Found at Sea

by Anne Marie Duquette

  Think, Aurora, think.

  She turned off the light and attached it to her belt, wanting to conserve the batteries. Then she studied the smaller debris around her. If she could shove a little pile of it underneath the beams, perhaps she could lift the beam and pull herself free.

  Aurora grabbed a small piece of wood with both hands. She locked her fingers tightly around it and jammed it into a space beneath the beam. The old wood crumbled in her hands. Aurora could have cried aloud with frustration. She tried the same thing with pieces of rock and other debris. Nothing. She exhaled shakily, feeling the first real traces of fear. I need a lever.

  Aurora maneuvered herself so she could better see the beam. Her other foot wasn’t much of a shovel, but it was the only chance she had. She pushed her lantern into the space. She hated to do it, but she had nothing else to prevent further shifting of the weight onto her leg. She continued to take slow, even breaths as she dug around her trapped leg. Those breaths changed to a ragged gasp as her toes hit solid rock. In that same moment, the little extra space she’d gained allowed the beam to settle even more, crushing the lantern into a bent, warped shape. Its light would never again warm the growing darkness of the waters.

  For the first time since the San Rafael fell, Aurora began to lose hope.

  * * *

  JORDAN DESCENDED INTO the murky, silt-stirred thickness of the Pacific. I can’t see a thing. Aurora, where are you?

  Neil swam alongside Jordan, eyes wide at the damage around him. The thicker, unbroken strands of kelp still held fallen debris trapped in their tendrils, while other strands were torn apart by the weight of the San Rafael as it fell. Visibility measured a bare five feet, even with their lights and the sun of a late-summer afternoon.

  Jordan impatiently checked his wristwatch and compass, the green luminescent numbers glowing in the twilight as he continued to descend. His mind tortured him with terrible scenarios—Aurora crushed, Aurora bleeding, Aurora dead. Jordan tried to push those thoughts away and concentrate on his dive. Fifteen more minutes, he thought. Fifteen more minutes and we’ll hit bottom.

  * * *

  AURORA BROUGHT HER dive gauges closer to her face to check them in the darkness. She’d been under far too long. According to her calculations, she had only fifteen minutes left—and she needed every one of those minutes to stop on her way to the surface to decompress. She dug again and again with her free foot, ignoring the raw, bleeding skin on her toes where the rubber boot had been torn by rock. All her efforts were unsuccessful and merely wasted precious air. She had to choose between struggling uselessly and dying sooner, or accepting the inevitable and buying herself a few extra minutes.

  I don’t care if I end up with the bends. Anything’s better than giving up. At least I’ve saved everyone except myself.

  The irony of the situation struck her hard. I hope Jordan won’t be the one to find me if I die here. I hope no one finds me. I don’t want any of them—Jordan or Dorian or anyone—blaming themselves for my death.

  Aurora regretted not relying more on her family and friends. She wanted to see them all again, make up for lost time, tell them how much she loved them, had always loved them, even when far away. She thought about her love for Jordan, accepted the intensity and honesty of her feelings for this man. She never wanted to be parted from him again. For the first time in her life, she wanted a family of her own. She wanted to belong, and that was something marriage and family could give her.

  Jordan understood what family was. Finally, so did she.

  She suddenly noticed a faint stream of light. Jordan? Her eyes narrowed in an attempt to follow the light beam above. A second light beam cut the darkness behind it—and then a third.

  Oh, no. Flores is back. Aurora watched with horror as he spotted her—just as she spotted Jordan and Neil. Just as her air gauge red-lined.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  NEIL BEHIND HIM, Jordan broke through the thick stalks of kelp, most a mere six inches apart, into the clearing at the lowermost tier. He spotted the third light beam trained on Aurora’s motionless figure, which lay in the eerie shadows. His heart raced, and his breath caught at the sight. Aurora’s arms and one leg floated limply in the water, her head at an unnatural angle.

  Oh, no. Oh, no...

  He followed the light beam back to its owner and saw the diver with the lantern in one hand and a knife in the other swimming straight toward Aurora. Jordan put on a burst of speed, desperate to reach her before the other diver did, knowing he couldn’t, yet trying anyway. He swam past one dead diver, a much larger man.

