Redemption in the Keys

by Matthew Rief

  After a few minutes of descending and equalizing the pressure, I caught my first glimpse of the seafloor and the plane wreckage. The entire rear of the plane was completely torn off along with both of its wings. The cockpit was smooshed in, and the sides of the fuselage were broken in places and scratched to hell. I met Kyle in the cockpit.

  “Told ya it’s a mess,” he said. “You should leave your fins here,” he added. “We’ll be walking this thing out.”

  He pointed to where his fins were stowed under a stone in the silt. I removed them one at a time, then placed them beside Kyle’s. I also set the spare air tank, the coiled nylon rope, and the deflated emergency raft alongside them.

  Kyle glanced at the equipment I’d brought down for a few seconds and smiled.

  “Smart thinking,” he said, then motioned me to follow him inside.

  Using my hands and controlling my buoyancy via my breaths, I followed Kyle up and through the shattered cockpit. After we navigated our way to the middle of the fuselage, he pointed towards a large metal storage container with piles of debris beside it. He moved to the backside of it, then we both grabbed onto a handle, one at each end. He wasn’t kidding about the electronics being heavy. It was a pain getting them to the front of the plane and out through the torn-up cockpit, even with the two of us. By the time we got it out, I’d been down for twenty minutes.

  Grabbing hold of my pressure gauge, I figured I had only about ten more minutes left at that depth. Even with two tanks filled with nitrox, diving down to two hundred feet means the gases compress to nearly one-seventh the volume that they were at the surface, giving the diver very little time to hang out at that depth. It also didn’t help that I was lifting a heavy object, making me use up even more precious air than I normally would have.

  Carefully, we carried the metal box down onto the seafloor and went to work. Grabbing the nylon rope, we looped it through the box’s handles, underneath, then through the other side. We did this three times, making sure that the box would be held in place, then looped and tied the nylon ends around the corners of the life raft, distributing the weight as much as possible.

  Once the raft was secured to the box, we spread it out on top, making the whole thing look like a big jellyfish. We donned our fins, then Kyle held the makeshift contraption in place and I reached for the full tank of air in the sand beside me. Once the tank was under the raft, I used my left hand to support the cylinder, then grabbed the pillar valve with my right.

  Here goes nothing, I thought, then turned it slowly counterclockwise.

  The valve cracked open and air spewed out, bubbling up towards the surface and becoming trapped under the raft. Within seconds, the bottom of the raft filled with a pocket of air and rose up like a hot-air balloon, causing the nylon connections to go taut. I continued to fill, keeping a watchful eye on the edges of the raft and making sure that it wasn’t going to tear. The positive buoyancy of the air soon prevailed and lifted the metal box from the seafloor.

  Kyle glanced over at me and said, “You’re a genius. Enjoy that, because you’ll probably never hear it again.”

  I was about to laugh, then stopped myself. Checking my pressure gauge again, I saw that I barely had enough to make it to the surface and perform my safety stop.

  “I need to head up,” I said, and when he looked over at me, I motioned towards my pressure gauge. “You got this alright?”

  The box had already lifted a few feet off the seafloor without any assistance. With Kyle steadying it and finning it along, I reasoned he should have no trouble bringing it up alone. Especially since the more it ascended, the more the air trapped under the raft would expand and the faster it would travel.

  “Let some air leak out over the edges if it goes too fast,” I said. “I’ll see you at fifteen feet.”

  He gave the OK signal, then I looked up and finned briskly, with big smooth kicks, towards the surface. Keeping an eye on my depth via my dive watch, I stopped at fifteen feet down, then started a five-minute timer. Performing a safety stop is important at the end of every dive, especially when you go down below a hundred feet. Failing to stop drastically increases your chances of decompression sickness, or the bends as it’s referred to.

  Keeping myself neutrally buoyant, I took in my surroundings. I could just barely see the light of Kyle’s flashlight below, and above I could see the Baia’s hull jutting into the water about a hundred feet away on the surface.

