The Daredevils' Club ARTIFACT

by Kevin J. Anderson

  When he was sure she was far enough down not to notice what happened topside, he moved to the front of the boat, peeled off his clothes, and slipped on a wetsuit. He looked over at the man on the other boat watching him.

  “You can go.”

  “No, man. Mister Brousseau told me—”

  “I’ll bring him back. Don’t worry. Of course, if you’d rather wait for the Obeahman to send you an invitation.…”

  Blaine looked the man right in the eyes. The Trini blinked. He understood the message: Move or die. He quickly turned away and started his boat’s engine.

  Satisfied Blaine looked back down at the telltale bubbles on the surface. Assuming the currents weren’t pushing them around too much, they told him that Peta was angling away from the support leg and moving toward the center where the test well would be.

  He grabbed a weight belt and slipped on an extra three pounds of metal. He wanted to drop like a stone. If he needed to, he could shed the extra weight on the bottom.

  Won’t pretty Miss Peta be surprised, he thought, lifting a chest near the front of the boat to pull out his BCV, fins, and an extra pair of tanks.

  In minutes, ready to dive, he sat on the railing, rolled backward, and splashed into the water.

  He had no trouble finding the cave opening; it had been clearly marked by Charles and Abdul when they’d discovered it. He assumed that Peta was deep inside by now, perhaps all the way into the cavern. Soon, she and Simon would be coming back.

  If Simon was still alive.

  He reached over his shoulder and adjusted his air mixture, cutting back the oxygen. When he was satisfied with the new mix, he pulled his knife from its sheath and—holding it in front of him like the bill of a swordfish—started into the cave.

  Having done more than enough cave diving to know what to expect, he moved smoothly through the twists and turns. He could almost anticipate the bony stone fingers that lurched out from the top and the sides. He swam sleekly, knife held in front of him, dodging the rocky outcroppings.

  How much further, he wondered, before he’d be in the cave, face to face with Peta and Simon? The two of them would be totally oblivious to his arrival.

  Surprise, surprise.

  At a fork in the cave, he chose the wider passage. No diver could make it into the narrower one. The walls of this new tunnel were smooth, looking almost preformed, man-made even. Probably created by the flow of water in and out of the main cave.

  He saw the dull glow of a light ahead. Instinctively, he kicked harder.

  The rocky tube widened suddenly and he shot into the cave. He could only dimly see what was happening. Simon was suspended near the far wall, which was covered by a mural that looked like something from an alien theme park.

  Peta floated partially behind Simon’s body.

  Blaine watched as she took a specimen bag from the dead man’s belt and stuffed something into it.

  Good, Blaine thought. All the hard work has been done.

  He kicked once, twice.

  She was turning in his direction. He imagined her shock at seeing someone else in the cave, her relief when she recognized him, and finally her horror when she realized his purpose.

  Horror was bad thing. It was no fun to know that something really bad was about to happen. Better to just go quietly, unaware that—oops, you’re dead. Blaine took no pleasure in the horror. Work like this was meant to be done well, but not necessarily savored.

  He came at her hard, pushing Simon’s body ahead of himself like a battering ram. The panic was rising in her face and he could see her gulping air as she hit the wall. Not good, he thought. You must breathe evenly when you’re diving this deep.

  He noticed that his own breathing mixture felt thin and that he was gasping a bit from too much exertion. Unavoidable under the circumstances, he thought. He would check it later.

  Keeping Peta pressed to the wall with Simon’s lifeless body, he moved his knife in a broad, sweeping arc and expertly cut the main hose from her regulator. Immediately the air mixture rocketed out. He shifted his grip to her BC to steady her as he cut her secondary hose.

  She kicked at him. That was another downside of the subject of the work being aware of what was happening. Nothing alive wants to die.

  Fortunately the water and the dead weight between them made her slow, inaccurate. It was too late for her as the twin jets of free air shot from her tanks and wedged her tighter between the dead body and the wall.

  Blaine sheathed his knife, scooped up the specimen bag, and kicked his way back to the cave opening. He held the bag tightly in his hand, the prize for Frikkie.

  A nice prize, with the added bonus that the witnesses would never see the surface again.

  Death wouldn’t come all that quickly for Peta, but it would come. It was sad, really. She was a beautiful woman with a lot of fire.

  He would have liked to have bedded her at least once.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Blaine moved slowly to the surface, taking his time. He didn’t let himself dwell on Peta’s struggles below. It wouldn’t have been pretty but—by now—it was over. Time to be forgotten. She was quite beautiful, he thought again, and quite brave. Altogether rather remarkable.

  Pity how things turned out sometimes.

  At fifteen feet from the surface he slowed to a stop. Breathing a tri-mix made rest stops absolutely necessary to ensure that no bubbles brewed in his bloodstream as he changed pressure. It was always good to vent some internal gases at low depth. Like a race-car driver making a pit stop. If life had been different, that’s what he would have done: Raced cars at high speed. He certainly had the balls for it.

  Looking down, he saw a shape moving through the water. It circled coyly under him. His watch indicated that he had only been at fifteen feet for a minute—he should stay at this depth for another two minutes at least.

