Richard settled to the seabed and began to look around. It seemed that he was on some kind of hilltop, though his torch beam would not go far enough for him to be sure. A thin ridge scarcely wider than Katapult herself coming and going into the darkness on either hand. On either side of it, hillsides plunged down within scant feet to depths he could not begin to estimate. Diagonally across this ridge ran a thin crack, perhaps a yard wide, apparently infinitely deep. Into this the anchor had fallen, and here it had wedged.
All he had to do was to slide his crowbar into the trench and he should be able to get the anchor free. There were some heavy-looking rocks farther down that would hold Katapult against the night’s calm and sluggish tides. He put down the spear gun, concerned that it might get tangled up in his efforts, took the steel crowbar from his belt, and moved forward. Already planning what to do with the rocks and the anchor — should he prove strong enough to carry it on his own — and wondering whether he should check those nearby boxes as well, he thrust the crowbar down toward the hook of the trapped anchor, only to hurl back, shouting with surprise as the eel attacked.
What sort of eel it was, he never knew. He was no expert and could have made no distinction between types. He remained ignorant also of its precise size, but he related it easily enough to the scale of his own body. Its head, jaws fastened onto the crowbar, was almost the size of his own head. The body that uncoiled with breathtaking rapidity out of the shadows seemed as broad as his thigh, perhaps as his waist. And it was longer than he was.
The power of the thing was awesome. Only his shockstrengthened grip kept him attached to the steel crowbar as the two of them tumbled backward end over end. His only clear thought was an overpowering command to his brain to keep breathing regularly. His lungs obeyed but the demands of galvanic action taxed their calm rhythm severely. Time ceased to have any meaning for him. His left hand, torch dangling from its wrist-strap, grabbed the far end of the bar, forcing the eel’s head away from his own, and they rolled back into the darkness, face to face as though the eel were a rabid dog at his throat. He felt its length whip round him and begin to squeeze. Wildly he wondered whether these things could crush you like anacondas. Then his shoulders crashed into angular solidity and he had the strangest feeling that he was tumbling down stairs and the image was so overpowering, so disorienting, that it took him a second to realize what had actually happened. The eel had pushed him against the pile of discarded explosives boxes under Katapult’s keel.
He thrust forward with all the power at his command, feeling the unsteady pile crumbling around him. The momentum of the eel’s attack was gone in any case and so he found himself moving back toward the crack where the monster lived — and not a moment too soon. As they rolled across the ridge, so the pile of boxes collapsed, some of them disintegrating to spill their contents out onto the seabed. Invisibly in the darkness, a small black disk, some four inches in diameter and two deep, flew lazily toward the crack in the ridge. It was well wrapped in clear plastic, which should have kept it waterproof, but as it landed, so the plastic ruptured, and instantly a thin trail of bubbles coiled upward. On the next bounce, a second later, the disk attained the black cleft and tumbled in. Two seconds later it exploded.
One instant, Richard was aware only of his blind test of strength. The next there was a flash of light and a detonation that made his ears ring. And the eel was gone. Dazzled and deafened, he fell to his knees on the thin ridge, pulled the torch into both fists, and swept its puny beam around in a tight arc.
Nothing.
The eel, more sensitive than he, had been more affected by the explosion and had swum away. No sign of it remained.
He stayed exactly where he was, on his knees, breathing slowly and regularly, waiting for his heart to slow. Waiting for the jumping in his limbs to still. Waiting for the next explosion.
Nothing.
The line around his waist, tangled around much of his body now, jerked suddenly and set his recovery back somewhat. He jerked in return to let them know he was all right, then waited. It took some time, but at last his heartbeat steadied, his breathing became normal and his limbs still. He untangled himself carefully and returned to the trench.
His torch beam showed him the mess the eel and he had made of the boxes. That crazy pile was now strewn willy-nilly across the seabed, but it looked as though only two were open. A cursory inspection revealed many boxes to be the same as the two that had burst, some distinguished by having a large X marked upon their sides. Both burst boxes contained flat black disks wrapped in clear, strong plastic. The look of the things was familiar.
Sidetracked into rummaging through his capacious memory, Richard was paying scant attention to the scene in front of him where the stem of the anchor protruded from the cleft in the narrow ridge, but suddenly a movement there pulled his distracted gaze into sharp focus and he realized wryly what the eel had done: it had run home. And its home was beside the anchor. If he tried to free it again, it would attack again. This looked like a stalemate.
Abruptly a shrill whining filled his head and an instinct trained into him years ago at diving school whipped his left hand toward his face plate. The luminous display on his diving watch was flashing at him. Four minutes and counting down. He should simply give up and return to the surface now.
But he would be damned before he would let himself be beaten by a fish.
Then, because he was thinking of something else entirely, he remembered what the black disks were. They were thunderflash grenades.
He didn’t think beyond that. He didn’t bother to weigh the implications. He knew what they were. He knew that they worked. He knew how to get rid of the eel — perhaps even without hurting it. Now, where had he put the spear gun?
It was easy enough to attach the grenades to the spears. They were wrapped in plastic just loose enough to push the spear points through. The first two he tried proved disappointingly ineffective. Neither detonated, though he was certain he had armed them correctly. The third was much more satisfactory. Almost as soon as he thrust the spearpoint through the plastic and twisted the top of the disk, a thin line of bubbles burst into the torchlight. He took careful aim and fired again. The spear sped straight and true. Richard curled his arm over his eyes. A second or two later there was a detonation from deep within the trench. Richard never knew whether the eel survived, but it was certainly absent when he moved to free the anchor.
Partway through the process, the line around his waist jerked urgently again.
And that, in the end, was what made up his mind.
Chapter Seven
“Thank you, Rass al Kaimah. Multihull Katapult leaving Hormuz inshore traffic zone now…” Hood consulted the piece of paper Weary had just passed to him. “Position fifty-six-fifteen east, twenty-six-twenty north. Time logged at…”
“One-thirteen, local,” announced Robin, her clear eyes on the chronometer.
“…thirteen thirteen hours local time. Inbound on a heading of…”
“Due west,” called Richard, who held the con, his gaze flicking back up from the compass to their course as he spoke.
“…due west for Bahrain Island. ETA at Manama Harbor…”