As Carlson and DeWolfe were tossed into the narrow holding cell along with Harvath, Morrell, and Avigliano, the first thing they noticed was the absence of Alexandra.
It was the question all of them were asking themselves, but which none of them really wanted to know the answer to. “She’s being held someplace else,” offered Harvath.
“She’s a big girl and can handle herself. Right now we’ve got other things to worry about,” said Morrell, focusing the team’s attention on the matter at hand. Though he doubted the makeshift brig was wired for sound, there was no sense in taking any chances. Stavropol and his team were proving to be very accomplished adversaries, and so he lowered his voice as he turned to Carlson and asked, “Did they get the detonator?”
“The charges were already placed, but they got everything else that was left in my bag,” responded the demolitions expert, “including the detonator.”
“Fuck,” responded Morrell who then turned to DeWolfe. “How about you? Were you able to sabotage the air defense system?”
DeWolfe crossed his fingers and held them up for Morrell to see.
“That’s it then,” said Harvath. “Now we wait.”
“Screw that,” whispered Carlson as he began scanning the room. It looked like it had been some kind of refrigeration unit at one point. “We’re going to find a way out of here.”
“We’ve already looked. That door is it,” replied Avigliano.
“So, what? We just give up?”
“No,” said Morrell. “We continue to try and find a way out of here.”
Carlson looked at his watch. “Well, whatever we do, we’ve got six minutes to get it together. I targeted their main power supply, as well as their auxiliary. I had no idea we’d end up in a room that depended on a mechanical ventilation system for its air.”
“Okay,” said Morrell, taking control of the situation, “so we’ve got six minutes and counting. We can do this. Everybody put your thinking caps on and I don’t want to hear a single word unless it has to do with how we can get ourselves out of here.”
The room was completely silent as the men went over it again inch by inch. The ventilation system itself was too small for any of them to squeeze through so they spent their time probing for loose ceiling panels or a way to trigger the locking mechanism from their side of the door. Their efforts, though, were all in vain.
Carlson’s eyes were glued to his watch as the final seconds of electricity ticked away before the main power shut down. The backup system momentarily came to life, and then it too went down. DeWolfe tried to comfort his colleagues by explaining that from what he had been able to gather, the air defense system, like the fire alarm system, had a battery backup and so his part of the operation would still be successful. The response to his revelation was lackluster at best, as the men took pains to conserve their oxygen.
The first thing they noticed was the suffocating heat. The amount of warmth that could be generated by five men in such a small, enclosed space was amazing. Condensation amassed upon the ceiling and either slowly dripped on top of them or trickled down the walls in thin rivulets.
As they began breathing in short gasps, DeWolfe wondered if maybe their captors had no idea that they were running out of oxygen. He pounded on the steel door until he lost the feeling in both of hands and then he kicked at it until he was so dizzy from hypoxia that he had to sit back down.
As time wore on, Harvath developed a pounding headache accompanied by severe dizziness, but what frightened him the most was the sense of euphoria beginning to overtake him. He heard a voice somewhere within the recesses of his mind warn him that after euphoria came the fourth and final stage of hypoxia wherein victims lost consciousness and quickly succumbed to death. He tried to fight his fatigue and rally against another voice that was quickly gathering strength in his mind. It told him that there was nothing he could do and that he should relax and let it happen. He had nothing to fear.
Harvath knew the message was a lie; that he should not listen to it. He closed his mind against the darkness and tried to focus on his breathing. He needed to slow his heart rate and respiration. The ship’s crew was probably already working on restoring power and they would have breathable air again soon.Breathable air. He kept repeating the words to himself until the darkness of hypoxia finally overtook him.