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

see the light cutting through a cloud of silt. The diver raised his arm again. He was holding a pry bar. This time, Tusker dodged the blow, which struck the sand harmlessly.

Tusker reached out with his right hand and grasped the umbilical. The diver shook his head like a dog in a tug of war but Tusker had got behind him and stayed there, matching his frantic twists and pivots. He brought the big knife up and sawed it through the umbilical and then the hose to his bailout bottle. There was a torrent of high pressure gas. He let go and watched as the diver weaved drunkenly along the seafloor, clutching the valves on his helmet, vainly trying to regain some breathing gas. Tusker could hear him grunting away the little gas remaining in his helmet, his torch light dancing crazily as he stumbled away. Tusker watched him fall to his knees and, with one hand, reach out to Tusker. Then, the diver slowly fell over onto the sea bed with a puff of silt, writhed briefly, then stopped moving. Tusker felt his gut wrench momentarily, then turned away.

The loss of diver comms and pressure would alert Dive Control aboard the Depth Charge and, no doubt, the second diver inside the wreck. There was no time to wait. Tusker had to move, fast.

The wreck loomed like a dead whale carcass, lying on its side with its long shadows of debris and coral dancing and swaying. Tusker caught his breath and took a second to check his pressure gauge. He was already past the first third of his bottom gas. He should be turning around now, but there was no point in dwelling on this. He was committed. He remembered the tight quarters inside the hull from his first dive here and quickly unclipped his decompression bottles from his harness and laid them down on the sand.

With three kicks, he lifted off the sea bed and was at the opening in the hull of the Vampire. The light inside was gone now: absolute darkness. He could hear the gurgle of a hard-hat diver’s gas supply somewhere beneath him. Someone was waiting for him to enter. Tusker fumbled for his torch and switched it on, quickly swinging its beam back and forth inside the black hole. Suddenly, from his right, just inside the wreck, a hand reached out and ripped the mouthpiece from between his teeth. He took in a gulp of seawater and swung his arm instinctively. The torch fell from his hand and dangled from its tether on his wrist, its beam bouncing wildly around in the darkness. With his left hand, Tusker took his second regulator, which hung on a rubber strap close around his neck, and pushed it into his mouth, coughing into it. He still couldn’t see the other diver but felt his presence close by.

Instinctively, Tusker ducked low and pushed off the inside of the hull, going deeper into the hold. As he did, he brushed past what he was sure was the other diver, caught his torch and swung it around. It was the dead naked body he’d seen on his first dive, now bloated and pale, floating freely around the confined space. The man’s features were unrecognizable now. The eyes had been eaten by something and the flesh was already soft and pocked with bite marks. Tusker wretched and pushed the body away, his hand sinking into the flesh of the stomach. Where was the other diver?

Then he saw him. A large man in a black dive suit was moving towards him, pulling hand over hand on some overhead pipes on the bulkhead. His lack of fins made him awkward and his feet pedaled uselessly against the water. But he was gaining ground on Tusker. A large knife flashed in his right hand. Tusker saw the man’s eyes behind the faceplate of the yellow Kirby-Morgan helmet. He gritted his teeth on his mouthpiece and kicked hard with his fins. The two men met in an awkward underwater dance, both of them thrashing, grabbing, and slashing. Their violence kicked up clouds of silt that hung suspended in the water, causing a complete whiteout.

Tusker’s mask was a foot from the other diver’s helmet and the two men made eye contact. Tusker dropped his torch and, with two hands, grasped the helmet on both sides and twisted, as if trying to unscrew the other man’s head from his body. The diver lurched away into the cloud, vanishing for a moment. Tusker regained his buoyancy and shone his torch around, but it was like using high-beam headlamps in a blizzard. Behind him he felt a tug, then heard a roar. He couldn’t breathe! His regulator hose had been cut and his double tanks were draining precious gas in a torrent of bubbles. Tusker again switched regulators, but he had to quickly shut off the valve of the severed hose or lose his gas. He reached back behind his head, feeling for the large knurled knob. In the dark, he was drifting down. Or was it up? He crashed into something hard and pinballed away from it, still fumbling for the valve. Finally, he found it and turned it one agonizing revolution at a time until the gushing became a hiss, then stopped.

How much gas had he lost? He didn’t have time to check his gauge. He regained control of his dangling torch and cast it around the space. He’d drifted up and was pinned against the top of the wreck, which was actually the inside of the starboard hull of the capsized ship. Far below, he saw the beam of the diver’s helmet torch through the silt. He was working at the bomb, filling one of the lift bags attached to it. It would be risky to try to swim down and stop him. He would be nearly out of breathing gas now. There was no doubt that Rausing knew what was happening, given the video feed.

Tusker