Cave Diver

by Jake Avila

  ‘His wok nau. Let him fight the spirit.’

  Chapter 26

  Once they crossed the border and entered Indonesian airspace, the banter quickly dried up. Hartono kept low, hugging each bend of the river, while Sura scanned frequencies on the radio. Jammed into the rear seat beside Nash, Boerman trained his binoculars on the unfolding landscape. It was clear they feared detection by Indonesian forces; the question remained why.

  They flew on, and the hazy ramparts of the looming central massif resolved into a wall of seemingly unbroken grey rock. Now close to its headwaters, the Sepik had changed from brown to milky green. On each side of the speeding helicopter rose thick walls of green rainforest, occasional super-trees erupting from the canopy like skyscrapers. On a tight bend, they surprised a colony of fruit bats, and several hundred cat-sized animals tumbled in their wake like a cloud from a giant explosion.

  ‘Tuhanku,’ breathed Sura, as the mouth of the Hoosenbeck Gorge came into view.

  It was as if God had taken a knife and carved two perfectly vertical seams through the rock to create a gigantic gateway to a magical kingdom, half-hidden in the mist beyond. Erupting from this half-kilometre-wide mouth, the turquoise Hoosenbeck River ran deep and swift, colliding with the Sepik in a foamy broil.

  As Hartono swooped into the gorge, Nash felt his pulse quicken. They really were going to the Hoosenbeck. Any boat – he assumed it had to be a boat – which had made it up here must have one hell of a story to tell.

  On either side of the gorge, dense rainforest clawed its way up the mighty cliffs – gravity-defying trees which had never felt the axe. Nash could only imagine the rainfall required to sustain such a precarious existence. It had carved dendritic side passages, insanely deep slot canyons snaking away into gloom where no vegetation could live, venting torrents of raging white water into the fast-flowing Hoosenbeck flashing below their skids.

  After perhaps fifteen kilometres the gorge narrowed to no more than 200 metres, and Hartono gripped the cyclic more tightly. Bouncing off the rocky ramparts, the Jet Ranger’s roar was an eerie ghost echo, which seemed to presage no good. Here, nature was losing her fight with stone. The dwindling trees crammed into two narrow strips had etiolated, their bereft crowns meeting above the water like hands clasped in prayer. They flew across a whole forest of huge skeleton trees – dead white trunks devoid of branches, suggesting a catastrophic dieback in the distant past. For a good kilometre, this continued until, dead ahead, the monolith dwarfed everything. It took Nash a moment to realise that this was the shadowy end of the gorge itself – a sheer black wall rising a thousand metres.

  Forgetting his predicament, he eagerly craned his head down. Somewhere at its base, shrouded by tenacious trees, lay the mouth of the Hoosenbeck Cavern.

  ‘There it is!’ Sura pointed to the top of a wide arch and crescent; a hint of darkness beckoned within.

  Hartono brought the Jet Ranger as close to the bastion as he dared, the tips of his carbon-fibre blades just metres from the rock. Gradually, he eased the chopper down, a few cautious metres at a time, but the downdraughts were playing havoc with his controls.

  ‘I need more margin,’ he told Sura. ‘It’s too fucking close.’

  She leaned around to confer with Boerman. He put on a rucksack and picked up the coil of climbing rope.

  ‘Give me ten minutes.’

  ‘Make it five. We must conserve fuel.’

  Hand on the door release, Boerman stared at Nash.

  ‘I don’t trust this fok.’

  Sura took out a small pistol and pointed it at Nash’s forehead.

  ‘This is a low-velocity cartridge. Rest assured, if you try anything, it will not damage the helicopter when I shoot you.’

  When Boerman opened the rear door, the volume was deafening. Chilled air rushed in, bearing the smell of wet rock and decaying vegetation. With boots planted on the skid, Boerman swiftly tied off one end of the rope and flung the remaining slack towards the ground. Then, gathering a loop, he connected it to the karabiner on his belt and attached a cammed descender above it. Reversing position, he gave Nash a grin and fell back, dropping for a couple of seconds before engaging the descender. Hartono swore as the chopper bucked and swayed under the impact. Within seconds, Boerman touched down, detached himself from the rope and was running for the nearest tree.

