With the sound of the explosion, the other diver turned, saw what had happened, hesitated for a moment, and raced for the open torpedo tube. I reached him just as he got his head and shoulders inside the three-foot opening. I couldn't let him make it inside, so I grabbed my second bang-stick and jammed it against his right leg. The explosion and bullet passing through his calf stopped his forward motion, and I pulled him back out of the tube. This guy wasn't about to go down without trying, though. His tight neoprene wetsuit acted to constrict the wound, and the cold water diminished his pain. He emerged with knife in hand, managing to slice through the back of my left glove and into my hand, causing me to drop my own knife.
I placed myself between him and the open torpedo tube and drew out my dagger. We were three feet apart, and I could see the hesitation in his eyes. Then he decided, and attempted to shoot to the surface about thirty feet above us, kicking with his left leg, trailing his right. I saw his hand reach for the blow button on his BC, as I reached out and stabbed his right fin as hard as I could, penetrating completely through the fin. Using the dagger as a lever, I pulled the surprised diver back down and ripped his regulator from his mouth, while pulling his leg sharply toward me to retrieve my dagger. From the corner of my eye I saw a flash disappear as his knife joined his buddy in the deep, so I stopped worrying about getting stabbed.
This guy was pretty resourceful. Without hesitation, he punched his BC fill button and we both began to rise. It took me a moment, but I managed to whip my right arm over his shoulder and stab his BC bladder, which immediately belched air, stopping our ascent. Next step, get rid of his mask. A diver doesn't really need a mask, but you can see a lot better with one, and in cold water it's much easier on your face. I fumbled around and managed to pull his mask off just as his hand found mine, pulling it up over my head. At least, that was his intent, but I had donned my mask under my hood, so my mask remained against my forehead, and I still had a regulator in my mouth.
That's when I felt a sharp pain in my upper left arm immediately followed by icy cold as the sleeve filled with water. The son-of-a-bitch had stabbed my left bicep. He had another knife! I should have anticipated it. My bad — I was tired, but not that tired.
This guy was really beginning to piss me off, though. Every time I did something that should have incapacitated him, he just found another way to get back at me. With a forty-five slug through his leg, he still was with me move-for-move. I locked my legs around him, trying to control his actions, when he ripped the regulator from my mouth. I squinted through my seawater filled eyes, and saw him put my regulator in his mouth. Shit on that!
Cut, stabbed, and now he was breathing my air!
I whipped my right arm around from his back in a wide roundhouse and jammed the needle point of my dagger right through his suit into his belly. I grabbed my mask with my injured left hand and pulled it back over my eyes and nose. Since it was self-clearing, I wasted no time, but reached for my spare regulator attached to the left side of my BC with Velcro. Now, with breathing air and clear vision restored, I saw the Russian's eyes open wide in shock. I pulled my regulator from his mouth with my injured hand, and twisted the dagger with my right. I wasn't looking to hurt the guy, but I needed to put an end to this madness. Only one of us was going home, I swore, and it wouldn't be the Russian. But he still had some fight in him.
A sharp pain pierced my left thigh, and my left suit leg flooded with water. Somehow he had either not dropped his second knife, or he had a third one stashed away. I grabbed his hand with my injured hand and forced him to drop the knife. Should I have anticipated this one as well? I don't really know. That's asking a lot.
He struggled with decreasing energy for another minute, and then he opened his mouth. I watched a stream of bubbles rise to the surface as his lungs filled with water. It was over. I released my hold on the diver and watched as he slowly slipped out of sight.
I didn't know how many more divers the Whiskey had available. None, probably, but as a precaution, I jammed the other end of the hawser through the space between the torpedo tube outer door hinges so they wouldn't be able to close the outer door and prepare to deploy a third man. Now, if they had another diver available, they would first have to remove a torpedo before they could put him in the water through a different tube. The alternative was to launch him from topside, and that would take at least ten minutes, probably more. I could still see the bottom of the trawler off to my right, and I had to find the Halibut.
I sheathed my dagger and swam over to the keel of the trawler, still wallowing in the swell. I could just barely make out the shadow of the Halibut below me. I struck out, kicking my way down with my right leg mostly. I knew I had lost a lot of blood, but I'd made it this far, and I wasn't about to quit now. I saw the light from the Can's open hatch when I reached about fifty feet, but as I continued to drop, the light disappeared. They had closed the hatch!
This wasn't good. Did they write me off? I couldn't believe that, so what was happening? Suddenly, the sub began to rise, and then I was on the deck. I was feeling pretty weak, but I needed to make some noise quickly. My knife was gone and my dagger wasn't massive enough. I backed up against the can and slammed my twin nineties against the hull. The sub stopped rising, and about a minute later the outer hatch opened again. A head wearing just a mask poked through the opening. I didn't recognize who it was, but he obviously was looking for me.
I could see him just fine, but it felt pretty comfortable lying there on the deck. I felt safe and secure where I was as a warm blackness overcame me. I vaguely remember being moved around, somebody stripping my gear off, being pulled through the hatch. But it's fuzzy, like a distant dream. Things got darker and then brighter, and I half wondered if I was going through a white-light-at-the-end-of-a-tunnel experience.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
My suit was gone, but I didn't remember taking it off. I pressed my hands down against something soft and resilient — my left hand hurt like hell. I tried to roll over, but was restrained by something. Then I floated away again.
I felt something cool against my forehead, and a nagging, persistent voice calling my name. Maybe if I opened an eye the noise would go away. I worked at it for a while. A thousand minutes later I managed to pull my right eyelid apart. The noise stopped, but the bright light was pretty startling, and I snapped my lid shut. The noise droned on again. It was becoming irritating, so I forced both eyes open to take on my tormentor, but what I saw was the Skipper (without his cigar), Ski, Ham, and a stranger.
"Welcome back, Mac," the Skipper said. "We thought we lost you there for a while." He grinned at me and left my range of vision.
"Great to see ya, El-Tee," Ski said. "I got to go tell the guys. They'll want to know." He saluted haphazardly and left.
Ham smiled at me and presented the stranger. "Mac, this is Sergyi. He wants to tell you something."
Sergyi looked fully at me, straightened to attention, and said, "You damn fine brave guy, El-Tee. I much pleasure to know you. We play chess later, da?"
I managed a grin. "Spasibo, Sergyi," I said to the Ukrainian. "Maybe later."
He turned and left, accompanied by a crew member I couldn't see.
When he was gone I asked, "What happened, Ham? The last thing I remember is seeing the light disappear when the hatch closed."
Ham filled me in. When I didn't come back, they decided to isolate the outer hatch and bring the sub up to get me. Sergyi insisted on joining Jack and Jimmy in the outer lock. Since the excursion appeared to be within thirty feet, Ham authorized it, since he could think of nothing Sergyi might do that could jeopardize the rescue operation. Then they heard my banging, and the hatch cracked open, Sergyi grabbed a mask and thrust his head through the opening. That's why I didn't recognize his face. I didn't really know it, and I was practically unconscious from loss of blood by then. When he donned his mask and stuck his head through the hatch, he saw me in a prone position floating away. Although he was dressed only in a borrowed Nomex jumpsuit, he wasted no time coming back up to explain, but with the breath he already had he pulled himself through the hatch, swam about five feet to my position, grabbed my harness, and pulled me to the hatch. He stripped my gear off and wrestled me up into the lock where an astonished Jack and an incredulous Jimmy pulled me to safety. Then they hoisted the half-frozen Ukrainian back into the lock and sealed the hatch. They got a hot shower on Sergyi, and proceeded to remove my gloves. The obvious injury on my left hand made them change their tactics, and they cut the rest of my suit off.