Cave Diver

by Jake Avila

  Nash involuntarily shivered. In diminishing light, any kind of free dive was exponentially more dangerous. After three minutes breathing up, he slid into the chilly water. The smooth rock bottom steadily dropped away, and he swam along the arm of the crescent, getting his bearings. Descending to nine metres, he sensed the exit passage looming in the shadows. Then, the alarm went off, and he ascended with half a minute to spare.

  So far, so good.

  Nash stretched out like a lizard on the warm stone by the middle of the pool. Skin tingling, he began the breathe-up cycle again.

  This time, he picked up a basketball-sized rock before stepping off the shelf. The gravity assist preserved vital oxygen, and on the way down he pinched his nose to equalise the pressure in his ears. The light was a dull green when he landed on the bottom. He figured his depth to be around twenty metres. This was one hell of a passage.

  Nash swam up at a forty-five-degree angle, looking to connect with the sloping wall of the sinkhole and stay orientated before the darkness closed in.

  Doubt began interfering with his internal compass, and he stopped swimming and checked his illuminated watch. Just a few seconds to go before the alarm sounded. Gratefully, he turned back. By the time he cleared the underhang, his lungs were starting to burn. He forced himself to not race for the air, and broke the surface close to the two-minute mark.

  The light was diminishing quickly, and he was cold. But he knew he hadn’t explored as far as his lungs could take him. This time, he breathed up for a full ten minutes, and reset his turnaround for one and a half minutes.

  Diving straight and true, he took a direct line to the top of the exit passage and swam inside. The greenish glow behind him steadily gave way to grey, and then finally, pitch black. Now, he had to trust his internal compass. He swam on and on, gaining confidence until suddenly his fingertips encountered rock. Fear drilled through him. He wanted to turn back, but he needed to establish whether the rock was sloping down, or he was drifting up.

  Turning turtle, he pulled himself along arm over arm. The roof was sloping up! Then the alarm went off.

  ‘Plan the dive, dive the plan’, the saying went. Nash should have immediately returned to the pool. But the rock was climbing so steeply, and he sensed he was almost at the surface.

  Another five seconds passed . . . eight, nine, ten . . . The realisation that he’d probably passed the point of no return fought with the desire to turn back. But he had to be close . . . surely . . . He’d been ascending for what seemed like ages.

  Have I miscalculated?

  His head banged painfully into rock. Nash felt around desperately, finding an unbroken wall beneath his scrabbling hands. It was a dead end!

  His final alarm confirmed it. Three minutes had elapsed. There was no point going back. Nash had less than thirty seconds to live.

  With nothing to lose, he groped sideways for several metres. With every handhold, flashes of his life popped up unbidden: his mother’s hug when he graduated; his father’s quiet hand on his shoulder at Natalie’s funeral; Jacquie chasing him around the yard, aged four, with a water pistol. A great sadness filled him as he realised they would never know what had happened to him. And then his hand met nothing . . .

  It was a ledge! Dragging himself around, Nash got his feet planted. Lungs on fire, he pushed off with all his might. One final hurrah, straight up like an arrow.

  A scant second later his head broke the water.

  Air, sweet, blessed air!

  Nash sucked it in, deep draughts echoing in a perfect void of blackness, and by the volume of his echoes, he knew it was a large chamber. He swam for several metres, until he encountered a sloping rock surface. Jittery with cold and adrenaline, he clambered out.

  His next moves were critical. He was reasonably certain that he could follow the mental route back and find the green glow of the entrance pool. But the longer he stayed here in the pitch black without any visual reference points, the faster that fragile mental map would degrade.

  Nash had one precious source of light – his watch – but the battery would not last long. He activated it just long enough to absorb the topography within the illuminated five-metre radius and was heartened to see the slope continued up. Fortunately, there were loose rocks and branches, detritus from the last flood event, and without ever taking more than three steps from his position, he gathered these by feel, building a succession of small cairns. In this way, he laid a return trail, taking perhaps half an hour to travel fifty metres.

  His heart sank as the rock began sloping down again. Sure enough, he soon hit water. Bitter disappointment coursed through him. How long did this next sump continue for? It might have been a few metres, but in absolute darkness, without any point of reference, it might as well have been twenty kilometres.

