by Jo Sparkes
“We can mend it another time.”
It was a good ten minutes before she spoke again. “You guys really think that’s a wreck?”
He found himself nodding - but she was still staring at the Caribbean water racing by.
“Oh yes,” he told her. “It’s too uniform, too symmetrical. Got to be man-made.”
“How old?”
“We’ll find out.”
“You’re gonna need more manpower,” she wheedled.
Mike looked over her slender frame, and burst out laughing. She harrumphed in return, but her eyes glistened with answering humor.
At least she was coming out of the sulks.
Kneeling in her pink shorty, Melanie scowled.
The thin wetsuit was still hot and uncomfortable, rendering a very expensive bikini invisible. Her gear littered the dive platform, mocking her. This same equipment had always attracted men in class, offering assistance and other things. Now she wasn’t quite certain which thing went where.
Lifting the regulator, she eyed its hoses suspiciously.
“Don’t forget you B.C.” Jill called sotto voce from the cockpit. For all the world as if she were trying to help without anyone knowing.
“My B.C.’s right here.”
Mike, who’d taken a swim to cool off, vaulted onto the platform, drenching her with cold water.
“I meant attach your air to your B.C.” Jill said, ruffling her all the more.
“I know, I know. Go soak your…equipment.”
Two muscular arms surrounded Melanie, reaching to connect the line to her tank.
“B.C. - Buoyancy Control, princess,” Mike murmured in her ear. “Don’t you remember my lectures? Or were you too distracted?”
She froze. In class she had been rather fascinated with Mike’s physique. He wasn’t her type - she preferred a little sophistication - but there was a sort of raw animal feel to the man that was hard to ignore. She’d admired him the way you admired a panther in a zoo: from afar and fully intending to keep it that way.
Flirting with others, Melanie never gave Mike the slightest sign. Or so she thought.
Now Mike withdrew as Wall dropped onto the platform, carrying her pink dive knife.
“Why, just your color,” Mike told him. For a wild moment it felt like two men battling for her attentions. Deliciously primal.
Then the muscle man moved on to help Jill, and Wall knelt over his own gear.
Lowering her eyes to the platform, Melanie was startled to see Mike’s shadow suddenly sport a huge phallic appendage. Her gaze flew to the man - to see him attaching that damned machete to his rig. Wall had said no one in their right mind would carry such a knife underwater.
“Doesn’t that get in your way?” Jill asked.
The muscle man patted it. “Brought me luck on every wreck I’ve explored. It’s my second favorite piece of equipment.” Over the brunette’s head, he sent Melanie a knowing look.
She ignored him to click in her air hose.
Wall snapped the buckles about his chest and checked the security of his rig. The familiar routine never failed to make him smile.
He loved diving.
Reaching down, he lifted Melanie’s gear, holding it steady as she slipped her arms through. She looked nervous, and he realized she hadn’t dove since her checkout dive.
“Make sure my gear’s in order,” he smiled warmly. And presented his back.
Her hesitation was palpable. Finally she moved, stepping closer, stepping away. When she said nothing he prodded, “Am I good?” He had to turn to see her nodding.
Demonstration was in order. Turning her about, he ran fingers along hoses to verify her tank was attached to her B.C., her regulator attached to the tank. Lifting her console, he showed her the computer panel. “Full tank,” he smiled.
She nodded. And finally reached for his own wrist computer. “Full.” she said. He touched her shoulder encouragingly.
In the U.K. Jill and Melanie would need much more diving experience to get certified. Americans like to deride the British for being too stiff on rules, but the accident reports told a different story. His old dive master had used the term ‘Cowboy’ when describing it.
Jon rolled off the dive platform into the blue water, barely disturbing the surface. Next Jill jumped in with a big splash, surfacing sheepishly with her mask askew. Jon’s cousin might be more enthusiastic, but she was as much a novice as Melanie.
Wall pointedly clamped a hand over his own faceplate as he leaned back and fell into the sea. Belatedly he realized Melanie remained alone on the platform.
