by Jason Heaton
They ascended a metal staircase and stepped inside the compartment one level above the dive deck. It was some sort of control room, monitoring the divers below. The air conditioning was blowing frigid, and Sam shivered in her soaking wetsuit. On the video monitors, she could see the inside of a diving bell in high definition. Tusker! She could see him staring up at the camera. If he was in the bell, something was wrong, Sam thought.
“Tusker, look, I can take care of myself up here,” she said to the image of Tusker on the video screen. “You just finish what you started.”
Then, the threat, the exchange over the radio, and another crack on the skull. Sam crumpled to the room’s steel floor.
“Throw Ms. de Silva in the chamber,” Rausing said calmly. His pale eyes looked straight into Sam’s soul. “Mr. Tusk will be joining you there shortly.”
A Grisly Errand
350 feet beneath the Indian Ocean.
Tusker dropped like a stone to the sea floor and landed with a thud, a slow-motion puff of silt billowing up to engulf him. He was starting to shiver from the cold. He’d been in the water for close to an hour now, without the advantage of an umbilical hot water line. He gathered himself and waited for the cloud to settle before walking over towards the Vampire, which loomed like a dark mountain in front of him. The maw in the hull was directly above him, but Tusker knew that the limpet mine he’d hidden earlier was somewhere in the darkness just to his left. Rausing would be watching his every move from the helmet mounted camera. Somehow he had to get it without being seen. But how?
“Get moving.” Rausing’s voice came through clearly in his helmet. Tusker suddenly had an idea.
“I’m having trouble seeing,” he answered back. “This head torch is aimed wrong or something.” He reached up and made a show of fumbling with the head torch, covering it with his hand. The view in Dive Control would be blackness now. He twisted the torch hard until it faced straight up at a crazy angle and quickly kicked up a cloud of silt from the sea bottom.
“Stop fooling around, Tusk,” Rausing’s voice was raised. “Hook the bomb and get back to the bell or it’ll be more than your girlfriend’s ears that are popping.”
Tusker scuffled his feet under the edge of the hull. Yes, there it was. The unmistakable turtle shell bulk of the mine. He squatted down, huffing into the microphone to exaggerate the sound of his effort. With one swift movement, he scooped up the mine, its carabiners still attached, and clipped it to his harness. It would be awkward going now, but he’d have to keep it out of sight of the camera. He twisted the torch back down and aimed it ahead, hoping the commotion and silt had kept Rausing from seeing.
Draped through the cut in the hull, now limp, was the umbilical torn from the diver trapped inside the wreck. Bubbles blossomed from the hole, catching the light from Tusker’s torch before disappearing into the blackness above. He grimaced at the prospect of having to detach the awkward bomb from Murray’s corpse.
“I’m going to take the hoist into the wreck and hook the bomb,” Tusker said in a mechanical voice he hoped would sound confident. There was silence for a moment. Then Rausing replied.
“Use the lift bags to get it out. We can’t risk the hoist fouling on the wreck.”
“I can guide it out,” Tusker replied authoritatively. “Your man is part of the cargo now, and it will be too difficult for me to extricate the bomb from him and the debris.” Silence again. No doubt Rausing was conferring with his crane operator.
“Fine, but make it fast.”
Tusker lifted the hook off the seafloor. It was half his own height and incredibly heavy. He dragged it over to the wreck and managed to wrestle it up and into the opening. It dropped inside. He followed it in.
“OK, feed out some cable,” he commanded. “I’m going to swim down to the bottom.”
The cable slackened and Tusker guided the unwieldy hook down the length of the upturned cargo hold. The light of his torch illuminated the grisly scene at the bottom. Murray’s torso was buried in debris, three of his limbs visible, a leg at an odd angle. And there, above the collar of his dive suit, was what was left of his head. It had been nearly torn clean off by the force of the taut umbilical on his helmet. Tusker averted his eyes, focusing on the task at hand.
