The hatch cracked open, and water rushed in. She dropped back. Together, they watched the cockpit fill with seawater. It wouldn’t fill all the way — the air inside would prevent that — but it ought to fill enough that they could open the hatch once the pressure had equalized. He held up his hand, palm out, to tell her to wait. Her eyes were wide, and she looked like she was hyperventilating. Vivian was the toughest woman he knew, solid under pressure. Except underwater.
He was making her worst nightmare come true.
Once the bubble was as full as it looked like it was going to get, he forced the hatch open wider. It moved much more easily now.
Her hand came through the edge of the hatch, then her arm.
She pushed through the small opening, and he pulled from his side. A tight fit. Bubbles rushed out of her suit as she exhaled. For a brief instant, he thought she wouldn’t make it, but then she popped free, and they both shot back almost a yard.
Edison swam up close to her, and she reached down to pet his back. Edison was best in the world at comforting panicky people. As Joe’s psychiatric service dog, he’d had plenty of practice. Vivian hugged the dog hard, and Edison licked the inside of the bubble surrounding his head.
With a visible effort, she let go of the dog and turned to Joe. He pointed toward the surface. She probably couldn’t see much in this darkness, but up was where they wanted to go.
Slowly, he kicked off from the side of the sub. He tugged on her suit while holding on to the handle on Edison’s suit. Joe’s flashlight dangled from a strap on his wrist. He had everything he needed.
He spared a glance toward the black sub. Tiny bubbles drifted up along the sides. The prince was probably already dead, and he felt torn. After he got Vivian to safety, he’d check.
Vivian had found a flashlight and turned it on. He guided her hand so the light shone on his face. He pointed to her suit, to the surface, and blew out air in a steady stream. He held his breath and waited for the bubbles to disperse, then shook his head.
She nodded. Hopefully, she remembered the briefing he’d given her on the emergency suit: Once you pull the tab to go up, don’t hold your breath, instead breathe out in a steady stream to avoid an embolism or a collapsed lung. Or at least he hoped she remembered, because he didn’t have any other way to communicate with her. He had to get her to the surface as soon as he could, in case the black sub had run into him on purpose.
Carefully, he pushed her, turning her around so her back was to him. He reached across her and pulled the tab. Her suit headed toward the surface. In a few seconds, he couldn’t even see her boots, just the tiny speck of light on the back of her suit rising toward the surface.
He wished he could have hung on and ridden her suit’s momentum to the top, but he worried Edison might hold his breath, and the dog’s lungs or ears might be damaged. As smart as he was, Edison couldn’t understand the safety briefing.
They’d have to go up the old-fashioned way, slowly. If someone from the large sub had bad intentions, he’d do the best he could. At least Vivian was out of danger.
He turned toward the smashed submarine. A light flickered, and he aimed for it. Unlikely the pilot was alive, but Joe had to check. Vivian had survived the initial impact. Maybe the prince had gotten lucky, too.
Edison swam nearby, yellow legs paddling hard. He was part Labrador, a water dog. He’d always been a strong swimmer, but had become even stronger since they started going out diving from the yellow submarine.
The giant sub hadn’t stirred. Was it disabled? If so, ought he try to rescue the people inside? He had no idea how. They probably had an adequate air supply, and no giant bubbles indicated a hull breach. He’d send someone down after he got to the surface. They’d nearly killed Vivian, and he wasn’t feeling too kindly toward them.
He looked in the direction where he’d first seen the prince’s submarine. A light sputtered, but there were no more bubbles. The little sub must have been crushed under the giant hull.
Joe swam toward the trapped submarine. Shattered plastic glittered under the beam of his dive light. The impact had broken the cockpit bubble. The flashlight blinked off. He banged his light against his thigh, and it came back on, but who knew for how long. Quickly, he swept his light over the remains. A pale hand stretched out from the mud.
Joe swam down to touch it. The hand felt so cold he almost dropped it. Gritting his teeth, he peeled back the man’s diving suit to feel his wrist.
No pulse.
How could there be? The body was crushed under the hulking black submarine. Joe wished he could bring the body to the surface. If he left it here, it might never be recovered. The visibility was low, and it was a big ocean. A dive team could search for a long time without finding something so small as a human body.
He held up a hand to tell Edison to stay still, then descended until he was eye level with the hand. A slow examination in a grid pattern revealed no way to extract the corpse.
He’d have to leave the body for someone else.
Chapter 7
Vivian blew out her breath in a long exhalation, trying not to think about her lungs exploding, bubbles boiling through her blood, embolisms seeking out her brain, all the nightmare scenarios from the safety briefing. She had a lot of sympathy for her panicked scuba buddy right this minute. She was trying very hard not to have a bad moment. Because she wasn’t in a pool with a buddy and instructors and a world-class hospital minutes away.
She was alone, and if she messed this up, she would die. In the water.
Hoping he’d left nothing out, she followed the instructions from Tesla’s safety briefing to the letter and forced herself to keep exhaling. She wasn’t going to run out of air and suffocate in her suit. Plenty of air up there. The suit bore her upward.
A sheet of silver as bright as a Mylar balloon shone above her upturned face, and her heart leaped. The surface. The silver wasn’t flat like a table. Instead, it rose and fell like a sheet flapping on a clothesline. Waves.
She burst through the silver sheet into the sunlit world. With her uninjured hand, she fumbled to unzip her hood. Once it was down, she took a long breath of salty sea air. It tasted better than any air she’d ever breathed. She took another breath.
A wave knocked her in the face, and she coughed. The air might be friendly, but the sea sure as hell wasn’t.
She bobbed around like a cork, the air inside the suit keeping her afloat. So long as she didn’t inhale a wave, she’d be fine. Tesla had told her the suit had an emergency beacon that would activate when exposed to salt water. Even now, hers was calling rescuers. She hoped.
Tesla. And Edison. She hadn’t expected them to surface with her. They didn’t have suits, and she wasn’t sure what would happen to a dog during a rapid ascent. But they’d be along any second. Tesla must have had a plan to get to the surface on his own, or he wouldn’t have sent her up. Right?
A minute passed, then another. She learned to anticipate the waves, to hold her breath, and dive through. Her mouth tasted of salt, and blood ran down her cheek from the cut on her head. On land, she wouldn’t have cared about it. But here she wondered if she was sending out messages to every shark in the sea: Come get your wounded prey! Shop here for a tasty and vulnerable treat!
Hoping to see bubbles from a scuba diver, she scanned the sea. Nothing. Maybe Tesla was a slow swimmer. Maybe he was doing a safety stop. Maybe he wasn’t coming. Or maybe he was stuck down there.
She searched for a rescue ship. No one had heard her transponder’s pleas for help. Did the damn thing work? She didn’t even know where it was supposed to be on her suit. For all she knew, it might not even be there, and it wasn’t calling in the cavalry.