Hatteras Blue (28 page)

This time the fish came in from above. He did not see its approach until a flick of its tail sent it curving along the bottom away from them. His light traced a dim spot along brownish-gray flank. A moment later it had nosed up and vanished into the blackness to their left, giving all three of them time to contemplate the grotesque shape that led that tapered, gracile whip of body.

A hammerhead. Probably, he thought, the one we saw on the way down. But this was no four-footer, as he'd guessed from that swift glimpse. This was mature, not far from fifteen feet long. And if this was the same shark, that meant trouble. That meant it had stayed around, feeling the strange bubbling throb the torch must have sent through the water. It had waited for its slow-swimming prey to reappear.

Because it was hungry.

Galloway turned to explain to the others, but their eyes told him they understood. He pushed past them and wriggled into the hull again. The shark was dangerous. But it was a possible danger. Whereas, he thought, the bends are certain. If he and Jack didn't get topside fast, they could be dead in a few hours.

He handed the first set of used tanks out, following it with the second. When he squirmed out with his own he gestured, drawing their eyes. He made a circle with his hands, then held the spent doubles out defensively.

—Form a circle. Fend it off with your tanks.

They nodded. Caffey bent to pick up his tanks from the bottom.

That bend saved his life. The hammerhead came from the right again, so swiftly they had neither warning nor time to move. Its fin flicked and the rush of water bowled the boy along the bottom. He recovered himself at the edge of the lit path, groping at a flooded mask He set it, tilted his head back, and cleared it. Then he looked slowly about for his light. It lay glowing feebly in the dark, several feet away.

Come back, Jack, Galloway thought. But Caffey didn't look at him. Don't go for it, he prayed. Come back with us. Quick! He began to move toward him.

Caffey swam back toward them, abandoning his light. Galloway hauled him back under the overhang of the hull, gripping his shoulder. The three of them picked up the tanks, holding them waist-high like shields.

Back to back, phalanxed like Greek warriors, they swam slowly out into the open. Caffey led, facing the beam. The two older men guarded the flanks and rear, hand lights stabbing at the darkness around and above them.

It'll come now, Galloway was thinking dully. It's through circling and waiting. It'll come in fast and come in for blood.

He remembered his hand then. The knuckles scraped raw on rusty steel, the black curl like smoke...

It came from Keyes's side, a sudden flat hatchet of head with a two-foot-wide gape beneath it, and crashed against his tanks, throwing him against Galloway. Tiller's light caught the tip of its tail for an instant before losing it again. It seemed to be turning. He braced himself. Thank God it can't stop, he thought. A shark, with its primitive gills, had to keep swimming. If it didn't, it could come in from above and take our heads off like plucking grapes.

The shark came unseen and hit Caffey again, striking so hard his tanks spun away into the dark. He gripped his wrist, groaning into his regulator. Galloway pushed ahead, sandwiching him behind himself and Keyes.

If only we could see it coming, he thought angrily. It can hear us in the dark, but we're blind. Waiting. Staring into the night, like prehistoric men watching for tigers before fire was—

Fire.

He pulled the torch from his belt, gripped it between his legs, and twisted the valves open. A storm of bubbles attacked his face, but he held on until he had set it by feel. He lifted it above his head and squeezed the lighter.

He had opened the oxygen to maximum and the flame leapt out blue-white, like an electric arc, but in a tongue of fire six inches long. It made not a roar but a continuous explosion. The light reached out sixty feet to catch the shark at the aphelion of its deadly orbit, flank to them, already turning inward.

He took advantage of the moment to look around him. Caffey had drawn his diving knife. The sliver of steel glittered in the unearthly radiance, but it was about as dangerous to a big hammerhead as a toothpick. Keyes had not yet seen the shark. He was looking backward, and Galloway followed his glance.

The U-boat, lit from stem to stern against the black, lay frozen like the Flying Dutchman in a hard roll to starboard that would last until its atoms melted into the all-dissolving sea.

He jerked his head back to the hammerhead. It had neither wavered nor slowed at the sudden flood of light. Seen head-on the shark formed a brightly lit star. It grew rapidly larger, and Galloway realized it was headed for him this time. He brought his tanks up with his left arm to cover himself, and thrust the torch out as well in an unconscious fending motion.

The shark flicked its tail and hit him. He was smashed backward and spun facedown to the bottom, hands empty. The sea flickered and went out. He flattened himself against hard sand, breathless, defenseless, waiting for the end.

Something gripped his arm. It hauled him upward and toward the still-visible headlight. He began swimming again, recovering his breath. Ten more yards. Five. Then he was climbing into the forward cockpit. He groped for a spare flashlight and looked back.

Keyes was in the rear seat, pulling off his tanks. Caffey hovered over the stern, passing the last set of fresh doubles forward. Galloway swept his light around them. No sign of the shark. Keyes tapped him on the shoulder then and when he looked up held something for him to see. The ends of the torch hoses, bitten off clean. There was no sign of the torch itself. Galloway nodded. Despite the sick silly grin sticking itself to his face, he felt suddenly immensely tired. He reached back and began the switch to the fresh tanks.

The motor hummed. They headed upward, preparing themselves for the long boredom of decompression.

"Are you sure the shark got the worst of it?"

None of them answered Hirsch. Keyes slumped in a corner, his face slack with exhaustion. Caffey, biting pale lips, was winding layer on layer of adhesive tape around his wrist. Galloway flinched as he dabbed his favorite antiseptic into the multiple cuts on his face and hands. He held the bottle up and finished with a long pull. It went to Caffey; when he put it down, choking a little, Galloway offered it to Keyes, who hesitated for a long moment before giving a tired shake of his head.

"Jack—
what happened?"

