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

facing each other. Rigged above were racks of flotation devices, Pelican cases and oxygen bottles. It was the ship’s self-propelled hyperbaric lifeboat.

While a modern dive support vessel’s crew can man ordinary lifeboats or be airlifted off the deck by a rescue helicopter, divers under pressure inside the hyperbaric chamber don’t have any choice but to remain at “depth.” The Depth Charge’s hyperbaric lifeboat was sealed one deck above the pressure chamber by a vertical trunk, and could be pressurized for an emergency escape. It was capable of supporting up to eight divers for up to two weeks, outfitted with its own emergency water and rations and separate, unpressurized cockpit which would ordinarily be manned by someone from the ship’s non-diving crew.

Tusker slammed shut the hatch and spun the locking wheel tight, then began frantically searching the controls inside.

“How do we get off the ship?” Sam cried out.

“I’m not sure, but there must be some kind of explosive davit releases.” Tusker said as he combed the ceiling and walls. “Found it!”

A large red knob, straight out of a cartoon, was situated on the forward bulkhead. A plaque next to it read, RELEASE. Tusker ran to it. “Sit down and strap in. This is going to be rough.”

Sam threw herself into one of the bolstered chairs and strapped a safety harness on. Tusker braced himself and hit the red button with his fist. There was a loud, muffled explosion above their heads and then a moment of silence. They dropped like an elevator with a broken cable. Then the lifeboat slammed into the ocean.

Tusker was thrown up against the ceiling and then fell hard across two chairs. He felt a rib, maybe two, crack, and howled in pain. The boat pitched wildly in the swells. It was shaped like a barrel and behaved like one in the open ocean. Tusker hoped for a brief second that they would drift far enough away from the Depth Charge before the bomb exploded.

As if in answer, a massive explosion blanketed the lifeboat in heat and light. The concussion was deafening and Tusker could feel the boat go airborne. Then he was tossed, first against the ceiling, then the floor, then the ceiling, then the floor again. Finally, mercifully, all went dark.

Blast Radius

Bay of Bengal, ten nautical miles east of Batticaloa. Two hours later.

It was later reported that the white flash of the explosion could be seen as far away as Trincomalee. Minutes later, a five-foot wall of water pushed a quarter mile inland up and down the coast, causing a tsunami panic. But compared to the 2004 disaster, the waves subsided quickly and flooding was minimal. The story made the BBC and CNN later that day.

Rumors quickly spread: the Tamil Tigers were back. It was a Chinese submarine, an underwater volcano. In Colombo, President Halangoda was awakened by his private secretary to receive the news. He immediately knew what it was, but feigned surprise.

Ten miles out to sea, Tusker opened his eyes. His head was throbbing and he struggled to remember where he was. All he could see was a haze of orange. As he regained his senses, he realized he was buried under a pile of life jackets. He clawed his way out as if swimming until he recognized the sterile interior of the hyperbaric lifeboat. The rows of seats were still bolted to the floor, but everything else had been ripped from the walls, the storage compartments and ceiling and thrown around the cabin.

Tusker could hear a steady hum and the sloshing of water. He took a deep breath— and realized that if he still could, the lifeboat had not been breached by the blast. The boat was effectively a floating compression chamber, and they were still trapped at the equivalent of 350 feet of water pressure. But at least they were alive.

But what about Sam? Tusker swiveled around and saw her slumped in one of the seats. She’d fastened herself with the four-point safety harness as he’d told her to do. But was she alive?

Tusker waded through the piles of debris on the floor to her. He leaned in, with his ear next to her face, hoping to hear, or feel, a breath.

“Trying to take advantage of a vulnerable woman?”

Tusker pulled back with a grin. “Are you OK?” He clutched her face in both hands and studied her eyes.

“Sure,” she replied. “I mean, I think so. I may have dozed off there.”

“Well, thanks for caring about me!” Tusker shot back with a smile. “I was left for dead under a pile of life jackets!”

Sam laughed. She unclipped her harness and climbed over the seat back. There was a row of small portholes, each about half a foot thick against the hyperbaric pressure. She peered out.

“Come take a look at this!”

Tusker joined her at the windows and craned his neck to see out the next porthole. In the distance was an apocalyptic scene. A towering cloud of white vapor culminated in what looked like a massive thunderhead. At the surface of the water was a jumbled mass of indeterminate flotsam—remnants, he grimly thought, of the Depth Charge. Closer to the lifeboat, was a raft of dead fish.

“I guess that bomb was for real,” Sam said in a quiet voice, still peering out the window. “How did we manage to survive the blast?”

“I suspect the hull on this boat is really thick, since it has to contain the pressure,” Tusker shrugged. “Thick enough to survive a bomb blast.”

In fact, the lifeboat had been thrown almost one hundred yards by the force of the explosion. The self-righting lifeboat tossed like a cork, ripping loose everything inside. But the thick walls and high pressure inside resisted implosion. Only now, they were adrift.

“We’ll just have to wait to be found, I suppose,” Tusker said, aimlessly throwing debris into heaps in an attempt to tidy the cabin. “We have no way to pilot this thing.”

Tusker and Sam were merely passengers. Even the emergency radio was in the boat’s