She nervously stepped off, somehow catching a fin and tumbling awkwardly. She came up sputtering, sans mask and glaring at the world.
Retrieving the pink plastic, he handed it back to her.
“Our mission is to find a way inside,” Jon announced. “Ought to be easy where she split apart, but Mike and I couldn’t find a break in the coral earlier. Might even be a hatchway on top - or a hole in the side.
“Do not feel the reef with your fingers, even in gloves. It’s razor sharp and can slice through neoprene. Use your dive knife if you see something worth checking out. Or get us.”
The two young women caught Wall’s eye. Jill eager, bursting to prove herself as she had in class; Melanie doubtful and nervous. Both would need careful supervision.
“I’m not too keen on diving threesomes,” he said aloud.
Mike cocked an eyebrow. “What about threesomes above water?”
“Jill’s a novice,” Wall continued, unamused. “And with you two concentrating on the wreck…”
“Mike is Jill’s buddy. I’m on my own,” Jon replied.
“Safe as in her mother’s arms,” Mike smirked. “Don’t worry about her - we’re two warriors.”
Wall didn’t like it.
When he came to the U.S. six months ago, wrangling a special assignment from his boss after the Padstow incident, he’d found the Crusty Porthole and Jon Sadicor. He’d been delighted to see the sign in the shop about volunteers for the certification class. A perfect opportunity to become part of the Wilmington Delaware community.
Wall discovered, however, that American dive training was an order of magnitude less than the British Sub Aqua Club. NAUI and PADI, the two U.S. organizations, considered a person certified after a mere two open water dives. The B.S.A.C. required ten.
There were other such examples.
“No penetration, even if we find a way in,” Jon continued. “We split up on the bottom: Wall and Melanie take the reef to the east; we three check the bit to the west.”
Slapping regulator into mouth, Wall studied the circle of faces. Jon so calm, Jill obviously eager. Mike just as eager but less obvious. And Melanie - whose green eyes widened apace with growing apprehension.
Jon’s hand lifted in the okay signal as he made eye contact with each diver. One by one they signaled back.
They submerged.
Ghosts of the Past
The water line rose over Jill’s faceplate. Sunlight muted as her own breathing rasped loudly in her ears, sending a tiny shiver down her spine.
Truth was, ocean diving felt deliciously scary. Halloween scary - lots of fun surprises mixed with a touch of adrenaline.
Wall handed Melanie her console, prodding Jill to fish for her own. She ought to monitor her descent.
The blonde suddenly kicked, reversing direction, and the Brit immediately rose with her. Jill glimpsed wide green eyes framed in a pink mask before the woman moved up out of sight.
She felt sorry for Wall. Melanie was not here for the diving, and the Brit would be very disappointed once he figured that out.
Surely he’d be disappointed.
Warm water diving was an adventure, one she wanted to share with Jon and Mike. Mostly for the sheer fun, though there was a need to prove herself, prove she was just as intrepid as Jon often said. And to show her father, who’d merely shaken his head and prophesied sharks.
Wel
l, she’d already seen her first shark.
Mike described worrying about sharks like driving your car and worrying the engine would catch fire. It happened - but rarely, and there were plenty of more likely problems to be prepared to handle. Actual shark attacks were rare, and smart diving made them rarer still.
Complications from breathing compressed air, on the other hand, were far more common. The molecules compressed as you sank; at thirty-three feet down they shrank to half their size. Thirty-three feet more squeezed them half again. So a lungful of air taken at sixty-six feet underwater would expand to four times its size on the surface - bursting the lungs long before you reached daylight. It was an image she found very hard to forget.
Jon had drilled it into the class’s collective mind, highlighting the need to rise and descend slowly, breath normally. Never hold your breath. If you had to surface quickly, blow the oxygen out of your lungs the whole way up.
Consciously she inhaled while peering down at the shipwreck.
The two reefs just looked like reefs. Maybe they did mirror each other somewhat, and perhaps there was a near ninety degree angle to one side. But an actual ship? She couldn’t see it.
