Chapter 53 Alison
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?
I was getting seriously tired, now, my thighs burning from keeping me afloat. Every time a wave broke over my face, my body went into panic mode, and I had to force myself not to scramble out from under the catwalk to breathe. Just a few more minutes. That must be almost all of them.
But the people kept coming. Mostly men, but some women and a few children.
Nine of them in all. Nine people, plus the pilot, plus a couple of men with guns who came out last. The submarine wasn’t big: they must have been packed in like cattle.
I tried to imagine being stuck in the windowless metal tube for the hours it must have taken to cross from Canada, knowing that a single leak or fault in the homemade engineering would send you straight to the bottom of the lake.
..and that no one would even know to look for you. I shuddered.
I was praying that once all the people were out, everyone would leave.
But apparently, there was a whole procedure for shutting down the submarine and making it safe, and the men weren’t in any hurry.
I started to really panic: my muscles were cramping, and my legs felt like lead.
I looked across the warehouse to see how Gennadiy was doing.
He looked to be suffering, too, but at least on his side, without any men around, he could wrap his fingers around the edge of the catwalk to rest his legs occasionally.
His eyes were locked on me, willing me to keep going.
And I did, while the pilot climbed back aboard and vented gas and closed valves and then scribbled notes on a notepad.
But then my left leg really started to cramp and—come on, come on—now the pilot was fixing the rubber seal on the edge of the hatch—come on, please!
—and then another wave hit me in the face, and I needed so badly to cough, but I didn’t dare, and my lungs were burning—
My muscles cramped again, and this time, I sank.
As the catwalk moved away from me, I panicked and clawed my way upward, swimming with one leg.
I managed to get a gulp of air, but after a few seconds, the adrenaline rush faded, and my limbs felt as heavy as lead.
The men were finally leaving. Just another minute!
But then a wave came out of nowhere and went up my nose, and I was choking on lake water—
I sank again. This time, when I clawed, my muscles didn’t have enough energy to get me to the surface. For a moment, I hung in place, thrashing but not moving, using up what air I had left. Then everything went black, and I was sinking down and down and down.