Gino Ravenelli could not believe the day he was having. He was wearing the pony bottle and the dive mask, thank God, so they kept the raw sewage from entering his nose, mouth or eyes, but he couldn’t see a thing. He had lowered himself into the muck and swum under it to a lateral tunnel near the base of the cistern. Even with the facemask blocking the stench, just the idea that he was swimming under a river of shit made his skin crawl. It was as if his body instantly recognized it was in a place it should not be. In addition to nausea, he felt wild disorientation and his muscles cramped as he felt his way along the tunnel wall with his hand outstretched in front of him. It was a standard sewer tunnel—just large enough for him to wriggle through it, the mushy solids and slime easing his passage. He found it easier on him if he closed his eyes as he went. It wasn’t as if he could see anything out the facemask anyway.
After what seemed like a lifetime, and with Gino acutely aware of the dwindling supply of air in the tiny pony bottle, he reached the end of the tunnel. It was just a flat concrete wall at the end, but as he felt along above him on the ceiling of the tubular wall, he found a smaller drain that clearly led into the tunnel at this end.
It’ll have to do, he thought.
He removed the small C4 charge he had set before descending into the cistern, twisted a manual dial that acted as a detonator, and pushed the device against the side of the drain wall, just over the drain’s entrance to the tunnel. Then he began to wriggle his bulk back the way he had come. It took a long time and he was aware that the small pony bottle’s air was nearly up, when he felt his legs were no longer constrained by the walls of the tunnel. He shoved off with his arms and his body was floating freely in the large cistern. He swam to the surface and wiped the slime from the front of his mask’s faceplate. The rusted metal ladder was within arm’s reach. He grabbed it and began climbing, not stopping to take the mask or the pony bottle off.
At the top of the ladder, Gino threw his body into the original access tunnel he had used to reach the cistern. He cinched his eyes shut, and covered his ears with the palms of his hands. He held his breath.
The explosion was gentler than Gino had expected. He felt a distant rumbling deeper in the facility, but the only effect near him was a loud belching bubble of sewage that spayed up nearly to the ceiling of the cistern behind him. Then all was quiet.
Gino shuffled backward out of the access tunnel, grabbed the flaking rungs of the ladder and twisted around to peer down at the bottom of the cistern through his smudged facemask. The level of fecal matter had dropped by probably 70 percent at the bottom, but he still couldn’t see the entrance to the sewer tunnel submerged beneath the surface. He rapidly descended the ladder and swam to the far wall, once more diving under the surface and feeling his way to the tunnel. Then he shuffled down its length again. When he reached the end this time, the drain that had been above his head the last time now felt like a large open area. He swam upward and in a short time, his hand no longer met resistance and he realized he had broken the surface of the nasty substance.
Gino Ravenelli wiped the muck a final time from the faceplate of his mask and his thoughts lightened. He scrambled up over the broken concrete and porcelain remains and found himself on the tile floor of the bathroom. A bathroom that looked like it had received a visitor with the worst case of explosive diarrhea in history. The walls and ceiling were splattered and coated with raw sewage and the detonation of the C4 had destroyed a significant number of fixtures in the room. The metal stall dividers had been blow across the room and now rested against the far wall, blocking the exit from the room The floor was coated under nearly two feet of sewage.
But Gino had eyes only for the sink.