Barracuda (13 page)

“Okay, Bob, you in first,” Bill yelled.

“Remember to do a no deco dive. I have no oxygen
tanks for decompression,” Rambo stated.

“We know. We will dive a no deco profile by our
computers. It’ll probably be only a fifteen-minute dive because of
the depth. If we have enough air left over, we will do a long hang
at fifteen feet.”

Bob plopped into the water, gave the diver okay
signal, and waited for his brother to hand him the crowbar and the
goody bag. Bill was soon bobbing in the water next to his brother.
He clipped the mesh goody bag to his weight belt D-ring. Then he
took the crowbar and slipped it between the Velcro of his BC vest
waist cinch. The brothers swam on the surface to the mooring ball
and held on.

“Listen to me, Bob. We follow the mooring line
down to the bow of the carrier and then continue over to the side
of the flight deck and down to the hatch. I’ll place the crowbar at
one of the hinges, and we will both try to pry the hatch off. When
the hatch falls off, tie your wreck line to an exterior part of the
ship, and I will lead the way. I’ll dive deep into the wreck with
you following me and letting out line. I’ll hide the bandanas, and
then you turn around and reel us out. We swim up to the flight deck
and check our computers before we begin our ascent. It’s a
no-brainer!”

Bob nodded in acknowledgment, and Bill gave him
the divers down signal. The pair expelled air from their BC vests
and slowly descended in a heads-up position until they reached a
depth of ten feet. Bill then jackknifed and swam headfirst down the
mooring line with Bob following.

The fish life was abundant and diminished
visibility, as schools of fish danced across the deck of the USS
Saratoga
. Their shiny undersides reflected light like a
disco ball and distracted Bill as he fell into the depths. Soon he
landed on the 880-foot flight deck and waited for Bob to join him.
The fish ballet was mesmerizing, thousands of baitfish moving as
one huge creature. The fish ball swam into the shadows, and the
light show ended. When it swam back into the sunlight, it resembled
a million shooting stars.

Bill had to close his eyes and shake his head.
Am I getting narced?
he wondered. When he opened his eyes,
Bob was in front of him, giving him the diver okay signal, which
Bill returned. Over the side of the ship they went and onward down
to the hatch. The fish life there was scarce. Soft coral adorned
the carrier at this depth while the fish preferred the dance hall
above.

Bill pulled the tool from his waistband and
immediately attacked the hatch cover. Both brothers were astonished
at how easily it released its fifty-year death grip on the ship,
springing off in a cloud of rust on the first attempt before
falling into the depths. The startled brothers were hypnotized as
they watched it cartwheel far below, kicking up another cloud of
white sand this time.

Bill looked at Bob in bewilderment and shrugged.
Bob unclipped his wreck reel from his weight belt, pushed the brass
clip through a porthole, snapped it back onto the line, and pulled
it taut. He gave his brother the okay signal, and Bill turned his
flashlight on.

The first four-foot section into the hatchway
was littered with an assortment of debris hanging like stalagmites
from the ceiling. Bill shone his light up at the ruins and dove
under the entanglements lest he be snared. Bob followed carefully
as he played out line from his reel. Bill swam through two
compartments congested with dangling wires and cables until he
reached the third. This compartment wasn’t draped with overhanging
debris and spread out into a huge corridor. Bill’s light danced off
the walls and floor, which were covered in rich colorful soft
corals. Nature’s very own mural of sea life was displayed before
him.

Bill turned to see that his brother didn’t get
caught up in the cobweb of cables. Bob was right behind like a good
dive buddy. The pair dove down stairwells to lower levels, stopping
only to tie a bandana around some interesting piece of war
machinery.

The forward section of the carrier also housed
the bow torpedo room. Bill was frenetic, attaching Renegade rags to
live bombs everywhere. Bob was uneasy with his brother touching
these explosive devices that were corroding before their very eyes.
Checking his dive computer, he realized that they had only eight
minutes to reach the surface, otherwise they would go into
decompression mode.

He tapped Bill on the arm, pointed to his
computer, and gave the diver up sign. Bill nodded in the
affirmative, and the pair retraced their steps out of the various
compartments. Bill was amazed at the immense size of the interior
of the carrier, but apprehensive that there were no ways in or out
except through the hatchway they had entered.

