by Jason Heaton
Sam drifted down next to him. Tusker searched her face to make sure she was doing OK. She wrinkled her eyes in a smile behind her mask and winked at him. He could see her taking in the wreck. The ship was huge, stretching well beyond their torch beams, which revealed only a few yards on either side of them.
The gas mixture they breathed contained less oxygen than air, the rest made up mostly of helium, an inert gas that doesn’t have the narcotic effect that the nitrogen in air does. But helium is also a “cold” gas, meaning that the body loses heat faster through respiration than with air. Tusker again cursed his decision not to wear a thicker suit. The temperature reading on his dive computer said 67 degrees, a full 20 degrees colder than at the surface. Tusker was used to cold water from his wreck diving in the Great Lakes, but there he wore insulation layers and a drysuit. For the ten-minute bottom time on the Vampire, he’d be fine, but he’d suffer on the long deco hang. So be it.
The anchor had hooked on the bow railing. Tusker had forgotten to account for this possibility. It meant a 100-yard swim to the aft end of the ship where the hole in the hull was, and then back again so they could ascend on the anchor line. This round trip would take up almost their entire planned bottom time. He gestured to Sam along the hull in the direction they needed to swim and set off in a measured flutter kick. Overexertion meant becoming hypoxic or using up their gas. In the thin beams of their twin torches, the swim felt interminable and disorienting, like walking in a railway tunnel lit only by a flashlight. Tusker paused every few kicks to make sure Sam was at his side. They were like two astronauts, spacewalking untethered away from their craft.
After five minutes, the hull below their torch beams curved down and away slightly as they approached the stern end of the shipwreck. The hole would come into view any moment now. There! Tusker shouted through his regulator and gestured. Sam nodded. He exhaled slightly, causing a decrease in his buoyancy, and descended towards the wound in the ship. He reached up and pressed the button to turn on the small GoPro camera he had secured to his harness, and confirmed that the red light was blinking.
Tusker ran his hand along the edge of the opening. It was blackened and jagged. There was no sign of an explosion or collision, just a neatly traced rectangle, clearly made by a cutting torch. He turned to make eye contact with Sam and held out his palm to tell her to stay put. She nodded. Tusker contorted his body upright and descended into the hole, fins first. The opening was big enough, but with the two smaller cylinders slung at his sides, it was an awkward move.
Then, a sharp pain that took a moment to register, his mind slushed from the cold and mild hypoxia. He glanced down and saw his wetsuit had torn away, exposing his shoulder. The black neoprene flapped and mingled with a black liquid. It was his own blood, snaking out of a cut on his white flesh. He’d scraped it along the razor sharp edge of the opening. Tusker gritted his teeth around the mouthpiece. Next time it might be his regulator hose or his buoyancy wing that tore. He felt a tap on top of his head and looked up. Sam was silhouetted above him in the hole. She flashed an urgent “OK” sign to him inquisitively. He returned the gesture and nodded, mustering a smile in the blinding beam of her torch.
The Vampire had come to rest on the sea floor at a steeply pitched angle. The inside of the hull where Tusker found himself was disorienting, made all the worse by the inky darkness. He cast his torch beam around the cavernous space. The ship’s bottom was almost above him and anything that had been on the floor of this compartment was now piled in a chaotic jumble below him. Only his exhaled bubbles would guide him back up and to the way he came in. He was glad to have Sam just outside with her torch as some reference. He glanced at the timing ring of his Aquastar watch. Nine minutes bottom time already! Every extra minute meant 15 minutes of decompression. He had to hurry. But what was he looking for? The helmet, yes, the helmet.
He swept the space with his torch. His own fin kicks had stirred up a cloud of silt, backscatter in the beam of light. But there, 15 feet below him, a flash of yellow. Yes! A Kirby Morgan Model 37, the most commonly used commercial diving helmet. Should he bring it up? What good would that do? It would be heavy and awkward to swim with and carry. How had its owner managed to get out without it? he wondered. From the back of the helmet trailed what looked like a twisted umbilical, like the kind that feeds electricity, comms, and breathing gas to a diver. The end of it lay coiled below, out of sight in the rubble. Near the helmet, another familiar object: a full dive suit! It had no sediment on it and from Tusker’s distance, looked almost new. The neck seal was split and the top of the suit torn as if ripped violently open by a superhuman force.
