His voice came through the pipe thin, shivering, and hoarse against the roar of the intake surge. "Nathan, the wheel is jammed from the outside! Keller didn't just chain the wheel—he drove two steel wedges into the lower dog cams!"
I lowered the lantern beam down to the base of the door. The murky water covered the lower hinges, but my gloved fingers found the obstruction immediately. Two four-inch construction wedges, stamped with the Vance Corporation shipyard crest, had been driven deep into the guide tracks with a sledgehammer. Whoever set them had not simply tried to keep Gabe inside; they had locked the dogs into the keeper plates so the emergency manual release could not trip even if the automated solenoids burned out.
"Can you reach the bypass chain on the overhead crane?" I shouted into the tube.
"The motor seized twenty minutes ago!" Gabe called back, his teeth chattering so hard the syllables blurred. "When she cut the main bus upstairs, the backpressure blew the packing on Valve Two! The river's coming in through the primary conduit at two hundred gallons a minute! Nathan, the water's past my sternum! The catwalk grating is bowing!"
"Hold the railing, Gabe! Give me three minutes!"
I hooked the jaws of the heavy bolt cutters onto the chain wrapped around the upper handwheel. I braced my right knee against the concrete bulkhead, seated the heat-treated cutting edges into a master link, and leaned my full two hundred and ten pounds onto the upper handle. The steel resisted, groaning under the mechanical advantage, before the hardened link fractured with a sharp, pistol-shot snap that stung my palms through the leather.
I unwrapped the severed chain and dropped it into the water, where it sank with a dull splash. But when I seized the spokes of the iron wheel and drove my weight downward, the wheel refused to turn. The wedges at the base were jammed solid, driven home under the immense outward pressure of six feet of trapped river water pressing against twelve square feet of steel plate.
The hydrostatic load was pinning the door against its frame. Even with the chain gone, twelve hundred tons of head pressure were acting like an invisible hydraulic ram, holding the dogs locked into their keepers. I could break my back against the spokes and the hatch would not budge an eighth of an inch until the water level on my side equalized with the water level inside—or until the pressure inside dropped.
"Nathan!" Gabe’s voice rattled through the brass horn, tighter now, stripped of breath. "The lower seal just ruptured! It’s rising past my collar!"
Behind me, the sound of sloshing steps echoed down the service corridor. I turned the lantern beam back toward the stairs, expecting Keller with a sidearm or private security trying to contain the floor.
It was Arthur Vance.
The old man had stripped off his tailored tuxedo jacket. His white dress shirt was soaked to the elbows, his black silk tie was tucked into his waistband, and he was wading through the knee-deep mud with a heavy cast-iron spud bar he had pulled from the fire equipment board at the base of the stairs. His face was gray with exhaustion and terror, but his jaw was set with the old, ruthless shipyard focus that had built his family's company before his daughter had taken over the boardroom.
"The guests are clearing out through the north colonnade," Arthur said, his voice ragged as he reached the bulkhead and leaned against the concrete wall for balance. "The fire marshals just pulled onto the esplanade. Nathan, where is the boy?"
"He's behind that door," I said, pointing the lantern at the inspection glass. "Your security man hammered wedges into the cam tracks before he locked it. And Gabe's got maybe five minutes before the water hits the intake ceiling."
Arthur looked through the glass, his eyes widening as he saw Gabe's chin tilted up toward the concrete vault to keep his mouth above the dark, swirling current.
"We have to reverse the main drain," Arthur said, reaching toward the jammed wheel.
"The main drain discharges into the city storm trunk, Arthur," I said, catching his wrist. "Your daughter signed the municipal permit variance three weeks ago. She abandoned that trunk to build the sunken parking terrace. If we try to force that valve, the backflow will blow the basement floorboards right out from under the lobby."
"Then what empties this gallery?" Arthur yelled over the rising roar of the water.
"The south storm bypass," I said, turning the beam down the adjoining service spur toward an iron wheel painted high-visibility yellow. "It dumps directly into the lower exhibition hall beneath the north ballroom. The wing with the Italian marble and the municipal historical archives."