Depth Charge by Jason Heaton (carter reed .txt) 📗

they switched on their handheld torches against the blackness. Tusker aimed his below. The dark water absorbed most of the 5,000 lumens. No matter how many times Tusker had done these deep dives, he never got used to the apprehension of dropping into a black void. Besides the increasing pressure on his eardrums, which he occasionally relieved by wiggling his jaw from side to side, there was no sense of going up or down since there was no reference point in the dark water.

He felt the wreck before he saw it. It was an imperceptible change in the water column — the presence of something huge nearby. Then, his beam fell on a section of hull. The unmistakable shape of a ship, so out of place in this lonely spot. The Vampire. He reached up to his inflation hose and added a burst of gas into his buoyancy wing.

At this depth, and with four heavy tanks, the wing was almost fully inflated before it arrested his descent. He came to a stop just a foot above the coral-encrusted steel. Tusker made sure to stay as shallow as possible, near the top of the wreck. Even a few feet made a big difference in the minutes of deco time they’d have to spend on the way back up.

Sam drifted down next to him. Tusker searched her face to make sure she was doing OK. She wrinkled her eyes in a smile behind her mask and winked at him. He could see her taking in the wreck. The ship was huge, stretching well beyond their torch beams, which revealed only a few yards on either side of them.

The gas mixture they breathed contained less oxygen than air, the rest made up mostly of helium, an inert gas that doesn’t have the narcotic effect that the nitrogen in air does. But helium is also a “cold” gas, meaning that the body loses heat faster through respiration than with air. Tusker again cursed his decision not to wear a thicker suit. The temperature reading on his dive computer said 67 degrees, a full 20 degrees colder than at the surface. Tusker was used to cold water from his wreck diving in the Great Lakes, but there he wore insulation layers and a drysuit. For the ten-minute bottom time on the Vampire, he’d be fine, but he’d suffer on the long deco hang. So be it.

The anchor had hooked on the bow railing. Tusker had forgotten to account for this possibility. It meant a 100-yard swim to the aft end of the ship where the hole in the hull was, and then back again so they could ascend on the anchor line. This round trip would take up almost their entire planned bottom time. He gestured to Sam along the hull in the direction they needed to swim and set off in a measured flutter kick. Overexertion meant becoming hypoxic or using up their gas. In the thin beams of their twin torches, the swim felt interminable and disorienting, like walking in a railway tunnel lit only by a flashlight. Tusker paused every few kicks to make sure Sam was at his side. They were like two astronauts, spacewalking untethered away from their craft.

After five minutes, the hull below their torch beams curved down and away slightly as they approached the stern end of the shipwreck. The hole would come into view any moment now. There! Tusker shouted through his regulator and gestured. Sam nodded. He exhaled slightly, causing a decrease in his buoyancy, and descended towards the wound in the ship. He reached up and pressed the button to turn on the small GoPro camera he had secured to his harness, and confirmed that the red light was blinking.

Tusker ran his hand along the edge of the opening. It was blackened and jagged. There was no sign of an explosion or collision, just a neatly traced rectangle, clearly made by a cutting torch. He turned to make eye contact with Sam and held out his palm to tell her to stay put. She nodded. Tusker contorted his body upright and descended into the hole, fins first. The opening was big enough, but with the two smaller cylinders slung at his sides, it was an awkward move.

Then, a sharp pain that took a moment to register, his mind slushed from the cold and mild hypoxia. He glanced down and saw his wetsuit had torn away, exposing his shoulder. The black neoprene flapped and mingled with a black liquid. It was his own blood, snaking out of a cut on his white flesh. He’d scraped it along the razor sharp edge of the opening. Tusker gritted his teeth around the mouthpiece. Next time it might be his regulator hose or his buoyancy wing that tore. He felt a tap on top of his head and looked up. Sam was silhouetted above him in the hole. She flashed an urgent “OK” sign to him inquisitively. He returned the gesture and nodded, mustering a smile in the blinding beam of her torch.

The Vampire had come to rest on the sea floor at a steeply pitched angle. The inside of the hull where Tusker found himself was disorienting, made all the worse by the inky darkness. He cast his torch beam around the cavernous space. The ship’s bottom was almost above him and anything that had been on the floor of this compartment was now piled in a chaotic jumble below him. Only his exhaled bubbles would guide him back up and to the way he came in. He was glad to have Sam just outside with her torch as some reference. He glanced at the timing ring of his Aquastar watch. Nine minutes bottom time already! Every extra minute meant 15 minutes of decompression. He had to hurry. But what was he looking for? The helmet, yes, the helmet.

He swept the space with his torch. His own fin kicks had stirred up a cloud of silt, backscatter in