Caffey looked up, forgetting his hand as the light of battle recalled filled his eyes. "Wow. You should have been there, Bern. Pass after pass! He was sure we were supper. I figured he might be right until Tiller lit the torch. Soon as he did, it made for him, and got it on the next strike."

"Got the torch?"

"Tiller was holding it in front of him when the shark hit him. The flame went out and the hose went whipping off after it in the dark. When we pulled it in from the tank end the cutting head was gone. Bit off clean."

"It swallowed it?"

"No, he stuck it in his pocket," said Caffey, in mock disgust. "Jeez, think about how that felt. A hot torch in its gut. No wonder it cleared out."

They noticed then that Keyes was not joining in the laughter. "Hey, there, my man. You all right?" said Aydlett.

He looked up. He looked older. Drained. "I suppose so—physically."

'"You look wiped out—all of you," said Hirsch. "What's wrong?"

"I was so sure it was there ... so sure," Keyes said in a low voice. "But it wasn't."

"What do you mean?" said Aydlett, standing up abruptly. "Not there?"

Caffey said, "Cool off, Shad. It's the truth. Zip. Zero. Nothin'."

The
big man stared
around.
He
seemed
at a loss.
Keyes
went on, talking now to Galloway in an ex
hausted monotone. "I'm sorry, Tiller. Still, you're out nothing. I can cover your expenses and damages. Thanks for your help."

Galloway reached over and slapped his back. "Chin up. Think of it as an adventure. Right? Something out of the run of—what was it—marketing insurance. Whatever that is."

The tall man smiled sourly.

Hirsch said, "Wait a minute. You mean—what are you saying, Tiller? That there wasn't anything there?"

"Not an ounce. The cell was bolted shut, all right. Booby-trapped, too. But there wasn't a thing in it but a tin box."

"The gold wasn't in that?"

Galloway felt too depressed and exhausted to explain about the cash. He could still see the blocks of currency turning dreamlike into silt. "Nope. Bum steer. Goose chase. That's all."

"And the cell was empty aside from that."

"I went down into it. Not a thing. Two steel walls, obviously jury-rigged, connecting cables, and then the grid keeping some ballast from shifting."

"Then that's it," she said.

"What's it?"

"The ballast. Ballast is supposed to be heavy, right? What did they use in those submarines?"

Galloway and Keyes stared at each other. "Mercury," whispered the tall man at last. "The U-boats used mercury. Since it was liquid it could be pumped fore and aft, for trim adjustment. She's right. It's got to be what we thought was ballast."

And Bernice Hirsch put her hand to her mouth. Too late, she realized she'd just spoken a warrant for her own execution.

seventeen

I
T WAS HALF PAST TWO AND THE STARS WERE

glittering madly midway through their wheel when the companionway hatch slid back. Keyes was wearing his Birkenstocks and Galloway, nodding on a locker near the stern, did not hear him until he sat down beside him.

"Christ! You startled me."

The tall man murmured, "Didn't want to wake you if you'd dropped off. You've earned your sleep today. How's the back?"

"Not so bad. Jack gave me a couple of his pain pills. And a few stiff ones helped." He nodded at the nearly dry bottle. "I can still feel it, though. Torn muscle, most likely."

"You should have it looked at when we get back in."

"Maybe I will."

"Look, why don't you just go on below, Tiller? I'll take your watch."

"Thanks for offering. But I'm wide awake again now."

"Sorry."

"No problem. I can sleep late in the morning. Weather looks like it'll hold for a couple more days."

"Don't turn complacent on me, Tiller. We're still not sure it's there."

"I have a hunch Bernie's right. It's in the ballast." "If it isn't?"

"Then getting up early won't change anything."

'You're a philosopher," said Keyes, from the dark side of the deck.

"No. Just cranky and half drunk."

Except for the lapping of the waves against the hull the night was quiet for a time. Galloway thought: He's making an effort to be agreeable. And it was working. At least through the haze of Percodan and alcohol. He thought of having another, and decided against it.

"Why so pensive?"

"Just thinking ... tell me something. If it's there, and we get the stuff up, what do you plan to do with it?"

"Head for shore fast. Rent a closed truck from U-Haul or Ryder and check it into one of those rental-storage places. Then New York first, I think, on the way to Switzerland."

"I mean, what will you do with that kind of money? You don't give me the impression of needing it to eat, like some of us."

"I don't, no. But I don't imagine spending it will be too hard. It'll cost money just to keep possession. Even with bodyguards and constant travel I can't keep it hidden forever."

"I see what you mean. Sooner or later your ... friends will put two and two together and get three. They'll come after you for the missing number."

"They understand greed, but not when they're the ones .being cut out. The U.S. government might be interested as well. But I'm primarily afraid of the old men in Argentina."

Galloway waited, then asked the question. "You're a Nazi too, aren't you?"

"My father fought in the
Unterseebooten
I told you that."

"That's right, you did, didn't you?" He leaned forward. "And I checked my father's records. He didn't

pick up any survivors. His last depth charge attack killed all the men in the water. So that was a lie."

Your ad," said Keyes, after a pause. He laughed then, startling Galloway a little. It was the first time he'd heard the blond man laugh and it was surprisingly attractive. "I guess I've got a confession to make, Tiller. I'm not exactly what I represented myself as. Hell, I've never even been to South America."

"What number story is this?"

"Three or four, I guess. Anyway it's the bottom line."

"Is there a reason I should believe this one?"

The other man shifted in the darkness. Galloway found himself holding a billfold. "Go ahead, take a look You'll find the driver's license on top. And my personal card."

Galloway examined them. They both said Richard R. Keyes. The photo on the license was undeniably the man beside him. The card said Consulting Architect, Futron Enterprises, Houston, Texas.