Bob was doing a fine job of reeling them back
toward the safety of the hatchway out from this historic but deadly
tomb. Suddenly, Bill grabbed his brother’s fin and pointed to the
left corner of a massive room. The pair swam over to what appeared
to be a huge nest. Gigantic girders, lockers, and machinery were
arranged in a wide circle. In the middle of the circle was a
mammoth pile of fish bones and gigantic empty eggshells. They knelt
down on the floor, looking at the strange fabrication before
them.

Bill looked at Bob, who had a quizzical look on
his face. Then as if in slow motion, Bob’s eyes widened to the size
of hubcaps. Bill saw a bright flash of silver zoom past. His
flashlight beam mirrored off the silver with such intensity that he
was temporarily blinded. The silver bullet rocketed between him and
Bob, and Bill was stunned by its speed and brightness.

Bill turned his flashlight off while he once
again tried to adjust his eyes to the dark. Once his vision
cleared, he saw that Bob was still kneeling across from him. Bill
turned on his light and motioned to his brother to lead the way
out. Bob didn’t respond, and his hands dangled at his sides at an
odd angle. Since the bright flash had blinded him, Bill was seeing
everything in slow motion as his sight gradually returned. Still,
there was no response from Bob, so Bill did the universal diver
attention action by flashing the beam of his flashlight back and
forth. Again, there was no reaction, so Bill played the beam toward
his brother’s face.

He shrieked a garbled scream that made his
regulator fly out of his mouth. His brother’s head was missing! A
steady stream of dark fluid leaked out of the top of Bob’s torso
like smoke from a freshly extinguished candle. When Bill’s light
beam illuminated the liquid, it reflected a crimson color. Bill
continued to stare at the grotesque figure that knelt where his
brother had been just moments before. His cries made him swallow
mouthfuls of water, and he began to gag on the salty brine.

In his panic to replace his mouthpiece, Bill
dropped his flashlight. With the regulator dolling out mouthfuls of
precious air, he made a mad dash to swim out of the house of
horrors. He swam over Bob’s still-kneeling torso and raced back
into the previous compartment. Without the wreck reel or his dive
light, however, the hysterical diver swam straight into a spider
web of pendulous cables. He was caught in the trellis of wires, and
in his panicky state, spiraled into further distress. Soon he was
corkscrewed into place, suspended from the ceiling in an impossible
maze of unforgiving circuitry.

***

James woke the next day, looked at his dive
watch, and saw that it was nearly ten o’clock in the morning. The
sun was shining, just as it always did in this tropical paradise,
and there were few signs of the devastating storm of the day before
except for the two waterlogged men in the shack.

He could hear the doctor breathing heavily, so
he decided to let the man sleep while he took a look around. Inside
the shack were a few items that would come in handy—pots, pans,
fishing line, and hooks. There was also a large rain barrel hooked
up with PVC piping that ran off the roof gutters. The barrel was
nearly half full with fresh water. James was elated. With water and
fishing gear, they could hold out for weeks until a search party
found them.

The duo had slept on the cramped floor, but the
shack was not equipped for sleeping. James figured he could make
some bedding out of palm fronds, and since it rarely rained, the
two would sleep under the stars at night. His brain was working in
overdrive as he looked around “Coney Island” for useful things.

“James, where are you? James, where are
you?”

“I’m right here, Dr. Two-Times.”

A very disheveled-looking Dr. Collins stumbled
out of the shack and squinted in the bright daylight. “I’ll need my
glasses, James.”

“I’ll get them from the pocket of your vest,”
James replied. “We’ll also need knives and flashlights.”

James walked down a short distance to their Rock
of Gibraltar, a small sandy dune leading down to the water. As he
approached their gear, he saw hundreds of crabs crawling over their
BC vests.

“Get out, you filthy bastards!” he yelled as he
ran the final three paces to his dive gear. He was slapping the
crabs in all directions when the professor walked up to him.

“James, those filthy bastards will keep us
nourished,” he pointed out.