He landed on the twisted metal remains of what looked like an old shelving unit next to Murray’s corpse. He aimed his torch alongside and started to pull debris away to expose the bomb. He stopped every few seconds to settle the plumes of silt that clouded his view. Finally he saw a large fin. The rear end of the bomb. There was no way he could have fished this out with lift bags. He stepped back and found the hoist hook swaying behind him, called up for more slack, then clipped the hook to a lift ring on the bomb.
“OK, it’s hooked,” he said calmly. “Raise the hoist slowly. I’ll tell you when to stop.”
The heavy cable went taut and the bomb shifted slightly, sending debris cascading across the room and creating a whiteout. This could work to Tusker’s advantage.
“Keep hoisting,” he said. “Easy does it.” The bomb continued to rise, with Murray’s body grotesquely suspended from one of the lift rings and a limp yellow lift bag providing a garish bit of gift wrapping for the deck crew above. Just before the bomb started swinging free, Tusker inched close to it and unclipped the limpet mine from his harness. He clamped it onto the bomb’s casing, its powerful magnets gripping like its namesake mollusk does on rocks. He couldn’t very well look at the time fuze since it would appear on Rausing’s video screen above, but he remembered Fonseka telling him that a full turn would be one hour before the boom. He gave it a half turn. That should buy him 30 minutes.
“OK, she’s clear!” he shouted almost enthusiastically. “Pull it up and keep it slow.”
The suspended bomb rose in the silty darkness. Tusker swam up next to it, guiding it towards the opening in the hull, careful not to show the limpet mine with his helmet camera.
Once clear of the wreck, Tusker swam clear and called out. “It’s outside the wreck. You can go ahead and raise it.”
The bomb suddenly shot up past him. Then, to his horror, he saw the bell being raised as well. He should have expected as much. He reached up to his own umbilical and pulled hard, climbing hand over hand until he was ten feet below the bottom of the bell. He took a breath but got nothing. They’d shut off his gas. He flew up his tether, holding his breath now. The helmet started filling with cold seawater, blinding him. Clang! His helmet bashed into the bottom of the ladder. The bell! With one clean motion, Tusker hurled himself up the ladder into the bell, which was rocketing to the surface. He threw himself on the bell’s floor, ripped off the helmet and cursed loudly.
“Good show, Mr. Tusk,” came a bemused voice on the intercom. “I look forward to welcoming you on board the Depth Charge.”
Decompression Sickness
On board the DSV Depth Charge, eight nautical miles east of Batticaloa. Ten minutes later.
Through the tiny porthole in the diving bell, Tusker could see the floodlit moon pool of the Depth Charge. Water cascaded off the flanks of the bell as it swayed, suspended above the ship’s aft deck. Why should Rausing even bother to keep him alive at this point? Why didn’t he flood the bell instead of hoisting him topside?
He squinted through the thick Perspex. Near the transom, a hoist was spooling up the cable attached to the bomb. Four men were laboring there, making sure it didn’t foul on the pulley as it came up. Would they keep him suspended here until the bomb was unloaded? They would surely see the limpet mine under the diver’s corpse and kill him and Sam immediately. How long until the mine would explode? Another ten minutes? Fifteen? And would it be enough to trigger the bomb? Either way, Tusker had resigned himself to an agonizing and fast death. His body had been absorbing breathing gas at ten times the pressure at sea level for over an hour. He would need days to decompress before safely emerging from a bell or hyperbaric chamber. His only hope was to get Sam off the ship before all hell broke l
oose. But how?
Finally, the bell started to move. It was swung out of the moon pool and lowered onto its trunk for passage into the ship’s hyperbaric chamber. He guessed Rausing simply wanted to observe their gruesome death through rapid decompression. Sick bastard. At least death would come quickly.
The bell clunked onto the chamber’s trunk and a green light in the bell flickered on. A sign next to it read EQUALIZED. Tusker stared at the sign for a moment. Then he cautiously bent over and gripped the locking wheel on the hatch in the floor of the bell, unconsciously holding his breath. This could be it. With a small hiss, the hatch unsealed and he spun the wheel until it was unlocked. He exhaled. He lifted it out of the way and shimmied down the ladder into the hyperbaric chamber. When he got the bottom and turned around, there was Sam.
