Counterpoint

by John Day

  Breathing hard and with her leg crooked around the line, she started the ascent. Several minutes later, from the tugging on the line below she knew Manuel and his dive buddy had reached it. Sparkling silver bubbles, caught in her dive light were now rushing past her from the divers below. So far, they had not seen her, preferring to keep their light away from their eyes and not spoil their night vision. Holding rigidly to the ascent rate, she tried to revive Max, thankfully, he was more conscious now and started to help her.

  Minutes later, Max ran out of air and had to share her air, using her spare regulator. Carla was relieved when the glow stick at the five metre mark was in sight. Max grabbed one of the emergency air regulators tied to the line. Maintaining shallow, regular breathing, he checked the dive computer for decompression time, 15 minutes, it read. From the rising bubbles, he knew Manuel was close behind. He looked down and saw their lights.

  Removing his jacket and air tank, he released all the buoyant air. Holding the empty steel tank like a torpedo, Max swam down the line as hard as he could, ramming the steel cylinder onto the top of the first divers head. The diver shouted with pain in a cloud of bubbles, and went limp.

  Max was relying on the fact that unless you look directly upwards, with a dive mask on, you see nothing above you. The second diver also did not see the steel cylinder descending on him, but he certainly felt it as it glanced off the back of his head. Startled, but not incapacitated, the man fought back.

  Unable to see through the mass of silver bubbles, Max snatched blindly at the diver's face and ripped his regulator from his mouth. The diver could not see Max either, through the bubbles. Suddenly, without air, it took all the man’s will to regain his self-control. Choking, he tried to find his spare regulator. Max had grabbed that as well, and grateful for the air supply, gripped the air tank on the man’s back, between his knees. Max grasped the divers flailing wrists and clung to the drowning man’s back like a giant rucksack. When the man stopped struggling and went limp Max slowly ascended, finally, when in reach of the reserve air, he let the man sink back silently into the deep.

  Closing his eyes for maximum concentration, legs around the line, Max felt for the Velcro covered straps that held his buoyancy jacket together, slipped into the jacket, and joined the straps around his waist, then inflated it.

  Carla had been surprised when Max suddenly shot down into the depths, she followed his progress with her dive light, she had seen the attack and thought to herself, he’s learning!

  Recovering all the gear and putting it into the boat was a struggle. The boat was pitching and tossing in the choppy water. As they gripped the ladder, it pulled them up wrenching their arms practically out of their sockets and then dropped them like a yo-yo, thrusting them under the water.

  They eventually tied the wheel to the boat and towed it into shore. Max rowed the last part of the way to avoid attracting attention so late at night, with the noise of the outboard motor. Eventually, they reached the quay and Max slipped away silently, into the night.

  Carla waited in the dark for Max to return with the pick-up truck, from the Quayside. He found her exhausted and shivering, clinging onto the wheel as though it was life itself. What a little tiger, he thought and how he loved her.

  He quietly stowed the dive gear and wheel on the truck, whilst she recovered. Then he took the boat back to the mooring, Carla followed in the truck, to pick him up.

  Because nobody was around at that time of the night, they thought no one had seen them, but they were wrong, they were also wrong about the two divers, neither was Manuel.

  Manuel was lurking in the shadows of the moored motor cruiser, waiting for his two divers to call him, so he could pick them up from the wreck buoy. He did not suspect the man in the rowboat, or truck that picked him up, was his adversary, not until later when his men did not return. At first he thought the men might have double-crossed him, but why should they, they did not know the real value of the wheel.

  Max drove the truck into the garage, by this time they were both exhausted, filled with diamonds or not, they left the wheel on the pick-up truck, until 10am the next morning.

  Chapter - Diamonds on velvet.

  Manuel grew impatient. The two brothers he hired to dive on the wreck, and take the wheel from Max, still had not called him. Their air supply would be exhausted by now, so what had happened?

  He slipped back into the darkness of the cabin and told his girlfriend, Atsoo, to call him if the brothers showed up. He was going round to their house to see if they had gone back there, or if anyone had seen them.

  One hour later Atsoo phoned him, one of the brothers, Rafael, had returned; he was injured. Having lost Jose, Rafael swam all the way back from the marker buoy. Manuel hurried back to the cruiser, and Rafael told him all he knew. The two of them were ascending the dive line, to catch the man and the girl at the decompression stop, when he was struck on the head, losing consciousness for a short while. When he came to, he was floating on the surface and could not see the buoy, the boat, or Jose, so guided by the distant shore lights; he swam back to the harbour. The old man and girl must have got away with the wheel.

  Manuel was furious; he guessed the boat and truck he saw earlier had the wheel on board, the timing was right. He had let the diamonds slip through his fingers. In hindsight, he should have waited for the man to get it ashore and then steal the wheel. At the time, though, he doubted the old man and his bimbo girlfriend would manage to recover the wheel, after all, they were total novices at diving. No, he wanted them to locate the truck and then grab the wheel. With the man and girl dead there would be no witnesses, that way nothing could go wrong, or so he thought at the time.