He had to go, but first made sure the red light on the GoPro was still flashing. He hoped the little camera had captured the scene despite the low light and sediment. Just as he started to ascend through this macabre chamber, a distinctive shape caught his eye. It looked like a small, fat rocket, with four fins on the tail and a bloated, bullet-shaped head. A series of what looked like valves or ports clustered around the midsection, with twisted piping connected to them.
It was a bomb alright, but not like any he’d seen before in the holds of B-29s sunk in the Pacific. This one was much bigger and fatter. It looked less aerodynamic. It was bolted to what was left of a badly decomposed wooden skid. Was the Vampire transporting munitions to the Pacific theater? Trincomalee was a major Royal Navy base during the war so this wouldn’t be unusual. But only one, and way back here in the stern? Two limp yellow lift bags hung off of a pair of rings on the bomb. These were clearly modern. He could made out the JW Automarine logo on one of them. It was all starting to make sense in Tusker’s muddled brain.
A loud clanging shook him from his thoughts. Sam. It was time to go. He gave a last look at the bomb and drifted upwards towards the opening, where he could see the light of Sam’s torch flicking to and fro, searching for him. He aimed for her and found the inner lip of the hole in the hull, reminding himself to be careful on the way out. Something brushed his arm. Had Sam come inside to find him?
He angled his torch towards whatever it was. A man was looking back at him, screaming, six inches away. Tusker gasped and violently pushed away, back down into the hold. He was breathing hard. Sam was still clanging on the outside. He aimed his torch again and sure enough, there he was. A man, white and half naked, was pinned against the inside top of the ship. His eyes were open and bulging, his mouth a round “O”. It was, Tusker reflected grimly, the look of abject terror, the moment of death.
He shot up past the corpse and out of the opening. Sam was shouting incomprehensibly through her regulator, pointing at her dive computer. When she saw his face, she stopped. Unable to explain, he simply gestured back down the hull towards the bow and the anchor line. Tusker’s dive computer read three hours, 28 minutes of decompression. The pressure gauge said his twin tanks were half empty. He didn’t have time to calculate his air consumption rate, but knew it’d be close as to whether he’d have enough gas to last the full decompression time. He hoped Sam breathed less than him. Women typically did. Now it was a race against time, and one limited by every single inhalation.
The swim back felt easier, taking just half the time as the journey out. Tusker registered that the current must have strengthened. It acted like a tailwind, pushing them back to the bow. This helped for the swim but would make the ascent tricky. They’d have to hold fast to the anchor line so as not to be blown off the wreck and far away from the skiff above. If that happened, it would be up to Roland to recognize it and follow their bubbles on the surface in the boat.
Tusker saw the familiar stanchions of the forward-end railing and counted them off in his torch beam. The yellow anchor line would appear right about now. Yet he saw nothing.
Sam aimed her beam around, frantically searching for it. Had it come unhooked? Perhaps Roland had to reposition the skiff and re-hook the anchor on the wreck. Then, the light from Tusker’s torch caught a flash of yellow in the water column. It was the ancho
r line, and he sighed with relief. But when he reached for it, he realized it had no tension. It was drifting in the current. He pulled and pulled and the line coiled in his hands until finally, the loose end of it appeared splayed out in a fray of fibers. The anchor line had been cut.
Free Ascent
Somewhere off the east coast of Sri Lanka.
The same day.
A free ascent in open ocean is risky even without facing four hours of decompression time. Tusker knew this, but he also knew that they had no choice. Without an anchor line to orient themselves at the specific depths for a safe deco stop, they could drift, not only far off the wreck site, but also dangerously up or down in the water column, compromising their bodies’ precious off-gassing. They would have to watch their depth gauges carefully, and each other.
