by J. F. Kirwan
He didn’t sleep that night, keeping guard over his youngest. He heard her and Jake every now and again. Hard not to. His feelings about that were ambivalent, so he buried them. He checked his phone. Still no word from his contact in Moscow. It should have been straightforward. Pick up Katya, head for the safe house.
As dawn approached, and the local birds got hellishly noisy, Nadia’s door creaked open. He vanished back inside his hut, silently pulled the door to, and made no noise whatsoever.
Like he was never there.
***
Jake’s dive briefing was longer than normal. ‘To summarise, it’s a cave dive, entrance at eighteen metres. A chamber with a high ceiling, about fifteen metres across. Access through a tunnel with a small hole. The point is, it looks really easy. Visibility is crystal. But if you kick up the silt at the bottom, you could die in there.’
She stifled a yawn. She and Jake hadn’t slept much.
‘You’ll see the skeletons of a large turtle and a dolphin. They died in there.’
That got her attention. Dolphins were smart, and turtles could hold their breath a long time.
‘So –’
‘Don’t touch the floor,’ she said.
‘And if you get lost, if the silt kicks up…’
She shrugged. ‘Pray?’
‘Find the dolphin skeleton. Locate its head, trace its spine along to the tail, and you’re heading straight for the exit hole. Use your hands to scoop along. It will be four outstretched arms away, no more, no less.’
‘You’ve done that?’
‘No. He has.’
Dominic wandered over, followed by Yukio, a glass mug of green tea in her hand.
‘Morning,’ Dominic said. Yukio nodded to Nadia briefly, then her elf-like eyes settled on Jake.
‘Need me to take the Germans in?’ Jake asked.
‘No, it’s okay. Raphael was sick yesterday, but he’s fine this morning. Besides, they want to do some spearfishing in the shallows off to the north.’
Jake winced.
‘Look,’ Dominic said, ‘I agree, I don’t really like it either –’
Nadia butted in. ‘It’s not that. He’s allergic to spear guns. Show them the scar.’ She smiled at Yukio. ‘Girls love scars, right?’
Yukio grinned, and at that moment she briefly placed her hand on Dominic’s waist. So, they were an item. Yukio caught her eye, and Nadia got the message. I’m not a threat. Nadia nodded and smiled back.
Dominic and Yukio pressed Jake until he relented and peeled off the top of his wetsuit. While they asked questions that Jake neatly parried, Nadia noticed someone, an older guy in his fifties. He didn’t look familiar, and yet… He was bending over, fiddling with a camera, but he kept glancing sideways. She followed his gaze to the Germans who were readying to enter the water.
‘Okay,’ Jake said. ‘Let’s go.’
***
Once they’d gotten past the turtles and the reef sharks, Jake found the tunnel entrance, which wasn’t at all obvious, as it was hidden by tan-coloured ferns. They had to enter one by one, torch beams lighting up green and purple flora and a few startled, big-eyed orange fish. It was slow going as the tunnel kept changing direction and its rocky edges were sharp. Not a good idea to get cut. The sharks would smell blood and wait at the exit, or worse, venture inside.
And then it opened up into a large chamber. The visibility was like nothing she’d ever experienced. It wasn’t just crystal, she couldn’t actually see the water, except via Jake’s bubbles. It was as if they were floating, weightless. She followed Jake upwards, to avoid kicking up any sand or silt. On the ground below were the two skeletons. The dolphin’s was larger than she’d expected, and she followed the line from its head to its tail. Sure enough, it pointed back to the entrance.
Jake moved up near the top of the chamber and she followed him. He put his arms out as if to have a dance. She rolled her eyes. Then his face changed, suddenly wary. He was staring down and behind her, back towards the entrance. She turned and saw it too. The flicker of a torch beam. Someone else was about to enter the cave.
A diver emerged from the tunnel – Lars – and quickly propelled himself into the cave. He finned upwards, but kept his distance. A second beam heralded the entrance of his buddy, Matthias. Nadia noticed they both had spear guns clipped to their right calves. Matthias stayed near the entrance. Jake, who was closer to them, gave Lars the ‘OK’ signal with his right hand. It wasn’t returned. With his left hand behind his back, Jake held out two fingers, side by side, then opened them. She understood. Split up. Her hand dropped to her side, ready to grab her knife.