  The three sat in the dim cabin, not speaking for some time. Atsoo knew better than interrupt Manuel when he was thinking, Rafael flopped out on a bunk, too exhausted to think or speak.

  Manuel figured Max would leave Cyprus the next day, at the earliest, almost certainly by plane. He knew them by sight, so he would go with Atsoo and Rafael to the airport, and wait until Max checked in. He would know what flight they were on and would try to get on the same plane. If not, he would kidnap the girl, or both of them, and make them hand over the diamonds. It would be safer, though, to follow them to where they were staying, and deal with them, in a less public place.

  Skipping breakfast Max and Carla were keen to view the diamonds. Their first attempt to cut the tyre with a hacksaw failed, because of the steel cords under the rubber. The only way they could see to get inside the tyre, was to undo the bolts that coupled the two halves of the wheel. This was not easy because of the corrosion. After exposure to air, the metal wheel was practically flaking away with rust before their eyes, so they sheared off the studs with their special tool. Then, with the application of sheer brute force, they hammered the two halves apart.

  The inner tube was still intact and held air. The hole, through which the packets of jewels had been inserted, was sealed with a large rubber patch. Eagerly they split open the tube and opened one of the 12 large cloth packages. Inside, interleaved layers of black velvet separated the many hundreds of stones. This packet contained diamonds, each layer graded to a different size, some cut and some uncut.

  “We’ve done it” Max exclaimed, “We’ve got the bloody lot, now we have to do something with them.”

  “First stop is the good old bank deposit box,” replied Carla “Then we can decide what best to do with them.”

  “We must also get some money to George Bryan’s family, straight away.” added Max.

  It was the following evening that Max and Carla checked in for the flight home to Malé in the Maldives. They had planned to meet up with the Ocean Raider, there. Manuel, Atsoo, and Rafael also managed to get on the flight, so the waiting game had started.

  Chapter - A statuette for Carla.

  Max was eager to find the location of the bug, he and Mark Goodliffe had secretly placed in the box, containing the statuette. Mark had made the bug for him, in
case the box was stolen, before it was handed over to Stephen Jackson, the buyer’s agent.

  Back on board Ocean Raider, Mark showed Max how to work the direction-finding receiver. Next, Max personally hired a small aeroplane and arranged to fly towards the southern tip of India, in the direction of the radio signal. Max then told Carla he was going on a mission on his own for a few days. She could not understand why he would go without her, and was extremely upset and bitchy.

  “Whilst you are away, I will see if I can catch up with Amy, and stay with her and David.”

  Max replied, “Are they likely to want you cramping their style?”

  “Who knows, perhaps David can satisfy two girls at a time,” she hit back.

  Max shut up. He knew better than escalate an argument with any woman, let alone her.

  Max set off the next day in the light plane, with the pilot, to travel the same heading as Stephen Jackson. The pilot kept a constant height of 500 metres as Mark had suggested for good reception, clear of most obstructions and interference, but also achieving good directional reception.

  As the miles slipped by, the faint beep and tick of the directional receiver got stronger, always at 20-second intervals from the time datum Mark had set. The signal was still too weak to take accurate bearings, but the direction was obviously right. It was within 50 miles of southern India, according to the latest fix. The heading was still optimal, a few degrees either side, the signal was weak, but equal.

  “Keep on this course pilot,” instructed Max.

  They were now flying over the jungle, and the signal was still growing in strength, so Max changed aerials to a tighter and more selective type. Max gradually reduced the sensitivity of the receiver to tighten further, the directional properties. Max then instructed the pilot to fly 10 miles northwest after noting the current heading as a line on the map. At the new location, Max took a new bearing, and a new line was drawn, that intersected the first line, about 10 miles ahead of where they turned.

  “I think we’ve got it,” exclaimed Max, “let’s circle in this region,” he added, pointing to the intersection.

  The pilot tapped in the new coordinates and altered course.

  Circling around, the pilot pointed out a small opening in the otherwise unbroken canopy of foliage below.

  “That must be what I am looking for,” said Max, excitement showing in his voice. “Can we go a lot lower?”

  The pilot obeyed and circled over the hole.

  “Something glinted down there,” Max exclaimed, the pilot agreed.

  “What is the exact position then?” Queried Max and wrote down what the pilot had said. Max also checked the instruments, and it all tallied.

  "Better go home to the ship now," said Max rather frustrated at the find. So near yet so far, he thought.

  High above them whirled a large helicopter equipped with long-range fuel tanks. Its pilot also noted the position of the circling aircraft below him, and later, when Max was out of sight, he moved in for a closer look.

  Philippe had organised his own search, hundreds of miles away, but was curious about another aircraft circling in this remote area. As usual, his intuition paid off. How the other pilot had found the crash site was academic, this was all Philippe needed.