  It was then that Nash noticed something very strange. What had become of the mighty Hoosenbeck they had just flown up? All he could see was a modest stream bubbling out of the cave and trickling down the wide and dry river bed in a pale imitation of the force that had carved it.

  Suddenly, a series of concussions thumped against the bottom of the Jet Ranger, as loud as a foot pedal on a bass drum. The crowns of several trees swayed and crashed down in a cloud of leaves. Boerman was using plastic explosives. Hartono cleared the leaves and dust away as he descended. Most of the trees had fallen down the slope. He settled the chopper on a ledge close to the entrance.

  ‘Kill it, Ricki,’ instructed Sura. ‘And stay here with the chopper.’

  The mouth of the Hoosenbeck Cavern was a semicircular arch about the size of a three-storey building. That a mighty river had once flowed through here was beyond doubt. The rock had been carved by chemical processes and boulders ejected from inside the mountain. Enough light penetrated the interior for them to see that a couple of metres below the lip was an expanse of emerald-green water.

  A vibration passed through Nash’s body. He’d been dreaming of this for half a lifetime – ever since first reading about the Hoosenbeck while sitting on his parents’ couch. But the moment was tinged with loss. It wasn’t just the context of a gun pointed at his back. It was because he felt unfit to enter the element to which he had dedicated his life.

  ‘Come on,’ said Sura. ‘We don’t have time to waste.’

  The vastness of the space was intimidating. The lake could not be encompassed by the light of their powerful torches, but what they could see was as long as a football field. According to the 1960s explorers, it reached twice as far again into the bowels of the mountain. Nash visualised its creation: the millennia of acidic snowmelt finding its way down some fault in the Miocene limestone and steadily eroding this vast dome. He realised the Hoosenbeck both entered and exited the lake below the surface. At some point, around two hectares of unsupported roof would collapse, and the gorge would lengthen again.

  Nash allowed himself to simply absorb the magnitude of the place. Analogies and allusions swam into his mind. Surely it was the hall of the mountain king which Tolkien had visualised in Middle-Earth? Or was it Dante’s Ninth Circle of Hell?

  Then the lines came to him unbidden:

  In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

  A stately pleasure-dome decree:

  Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

  Through caverns measureless to man

  Down to a sunless sea.

  The poetry conjured up his last journey with Natalie. En route to the Octopus, Nash had been musing on the final sentence in the foreword of his book: For what we discover in caverns unknown to man is nothing less than the potential of human imagination itself.

  ‘It’s almost there –’ Natalie had her eyes on the undulating dirt road – ‘but you need to drop the bastardised allusion.’

  ‘You’ve got a problem with Samuel Taylor Coleridge?’

  She punched him lightly on the arm and he grinned.

  ‘No, Rob, I’ve got a problem with the fact your hero already used that line in the title of his book.’

  ‘Caverns Measureless to Man,’ Nash recited sonorously, ‘by the late Sheck Exley, America’s greatest cave diver. Tragically perished below 300 metres in a sinkhole at Zacatón, Mexico, 1991.’

  Natalie frowned. ‘I wish you wouldn’t do that. Especially before a dive in the Octopus.’

  Citing fatalities in the vocation he lived and breathed was Nash’s way of acknowledging those who’d gone before and learning from their mistakes, but it was poor t
iming. He put his hand on Natalie’s smooth brown thigh.

  ‘You’re right. I’m sorry.’

  She blew him a kiss. ‘I agree it is a perfect description for the lure of cave diving – especially if you happen to be a man! But I’m sure you’re smart enough to come up with another.’

  ‘OK.’ He smiled at her. ‘How about, “Because it’s there?”’

  ‘Idiot!’

  Those seductive creases at the corners of Natalie’s mouth, the delicious peal of her laughter . . . she was still there inside his head! For a moment Nash was overwhelmed. Then a prod from Boerman’s pistol expunged the vision, and he was grateful for the darkness to hide his pain.