James washed off the scuba equipment and stored
it in the shack. The two men drank water from the barrel,
astonished at how good it tasted. There were several nice-sized
coconuts lying about, so James decided to break one open for the
tender meat inside.

The professor laughed hysterically as he watched
James futile attempts to crack the coconut. He found a rusty
cleaver in the corner of the shack with a beat-up old frying pan
and a small kettle, as well as a box of matches. The scholar knew
what the cleaver was for. James repeatedly stabbed the coconut with
his dive knife just to have it bounce away from him. When Dr.
Collins saw that his colleague’s frustration level had peaked, he
stepped in to help.

“Now watch the expert, young man,” he
instructed. “First, you firmly grasp the coconut in the left hand
and locate the eye of the beastly thing. Then you can figure out
the centerline of this poor inanimate object. Secondly, use the
blunt end—I repeat, the blunt end—of the cleaver to firmly tap the
centerline of the coconut. Rotate the coconut as you firmly tap it
and…
voilá
!”

James was visibly impressed as he watched the
coconut split evenly in half and fall onto the professor’s lap. The
two used their dive knives to dig in and eat the fresh meat before
washing it down with the sweet milk.

The pair ate several coconuts, and James saved
the husks and the hulls. He gathered dried dune grass and scorched
palm leaves. The he scoured their tiny island for flotsam. James
knew they would need fire to cook, so these components were
necessary.

Dr. Collins had found a tattered crab trap and
used some of the extra fishing wire to effect adequate
reconstruction. The two men soon collected a pile of driftwood and
dried grass for making fires. Before dusk, they had a full trap of
tasty crabs frying over a hot fire as they watched their fishing
lines bob in the flaccid ocean.

“What a difference a day makes,” laughed the
professor.

“This is a superb fishing system you’ve set up,”
James chimed in.

The professor used six coconut shells as bobbers
connected to an old lifesaver ring he’d found. The six bobbers held
six hooks that dangled at various depths and were connected to the
rope that surrounded the ring, a fishing line connected to the ring
and tied around the palm tree for hands-free fishing. If they saw
any of the coconut shells doing a jitterbug in the water, they
would just untie the line from the palm tree and haul in dinner.
Crabs made great bait, and the two scientists didn’t go hungry or
thirsty.

***

Rambo was getting frantic. The brothers had been
underwater way too long. What was he supposed to do? Should he tell
the authorities? No, he couldn’t do that. The hotel directors were
the local authority. They decided a course of action, and they only
notified the police in Majuro in dire cases. The directors had
their own hidden agenda and would not jeopardize the future of
their hotel business with nefarious diver deaths. Of course, divers
did perish, but the professional dive master wrote the reports,
which were sent to the Professional Association of Diving
Instructors (PADI) headquarters in California. In most cases, the
divers were to blame for their own accidents, so no blame was
placed on the resorts. In this case, however, the divers had been
killed during an unsanctioned dive, and people could be held
accountable.

Rambo knew that Hiroshi could make a great deal
of trouble for him, so he untied his skiff from the mooring ball
and raced back to the dock. He wouldn’t tell a soul that he had
taken the brothers to the USS
Saratoga
.

The skiff kicked up a spray of white foam in its
haste to return home. Rambo took a final look over his shoulder at
the spot where he had seen Bill and Bob plunge to their watery
graves.

***

Bill was sucking up air at an exorbitant pace.
His struggling only caused him to become more tangled until he
could move no more. Suddenly he was able to see much clearer. The
sun must have poked through some clouds, and the ambient light was
penetrating the depths, illuminating his mausoleum. He could see
straight ahead since the tentacles that held him were from the
rear. He understood that this was the end, and he felt at ease as a
wave of tranquility washed over him.
Drowning isn’t too bad
,
he thought.
It’s painless and it will be over in a few
minutes.

His peacefulness was broken by a slight movement
ahead. Bill strained his eyes to see what was stealthily
approaching. The sunlight that reached this depth refracted and
splintered, causing visual distortions. The advancing being was
shrouded in a ghostly silver hue. The surreptitious movement of
this shimmering shroud had a hypnotic force on Bill until it got
right up into his face.