Several bodies floating in the water confirmed Davidson's worst fear.
"Just float, huh?" Bunny asked as she removed her head from his shoulder.
Davidson tried to maneuver so that he went through first. If anything he should be able to make sure she got through alive. Then of course she would have to make it all the way through the Sodom cavern, fight her way through the small hole in the wall, now well below water level, get into the outpost before it too was underwater, and then make her way across the Jordan desert by herself to civilization.
None of that sounded very likely, but hey, what could you do?
"We've got to work together to try and go upstream." Davidson clarified, "I'm going to do most of the kicking, but I need you to-"
"Or you could just catch a ride," a voice called out from behind him. Davidson swiveled to find the SUV had come up alongside them. Lopez and Harvish were using part of the fenders as paddles while Talli used the other as a rudder. "On the LHT-SUV gondola service."
Talli turned the SUV so that it blocked the passage. "Hop aboard."
Rebecca helped Bunny onto the SUV's roof, although she noticed that Davidson didn't take his hand off of her the whole time. Nothing like a little death-defying experience to bond you. Rebecca should know. Hopefully their bond held up better than hers and Brandt's.
"So do we have a plan?" Davidson asked, whipping the water off his face.
"Yeah," Rebecca said, not able to keep the trepidation out of her voice.
Lopez though had no such trouble. "Brandt came up with a plan and it is legendary!"
As Lopez detailed Brandt's plan, Rebecca became less and less certain of it.
"That isn't a plan," Davidson said. "It's a suicide mission."
"I know, right?" Lopez said. "We really need to give morphine to Brandt more often."
Rebecca wasn't so sure of that. At the least the drug had forced him to rest, but his breaths were shallow and the cast of his skin had grayed. She'd seen it before and had sworn to never see it again.
"Do we even have enough C-4 to pull this off?" Davidson asked.
Lopez handed the private his sniper rifle. "Depends on if you make the shot on the first try." Rebecca watched Davidson visibly sag. Lopez though smacked the younger man in the arm. "Come on, dude, you missing the mark isn't even part of our worst-case scenario calculations."
Davidson accepted the rifle and then glanced down to the ropes secured to the car doors. "What are those for?"
"Oh those?" Lopez said. "Those are part of our worst-case scenario."
Brandt startled awake feeling as if he was lying under a wide-open faucet. Then he realized that he was. A briny faucet. In a cavern. Where they were all about to either be drowned or crushed. That faucet.
Water dripped from his face, ears, clothes. There wasn't a single square inch that wasn't saturated through and through. He looked to Rebecca as water streamed down her soaked hair, creating its own mini-waterfall. She wasn't looking at him though. Instead she was watching Davidson as he set up his shot.
Right. Rescue attempt still in progress. Got it.
The end of the grappling hook, smeared in C-4, protruded out the M4 rifle. It was an outright insane plan. Really it should have by all rights come from Lopez, but they were desperate enough that Brandt's mind had gone to extreme solutions. Besides, he had to live up to Rebecca's confidence even if it was the last thing he ever did. Which, with this plan, was the most likely result.
"Um, Davidson," Lopez said. "You going to take the shot or wait until we can just hook that thing up there ourselves?"
Brandt looked to the side of the SUV. He could only see water. No buildings. No salt. No Gomorrah. They floated on an underground lake. A lake with about a half dozen raging waterfalls. And the white magnesium fire? It still raged across the ceiling crackling and sparking. The sound reverberated through the cavern, making it nearly impossible to hear your own thoughts let alone anything else.
"Do it," Brandt ordered.
Davidson swallowed, then tightened his grip on the rifle, pushing it hard against his shoulder. Brandt watched the younger man settle into his shot. Even with the road map of scars across his face, you could see the determination etched into his features. You could feel the shot building within the man. The mark of a great shooter. He was envisioning exactly where he wanted the hook to go. He could see the successful hit. Even if no one else could, he could.
Even before Davidson fired, Brandt knew the grappling hook would hit exactly where they needed. Davidson's posture was just that certain.
And sure enough, when Davidson pulled the trigger, the grappling hook zipped through the air, passing through water and fire and hitting its mark like the center of a bull's-eye.
Okay, the easy part was done.
On to the insane part.
"Can I just say one last time how much I love this plan?" Lopez said, winking at Rebecca as he secured the rope around her waist.
"You mean before we all get killed," she clarified. The corporal really was way too excited by all of this. "Weirdo."