  What he should have done next was to immediately head back while there was enough daylight to guide him to the entrance pool. But Nash was suddenly overcome by his predicament, and slumped down in exhausted despair. What was out there anyway? The whole ramshackle edifice of his life was one he no longer recognised – one he didn’t know how to live. Perhaps being marooned on the shore of a netherworld beach was a fitting way for it to end?

  ‘Sonofabitch!’ he roared in the sightless grotto. ‘It wasn’t my fault, Nat! Do you hear me? It wasn’t my fault!’

  A wave of self-pity and frustration engulfed Nash. Everyone had been so quick to blame him. But Natalie was an experienced cave diver, and she had made the error coming into the squeeze, not him. The whole dive had been dissected by the coroner, who had ruled it an unfortunate accident. And yet, why didn’t the formal exoneration give him any comfort? Why had saying sorry to Brendan and Jonathan felt so fucking hollow?

  ‘What do you want me to do, then, Nat?’ he said wearily. ‘Join you? Go on, then, give me a sign.’

  His echoes rolled away into nothing, and it occurred to Nash that if he wanted to live, the only way was to retrace his footsteps . . .

  Four sharp tugs on his safety line . . . Natalie – no doubt worrying about where he’d got to. Reluctantly, he had backed up. Halfway out of the narrow squeeze, the slight drag on his regulator told him the two-litre mini tank was running low; its 400 litres of compressed air was only good for six minutes at this depth, but Nash loved the freedom it gave him to check out promising leads.

  Back at camp, he elaborated on his findings over a strong cup of coffee.

  ‘I think it’ll keep going all the way to Cocklebiddy. But it’s tight, Nat. I’ll need the six-litre bale-out cylinder. Pushing it ahead of me, I reckon I can just about wriggle through there.’

  ‘Just how small is this squeeze?’ Natalie asked, anxiously.

  ‘Remember the last time you had constipation?’ He began to chuckle, when suddenly she burst into tears. He looked at her in bewilderment. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I was scared.’ Her shoulders shook. ‘Why did you just take off and leave me there?’

  ‘Babe, it’s OK . . .’ He tried to take her hand.

  ‘No, it’s not OK. You said three or four minutes, and you were gone for nearly seven. Do you know what it’s like not knowing if you’re ever coming back?’

  ‘What’s got into you? I was just around the corner. It was nothing. Come on, Nat, you’re overreacting.’

  She was pale and reserved the next morning.

  ‘Did you sleep badly?’ he asked.

  ‘I think I might be coming down with something.’

  He let her brush off his suggestion that she stay in camp. The connection to Cocklebiddy was there – he knew it – and someone might beat him to it.

  Giving Natalie a cheery thumbs up, he swapped his rebreather for the smaller six-litre tank and entered the passage. Exley’s rule of thirds meant he had six minutes of exploring before he needed to return, with a third of his gas intact for contingencies.

  Retracing his route to the dog-leg he tied a new line to the existing one.

/>   Man, did he love breaking new ground!

  Squeezing after his small tank, he made his way down a gradual slope, heart beating faster as the squeeze widened out into kinder dimensions. But around the next bend, it abruptly terminated in a narrow, impassable slot.

  Frustrated, Nash lay on his side and shone his light through. To his amazement, there was nothing on the other side but a dark blue void. A chamber, and a bloody big one at that! Perhaps he’d been too hasty in his judgement. Yes, the slot was narrow, but it was also a good metre wide, and barely half that long.

  His wrist-mounted dive computer told him he was right on the edge of the threshold. By rights, he should turn around, now. But how long would it take to slip through and get a photograph? An advantage to this was that he could reverse direction to return.

  Nash moulded himself to the contours of the rock, shimmying forwards on elbows and knees, pushing the tank ahead of him. Negotiating a super-narrow squeeze like this was something like birth. He had just pushed the tank through when he felt the single tug on the line. It meant stop, and Nash frowned. It was unusual for cave divers to pull on a line, because it could easily get stuck or break.

  Confined in the squeeze, Nash gave her an awkward two-tug response: code for ‘I’m OK’. Then, gripping the edge of the slot with his free hand, he pulled himself forwards and popped out into open water.