“Boy, am I glad to see you!” she squealed, her voice altered by the helium they were breathing. She looked worn out, more tired than he’d ever seen her. There was a cut on her forehead and an egg-sized lump matted with blood at her hairline.
“I guess absence does make the heart grow fonder,” Tusker said, managing a weak smile. They embraced. Tusker was still in his wetsuit and shivered in the chilled air. Sam felt warm and soft. He closed his eyes and tried not to think of their impending fate.
“I need to tell you something,” Tusker said as he pulled away from Sam. “It’s important.” She searched his face. Just then, a familiar voice interrupted. Rausing. He was at the chamber hatch, his face filling the window. His large pale eyes bored into Tusker.
“Mr. Tusk,” he said, ignoring Sam. Speaking through an intercom made his voice sound even more disembodied. “You’ve done me a great service, retrieving my cargo and disposing of my overpriced hired help. Thank you.” A thin smile.
“You should know that the Sri Lankan Navy is on its way out here right now,” Tusker bluffed. “If you drop the bomb back in the sea and no harm comes to us, no one needs to know any of this happened.” He was trying to seem reasonable but also firm.
Rausing looked down and chuckled. “Mr, Tusk, do you honestly think I could have gotten this far without thinking of every contingency? The navy, the police, they won’t cause any problems for me. Your friend, Mr. Karuna, and his friends were but a mere inconvenience. Just as you have been.”
Tusker stepped close to the thick glass and gritted his teeth. “You son of a bitch,” he said, spitting the words out at Rausing.
Rausing ignored him. “We’ve not had a single accident onboard the Depth Charge,” he continued, then twitched his head, recalling McElroy’s misfortune. He cleared his throat. “So I’ve never been able to satisfy my curiosity about the effects of rapid decompression.”
Here we go, thought Tusker. He reached over and gripped Sam’s hand and stepped back into the chamber a few paces. “If you are going to kill us, get it over with, you sick bastard.” Sam inhaled sharply and gripped Tusker’s hand tightly.
Rausing smiled. “You seem worried, Mr. Tusk, but I thought we’d experiment with someone a little more… expendable, as a test, just to make sure we do it right.” He nodded to someone down the corridor, out of sight of Tusker.
With that, there was a hiss from the adjoining chamber, one that would normally be used to insert new divers or medical staff in case treatment was needed. This chamber was separated from the main one, where Tusker and Sam were, by a thick pressure hatch. Through a porthole, Tusker saw a familiar face. Roland. He had a bandage over one eye and looked rough. He had been pushed in against his will by a muscular man with a shaved head and mustache.
“As you might guess, my little project here in Sri Lanka is like the chamber you find yourselves in. Even a tiny leak would be disastrous to it.” He nodded in the direction of Roland in the adjoining chamber. “I’ve decided Mr. Van der Schyff may one day be a leak.”
Tusker looked over at Roland, who was banging on the outer hatch of his chamber, shouting in Dutch. He paced around the chamber, squeezing his nose and crying in agony. Tusker knew what was going to happen. Rausing stepped back from the porthole and nodded to his left. There was a hiss. Tusker grabbed Sam and held his hand over her eyes. “Don’t watch!” he whispered to her loudly. But Tusker couldn’t look away.
There was a piercing scream, unlike anything human or animal that Tusker had ever heard. Then a loud pop. Then silence. Pink-tinged pulp covered the porthole to the adjoining chamber. Tusker closed his eyes before he could see it drip.
“Mercifully fast, wouldn’t you say, Mr. Tusk?” Rausing was back on the intercom, peering in. His face was almost expressionless but there was something there—satisfaction? Pleasure? “Now, I regret to say, I fear that you and Ms. de Silva here may know too much as well. Like I said about leaks… Now which one of you will pop first?” He smiled.
