I said, “At least one of you has some brains.”
“And they’ll tell the property owner,” Perry finished.
“They’re required by law to inform the owner,” I said. I didn’t know if that was true, but it sounded plausible.
I had been busy rigging a tank and regulator. Now I looked from the lake to the Gulf horizon, where the sky was orchid streaked. I couldn’t remember ever being so eager for nightfall. “What’s a few hours matter?” I said. “It’s not going to bring my friends back.”
That was true, and I felt a dizzying vertigo as I spoke the words. I felt as if I was viewing the area from above, descending so fast into the reality of what had happened, my belly felt hollow, like falling through a trapdoor.
Perry believed me. He wanted King to believe, too. After all, King had to go in the water, not him.
“We got what’s called a window of opportunity,” Perry told him. “It’s the damn chance of a lifetime! But shit, dude, it’s gonna be too dark to see anything.” He had followed my gaze to the horizon, watching the sun inflate, molten orange, as it absorbed light from an invading darkness. “But the dude’s got underwater lights, right? See there, King”—Perry knelt by the canvas bag—“he’s got three . . . four flashlights. Plenty of lights, plus this thing.”
Perry stood. In one hand he held a broad-plated dive mask made of aluminum, black rubber and tempered glass. The front of the mask was fitted with a mounting rail. In the other hand Perry held a night vision monocular that was capped on both ends to protect the lenses.
It was an underwater night vision system made for me in Arizona by NAVISYS Inc., a manufacturer that specializes in tactical equipment.
Perry picked up the rifle, and gave me ten yards of clearance, as he carried the mask and monocular close enough for King to see.
King was in the middle of saying, “I’m not going into that goddamn water this late. You can forget about it!,” but he stopped talking when he got a look at Perry’s outstretched hand. The monocular was palm sized, tubular and precisely milled. The mask was as solid and well constructed as a copper diving helmet. It was a rare and expensive piece of equipage.
Instead of convincing King, though, the dive mask only made him more suspicious of me. I could read it in his expression. Maybe he had read about underwater night vision systems in some pseudomercenary magazine. Magazines like that would be popular in prison libraries.
Staring at me, King said, “Where the hell did you get something like this? If you wear this thing, you don’t even need a flashlight. Does it work?”
For the first time in a long while, I smiled. “It works.”
“You’re shitting me! How’d you get it? You’d need a special license to own something like this.
Jesus.
” King’s expression now read
Who the hell are you?
But he didn’t get a chance to press the issue. That’s when Arlis decided to start the truck. We all heard the roar of the revving diesel, then the sound of tires throwing mud as Arlis shifted the truck into reverse.
King and Perry stood frozen for a long second as we watched the truck lurch backward. The vehicle stopped, and there was the sound of Arlis shifting gears again. Because his feet were bound, though, he was having trouble using the clutch and the accelerator. The truck lurched forward, bucking like a horse. For a moment, I thought he was going to make it . . . But then the engine stalled.
By the time Arlis got the truck started again and into first gear, Perry had the Winchester up.
I was midstride, lunging toward the man, when he fired the first of three fast rounds.
FOURTEEN
WHEN THE TEENAGER, WILL CHASER, DROPPED HIS
emergency air bottle, it was several seconds before Tomlinson noticed that the boy was in trouble.
Tomlinson was at the top of the chamber, using his flashlight to peer through a hole into a small room that reminded him of a snow globe—one of those little glass balls with a snowman inside or a Christmas tree next to a cake-icing chalet.
Instead of a miniature Swiss house, though, the room contained what even from a distance Tomlinson could see were man-made artifacts. There was pottery. Lots of broken shards, but a whole bowl, too. The pottery possessed an ancient Mayan curvature.
Was that a flint spear point?
Yes. There were several Indian points, plus what looked like carved fishhooks. And . . . he saw splinters of bone. There were bones scattered everywhere, and what might have been the carapace from a long-dead turtle.
That’s how clear the water was above them.
