydraulic lines were severed, sending the yellow submersible plunging into the dark waters below with a tremendous splash.
"The sub is in the water!" Marilyn screamed over the noise of the gunfire. "Arthur is already on board!"
"Hold on!" Halloway yelled.
He didn't slow the launch. Instead, he steered straight for the trawler’s flank, cutting between the sinking submersible’s tether lines and the hull of the *Borealis*. As we swept past the enemy vessel, two armed men on the deck fired wildly down at us, but Miller and Lin picked them off with surgical precision.
"The caisson intake is fifty yards off our bow!" Halloway shouted, throwing the throttles into reverse to arrest our momentum. "The outer sea-gate is open! Arthur’s sub is diving down to the tunnel!"
Beneath the surface of the water, a massive green glow illuminated the dark depths. The underwater entrance to the Devil's Throat had been activated, its heavy floodlights casting an otherworldly emerald halo through thirty feet of crystalline lake water.
"We can't dive after him in this boat!" Thomas said, looking over the side at the freezing vortex.
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"We don't have to," Marilyn said, her face grim as she pointed to a rocky headland rising thirty yards away. "Donald built a surface access shaft through the old copper mine on the ridge. The vertical emergency stair descends straight into the subterranean dry dock. If we reach the pump room first, we can flood the caisson while Arthur is still inside the lock!"
"Let’s move," I said, strapping Ruby securely into my chest harness and grabbing Donald’s heavy brass key from beneath my collar. "We finish this where it started."