  The chamber was a vast half-hemisphere, so huge that in the periphery of his dive lights the deep blue water became impenetrable black. Nash was ecstatic. It was the elusive connection to Cocklebiddy!

  He fired off a few quick shots with the GoPro and was turning to go when, suddenly, there were more tugs on the line. These were jerky, disconnected. Was she signalling ‘Come up’ or ‘Emergency’? Nash gave four quick tugs to signal he was returning. The responding tugs had no discernible pattern. And they seemed weaker. A chill came over him.

  Nash found re-entering the slot much more difficult than he’d anticipated. After two abortive attempts, he literally drove himself inside with powerful beats of his fins. Powering up the slope towards the dog-leg, he was stunned by a shimmering ball of silver. It was a massive pocket of gas trapped at the apex of the sloping roof. At first, he couldn’t understand it. His open-circuit bubbles of trimix would have contributed nothing like this amount, and Natalie was on a rebreather, with no bubbles shed at all . . .

  Her helmet lights were ominously still. Her floating arms were lifeless. When he got to her, she was unresponsive, mouth slack on her regulator mouthpiece. With agonising clarity, Nash knew instantly what had happened. Of much smaller build, Natalie had been able to enter the squeeze with her rebreather and it had caught in the dog-leg. While she struggled to get free, her breathing loop hoses had torn, venting the contents of her oxygen and diluent tanks in a catastrophic gush.

  Reaching around, he retrieved her secondary mouthpiece and forced it into her mouth. Depressing the button, he expected a blast of trimix from the bale-out tank on her thigh, but there was nothing. She’d taken off the backup to fit inside the squeeze.

  Quickly, he pushed his mouthpiece between her slack lips. Her cheeks expanded with gas, but her eyes stared sightlessly.

  With just a light shove, Nash pushed her lifeless body back through to the first chamber. That moment would haunt him forever. Her entrapment had been a relatively minor affair, but, exacerbated by sheer terror, she had not been able to back out.

  It took Nash ten minutes to put on his rebreather and drag Natalie back up the tunnel to the main chamber. Inflating his buoyancy vest, he sped her to the surface. Dragging her out of the water, he laid her on her side to clear her airway.

  While he searched for her pulse, he felt an intense itching break out all over his body. He couldn’t leave her to go and decompress. No fucking way.

  There was no pulse.

  ‘C’mon, baby, c’mon,’ he urged, rolling her on to her back.

  Although it had been more than fifteen minutes since Natalie had drawn her last breath, Nash performed a relentless, brutal CPR, shouting, begging, praying and willing her to breathe.

  Why had she missed or misinterpreted his awkward first response on the line? Why had she foolishly come in to check he was all right?

  Why?

  Chapter 33

  Jayawijaya Province, Papua, confluence of the Hoosenbeck and Sepik rivers

  Sweeping in from the west, the now beaten-up Jet Ranger banked around the ship in a long, lazy circle. On the quarterdeck, Kaboro drained his morning coffee and braced himself for a day of further compromise. At least he now knew what he’d sold his soul for. Sir Julius had called to explain the expedition was, in fact, a covert salvage job, vitally needed to replenish department coffers.

  ‘The deal with General Suyanto is fifty-fifty, Kaboro, and not an ingot less. I want every man on that vessel watching that cargo like his life depended on it.’

  For a moment, Kaboro wondered where the bullion was destined for. Probably the Bahamas or some other offshore tax haven. But it was no longer any concern of his. All that mattered now was saving Toby from the horrors of Bomona jail.

  The Jet Ranger settled on the pad, and Kaboro’s bubble of unease grew as two armed Indonesian soldiers and an officer alighted with Sura. He noted their red berets with distaste. Kopassus. Sir Julius hadn’t mentioned their involvement.

  On deck, he exchanged looks with Singkepe, who had marshalled the men.

  ‘I don’t like this,’ the NCO muttered.

  ‘Probably just more fingers in the pie. Keep the men calm.’

  Singkepe’s cool stare made Kaboro feel ashamed. It summed up his loss of face since the massacre, especially with his own crew, who would no longer meet his eyes.

  Sura came up with the Indonesian officer and flashed that repellent TV smile.