  Their footsteps echoed mournfully, as Sura led them on a circumnavigation of the still lake. Mineral deposits on the walls indicated the ledge upon which they were walking would be a couple of metres underwater in the wet season. But it was another faint ring, a good five metres higher, which caught Nash’s eye. Once the lake had been far deeper, but only for a short span of years, just long enough to leave the ghost of its presence.

  Towards the back of the cave, the ledge sloped down into crystal-clear water. Sura gasped as she stepped into it. The shock of the icy snowmelt, not much more than nine degrees Celsius, was like wading through fire. For several minutes they proceeded at thigh-numbing height, until Boerman cried, ‘Look up there!’

  In the beams of their flashlights, a strange brown object drooped from the rock above. Like an oversized jungle vine or root, it was several metres long and as thick as a man’s arm – a rusted steel hawser, grotesquely swollen as oxides cannibalised the integrity of the metal. The shackle was held in place by four heavily corroded bolt heads protruding from the limestone.

  Boerman gave a triumphant whoop and the sound echoed brutally around the cavern. For Nash, it was heresy. Aside from the slow plink of dripping stalactites, and occasional shrieks of bats, these lost worlds were worlds of silence, demanding veneration.

  ‘Look where the water level was when they drilled those bolts.’ Boerman turned to Sura excitedly. ‘It must be right here below us!’

  Together they directed their flashlights at the water. It was gin-clear, the rocky sides of the cave clearly visible, tumbling down into unseen depths.

  Nash cleared his throat. ‘Isn’t it time you told me what this is all about?’

  WHUMP!

  Nash’s head snapped brutally back as Boerman’s punch took him full in the face. Hands tied, head spinning, Nash staggered. Before he could fall, Boerman grabbed him by the shirt and shook him violently.

  ‘So, Mr fucking know-it-all wants an explanation, does he?’

  ‘That will do, Jaap.’

  Sura sounded satisfied, and Nash knew it was payback for humiliating her on the ship. He spat out a mouthful of blood and ran his tongue around his throbbing lips. At least he still seemed to have his teeth.

  ‘We’re here for a submarine, Mr Nash.’ Her exhilaration was eerily disembodied in the near darkness. ‘A Japanese megasubmarine that moored in this cave more than seven decades ago and later sank. Somewhere down there is 200 million dollars’ worth of gold bullion, and you’re going to get every last bit of it out!’

  ‘A submarine . . . here?’

  Nash’s astonishment turned to dread. If the Octopus had been a failed test . . . the flooded, rusted hulk of a submarine would be the ultimate examination of his shattered nerve.

  Dont be a fool, he chastised himself, remembering the topography of the gorge outside. Sura was completely nuts. No submarine had ever reached this cave. It was physically impossible.

  Sura’s focus shifted to Boerman. ‘Why would it sink after so many years on the surface?’

  The Afrikaner played his torch over the severed hawser.

  ‘When the water level in here dropped, the submarine must have tipped. With a stern hatch open, it would pour inside and fill her up fast.’

  ‘And the cable snapped from the extra weight?’

  ‘Ja, sent her straight to the bottom.’ He paused to hopefully play his torch into the depths again. ‘With a bit of luck, we’ll be able to use the same hatch to swim straight inside.’

  To Nash it sounded fantastical. While their confidence suggested they were in possession of compelling information, the physics simply didn’t allow it. Water found its own level; thus, if you transposed that high-water mark outside the cave, a vast lake would have filled the whole gorge. And there was no way the fall to the Sepik allowed this. He figured the explanation was something to do with the cave mouth. Once, it must have been higher, possibly from a rockfall, which, of course, rendered the whole idea of sailing a submarine up that narrow steep gorge even more ridiculous. As for the hawser, the most likely explanation was that the Dutch had winched equipment into the cave.

  Somehow Sura had swallowed a cock-and-bull story about sunken treasure. Nash exhaled softly. It was a common aberration. Because for an inert metal, gold had a corrosive effect on common sense. Nash recalled his second expedition to Mexico’s Timoche Cenote – a giant freshwater sinkhole – while trying to complete a fifteen-kilometre connection to the Caribbean Sea. Navigating a maze of interconnecting tunnels, his team had come across a deposit of gold Mayan artefacts in a minor cenote. Nash had surrendered these to the Mexican authorities, but two American divers went to buy metal detectors. Nash had left them to it and made the breakthrough to the coast himself. Two weeks later, the Americans’ bodies were found in a burned-out van by the side of the road. A local gang had tortured them. Later, someone had blown up the cenote while trying to remove a plug of ancient trees and debris, closing down that part of the system for good.