  As I floated, wondering if it would be easier to swim the metal box over or move the Baia closer, I heard the distinct sound of a boat engine and a propeller cutting through the water. My heart raced, and I searched the surface for the source. Sound travels much faster in water than in air, making it easy to hear sounds from much farther away. However, this also makes it almost impossible to identify which direction the sound is coming from, since to figure that out, our brain uses the time it takes for sound waves to travel from one ear to the other.

  “Logan, do you have a visual?” Kyle said.

  My eyes scanned back and forth towards the surface and the twilight sky above. The sound was growing louder and louder, and after a few seconds, it materialized into a boat that was skirting across the water in the corner of my eye, heading towards the Baia.

  SIXTEEN

  I kept my eyes trained upward and locked onto the boat. It was small, no more than twenty feet long, and it looked like a rigid-hull inflatable, or RHIB, as they’re called.

  “Kyle,” I said into the speaker. “It’s a RHIB.”

  I watched as it cruised around the Baia, then moved back towards the stern, slowing to just a few knots.

  “Who is it?” Kyle asked, like there was a way in hell I was supposed to know.

  “It’s slowing aft of the Baia,” I said. “I’m gonna pop up and check it out.”

  “Wait for me!” Kyle said. “I’m almost up to you.”

  Not that I didn’t want Kyle’s help, but the second that raft hit the surface, it would be a massive target and give away our position. I glanced down at the timer and saw that I still had a minute and a half left.

  I guess I’m gonna have to risk it.

  I had no way of knowing who they were or what they wanted, but one thing was certain: I wasn’t about to let them board my boat without my permission.

  The RHIB idled just aft of the Baia as I loosened the straps on my BCD, pulled apart the Velcro waist strap, and slid it off my back. If any of them had half a brain, they’d already know where I was from my bubbles rising up to the surface. After venting enough air for the BCD to remain neutrally buoyant, I took a final inhalation, then pulled the regulator from my mouth, grabbed my small drybag, and swam towards the bottom of the Baia. Just as my body cleared the hull, a bright spotlight pierced down into the water from above.

  Once I reached the port side of the Baia, I ascended slowly, exhaling some of the air from my lungs to prevent overexpansion. Rising slowly out of the water, I exhaled the rest of my air, then took in a slow, quiet breath. I reached for my mask and slid it up over the crown of my head. My body was hidden from the guys in the boat by the Baia’s port gunwale. As I moved slowly aft, I silently removed my Sig from the drybag and held it up out of the water with my right hand. I grabbed hold of the swim platform with my left and peeked around the corner, catching my first glance of our guests.

  My first realization was that they sure as hell weren’t Bahamian Coast Guard, and whoever they were, they weren’t there to make friends. There were two men, one sitting all the way aft with a hand on the tiller of what looked like an idling 75-hp Yamaha; and the other was standing all the way forward and shining a spotlight into the water near where I’d been ascending just a few moments prior. Both guys were armed. The guy up forward aimed what looked like an M4 into the water with his right hand and shoulder while he adjusted the spotlight with his left. The guy aft had an MP-5 SD6 strapped across his back and a handgun in his right hand. I couldn’t make out any details of their appearance in the d
arkness, but judging by their mannerisms, they had some training.

  Suddenly, the guy operating the tiller spoke. I was roughly fifty feet away, but it sounded like he was speaking Russian. The guy forward replied, and I was able to distinctly discern the word nyet, which means no in Russian.

  Shit. I guess Baldy had been telling the truth after all.

  I brought my Sig up and rested the barrel on the edge of the swim platform. I knew I only had a few seconds before Kyle and the raft would reach the surface.

  Time to send the Russian Devil home.

  I lined up my front and rear sights on the guy standing up forward. With my finger on the trigger, I clicked off the safety and took in a slow, deep breath. Suddenly, he yelled out something in Russian and adjusted the position of his M4. I knew that he must have spotted our makeshift salvage contraption. With a smooth, quick motion, I pulled back on the trigger. The hammer slammed home, sending the 9mm round exploding from the chamber. The sound rattled across the calm evening air as the bullet struck the guy up forward in the chest.