"Yep," he said, winking again, and then his face sobered. "If he passes out again, you may have to pull his line for him."
"'He' is sitting right here," Brandt guffed.
"Sarge, that would be 'lying' right here, and we've got to be prepared if you decide to take another nap."
Rebecca put a hand on Brandt's knee and gave it a squeeze. He really shouldn't be wasting energy trying to be all tough. Plus Lopez was being kind. Brandt hadn't taken a "nap," he'd lapsed into unconsciousness. They couldn't rouse him. She had to stuff down the memory of having to check his pulse to be sure he was still alive.
Lopez rose and spoke to the entire group. "Once we break through the ceiling and head up, we don't know exactly what to expect. We could be facing a thousand feet of Dead Sea overhead or only the average depth of four hundred feet." He checked Bunny and Davidson's lines, then Talli's, then Harvish's. "What we do know is that we are going to ride the SUV as far up as we can, then cut the line and strike for the surface. How much swimming we may have to do is a big fat question mark, so be sure to take in plenty of oxygen before we launch."
Unlike the rest of them, Lopez only wrapped the rope around his wrist. This plan required him to be mobile. Which of course Lopez would have insisted upon even if the plan didn't.
Lopez picked up his fender/paddle and guided the SUV outside the blast area. He hit the detonator, and yet another huge chunk of ceiling came down. But would it be enough? It was going to have to be as Lopez draped a large tarp over them all.
"Everybody, oxygen-up!"
Taking deep breaths, Rebecca watched as Lopez guided the SUV under the downpour. The water from the newest hole hit them with such force that it actually shoved the SUV a foot farther down into the water. If they didn't get going they'd go down with the vehicle as water lapped at the SUV's roof.
"Three," Lopez announced. "Two. Screw it!"
He hit the second detonator, the one that exploded the six huge directional C-4 charges placed on the undercarriage of the SUV. One moment they were floating on the lake, and in another gut-wrenching moment they were being hurled upward.
The metal vibrated in loud protest just as Brandt's hand went limp.
Davidson held Bunny close as they hit the wildfire. The tarp overhead lit up with flame, but Lopez was there to cut the tarp loose before any of the magnesium could touch them. Then they were within the heart of the breach.
He tucked Bunny's head close as he took his last breath for who knew how long. Water surged around them. Not water from the Dead Sea, but actually the Dead Sea itself as the controlled explosion propelled them upward through the water toward the moonlight.
Then they broke the surface. What?
They shouldn't have broken the surface yet. Bunny gasped next to him as the SUV vaulted up into the sky. Without the resistance of the water, they overshot the surface, by a lot, a lot.
"Hang tight!" Lopez yelled.
If it weren't so wrong their flight would have been beautiful. It felt like they were on a ship to the moon. And Lopez was their gondolier, standing tall, the moonlight framing his shoulders. Davidson tried to memorize each and every sight since if they survived Lopez was going to want an exact recounting of how awesome he looked.
As their velocity slowed, the sensation of weightlessness took over. Thank goodness for the ropes, otherwise he feared they would have been flung into the night.
Then they would fell back to the water. The density of the salt would break their fall. The SUV would absorb most of the impact. This could still work.
That was until Lopez stumbled and righted himself, but then he stumbled again.
Davidson realized why.
The SUV was tipping. Tipping over.
Brandt snapped awake as Lopez scrambled to get to the other side of the SUV to balance it out, but he was too late. In a sweeping motion, the SUV flipped over, hurtling back down toward the Dead Sea with them on the wrong side of the equation. If they landed like this, they'd be crushed between the SUV and the water.
Lopez dangled from his rope, swinging back and forth like a circus performer.
"Cut loose!" Brandt yelled through the tumult of noise.
Almost reluctantly Lopez swung farther out and let go, straightening his body, getting ready for impact with the water.
"Everyone!" Brandt yelled, but the others were already all over it. All except him. Between the shock and the morphine, his fingers just couldn't get the right end of the slipknot. Then Rebecca's fingers were there.
Even she had a hard time though, especially trying to keep the pack with the tablets on her arm. He could see her make the decision.
"Don't!" Brandt begged, but with a smile she dropped the backpack into the rift and then wrapped her rope around him. Brandt watched the backpack disappear down into the cavern as Rebecca shoved hard off the SUV before tugging them both loose. Arm in arm they sailed through the air in free fall. The wind whistled around them as they dove, together, toward the dark blue sea. All in all not a bad way to go.
