by Evan Graver
Dirt and sand blossomed up as the ship slammed down. Particulate blocked out what little light that came through the cargo opening, turning Ryan and Mango’s world dark as night. The current quickly carried away the particulate and allowed light to stream through the cargo hatch again.
The Humvee was now on its right side, suspended by its chains. Any items that hadn’t fallen during the ship’s plummet to the seafloor began raining down. A four-foot-long pipe wrench plunged head down to slam into the side of their Humvee.
Ryan felt the chain on the front driver’s side snap, sending a shudder through the vehicle. He grasped the back of the seat in front of him and the handle screwed to the frame above his door.
Mango frantically motioned for them to exit the vehicle. Ryan signaled with an okay sign. He reached for his door handle.
The rear driver’s side chain gave way and the Humvee slid down the vertical deck on its tires, hit the limits of the passenger side chains, and flipped over onto its roof. The Humvee’s momentum snapped the two remaining chains. It rolled again and crashed into the ship’s hull, coming to rest on its wheels.
“Holy shit!” Ryan yelled into his mouthpiece. Mango lay in a tangle. Ryan pointed at him and flashed the okay sign.
Mango held up his middle finger.
Ryan leaned his shoulder into the Humvee’s door and tried to force it open. The door wouldn’t budge. He gestured for Mango to try his door. Mango did, and found his door jammed shut as well. Mango’s eyes were wide and round. He held up both hands with extended middle fingers.
Yeah, I know. Screwed the pooch, Ryan thought. He was glad he couldn’t hear Mango berating him for trapping them inside the Humvee in three hundred feet of water. He looked up at the hole in the roof where the gunner normally stood. It wasn’t large enough for them to exit while wearing the rebreathers.
They took turns leaning forward and trying the front doors of the Humvee. Neither would budge. Ryan crawled into the back under the slanting fiberglass cover. He braced his shoulder against the bed of the truck and shoved up with his feet. Nothing gave. He tried again with the same result.
Physical exertion at three hundred feet underwater was not a good thing. Ryan tried to control his breathing and closed his eyes to focus and calm himself. In his mind, he chanted the mantra he’d always lived by when scuba diving. As long as you’re breathing, you have time to figure things out. Don’t panic. Panic kills.
He thought of every exit out of the Humvee. The only one open was the gunner’s turret. During the Humvee’s tumble down the deck, the frame had twisted just enough to keep the doors from opening. He’d seen it happen before after IEDs had detonated under the machines.
There was also a lot of weight on the outside of the machine. At three hundred feet, they were at more than ten atmospheres below sea level. This meant there were more than one hundred and forty-eight pounds of pressure per square inch squeezing everything together. The massive water pressure caused the Santo Domingo to continue to creak and groan. More parts and pieces fell.
In the near darkness of the Humvee cab, Ryan Weller realized the only way to live was to take off his rebreather, exit the gun hatch, pull the rebreather through, and put it back on before opening the truck’s door for Mango. It was an excessive task load at depth.
He loosened and unbuckled the rebreather’s straps before sliding the whole contraption over his head. As he did so, he had an epiphany. He glanced at Mango, who scowled with narrowed eyes and shook his head.
Instead of holding his breath and dragging the rEvo after him, Ryan pushed the rebreather out the hole and kept his teeth clamped tight on the mouth piece. The rEvo barely fit through the turret. Mango helped him snake the straps and buckles through. Then he levered himself out of the gun turret and pulled the rebreather back on. He took a minute to relax and regulate his breathing. They still had a long swim ahead of them. He couldn’t afford to burn through all his gas by working hard.
Mango pounded on the cargo hatch door. Ryan swam around to the latch. The handle twisted freely. Mango shoved the door open and floated out. Ryan reentered the Humvee and removed the four tanks he’d stowed in the driver’s side footwell. He helped Mango strap two to his rebreather harness and then Mango strapped the other two to Ryan.