  In rapid succession, I sent another round his way, the second striking him just below the neck. His body lurched forward, spinning the spotlight and casting a pillar of bright light straight up into the night air. As the guy fell forward, his M4 exploded to life, sending a stream of bullets splashing into the water below. After a fraction of a second of firing, his body tumbled all the way forward, collapsing over the bow of the RHIB, and he let go of his rifle.

  I redirected my attention to the guy seated at the stern. In a flash of movement, he snapped his body around and yelled out a curse in Russian as he aimed his handgun in my direction. Just as he spotted me, I fired off two more rounds. The first struck the right side of his chest, causing his body to jerk violently. The second put him straight to bed in an instant as it exploded into the side of his skull, spewing blood and bone onto the inflated rubber gunwale beside him.

  Following the report of the rounds, the scene around me turned eerily quiet as the two guys lay motionless. I kept my Sig raised for a few seconds, just in case. When it was clear that both men were down and out, I held my Sig up out of the water and kicked towards the black RHIB. Just as I made it to the starboard tube, I reached for the bow and quickly switched off the spotlight, which had still been shooting a beam high into the night sky. After what had just happened, the last thing I wanted was to draw more attention than the gunshots already had.

  Once the light went out, I noticed air bubbles rising up to the surface near where I’d left my BCD. Swimming forward, I held my mask against my face and peered down into the water. The concave raft was just a few feet beneath the surface but was losing air.

  That guy must have shot it with his M4 when he went down.

  There was no time to think of a plan. At the rate the air was bubbling out, it would all be gone and the box would sink to the bottom in a hurry. Looking down, I saw Kyle kicking beneath the metal box, working hard to keep it afloat. I took in a deep breath, dove down, and finned towards him as fast as I could. Grabbing hold of the metal box alongside Kyle, I motioned towards the RHIB and we both kicked as hard as we could, willing the box towards it. There was no way we could make it to the Baia before all of the air escaped, which meant that our only chance to get it out of the water was to use the black inflatable.

  After a series of strong kicks, we reached the edge of the RHIB. Rising out of the water, I wrapped my right arm around one of the pontoons and held one of the metal box’s handles securely with my left. Kyle pulled off his rebreather gear beside me, leaving me to keep most of the weight up by myself. I felt every muscle across my body flex and tremble as I gritted my teeth and forced myself to hang on.

  Once Kyle was out of the gear, he grabbed onto the other handle, taking some of the weight off and easing the pain in my fingertips. Keeping my left hand clasped to the handle, I pulled myself up onto the pontoon using my right leg, then rolled over onto the thick plastic hull. Fortunately, we’d chosen the side opposite to where the two dead guys had collapsed, so we wouldn’t have to worry about the small boat tipping over.

  After removing my fins, I adjusted my grip on the side of the boat, making sure I was secure, then leaned over the side.

  “Alright,” I said, making eye contact with Kyle. “One…two…three!”

  I pulled as hard as I could while Kyle kicked and pushed up. With a strong, quick movement, we jerked the heavy-duty box out of the water, slid it over the pontoon, and thumped it onto the deck. After helping Kyle get the rebreather gear out of the water, I fell back against the starboard pontoon and breathed heavily.

  “Holy shit,” Kyle said as he pulled himself out of the water and plopped down beside me. He slid out of his fins and looked around the boat, breathing as heavily as I was from sheer exhaustion. The deep dive, lugging the metal box out of the plane, and hoisting it up into the boat had taken its toll on both of us.

  “Way to make a mess,” he said, glancing at the two bleeding dead guys.

  “Next time I save your ass, I’ll make cleanliness a higher priority,” I fired back along with the best attempt I could make at a grin. Tilting my head to look at the monstrous metal box beside me, I added, “What the hell’s in this thing anyway? It feels like a box of bricks.”