Into Tomlinson’s mind came an image. Shake the rock room and snow—or silt, in this case—would swirl in an enclosed universe that was as round and rough as a geode, forever insulated from the outside world. Added to the image were the flint artifacts. People had lived in this room, but then time had stopped when the earth had changed, causing the sea level to rise.
Tomlinson liked the thought of that. It redirected his attention from the horror of their predicament. The hole he was looking through was small, no wider than his own thigh. By wedging the flashlight close to his ear, though, he could fit his faceplate into the opening and see the far side of the room, where flint and bones and pottery were scattered and where small stalactites dripped from the ceiling.
Strange. Otherworldly.
The room suggested a safe haven, even though it refused Tomlinson entrance. Thousands of years ago, people—a small tribe, perhaps—had flourished in this space, only to vanish into a refuge of time and silence and darkness.
That darkness would soon claim him, Tomlinson suspected. Probably within a very few minutes unless Ford pulled off a miracle. The man was capable of doing just that, although Ford would have been the last to believe it. But even if the darkness didn’t claim Tomlinson now, it soon would . . . So why did the timing matter?
As Tomlinson exhaled, he noted the sound and shape of his own exhaust bubbles. The bubbles expanded into silver oblong vessels, then burst into a star scape of smaller bubbles that scattered along the rock ceiling seeking corridors of ascent.
Watching the bubbles, Tomlinson felt a welling, peaceful euphoria. Transition . . . transformation . . . reformation. It was all right there, the whole human enchilada, inches from his own eyes.
It was kinda nice. Yeah, nice. No . . . it was
perfect.
The feeling wasn’t anything like some of the more familiar sensations that Tomlinson treasured. For instance, the warming kick of a rum shooter after sex on a rainy summer night. Yet what he was now experiencing, this strange sense of perfection, was in its way more comforting. His end was near—this portion of the journey, anyway. Indeed, what did the timing matter?
Tomlinson reminded himself,
Because of the boy, butterfly brain.That’s why the timing matters.
Which is when Tomlinson turned and shined the flashlight to check on Will and saw the kid fighting like a madman trying to swim toward the bottom of the chamber. Tomlinson noted that the kid was also trying to free the little Spare Air bottle from the D ring on his vest. Will’s regulator was flailing behind him as he battled toward the bottom, and Tomlinson thought,
Christ, the kid’s out of air!
Tomlinson pivoted to swim after the boy as Will finally got the Spare Air bottle loose. But the thing somehow went tumbling from his hand and spiraled toward the sand below, where, Tomlinson could see, the larger reserve canister lying eight feet beneath them.
How the hell had Will managed to drop them both? It was a pointless question, and Tomlinson swam harder to intercept the boy. As he did, he understood why Will was having to fight so hard to get to the bottom. He and the boy had not only abandoned their fins, they had dumped all of their lead weight. Even with their BCs deflated, their bodies were ultrabuoyant now.
Tomlinson screamed through his regulator as he waved the flashlight to get the kid’s attention. Then he pointed the beam at his own body, hoping Will would swim toward him instead of the air bottles. At that same time, Tomlinson ascended briefly to get a better start, then somersaulted downward.
He got both feet against the ceiling, the buoyancy of his body pressing him solidly against the rocks. He pushed off hard toward the boy only to feel the ceiling crumble as he thrust away. It killed his momentum, and Tomlinson began drifting upward again no matter how hard he stroked and kicked, and he soon banged hard against what was left of the limestone ceiling.
By God! He wasn’t going to let it end like this!
Tomlinson jammed the flashlight into his vest, pushed off harder and tried to swim downward in the sudden gloom, but he couldn’t fight his own buoyancy. He soared upward, and his tank, then his head, banged off the ceiling. An instant later, something kicked Tomlinson hard in the jaw, knocking off his mask.
It was Will’s foot!
Without clearing his mask, Tomlinson felt around until he got a grip on the top of the kid’s air bottle. He pulled Will toward him while simultaneously thrusting his own regulator toward what he hoped was Will’s face. Hands found Tomlinson’s hands, yanking the regulator away, as the two of them floated along the ceiling like zeppelins, then thudded hard against the rocks.