Lars snatched up his spear gun, levelled it at Jake, and fired.
Somehow the spear missed, and made a dull thud as it embedded itself in the wall behind Jake. Lars glanced at his weapon. Jake darted forward, his knife drawn, but was hit with a spear shot by Matthias. Blood spooled out of Jake’s thigh like an aeroplane’s contrail. But he kept swimming straight towards Lars and began grappling with him, each holding a knife and the other’s wrist. Despite being wounded, Jake drove them down towards the silt. As they fell, Nadia kept them between her and Matthias, who was reloading.
As soon as Jake hit bottom he kicked his fins like crazy, turning crystal clear water into thick potato soup. Within seconds she could see nothing except two torch beams flailing in the murk, and then even they disappeared. Despite knowing that Jake was fighting for his life, she knew she would be no help to him, unable to see anything. She would get in the way or stab the wrong guy. Matthias wouldn’t be able to intervene either, or fire his spear gun. He would guard the entrance.
She had to find the dolphin’s skeleton.
She switched off her torch and descended. Aside from her breathing, she could hear the short, urgent rasps of others’ bubbles. Moving carefully, like a cat with its paws outstretched, she edged forward. At one point a heel landed hard on her side, and she saw a blur of fins, but they moved away. She found the jaw of the dolphin. Laying low, she pulled herself along using its ribs as handholds until she reached the tail. Looking straight ahead she could still see nothing but solid grey. Jake had said it took thirty minutes minimum for the silt to settle, and his battle was churning up even more. Matthias would be there, four paces in front of her, spear at the ready.
Jake had said only instructors knew about the skeleton pointing the way. Matthias would be expecting her to come from one side or the other, tracing the edge of the cave just above the silt layer. Still, he would be able to react quickly, so a frontal assault had only a fifty-fifty chance, maybe less.
She remembered what her father had once told her, that fear is a weapon many animals use, whether the bear’s roar or the wolf’s growl – and can be the key to overcoming a superior opponent. She went back along the skeleton, found the skull, and lifted it. Thankfully it was no longer attached. Would Jake find his way out without it? She had to hope so. She went back to the tail, wedged her torch inside the skull, and switched it on. It looked like a macabre Halloween mask. She pointed it behind her, gauged the angle, and then kicked off, holding her breath so as to make no noise.
She ascended a couple of metres. Holding the ghoulish skull in outstretched arms, she swivelled it back around so it would face Matthias, and let it fall. Just as it disappeared in the murk there was a glint of silver and a ‘phish’ sound. He’d fired. She finned hard downwards, knife drawn.
She tried to stab him in the neck, but he was too quick, even in water, and thrust sideways away from her, her knife scraping the metal of his tank. She didn’t hesitate, knowing it would take him time to get back to the entrance in almost zero visibility. She needed to summon help. She pulled herself into the tight dark hole.
Nadia clawed her way through, keeping her head low to avoid banging it on the rock ceiling. Knees grazing the jagged floor, she expected to be speared at any time, but the twists and turns worked in her favour, and she guessed he couldn’t
get a clear shot. Eventually the blackness gave way to a deep blue, and she finned out into the ocean.
She thought about trying to stab Matthias as he exited, but these were seasoned pros. She bolted for the top of the reef. Just as she reached it, she saw him exit, spin around so he was on his back, and fire. Again he missed, though not by much. Something was wrong with their spear guns, but Matthias was learning to compensate.
Reaching the top of the reef, only knee-deep in water, she ditched her fins and waded out onto the sand. To the right, just around the curve of the island, was the jetty. She’d never make it, and the wind was blowing her way, so shouting for help wouldn’t work either. She stared at the forest, knowing this could be a fatal decision, then heard Matthias breach the surface. She sprinted through the treeline and was soon surrounded by dense bushes and high grass. She ran a further ten metres, slashing her legs in the process, then lay down amongst the roots and soil and crawling insects, and held her breath.