Ryan pointed toward the ship’s cargo hold opening with his right hand. Then he extended his left forefinger and brought it beside his right forefinger, indicating Mango should stay with him. They swam out of the cargo hatch into the open ocean.
The current had carried away much of the particulate. Mango pointed at the upside-down tugboat and they both stared at the carnage. The ship’s twisted crane boom draped over the barge. A Humvee lay on its side, still attached to the crane’s cable.
Mango tapped Ryan on the shoulder and held up his hand in a fist with his thumb extended to the right. He rapidly rotated his wrist it back and forth to ask, “Which way?”
Ryan knew the ship had gone down paralleling the coast of Haiti. It had listed to the starboard side as it sank, which meant the cargo hold was facing land. How far they would need to swim was another story. He checked the compass built into his dive computer and tapped the large S. Mango nodded, consulted his own compass, and flashed okay.
Ryan straightened his left arm out, locked his right wrist on the left elbow, and allowed the compass to swing. It spun wildly. He’d forgotten that the ship’s metal hull would confuse the reading of a compass correcting to magnetic north. They’d need to swim away from the ship before he could establish a true reading. He aimed his left hand at a small mound in the seabed and they began to swim.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Greg Olsen stared forlornly into the churning and bubbling ocean. Air bubbles roiled and burst on the surface as they escaped from inside the two sunken vessels. The stiffening breeze quickly whisked away the burning fishing boat’s black smoke. Toussaint Bajeux stood on the top of a tugboat’s bridge roof.
Greg had seen ambushes before, and the speed and fury of this one matched the best. Not only had they no warning the boat was attacking, there was also no time to save the sinking vessel. The daring ferocity of Ryan and Mango’s counterattack was a testament to their training and bravery. Or stupidity, Greg thought.
He feared Ryan and Mango’s retaliation had prevented them from escaping the doomed ship. He spun the wheel to take Dark Water closer to the wreck site. He wanted to look for survivors and, with any luck, pick up his friends. Although having them safe from a sinking ship and on the Hatteras was, Greg thought, like hopping from the skillet into the frying pan. Terrible news all around.
An older model cruiser sped up to the slowly sinking tugboat and took Toussaint and another man onboard before accelerating away.
Greg heard Volk cursing in his native tongue even though he was at the top of the tuna tower. He had lost his payday, and that put Greg in a bind. He wished he’d saved his pistol for a better opportunity if Volk decided to summarily execute him because Ryan and Mango had gone down with the Santo Domingo. He’d dared Volk to kill him, begged him in a moment of self-pity, but now he wanted nothing more than to kill all the Russian bastards.
Volk dropped down the aluminum ladder and stood on the bridge with his fists on his hips, his brow furrowed, and his lips pursed as he squinted into the distance.
Greg wanted to poke fun at the Wolf but kept silent in fear of retribution. He ran his tongue over the inside of his mouth, feeling the broken skin from Volk’s last punishment.
“They dead?” Volk asked.
“If they didn’t get off the ship.”
“This is magic man,” Volk said as he turned to look at Greg. “José Luis Orozco told me of Weller’s exploits in killing Arturo Guerrero. Your friend has nine lives, da?” He relaxed his posture and wagged a finger at Greg. “I think he is alive.”
“Man, I hope so,” Greg muttered.
“We wait here for him.”
“Not gonna happen, Chief. As much as I want to find m
y friend, we have a storm heading our way.”
Volk braced himself on the bridge console as Greg turned the boat into the waves to circle the continuous stream of bubbles erupting from the sunken ships.
“You take us to marina. Your friend will call.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
Volk’s lips peeled back in his trademark grin. He made a fist with his thumb sticking out, then drew the thumb slowly across his throat as he stared at Greg.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Ryan and Mango worked their way along the sea floor, kicking slowly to conserve energy. Ryan constantly monitored his direction, speed, and gas consumption. Once they were a good distance from the ship, the compass had given them a true reading and they corrected course. Now, they were fighting a current, which was running west, parallel the coast. To control their speed, he counted the number of kicks he made per minute. These were skills he’d learned in the Navy. He knew Mango had learned them as well. Every member of the U.S. military who qualified as a diver, regardless of branch, went through the Navy’s dive school in Pensacola, Florida. During his time in EOD, Ryan had plotted and swum more tracks than he could count, most in strong currents or near blackout conditions.