  Beneath him, the shark described another circle, spiraling up his way.

  Wouldn’t that be ironic? he thought. Get the artifact, kill Peta, and have a shark rip me to pieces.

  He looked up at the hull of his boat. Enough of a rest stop, he thought, kicking toward it.

  In moments, he broke the surface. The water had turned choppy and he could feel a breeze building up from the southeast. Little whitecaps slapped him one way and the other as he treaded water. He swam to the edge of the boat and latched on. Removing his vest and tanks in the water, he climbed on board and pulled up his gear behind him. In short order, with his wetsuit unzipped to the waist, he had the engine going and had cast off from the rig.

  He stuffed the specimen bag in his shorts. This was one prize he would keep very close to himself. He toweled the water from his hair, sat on the edge, and looked down, hoping to see the shark. Keep coming up for me, he thought, and I’ll put a damn bullet in your primeval head.

  For a split-second, he believed he could see it in the deep water below him, but then it faded and he guessed it had given up the chase.

  He tossed away the towel, then eased back the throttle, prepared for a nice, leisurely cruise back to the shore. The boat belly-whapped on the choppy water, sending a wet cool spray shooting back at him. Feeling relaxed and satisfied, he brought out a silver metal box from under the foredeck hold, popped open the latches, and removed his sat-phone. After turning it on, he said “Frikkie.”

  The phone dialed automatically. He could hear the whirring ring: once, twice. Come on, he thought. You have to be there. This is what you’ve been waiting for.

  “Yes?”

  “I got it.”

  “Good. Correct that. Great. Take care with it.”

  Blaine smiled. “It’s as safe as my family jewels, Frik. I tell you, though, it is a strange looking thing. I do hope it was worth that beautiful woman’s life.”

  “Wait! What did you just say?”

  “Peta. I thought it might be tidier if she didn’t surface to ask questions. Seemed like a nice place to leave someone buried. She and Simon kind of disa
pp—”

  “Go! The hell! Back! Now!”

  “What?”

  Even as Blaine spoke, he started cutting the wheel of the boat, turning around. It rocked as its own wake hit it from behind, and for a moment the propellers cut at air. Then he gunned the throttle.

  “Are you going back?”

  “On my way. Now tell me—”

  “You idiot. Did I tell you to kill her?”

  “No, Frikkie, but it seemed like a … how you say … no-brainer. Why would you—”

  “Because she still has a piece of the artifact, you fool!”

  The Venezuelan let that sink in. This was not good. People rarely screwed up on Frikkie more than once. They didn’t live that long.

  “You’d better hope to God she’s still alive down there, Blaine. And if she isn’t, you’d be better off not coming up again yourself.”

  He didn’t respond. He could only think that it had been a long time since he’d left her in the cave. The best chance that she was alive was if she were somehow able to breathe the free-flowing gases from her tanks. Slim possibility of that, but a possibility nonetheless.

  “Are you at the rig yet?”

  “In thirty seconds, Frikkie. I’ll go down. I’ll see.”

  “She’d better be alive, Blaine. You hear me?”

  “I hear you.”

  Blaine shut off the call and, one hand holding the wheel, he grabbed his fins and suited up again.

  O O O

  Peta saw the precious mixture gushing out of the cut hoses like streams of water from the mouth of a crazed snake.

  If something like this happened during a rec dive, she could just hold the free-flowing hose up to her mouth and breathe while she ascended. This deep, though, that wouldn’t work. With the air shooting out so fast, there was no way it would last long enough for her to get out of the cave, even if she could sip the air like that.

  Her second option was drowning. Already, she was feeling a little glow in her chest, the beginning of that amazing reflex that would eventually demand that she open her mouth and breathe, no matter what was touching her lips. She would suck in the water, putting an end to that crazed demand.

  In minutes she’d be dead.

  Then she realized that the answer was right in front of her: Simon. His tanks were intact and still had plenty of air in them. If she could hold her breath a little longer, she might be able to get to them.

  Trying to avoid looking at the bulging eyes and the rubbery, puffed-out lips, she reached for the regulator. You’re saving my life, Simon, she thought as she took a breath. For a moment she wondered if it had been a regulator failure that had killed him, but the mechanism worked fine. She took a few even breaths before she slid off her own BC vest and tanks, and watched them float to the top of the cave. With Simon’s mouthpiece locked between her teeth, she reached around him and undid the buckle and the Velcro of his BC. As she pulled it open, she tried to slide it down, but his arms wouldn’t cooperate.

  Take your time, she told herself. You have to be patient. Don’t expend too much energy.

  As gently as she could, she pushed his right arm out of the vest. It wasn’t easy. The arm felt stiff, too long for the armhole. She had to wedge Simon’s body against the wall and use all her strength to force it through.

  With one arm out, the other became much simpler.

  Once she had the tanks free, she turned away from her friend’s body and ended up facing the wall mural. Something in the shapes drew her attention, as if there were a secret there that she would understand if she just stared at it long enough. Was that shape a head? No, not a head. More like something from a microbiology class—as if the mural were some grotesque enlargement of a slide.

  Several sharp beeps drew her attention away from the images. She looked around, afraid that someone else might be attacking, and realized that the sound was coming from Simon’s dive watch.