  ‘Good to see you, Lieutenant. This is Kapten Alatas. He’s the local authority.’

  The Indonesian officer made no attempt at a greeting. Not missing a beat, Sura pressed on brightly.

  ‘Once we’ve finished logging in your weapons, you’ll fly up with me, so I can explain the salvage operation to you. Your men will then follow in the kapten’s gunship. We expect it to take a day or two at most.’

  ‘Log in our weapons?’

  ‘Sir Julius didn’t tell you? We have extremely strict firearms laws in Indonesia. Relax, Lieutenant, your weapons will be quite safe on board.’

  Kaboro could feel Singkepe’s tension as well as his own. And when he didn’t respond, Sura irritably took out a satellite phone.

  ‘Very well, call Sir Julius. Explain to him how your sergeant managed to let a woman and a sick man escape into the jungle and jeopardise our mission.’

  Slowly, Kaboro unclipped his Browning and deposited it on the deck.

  ‘Come on, men, let’s get it over with.’

  Looking at the growing pile of old FN FAL rifles and M16s, Kaboro couldn’t help but contrast their firepower with that wielded by the Kopassus troops, who were carrying high-tech Brügger & Thomet MP9 machine pistols with 30-round transparent box magazines. A curious choice for Papua, he thought, where rain, mud and impacts took a heavy toll.

  Singkepe was last to surrender his beloved machine gun, and the doubt was evident in his stooped shoulders. Again, Kaboro felt ashamed. Sergeant Singkepe was a real soldier.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Sura. ‘You’ve been most co-operative.’

  Two things struck Kaboro simultaneously: one, his unarmed men were all lined up conveniently on the port side; and two, at some point the Kopassus men had levelled their machine pistols at their stomachs. He was about to raise the alarm when Sura jumped back.

  The Kopassus men opened fire point-blank.

  Rat tat tat tat tat tat . . .

  Kaboro saw flashes and felt thunderous impacts before he even heard the rapid crackle. Stumbling back, he felt himself falling over the stanchion. The world turned upside down.

  Thump!

  Water closed over him,
a final wet embrace. As the current took Kaboro, he felt only the bitter ache of remorse. He’d betrayed the men, and still he’d failed Toby.

  The deck was awash with bodies leaking blood, and Sura had to step up on a ventilator to avoid it. Only one figure was still moving. Although riddled with 9 mm Parabellum rounds, the big NCO was doggedly trying to drag himself towards his abandoned weapon. Legs paralysed, he was propelling himself on his elbows, grunting with the effort.

  ‘Now what do we have here?’ Alatas drew his pistol with a laugh. ‘A rare black orang-utan. The forest is over there, monkey man!’

  His men giggled. A nervy, jittery kind of hysteria. Sura recognised they were high on killing, excitement and revulsion filling them in equal measure.

  ‘Get on with it,’ she said. ‘We haven’t got time for games.’

  Alatas made his way gingerly across the blood-soaked deck. Taking careful aim so as to avoid ricochet or blood spray, he put two bullets into the top of Singkepe’s head. The big man sighed and lay still. Alatas holstered his pistol.

  ‘Throw them over the side,’ he barked at the soldiers. ‘Quickly now.’

  Only when the sound of the Jet Ranger had dwindled to nothing did Saworno timidly make his way up the ladder. With shaking hands and a bone-dry mouth, he peered through the hatch into the passageway. From down in the engine room, the sounds of gunfire and screams had chilled his blood. He had been waiting in terror for someone to come down and kill him, too, because, aside from the lieutenant, he had no friends left on this ship.

  ‘Kaboro?’ he called tentatively into the passageway. ‘Is anyone here?’

  They had used a hose, but there were still pools of diluted blood drying on the deck. Saworno walked the perimeter of the ship and checked the milky water below. There was no sign of anyone. The current had taken them all.

  The little engineer felt completely adrift. When he’d been offered this job, it had been a godsend; his retirement pension was inadequate, and there was the joy of returning to a job he’d loved, with the bonus of escaping his wife’s nagging tongue. Saworno anxiously checked the sky for the chopper. Had they forgotten he existed, or did they just see him as part of the engines? Either way, it was clear they would want no witnesses.