Hatteras Blue (16 page)

Galloway looked around once more. Aydlett was thrashing clumsily toward the line, exhaling huge clouds of scarcely used air, swimming more with his arms than with his legs. Well, he'd learn. He nodded to Keyes then and returned his downward signal. He vented air and began swimming downward, the fingers of his right hand ringed around the line.

The sea around them was the same blue as a summer sky, as soft and as filled with light. Delicate white filaments, like smoke from a quietly burning cigar, drifted by as they descended. Galloway pinched his nose through his mask as pressure leaned on his eardrums. His ears cleared and the hiss of air and rumble of exhaled bubbles became encouragingly louder. He felt his sink rate increase as the air in his suit and vest compressed. He turned his wrist to check the gauge. Forty feet.

The two men sank together. The blue became deeper and richer. Red and yellow muted, became washed out. At fifty feet the sea went suddenly cold on their faces and hands. Galloway shivered. They sank rapidly now and from time to time he tightened his hand on the line to brake himself as he cleared his ears.

At sixty-five a flash at the corner of his mask drew his eye. Amberjack. Three, seven, a school of a dozen flashed like scimitars in the falling light. Big, three or four feet long. Curious and unafraid, they swam close to the bubbling monsters that sank slowly into their world, veering off only a dozen feet away. Their scales glittered like rhodium plating. Beyond them moved other, larger shapes, too far to see clearly.

Tiller turned his head to check his partner. Keyes was swimming strongly a few feet above, his mask turned toward the fish. They passed eighty feet and he paused to vent a little air into his vest. Not much, he still wanted to be heavy. The line stretched ahead in a shallow arc, disappearing into a void of prussian blue. He could feel the current now, about a knot, streaming past them like a slow thick wind.

Ninety feet.

At 100 he gripped the line to stop the descent. He could see nothing below but a school of yellowtail, angling away from them into the gloom. He looked upward. The boat and Aydlett's spread-eagled form were long out of sight. A murky green sky glowed between him and the surface.

Keyes motioned brusquely down. Galloway shrugged and kicked downward again.

The sea grew abruptly colder at 110.

At 120 he stopped again, and set the outer ring on his watch. The air flowed thickly past his tongue, a viscous fluid that made the regulator click and squeak. A shadow slipped by him and he glanced up.

It was Keyes, going down with powerful kicks of his fins. He had let go of the line. Galloway cursed inwardly, then let go too and followed him. The current was stronger now. The gloom deepened, even the blue-ness dimming toward night.

At 140 feet something took shape beneath them. At first it was merely angles, a flat surface that reflected what little light remained. At 150, where Galloway leveled off, it became a tapered stern.

He hardly looked at it. He was searching for Keyes. The other man was not in sight. He brought his arm up to his eyes and squinted at the luminous dial. It was hard to make out the hands. He blinked rapidly, then realized the trouble was not in his eyes. The beer, he thought, remembering the can he'd left on deck. That, and the pressurized nitrogen in his air, was making him drunk. It didn't frighten him. He was used to the sensation. But it made him more cautious. He bit down on the mouthpiece, conscious of it as his link to life.

Where the hell was Keyes? In a few minutes they'd have to leave. At 150 feet they were using air from the single tanks five times as fast as at the surface. He pivoted, searching the dimness below, and finally, reluctantly, angled downward.

His eyes took in what his narrowed brain could not fully understand. What he could see was light-colored with coral encrustation. As he moved along its length a taller structure took shape from the icy gloom ahead of him. Once smoothly curved, now jagged with barnacles and waving here and there with weed. Pipelike things protruded from its top. He exhaled and settled toward them, curling an arm around the tallest to anchor him as he checked his air.

Five hundred pounds left above reserve. Two minutes of bottom time at this depth, if his increasingly fuzzy calculations were correct. He looked around. A large grouper, mouth gaping, meandered across the smooth hull. It took several seconds before he realized that the stream of bubbles beyond it wasn't coming from the fish. That's stupid, he chided himself. Must be Keyes over there. Yeah. Who else? He grinned around his mouthpiece.

