He let some of the breath out on the way back — getting some of the air out of his lungs reduced the need — then popped back up when he came to the landing platform.
“Kildar, are you well?” Yosif asked, running down the stairway.
“Fine,” Mike said, taking more deep breaths to vent the air. “God, I’d forgotten how much fun that is.”
“That was a long swim,” Yosif said, his eyes wide.
“Yosif, I think that most of the Keldara have figured out I used to be a SEAL, right?” Mike asked. “You do know what SEALs do, right?”
“Oh,” Yosif said, shaking his head. “I suppose worrying about you in the water is… silly.”
“A bit,” Mike said. “Yosif, you and your team are going to be doing some special training. And, unfortunately, I’m the only one around who can give it. So we’d better get started. But first I need to see Daria. We’re going to need some gear.”
Kahf put his regulator in his mouth, sucked on it a couple of times to make sure his air was on, and rolled over the side of the moving boat.
The container had very dim strobes attached to it. In these waters, from the surface, they looked more like a school of phosphorescent jellyfish than a container moored seventy feet down.
Kahf had to fight some current on his way down. That was going to be a pain. The currents in the area, not far from the Gulf Stream, tended to swirl randomly. One day there’d be none, the next it could be high and from about any direction.
He made it to the container, though, breathing somewhat hard, and then paused. He slid a small device out of his buoyancy compensator and slid it down into the container on a lanyard. It stayed green. Good.
Swimming head-down he got to the first rank of remaining barrels. Bracing himself with a fin stuck between two of them and blowing out all the air in his BC, he pulled a mesh bag off his side and started pulling out items. First there was a long rope, which he dropped to settle against the barrels. Then he pulled out a nylon harness and clipped the bag back on his BC.
The harness went around one of the barrels and clipped together. It was a pain to get on but he had plenty of time. He was wearing double 105 cf tanks, over-pressured to 4000 PSI, and NITROX. The boat wouldn’t be back for over two hours and he could stay at this depth for longer. Of course, he’d have to decompress, but the way things were set up that wouldn’t be hard.
He uncoiled part of the rope and attached the barrel to an already tied-in loop knot. One down.
Working faster now, he fitted another barrel and another until he had four. Only then did he release the ties holding the pre-weighted barrels in place.
Now was when he was going to have to use up some air. First he tied down the rope with a quick release. Then he attached four large float bags to the rope and inflated them from a spare hose attachment on his regulator. His air supply dropped noticeably but he still had plenty. Last, he grabbed onto the ties that had held the barrels down, wrapped the rope around his body and released the tie.
The bags wanted to jump to the surface but that would be bad. Instead he belayed them up until the rope was taut. Then he undid it from his body, grabbed the barrels and went for a short ride.
The rope was fifty feet long. The top of the container was at seventy. He slid out of the opening, easily missing the side and popped up twenty feet. A glance at his dive computer indicated that was not an issue. The computer said he’d need to decompress at twenty feet and ten but he had loads of time. Then he checked the watch built into the computer. Loads, the boat wouldn’t be back for over an hour.
He reinflated his BC and slid up the rope to the loop at twenty feet. Once there he adjusted his buoyancy, clipped himself in and lay back to enjoy the peace and quiet, bobbing lightly up and down due to the bags at the top. He’d have to be careful; he could very easily fall asleep. It wouldn’t kill him, when the regulator slipped out he’d just get some seawater in his mouth and maybe lungs and cough a lot. But it would be a pain. And this was just too pleasant after being slammed around in that damned boat for two days.
“Okay, this is just too much fun,” Mike said, sliding out of the water like, well, a seal. “I feel like I’m playing.”
“You may,” Yosif said, climbing out on the dock next to him and gasping for air. “I don’t. I thought this was going to be fun…”
“Try doing it in twenty degrees,” Mike said, referring to the temperature in Celsius. “This is the shit.”
Yosif’s team had been doing cross-overs, swimming one way, surfacing for a breath and then swimming back, for nearly an hour, and one by one they all managed to clamber onto the dock. And they were all gasping as if they’d just finished a marathon.
Cross-overs were deceptively exhausting. At first they were easy. This section of the harbor was barely wider than most pools and had concrete walls on both sides. Mike had shown them how to push off and you could coast most of the way on a push. And you weren’t actually underwater all that long. But you were only allowed to come up for a fast breath and then you had to dunk back down and do it again. And again and again and again.
The muscles in the body quickly ran through their anaerobic energy stores, and those caused lactic acid generation anyway, then they had to switch to aerobic. Aerobic exercise released CO2 as the body converted O2 molecules into energy via ATP in the mitochondria. CO2 caused the “desperate for a breath” reaction. And the short bobs were never enough to get rid of all the CO2, much less get enough oxygen.
Doing it over and over again was debilitating in the extreme, worse than a fast run of the same time duration. The Keldara were only able to survive it because of two factors: they were all runners thanks to Mike’s training, and they were from a high-altitude environment. They had grown up with about two thirds of what most people considered normal oxygen and their bodies had reacted by producing an abundance of red blood cells. Those were able to scavenge extra oxygen from their short breaths and carry more of the CO2 to their lungs to be expelled.
And, of course, they were very hardcore and were not about to disappoint the Kildar.
Mike had managed to scrounge swim goggles for all of them from the well-appointed yacht and from the estate. Now they pushed them up or off, sprawling in the Caribbean sun.
“You guys are going to have to do better than this,” Mike said, shaking his head. “I thought you were swimmers!”
“Kildar,” Yosif said, finally getting his breath. “The pool we swim in is perhaps the size of a large bathtub. I have swum across the river on a bet. This is…”
“I know,” Mike said, relenting. “But, seriously, if we have to do a water insert, you’re the guys who are going to have to do it. I’m going to set up a lesson plan because I’m going to have to head back to Nassau.” He paused and considered something then nodded. “The master chief is probably about done with his hospital time and, frankly, this would be a good place for him to convalesce. He can oversee it. He’d consider it refreshing. Just don’t let him try to swim!”
“Yes, Kildar,” Yosif said.
“You guys give it fifteen minutes,” Mike said. “Then I want you to swim over to that point,” he said, pointing across the vaguely curved island to a point about a quarter of a mile away. “Stay along the sides. Yosif, drag that rescue buoy,” he added, pointing at the device that was hanging by the harbor. It was cigar shaped and had a harness that went across the chest. “If anybody can’t make it, call the swim and swim in. Let them hold onto the buoy. I don’t want anybody dying. But the guy who calls the swim… He gets to work with the women in the kitchen tonight.”