  Time to get out of here, she thought. She had to let the regulator slip from her mouth as she slid her arms into Simon’s considerably larger vest. Putting the mechanism back in her mouth, she took another slow, steady breath. She had to stay calm, not breathe too fast.

  It occurred to her that she wasn’t entirely sure what she’d find when she did escape this cave. Would Blaine be waiting in his boat to see if she made it out? What about Simon’s pilot? What would she do if there was no boat up there waiting for her?

  None of those questions had answers now. She had to keep her focus. The first task was to get out of this cavern and back to the surface.

  She looked ahead to the cave opening, then around at the other walls, their surfaces as smooth as glass. What this place was, she had no idea. She did know that if she stayed here much longer looking for the answer, she wouldn’t live to tell anyone.

  She took one last look around the dome-like cave. About to turn away, she spotted something she hadn’t noticed earlier: a hole, low to the ground on the other side of the cave. Another way out, perhaps. A good thing, given that she didn’t know what Blaine might have left for her on the path they’d used to come in.

  Swimming over to the second passage, she got her head down low to shoot her light inside. The dim light didn’t reveal much. She hesitated for a moment, and went in.

  This channel was much narrower, barely large enough for her body and tanks. The walls were even smoother than in the first cavern, glassine and iridescent, silky to the touch.

  Half-a-dozen feet in, the tube opened into a small chamber, a circular passageway with three other thin tubes shooting off in different directions. The chamber was big enough for her to kneel and look around.

  On the wall behind her, she saw what looked like a shape. While she watched, it seemed to move—a dark, blue-black shimmer. Tiny plankton floating in the water gave the shape a hazy, blurry outline and she guessed that the apparent motion was a result of the light reflecting on the strange surface, like the inside of the shell of an oyster. The image of an oyster reminded her of the strangest aspect of this cavern: There should have been fish and crustaceans making this nice, deep water pocket home, but she saw nothing alive. Nothing at all.

  She heard a series of high pitched beeps. Her own dive watch this time. She looked at the maze of other channels ahead leading to other chambers, other secrets. They might lead to another way out, but she didn’t have time for errors. She would have to leave the way she’d come in.

  Swimming as quickly as she could without straining, she passed through the big cavern and into the channel. Not until she had exited the hole into open water did she pause to check her watch and her gauges. She was doing fine. There was plenty of time for a safe ascent, if nothing else went wrong.

  Following one of the giant Erector set legs of the platform, she ascended slowly. As she looked up, she noticed something moving on the surface. When the object came to a stop, she managed to focus on it until she made out the shape of a boat. It looked like Blaine’s boat, but why would he have come back?

  After another few feet of ascent, she saw the churning foamy bloom of a diver entering the water. She realized that not only was Blaine back, but he was coming down to make sure she was dead. What other possible reason could there be?

  She reached down instinctively for her knife, but this wasn’t the place to fight.

  She checked her compass. Tired as she was, the best thing would have been to go straight up, but with a killer coming down to the scene of the crime, that option was blocked. So instead, she started kicking, turning her ascent into a long angle, heading west. If she could make it to one of the other legs before Blaine noticed her, she could use it as cover.

  With luck, he would swim by and never know she was around.

  Hanging twenty feet below the surface to rest and let her blood gases even out, she wondered why he had come back.

  Not that it mattered. She was just glad he had been courteous enough to bring her a fast boat. Any other concern would have to be left for later, when there was time to
think about what had happened and why this artifact was worth the lives of so many people.

  Arthur, Keene, Simon, Paul Trujold, all dead. It was a miracle that she and McKendry weren’t also among the deceased, she thought as, with a few gentle kicks, she propelled herself to the surface.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Blaine rolled into the water and started a quick plummet back to the cave opening. He didn’t take the time to consult a tech dive table, but he was sure that two quick ups and downs at such depth had to be bad.

  Besides, this was probably a pointless dive. Unless he could find the object Frik wanted so badly—on Simon, or Peta, or still wedged somewhere in the underwater cavern—the dive would only confirm that Peta was dead. And that Simon was dead. After overstepping his authority so badly, he was sure to join the dead soon himself, if the dive didn’t kill him first.

  This must be the way an American death row prisoner felt, he thought, hoping against hope for the governor’s eleventh-hour pardon.

  His stomach in knots, he approached the cave opening.

  A school of annoying yellowfins hovered there, as if they were thinking about going inside to nibble on something tasty. They dispersed like seeds blown from an aquatic dandelion as Blaine approached, only to reform into a loose school a dozen feet away.

  Ready to enter, he adjusted his air mixture. If he kept the oxygen as lean as possible, he might avoid getting bent. One of his tanks scraped along a rocky outcrop with a noise far worse than fingernails on a chalkboard.

  He kicked onward, passing into the channel where the walls became smooth and finally widened as he neared the main cavern. As he reached that opening, diver’s intuition told him that something was wrong.

  He flashed on the shark.

  Had it beat the yellowfins in here? he wondered. Was that why the fish had hesitated? If so, the shark wouldn’t take too kindly to being disturbed while dining.