  This swimmer has to be Flores—coming to finish her off....

  Just as Flores reached her, Jordan watched Aurora come to life. With her free leg she kicked at Flores’s knife hand, successfully knocking it away.

  She’s alive!

  That was all he needed to catch up to Flores, drop his lantern and grab the other man’s ankle with both hands. As Flores jerked around, Jordan saw Aurora make the diver’s motion for air, waving her hand toward her lips. He continued to wrestle with Flores as Neil swam past and shoved his octopus, his spare regulator, into her mouth. The two of them could now easily breathe from one set of tanks. Then Jordan saw nothing except the fury of his nemesis.

  Doubled up, Flores grabbed at Jordan’s regulator, forcing him to release the ankle and protect his air source. The two men circled each other. Jordan pointed to his gauge, then Flores’s.

  If Aurora’s out of air, you jerk, you can’t be far behind. Come on, Flores, give it up. You don’t have a weapon to use against me anymore and you can’t survive without air.

  Flores appeared to consider his options—and then they all heard a noise. Even this far below the surface, the sound of a boat’s twin engines coming to life was unmistakable. They started to fade into the distance. Flores hesitated, distracted by the Mako’s cowardly retreat. Jordan didn’t. He kicked hard to get back to Aurora, to cover her with his own body as the faint concussion of the engines in the water finished what the helicopter rotors had begun.

  The rest of the San Rafael fell off the tier farthest from the trio of divers and nearest to Flores. The trio was struck by some of the falling wreckage, while the single diver bore the brunt of it. When the water cleared somewhat, there was no sign of Flores. No air bubbles signaled life.

  Jordan swam to Aurora. He reached for her hands, unable to speak, overjoyed just to be able to touch her. Neil held up the underwater writing pad with a brief message. “She’s stuck.”

  Jordan gave Neil an impatient “Okay” hand-gesture. I’ve got eyes, Neil.

  “Check her gauges,” Neil wrote.

  Jordan did, gently turning Aurora’s wristwatch and dive gauges toward his mask. His stomach dropped at what he saw. She needs to decompress.

  He checked his own gauges and made the calculations. Even before Neil held up the slate again, he knew. We don’t have enough air for her to decompress.

  Aurora took the slate and stylus from Neil’s hand and wrote, “Leg broken. Forget bends. GET ME UP.” She held it for Jordan to see.

  He nodded. Then he took the slate and scribbled, “Okay. Love you.”

  Aurora took the slate and held it tight against her heart, then quickly added her own message for him to read.

  “Me, too.”

  And Jordan knew it was true. What a time to find out...

  He surveyed the wreckage. From the look of things, he and Neil might be able to shift the wooden beam off Aurora’s leg if they lifted the far end of it together. He gestured to Neil, who had grasped the situation, already sliding out of his B.C., leaving his tanks with Aurora. Jordan held out his octopus to Neil, and the two men headed for the end of the old galleon’s beam. Together, they lifted, pivoted, lifted and pivoted again. On the third try they were able to swing the beam free. Aurora pulled out her lower leg, and the men swam back to her in tandem.

  Jordan switched Aurora to his spare regulator, while Neil took his set of tanks onto his
back. He and Neil checked their air gauges. In pantomime, Jordan signaled that they’d have just enough air for one decompression stop, instead of the required three. The compressed air she’d breathed into her lungs would have only one chance to expand normally. The air bubbles in her blood could still damage, an embolus ripping apart vital heart and brain vessels, causing pain...or death.

  Hang on, Aurora. We’ll get out of here yet. He linked his arm tightly through hers, and Neil did the same. The men started their ascent with Aurora, her damaged leg hanging limp in the water. When they reached the area for the first decompression stop, Jordan released her. She grabbed for his arm as he gestured that he was going down again.

  Aurora shook her head violently. Jordan, no!

  Jordan removed the slate attached to his belt. “2 check Flores. Got air 4 quick trip.”

  Neil took the stylus and wrote, “He’s outta air & dead.”

  Aurora snatched the stylus. “We’re losing light,” she added.

  Jordan cleared the slate with a rub of his hand and wrote, “Murky below. Gonna check 4 sure.”