Holding his breath, Tomlinson cleared his mask, then found his flashlight. He pressed the button and was relieved to see Will’s face inches from his own. The kid was sucking air, his eyes wide but not wild. Will was still in control, his attention focused inward until he’d taken enough breaths for his brain to function.
As Will passed the regulator back to Tomlinson, the kid’s expression read
Man, that was close!
Buddy-breathing, Will handled the exchange as if he had been doing it all his life. Talk about grace under fire! Tomlinson wanted to hug the kid. Maybe . . . just maybe . . . he would in a few minutes, as a final gesture of respect and farewell, because, after passing the regulator back to Will, Tomlinson checked his own gauges.
200 psi.
His tank was redlining, almost no air left. They might have five minutes tops, but probably far less with the way the boy was now drinking down the gas.
When Will pushed the regulator toward Tomlinson. Tomlinson refused it by holding up a hand. He steered the mouthpiece back toward the boy, as he allowed his body to relax, feeling his heart decelerate as his brain nibbled at the air within him.
Very slowly, Tomlinson shined the light toward the bottom. Because of the rocks he had kicked free, the water was murky, but he could see the two miniature tanks. He could also see that they were now partially covered by rocks that had fallen from the ceiling.
Tomlinson reached for his dive slate and wrote:
Spares empty?
As the boy shook his head no, Tomlinson realized that it was a stupid question. Both Spare Air bottles had to be full or they wouldn’t have sunk.
Tomlinson swung the light toward the roof of the chamber. What he saw gave him hope. The hole into the snow globe, where he had seen bones and artifacts, was now as wide as a drainpipe. When he’d pushed off from the ceiling, he had kicked some of the limestone free.
Tomlinson took another look at his gauges. The depth gauge was inexact at this depth, but it read
9 ft.
My God, the sky was so damn close! Their own familiar world, rich with air, was only a few feet away.
Tomlinson accepted the regulator from Will. He took two long, slow breaths, thinking about what they should do next. Obviously, they should follow the passage upward—but should he go after the extra air bottles first?
Yes. He had to.
After Tomlinson had passed the regulator back to Will, he held up an index finger, then used the flashlight to illuminate the opening above them. It was close, only a few yards away. He let the kid see him smile, wanting to communicate
We still have a chance,
then handed the flashlight to Will before he ripped open the Velcro straps and slipped out of his BC.
Man, it felt good to be free of that damn cumbersome vest!
Taking his time, Tomlinson put the flashlight in his teeth and breast-stroked to the bottom. In slow motion, he anchored one hand to a slab of limestone, gathered both bottles, then allowed his body to drift upward. As he ascended, he twisted open a valve on one of the bottles and took an experimental breath.
Air!
The spare bottles didn’t contain much. A couple minutes of breathing time in the small bottle and maybe five or ten minutes in the larger bottle. They were for emergencies only—like now, for instance.
When Tomlinson was beside Will again, he exchanged the bottle for his own regulator. Tomlinson waited to be sure the kid was comfortable breathing from the miniature tank, then motioned for him to follow.
Using his hands to pull himself along the top of the chamber, Tomlinson returned to the opening into the snow globe. Once again, he peered up into the geode-round room, where the water wasn’t so clear now but still clear enough. He could see the broken chunks of pottery, the turtle carapace, the elegant vase that had been resting on its side half buried in white coral sand for who knew how many thousands of years.
The hole into the chamber was wide enough to wiggle through, yet he hesitated. Tomlinson understood why he was reluctant without having to explore his own irrational response.
Or . . . maybe it wasn’t so irrational. If the karst vent they were following dead-ended here, then they, too, were dead. Tomlinson much preferred the inexplicable to the inexorable. The unknown offered hope at least.
There was no avoiding the reality of what lay beyond, though. It was their only option, so he pushed himself through into the room, using a minimum of movement not only to conserve what little air he had remaining but also because he hated the idea of corrupting this idyllic pure space with silt—the murk of his own presence.