No Escape by Julie Moffett
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Lexi Carmichael
I heard numerous gasps as I teetered back and forth on the walkway, trying to regain my balance.
Please, please don’t screw this up. Don’t fall in.
Too late I realized I wasn’t close enough to reach Tito’s outstretched hand. Windmilling my arms and contorting my body to stay upright, I’d pivoted almost 180 degrees. For a moment, I thought I’d recovered, but I knew I was near the edge of the walkway, because I could feel the slope. I put my foot down to catch myself and felt…nothing.
I was going down.
A cry escaped my lips as I fell. Except, by some miracle, I didn’t fall. Something snagged my right arm, and I straightened.
Stunned, I turned and saw Tito had caught me. He’d placed one foot on the corner of the box and, by leaning over, had just managed to reach me.
“Easy there,” he said. “You gave us quite a scare.”
“Holy crap.” My heart pounded. “Not half as much as I gave myself. Danke, Tito.” My foot finally found purchase on the walkway, so I steadied myself. Still clutching Tito’s hand, I knelt next to the box and closed my eyes for a moment to get a hold of my emotions.
Once I’d settled the rapid beat of my heart, I got back to the matter at hand. The first thing I noted about the clear box was although the water level in the pool had sunk below the level of the box, the water level in the box itself had not dropped. The water inside the box was now higher than the pool level by almost an inch.
Interesting.
“Tito, look at this,” I said as he knelt on the other side. “The water level in the box isn’t dropping. That must mean that the box is self-contained and the water in the box is separate from that in the pool. Otherwise, it would push the water out the bottom and the levels would equalize.”
“Okay. And that means exactly what?” Tito asked, his expression blank.
“It means we don’t have to drain the entire pool,” Vittoria called out. “We just have to drain the water in the box to get down to the float and the weight.”
We all turned to look at Vittoria in surprise. She held up her hands. “What? I had physics in school, and I’m a schoolteacher. Just because I’m pregnant doesn’t mean I lack brain cells. Not yet, anyway. I presume this means we can stop draining the water from the pool and start doing it from the box.”
Grinning, I gave her a thumbs-up. “You’re exactly right, Vittoria. Guys, help Vittoria raise the siphon in the hot tub as high as it will go without taking the end of the hose out of the water. That should slow or stop the flow, so we don’t fill the hot tub with any more pool water. Then, someone needs to grab the end of the hose that’s in the pool and move it here to the box so we can siphon the water.”
“On it,” Stefan said, wading into the water and grabbing the hose with his feet, pulling it up. Holding on to the side of the pool and keeping one end underwater, he dragged it toward us.
Juliette and Vittoria lifted the hose in the hot tub to slow the drain. While they did that, I quickly began calculating how much water we could siphon out of the box and put into the hot tub. When I came up with a number, it meant we didn’t have enough room in the hot tub.
“Guys, we’re going to have to remove some water from the hot tub with those cans and dump it,” I said.
“Why?” Tito asked.
“Because the volume of water in the clear box equals roughly half of what we’ve already removed from the pool. But since the hot tub is more than halfway full, we’re going have to first remove several feet of water from the hot tub before we can make this work.”
Oscar looked at me in surprise. “You just did all of that calculating in your head? Right now?”
“Yes, right now. Do you want me to explain my calculations?”
“God, no. I’m just…incredibly impressed. Well done.”
Wait, my father-in-law was impressed by my mental calculation skills? Really? I was totally going to sit next to him at all our family functions.
“Lexi, where do you want us to dump the water from the hot tub?” Vittoria asked, still holding the hose.
“Well, we can’t put the water back in the pool,” I said. “And we can’t afford to raise the water level here. Anyone see a floor drain?”
“There should be one here somewhere,” Stefan said. “Almost all pool decks have a drain of some kind for deck washing or in case the pool has an overflow. It might be hidden. We need to look for it.”
Everyone started looking around, except for Tito and I, who stayed at our post in the middle of the pool and Vittoria at the hot tub.
“It’s here by the hot tub,” Oscar finally cried out. “It had a cover on it, so it didn’t look like a drain.”