  “Things that are going to bring the truth to light,” Kyle replied in between quick, deep breaths.

  Summoning my strength, I sat up and looked around. I felt beyond tired and dehydrated, but we weren’t done yet.

  “Let’s get this hunk of metal onto the Baia,” I said. Then, looking down at the two dead guys whose blood was pooling at our feet, I added, “We’ve got to figure out what we’re going to do with these two.”

  “Sending them both to the bottom is my vote,” he said. “You think one of these jerks is the Russian Devil?”

  I shrugged as I moved for the Yamaha outboard that was still idling.

  “I heard them speaking Russian,” I replied. “We should search them real quick before we get out of here.”

  “You sound like you’re in a hurry.”

  “This boat has a short range,” I said. “Which means that the mothership must be somewhere nearby.”

  As the words came out of my mouth, I could tell Kyle was wondering why he hadn’t thought of that himself. Fatigue and deep diving don’t mix. The combination can have bad effects on your wits.

  He looked around us while I put the motor in forward gear, then twisted the throttle on the end of the tiller. Just as we began to move, Kyle snapped his head towards the bow, then held a hand up in the air.

  A second later, he pointed out over the bow and said, “I hear something.”

  My eyes darted in the direction he was pointing and tried to focus through the darkness. The patches of cloud covering the moon made seeing anything difficult, but I could just make out the large black outline of what looked like the fishing trawler we’d been suspicious about. I cursed myself for not noticing it sooner, but the sound of the idling Yamaha must have drowned out the noise of its engines as it approached.

  My eyes grew wide as the trawler cruised towards us at an unbelievable speed. I tried to accelerate out of its path, but with all four bodies along with the metal box, the small RHIB was most likely right at the limit of its load capacity, causing us to ride low in the water. With my right hand still gripping my Sig tightly, I accelerated our small boat as fast as it could.

  In an instant, the trawler slowed just a few hundred feet away from us, and I spotted a man standing stoically on the bow. Through the darkness, I saw a plume of smoke coming from his mouth, then realized that he was holding something both unmistakable and terrifying over his left shoulder.

  “RPG!” I yelled.

  Kyle snatched the M4 from the deck and raised it just as I raised my Sig. But before either of us had time to take a shot, a rocket exploded violently from the launcher. My heart pounded as I instinctively hurled my body over the port gunwale. In the corner of my eye, I could se
e Kyle diving as well as the rocket-propelled grenade hissed through the air. In the blink of an eye, the grenade made contact with the center of the RHIB and exploded, sending a painful shockwave into my body and scorching my back as I splashed into the water.

  I grunted as the pain overtook me and felt disoriented in the dark thrashing water. The force of the explosion had knocked the air from my lungs, but I forced myself to swim deeper, not wanting to expose myself. There was a high-pitched ringing in my ears, my back burned, and my side felt like I’d been hit by a series of Mike Tyson haymakers. I opened my eyes to the sting of saltwater and saw a burning glow radiating from the surface above. I heard the sounds of the trawler’s propellers as they pushed the enemy boat along and could barely make out its hull through my blurred vision.

  Suddenly, I felt an arm grab hold of mine and jerked my head sideways. I still couldn’t see very well but realized that it was Kyle and that he was pointing towards something in the water ahead of us. Focusing my eyes forward, I spotted my BCD still floating lifelessly at fifteen feet down. It looked to be about thirty feet away, fortunately having drifted in the same direction as I’d motored the RHIB.

  With my lungs aching for air and my body feeling like hell, I swam alongside Kyle towards the BCD. Forcing myself to keep moving and pushing through the pain, we eventually reached it and took turns taking a deep breath of much-needed air. My vision slowly cleared, but the ringing in my ears persisted. I looked up towards the surface just in time to see strands of automatic gunfire splashing into the water, the rounds breaking apart just a few feet over our heads. By the sporadic nature of the bullets, it wasn’t clear whether they saw us or not. But one thing was clear, they knew that neither of us had been killed by the grenade blast.