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

to see the sea floor below him. He hadn’t overshot and ended up in the abyss, but the moonscape of the bottom also meant he’d missed the wreck.

He checked the heading on his compass. He had no idea in which direction the Vampire lay, so he would have to swim big patterns until he found the ship: off in one direction for 20 seconds, then a right-angle turn, then swim another 20 seconds and so on until he’d returned to his starting point. He’d increase his swim times and do the same pattern until he bumped into the wreck.

On his third turn, something in the torch beam caught his eye. On the seafloor, what looked like a box. Tusker swam over and examined it. It was an ammunition box, and next to it, some .50-caliber shells lay strewn on the silty bottom. The ship had to be close by. He swung the torch beam around and saw something else in the distance, reflecting back the light. It looked huge and silver.

Tusker swam slowly in the direction of this shimmering object. It got brighter as he got closer and seemed to be moving, rippling. Then, when he was almost on top of it, it exploded into a thousand pieces. It had been a swirling school of silver amberjacks, swimming in a choreographed vortex. They’d scattered. He shook his head, groggy from the depth and rattled by this apparition. Now he’d have to resume his swimming pattern. He had to find that wreck, but his bottom gas would only last 40 minutes and he’d used up four on his search.

As he turned to start swimming, he brushed against something. A wall of coral, rising up from the bottom. And—yes—a perfect circle. A porthole. He’d found the Vampire.

Terminal Depth

On board the DSV Depth Charge. 30 minutes earlier.

Malcolm Rausing emerged from his stateroom aboard the Depth Charge, locked the door, and descended the stairs to the dive deck. On the steel staircase overlooking the moon pool, he paused. It was pitch black aboard the ship, as he’d ordered, but he could hear the clanking of metal and the low chatter of men working below, readying the hoist and diving bell. The air was moist and smelled of the sea. The ship rolled heavily on big swells. These weren’t ideal conditions for diving, but Rausing couldn’t wait any longer.

Murray and Aitkens had been waiting in the hyperbaric chamber for three days since their first dive to the Vampire, remaining in saturation at an effective 350 feet of pressure until their second attempt to salvage the bomb. They passed the time watching porn on the internet, reading, and sleeping. McElroy’s personal effects lay in a heap on his bunk, a constant reminder of his horrific fate, but the two divers didn’t dare speak of him. They’d be diving without a third, a bell man. It would be risky, but then everything about this project was.

“Keep yer feckin’ dirty clothes on yer bunk, will ya?” Murray threw a pair of thermals at Aitkens, who laughed. The two men had known each other for years, having dived together out of Aberdeen in the ‘90s. It was Murray who’d coaxed Aitkens out of retirement for this “easy money” job in Sri Lanka, and the two men intended to treat it like a tropical holiday. They’d already planned to fly to the Maldives the next week with their newfound wealth.

“Prepare to transfer to the bell,” came the disembodied voice from Dive Control. Murray nodded up at the camera in the corner of the room. The two men moved to the ladder and climbed up to the pressure hatch in the ceiling.

“Equalized. Transfer to the bell.” Aitkens climbed the ladder, spun open the lock and pushed the hatch up into the diving bell. It was hot and muggy inside, and the two Scottish divers’ faces shone with sweat. Murray closed the hatch with a thud and spun the lock shut. They sat down on the metal benches surrounding the hatch, which would be their exit to the sea, while the hoist slowly began to lift them off of the pressure chamber. The men braced themselves as the bell swung free and rocked lightly. Like astronauts in a crude capsule, they were about to be sent into an alien and hostile environment.

“Good dive, gentlemen,” came Dive Control’s voice. Then Rausing’s voice.

“The cargo should be close to the hatch, with the lift bags still attached,” he said coldly. “Bring the hoist over to the opening so you can secure it close to the wreck.”

“Piece of cake, skipper,” Murray replied. “Like hooking a dead fish.” His joke was met with silence.

“Tell that to McElroy when you see him,” Rausing finally said, then clicked off.

Murray shuddered at the thought of the dead man inside the Vampire, whose sopified body they’d no doubt encounter in a few minutes. He’d done body recoveries before, and seen plenty of corpses, but not that of anyone in whose death he’d taken an active part.

The bell splashed into the moonpool where, despite being protected from the open ocean, it rode the up-and-down of the night’s big swells. In a few moments, the bell was lowered into the depths and there was no sensation of movement at all. Only the depth gauge on the wall showed their progress to the sea floor. 150 feet, 200, 250, 300, then finally stopping at 330 fsw, “feet seawater.” It was silent. The men were no longer sweating. The cooler temperature at depth chilled the bell, and the cold sweat on Murray’s neck made him shiver.

“Terminal depth. Divers, prepare to exit the bell,” came the instruction from Dive Control.

When both divers had their helmets secured, tool harnesses buckled on, and umbilicals connected, Murray bent and unscrewed the hatch in the floor of the bell. He felt the familiar moment of uncertainty: if the pressure was not equalized, the seawater would pour in and fill up the bell in seconds. But the pressure was right and,