As her fins set in the sandy bottom, Jon peered into her mask. He always liked to make eye contact with the students. Mike tapped her shoulder, flashing the okay signal. Belatedly she returned it.
They headed to the wreck.
Hovering barely fifteen feet below the surface, Wall tapped his ear. Melanie nodded nervously.
He slowly grabbed his nose, mimicked blowing it. When she just blinked at him, he repeated the gesture.
Finally the light came on. She imitated his movements, eyes starting when her ears popped. He gave her the okay signal, waited until she nodded, and then deliberately held his wrist computer close to his faceplate. Once she did the same, they continued their descent.
He checked her again at the bottom. Most beginners had a mixture of nerves and eagerness, but Melanie seemed all the former and none of the latter. Still, she returned the proper signal before they swam to the reef.
Pulling his knife from his ankle sheath, Wall poked it into a few holes, hoping to produce a lobster to make her smile. He found nothing. So he set to work, prying at the coral and suppressing a sigh at the damage to an underwater habitat. Oddly, no fish appeared to protest.
No fish appeared at all.
Above him, a large gray patch seemed already dead. Wall wedged his blade beneath it, pounding the handle to lever the piece free. Nothing happened.
He floated higher and tried again. Nothing.
PING. Someone rapped on a tank. Someone, Wall guessed, had found something.
Melanie clutched his arm like a heroine in a horror movie. After calming her, Wall beckoned. Together they swam for the source of the noise.
Skimming the length of the second reef, they spied a rather pointed end - with a bouquet of giant anemones, delicate tan in color with pink tips waving in the sea.
Wall found himself smiling in delight - it was exactly the sort of vision that drew him underwater in the first place. He glanced at Melanie, swimming beside him to keep from sinking. Her interest seemed focused on her swimming.
A tiny fish peeked out from the tentacles. For an instant the reef seemed to offer him this magical undersea posy.
The tentacles jerked, froze. The fish shot out over his shoulder and vanished.
The only thing moving now were the two pairs of flippers below the anemones.
The ocean floor dipped low beneath, where Wall lead Melanie. Where Jill stood on the sand below, watching the men above her.
Here the reef rose twelve feet up, jutting out to hang over their heads. Allowing a clear view of Mike and Jon shoving a crowbar beneath one of the anemones.
The thing burst free, shooting over Jill’s head before drifting slowly down to the sand. Curling in on itself, as if already dead.
A shiver ran down his spine.
More coral chunks broke free, bits of rubble drifting down around them. Revealing a void in the reef. A black hole just large enough for a diver.
The tremor shook his lair. He woke.
Breathing, stretching, he moved purposefully into awareness. Something was different. The spinning in his mind grew, stirring the water around him. It was not enough.
He sought a living thing. Finding and rejecting a conch, a snail, his mind perceived the perfect host. He beckoned.
The creature approached, hesitated. Being outside the lair, it lacked an entrance path, but the little vortex demanded, insisted. And the creature frantically sought a way to obey.
At last a narrow crack appeared, a small opening too narrow to pass through unscathed. Scratched, hurting, the creature arrived.
Taking possession, the Vortex swelled with triumph. And waited.
Jon shone his light inside the hole.
Within appeared a cloudy cavern - a silt blanketed floor, dangling thick white threads, floating debris. He arced the beam slowly, revealing more of the same.
A modern shipwreck ought to be more, well, modern. If this was a ship interior, surely it would be more recognizable. Portholes, lamps…something. Hell, even the footage of the Titanic identified man-made pieces.
Jill swam up beside him to clutch the edge and peer inside. An instant later Melanie did the same. Mike and Wall floated closer.
Could this thing have been purposefully sunk to form a reef? If so, it’d be a dead husk. Worthless.
His beam stilled on a distant spot - where shadows swirled.
The great thing about diving with Mike was the way they read each other’s mind. The big man was already pulling line from his belt reel to tie off round the overhead point. Jon moved to do the same, pausing only to hand off Jill to the Brit.