The conditions they were swimming in now were more than favorable. They had at least forty feet of visibility, the water was eighty-five degrees, and the current was moderate. His concerns centered on their time at depth, which would be minimal as the sea floor gradually sloped upward, acting as a natural ascent line, gas consumption, and backup contingencies if their rebreathers failed.
If one of the rEvo’s quit completely, the diver would switch to the air tank strapped to their side. He would make a slow ascent to the surface, and swim like hell for the beach, if he didn’t get the bends during the rapid ascent. And most likely, they would if they had to ascend from three hundred feet on one tank of air
Ryan rechecked his computer and twisted to look up at the surface, two hundred and fifty feet above them. He could hear buzzing propellers signifying smaller pleasure craft and the deep whomp, whomp, whomp of a commercial vessel. It sounded like the massive boat was going to run them over.
Could we have drifted into the channel for Cap-Haïtien? Ryan asked himself. He’d kept a steady compass bearing and tried to use reference points underwater as natural navigation aids. It was possible they’d drifted north. Anything was possible. He thought he’d stayed in a straight line.
Doubt fogged his brain. He stared at the computer and then at the compass. Was he getting them lost? He glanced over at Mango, swimming beside him. He would have noticed if we were off course, right?
Ryan tried to clear his mind and focus on the facts. Air pressures were right. He felt good. Their ascent was steady. He took a deep breath and leveled off in the water column again. He extended his left arm out straight and clamped his right hand on his left elbow. The compass was rock solid on the same line they’d begun when they’d left Santo Domingo’s cargo hold. Things were fine, Ryan told himself. You’ve done this a million times. This is just one more training scenario.
He nestled down into a rhythm, counting kicks as he watched the timer on his computer, and scanning ahead for visual cues. At this depth, those cues were just small marks in the sand and mud. His worry eased as he remembered that the ripples in the sand ran parallel to the coast. They were following the ripples in.
Gradually, their depth lessened, and they came upon a reef system. Ryan could see the vibrance of the coral and marine life even though it was muted by the depth. Past twenty feet, reds disappeared, then oranges at fifty. He knew they were in less than one hundred feet of water because the yellows were still vibrant against the wash of blues. Tiny fish darted in and out of the coral heads and around the purple sea fans. Ryan knew few divers had explored this section of paradise.
A dark shadow materialized out of the gloom. It was a wreck of an ancient steel-hulled boat heavily encrusted with coral and entangled with fishing line and fouled anchor ropes. Some of the largest fish they’d seen on their journey lurked near the artificial reef structure. Several long barracudas eyeballed them, and a pair of amber jacks chased each other through the wreck. A hogfish with its elongated snout rooted in the sand at the base of the hull. Mango pointed at it with a finger gun and jerked his thumb to mime shooting it. Ryan waggled his hands in a surfer’s “hang loose” sign.
Forty minutes later, the two men lay in the sand, eighteen feet beneath the surface, watching a pink-and-green bicolor parrotfish comb the coral for dinner. With its hard beak, the parrotfish pecked off algae. Parts of this reef were bleached white. Silt from the barren hills had washed into the ocean where it clogged the reefs and killed the coral.
The motion of the waves rolled, lifted, and nudged them forward. Both men were ready to be out of the water. Ryan felt a shiver course through him. His body was trying to make up the temperature difference between it and the water, which sapped heat twenty-four times faster than air. He glanced at the computer, only five more minutes before they could surface. The rebreather was pumping out almost pure oxygen to help eliminate any residual nitrogen in his system.