  Aurora’s eyes opened wide, but she made no further protest. Jordan passed the stylus and board back to her as he prepared for another descent.

  Aurora touched his arm. Wait. She quickly wrote, “Come back to me, OK?”

  He pulled off one dive glove to stroke her white cheek, the only part of her not covered by her wet suit. “Take care of her, N,” he wrote on the board, then put on his glove and headed down once more into the kelp depths.

  * * *

  I CAN’T BELIEVE I’m doing this, Jordan thought as he descended. I can’t believe I’m going back for those killers. I must be insane.

  But the thought of leaving anyone, even a deadly enemy, alone to drown went against everything he believed in, every single tradition of the sea.

  Will Aurora die, too? The bends could kill. He hoped someone would be waiting for them when they surfaced. Please don’t let her die.

  Quickly—more quickly than safely—he descended toward the massive debris that once was his family’s heritage, and now his family’s tragedy. By the beam of his dimming light, he located Flores half-buried in debris. A cursory check confirmed his suspicions.

  A kinsman dead. He felt no satisfaction, only regret. So many Castillos dead in the seas. Such a waste. And this unknown Castillo... We could have shared. We could have been family.

  Jordan hovered over the body of the other man, whose head had been crushed by the cannon barrel. Jordan noticed the hand tightly clutching something gold.

  And now this fool, too. What good can your gold do you now?

  He stretched out his hand for the gold, a long, jewel-studded chain that snagged and caught on the tanks. Jordan gently lifted the tanks to free it, then clenched his fists with excitement.

  The tanks. The tanks! He reached for the dead man’s air gauge and nearly screamed his joy into his regulator. They were half-full. This man had died earlier than Flores did. He had air!

  Jordan removed the tanks from the man’s back—the treasure that would allow Aurora a second decompression stop—and grasping them tightly, ascended, the gold necklace still tangled in the dive straps.

  * * *

  THE SUN HOVERED above the waterline as Jordan guided Aurora to the surface. He and Neil propelled her upward with strong legs. The cool breeze of a summer evening hit Aurora’s cheeks as her head broke through the water. The two men inflated their B.C.s from their tanks so they could float and pulled their masks down from their faces to rest around their necks. Neil quickly filled Aurora’s B.C. by mouth as Jordan supported her, arms around her waist, her back against his chest. The empty tanks were jettisoned to rest on the bottom of the ocean. Earlier, Jordan had safely tucked away the necklace in his B.C.’s Velcro pocket before he’d returned to the first decompression dive stop. It remained there throughout the second. There had been no chance for a third.

  “You okay?” he asked Aurora. “You hurt anyplace else?”

  “Just my ankle...” She grimaced.

  “Any cramping, aching, signs of the bends?”

  “Some. My arms...and my other leg. But it’s not too bad, thank goodness.”

  Thank goodness is right. If he hadn’t gone down to see if those men were still alive... Jordan held on to her even more tightly. The bends could take hours to fully develop.

  “I thought you were a fool for going back down,” Neil said bluntly. “Treasure-crazy. Glad I was wrong. How’d you know there was air left in his tanks?”

  “I didn’t.”

  Aurora’s eyes opened wide at that. “You...didn’t?”

  “No. I told you, I wanted to make sure no one was trapped alive.”

  “You’re crazy,” Neil said. “This whole setup is crazy.”

  “It’s not over yet,” Jordan said. “Aurora, I know you’re hurting, but hang on. Help’s coming. I gave Donna our coordinates before we left. Sooner or later she’ll show up.”

  “I’ll hang on,” she whispered, leaning her head on Jordan’s shoulder.

  “I’ve got three waterproof flares,” Jordan said. “You?”

  “Three also.”

  “So...” Neil turned his gaze toward the setting sun. “How long do you figure we have to wait?”

  “As long as it takes,” Jordan said, holding close the woman he loved. “As long as it takes.”

  * * *

  IN THE END, the wait didn’t take long at all. Donna needed barely thirty minutes to find their location. She showed up on Neil’s Dealer Ship alone; she’d insisted that Gerald take her place on the helicopter to reunite with Dorian at the hospital.

