Sam looked to Des with a raised eyebrow.
Warren sounded hesitant. “I could be wrong, but it looks to me like an entry.” He paused, and the comm line hissed with faint static. His next words sent a jolt through everyone on the bridge. “And unless I’m mistaken, it’s been used recently.”
CHAPTER 22
Sam slipped the dive mask over his head and glanced at Remi, standing beside him in a wet suit. “Fits you like a glove,” he said, admiring her figure.
“It’s too loose, but I’ll manage. You ready to do this?”
“I was born ready.”
“Let’s not start on that again,” she said as she cleared her regulator and moved to the edge of the dive platform. She stepped off the lip and dropped into the water. Sam cleared his line with a hiss and followed her into the sea with a splash.
Once they were below the surface, Sam swam toward Remi and gave her a thumbs-up signal, which she returned. He glanced to his right and pointed and she nodded. He began swimming toward the hazy outline of the ruins, bleeding air from his BCV as he descended. Remi did the same, and several minutes later they were beside Warren and one of his divers, wearing commercial diving suits and Kirby Morgan dive helmets. Warren pointed at the gap in the wall and Sam swam toward it.
He paused and ran his gloved hand over the edge, noting the scrapes along the rim. He turned back to Warren and pointed at the marks and Warren signaled No. They hadn’t made them.
Remi joined him and Greg Torres swam near. Sam fished a flashlight from his dive bag and switched it on, and Remi did the same. Greg tapped his watch and pointed up, his message clear: he was running low on air and would need to begin his decompression run to the surface. Sam gave him an OK signal and watched as Greg and his companion began their ascent.
Sam returned his attention to the gap and shone his light in it. The darkness lit up, and he and Remi could make out a passage. The floor of the corridor was littered with broken chunks of block, seaweed, and barnacles.
Remi directed her flashlight beam into the opening and waited for Sam to lead the way as Warren waited nearby. Sam pushed himself cautiously into the passage, wide enough to accommodate both Remi and him side by side. He moved slowly, his fins barely propelling him along. Remi’s light bounced off the sheer face of the walls and played over the ceiling.
Slivers of daylight glinted through cracks overhead. Sam stopped at the end of the passage where it made a hard right and paused before shining his beam into the inky darkness. He recoiled abruptly as a long black form swam toward him, the creature’s predatory smile eerie in the flashlight’s glow. The eel’s sleek body, at least four feet long, undulated in serpentine waves as it darted past Remi toward the opening.
Remi followed the eel with her light until it faded into a shadow by the gap and then turned back to where Sam waited motionless. He wiped away the edge of the corner block and pointed to where more of the distinctive scrapes could be made out.
Sam resumed his progress, brushing away a trail marker along the walls to guide their way out.
Remi was behind him. When they made the turn, they found themselves in a large, partially collapsed chamber. Their flashlight beams roamed over the floor and walls, and Remi’s stopped at another gap — this one in the floor.
Sam drifted toward the opening, pausing to look around, and hovered over it, before pointing at the scrapes along the edges. Remi nodded with an exaggerated waggle of her head so he would see it and then she stopped, wincing. The doctor’s warning about taking it easy had been forgotten in the fray, but it came screaming back as a lance of pain shot down her spine.
Sam, unaware of his wife’s discomfort, flashed his lamp into the hole, the darkness closing in as the amount of light in the chamber halved. With another look to Remi, he swam into the opening.
Remi followed him down, the shriek of pain in her neck subsiding as quickly as it had come. They found themselves in a smaller chamber, the walls as encrusted with barnacles and marine life as the one above. Sam edged to the nearest wall and rubbed it with his glove. A smear of greenish brown came away, floating in the water like a cloud, as he eyed the stone beneath. A line a quarter inch deep ran from top to bottom.
He scrubbed again lower down and peered at where the line intersected another. Two minutes of this and he had a three-foot section cleared, enough to see that the indentations were carvings.
A glint caught his eye, and he neared the wall until his face was only inches away. The light caught the spot again and it sparkled.
Remi was nearby, also scrubbing with her glove, but along the floor. She waited for the floating residue to clear and tapped Sam’s arm. He spun to where she floated weightless near the floor and she pointed to a lump on the surface. There was still too much debris in the water to see well, but he focused his lamp where she was indicating and approached.
His eyes widened when he made out what Remi had found. It looked like a long knife.
Sam reached down and freed the blade from the silt, but most of it disintegrated at his touch, leaving him holding a worn piece of wood. He inspected it for several long beats and then directed Remi’s gaze to the wall as he placed the find in his dive sack. She swam closer to the lines and he joined her, taking care to shine his light along the etching so she could see what had caught his attention. The section he’d pointed to gleamed in his beam and she reached out to touch it.
After scrubbing more of the wall, Sam tapped his watch and then his air supply gauge. Remi checked hers and gave him a thumbs-up. It was time to return to the surface.
They turned and were swimming toward the doorway when a low rumble trembled through the structure. Several large blocks dislodged in the chamber above them and dropped in a cloud of debris, barring their exit as the small earthquake shifted the foundation. Sam and Remi held deathly still until the shock subsided, their light beams filtering through the cloud of sediment. They exchanged a glance through their masks — their means of escape was sealed off.
Sam swept the area with his flashlight, looking for another opening. At the far end of the chamber, the light disappeared into darkness where previously there had been wall. Sam pointed to the new gap and swam cautiously toward it, Remi by his side. They reached the opening and found themselves peering into a passageway encrusted with marine life, long tendrils of seaweed drifting in the water like wisps of green smoke. Sam looked over at Remi and gestured at his air supply gauge. Remi glanced at hers and gave him a So-so signal with her right hand.
They swam into the narrow corridor together, Sam in the lead, the glow of his lamp of little help through the curtain of marine growth in their path. He groped with his free hand as the passageway curved, and slowed when he came to a bend, the bottom rising in a mound of debris.
Another glance at his watch confirmed that they were almost out of time — their ascent would require a decompression stop to allow the nitrogen in their systems to disperse, which would require air to breathe. At the rate they were going, they’d run out before they had sufficient decompression time and would have to rush to the surface, risking the painful and sometimes fatal condition known as the bends.
Which assumed they’d be able to escape in the first place and didn’t drown when their dwindling air supply ran dry.
Sam pushed ahead until he came to a point where the rubble pile rose so high it blocked his way forward. He looked overhead at the ceiling and spotted a narrow section of opening created by several of the stone blocks collapsing. He inched to it and groped along the rim. More sediment filled the water as he broke loose a crumbling edge.