Tusker felt his resolve and his energy drain away, sad that Rausing’s face might be the last thing he would see, sad that he’d gotten Sam into this mess. Where was that limpet mine? He instinctively glanced at his wrist, then remembered his watch was gone. Had he set the mine incorrectly? It had to have been 30 minutes by now!
Rausing saw Tusker’s gesture. An odd moment to check the time… Something dawned on him and he cocked his head. At that moment, a technician ran up behind Rausing.
“What is it?” Rausing hissed, visibly annoyed. The man whispered something in his ear. Rausing pulled back, confused, then looked in at Tusker. His eyes blazed. Behind him, a siren started to blare. Technicians were running past in the corridor. Rausing scowled and vanished from the porthole.
Tusker turned to Sam. “The limpet mine. I set it for 30 minutes and attached it to the bomb.” Sam’s eyes got big.
“But how do we…” she started. Tusker was already running across the chamber.
“Over here, quick!” he called to Sam. “It’s a long shot, but our only one.”
There was a small hatch at the top of a ladder in the corner of the chamber. A series of switches, lights and gauges glowed below it on the bulkhead, with a plaque that read, SPHLB. Tusker surveyed the bank of switches, then flipped on the one labeled Equalize. He watched the gauge’s needle rise. When it neared ten atmospheres, it slowed and then stopped. A green light flashed on. He turned to Sam.
“Time to go,” he said, and scampered up the ladder, spun a locking wheel on the hatch, and pushed the heavy door upward. Sam followed him and they emerged into a long horizontal cylinder with what looked like airplane seats facing each other. Rigged above were racks of flotation devices, Pelican cases and oxygen bottles. It was the ship’s self-propelled hyperbaric lifeboat.
While a modern dive support vessel’s crew can man ordinary lifeboats or be airlifted off the deck by a rescue helicopter, divers under pressure inside the hyperbaric chamber don’t have any choice but to remain at “depth.” The Depth Charge’s hyperbaric lifeboat was sealed one deck above the pressure chamber by a vertical trunk, and could be pressurized for an emergency escape. It was capable of supporting up to eight divers for up to two weeks, outfitted with its own emergency water and rations and separate, unpressurized cockpit which would ordinarily be manned by someone from the ship’s non-diving crew.
Tusker slammed shut the hatch and spun the locking wheel tight, then began frantically searching the controls inside.
“How do we get off the ship?” Sam cried out.
“I’m not sure, but there must be some kind of explosive davit releases.” Tusker said as he combed the ceiling and walls. “Found it!”
A large red knob, straight out of a cartoon, was situated on the forward bulkhead. A plaque next to it read, RELEASE. Tusker ran to it. “Sit down and strap in. This is going to be rough.”
Sam threw herself into one of the bolstered chairs and strapped a safety harness on. Tusker braced himself and hit the red button with his fist. There was a loud, muffled explosion above their heads and then a moment of silence. They dropped like an elevator with a broken cable. Then the lifeboat slammed into the ocean.
Tusker was
thrown up against the ceiling and then fell hard across two chairs. He felt a rib, maybe two, crack, and howled in pain. The boat pitched wildly in the swells. It was shaped like a barrel and behaved like one in the open ocean. Tusker hoped for a brief second that they would drift far enough away from the Depth Charge before the bomb exploded.
As if in answer, a massive explosion blanketed the lifeboat in heat and light. The concussion was deafening and Tusker could feel the boat go airborne. Then he was tossed, first against the ceiling, then the floor, then the ceiling, then the floor again. Finally, mercifully, all went dark.
Blast Radius
Bay of Bengal, ten nautical miles east of Batticaloa. Two hours later.
It was later reported that the white flash of the explosion could be seen as far away as Trincomalee. Minutes later, a five-foot wall of water pushed a quarter mile inland up and down the coast, causing a tsunami panic. But compared to the 2004 disaster, the waves subsided quickly and flooding was minimal. The story made the BBC and CNN later that day.
