by Steven James
Creighton rolled free.
He rolled free. He was quick. He ran for the food prep area, and I rose awkwardly, painfully to my feet. My left leg throbbed with nearly unbearable pain, and the floor was slick, making it even harder to stand. With the gunshot wound, I wouldn’t be able to chase him down. I glanced toward the shark acclimation pool. The water was up to Lien-hua’s chin.
Air. I needed to get her air.
The scuba tanks were by the wall.
I started toward them as Melice stepped out of the food prep area wielding one of the long, slender skinning knives.
I would need to get past him to save Lien-hua’s life.
Lien-hua took a long sip of air. It would only be a matter of seconds now.
Seconds before she joined her sister.
She stretched for the surface one more time.
But found it out of reach.
Tessa finished getting ready, jammed the soaking wet towel into her satchel, and swung it at the lightbulb. Shattered it. Then she backed into the corner. Riker threw the door open and blocked the doorway. “This stalling is gonna cost you,” he said. She didn’t reply. She saw him step forward and reach for his belt buckle. “It’s time to come back to the nest, my little Raven.”
Quoth the raven, “Nevermore.”
“I’m ready,” she said. “Come and get me.”
103
“Oh, I’m gonna enjoy this,” said Melice, raising the knife, both of his hands dripping blood from their gruesome wounds.
The water was rising fast. Fast. “Where’s the release valve for the pool, Creighton?” My leg was growing numb. It was tough just to stand. “Help me get her out of there.”
A man has a knife, a woman is dying.
Basque. Melice.
Melice. Basque.
“I’m afraid I already smashed the valve.” Melice motioned toward the food prep area. “Turned it up all the way first, though.” He leered at the shark acclimation pool. “Oh, this is the best part, right here, when the water rises above her head. I always rewind it and watch it over and over.” Then he grinned at me. “So Bowers, what’s it gonna be? Stop the bad guy or save the damsel in distress?”
You have to get past him to get to the air tanks.
“Both,” I said, and I rushed toward him as fast as my shrieking leg would take me.
Riker stepped into the darkened bathroom and for a moment Tessa wondered if he’d be able to see what she’d done. But then he took one more step and she heard a startled cry as his face collided with the plunger she’d suctioned to the wall, and then she heard the welcome crash as he lost his balance on the water and liquid soap she’d spread across the floor.
As Riker tried to stand, she swung the satchel, weighted with the saturated towel, down hard against his head, smacking his face onto the tiling. Then she planted one foot on his back, leapt over his legs, and ran for the door.
I dodged a swipe of the knife and crashed into Melice, driving him toward the wall, but he grabbed my arm and threw me to the ground. He was amazingly strong and, with the wet, slick floor, he was able to sling me into the middle of the husbandry area. I hobbled to my feet and gasped, “The tank was already constructed when you got to San Diego, wasn’t it?”
A brief hesitation. “How did you know?”
Hold your breath, Lien-hua. Hold your breath. I’m coming.
“And Shade was there, right? At police headquarters? He had your lawyers tell you about the device.”
“None of that matters now.” He came at me with the knife. Came at me fast.
I tried to fight him off, but with my injured leg, I lost my balance. He kicked his steel-toed boot hard against the gunshot wound. The pain was crippling. I tried to stand, he kicked me again, this time in the stomach. As I struggled to get to my hands and knees, he pressed his foot against my side, rolled me to my back. Kicked my wounded thigh again.
As I started to fade, dizzy from the pain, he grabbed my wrist and dragged me toward the acclimation pool. “Well, looky here. I guess you were too late to save her.”
I rolled my head to the side and saw Lien-hua’s beautiful, dying eyes staring up at me from below the water’s surface.
Without oxygen she has maybe four minutes, max, before brain damage. That’s all. You have to get her some air.
I tried to pull free from Melice so I could go for the gun in the pool, but his grip was solid. He took a slow look at his knife and then at the door that led to the path around the Seven Deadly Seas exhibit.
