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

glanced down at his wrist. The Aquastar was gone. It must have been torn from his wrist in the struggle with the Depth Charge diver. The watch he’d worn on every dive he’d done since age nine was now ticking away somewhere in the bowels of the wreck. Tusker didn’t have time to curse. He had to stop the bomb, even if it meant breathing down his tanks to nothing. There’s only one way back to the surface now anyway.

Consigned to the Depths

350 feet beneath the Indian Ocean. The same night.

In the bottom of the bomb room, Murray caught his breath after his struggle with the scuba diver. Amidst the settling silt, he inflated the two massive lift bags that were slung on the bomb, left on their first dive by McElroy, whose bloated body floated somewhere above. Murray slowly inched the now-buoyant cargo towards the opening in the wreck. It was awkward going in the cramped confines of the cluttered room, made harder by the almost zero visibility. Once outside, he would hook it to the hoist dropped from the Depth Charge, which lay on the seafloor. Dive Control had already told him that Aitkens had been “incapacitated.” I better get double pay for this.

He maneuvered toward the exit hole. Suddenly, out of the blackness, he was hit, hard, and knocked back into the wreck. The blow extinguished his head torch and he spun downwards in darkness, landing with a grunt on a pile of wooden crates that disintegrated into a cloud of dust on his impact.

Immediately, the other diver was on him, holding his helmet by the umbilical and shaking him. Murray struggled to gain his footing and clawed at the other man’s mask. He managed to pull it sideways, flooding it and rendering him blind. Now was his chance. He pushed the flailing diver aside and used his umbilical to pull himself up the hull to the opening. Never mind the bomb. This was more than he’d signed up for.

Tusker straightened his mask and managed to clear the water by exhaling through his nose and lifting the bottom skirt. Nearly blinded from the salt and the silt, he swam towards the vague glow and saw a silhouette climbing up the inside of the hull. As he neared it, the bright yellow of the lift bag caught his eye. The bomb. It was floating near the exit, neutrally buoyant. Tusker swam up, up, up to Murray and, just as the big man reached the opening, grabbed a D-ring on the back of Murray’s tool belt and pulled on it, hard. Murray lost his balance and teetered backwards. In a single, swift motion, Tusker clipped Murray’s D-ring to the lift bag’s carabiner and ripped the balloon’s deflation cord.

Murray, suddenly attached to a 1,400-pound bulb of lead and uranium, fell off the hull like a stone and disappeared into the black hold of the Vampire, his helmet torch a wild, spinning beam. The tremendous weight and momentum sent him crashing through the remains of cargo, which fell on top of him, trapping him, weighted and buried in the 75-year old detritus of the dead British war machine. For a moment his umbilical was stretched taut, connecting Murray inside the wreck to the bell, and to the Depth Charge above. Then it gave way like a whip in a roar of bubbles.

Tusker turned away and found the cut in the hull outlined by the glow of the bell’s flood lights. He kicked over to the opening. His breathing gas supply was near zero and the bailout bottles he’d stashed earlier were too rich a mixture for this depth. He had to get to the bell. As he exited the wreck he saw the heavy hook from the Depth Charge’s hoist lying on the muddy bottom. He swam cautiously towards the suspended bell. With his two divers dead and no bomb, why would Rausing bother to even hoist him to the surface, much less keep him under pressure long enough to decompress? He would have to negotiate. But what leverage did he have, alone and 350 feet deep? It would be just as easy for Rausing to flood the bell and kill him. No one would be the wiser.

Tusker crept up alongside the bell. He couldn’t be sure what the gas mix was inside. But he had to take that chance. His pressure gauges were nearing zero. He climbed up into the bell and took the regulator out of his mouth. It was strange to suddenly be standing dry and breathing without a mouthpiece. He took a few cautious breaths. The helium mix in the bell was similar to what he’d been breathing in his tanks. A camera was suspended in the corner. There was nowhere to hide now. Everyone, including Rausing, knew he was in the bell.

As if in answer, a voice came over the intercom.

“You’re out of options, Mr. Tusk.” It was Rausing. He paused. “Except one.”

“Go to hell,” Tusker said, staring at the camera, his voice distorted by the helium.

“We have the girl,” Rausing said, this time more sternly.

Sam! Was he bluffing? Tusker thought of her, swimming back to the skiff in the darkness after he descended. She could have easily been spotted, captured, maybe even killed already. And what about Sebastian?

“Bring me the bomb and then we can talk about your future.” Rausing remained calm, a Human Resources manager talking to an employee.

“If you have her, put her on the radio,” Tusker said. There was a long pause. Was Rausing stalling? Tusker considered his options. Think of Sam, do what Rausing asked and hope to foil their plans later, aboard the Depth Charge? He knew there was a slim possibility he’d be kept alive after a ride to the surface, much less hours of decompression aboard the ship. Rausing would no doubt find some creative and painful way to kill him. He loved Sam, but this was bigger than all of that. Much bigger. He had to return