“Excellent,” I said as Stefan arrived, pulling himself along the wall toward Tito and dragging the end of the pool hose with him.
“Tito, can you get that hose out of the water and into the box without letting any air into it?” I asked. “You’ll have to press your hand tight against the hose end while moving it into the box water.”
“Jah, I believe so. I have big hands and I don’t have to lift it very far.” He stood up and walked along the walkway to retrieve the hose.
“Stefan, hand the hose end off to Tito now. Everyone else needs to get that water out of the hot tub as fast as you can. Juliette, Oscar, and Stefan, please climb into the hot tub. We need to form a bucket brigade to get that water evacuated as quickly as possible. Juliette, you fill the cans with water and pass them off to Oscar and Stefan. You two take the cans to the edge of the hot tub where Vittoria and Tito, once he finishes here, will tip the cans over the side and allow the water to run toward the drain. I’ll stay here and keep the hose in the water on this end.”
“Good idea. We definitely don’t want you walking on water again.” He chuckled, and I rolled my eyes at him.
“But I don’t understand, Lexi,” Oscar said. “Why can’t we just siphon the water into the drain directly?”
“Because the end of the siphon has to be lower than the level of water in this box in the pool,” I explained. “If they’re at the same level, nothing will happen since the pressure is equalized. Since the bottom of the hot tub is lower than the current level of water in the box, it will siphon until the water levels equalize. Every inch of water we remove from the hot tub is another inch we can siphon out of the box.”
“But that means that we won’t be able to drain all of the water out of the box, right?” Juliette asked. “Because the box in the pool is much lower than the bottom of the hot tub.”
“Unfortunately, that’s true,” I admitted.
“So, how are we going to get the rest of the water out of the box?” Stefan asked, pulling himself out of the pool on the side and heading toward the hot tub.
“Well… I’m still working on that part.”
Tito knelt on the walkway, pushing his hand against the hose opening and lifting it out of the water. He walked carefully toward the square and pushed it underwater in the box. I took over from there, making sure it stayed put under the water.
“Good job,” I said.
“I have the easy job.” He flexed a bicep, causing me to smile. “You’re the brains and I’m the brawn.”
“Oh, you have plenty brains, too. Not every muscular Swiss guy can make it to the Vatican’s Swiss guard.”
“Hey, Lexi!” Oscar yelled from the hot tub. “It’s working! I can feel the water swirling around my feet. It’s siphoning the water from the box.”
“Excellent,” I said. “Now get that water out of the hot tub and fast.”
“We’re already on it,” Vittoria said, tipping the first can and spilling the water onto the floor.
“Tito, go help them,” I instructed.
“Jawohl, General,” he said, saluting.
I watched as he carefully navigated the walkway back to the pool deck and headed toward the hot tub. He might have thought I was a general and knew what I was doing, but I didn’t feel nearly as confident as I should. Everyone was counting on me to solve the puzzle, but I was running out of ideas and time.
Speaking of time, when was the last time I’d checked? Worried, I looked over at the clock and saw it read two thirty. That meant we had fifty-five minutes, or less than an hour, left. By my calculations, the siphon would remove less than half of the water. We needed to remove the rest once the siphoning stopped, and quickly.
What could we do to get rid of the rest? I considered and discarded the idea of lowering the cans into the box, filling them, hauling them up, and then dumping them over the side. My instincts told me that there wouldn’t be enough time and the work would be very difficult perched on the walkway. Still, without getting rid of the water, there was no way to reach the float without getting my head wet.
What am I missing?
“Lexi, how are you doing?” Juliette called out. It warmed my heart that even in the middle of the pressure of the puzzle, she was worried about me. Or maybe she was worried I wouldn’t figure things out.
I decided honesty was the best policy at this point. “I’m okay, Juliette, but I’m running out of ideas here.”
“Don’t try to overthink things. I find that our brains, like our muscles, work better when they are calm and relaxed.”
Of course she’d say that. Juliette was a nurse, used to being a calming presence in the midst of a storm. She faced life-and-death pressure on a daily basis. Remembering that gave me perspective, and I began to relax a little.
