The Third Antichrist (6 page)

Abi knew about the dangers of hyperventilation. Breathe too deeply and too long before diving underwater and you’re liable to pass out. Breathe too little, and you won’t make it more than twelve feet down before the atmospheric pressure forces you back up again, like a cork in an olive pot.

Abi tried to judge his breathing just right. He cleared his lungs of air five or six times, and then drew in compensatory lungfuls of maybe 80 per cent to 85 per cent by volume. At the same time he worked on his entire system, calming himself, and imagining a yoga session, with his usual teacher guiding him through the motions of pranayama. This made him think of Vau again, and he lost concentration for a few minutes, and had to fight to clear his head of negative thoughts.

When he was ready he jack-knifed in the water and started down to where he thought the Suzuki might have settled. He had no idea how deep the pool was, or whether the Suzuki might have paraglided through the water, ending up in a completely different location from its entry. But those were the risks of the game.

He estimated that he had five or six dives in him at most, and then he would have to pass the baton to Rudra and the girls. But he was by far the best swimmer amongst them, and he was privately certain that if he couldn’t pull this off, none of the others would be able to either. He was the senior remaining de Bale – Madame, his mother, naturally excepted. He was twenty-five years old, and in his prime. If he couldn’t manage this, nobody would.

Once under the water Abi realized that he would have an additional problem. Thick weed grew in streamers from the bottom of the cenote, prejudicing visibility. At first Abi tried steering himself down via the streamers, but they simply broke off in his hands like sticks of celery. In the end he corkscrewed his way down, brushing up against the streamers, but avoiding the thicker fronds in case they entangled him. At twenty feet down he still couldn’t see the bottom of the pool. At thirty feet, and having decompressed three times by pinching his nose and blowing internally, he decided to call it a day and head back for the surface, leaching oxygen and carbon dioxide as he rose through the water.

‘What’s it look like down there?’

‘Hard to tell with this amount of daylight.’ Abi was gulping in great lungfuls of air. ‘The weed is so thick you can scarcely see through it. But in an hour’s time it will be five times worse. Five times more murky.’

‘Did you get to the bottom?’

‘Nowhere near it. And I must have descended thirty feet.’

‘It’s a no-hoper then?’

‘No. I’m going to try again. But I’ve got to weight myself with something.’

‘Like what?’

‘Shoes. Grab everybody’s trainers and either tie or Velcro them together. Our friends here won’t be needing them anymore, and it’ll serve to lighten them up and give them more buoyancy. I’ll make a sort of scuba weight-belt for myself. That should get me down another ten feet or so.’

‘You’re crazy, Abi.’

‘You got any better ideas, Rudi? You, Nawal? Dakini? Anybody got any better ideas? Or do you just want to float in here until you croak?’

‘Someone might find us.’

‘You’ve got to be kidding me. Who? Sir Henry Morton Stanley? No one came when the tweak factory blew up. No fire engines. No helicopters. No cops. And why do you think that was? Because these people floating around us are fucking crooks. They’re cowboys. They’re the bozos who really run things around here. The cops leave them to their own devices in return for hefty backhanders, free cocaine, unlimited call girls, and a front-end slice of the action for the higher-ups. It’s the age-old story. Have money, will travel.’

‘Then at least tell us what you are hoping to find in the Suzuki.’

Abi grimaced. ‘That’s the fifty-thousand-dollar question.’

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Abi could feel himself being swept towards the bottom of the cenote by the weight of the waterlogged trainers. He lashed out with his free hand and finned himself down even faster. In his other hand he held a penknife with which he intended to free himself from the trainers if he couldn’t make it back up to the surface against their drag. He was calmer now. The first descent had given him a modicum of confidence in his abilities, and he reckoned that he had a good fifteen or twenty extra feet left in him.

This time he forced himself to decompress every five feet. Just a light decompression – enough to clear his ears and regulate the pressure inside his head. Enough to stem the panic.

At forty feet down he saw the bottom. At forty-five he saw the glint of metal, about twenty feet to his right. He struck off in that direction, the shoes sweeping against him like the skirts of a jellyfish.

When he reached the car he hooked his fingers under the lip of the partially cracked side window and peered inside. The naked bodies of the murdered
narcotraficantes
were bunched up against the roof. Their faces looked yellow in the murk.

Abi pulled open the driver’s door and glanced across at the interior light. Dead. He wound the headlight switch to the right. No go. Hardly surprising after twenty-four hours in the water, but it had been worth a try.

His breath was screaming to be let out.

With his last remaining strength he yanked the bodies out of the car, clearing the cab for future access. They floated off and settled in slow motion on the floor of the cenote, head down and feet in the air, like a circle of skydivers.

