Duff began to pray.
And the door opened. Daylight showed.
“Boss!” a scared voice called.
“Hold it!”
Stanton left. He did not return. Ten minutes later the door opened and a man shouted,
“All out! Taking off! Leave ’em lay! A damn Coast Guard plane went over twice!”
Time passed. Duff thought he heard the ships engines. Then silence.
A while after that the chamber was filled with reddish light, a thunderous blast. A pressure wave banged Duff against the floor. The concrete walls cracked. Sand gushed into the room. It turned furnace-hot. He thought he was dying and realized, seconds later, that he could see sunlight in the swirling, wrecked chamber.
He rolled across the floor. He got his arms up against a sharp edge of rent metal. It took fifteen or twenty choking minutes to free his hands, as long again to untie his legs. Then he crawled to Eleanor. She was half covered with sand and her nose bled.
They began digging feebly with bits of debris. Before long they had made a way out.