Still, Juliette and the rest of the team had no idea how much Slash and I had riding on these challenges. There was much more at stake than a nice honeymoon for Gio and Vittoria. There were a lot of people, many of them young and vulnerable, counting on us to solve these challenges. Then, of course, there was the pope, who believed Slash and I could do anything. Which wasn’t true, but when the pope is counting on you, what’s a girl to do?
I had to up my game.
“What do you think our options are at this point, Lexi?” Juliette asked, interrupting my thoughts.
I took a deep breath and tried taking her advice to relax. “Well, after we siphon as much water as we can out of the box, we have to lift the float and the weight and somehow get the golden disc off the bottom of the pool without getting our heads wet. That’s it in a nutshell.”
“Why can’t we use the cans to remove the water in the box like we’re doing at the hot tub?” Stefan interjected.
“I thought of that, but there’s too much water to move and not enough time. I need to come up with a faster solution. There are many other related problems to solve, but that’s the big one.”
“In my experience, we tend to make our problems more complicated than they really are,” Juliette said. “The best first step is to define the biggest problem standing in the way of your goal. Often, if you solve that, the rest will fall into place.”
Defining the problem was the easy part, in my opinion. But I humored her just the same. “Our biggest problem is getting all the water out of the box as quickly as possible. We have no other options until we can do that.”
“Why can’t we continue to use the siphon?” she said. “It’s working wonderfully.”
“For now, yes. But the siphon will stop working once the level of the water in the box reaches the same level as the water in the hot tub.”
“Oh.” She stopped to consider that for a moment. “So, if I understand this correctly, at a certain point, the problem is you can’t lower the siphon any more to continue to drain the water.”
“Correct.”
“Then to use the siphon past that point, we have two choices. Lower the drain end of the siphon or raise the water in the box.”
“Both are impossible, I’m afraid,” I said. “We can only lower the siphon end in the hot tub as low as the bottom of the tub if it’s empty. And raising the water is opposite of what we’re trying to do, which is to lower the level of the water in the box so we can get the disc without getting our heads wet. Therein is the conundrum.”
“Hmm…” she said, falling silent for a moment. “You know, this problem kind of reminds me of an old Aesop’s fable I used to read to Romeo, Stefan, and Gio.”
“An Aesop’s fable?”
“Yes. All this talk of raising and lowering the water reminds me of a story called ‘The Crow and the Pitcher.’ You may have heard of it before. The crow badly wanted a drink, but the water in the pitcher was too low for him to reach. The crow couldn’t tip over the pitcher, so instead, he figured out a solution. He dropped rocks into the water until the water rose to where he could drink it. I often remember that fable because afterward, the editor annotated the story with the quote ‘Necessity is the mother of invention.’ I’ve used that motto during many challenging times in my life. Now, I don’t know where you’ll find your rocks, but I have faith an intelligent woman like yourself can figure out a solution from that.”
I stilled, finally understanding where she was going with the story. Why hadn’t it occurred to me before? “Juliette, you’re brilliant. You just solved this puzzle.”
“I did?” she asked. “Because I don’t know what comes next.”
I smiled at her. “Don’t worry. I do.”
Rocks. I needed rocks, but what could I use in their stead? I turned and stared at the crew dumping water from the hot tub. They were slowing down a bit, but I could see the results of their efforts. They’d gotten into a good rhythm on the brigade, and the water in the box was already down well over a foot in just a few minutes.
Cans. We’d use the cans. We had twenty-four of them, and each can could hold five gallons. That would displace 120 gallons of water. I estimated the siphon would leave about 220 gallons in the box before I started using the cans as my so-called rocks. I wouldn’t be able to get all the water out of the box using the siphon and the rocks, but there would be less than three feet left when we were finished. That should be enough. It had to be enough to retrieve the disc.
I didn’t want to slow the brigade’s progress, as it was critical to our success, but I needed some help. I asked Juliette to take a quick break from the hot tub.
“Would you please bring me the remaining empty cans from the end of the pool?” I asked her. “I think I’ve found my rocks.”