Then he yanked me away from the pool and dragged me toward the Seven Deadly Seas. “I think, Agent Bowers, that it’s feeding time.”
To Lien-hua, air was a memory. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t reach the surface.
She knew she’d just taken her last breath. Her last one ever.
Stay calm. Stay calm. You’ll use less air.
But it was hard to stay calm, so hard. A burst of air escaped her mouth and bubbled toward the continually rising surface of the water.
Tessa decided not to waste any time trying the other doors in the hallway. She didn’t need to hide. She needed to get out of this club.
Down the stairs, then to the bar.
But when she yelled for help, her words were met only with disinterested looks and the grinding rhythm of the music. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Riker crashing down the stairs behind her. She squeezed forward into the melee of people and moved as quickly as she could toward an exit door.
I tried to roll free, but once again, Melice paused, kicked my wounded leg, and then he hauled me through the doorway that led to the path around the Seven Deadly Seas. I felt the sheathed Maglite that hung on my belt digging into my back.
He held my left wrist, but I had my right hand free. Twice I tried to grab him but failed.
I had to get away. Now. A few more seconds and it would be too late.
Wait. My Maglite. My belt.
Get him to the ground. You have to get him to the ground.
As he dragged me, his back was turned so I was able to unclasp my belt buckle and pull my belt free from my jeans without him noticing. I curled it into a loop, and as he stopped near the edge of the water, I rotated to my side, threw the loop up to my other hand, and grabbed hold of it.
Yanked.
Hard.
Since he was holding that wrist, the force pulled him off balance and he toppled onto the path beside me. I rolled, pulled myself toward him, and punched him hard in the face.
But he still had the knife in his right hand.
I snagged his wrist and was pinning it to the ground when he wrestled his other arm free, threw it across his body, and drove his palm down the knife’s blade all the way to the hilt. Then he squeezed his hand tight to lock the blade in place, released his right hand’s grip on the handle, and with the knife sticking through his spurting hand, swung the blade toward my face. I pushed back and he barely missed severing my neck.
“You can’t hurt me, Agent Bowers,” he hissed. “You can only kill me or die trying.”
As he swung the knife at me again, I twisted to the side, flipped the belt around the blade and the handle, cinched it tight. Now I had control of his arm and the knife.
“Have it your way,” I said.
Shock swept across his face. I clenched the belt and rolled toward the water, pulling him with me. At the ledge, I let go of the belt and let the momentum launch him into the Seven Deadly Seas.
Melice tried to pull himself out of the water, but the blood from his hands had caught the attention of half a dozen hammerheads. The largest shark curled toward him, rolled its eyes back, and before I could even consider trying to drag Melice onto the deck to cuff him, the shark used its ampullae of Lorenzini to locate its prey and then sank its ragged teeth into Melice’s soft abdomen and dragged him under the water.
A burst of air and frothy blood came churning to the surface. Then the shark bolted, taking Melice deep into the Seven Deadly Seas tank,
where a frenzy of other sharks were waiting to be fed.
I turned away so I wouldn’t have to watch.
Creighton Melice finally got his wish. He was no longer trapped in a painless hell.
Lien-hua. You have to save Lien-hua.
I stood and then lurched toward the husbandry area. The acclimation pool lay ten meters away and was nearly filled by now. There was no time to go looking for the release valve, and I knew the air tanks were too far away for me to get to them in time.
I would need to get air to her myself.
104
With the number of people in the club, Tessa couldn’t get to an exit door, so she headed for the wall and the next best thing.
A fire alarm.
The water was calmer now, as Lien-hua tried to relax and use less precious oxygen. Blood seeped out of the circular cut around the bottom of the shackle and drifted lazily up toward her face. Her body swayed in the water.
Without air, she knew what was going to happen next. In a few moments her heart would stop beating and her blood would stop flowing and her awareness would flicker and fade and then within three or four minutes, her brain would join the rest of her body in death.
