"Everybody ten-four?" Ki Soo's voice sounded in the receiver pressed against the bone of my skull.
"Ten-four," I spoke into the mouthpiece and tried to relax as I slowly kicked barely below the surface.
"You're on the hose?" It was Jerod who spoke this time.
"I've got my hands on it now." It seemed oddly taut, and I was careful to disturb it as little as possible.
"Keep following it down. Maybe thirty feet. He should be floating right above the bottom."
I began my descent, pausing at intervals to equalize the pressure in my ears as I tried not to panic. I could not see.
My heart was pounding as I tried to will myself to relax and take deep breaths. For a moment I stopped and floated as I shut my eyes and slowly breathed. I resumed following the hose down and panic seized me again when a thick rusting cable suddenly materialized in front of me.
I tried to get under it, but I could not see where it was coming from or going to, and I was really more buoyant than I wanted to be and could have used more weight in my belt or the pockets of my BC. The cable got me from the rear, clipping my K-valve hard. I felt my regulator tug as if someone were grabbing it from behind, and the loosened tank began to slide down my back, pulling me with it. Ripping open the Velcro straps of my BC, I quickly worked my way out of it as I tried to block out everything except the procedure I had been trained to do.
"Everything ten-four?" Ki Soo's voice sounded in my mask.
"Technical problem," I said.
I maneuvered the tank between my legs so I could float on it as if I were riding a rocket in cold, murky space. I readjusted straps and fought off fear.
"Need help?"
"Negative. Watch for cables," I said.
"You gotta watch for anything," his voice came back.
It entered my mind that there were many ways to die down here as I slipped my arms inside the BC. Rolling over on my back, I snugly strapped myself in.
"Everything ten-four?" Ki Soo's voice sounded again.
"Ten-four. You're breaking up."
"Too much interference. All these big tubs. We're coming down behind you. Do you want us closer?"
"Not yet," I said.
They were maintaining a prudent distance because they knew I wanted to see the body without distraction or interference. We did not need to get in each other's way.
Slowly, I dropped deeper, and closer to the bottom, I realized the hose must be snagged, explaining why it was so taut. I was not sure which way to move, and tried going several feet to my left, where something brushed against me. I turned and met the dead man face to face, his body bumping and nudging as I involuntarily jerked away. Languidly, he twisted and drifted on the end of his tether, rubber-sheathed arms out like a sleepwalker's as my motion pulled him after me.
I let him drift close, and he nudged and bumped some more, but now I was not afraid because I was no longer surprised. It was as if he were trying to get my attention or wanted to dance with me through the hellish darkness of the river that had claimed him. I maintained neutral buoyancy, barely moving my fins for I did not want to stir up the bottom or cut myself on rusting shipyard debris.
"I've got him. Or maybe I should say he got me." I depressed the push-to-talk button. "Can you copy?"
"Barely. We're maybe ten feet above you. Holding."
"Hold a few minutes more. Then we'll get him out."
I tried my flashlight one last time, just in case, but it still proved useless, and I realized I would have to see this scene with my hands. Tucking the light back in my BC, I held my computer console almost against my mask. I could barely make out that my depth was almost thirty feet and I had more than half a tank of air. I began to hover in the dead man's face, and through the murkiness could make out only the vague shape of features and hair that had floated free of his hood.
Gripping his shoulders, I carefully felt around his chest, tracing the hose. It was threaded through his weight belt and I began following it toward whatever it was caught on.
In less than ten feet, a huge rusty screw blossomed before my eyes. I touched the barnacle-covered metal of a ship's side, steadying myself so I did not float any closer. I did not want to drift under a vessel the size of a playing field and have to blindly feel my way out before I ran out of air.
The hose was tangled and I felt along it to see if it might be folded or compressed in a way that might have cut off the flow of air, but I could find no evidence of that. In fact, when I tried to free it from the screw, I found this was not hard to do. I saw no reason why the diver could not have freed himself, and I was suspicious his hose had gotten snagged after death.
"His air hose was caught." I got on the radio again. "On one of the ships. I don't know which."
"Need some help?" It was Jerod who spoke.
"No. I've got him. You can start pulling."
I felt the hose move.
"Okay. I'm going to guide him up," I said. "You keep pulling. Very slowly."
I locked my arms under the body from behind and began kicking with my ankles and knees instead of my hips because movement was restricted.
"Easy," I warned into the microphone, for my ascent could be no more than one foot a second. "Slowly.
Slowly."
Periodically, I looked up but could not see where I was until we broke the surface. Then suddenly the sky was painted with slate-gray clouds, and the rescue boat was rocking nearby. Inflating the dead man's BC and mine, I turned him on his belly and released his weight belt, almost dropping it because it seemed so heavy. But I managed to hand it up to rescuers who were wearing wet suits and seemed to know what they were doing in their old flat bottomed boat.
Jerod, Ki Soo and I had to leave our masks on because we still had to swim back to the platform. So we were talking by buddy phone and breathing from our tanks as we maneuvered the body inside a chicken-wire basket. We swam it flush against the boat, then helped the rescuers lift it in as water poured everywhere.
"We need to take his mask off," I said, and I motioned to the rescuers.
They seemed confused, and wherever the transducer was, it clearly wasn't with them. They couldn't hear a word we said.
"You need some help getting your mask off?" one of them shouted as he reached toward me.
I waved him off and shook my head. Grabbing the side of the boat, I hoisted myself up enough to reach the basket.
I pulled off the dead man's mask, emptied it of water, and laid it next to his hooded head with its straying long wet hair. It was then I knew him, despite the deep oval impression etched around his eyes. I knew the straight nose and dark mustache framing his full mouth. I recognized the reporter who had always been so fair with me.
"Okay?" One of the rescuers shrugged.
I gave them an okay, although I could tell they did not understand the importance of what I had just done. My reason was cosmetic, for the longer the mask caused pressure against skin fast losing elasticity, the slighter the chance that the indentation would fade. This was an unimportant concern to investigators and paramedics, but not to loved ones who would want to see Ted Eddings' face.
"Am I transmitting?" I then asked Ki Soo and Jerod as we bobbed in the water.
"You're fine. What do you want done with all this hose?" Jerod asked.
"Cut it about eight feet from the body and clamp off the end," I said. "Seal that and his regulator in a plastic bag."
"I got a salvage bag in my BC,- Ki Soo volunteered.
"Sure. That will work."
After we had done what we could, we rested for a moment, floating and looking across muddy water to the johnboat and the hookah. As I surveyed where we had been, I realized that the screw Eddings' hose had snagged on belonged to the Exploiter. The submarine looked post-World War II, maybe around the time of the Korean War, and I wondered if it had been stripped of its finer parts and was on its way to being sold for scrap. I wondered if Eddings had been diving around it for a reason, or if after death, he had drifted there.