He gave the thumbs-up sign to Sam and they began their ascent. He was already shivering from the cold. God knows where we’ll come to the surface, he thought. All he knew was that with this north-south current, they’d come up well past Batticaloa and miles offshore. But before that, they had hours of desperate hanging in the water column, being pulled south like a wisp of seaweed.
Despite the impulse to hurry, Sam and Tusker slowly, deliberately ascended, no faster than 30 feet per minute, until they reached their first stop, prescribed by Tusker’s Sherwood computer. The deco plan he’d scrawled on his wrist slate before the dive was obsolete given their added bottom time swimming the length of the wreck and searching for the anchor line. Now their safety was left to the dive computer’s algorithms, which would adjust on the fly as they ascended. And that would only get them to the surface.
They hung at 120 feet for eight minutes. At least there was some light filtering down from the surface now. Tusker looked across at Sam. He could see the worry crease her face, even behind the mask and hood. She wasn’t even supposed to be here. He wanted to reassure her that it would be OK, he’d somehow get them out of this, even though he knew it was a lie. He reached out and gripped both of her shoulders and gave them a squeeze. Her expression didn’t change.
He thought of Sebastian, back at the Deep Blue. It was 3:30. He’d be back from diving the Hermes with the Russians and wonder where they were. Tusker wished he’d told someone else where they were going. At least then a search party could be mounted when they didn’t return. It was basic safety on any expedition to tell a few people where you were going, but Tusker had been impulsive, reckless.
And what of Roland? Would he have dared to go back to the Deep Blue, or was he gone for good? Tusker was convinced now that he was somehow connected to all of this—the Depth Charge, the Vampire. Who knows, maybe he was even the one who’d blown up the Taprobane. Tusker vowed to find him. What he’d do when he did he wasn’t sure. But first, they had to somehow get ashore. And at the moment, that possibility seemed remote.
The Sherwood beeped. Time to go up to the next stop. 80 feet for seven minutes. Tusker checked his pressure gauge. He’d breathe down the big tanks as long as he could but soon they’d need something with a little more oxygen to speed decompression. He glanced over at Sam’s gauges, upside down. She was fine. He found himself studying her as they hung in the current. She floated horizontal and motionless, her fins out behind her, perfect form. Decompression was best if your entire body was in the same plane, to allow equal off-gassing from all tissues. Even here, behind the tangle of hoses and tanks, she looked athletic and confident.
Beep. Time to ascend. At 60 feet, Tusker and Sam switched to their 80-cubic-foot bottles of nitrox, a blend of 50 % oxygen and 50 % nitrogen. The nitrogen would be nearly harmless at this depth and the extra oxygen would accelerate their decompression. These tanks would have to take them up to the ten foot stop, where they’d finally switch to a small tank of 100 percent oxygen. Tusker tried to breathe evenly. He had to make this tank last close to three hours.
And so they went on, being pulled south at progressively shallower depths. Tusker was shivering noticeably now and Sam rubbed his arms. They were up to 30 feet and the water was warm now, but the chill had gotten into his core. He was also dehydrated from sucking dry gas for three hours. His tank was down to 700 pounds per square inch, less than a quarter of its contents remaining. It would be a close call. He hoped he didn’t need to ask Sam for any of her gas.
At one point, the baritone gurgle of a boat motor seemed to come close and they both swiveled their heads, looking for it. It sounded too big to be Roland in the skiff and Tusker’s hope faded when he realized there was nothing he could do anyway to signal it. Their only hope would be if someone saw their bubbles. But at dusk, in rolling ocean swells, this was unlikely. He wished he’d brought his reel. He could have hooked on his surface marker buoy to a line and sent it up with a puff of air to drift along with them, as some signal of their presence. Rookie mistake, not bringing it. He’d been in such a hurry to clandestinely load the skiff earlier that he’d forgotten it.