Even as that thought trickled through his brain, the other diver came into view around the edge of the hull.

He had drawn his knife and was trailing it behind him. He saw Galloway and swam upward toward him. As he neared, Galloway tapped on his watch and held up a finger. One minute. He jabbed his thumb upward.

Keyes lunged, knife arm extended, point aimed at Galloway's stomach.

Reflex alone saved him, slow as his thought processes had become. His hand caught the outstretched arm and he pivoted, pinning it against barnacled steel. The other diver resisted, straining against him. Galloway sucked air, fear cutting suddenly through nitric gaiety. The other man was strong. They were mask to mask. In the dim nightmare light the blue eyes bulged fixedly at him. The knife quivered in their double grip, the point inches from his side.

It began slowly to move. Toward him. Galloway grunted into his regulator, conscious that he was using air too fast. But he couldn't let go, couldn't break away without running the chance of a slip. Let the other man get that hand free, even for a moment, and the knifepoint would rip through a quarter-inch of rubber into his guts.

Keyes's other hand came up and wound itself into Galloway's hair. At the same instant he changed the direction of thrust, catching him by surprise. The knife flashed between their chests, both of them fighting for control; the dull glimmer of the saw-blade just missed Galloway's face.

He breathed out hard, cleared his lungs, and let go of the hull. Locked together, they began to drop. He reached out with his freed hand then and found the toggle on Keyes's vest. Yanked it savagely. It popped and hissed and began to fill, slowly, against the terrible pressure of the sea.

Keyes fought for a moment more as his body rose, then lost his grip. He began sailing upward, silhouetted against the glow, looking like a medieval saint fighting his apotheosis. Steel gleamed briefly as it fell, then disappeared into darkness.

Galloway exhaled. He glanced around once more, then released the stanchion and inflated his own vest.

He came up as fast as he dared and broke surface 200 yards from the boat. Waves tore at his mask as he tongued out the regulator and went to snorkel. Sure rough up here, he thought tiredly. The swim back was slow. Once he saw Keyes ahead on the crest of a wave, then lost him as he disappeared into a trough. Bernie was helping him over the diving platform when Galloway, puffing and blowing water through the snorkel, reached the stern.

He rested his arms on the rusty steel, breathing hard. The violent pitching of the platform made him dizzy after the stability of the deep. Hirsch finished with Keyes and reached down to him, looking worried. He handed up the tank, then drew his own knife. He hauled himself up and rolled over the transom into the cockpit.

The tail man was sitting on deck, chest bare, holding his right hand in his left. Blood ran from narrow slices in his wrist. He looked up as Galloway stood over him, the blade ready. "My hand. What happened to—"

"What the hell was that little stunt?"

"Stunt?"

"You heard me, goddamn you! That bit with the knife!"

"I don't know what you mean," said Keyes. He looked at his sheath and his puzzled look deepened. "Where is it? I remember tapping on the hull with it ... what happened after that?"

Galloway sat down, almost collapsing on the deck, but he kept his eyes on Keyes. Spray burst over the rail, resoaking them both. His head ached.

"Tiller, what happened?"

"He made a pass at me with his diving tool. I got it away from him, fortunately. Well, Keyes?"

"I told you! I don't remember!"

Galloway stared at him. Finally, slowly, he slid his own weapon back into its sheath. "It must have been narcosis. You were deeper than I was, and it hit me too. Have you been this deep before?"

"No."

"You've got to watch for it. Allow for it, control it. And you need more sleep... But why'd you go off on your own?"

"Sorry." There was real apology in his voice. "I had to find out. To see if it was the boat."

"Boat," repeated Galloway, and this time the image in his mind suddenly made sense. His eyes widened. "That wasn't a ship down there. That was a submarine. Is that what you were after?"

