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Water sputtered from the tube Pitt waited a moment to make sure it wasn’t just some residue in the line but rather that the snorkel’sHe was definitely still underwater But judging by the light oozing in froly close

He checked the orange-faced Doxa watch that had been strapped to his wrist for decades Only twenty minutes had elapsed since he’d raced to save the Turtle Rescue teah he doubted police divers would have had tiet into their diving suits and tanks Pitt figured he still had enough air in the subh for the divers to reach the old suer where they expected to find hiet swept out of the worksite and into the river Recalling the speed of the current before the accident, Pitt estimated he was a mile south of where they expected to find him For all he knew, he could be abreast of Roosevelt Island

Logic told hiht course of action was to let the Turtle refill and escape so that, with luck, the an

tique could be recovered fro, it was likely that the little sub until it passed Governors Island and be lost for all time in the lower reaches of the harbor where it widened considerably

Pitt wasn’t one to give in to logic too quickly Not when he still had options The vertical propeller hadn’t spun in two hundred and fifty years and its blades were encrusted with dried tar that warped their shape and severely degraded their hydrodynaet the prop to crank at all, and it wasn’t until he put both hands on the knurled wooden handle and braced his feet against the hull did he succeed in turning it through one tortured revolution He kept at it, turning it a second, and slightly easier, rotation, and then a third and fourth time, until he could crank the propeller with one hand only and could feel through the contraption that the spindly blades were actually biting into the frigid river water

He cast a hopeful eye on the one viewport that let soh but couldn’t tell if his efforts had brought the Turtle closer to the surface The glass was just toohis air supply Now he had to pull air deep into his lungs to feel he was getting enough oxygen He did a multiplication question in his head tofrom carbon dioxide intoxication, which nitive function A quick check of his watch told him that thirty minutes had passed since he’d sealed himself inside the submersible and he’d just about reached his limit

One last gaain Moist, icy air cah the inch-wide tube, and Pitt drew it deep into his lungs He’d ed to surface the Turtle And no sooner had he taken a half dozen deep breaths, water again sluiced fro Pitt to hastily replace the plug Negatively buoyant even with her bilge dry, the Turtle needed the added boost of the vertical screw to stay on the surface Once it cleared the water, the craft iain

Pitt turned the screw handle furiously and could tell by how it lost resistance that it had broken the surface He was ready right away to open the snorkel and let fresh air enter the sub for a few precious seconds before the snorkel again dipped beneath the waves and he had to reseal it

Because the screw and snorkels were taller than the hatch/conning tower, Pitt knew that it was unlikely the top of the subhtly above fifty/fifty that a sharp-eyed captain or crewone of the dozens of ships, boats, and ferries that ply the waters of New York Harbor would spot the Turtle as it rose and dove repeatedly while it floated ever southward on the tidal current

Forty minutes later, Pitt adjusted his odds doard to zero He’d felt vibrations through the water twice that indicated a boat of some kind was near, but neither had spotted hih to the surface to draw in even a tiny a returns He wasn’t sufficiently replenishing the oxygen he was consu the vertical propeller to raise the suber, but he also knew that once he escaped the one-man sub, he’d still have to contend with the East River Always a strong swirueling struggle once he hit the water It didn’t help that his core temperature had dropped considerably since his clothes had been soaked by the leaky hatch

Defeat was a bitter pill to s, especially for Pitt, as he was a s far less than amble hadn’t paid off at all It was time to make his escape He needed the submersible to fill quickly so he could swim clear of it in as shallow a depth as possible Pitt would use his knife to reain the drips would turn into a steady rain

He’d just started at it when he felt soh the Turtle’s stout wooden hull It was like the vibrations he’d experienced earlier when a ship had passed close by, but this was soe of a giant vessel, a containership or tanker, bearing down on the submersible on a deadly collision course He suddenly felt very exposed The sound and vibration grew until it seenized the noise wasn’t a ship’s screws at all but the rotor doash from a helicopter

Ignoring the water dribbling down on his head froasket, Pitt cranked hard on the vertical prop handle with one hand and furiously worked the bilge puainst the sharp pain of s were soon sucking desperately at air that contained less and less of the life-giving oxygen and grew more toxic with his exhaled carbon dioxide

The chopper had to be directly overhead He could even hear the screams of its turbines over the hurricane-like downdraft The resistance against the screw blades vanished Pitt had ed to surface the sub one last ti more that he could do

He waited, knowing the Turtle was already starting to sink again He held out hope against hope, but as the seconds ticked by he had to adain