He had entertained a desperate hope that the diving equipment might be recoverable; with it, he could take his time salvaging the wreck, but the locker where it had been stored had been completely obliterated.
Further along the deck, he spied the cradle that contained a cylindrical container, about the size of a beer keg. The explosion had ripped apart one end of the canister, peeling the aluminum shroud back like the skin off a banana. The uninflated four-person life raft contained within was peppered with splinters of debris and black scorch marks.
He was starting feel a desperate urge to breathe. It was time to go.
He twisted the release handle of the life raft canister. There was an eruption of bubbles as the contents of a pressurized gas cylinder flooded into the cells of the raft, and then promptly rushed out through the gaping holes caused by the explosion. Not all of the cells were compromised however; half of the raft plumped up like a frankfurter on a grill, and started rising for the surface, boosted by the cloud of free gas rushing out of the damaged sections. Dane knew the raft also contained an array of survival equipment and emergency rations.
He swung around to Baby’s winch spool and disengaged the manual clutch, allowing it to turn freely. The weight of the cable and the friction of the winch axle kept it from shooting straight to the surface, but it nevertheless started rising. With one hand gripping the body of the ROV, he gave the cable winch a spin, rapidly unspooling several hundred feet of cable for the ROV, and was about to kick for the surface when something caught his eye.
Dane felt a surge of excitement at this discovery, but the demand for fresh air would not be put off any longer. He pushed off from the deck and kicked furiously for the surface, letting out the stale breath in a stream as he went.
The ascent was agony. The need to breathe was an animal in his chest, trying to tear its way out. He could see daylight, magnified by water refraction to appear deceptively close. He kept kicking, clawing for the surface with one hand. The ROV in his other didn’t seem to be aiding his climb appreciably, but it wasn’t weighing him down either. The animal told him to let it go, but he refused to part with his prize.
The end was almost anticlimactic. There was a moment of disorientation as his momentum suddenly changed, his kicking legs no longer propelling him upward, after which it occurred to him to check his watch — the sweep hand was just passing the ten o’clock mark, which meant he was fifty seconds through whatever minute this was, probably the fourth, which meant if he could hold for just ten seconds more he’d set a new personal record.
BREATHE!
He took a greedy gasp. Fresh air filled his lungs, lifting him up higher in the water. He realized only now that the ROV had actually helped him stay buoyant when he’d exhaled everything else.
The orange life raft floated nearby, looking like a collapsed parachute on the water’s surface. It was moving, caught in the slow drift current that ran parallel to the island. He imagined Trevor Hancock and Archie Bailey, fifty years earlier, clinging to each other for hours, perhaps days, brought to this island by that current, and then having to swim like crazy to avoid being just as quickly drawn away by it.
Dane knew the tethered ROV would keep him from drifting too far away, but if he didn’t secure the raft, it would be lost forever. He dog-paddled toward it and snared a handful of amorphous rubber. After shifting the ROV inside the collapsed body of the raft and wrapping it up into a crude bundle so the two would not become separated, he pulled his upper body onto the floating mass.
He ached for a rest break, but every idle second took him further from his goal — the beach — and would require that much more effort later on, so he immediately began kicking, propelling himself and the floating bundle back toward the surf. He quickly got into an automatic rhythm that allowed him to compartmentalize his weariness and just drive on without thinking about how exhausted he was, or how much further he had to go. Finally, after long minutes of mind-numbing exertion, he was caught by the incoming waves and thrown toward shore. He allowed himself to be swept in. Bones and Alex were waiting in the tide, and helped him drag his burden up onto dry sand.
While Dane lay supine on the beach, Bones began unpacking the bundle and taking stock of the emergency equipment cache in the raft. “There’s a leak repair kit,” he announced, “but this thing is shredded. We might be able to use the coaxil from the ROV to lash some of the driftwood together, make a raft, but I wouldn’t give great odds for it holding together in open water.”
The canister life raft had been Dane’s Plan A. Cobbling together a driftwood raft had been Plan B, and a desperate one at that. Fortunately, his last discovery before leaving the Jacinta trumped both of those ideas.
“I’m going back,” he announced. “To get the Zodiac. It’s still intact…mostly, anyway. Tied up right where…” Right where Gabby had left it, he almost said. “To the dive platform.”
Bones stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Drop the outboard and you’ll probably be able to float it back to the surface. Be a shame to lose it, though.”
“Maybe we don’t have to.” Dane would have preferred to rest a few minutes — or more accurately, days — longer, but he knew there was no time for delay. “You’ve got your Leatherman, right?”
Bones took the multi-tool from his pocket and held it up for inspection.
Dane outlined his plan, and assigned tasks for each of them. Bones went to work cutting away the damaged sections of the raft, and then he and Alex worked together to deflate the boat and ensure that its undamaged cells would remain air tight. Dane meanwhile removed the compressed air cylinder that was part of Baby’s ballast regulator, and switched out the spent cylinder that had initially inflated the lifeboat. To re-inflate the partial raft, he would need only twist the manual valve on the air cylinder.
Bones inspected the finished contraption with hands on hips. “MacGyver would be proud. But will it work?”
“I guess I’ll go find out.”
“It’s going to be dark soon,” observed Alex. “Sure you don’t want to put this off until morning?”
“We’re going to be a hundred miles away from here by morning,” Dane told her, confidently. He tucked the orange bundle of the deflated raft under one arm and headed out across the beach. “You guys keep working on the rain shroud. I’ll be back in a jiffy.”
The outgoing tide shortened the distance he had to swim and made the paddle out considerably less of an ordeal, which was a good thing since he was still bone-tired and carrying thirty pounds of equipment.
The fuel slick was mostly gone, but Baby’s coaxial cable tether led him straight to his destination, and before long he was once again preparing himself for a final free-dive to the Jacinta.
This time, there was no uncertainty about what he would find or what he would do when he reached the wreck. He sped down the length of the cable and when he reached the deck, the first thing he did was to pull out what remained of the cable and detach it altogether from the winch spool. That took up the first minute of his dive.