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

the skiff. They bade farewell to Ian, heaved their air cylinders onto their backs and backrolled off opposite gunwales. The commotion scattered a group of gulls floating nearby. As soon as they reached the bottom, Tusker heard the outboard motor start up and watched the silhouette of the boat swing around and disappear.

Upali and Tusker spread out, picking around the search area they’d marked with yellow flags, probing the deep silt with wire probes, stopping to mark promising spots with red flags.

Next week, best bring the metal detector and some hand tools to investigate all these. Tusker mentally prepped for next week to fill the monotony. Wouldn’t Upali be jealous if I find something while he’s over on the east coast. He smiled to himself.

At four o’clock, after two more tank swaps, they were ready to call it a day. The sun dropped like a stone in the tropics, meaning it would be dark in two hours. Underwater, it was already getting hard to see in the late afternoon light. Probing, flagging and digging was monotonous, exhausting work, especially while sucking dry, compressed air. Despite the bathtub warm water, Tusker was thoroughly chilled.

Raj, whose day sitting in the skiff under the hot sun had been no less arduous, helped them heave their gear into the boat. They motored across the crowded harbor to a dock. Tusker tugged on the faded red Mount Gay Rum baseball cap he’d gotten while crewing in the Chicago-Mackinac regatta years ago. Along with the old Aquastar diving watch, it was one of his few prized possessions, and he held on to the brim tightly as Raj gunned the little boat across the water.

“All in a day’s work, eh, machang?” Upali shouted over the motor, using the Sinhala term for “mate.”

“It never felt this hard when we were doing site surveys up in Lake Superior!” Tusker replied, pausing to smear a forearm across his damp brow.

“But at least there’s no risk of frostbite here!” Upali said. They both laughed.

“The legend lives on, from the Chippewa on down, of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee…” Upali broke into song, starting an off-key rendition of “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” Tusker joined in and they belted out the rest of Gordon Lightfoot’s famous song about the sinking of a ship in Lake Superior. Raj watched them with an amused grin.

At the dock, the three of them loaded a rickety cart and pushed it slowly up the dock, its rusty steel wheels protesting under the weight of the scuba tanks, weight belts, and the soaking-wet gear.

It hadn’t been an entirely bad day. After lunch, Upali had identified a promising patch of sea bed with his probing. Digging down a couple of feet had turned up some rusty objects of indeterminate age that they had hauled topside and placed in the bottom of a plastic bucket full of sea water. It might just be a jumble of decades-old fishing tackle, but to expose it directly to air would risk rapid oxidation and disintegration, and Upali wanted to get it back to the lab to examine more closely.

Raj had a shed across the busy road from the harbor. It was five o’clock now, and inside it was dark and smelled of rotten fish. Raj flicked on a naked fluorescent tube light that swayed from the tin ceiling and the sudden light scattered a few large insects. Tusker’s skin, despite being bathed in sweat, went instantly cold. He hated the cockroaches, centipedes, and large spiders that lived in the tropics, and even after five months of daily sightings, his phobia hadn’t diminished. So much for exposure therapy. Raj grinned, his teeth bright red from the betel nut he constantly chewed. He said something to Upali in Sinhala, who laughed loudly in response.

“Raj wonders how a big guy like you can be so afraid of small critters,” Upali said. Tusker gave an exaggerated shiver in Raj’s direction. Raj didn’t speak much English and Tusker’s Sinhala was limited to about ten words. They both laughed.

For the next half hour, the three of them worked to clean and stow gear. Wetsuits were hung to dry, though they never would in the humidity. Tusker turned his neoprene booties inside out and hung them on nails in the wall, away from the scorpions and centipedes that sought their damp crevices at night.

“Machang, you should come across to Batti and we’ll dive the Hermes,” Upali finally broke the silence of their chores. “You can’t leave Sri Lanka without diving its best wreck. Otherwise you’ll think all our diving is like the harbor here!”

“Yeah, I might just take you up on that,” Tusker replied. “I’ll have to see if my boss will give me a day or two off.” He winked.

“I’ll think about it,” Upali smiled back. “But only if you haul the tanks.”

Raj filled the air compressor with diesel and pulled the starter cord. It roared to life. Tusker fitted the manifold to two of the day’s empty air cylinders and made sure the intake hose was rigged up over the top of the shed’s swinging door. It had to be far enough away from the compressor’s exhaust to not push exhaust fumes and carbon monoxide into the tanks. Not that the air outside the shed was much better, with the passing Leyland buses belching black exhaust that settled in a haze over the road.

Tusker waved to Raj. “Go home! We can finish up here!” Upali nodded and repeated it in Sinhala. Raj looked at both of them, then pressed his palms together, gathered up his sarong, and headed off down the roadside into the gathering dusk. He had three bus connections to make before he’d be home to his wife and two sons, up in the hills behind Galle town, at least an hour’s commute.

Tusker switched the compressor manifold to two more tanks and settled onto a flimsy folding chair. He pulled two warm Lion lagers out of the cooler and passed one to Upali.