He jumps, plunging feet first down the seventy-degree chute in total darkness, the air tank screeching at his back, the roar above his head momentarily receding. Pressing his forearms to the slick metallic surface, he tries desperately to slow his descent, using the neoprene wet suit as a brake pad.

Mick shoots out of the shaft opening, tumbling headfirst into the vertical facing of a rotor blade. Dazed, he struggles to his feet, registering powerful vibrations as the giant turbine growls to life beneath his feet.

Climb over—get back to the sub!

Mick pulls himself up and over the seven-foot-high blade as a river of seawater explodes out of the ceiling. He lands on his feet, panicking as turbine blades begin rotating, reversing, fighting to push the Barnacle free.

Don’t let the minisub leave without you!

Mick stumbles through knee-deep water, sucking in a deep breath of air before releasing the cumbersome air tank from his back. Freed from the weight, he leaps onto the titanium hull as a raging wall of water slams into him from behind, nearly tossing him from the vessel.

The donut-shaped chamber is filling quickly with water, the pressure building, threatening to burst the sub free at any moment. Mick pulls himself to the top of the Barnacle, feeling the pressure in his head intensify as he wrenches open the hatch and stumbles down the opening, slamming the entry shut behind him, sealing it with a twist.

An explosion of water flips the minisub sideways.

Mick tumbles down the ladder, landing hard on shards of broken equipment as the Barnacle is freed.

A screeching, deafening whine as the giant turbine accelerates to a hundred revolutions per second, propelling the minisub back up and out of its intake shaft like a speeding bullet.

Aboard the Scylla.

8:40 P.M.

“It’s a maelstrom!” Captain Furman is thrown over a control console, the floor twisting out from under him as twelve tons of steel drill pipe are hurled across the lower deck.

Sounds of screeching metal rend the air. With an agonized groan, the upper deck of the seven-story platform sways against the monstrous current, the Scylla listing at a sixty-degree angle as half a dozen submerged mooring lines attached to one pontoon refuse to yield to the growing vortex.

Technicians and equipment slide across the open decking, plunging helplessly into the raging emerald sea.

The remaining moor lines snap, releasing the rig from the seafloor. The buoyant superstructure rights itself—then spins, bobbing and pitching within the swirling mouth of the luminescent whirlpool.

Alarms howl against the night. Bewildered crewmen stagger from their cabins, only to be battered by flying debris. As their world gyrates around them in dizzying revolutions, they stumble down aluminum stairwells, moving to the lower deck, where a dozen lifeboats hang suspended from winches.