All he could see was that Tom wasn’t going down without a fight.
He struggled and fought like a frenzied fish. Hand-to-hand fighting is difficult in enclosed spaces, like the interior hull of the Buckholtz, but it was next to impossible in thick dive gear, while submerged in narrow spaces. The viscosity of water forces every move to slow down. Numerous weapons still fired under water, but bullets rapidly lost their momentum, rendering any shots ineffective unless the barrel of the gun was pressed up against an enemy. Kicks and punches were mostly useless too, for the same reason.
A sharp, streamlined weapon, like a speargun, was the most lethal.
The fact that Tom was still alive suggested to Sam that the divers weren’t expecting trouble and thus weren’t equipped to fight. They had most likely spotted him and Tom and tried to kill Tom while he was on his own.
Right now, they were working to physically maneuver Tom until he was face down and they could easily close off his oxygen supply.
Sam gripped his dive knife firmly in his right hand.
There wasn’t much time.
Three of them versus him and Tom. They had the advantage, but he might still surprise them — and once Tom was free, it would be a much fairer fight.
Sam reached the diver closest to him. The diver had his back up against the internal wall of the Buckholtz. He was trying to work out how to shut down the oxygen supply to Tom’s closed-circuit rebreather system. It was nearly impossible without dismantling the aluminum backpack, but the sight gave Sam an idea.
The scuba diver’s tank was directly in front of him. Sam reached forward and closed the attacker’s regulator valve.
Confident it was now closed, he positioned himself backward in the dark and waited for a few seconds. Sam watched as the diver realized something was wrong, and unable to do anything about it, broke free from the fight and headed toward the surface.
The second diver turned to see what was going on. Sam watched as he peered out the opening in the hull, where the first diver was now making a rapid ascent to the surface.
When the diver turned again, to face Tom, Sam slid his knife into the diver’s throat.
The blade was razor sharp, designed for slicing ropes and anything else that he might become entangled with, and he drove it straight through his attacker’s windpipe. The diver frantically, reached for his throat, as though he could somehow protect himself.
Sam twisted the blade, causing further damage, and then yanked it free.
It was a disturbing way to kill a man, but there was nothing else to be done. It was either the scuba divers or Tom and him. Kill or be killed. Given the options, Sam was happy with his choice. He stared at the diver. Sam’s knife had inflicted a fatal wound, and the man knew it. His eyes were wide with terror, and his arms flailed frantically, searching for some sort of support.
Sam stared at the stranger’s eyes. There was something else there, too. Concealed within the man’s death throes, was another emotion, something that took Sam by surprise — triumph.
Sam tried to back away, out of reach, but he wasn’t quick enough. The dying man’s hand connected with Sam’s full-faced dive mask and the man yanked it free.
In an instant, his visibility was taken from him.
Sam tried to orient himself, but there was little he could do. The second his mask was ripped free, murky water gushed over his face, flooding his mouth and blinding his eyes. He forced himself to open his eyes. In the darkened mess, his eyes swept the environment, trying to distinguish the darkness of the internal hull of the Buckholtz and the radiant light from outside.
His only chance was to reach the surface, but until he got control, and knew in what direction that was, he would end up doing nothing more than racing toward his death.
The seawater turned white with bubbles gushing out of the end of the piping that should have formed his closed-circuit rebreather system — a system no longer closed with the destruction of his mask.
Still, he needed to reach the end of that tubing. It wouldn’t last long, but the air inside might sustain his life long enough to reach the surface.
He groped in the dark for the end of the pipe and then pulled it toward his mouth. The bubbles went everywhere. He couldn’t seem to form a seal. Why not? Mentally, he struggled to come up with an answer. Had his attacker managed to rip the piping down the middle? It seemed impossible. He tried a second time to form a seal over the end of the tube but failed.
Next solution, locate his pony bottle.
A pony bottle was a small tank with 50 bar of compressed air. It encompassed a small regulator and single mouthpiece. It was generally attached to his right leg as a last resort, emergency, breathing source.
Only now, he couldn’t reach it.
He ran his hands all the way down his torso and thighs.
It wasn’t there.
Could his attacker have managed to knock that off, too?
Sam shook his head. It didn’t matter. Right now, he needed to surface. But the darkness was overcoming him.
He thought he saw the light and started swimming toward it, only when he reached it, his world got darker again. The problem was that without vision or an air supply it was almost impossible to determine in which direction the surface was. He followed the light, as his chest burned with the tightness of suffocation.
Sam felt his ears ache and swallowed to equalize the pressure.
He should have been near the surface. Was he going deeper? The thought horrified him. He gritted his teeth and kept swimming. The world in front of him was bright like he was nearing the surface. He reached his hands forward expecting to break the surface of the water.
Instead, they slammed into something metal.
Sam stared at the light in disbelief and grabbed it.
In an instant, full understanding dawned on him. It was a flashlight. Not his, but the other diver’s. The light must have fallen free, dropping to the lower levels of the Buckholtz’s internal hull. He’d followed the light all the way down to the bottom, which meant he was now what… 50…or possibly 60 feet from the surface?
Terror stripped at his hardened resolve, and part of him was ready to take a deep breath and end it all then and there.
But he’d never been a quitter and didn’t plan to make this the day of his death. So, instead, he gripped the flashlight and kicked off the bottom of the hull in a desperate race to the surface. He kicked both of his legs in a slow and continuous motion.
Despite his tenacity, Sam couldn’t stay submerged without air indefinitely — his vision started to darken.
He felt his world come apart as his oxygen-deprived brain struggled to make sense of his environment.
Above him, Sam’s hands struck steel. It was possibly the internal deck of the Buckholtz, or even simply a gangway or passageway.
It didn’t matter.
There was nowhere else for him to go.
Sam stopped kicking. And why shouldn’t he? It was now impossible for him to reach the surface. A ghost, or was it simply a figment of his imagination, told him to have a rest and take it easy. Everything was going to be just right.
The ghost was big and friendly. It handed him something and told him to breathe. Sam kept pushing it away. No thank you… I’m quite all right, dying here without your help. But the ethereal specter was insistent, until Sam finally felt something forced into his mouth.