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

alongside the skiff, holding himself away with a hand on its hull. Sam swam around to him. They looked into each other’s eyes in the gloom. Tusker wanted to say something meaningful to her. This would be the last time they’d speak until after he would surface. If he would surface. But before he could open his mouth, Sebastian leaned over the side and whispered loudly to them.

“Get going!” he hissed. “Samanthi, I’ll look out for you when you surface. Julian, we’ll motor in just offshore and keep an eye out for your signal when you surface in a few hours. Remember, three pulses with your torch towards shore every 60 seconds.”

Tusker nodded and clamped his mouthpiece between his teeth. He swiveled around towards the open sea and held up his wrist compass. Aligning the bezel so that North was on the swinging needle, he took a bearing on the approximate position of the Depth Charge. 50 degrees, give or take. If he could get close, he’d know when the big ship was above him. He caught Sam’s eyes and gave her a wink. Then, a thumbs-down gesture. Time to go under and swim.

Tusker and Sam vented air from their buoyancy wings and their heads disappeared under the inky surface. He felt her hand on his arm. He switched on his torch and quickly held it tight against his compass and then his watch for a few seconds, then turned it off. The compass and watch dials glowed brightly, their luminescent markings excited from the burst of LED light. Then, with his left arm held at a right angle in front of him, he swam on the 50-degree bearing with slow, deliberate kicks. At this shallow depth, it was difficult going, and the swells pushed him and Sam up and down, their backs almost breaking the surface. The heavy mine attached to Tusker’s chest made swimming awkward.

They swam in unison, Sam’s hand held lightly on Tusker’s arm. In the pitch black, Tusker felt an eerie sense of disembodiment. Sam’s light touch through the neoprene provided a small measure of comfort. He remembered her fingers on his skin in that dark room back in Pottuvil and wished they were there now. Tusker only took his eyes off of the compass to check the time on his watch, counting off his swim distance. He could swim about 100 yards in ten minutes. They must be getting close to the ship.

Sure enough, ahead he could sense something big in the water, a change in the sound: A low murmuring and a slapping of water, the hum of the ship’s dynamic positioning system thrusters. At their shallow depth, if they got too close, they would swim right into the ship. A slight glow emanated down into the water column, light leaking through the moon pool, no doubt. It was time for Sam to leave him.

Tusker stopped swimming and turned to face her in the dark water, being careful to stay below the surface. They’d gone over the tank handoff several times. She’d have the 100 percent O2 clipped on her right side. “Rich on the right,” he remembered from his old tech diving instructor in Michigan. He reached out and, with his fingers, found the double-ended dog clip on her harness and unclipped it, being careful not to lose his grip. One mistake here—a dropped tank, a mixup of the two deco bottles—and they’d have to abort, or worse, he would die breathing the wrong gas at the wrong depth. He transferred the oxygen cylinder to his own right side and clipped it to the D-rings on his shoulder strap and hip belt. Then he did the same with the 50 percent nitrox tank, moving it from Sam’s left to his own. The transfer of weight caused him to sink in the water and Sam to rise, but they’d accounted for this and she deflated her own wing while he moved the tanks. He momentarily gripped her on both forearms and squeezed a goodbye, hoping the gesture would convey all he wanted to say. She squeezed back. Then she was gone.

Tusker turned back to face the ship that loomed in front of him, invisible in the water. The other invisible ship, the HMAS Vampire, would be directly below him now, 350 feet down. Sebastian had pumped up the little 15-cubic-foot travel bottle as much as he could, but Tusker had breathed off of it for the ten-minute swim and needed it for the descent as well. He would discard it when he got to the wreck. There was no time to waste. He deflated his wing and sank like a stone, equalizing his ears every few feet. After three minutes, he quickly switched mouthpieces. He was now breathing off of his precious bottom gas mix. The clock was ticking.

Without an anchor line, and in complete darkness, he had no sense of where he would touch bottom. A few feet off and he’d descend right over the lip of the trench and keep going into 2,000 feet of water. He blindly fumbled for the backlight button on his dive computer and pressed it. The display showed 300 feet and dropping. He had to be getting close. Would he sense the Vampire as he did the Depth Charge?

Tusker was dropping faster now, any buoyancy he had higher up long gone. The ocean was reeling him in. He inflated his wing with what seemed like a lot of air, and his descent finally slowed. He was deep enough now that it would be safe to switch on his torch. As he did, something big flashed just in front of him and then was gone. He felt a pulse of current from its thrust. A big fish? A whale? A giant squid ascending after dark to feed? He cast the beam of his torch around in wide arcs. Nothing. Did he imagine it? Never mind the wildlife. Time to find that shipwreck. Tusker was both glad and worried