Kaz soon learned that a mixed-gas dive had as much in common with recreational scuba as a polar expedition had with a walk in the park. Even his wet suit would be inadequate. The lightweight rubber was fine protection from the scrapes and stings of a coral reef. But only a thick neoprene shell would insulate him from the bone-chilling cold of the depths.
I may be nice and warm down there, he reflected, zipping up the heavy material, but here in the tropical heat, I’m going to melt!
English loaded him down with enough gear to flatten a packhorse. Back home in Toronto, Kaz had been a hockey player. He was used to heavy padding and protection. But this was unbelievable. More than one hundred pounds of equipment hung on his fourteen-year-old frame. It was all he could manage to put together a string of stiff-legged steps to the dive platform as Captain Torrington dropped anchor.
The spot was directly over the last reported position of Deep Scout.
All at once, Kaz felt fear. Could he do this? His basic dive certification didn’t cover a mixed-gas jump to three hundred feet.
English was also loaded down, but he moved on deck with ease and confidence. He noticed Kaz’s unease. “It is not too late for change the mind,” he said, almost kindly.
Kaz shook his head stubbornly and jumped down to the platform. His knees nearly buckled on impact.
“Bring Braden home,” ordered Torrington.
They hit the waves.
CHAPTER FOUR
A powerful current manhandled Kaz right away. He fumbled with his B.C. to descend from the worst of its strength. But he forgot his heavy gear, and plunged thirty feet in a few seconds, popping his ears painfully. At last, he stabilized. Surprisingly, the extra weight wasn’t too bad underwater, although the thick neoprene wet suit gave him the feeling he’d been laminated.
With effort, he kicked over to join English, and the two headed down the braided rope toward an invisible destination. The depth made Kaz dizzy. His previous dives had been over the reef, with the bottom clearly visible when he entered the water. All he could see now was a void, and its infinite blueness grew darker as they descended through clouds of marine life.
Just as Kaz was beginning to feel the unnerving wooziness of nitrogen narcosis, English clapped him on the shoulder.
Tank change. Kaz switched his regulator from the compressed air in his wing bottles to one of the big eighty-cubic-foot canisters on his back. He spat out an unnerving mouthful of salt water, and inhaled the metallic tang of tri-mix. Instantly, the drunkenness disappeared. English had prepared him for this. The intoxicating effect came from the nitrogen in air being absorbed into the body. But with tri-mix, much of the nitrogen was replaced by helium. This would be the gas mixture they breathed while at depth.
Passing through 150 feet, English turned on his headlamp, projecting a cone of illumination in the darkening water. Kaz did the same, and the sea came alive around him. But they were still nowhere near the bottom.
Two hundred feet. The length of a regulation hockey rink. On skates, Kaz could have covered the distance in a few seconds. Yet the surface seemed miles away. Even the fish avoided this darker world, preferring to stay within reach of the sun’s light.
Hockey. It amazed Kaz how much the memory still stung. The Ontario Minor Hockey Association finals. A hard body check, a freak accident. And a boy named Drew Christiansen was confined to a wheelchair for life. So much had happened — Captain Vanover’s death, Star’s injury. Yet this was still the recollection that haunted Kaz, that kept him up at night. The sport he loved, that he was good at, had turned him into a weapon.
That was what had brought him to Poseidon in the first place. Diving in the tropics — what could be farther from hockey in Canada? That was why he was here, under seven atmospheres of pressure, hooked up to a floating laboratory of equipment, breathing a chemist’s concoction of exotic gases.
Two hundred fifty feet. At last, there it was. The sea floor. It was slanted sharply downward. This was the place where the Hidden Shoals dropped off to deeper ocean.
At 270 feet, the divers made themselves neutrally buoyant for the search. Kaz looked around helplessly. Topside, it had seemed like a simple task: Go down to the correct coordinates and recover the body. But now he took in the featureless expanse of the slope. Their headlamps carved ghostly ovals out of the darkness of the sandy incline.
The divers synchronized watches. Kaz knew they had only twenty-five minutes of bottom time. Even that would require nearly two hours of decompression before they could safely return to the surface from this depth. If they stayed down any longer, they would not have enough breathing gas to complete the decomp. Then they would face the same choice Star had: suffocation or the bends.
So there was a ticking clock behind the hiss of his regulator. Kaz played his light over the vast sameness of the bottom. He kept a nervous eye on English, who was criss-covering the gradient with methodical track lines. To get lost down here — Kaz couldn’t even bring himself to think about it. But one thing was for certain: It would be a death sentence.
Less thinking and more searching. You’ve only got fifteen minutes left!
He could feel the cold now, too. A wet suit was, after all, wet. The penetrating chill of the ocean made him shiver. Due to the slope of the sea floor, he had to adjust buoyancy to parallel it. He watched the numbers on his depth gauge: 280 feet, 290. Would they reach three hundred? It seemed likely. This incline continued a long way. Aboard Deep Scout, the interns had spotted scattered debris in this area, leading down to the second shipwreck at seven hundred feet.
Another tank change. Kaz clipped his regulator into the second big eighty. Down here, gas disappeared at lightning speed, squeezed to practically nothing by nearly ten atmospheres of pressure. Eleven minutes.
Kaz’s breath caught in his throat as English descended to investigate a dark shape on the bottom. But it was a false alarm — an area of black mud on the sandy gradient. Kaz checked his watch. Four minutes.
We let you down again, Captain, he thought in misery. All you did was be nice to us, and you paid for it with your life. We can’t even recover your body for a decent burial.
He squandered his remaining time, barely kicking his flippers. What difference would it make if they found him? Braden Vanover, the man, the friend, would still be dead.
His dark eyes awash in anguish and fatigue behind his mask, English signaled their return to the anchor line. The search was over. Kaz began to cry softly, but he followed without argument. They ascended slowly, allowing their bubbles to outpace them.
As they passed through two hundred feet, the faint glow of Kaz’s headlamp, weakened by the distance to the slope, fell upon a huge sea fan. It had doubled over under its own weight. Standing upright, the thing would have been seven feet tall.
A rush of adrenaline electrified Kaz’s core, radiating outward to his extremities. The memories of that awful day exploded like a fragmentation grenade inside his brain, jump-cut images, a real-life music video: the roar of ocean flooding the dying sub, the struggle to get out, the panicked ascent. And, through the haze of nitrogen narcosis, a dark, murky picture — an enormous sea fan collapsed on the slope, just a few yards away.
Kaz broke off the anchor line, finning for the buckled fan.
“No!” cried English into his regulator.
The guide was going to kill him for this, and Kaz didn’t really blame him. This detour could throw off their entire decompression schedule, a deadly risk. But something other than reason was propelling Kaz away from the rope and safety. There was one final slim chance to recover the captain, and Kaz had to take it.