Craning his neck he watched Lopez hit feet first, and then the corporal disappeared beneath the surface. The others slammed into the water. The impact jarred Brandt's already trashed bones. He gathered his remaining strength to pull Rebecca close and roll them out of the way as the SUV crashed right beside them, missing them by inches.
The waters roiled around them, making it hard to tell which way was the surface. Pushing off against the SUV, he sent them moving, but whether it was the right direction or not Brandt had no good idea.
Then he saw flashing lights. Where those real or just in his head? It didn't matter, they needed to head somewhere. Thankfully the sea was as buoyant as advertised and they breached the surface within seconds.
"Here!" a voice called out.
Every movement searing, Brandt struggled to keep up with Rebecca. Then a hand was at his back, pulling him up.
"Put your feet down, Sarge!"
He did as instructed and damn if his boots didn't hit the seabed. With a lot of help, he was able to stand. How was that possible?
Then he saw the long crack in the sea floor that went as far as the eye could see. They must have opened up a much larger fault line than they'd thought as the Dead Sea drained into the breach, leaving them this narrow patch of land. Before he could absorb the sight, he realized they were missing a man.
"Where's Lopez?"
But why did he bother to ask as the corporal rode a wave on his fender, working it side to side until he nailed a perfect landing next to them?
"Oh. My. God. Cave surfing," Lopez exclaimed. "I so want to go pro!"
That was going to have to wait until they found a way out from the middle of the Dead Sea. Christ only knew Brandt didn't have it in him to swim to shore. And which shore became an issue. Were they on the- Above the roar of the water, a gunshot pierced the air. Hot blood sprayed across Brandt's face. Not his blood. Not Rebecca's blood. Harvish's blood.
The point man stumbled forward, red gushing from his chest. He didn't have on a bulletproof vest. Harvish had given Brandt his vest. The man was now coughing blood because of Brandt.
No, not again.
Brandt gripped the man's shoulders, holding him up. "We are getting you out of here."
Another shot and Harvish screamed as the second bullet hit him in the back. Brandt looked over the point man's shoulder. He expected to find Aunush and her goons, only it wasn't them. It was the Jordanian army. What looked like an entire platoon lined the eastern bank of the Dead Sea. All with their guns raised.
"Help me," Brandt asked Rebecca, but Harvish shoved away the offer.
"Go!" the point man demanded as he brought his gun up. "Now!"
Harvish would have made a great commander one day. He'd gotten that growling order down. Brandt could still disobey him. And Brandt would have except Harvish turned toward the eastern bank and ran straight toward the army, firing away.
Too weak to resist Rebecca, Brandt stumbled west with her. "He's made his choice!" she yelled over the gunfire.
But it was the wrong choice. It should have been Brandt to provide their cover.
It should have been him to die.
Davidson and the other men ignored Brandt's protest as they rushed headlong to the northwestern bank, following the crack along the Dead Sea floor. It was already the shallow end of the sea, and with the bulk of the water rushing toward the cavern, they were sloshing through only a foot of water.
An anguished scream came from behind them. Harvish fell face-first into the water, finally succumbing. Davidson had only known the point man, what, a few dozen hours, yet he felt Harvish's death hit deep in his gut. As the point man's body floated on the water, carrying him toward the breach, Davidson looked to Brandt.
The sergeant's face was a mask of shame. "It should have been me," he mumbled.
Again, everyone ignored the sergeant as they picked up speed, heading toward the blue and white lights of the Israeli police. Sure they would be questioned, maybe even tortured, but it was a far cry above being captured by the Jordanian secret police. Davidson had enough scars already, thank you.
The Israelis waded into the water, stopping at some invisible line. It must have been the Israel-Jordan border. Davidson glanced back to find the Jordanian army doing the same. Which would they reach first?
"Move it!" Lopez ordered as he helped lift Brandt off his feet. The sergeant protested, but Lopez and Talli got them moving faster.
A loudspeaker squawked to life, carrying harsh Arabic words.
Talli translated. "If you fire on them, you fire on Israel!"
This announcement seemed to give the Jordanians pause. And Lopez apparently wanted to make the most of it as they surged ahead, straight at the line of Israeli soldiers, even though the soldiers' weapons were up. At the last moment the sea of green uniforms parted, allowing them to pass.