  Jordan grabbed on to the ladder of Neil’s vessel with one hand, his other arm still around Aurora’s waist as Neil climbed aboard first and shed his dive gear. Donna couldn’t leave the bridge in the rough waters, even though Neil yelled, “She’s broken her ankle and has signs of the bends. Help us get her up.”

  “I’m the only crew. You’re on your own,” Donna yelled back.

  Neil then climbed back onto the dive platform, taking Aurora from Jordan’s arms.

  “The controls are yours, Neil,” Donna said to Neil as soon as everyone was on board. He made his way to the pilot’s wheel. “I’ll help with Rory. How is she?”

  Donna gently slid off her remaining dive boot. Even in the fading light, she gasped at Aurora’s flayed, bleeding toes. Her eyes caught Aurora’s for a second, then Donna studied her broken ankle.

  “I got trapped...tried to dig my way out,” Aurora whispered.

  “I’ll splint that ankle,” Donna said as Neil increased speed for San Diego. “Jordan, you bandage her toes.”

  Before they could do either, Aurora doubled over in pain, her body in the fetal position as the bends cramped her insides.

  “Forget the toes,” Jordan said, holding on to Aurora so she didn’t roll right into the side of the boat. “We need a helicopter.”

  “The cruise-ship helicopter had to go refuel. He was running on fumes.”

  “Call the Coast Guard chopper,” Jordan said. “We need a decompression chamber. Tell Neil to radio in a Mayday.”

  * * *

  THE PAIN WAS WORSE than anything Aurora had ever experienced—or hoped to experience again. Decompressed nitrogen in her circulatory system, nitrogen compressed by the depth of her dive and the pressure of the deep water, now expanded faster than her body could handle.

  The bubbles of nitrogen in her veins and arteries could cause a stroke if trapped in her brain, could cause a heart attack, could cause paralysis. They could blow apart lungs and other organs, explode blood vessels, cause severe injuries or death.

  All she could do was scream and scream as severe embolism cramping—the bends—attacked her body. For the first time in her life, her beloved ocean had turned against her. She felt Jordan hold her, Donna removing her wet suit and swimsuit, Jordan wrapping her in warm blankets, Donna splinting her broken ankle. Even the pain of broken bones felt
insignificant compared to the agony she suffered. Her voice changed from piercing to raw to hoarse and finally grew silent. Her overworked muscles stiffened from exhaustion. Yet the pain still continued.

  Only Jordan’s voice kept her sane.

  Even Donna abandoned her, saying with a cracking voice and wet eyes, “I’ll go check on the chopper.”

  Jordan held her shivering body. Warm blankets were useless against her pain. Only Jordan helped.

  “I’m here, sweetheart. Hang on,” he kept saying.

  She felt his love surround her, as his arms did. Jordan loves me, she told herself over and over. Jordan loves me.

  “Remember what you wrote,” he was saying. “You love me. I love you, too. You hang on, sweetheart. Just hang on.”

  She didn’t—couldn’t—register much of the boat ride. The sunset, another spectacular California sunset, went unappreciated. The noise of the Coast Guard helicopter in the dark went unheard as agony became her whole world. She didn’t notice the departure of the Coast Guard helicopter; darkness and the ocean’s sudden choppy swells had made ship-to-chopper transfer impossible. She didn’t even register when the Dealer Ship arrived in San Diego Harbor.

  By the time Jordan’s strong arms carried her off the ship onto the waiting ambulance, she’d thankfully lost consciousness.

  Balboa Naval Hospital, San Diego

  Nighttime

  TANYA STOOD beside the navy’s barometric chamber. Inside, Aurora, still unconscious, lay covered, a temporary splint on her ankle. Outside, Jordan and her aunt’s doctor, a tall woman in uniform khakis, consulted in low, serious tones. Every dire prediction twisted inside Tanya’s middle.

  “...Could be some brain damage...hard to say with only two decompression stops instead of three... Can’t tell until we release her from the chamber and get an MRI.”

  That meant nothing to Tanya. She felt like throwing herself against the porthole hatch of the barometric chamber and sobbing wildly. Instead, she forced herself to listen to the doctor and Jordan, who’d been labeled “the boyfriend.”

  “Where’s the next of kin?”