Ryan held up five fingers on his right hand under the flat palm of his left, indicating they had five minutes at their final safety stop, and then flashed Mango the okay sign. Mango shot him the bird. Ryan shook his head. Mango had given him the bird every time Ryan had asked if he was okay. As far as Ryan knew, this was Mango’s longest and deepest dive.
He closed his eyes and let his body ride the ocean swells while he maintained a grip on a chunk of dead coral. For the first time in the last hour and a half, he let his mind drift from the dive. His thoughts found their way to Emily Hunt. He wondered what she would think of all of this. Did she even know where he was, or about his troubles with Kilroy and Toussaint? He missed her and wished he was home with her right now. He felt sentimental and sappy.
The beeping of his dive computer saved him from dropping further into introspection. Their safety stop was complete. Mango pointed his finger at the beach and made a let’s get out of here motion.
The two men swam into waist-deep water and stood up. A three-foot-high wave nearly knocked them over. Each placed a hand on the other’s shoulder for stability, pulled off their fins, and waded up to the beach. When they hit the sand, they shed the rebreathers and spare tanks.
“Well, Google Maps, where are we?” Mango asked.
“I have a general idea, but you’re not going to like it.”
“Let’s hear it, bro.”
Ryan pointed west. “Cap-Haïtien is probably twenty miles that way.” He pointed east. “That way is Fort Liberte Bay and the Dominican Republic.”
“Where’s the closest place to grab a beer?”
“That, I don’t know.”
“Well, I’d kill for one right now.” Mango dropped to his knees in the sand.
“You and me both.”
“What’re we doing with this gear?”
“I’m going to carry the rebreather and leave the tanks.”
“Bro, you’re seriously crazy.”
“I’m getting something out of this deal.”
Mango shook his head in disgust. “You’re going to hike twenty miles with a rebreather on your back? Might as well have a target that says shoot me.”
“You’re probably right,” Ryan agreed.
“Of course, I’m right.”
“I wouldn’t let your wife hear you say that.”
Mango rolled his eyes. “You did get something out of the deal. You’re alive. Well, you’re dead, but you’re alive.”
Ryan chuckled as he dragged the spare tanks and rebreathers into the brush. He crawled out from under an acacia tree, brushed his hands together to knock off the sand, and said, “Let’s go out for some Haitian food.”
“What’s that, like beans and rice?”
“You know, like Mexican and Chinese.”
“Get outta here.” Mango waved his hand and started up t
he beach.
They came to a dirt road running south. A yellow Grove crane sat buried to its axles in the loose sand. Someone had attempted to dig it out, and from the deep ruts, in front of the crane, they had also tried to tow it out with another vehicle.
“This reminds me,” Mango said as he kicked the crane’s tire with his prosthetic foot. “I think I saw Dark Water milling around before we got blown up.”
“Greg knew where we were coming here.”
“Let’s find a phone and give him a call,” Mango said. “I’d like to get out of here before the hurricane hits.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“How far will we have to walk?”
Ryan shrugged. “Couple of miles.”
“I’m getting too old for this shit.” Mango gave his leg a little extra muscle and his prosthetic rattled as it sprang forward.
“You want to hang out here? I’ll go find us a ride?”
“I think I’ve got a couple of miles in me.”
“Be like old times,” Ryan said. “Want to jog and sing chants?”
“Hell, no.”
They fell into silence as they marched along, automatically falling into step as they kept a brisk pace. Both were used to long swims and runs as part of their military service, but neither had been at operational tempo for several years. Their physical stamina was not what it had once been.
“Sure could use that beer right about now.”
“I know what you mean, bro,” Mango agreed. “I’m dry as a bone.”
Ryan estimated they’d walked about two miles when the road made an abrupt right. A smaller track continued straight.
“What do you think, Robert Frost, the road less traveled?” Mango asked.
“When did you become the poetry scholar?”
“Every wanderer knows that rhyme.”
“True,” Ryan agreed. “But I think we should stick to the path well-traveled. This thing should lead us to civilization, and we want to get there sooner, rather than later.”