He swam with all his might, gritted his teeth, and looked down.
CHAPTER FIVE
The body was so close that Kaz recoiled in revulsion.
Captain Vanover lay upon the slope, still in the street clothes he had been wearing on Deep Scout’s final voyage. The arms were in an outstretched position, swaying softly, matching the movement of the fan.
Calm down! Kaz ordered himself as his breathing began to accelerate. If he hyperventilated, he could inhale the rest of his tri-mix in no time at all.
Swallowing hard, he descended to the corpse. He watched as the face entered the cone of brightness provided by the headlamp. He had been prepared for a horror-movie image, a hideously disfigured carcass. But what he saw was perhaps even more disturbing. Although his complexion was blue and lifeless, Braden Vanover looked very much as he always looked — as if he were about to speak. To laugh out loud and tell them it was all a big joke.
It’s no joke, Kaz thought tragically.
The eyes were closed. And when Kaz reached out to touch Vanover’s arm, the skin didn’t feel like human flesh anymore. It was rubbery — the cold smoothness of neoprene.
English approached from above, his face a mixture of sorrow and triumph. Despite his emotions, he did not waste a single second. At this point, every bottled breath was borrowed from their vital decompression time.
The operation was not complicated. Kaz helped English carry the body — it was surprisingly buoyant — over to the anchor line. The guide attached two lift bags to his friend — one under each arm. Then he inflated the bags with shots of air from his B.C. The body rose up the rope as if by magic. It was out of sight almost immediately.
Back on the ascent, Kaz could only imagine the gruesome discovery awaiting Captain Torrington when the corpse reached its destination. As it rose, the air in its cavities would expand. The body had not been deformed in its watery grave, but on the surface it would be bloated beyond recognition.
Approaching one hundred feet, they switched back to compressed air. Kaz was aware of the pleasant drowse of narcosis, but the feeling had faded by the time English clutched the line and signaled for him to do the same. They had reached sixty feet — their first decompression stop.
The idea was that a deep diver could avoid the bends by returning to the surface slowly. This would allow absorbed gases to breathe out naturally rather than bubbling into the bloodstream and tissues. It was achieved by making five stops on the ascent.
The sixty-foot stop was short — four minutes of fish watching and thumb twiddling. But the times quickly grew. The twelve minutes at forty weren’t so bad, but Kaz found himself staring at his dive watch during the eighteen minutes at thirty. Another problem: Up here the sea was warm, but their heavy neoprene suits were designed for much colder ocean. He was sweating profusely.
Finally, it was time for the twenty-foot stop. Here, the current was a factor once again. Kaz had to cling to the anchor line to maintain his position. It wasn’t difficult at first, but the effort required to keep it up for the full thirty-two minutes was physically exhausting.
The depth isn’t what gets you, he reflected. It’s the decomp that drives you mad!
He was really dreading their final stop. It was right in the teeth of the current at ten feet. And it was scheduled to last more than an hour.
Plodding up the rope was like mountain climbing — inching hand over hand through an overpowering wind. When they reached the ten-foot mark, he held on for dear life, flapping like a flag in the fast-moving water. It was time to switch to their third and final breathing gas — pure oxygen to speed decompression.
But how can I change tanks in this current? If I let go with even one hand, I’m lost.
He tried calling into his mouthpiece. “I can’t—”
English cut him off. “You will.” Curling his right arm into an iron clamp around the line, he enfolded the boy in a bear hug with the left. Kaz struggled clumsily with the hoses, fumbling to clip the regulator in place. His first breath brought in only seawater. The coughing fit followed immediately. To be out of control, untethered from the rope, made his stomach leap up the back of his throat.
“Try again!” ordered English, eyes afire. “Vite!”
There it was. A clean snap this time, and the clear, strong taste of oxygen. Kaz grabbed the line once more. Sixty-four minutes to go.
The ache in his wrists grew to twisting agony. His fingers stiffened painfully, and then went numb. And the heat — he was quite literally swimming in his own perspiration inside the heavy rubber suit. When he dared to look at his watch, only eleven minutes had gone by.
Close your eyes. It helps the time pass.
But the darkness in his head only reminded him of the darkness of the deep, filling his mind with images of the captain’s lifeless body listing on the slope.
And when he opened his eyes, he was looking straight at Clarence.
Kaz’s very being convulsed with terror as he stared at the shadowy behemoth about twenty yards away. What else could it be but the eighteen-foot monster tiger shark of local legend? The sleek, muscular body, longer than many boats; the triangular dorsal fin; the top-heavy crescent tail; the huge, gaping mouth…
He was never actually aware of letting go of the anchor line. He felt the manhandling force of the current. But at that moment, his fear of the shark prevented him from realizing just how much trouble he was in. The water was conveying him away from Clarence — that was all he cared about just then.
“Boy!” shouted English, lunging for his charge.
Accelerating in the current, Kaz noticed for the first time how huge the shark was — much larger than he remembered Clarence. He could also make out pale yellow markings on the dark gray skin, almost like polka dots. The mouth looked wrong, too, limp and floppy. The tiger shark had powerful jaws, capable of snapping a person in two.
The truth came to Kaz in a moment of horror. This wasn’t Clarence at all! This was a twenty-five-foot whale shark — a huge but harmless plankton eater.
He had let go of the anchor line — the lifeline — for nothing.
Menasce Gérard watched Kaz’s receding form disappear in the surging current. He had no doubt that he could catch up to the boy. But then the two of them would be lost, with no way to call for rescue. No, the only course of action was to remain here; to remain calm. He would complete his decompression, return to the Pizarro, and then go after the boy.
Mon dieu, those teenagers were trouble. Yet he had to admit that without Kaz, they never would have recovered the captain’s body. Oui, he owed the boy that. His stubborn insistence on joining this expedition was as courageous as it was foolhardy.
English regarded his watch. He still had more than forty minutes to go, but he could cut that time in half. It was risky, but necessary to rescue the boy.
Twenty nervous minutes later, he broke the surface. Not wanting to risk even a short swim in the powerful current, he hauled himself and his equipment straight up the anchor line, and swung a long leg over the gunwale of the Pizarro.
Vanover’s remains had already been placed inside a gray body bag on the deck. Perhaps that was best — to remember Braden as he was, not in this state.