Hirsch, standing between them, could contain herself no longer. "I'm glad you're back, Tiller."

"No big deal. Glad to see you care, but—"

"Funny. No, it isn't that." He looked at her face, then followed her arm to the horizon, to the boiling thun-derheads almost on them. Another sea came over the side and drenched them all with cold salt water. Loose gear slid and rolled across the deck.

"So our storm's finally arrived. This close to Hatteras, I wonder what took it so long."

"That's not all," she said. "I knew when you saw that you'd want to get underway. So I started the engine while you were down. But, Tiller—the other engine's quit, too. And I can't get it going again."

"Christ. What's Shad say? He's good with engines."

"Shad?"

"Wait a minute. He's back aboard, isn't he? I didn't see him on the way up."

A sudden preliminary spatter of rain danced along the gunwales. Behind her voice the wind rose to a whine. "No," Bernie said, sounding frightened. "He hasn't come back aboard. As far as I know he's still in the water."

* eleven

G
alloway pulled himself to his feet, ig-

noring the pain. His eyes came up from the sea to the onrushing storm. And then, instinctively, to the compass.

The wind was dead southeast.

It was nothing less than a death sentence for a powerless boat off Hatteras. Downwind waited disaster. Driven on a lee shore,
Victory
would be pinned on the shoals and battered to bits like a balsa toy. Their only hope, with both engines dead, was to ride it out at anchor, fixed by a thread of nylon to the mass of steel far below.

"Get this gear stowed," he snapped at Hirsch. "Tanks first. Lock the lockers. Throw everything else movable below. We're going to be taking some seas." His glance flicked to Keyes. "Get below with that hand. Wash it out with disinfectant. There's a medical kit in the head. Then get back up here. Move!"

"Wait, Tiller, wait! What about Shad?"

"What about him?"

"Where is he?"

Galloway, bent over the fuze panel, said angrily, "How should I know? He may be on the bottom. In which case we can't help him. Or he may have left the line and got pulled away by the current. In which case he's somewhere north of us. And we can't help him there, either, till I can get one of these bastards to turn over."

She stood aside from the companionway at that, her face white. Galloway slid down it after Keyes. He turned aft, ducking as he entered the engine compartment. The light was on. Tools slid across the deck. He picked them up and went to work, hearing as he did so a sudden heavy drumfire of rain above his head.

A few minutes later he looked up from the port engine as Keyes came in. He held up his hand, neatly wrapped in gauze and adhesive tape. "All fixed."

"Did you clean it out? Coral infections can be hell."

'Yes. Used the last of your bourbon. I took an internal dose, too." His smile faded. "That business with the knife—I remember it now. Vaguely. But I don't see how I could have done it."

"Narcosis is a funny thing. Sometimes fatigue—like when you're seasick for days on end, I guess—can bring it on hard. You probably thought I was some old enemy, or a shark." Galloway twisted a fuel valve closed and then open again. His fingers were ochre with rust. "Know anything about diesels?"

"Some."

"Great. Check out the fuel pump. I'll pull the filters."

"Right."

They worked silently for several minutes, bracing themselves against the engine blocks as the boat pitched. At last Galloway straightened. "It's time we got off a distress call." /

"Just a moment." Keyes did not look up from the pump. "Tiller ... I'd really rather you didn't."

Galloway stopped, one hand on the hatch. "I thought we had this straightened out."

"We do. You're the captain. But I still don't think you ought to use the radio yet." Keyes replaced the pump cover, tightened the bolts, and wiped his hands on his trousers. The bandage was smeared with red; in the dimness Galloway could not tell if it was rust or blood. "We're in no danger as long as the grapnel holds. Correct?"

"We'll get shaken up pretty thoroughly. May lose some gear. Serious damage, probably not—
if
the hook holds."

"Then why give our position to the world on channel sixteen? There'll be time to call if we start to drift, won't there?"