Chapter Nine
Jake swam towards Lars at full speed, before he had time to reload. Matthias, below him, fired. Jake had no time to dodge, just hoped it would miss. No such luck. The spear pierced his right thigh. Pain skewered down his leg to his foot, and he knew the last thing he should do was keep moving, but he had to. He did his best to ignore it. He’d felt worse: the torture in Kenya. Knife in his right hand, he aimed to be a spear himself. Lars pulled out his own knife, and raised it high.
Evenly matched in size, they each thrust with one hand, and countered by grabbing the opponent’s wrist with the other, locked in a deadly dance. Nadia couldn’t help him, and was an easy target. He arched his body and finned upwards, then down, like an aeroplane banking and then going into a vertical spin. Lars’s eyes didn’t register surprise or concern, only determination. A fight to the end. The trouble was, Jake was bleeding. The sharks would sniff it soon enough. Then they would come. If they arrived while he and Lars were still inside the cave, it would only end one way. Jake guessed Lars knew that, and clearly didn’t care.
They hit bottom. It was like clay, soft and sticky. It mushroomed up in front of his face. Lars’s mask and eyes faded behind a cloud of liquid dust. Lars tried to force Jake’s knife deep into the sludge, but it was a feint. Lars’s knee rammed into the end of the spear, and drove it deeper into Jake’s thigh. The spear struck bone, bringing on instant nausea and blurred vision. Jake’s entire body was on fire. He imagined this was his torturer back in Kenya. He channelled all his pain, all his humiliation, into his right arm. With a primeval scream of rage his wrist broke free and his knife raked blindly across Lars’s face.
Lars let go. Jake thrashed wildly with his knife, still unable to see clearly, not that there was anything to see. His fin connected with someone behind him. Had to be Nadia. Good. She knew what to do. He kept his knife in front, scything from side to side, hunting flesh. Time wasn’t on his side. Lars could leave Jake to drown or be eaten by sharks, who would arrive quickly once the scent worked its way outside. And Jake was losing blood. The spear had missed an artery, that much he knew, because he wasn’t in shock yet, but it would come.
Which way to go? Everyone in the cave was blind. But he knew where the entrance was. His sense of direction, near useless on land, never failed underwater. He never got lost. He slowed his breathing. His heart rate was another matter.
Jake had always feared sharks. A secret he’d told nobody. Not the smaller white-tipped reef sharks. The big, mean, killing machines. Mako, tiger, bull, blue, great white. To overcome the fear, he constantly sought them out. But it never went away. He’d had a premonition for years that he would end up eaten by a large shark, torn to shreds. The first bite would trap him with those rows of hooked teeth; the second would crush most of the life, and all of the fight, out of him, but not enough to kill him. That would be the third bite, followed by the long slow descent into endless blue.
But right now he needed to think like a shark.
He closed his eyes, stopped moving, held his breath, and listened to the sounds of regulators: two working hard, one slower. Sound underwater was omnidirectional, so it didn’t tell him where they were, but it meant Nadia was still alive. He used the skin on the backs of his hands and his head to feel any water motion. There was movement to his right, where the entrance was.
A sudden rasp of bubbles, some kind of a struggle, then a wind-like gust of water, someone finning fast, horizontally. Nadia, escaping through the tunnel. Smart girl. A second gust, a few seconds later. Matthias, chasing her. Between the two of them, they would flush out his blood in their wake, and a hundred sharks’ noses for miles around would suddenly swerve in his direction.
He needed to get out of the cave.
But Lars could wait in the cave, keeping Jake there until the very sticky end. Or would he? Who was their quarry? It had to be Nadia, not him. He waited a while longer. Sure enough, the same gust of water. Lars had exited. Now it was time for Jake to be the shark, approaching from behind. He pushed off and headed for the entrance, arms outstretched until he found the hole, and then he darted through.
He knew the twists and turns, and could go quicker, even though the shaft of the spear in his leg kept hitting rock, which only made him fin faster. The fog cleared, and in the darkness he saw the small bubbles swirling behind his enemy’s fins. His knife became the shark’s mouth, and he followed his prey, fast, silent, almost not breathing, eyes unblinking.