  In the darkness, he could feel Sura staring at him.

  ‘You said this lake is one to two hundred metres deep.’

  ‘I’m a prisoner, not a consultant.’

  Nash was risking another fist, but pushing back was the only way to get information which might lead to a way out. Sura shone her flashlight directly into his eyes, making him squint.

  ‘Must I again remind you that your life, and those of your friends, depends solely on your value to me?’

  ‘How do I know they’re alive? I need proof.’

  ‘You’ll get it soon enough. Now, the depth, Mr Nash?’

  ‘Put a line down and find out.’

  ‘Did you bring enough rope?’ she asked Boerman.

  ‘We don’t need it . . .’

  ‘Very well,’ she sighed. ‘Let’s get the gear.’

  When Boerman dragged two rebreather units from the chopper’s cargo cradle, Nash was incredulous. He’d assumed they were flying back to the Albany to equip themselves.

  ‘You can’t be serious. Without drysuits we’ll freeze down there.’

  Boerman glowered. ‘It’s a preliminary reconnoitre. Grow some balls, man.’

  Sura’s eyes narrowed. ‘You have a better idea?’

  ‘Yes. Properly equipped, we can survey safely and efficiently.’ Nash explained that hypothermia was an insidious killer that crept up on you. ‘In water this cold, our dexterity will be compromised in under five minutes. Within thirty to sixty minutes, we’ll lose consciousness and drown.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound like an exact science to me,’ Sura said doubtfully.

  He explained the wide variable was reflective of individual physiology and size. Boerman would last longer because his huge bulk shed heat more slowly.

  ‘Sura, I’m telling you this is a dangerous waste of time. You can see for yourself the size of the lake –’

  ‘Says the master of wasting time,’ Boerman scoffed. ‘Let’s do this.’

  Sura nodded. ‘Jaap, cut him free.’

  In a last-ditch attempt to prevent Boerman killing them both, Nash hastily proposed a plan scratched out in the dirt of the cave mouth.

  ‘The lake is around two hectares in area. In water this cold, we won’t stand a long decompression, so let’s avoid it by staying shallow and surveying what we c
an within the no-decompression limit.’

  ‘But we need to get to the bottom,’ complained Boerman.

  Nash brushed the dirt aside and placed his stick on the rock.

  ‘Limestone is white. It should easily contrast with something as large as a submarine.’ He looked up at Sura. ‘What’s its length?’

  ‘It’s 120 metres,’ replied Sura promptly.

  Nash frowned. ‘That’s more than twice as long as a U-boat.’

  ‘Stick with the task at hand,’ she snapped irritably. ‘What visibility will you have?’

  ‘More than enough.’

  That was a lie, because with these inadequate lights, the best they could hope for was 80 to 100 metres. Nash hesitated as something else occurred to him. Somewhere below them, the Hoosenbeck was finding its way out of this cave. It would be dangerously powerful, easily enough to suck in an unwary diver.

  ‘You were about to say something, Mr Nash?’ Her almond eyes were full of suspicion, and when he did not reply, she added balefully, ‘If anything happens to Jaap, you have my word that I will fly straight back to Hufi and deal with Frank Douglas and Mia Carter. Do you understand?’

  On a ledge below the cave mouth, Nash strapped on the rebreather and turned on his dive lights.

  ‘Stay close, dickhe—’

  Stepping into the water first, Boerman’s voice died as cold shock sucked the air out of his lungs. Nash followed, and the nine-degree water was like a cleaver splitting his skull. For several seconds, his ear canals felt full of boiling water.

  Descending to thirty metres, the only visual reference in the void was the blank wall of rock behind them, and the refracted glow of the cave mouth above. Their first pass was along the left-hand side. The water was crystal-clear, and the rock wall beside them plunged well over eighty metres until it vanished. There was no sign of the bottom, just a blue-green haze as the limits of visibility were reached.