After three and a half hours, the Sherwood beeped again. It was nearly as dark now as it had been down on the wreck. They ascended to ten feet, where they both switched regulators to finally breathe off of the small bottle of pure oxygen under their right arms. Tusker wiggled his limbs, trying to detect any telltale aches or pains that might be an early sign of decompression sickness. Aside from the throb in his shoulder where he’d been cut, and a stiff neck, he felt OK. They’d been careful. He was still cold and his lips felt cracked and dry. Neither of them had drunk any water for hours and who knew when they would have a chance to again. He wondered what they would see when they came to the surface. Would the shoreline be visible? Lights from a town along the coast or a boat?
At last, the Sherwood beeped a different tone. Tusker shined his torch on its display: “All Clear.” God, I hope so. He held his mask close to Sam’s and nodded. She returned the nod and they kicked the remaining ten feet to the surface.
Adrift
Somewhere off the east coast of Sri Lanka. That night.
There is no place more lonely and despairing than the open ocean. Tusker and Sam surfaced into a moonless night. The sea was black, the sky was black, the horizon was black. They might as well have been in outer space. Their chances of rescue were about as good out here.
“We need to shed these tanks and weights,” Tusker said. His voice was hoarse and it seemed strange to be speaking after so many hours of anxious, nonverbal communication underwater. His jaw hurt from biting down on the rubber mouthpiece for so long. Both of them were barely staying afloat, weighed down by their four tanks plus weight belts. He was already unclipping his two smaller cylinders from his harness. Sam did the same.
The more difficult task would be to remove the double tanks on their backs while keeping their buoyancy wings for flotation. The tanks were held together by aluminum bands, then secured to their harnesses with long threaded rods and wing nuts. It was finicky work even on the floor of a well-lit workshop, but bobbing on the ocean, at night, with frozen fingers, would be tricky. But the heavy tanks, empty of their helium mix, were simply dead weight. It had to be done.
Tusker switched on his dive torch and tucked it under the shoulder strap of his harness, aiming it at the back of Sam’s tanks. The light was little use. The hardware was under the water surface. He’d have to do it by feel. First he twisted shut the tank valves and disconnected the regulators, letting them hang loose. Then he reached down between the tanks and found the end of the threaded rod. The wing nut was on the inside of the harness, under a pad at Sam’s back.
“You’re going to have to remove your harness for a bit,” he said. “It’ll be easier to disassemble it if it’s floating in front of me.” Sam wriggled out of the shoulder straps and the harness flopped over like a turtle and floated. “Be sure to stay close to me,” Tusker told her. “In the dark especially, we don’t want to get separated.” Her thicker wetsuit’s buoyancy allowed her to float easily, and she held on lightly to Tusker’s own tanks while he worked.
After a few min
utes, he had the wing nuts off and the tanks fell immediately away, disappearing quickly into the depths. The buoyancy wing popped up out of the water like a pool toy, unencumbered by the unwieldy cylinders. Sam slipped back into it, then helped Tusker remove his gear. His thinner suit didn’t offer as much buoyancy on its own, and he struggled to keep his face and arms above the surface while he fiddled with his tanks. Finally, his tanks dropped into the abyss and he cinched on his own harness and wing, panting from the exertion of the awkward work.
“Small triumphs,” he said to Sam.
“Thathi won’t be happy we lost his tanks,” she joked. “I think you’ve lost your security deposit.”
“It’s no use tiring ourselves out trying to swim right now,” Tusker said. “We’ve got about eleven hours until any daylight and I’ve no idea where we are in relation to shore.”
Sam switched on her torch and aimed it at her arm. She had an old square wrist compass lashed over her wetsuit sleeve with a long yellow nylon strap.
“Well, due west is…” she pivoted in the water, “that way.” She held her arm out, which Tusker could barely make out. “So assuming the current was roughly to the south while we were decompressing, the coast should be over there.”
“The question is, how far,” Tusker said glumly. “The Vampire was already about eight miles offshore.”