Wall glared back, shaking his head. Mike had it right - this guy hated altering the dive plan, no matter what the circumstances. But already Mike was shimmying through the opening, penetrating the wreck. Jon had to follow, for safety if nothing else.
Grabbing Jill’s arm, he pointed to her and then Wall. She caught on quickly, and nodded.
With a last swift look at the Brit, a last questioning thumbs up, Jon glided into the cavern.
Wall glared after the little man.
This was absolutely wrong. Mike was Jill’s buddy - he couldn’t just pass her off, leave mid-dive. They should stick to the plan, sweeping the exterior for other openings. Plan a proper penetration topside, around the table. But Jon’s fins were already scraping past the edge.
For a moment the pair vanished in the void.
Then two spotlights shot through the murk, revealing hazy forms floating inside. Silt stirred as the divers passed, reducing visibility even more.
Jill gurgled beside him, pointing eagerly, but a flashlight blinded him before he could make out what spiked her interest. When the light moved away, and he’d blinked the residual flash from his retina, he detected a…fluttering.
Mike saw it. Drifting lower, he aimed his beam at a sort of pulsing half-buried in the silt. Wall had never seen anything like it, not in Britain, not even in diving documentaries.
Mike drifted closer.
The Pulse seemed to breath, swell. The full-on dive light revealed only a blacker black, a shadow within shadow. Cautiously the big man reached out -
The Flutter jumped at him.
The light tumbled, bounced on the floor as the spiraling beam caught a glimpse of giant shadow zooming towards the opening.
Towards Wall and the girls.
It hit him hard, slamming him backwards. Tumbling heels over head, he thrashed to defend himself, though the thing was already gone. His breath rasped in his ear as his vision righted itself.
An eerie wail threaded the water. Realizing he faced the wrong way, Wall turned.
Overweighted, Jill sprawled on the sea floor beneath the hole, just now rising on elbows. Melanie huddled beside her, seemingly okay. Both were gawking upwards. He followed their look.
&nbs
p; The manta ray soared overhead, a shadow between them and the surface. The damn thing had a twelve foot wing span, gliding majestically without any seeming movement. How the hell it had gotten inside…
Wall lost his thought in a wave of sheer wonder. Of all the ocean creatures he’d seen with his own eyes, this was the most awe-inspiring. He had to shake himself to tear his gaze away and drop down to the women.
Setting his fins in the sand between the two, he extended a hand to each. Jill immediately grabbed his fingers. Melanie did not respond - and when he touched her, she turned to stare blankly. With the blond hair floating all about, she looked an odd caricature of fear.
He tried the thumbs up signal to ask if she was all right. She didn’t even blink. When Jill’s prodding flipper drew no reaction, he grabbed the pink clad shoulders to bring her mask to mask.
Slowly she focused on him. Slowly she nodded, even offering a tentative ‘thumbs up’. He patted her shoulder in approval.
Checking the air gauges was just habit. Wall already knew it was time to surface.
The sun was setting as the compressor ran full-throttle pumping air into empty tanks. So much attention to dive gear, Jill sighed. So little attention to human needs.
She’d really love a decent meal. Cooked by hand, with proper quantities of vegetable to accompany the protein. Calmly consumed around the table while they discussed the wreck.
Instead a plastic tub of cold Pepperpot Stew perched on the galley counter, fresh from the microwave. Too spicy for her taste. And a leftover mound of the weird okra dumpling with green stuff to round out the meal.
All this excitement over a stupid wreck. She just didn’t get it.
Jon and Wall agreed it had to be recent, because wood didn’t last long in tropical waters. If the Sadicor sank today, there’d be precious little worth finding. She’d seen Jon sell a salvaged porthole for a cool grand - but that had been old brass, British made at the turn of the century. The last century.
This whole thing felt more like the time they found a safe off the coast of New Jersey. After weeks of plotting and two failed attempts to raise it, Jon and Mike actually snagged some sort of underwater explosive. It had worked too well, destroying both the safe and whatever was inside. All the dreaming had come to naught.