Abi kicked himself away from the car. He could feel the weight of the trainers holding him back. But he knew that if he cut them free on this, his first successful descent, he would never be able to get down this far again.

Half a minute later he burst onto the surface of the cenote, coughing and wheezing.

Rudra swam across and guided Abi back to the raft of corpses. ‘Did you find it?’

‘Yes. It’s clear as a bell. It helps that the fucking thing is white.’ Abi was sucking air in through his tormented lungs.

‘What about the stiffs?’

‘I got them out of there. It was not a pretty sight. They’ll bob up to the surface again in a few days’ time as refloaters. We can use them as back-up ballast if we’re still alive by then. Sort of like an assembly line of gas-filled corpses.’ He caught sight of Rudra’s face in the gloom. ‘Only joking.’

Rudra shook his head. He was getting used to Abi’s grotesqueries by now. ‘Did you see anything else useful?’

‘That’ll be in the back of the car. I’ll get to that next time.’

‘Listen, Abi. You don’t look so good. And I don’t like the way you’re sounding. If you go on like this, you’ll give yourself hypercapnia. You want me to go down instead of you this next time? Or one of the girls, maybe?’

‘You wouldn’t make it. Neither would they. I’m on the very edge of my own capacities as it is. No. Let me go down one more time. Then I’ll rest up a bit. It’s not as if this thing is time sensitive.’

Rudra gave his brother an old-fashioned look. ‘Oh, yes, Abi. It is.’

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This time Abi swam through into the back of the Suzuki via the rear passenger door. He instinctively glanced up to check if there was an air bubble trapped in an upper corner of the roof. Yep. There was. Then he realized what sort of filth and noxious gases the bubble would probably consist of, and he discounted it. He would simply have to manage with what was left in his lungs.

He ripped up the carpet in the rear of the car and groped alongside the spare wheel. Two tyre irons and a tow rope. He grabbed them.

Then he felt around in the side compartment for the jack. His lungs were about to explode. He fought down his panic. The jack was heavy. It was attached to the main body of the car by a thick rubber strap. Abi jammed the tyre irons into his belt and sawed at the strap with his penknife. Air was bleeding out through his lips. He was ten seconds away from passing out. He made a desperate grab for the jack, and kicked himself off from the rear seat.

It was then that he saw the fire extinguisher. It was a six-litre job. Far too big for the size of the car. But there it was. Tucked in between the passenger seat and the offside door. He didn’t know why, but he knew that he needed it. He lunged down with his spare hand and grabbed it, just as the trainers he was using as dead weights snagged themselves between the two front seats.

He was stuck fast. The damned shoes would kill him. He had little or no control left over his lungs. He was losing consciousness.

Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to die like this, Abi thought to himself. Just switch yourself off and pass out. He could feel his eyes turning up inside his head.

Abi gripped the fire extinguisher hose in his teeth. He sawed at the shoe belt with his penknife, his arm pumping like a man using bellows. There was a sudden wrench and he was free. But he was already dead. He knew it. There was no way he could reach the surface with what he had left in his lungs.

He kicked his way to the part of the roof space where he knew the air bubble was. If this didn’t work, he was finished. He had no choice anymore in the matter.

He spat all the air he had left in his lungs into the water surrounding him. Then he thrust his nose and mouth up to where the trapped air had to be. He drew in two deep breaths. He didn’t allow himself to think of what he might be taking into his lungs – the makeup of the gases he was ingesting – the quality of the mulch after two days stewing. He booted his way out of the car, leaving both his belt and the skirt of shoes still attached to the front seat. He was fighting off an overwhelming desire to gag.

He still had the two tyre irons, the jack, the tow rope, and the fire extinguisher clutched to his stomach. He knew that their weight might prove just enough to tip the scales and hold him down. But there was no earthly point in ascending without them. Something deep inside his head was telling him that.

He floated onto his back and began to ascend. He was far too weak to kick anymore. As he rose through the water, the remaining air in his lungs bled out through his teeth in a rapidly diminishing stream. Abi closed his eyes. He was kaput. He would arrive at the surface dead. Somewhere on the way up he would let go of his burdens and watch all the prizes he had fought so hard for vanish back into the murk below him.

He contrived one final upward kick with his feet. It was more like the spasmodic movement a dying man will make than any direct product of Abi’s will.

He bobbed to the surface and sank forwards onto his face, still clutching his booty. His nose and mouth were in the water. He had no strength left with which to breathe. He would die now, and that was fine by him.

He felt himself being turned over. The weight he was cradling in his arms was taken away from him. Then he was see-sawed onto his front again and slammed against something soft. His back was pummelled and slapped. He brought up some viscid liquid. Then a little more.

Abi lay half on, half off the raft of bodies.

When his senses finally returned, he found, to his astonishment, that he was still alive.

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