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

Tusker lifted the hook off the seafloor. It was half his own height and incredibly heavy. He dragged it over to the wreck and managed to wrestle it up and into the opening. It dropped inside. He followed it in.

“OK, feed out some cable,” he commanded. “I’m going to swim down to the bottom.”

The cable slackened and Tusker guided the unwieldy hook down the length of the upturned cargo hold. The light of his torch illuminated the grisly scene at the bottom. Murray’s torso was buried in debris, three of his limbs visible, a leg at an odd angle. And there, above the collar of his dive suit, was what was left of his head. It had been nearly torn clean off by the force of the taut umbilical on his helmet. Tusker averted his eyes, focusing on the task at hand.

He landed on the twisted metal remains of what looked like an old shelving unit next to Murray’s corpse. He aimed his torch alongside and started to pull debris away to expose the bomb. He stopped every few seconds to settle the plumes of silt that clouded his view. Finally he saw a large fin. The rear end of the bomb. There was no way he could have fished this out with lift bags. He stepped back and found the hoist hook swaying behind him, called up for more slack, then clipped the hook to a lift ring on the bomb.

“OK, it’s hooked,” he said calmly. “Raise the hoist slowly. I’ll tell you when to stop.”

The heavy cable went taut and the bomb shifted slightly, sending debris cascading across the room and creating a whiteout. This could work to Tusker’s advantage.

“Keep hoisting,” he said. “Easy does it.” The bomb continued to rise, with Murray’s body grotesquely suspended from one of the lift rings and a limp yellow lift bag providing a garish bit of gift wrapping for the deck crew above. Just before the bomb started swinging free, Tusker inched close to it and unclipped the limpet mine from his harness. He clamped it onto the bomb’s casing, its powerful magnets gripping like its namesake mollusk does on rocks. He couldn’t very well look at the time fuze since it would appear on Rausing’s video screen above, but he remembered Fonseka telling him that a full turn would be one hour before the boom. He gave it a half turn. That should buy him 30 minutes.

“OK, she’s clear!” he shouted almost enthusiastically. “Pull it up and keep it slow.”

The suspended bomb rose in the silty darkness. Tusker swam up next to it, guiding it towards the opening in the hull, careful not to show the limpet mine with his helmet camera.

Once clear of the wreck, Tusker swam clear and called out. “It’s outside the wreck. You can go ahead and raise it.”

The bomb suddenly shot up past him. Then, to his horror, he saw the bell being raised as well. He should have expected as much. He reached up to his own umbilical and pulled hard, climbing hand over hand until he was ten feet below the bottom of the bell. He took a breath but got nothing. They’d shut off his gas. He flew up his tether, holding his breath now. The helmet started filling with cold seawater, blinding him. Clang! His helmet bashed into the bottom of the ladder. The bell! With one clean motion, Tusker hurled himself up the ladder into the bell, which was rocketing to the surface. He threw himself on the bell’s floor, ripped off the helmet and cursed loudly.

“Good show, Mr. Tusk,” came a bemused voice on the intercom. “I look forward to welcoming you on board the Depth Charge.”

Decompression Sickness

On board the DSV Depth Charge, eight nautical miles east of Batticaloa. Ten minutes later.

Through the tiny porthole in the diving bell, Tusker could see the floodlit moon pool of the Depth Charge. Water cascaded off the flanks of the bell as it swayed, suspended above the ship’s aft deck. Why should Rausing even bother to keep him alive at this point? Why didn’t he flood the bell instead of hoisting him topside?

He squinted through the thick Perspex. Near the transom, a hoist was spooling up the cable attached to the bomb. Four men were laboring there, making sure it didn’t foul on the pulley as it came up. Would they keep him suspended here until the bomb was unloaded? They would surely see the limpet mine under the diver’s corpse and kill him and Sam immediately. How long until the mine would explode? Another ten minutes? Fifteen? And would it be enough to trigger the bomb? Either way, Tusker had resigned himself to an agonizing and fast death. His body had been absorbing breathing gas at ten times the pressure at sea level for over an hour. He would need days to decompress before safely emerging from a bell or hyperbaric chamber. His only hope was to get Sam off the ship before all hell broke loose. But how?

Finally, the bell started to move. It was swung out of the moon pool and lowered onto its trunk for passage into the ship’s hyperbaric chamber. He guessed Rausing simply wanted to observe their gruesome death through rapid decompression. Sick bastard. At least death would come quickly.

The bell clunked onto the chamber’s trunk and a green light in the bell flickered on. A sign next to it read EQUALIZED. Tusker stared at the sign for a moment. Then he cautiously bent over and gripped the locking wheel on the hatch in the floor of the bell, unconsciously holding his breath. This could be it. With a small hiss, the hatch unsealed and he spun the wheel until it was unlocked. He exhaled. He lifted it out of the way and shimmied down the ladder into the hyperbaric chamber. When he got the bottom and turned around, there was Sam.

“Boy, am I glad to see you!” she squealed, her voice altered by the helium