She knew these things, realized them in one tightly packed moment. She gazed up through the water.
The surface was out of reach.
Forever out of reach.
As the last dribbles of air ascended from Lien-hua’s mouth, her lips formed one final word. The only word that mattered to her anymore.
Pat.
Then, in the final drifting darkness, she saw someone dive into the water and Lien-hua Jiang realized she could still move her fingers, so she did.
I swam to her. Desperately. Frantically.
She’d stopped struggling against the chain. With my hand on her shoulder, I pulled myself to her face and saw her blink. Yes, she’s conscious. I pressed my lips against hers and gave her all my air, then I swam to the surface for more.
Having gotten her some oxygen, I’d bought her some time.
Good, good.
Back to her. I passed her more air. Then up to the surface again. I was swimming too slowly, though, with my leg dragging me down.
You can do this. You can save her.
I gave her my air once again, my lungs burning. But I wasn’t getting her enough oxygen. I knew I wasn’t. Not quickly enough.
Then to the surface.
On my fourth trip down, I saw she was moving her fingers. Sign language. Three letters. Signing, what was she signing? She was weak, the letters indistinct.
I gave her air, then reached for her hand, felt her fingers, closed my eyes. Floated beside her. Remembered. Remembered.
D . . . A . . . E . . . D . . . Was she mixed up? Was she signing “dead”? Why would she sign “dead”? . . . D . . . A . . . and then her fingers stopped moving. Her mouth drifted open, a final bubble of air escaped, and though I shook her and shook her, she didn’t respond. Unconscious. Unresponsive.
No more time. I had to get her out of the water and I had to do it now.
I swam to the surface, gulped more air, then swam down and tried to pull the chain free, but I couldn’t do it. There wasn’t time to pick the lock.
Wait. The gun.
With my air almost gone, I grabbed the SIG off the bottom of the pool, took aim at the chain and fired—a deafening noise—but underwater the velocity wasn’t enough to break the link I’d aimed at. I emptied the magazine, but the chain was too thick.
My ears ringing, I dropped the useless SIG, then tugged at the grate until I was completely out of air. But it did no good. The chain held.
I kicked to the surface, and as my head broke through the water I saw the track high above the pool and the cable hanging from it.
And I knew at last how I could get Lien-hua free. I just didn’t know if I could do it fast enough.
Tessa had made it to the fire alarm, but not to a door.
At first no one in the club seemed to notice the blare of the alarm or the strobing emergency lights. Maybe they thought it was part of the show. Then she saw Riker pushing his way through the crowd. His eyes found her. She tried to cut through the mass of people, to a door. Couldn’t make it.
Suddenly the room lights came on, and people were yelling and shoving toward the doors, pulled by the unstoppable force of panic. But there weren’t enough doors. Tessa stayed pressed flat against the wall, and the wave of people tugged Riker away from her. But now she wasn’t thinking so much about him but instead about how if anyone got trampled in the mad herd of people it would be her fault.
Now out of the water, I smashed my hand against the release button for the cable, grabbed the metal hook attached to the end, yanked on it to make sure the cable was loose, and dove into the pool. If this cable could lift a thousand pound shark, it could pull up a metal drain.
Lien-hua’s limp and unconscious body floated beside me, her face pale. Her eyes open. Sightless. Unblinking.
Two minutes. Maybe two minutes left.
I attached the cable’s hook to the lowest link in the chain, pushed off the bottom, swam to the surface. I scrambled out of the water and over to the hydraulic control board. Pulled down on the lever and heard the motor engage.
The gunshot wound in my leg roared with pain, but I ignored it.
Come on. Come on.
As the motor began to whir and the cable started wrapping around the carriage drum, I grabbed the phone on the wall, called 911, and told dispatch there’d been a drowning at the Sherrod Aquarium— but that was all I had time to say because then the cable tightened and I heard a muffled crack as it pulled the entire drain loose from the bottom of the pool.
