Page 80 of Identity Unknown
But in this case, I don’t want the body seeping blood and tissue and attracting predators. Shining my light around the cockpit, I notice a mobile phone mostly covered with sand drifting over the inverted headliner. A bottle of berry-flavored vitamin water is suspended nearby, some of the red liquid gone inside, the cap on. Images flash of Briley Flight Services, the refrigerators stocked with the same brand of drink.
I’m careful not to get my hoses snagged as I reach down for the phone, then the bottle. Tucking them inside the collection bag attached to my vest, I ponder the best way to free the pilotwithout causing a brown-out and further damage. At least he’s not trussed up in a four-point harness that would be awkward to manipulate with my neoprene-gloved fingers.
Releasing the buckle of his shoulder harness, I free him and he floats away from the seat. I’m careful not to send him into oscillation, banging into everything and stirring up more clouds of silt. Turning him around, I grip him under the arms as he moves away from me, his shoulder knocking into the cyclic. Then one of his legs is caught on the back of the seat, his sneaker coming off and drifting.
I manage to ease him out of the open door, and Lucy straps a salvage bag’s tethers around his chest. Tron attaches the second bag, and he begins to float up as they hold on to him. I follow the anchor line, Liam behind me. We ascend slowly to prevent nitrogen bubbles from forming in our blood, what’s known as decompression sickness or the bends.
I continuously check my dive computer, and I have half a tank of air left. I remind myself to sip and avoid deep breaths. It’s easy to go through a tank shockingly fast when stressed and exerting oneself. Every ten feet Lucy and Tron stop on the rope where we hang perpendicular like windsocks. Then we resume our ascent through blasting bubbles.
At fifty feet below the surface, the dimly lit water suddenly blacks out as if someone closed a metal lid over us. We stop moving, hanging on to the rope while pointing our lights straight up as if we might see what’s happening. We can’t make out anything but suspended silt, another turtle swimming by in a hurry as if trouble is coming.
We’re thrown into complete darkness, something huge slowly passing over top of us. I can feel the vibration in the water as we wait for what seems an eternity, shining our lights around. I’m feeling the thrumming in my very marrow when the anchor line suddenly is ripped from our hands. I watch stunned as it’s tugged away, vanishing in the blackness.
CHAPTER 29
Slowly, the murky light is restored, the vibration dissipating. The inflated salvage bags tug on the body of the dead pilot as Lucy and Tron keep a firm grip. Liam gives us the OK sign, pointing up, and we resume our ascent.
Staying close behind him, we stop and wait as he directs, our fins gently paddling. We hold in place underwater without an anchored line to make it easier. The winds are picking up, the current stiffer and moving us along. We can’t fight it without exhausting ourselves, and we’re down to less than a third of a tank. It would be easy to suck in the rest of our air in no time, and that would be very bad once we reach the surface. We wouldn’t be able to inflate our buoyancy vests.
I’m thinking about that as I press a button on mine, adding more air from my tank, feeling myself rising, sunlight shining through the water. I squint in the brightness as I break the surface and float. White cumulus clouds are building in the blue sky, and I look around for our boat, no sign of it. I can make out the retreating submarine’s conning tower jutting up like a squared fin, some of the fuselage showing above the water like a whale’s back.
An untethered dive float rocks on the water some fifty feet from us, the attached flag gently waving, and we snorkel toward it. I’m guessing that when Henry and our boat captain realized they had to relocate immediately, they untied the anchor line, lashing it to a bright red dive buoy. We hang on to it, the yellow nylon rope loose. It was either severed or the anchor isn’t holding anymore.
I keep my scan going, hoping nothing else comes this way, another submarine, for example. Those aboard wouldn’t have a clue we’re here, and we’d have no means of getting away. I doubt the encounter would be survivable. A sub, an aircraft carrier, and we’d be sucked right under the hull. I can imagine it in detail and that we’d drown most likely.
“You can’t be within five hundred yards of a military vessel.” Liam interrupts my grim preoccupations. “When it’s far enough away, our boat will come back for us.”
“Well, I don’t see them anywhere,” I reply as brackish water slaps under my chin, and I spit it out.
“They’d know to come straight back to where they left us,” Lucy says with her usual calm.
“Except we’ve moved,” Liam says. “More bad weather’s rolling in tonight, and the winds are now blowing out of the south at ten or fifteen knots, I’m guessing. The current’s only getting stronger and pushing us closer to the naval station.”
“Which means we’re even more in the path of military ships,” Tron replies as I think of Marino.
This wouldn’t have been the trip for him.
“Well, I never thought my day would be like this,” Lucy says.
“Most of all, he never thought it.” I stare at the dead pilot floating facedown, rocking with the surf.
The orange salvage bags are deflated on top of his body, his black-plastic-covered head hanging below the surface, his arms and legs dangling.
“I wonder if he’s married, has kids,” Liam says. “Or if his parents are still alive. What a bad day for them.”
“I already looked up stuff about him,” Lucy tells us. “Unmarried. Thirty-two. Had just started flying for Dana Diletti at the beginning of the year.”
He told reporters it was his dream job. A new chopper with all the bells and whistles. Working for a celebrity, she explains as we scan for military ships, floating on top of the water. And we wait. Then wait some more as I worry about something suddenly barreling down on us. None of our vests or the dive float are equipped with flashing emergency beacons.
We begin making small talk to distract ourselves, chatting about when we started diving. And misadventures from the past. And stupid things we’ve done like running out of air. Or forgetting to turn it on before jumping into the ocean. And whether it’s true that divers pee in their wetsuits but don’t admit it.
“Never,” Liam says.
“Nope.” Lucy shakes her head.
“Making the point that no one admits it,” I reply, and next we talk about food.
“I’m always starved after diving,” Tron says.