Page 2 of Building Courage
“Sure.” Sam tugged his cell phone out of one of the pockets in his camouflage pants, opened the screen, scrolled through, and then extended the phone to him.
There was a blend of abstract and realistic works, but they all had Moira’s distinctive style. “She’s going to be famous one day, LT, and you’ll be dodging cameras while she’s soaking up the limelight.”
“I hope she is. She works her ass off at school and then works every weekend. She deserves to be successful.”
Jeff Sizemore, aka Bullet, reached for the phone and scrolled through the photos. “Fucking amazing, LT.” He passed the phone on to make the rounds.
They finished breakfast and went to their cabins to dress in their dry suits. The trawler was still leaking oil. The dry suits, with their rubber seals at wrists, ankles, and neck, would protect them from exposure to the petroleum in the water, as would the heavy goggles they used. Their MK16 Rebreathers extended bottom time, and wearing helmets with lights kept visibility at maximum. Downtime was only supposed to be an hour. With eight of them setting charges, they would have the work done easily in that length of time.
Tucker paired off with Squirrel to buddy-check each other’s gear. Denotti and Bullet climbed down into the Zodiac, and then he and Squirrel lowered a heavy metal basket containing mesh bags filled with the explosive devices. They would be triggered by a remote device topside once the team was out of the water and the Sea Dragon had been moved a safe distance away. Denotti took the driver’s seat with Bullet riding shotgun, and the rest of the team systematically climbed down to join them.
A temporary buoy bobbed directly over the site with a downline secured to it. Every other man armed himself with a speargun to dissuade the sharks that cruised the site. They dropped anchor next to the buoy, and the men wasted no time getting their supplies, dropping over the side, and following the line down to the wreck.
From his position behind Harding and Swan, Tucker found it strange to see the men kicking downward with no bubbles flowing upward behind them. The rebreathers absorbed the carbon dioxide from their breath and recycled the oxygen to extend their downtime.
They came upon the trawler tilted slightly on its side on the edge of the chasm. Had the boat been forced thirty feet further to the left when struck, it might have ended up in the depths instead of becoming a collision hazard.
The men paired up and dropped down behind the trawler to set the charges. Squirrel took a position with a speargun outside the ragged hole where the oil tanker had struck the fishing trawler and done its best to rip it in half.
Tucker hesitated outside the opening and took a minute to get his mind right. He’d studied the plans and done mental dry runs in preparation for entering the vessel, but none of that would prepare him for what he would face inside the wrecked ship. He’d gone over and over the plans with the entire team in case something went wrong, and they had to come in after him.
He had an hour. He’d find his way. He flashed Squirrel an okay sign and swam into the ship’s dark interior.
In the glow of his helmet light, Tucker caught the glint of crinkled metal hanging in jagged pieces at the entrance of the fissure created when the bow of the oil tanker sliced into the smaller vessel. Vinelike electrical wiring hung from the partially detached upper bulkhead in the passageway. He swam along the slope of the deck as he did an easy cave-diving kick to propel himself forward without stirring the water too much. Regular kicks would stir the sediment inside into a cloud. He could get lost in that cloud. He needed to reach the hold where the fish had been stored. He’d studied the location of a hatch at the bottom of a stairway that had given the crew access to the storage compartment so they could clean it.
On his way there, he set to work laying in the explosives along the farthest bulkhead opposite the seam where the boat had been ripped apart. Finding a buckled breech in the deck, he peeked downward into the space.
Most of the catch had spilled out into the bay as the ship had tumbled to the bottom and settled on the ledge, but there were still piles of carcasses resting in stagnant heaps on the port side. Their decomposition filled the hold with a foggy stew of tissue that drew smaller fish. He thanked God he was spared the smell underwater. His dry suit would stink like death after this. He didn’t relish scrubbing it—if it could be salvaged at all.
He dropped down into the hold, then swam upward to the starboard side of the ship and set to work laying the devices in a straight line ten feet apart from one side of the hold to the other. As he set the fifth charge and swam forward to position the sixth, a pale gray shadow shot out of the haze, and he had only a second to recognize it as a shark before it struck him. It was a hard glancing blow to his hip, a test to see if he was edible. The force of the blow spun him around, and he hit his arm on a zagged piece of metal. The tough fabric of his dry suit protected his arm but didn’t cushion the full-on blow of a huge shark butting him.
His heart rate quickening, his breathing ragged, he jerked his dive knife free of his belt and held completely still, suspended just above the deck by his buoyancy vest.
Fuck! With all the food shoved against one side of the hold, this fucker had decided he wanted fresh meat.
Out of all the scenarios that had run through his mind, being trapped inside the hold with a shark hadn’t been one of them. He tried to calm his breathing, but the surge of adrenaline kept his heart racing.
When the beast didn’t appear again, he sheathed the knife. With every nerve in his body on red alert, he hugged the deck and glanced over his shoulder every few seconds. Setting the last four devices seemed to take forever. With every muscle in his body tensed and ready for battle, he followed the dim blinking lights of the set charges back the way he’d come. Pausing to get his bearings, he looked up and spied the edge of the opening through which he’d entered. He was almost home free.
He caught quick movement to his right. Like a gray shadow, the shark pierced the cloudy water and came straight at him, its powerful tail whipping back and forth like a sickle. Tucker jerked his dive knife free again but realized it would be like trying to stop a torpedo with an icepick. Out of options, he pushed off the deck and swam upward, kicking for all he was worth.
Expecting to feel the agonizing pain of having a leg or foot ripped off, he scrambled through the hole, caught the edges with his fingertips, tucked his legs in against his body, and twisted to face the threat.
The shark shot up through the hole. Tucker lashed out with the knife with all his strength, catching the animal along one side. It bowed in reaction, teeth bared. He braced for an attack, but injured, it darted away and sped down the passageway, churning up a cloud of sediment and leaving a thin trail of blood as it went.
Relief had barely rushed in when a thought occurred to him. Shit! Squirrel was right in its path.
And there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to warn him.
The water looked as thick as milk. Tucker forced himself to maintain his easy kick as he hovered as close to the sloped deck as possible. He came upon the dangling electrical wiring pulled low. The shark had obviously gotten tangled and torn loose more wire. Concerned his rebreather might get hooked to the wires, he flipped onto his back to kick beneath it and had to release some of the air from his buoyancy vest to fit. Six feet later, he reached clearer water and the jagged hole through which he’d entered the wreck.
He swam out to find the other seven members of his team hovering at the breech, waiting for him. He looked around for the shark, but it was nowhere in sight. Denotti gripped his shoulder and looked into his eyes through his facemask.
He signaled he was okay and adjusted the air in his vest again to make his assent easier.
Squirrel and Swan took the lead to the downline while Arrow and Bullet brought up the rear, all armed with spearguns. When they settled in for a decompression stop at forty feet, Harding gave him a once-over and flicked a finger at his torn dry suit. He signaled he was okay, but now that the adrenaline had leached away, he was shaking, and his hip, where the shark had hit him, was beginning to ache.
Once in the Zodiac, he dragged his helmet and facemask off, took a deep breath, and almost gagged.