Just as Lars reached the blue, his supposed sanctuary, Jake struck his trailing foot with the blade, a slicing blow, aimed not to maim but to slash. Lars’s legs went into frantic, uneven finning as he swam out into blue, through shafts of bright sunlight. Jake pursued him. A dozen small white-tips hung below, zigzagging, eyes wide, the blood in the water prepping them for a feeding frenzy.
Above on the surface two groups of divers were finning fast to the shore. He recognised Yukio’s pink fins amongst the closer group. Good. Get them all out of the water. Now! Her masked face turned towards him. He carried on.
Lars finned away from him, and away from the reef. Towards the bigger sharks. The man-eaters. Jake sensed the current, and turned slightly, making sure Lars was down-current. The reef was on his left, almost out of sight. Jake slowed, and Lars did too, a river of blood trailing from his foot, as Jake knew it would be from his own thigh. The sharks would arrive in seconds. Who would they take first? Fifty-fifty. Except not quite, with the current. A slight advantage for Jake. Was he afraid, now that his time had come? Did he have that instinctive fear of the shark?
No.
Three large trevally swam into view – thin, silver fish as long as his arm, strong jaws and razor teeth – behind Lars. Little doubt they were behind him, too, patrolling the pair of bleeding divers, waiting for an opening. Lars retrieved his spear gun, and extracted a fresh spear from a holder on his left calf. The three trevally darted towards Jake, who brandished his knife, scattering them, though they’d return quickly.
And then Jake saw it. A shape looming out of the blue, behind Lars.
Jake barely moved.
Lars fixed the spear into place.
The mouth and eyes of the shark appeared.
Lars stretched back the elastic around the rear end of the spear.
The pectoral fins and the dorsal fins were now clear, as were dark slanting lines just behind its head. A tiger.
Lars straightened his arm, aiming directly at Jake, looking him in the eye, confident in the kill.
The shark twisted at the last moment, its jaw yawning impossibly wide, its eyes rolling back, its teeth glistening in the sunlight before they crunched down on Lars’s legs, dragging him down sharply.
The first bite.
The spear shot off at a wide angle as the four-metre shark shook Lars like an underwater rag doll. Mesmerised, Jake watched Lars trying to fight it, beating it with his fist and the end of the spear gun, his knife useless, strapped to the leg inside the shark’s mouth. The shark thr
ashed left and right, then finned upwards, its body vertical, its tail swinging in powerful strokes. It loosened its grip on Lars for a fraction of a second, only so it could to clamp down again, this time biting down on his torso.
The second bite.
Lars’s body became listless. The shark continued up and breached the surface before heading down again, an entourage of smaller reef sharks and trevally chasing it.
Jake snapped out of it, and almost bit off his mouthpiece as a lone trevally sunk its teeth into his thigh. Without thinking he stabbed it straight through the brain with his knife, which he then shook free. He couldn’t see the reef, but it was on his left, had to be. He finned fast as he could. The pack of fish would chase him, and be more likely to attack a wounded creature on the run, but he couldn’t let them surround him, His only chance was the reef. He pulled out his shorter knife, so that he had one in each hand. Twice he was bitten, twice he stabbed with his knife to make them let go, hoping the adrenaline would compensate for his increasing blood loss.
The reef was in sight, but to his left and right other sharks arrived, two-metre black-tips, skittish, excited, two million years of evolution urging them to attack, knowing they would win. Amongst them was a three-metre bull, a marauder, judging its moment, gliding through the other sharks as if they weren’t there.
Jake finned for his life. He wasn’t going to make it. Too many trevally. Too many sharks. Simple math.
Still, he finned.
Something splashed into the water to his right, then to his left, large clumps of chum leaving a bloody cloud behind them as they drifted downwards. The sharks suddenly turned and zeroed in on the easier targets – bloody meat, tuna most likely – so that within seconds a dozen sharks assailed each chunk, trevally devouring loose shreds.