Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 107079 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 535(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107079 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 535(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
I looked around. There wasn’t anything to hide behind in the concrete loading area; it was just a big, open space. But downstairs, next to the water: they wouldn’t need to go down there. I grabbed Alison’s hand and hurried down the steps. Then I pushed her under the staircase. There wasn’t room for two of us to squeeze in, so I ran to the matching staircase on the other side of the warehouse and ducked under it.
I heard the side door open and, a second later, the lights flickered on. Now there really was nowhere to hide. But as long as they didn’t come down here… We exchanged nervous glances from across the warehouse and tried not to make a sound.
And then something weird happened. The black water in front of us started to bulge upwards in the middle, like the lake had become solid. I stared...and then, as the water started to splash around the edges, my perception shifted. Something black and curved was rising up out of the lake.
We’d got it wrong. The boat had shown up right on time. We just hadn’t been able to see it because it had been slipping silently under the water. Grushin was using a submarine.
Footsteps from above. The shipment had arrived...and Grushin’s men were coming down here to unload it.
53
ALISON
There was no time to call Valentin. There was no time to do anything. Any second, Grushin’s men were going to start down the stairs and see us. There was only one place to hide.
I scrambled out from under the staircase and dived into the lake, fully clothed. Across the warehouse. I saw Gennadiy do the same. At least it was early September and the water wasn’t too cold.
I swam under the catwalk, where the shadows would hide me as long as I kept still, and started treading water. The first of Grushin’s men clattered down the metal staircase, then another and another. They gathered on the catwalk, right above my face. Apparently, my side of the warehouse was the unloading side. Great.
Now that the lights were on, I could see the shape of the submarine. It wasn’t some huge thing, like the nuclear submarines navies use. It was only about the size of a small truck. And it didn’t look like something a navy would build, either: there were dents where some of the metal panels had been hammered into place, and exposed pipes secured by cable ties. This was homemade and barely hanging together: it probably needed repairs after every trip.
One of the companies Grushin had been calling did welding. That’s what that was for.
I’d heard of drug smugglers building their own submarines and using them to get their product into the US, but I’d never thought someone might use one to smuggle across Lake Michigan. The Coast Guard boat we’d seen made sense, now. Grushin hadn’t wanted their patrol routes from Yakov so he could avoid the Coast Guard, it was so the submarine could sail right behind them, in their sonar blind spot.
The men above me were laughing and joking in Russian while they waited for the people on board to unseal the hatch. They weren’t in any hurry...but I was already starting to get tired. There was only about an inch of air between the surface of the water and the underside of the catwalk, so I couldn’t tread water normally. I had to arch my back and half-lie so that my lips stayed above water, and that made it very hard to kick downwards and stay afloat. If I could have grabbed the edge of the catwalk and clung on, I would have been okay, but I didn’t dare: if one of the men glanced down and saw my fingers, we were dead. Worst of all, the submarine had churned the water up, and every few seconds, a wave would fill the gap beneath the catwalk and swamp me completely, cutting off my air. I was already getting tired.
That’s when I had a horrible realization: no one was coming to rescue us. Gennadiy had told Valentin to stay put. They wouldn’t have been able to see the submarine arrive. They had no idea we were in trouble.
To take my mind off the tiredness, I focused on what was going on. A hatch had opened in the top of the submarine, and a bearded man threw ropes to men on the catwalk to hold the thing in place. He gingerly climbed out, down a ladder, and across a makeshift gangplank to the catwalk. The cargo will be next…
But then a woman in her twenties appeared, looking around fearfully. As she climbed down the ladder, another woman emerged from the hatch. Jesus, it’s sex trafficking. Grushin was selling Russian women to American men.
Then a boy emerged, no older than ten. What? And then a man in his thirties. What the hell is going on?