The Deep

“Well, I do. Somethin’ on that boat.”

“Shit. Dog only thing on that boat.”

“Somethin’ inside that boat.”

“You jumpy, man.”

“You go “head over. I gon” cuddle this boat up to that boat and have me a look.”

A laugh. “You be careful. That dog bite your ass.”

“I shoot that sucker with a spear gun.”

A splash, another, a few incoherent words, then silence.

Gail waited. She heard the sound of a paddle sweeping through the water, looked aft, and saw the shadow of the other boat drawing near.

She stepped around the bulkhead, the shotgun at her waist. The man was in the stern of the other boat, looking down at the water and paddling. She didn’t have to see his face; the angry red scar shone black against his dark chest: Slake.

“What do you want?”

Slake looked up.

In the brief glimpse Gail had of his face, she saw surprise, then glee. What followed seemed a single motion: he dropped the paddle, bent to the deck, righted himself. Something shiny in his hand. A twanging sound, tightened elastic released. A flash of metal. The thunk of a steel spear in the bulkhead six inches from her neck.

Then (she would not remember all of this) the click-clack of the shotgun cocking. The roaring boom of the twelve-gauge shell exploding. The sight of Slake, three yards away, as the nine pellets struck him in the sternum-a baseball-size hole, red ooze flecked with white-staggering backward across the cockpit, striking the windward gunwale, sagging, hands clutching at his chest. A gurgling rush of breath. Echo of the explosion across the still water. Eyes rolling up in his head. Skin color graying as the blood left the head. Slump to the deck.

The steady chug of the compressor.

Open-mouthed, she watched the twitching body. The slap of water against Corsair’s hull brought her out of shock. She put the shotgun on the deck, walked aft to the compressor, found the wing nut, and turned it. The motor sputtered and died.

Sanders freed the last two inches of gold rope.

He tapped the aluminum tube and saw it withdraw from the hole, gathered the rope in his right hand, and backed out onto the reef. The light was fading fast, but in the blue-gray mist he could still see Treece and the reflections off the air lift and the outline of the reef. Assuming that they would keep digging for more gold, Sanders opened his wet-suit jacket and stuffed the gold rope inside.

Sanders sensed a change in the sound patterns; something was missing. He exhaled, drew another breath, and realized what was missing: the compressor. He strained to fill his lungs one last time, looked at Treece, and saw a glint and a shadow falling toward him. The glint moved-a knife. Treece’s air hose stiffened, the glint slashed back and forth, and the air hose went limp. Treece turned and raised his arms over his head.

Two men struggled in a twisting ball of shadows, a flurry of arms and hoses and bubbles, the shape of the knife falling to the bottom. Thrashing and kicking, the forms rose toward the surface.

Sanders held his breath, fighting panic. He kicked off the bottom and followed the thrashing figures, rising slowly, remembering to exhale, searching for other shadows in the gloom.

The shape of the figures changed. He could see Treece clearly now, his long body extended vertically, flippers kicking steadily. His hands were clasped around the other man’s head. The man’s regulator and mouthpiece floated away from his tank. For a moment, Sanders thought Treece was helping the man reach the surface. Then, as he saw the man’s arms-pinned to his sides-struggling to wrestle free, saw the legs kicking feebly, Sanders knew what Treece was doing: his hand was clamped over the man’s mouth and nose, preventing him from exhaling. The compressed air in the man’s lungs would be expanding as he was dragged to the surface. With no exit from mouth or nose, the air would be forced through the lining of the lungs.

Sanders had a split-second recollection of a diagram he had seen in a diving book: a ruptured lung, a pocket of air in the chest cavity collapsing the lung, forcing still more air into the chest cavity, that air ramming the collapsed lung and other organs across the chest cavity and collapsing the other lung. Bilateral spontaneous pneumothorax. The man might well be dead before he reached the surface. Briefly, Sanders wondered if the man would feel pain or would simply pass out and die of anoxia.

Sanders was ten feet from the surface, and now all he could think of was getting air. The tightness in his chest lessened as he rose nearer the top; he knew he could make it. But what was up there waiting for him?