The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje [75]
He ran his palms up and down the bomb case to detect any rips in the metal. The submerged section would be safe, but oxygen could ignite if it came into contact with exposed explosive. Carlyle’s flaw. X over Y. If there were rips they would have to use liquid nitrogen.
‘It’s a two-thousand-pound bomb, sir. Esau.’ Hardy’s voice from the top of the mud pit.
‘Type-marked fifty, in a circle, B. Two fuze pockets, most likely. But we think the second one is probably not armed. Okay?’
They had discussed all this with each other before, but things were being confirmed, remembered for the final time.
‘Put me on a microphone now and get back.’
‘Okay, sir.’
Kip smiled. He was ten years younger than Hardy, and no Englishman, but Hardy was happiest in the cocoon of regimental discipline. There was always hesitation by the soldiers to call him ‘sir,’ but Hardy barked it out loud and enthusiastically.
He was working fast now to prise out the fuze, all the batteries inert.
‘Can you hear me? Whistle … Okay, I heard it. A last topping up with oxygen. Will let it bubble for thirty seconds. Then start. Freshen the frost. Okay, I’m going to remove the dam … Okay, dam gone.’
Hardy was listening to everything and recording it in case something went wrong. One spark and Kip would be in a shaft of flames. Or there could be a joker in the bomb. The next person would have to consider the alternatives.
‘I’m using the quilter key.’ He had pulled it out of his breast pocket. It was cold and he had to rub it warm. He began to remove the locking ring. It moved easily and he told Hardy.
‘They’re changing guard at Buckingham Palace,’ Kip whistled. He pulled off the locking ring and the locating ring and let them sink into the water. He could feel them roll slowly at his feet. It would all take another four minutes.
‘Alice is marrying one of the guard. “A soldier’s life is terrible hard,” says Alice!’
He was singing it out loud, trying to get more warmth into his body, his chest painfully cold. He kept trying to lean back far enough away from the frozen metal in front of him. And he had to keep moving his hands up to the back of his neck, where the sun still was, then rub them to free them of the muck and grease and frost. It was difficult to get the collet to grip the head. Then to his horror the fuze head broke away, came off completely.
‘Wrong, Hardy. Whole fuze head snapped off. Talk back to me, okay? The main body of the fuze is jammed down there, I can’t get to it. There’s nothing exposed I can grip.’
‘Where is the frost at?’ Hardy was right above him. It had been a few seconds but he had raced to the shaft.
‘Six more minutes of frost.’
‘Come up and we’ll blow it up.’
‘No, pass me down some more oxygen.’
He raised his right hand and felt an icy canister being placed in it.
‘I’m going to dribble the muck onto the area of exposed fuze – where the head separated – then I’ll cut into the metal. Chip through till I can grip something. Get back now, I’ll talk it through.’
He could hardly keep his fury back at what had happened. The muck, which was their name for oxygen, was going all over his clothes, hissing as it hit the water. He waited for the frost to appear and then began to shear metal off with a chisel. He poured more on, waited and chiselled deeper. When nothing came off he ripped free a bit of his shirt, placed it between the metal and the chisel, and then banged the chisel dangerously with a mallet, chipping off fragments. The cloth of his shirt his only safety against a spark. What was more of a problem was the