  Within minutes of landing at Thiruvananthapuram International airport, a team of men was boarding another helicopter to fly to the drop zone. They had full jungle survival training and many resources aboard, should they need them, to get down to the jungle floor and possibly back up. Their rewards would outweigh any risk on this mission.

  The large Sikorsky was well on its way when a sudden and severe storm warning was issued. Much to Philippe’s frustration the mission was cancelled until it cleared, three days later.

  Affected by the same storm, Max prepared his plan. Whilst the Ocean Raider sailed back to Trivandrum, Max built a special platform, near Thiruvananthapuram International airport. Four long bamboo poles were arranged like a noughts and crosses grid. This grid, with a secure platform in the middle would be lowered onto the treetops and be roughly supported by the branches. The helicopter he proposed to use, could carry it to the hole in the treetops, and then disconnect the line. A rope ladder could be lowered from the platform so Max could get to the ground and back up again, without fear of the helicopter line snagging trees.

  By standing on the platform, effectively above the trees, Max could be lifted off again when he wanted.

  It took two days to organise the helicopter and build the simple grid frame, deck the centre and load the equipment. As soon as the storm cleared on the third day, Max was flown to the crash site with the grid dangling below. The journey was extremely slow because even though a sort of tail was fitted to stop the frame from spinning, the drag was particularly significant.

  After relocating the hole in the tree canopy, the frame was lowered onto the branches and the line released. Only the platform was visible as the light bamboo frame sank slightly into the foliage. Next, with the help of a member of the helicopter crew, Max was lowered by harness onto the platform and released. The helicopter then flew off for refuelling.

  It was a strange feeling, standing on the small platform in the middle of a vast green carpet of treetops, spread out around him. The air was clean and fresh, the fragrance of the foliage wafted around him in the brilliant sunlight. In just a moment, beads of perspiration oozed from him, causing his loose clothing to cling to his wet skin, in the scorching heat.

  Max unpacked the rope ladder tied to the deck, and lowered it onto the wrecked helicopter below. Then he descended on to it, amid the up current of dank, moisture-laden air, below the canopy. A quick search in the gloom of the wreckage, revealed the box containing the statuette, securely strapped in and undamaged, with its thick polystyrene case and bubble-wrap around it. With the aid of a rope and a large canvas bag, just the box was hoisted up to the deck. It was hard work in the oppressive heat, but Max was getting quite fit these days.

  Whilst waiting for his helicopter to return, Max decided to go back down to the ground and see what might have happened to Stephen and the pilot, of the crashed helicopter.

  The noise of birds calling and creatures moving stealthily through the dense undergrowth grew louder as he descended to the jungle floor. The leaves had filtered out the brilliant sunlight above the canopy, leaving the fetid interior, dark and gloomy. Occasional thin beams of blinding sunlight stabbed the gloom, illuminating the rising mist as it curled up from the ground. The strong smell of the rotting vegetation and hot, humid air trapped down there, added to a feeling of foreboding. This was not a good place to be lost.

  After a few minutes, Max’s eyes became accustomed to the poor light, and he moved cautiously through the narrow openings between bushes and vines. Then he froze at the sight of the remains of a rotting corpse.

  Judging by the clothing that remained near parts of the skeleton, this was Stephen Jackson.

  Max continued to search for ten minutes hoping to find the pilot’s remains, not knowing Stephen had tossed him to the sharks.

  By scuffing a rough trail in the ground as he went, the way back to the wreck should have been easy. Somehow, Max lost the trail, and although no more than twenty metres away from the ladder, there was no way to see that far in this wild tangle of plant life.

  A sickening fear swept through him as he realised he was lost. What should he do? Turn around and go back was the obvious answer, but after turning 180 degrees, which way had he come from? Without moving any further, Max examined every leaf and twig around him until he saw freshly broken plants and vines. He moved forward, placing a fresh green leaf on the ground, pointing behind him. Progress was very slow; he had to be certain the trail was his before committing the next step.

  What if his helicopter returned, and he hadn’t reached the platform? He might never hear it down here, with this high background noise of insects and creatures. How long would they wait for him, and if they went, would he be able to stay alive
until they sent help?

  With so much going on in his mind, he took a wrong turn and had to back track picking up the leaves as he went.

  Half an hour later, drenched in sweat from the humidity and fear, he broke through into the small clearing under the ladder.

  “Thank God, ” he said to himself, and braced himself against a tree until he recovered.

  Without venturing far, Max took a photo of the skeletal remains and the wreckage and went back to the rope ladder. So wrapped up in his thoughts about Stephen, he walked right up to the large snake, blocking his path. Its head was lifted, and it was coiled about to strike.

  When Max saw it, he froze on the spot, one foot in front of the other, mid stride, only a foot away from the evil swaying head. Very slowly, he raised his hands and took off his peaked cap (Carla said he looked younger in it, so he wore it whenever appropriate). Gradually he lowered the cap and dropped it to the left side of the snake. The snake struck it as soon as it fell level with its head, and before it could re-strike at Max’s leg, Max had leapt back and away.