I stopped the crank, jumped into the water, unhooked the cable, and, cradling Lien-hua’s body, I swam to the pool’s side as best I could with my useless leg. I knew there was a backboard hanging on the wall, but I didn’t think I could have used it by myself, so I decided to try and lift her on my own.
But with the weight of the drain that was still chained to her ankle, it was all I could do to hold on to the edge of the pool while supporting her limp body. Even though I was furiously kicking and lifting, I failed twice to slide her body over the lip of the pool and onto the deck. Finally, with one more desperate try, I succeeded.
Clambering out of the water, I knelt beside her and saw her face, blank and cold, the color of death already falling across her lips.
No, no, no.
I shook her, yelled her name, shook her some more, yelled for her to wake up, to be OK, but she was unresponsive. Her head lolled to the side. Her bluish tongue visible, her face ashen from lack of oxygen. I shook her again, still unresponsive.
This isn’t happening. It can’t be happening.
The CPR training I’d received as a raft guide and later reviewed as a federal agent took over, and I tilted her head back and lifted her chin to open her airway. I felt for her breath on my cheek, watched her chest to see if it would rise. No breath. I gave her two breaths, two good strong breaths, then felt for a pulse.
Airway breathing, circulation.
No pulse.
No breathing, no pulse, it’s over.
No, it can’t be. It’s not, it’s not.
We live short, difficult, brutal lives and then die before our dreams come true.
No, not now. Please, not Lien-hua.
So much I needed to say to her. So much life I wanted to live with her. So much.
I needed to keep oxygen circulating through her body. I heard a voice in my head, Begin five chest compressions. I interlocked my hands, pressed down against her sternum. Count them off: One.
I leaned forward. Felt her chest sink beneath my hands.
Two.
She’d tried to tell me something, to communicate with me. Signed “D. . . A . . . E . . .” but I didn’t understand. What was she trying to tell me? D . . . A . . . E . . . D . . .
Three.
I scrambled the letters in my mind. Unscrambled
them. Rearranged them: ADE—aid her? . . . EDDE—an eddy in the water? . . . DEAD . . ADD . . . AED . . .
Four.
Oh . . . AED.
Five.
AED: Automated external defibrillator.
Lien-hua knew she was about to die. She was telling me to bring her back. The only way to bring her back.
The defibrillator hung on the wall beside the backboard. I limped over, yanked it down, pulled out the defib pads, and crouched beside her. The dress Melice had put on Lien-hua had only thin straps, so I slid one to the side, placed a pad over her heart, and put the other pad on the left lateral side of her chest beneath her armpit, so the current would go through her body and be more effective. All the while, inside of me, I was screeching out a prayer, awkward and raw, a one-word prayer. Please. Please.
Tessa’s words from yesterday about readers liking pain and the characters not always surviving at the end of the story haunted me. “It doesn’t always happen, you know,” she’d said. And she was right.
Please.
The defibrillator is automatic—it’s supposed to check for a pulse, then give the shock—but I knew we couldn’t wait. I pressed the alternate button to deliver the shock manually. The defibrillator buzzed, Lien-hua’s body arced, lurched. Dropped.
Again I checked her airway, her breathing, felt for a pulse.
Still no breath. Still no pulse. Glassy eyes. Open. Staring at me. A fixed blank stare.
No, no, no, no.
Four minutes. Brain damage after four minutes without oxygen. Irreversible.
I gave her two more breaths.
Checked for a pulse.
None. I needed to circulate the blood.
Beginning compressions. One.
This time as I depressed her sternum I felt a snap and knew I’d broken one of her ribs, maybe more than one. But I had to keep going.
Two.
I heard the broken bone grind and pop as I pressed down again, You almost always break someone’s rib when you give CPR, but you have to do the compressions that hard. You have to go that deep.
Three.
I tried to ignore the awful grating sound as I pressed down. But she could live with a broken rib. She couldn’t live without oxygen.
