The Deep Zone: A Novel

by James M. Tabor

  “Actually,” said Bowman, “I’ll be going through first and running out the line.”

  She gave him a look. “But I’ve been through here before.”

  “I know that. But I’m expendable and you’re mission critical. We can’t afford to lose you. If there’s anything unexpected in the sump, it’s best I find it first.”

  “Okay. You’re right.” She was annoyed, but could not argue with his logic.

  “I’ve never seen rebreathers this small.” Ron Haight was holding his up, turning it over, examining it like some exotic treasure. “Most of ’em are like big suitcases.”

  “They are. I mentioned that DARPA had a lot of things going. These are another. They’re half the size of standard rebreathers.”

  “Do they use the same scrubbing system?”

  “No. These use lithium trioxide to scrub the carbon dioxide from our recycled breathing gas.”

  Cahner whistled. “Volatile stuff. Explodes if it gets wet.”

  “But the best carbon dioxide scrubber there is, ounce for ounce.”

  “I am just curious about one thing,” Arguello said. “How much does such a device cost?”

  Bowman chuckled. “You don’t want to know.”

  The unit was like no rebreather Hallie had seen or used. It had a full-face mask like those worn by commercial divers. The mask was connected by a short, flexible hose to a chest pack held in place by a webbing harness. The chest pack was about the size of an old Yellow Pages phone book and, with its lemon-colored plastic shell, looked something like one.

  “Let’s get through this quickly.” Any wait longer than thirty seconds had Bowman sounding impatient. “These units do not have voice comm, so we won’t be able to talk to each other underwater. The packs’ weight should keep us negatively buoyant, so you won’t be pinned to the sump’s ceiling. I’ll dive first. Hallie next. Then Rafael, Al, and, Ron, you will be the sweep diver. Questions?”

  Bowman looked around, his helmet light beam swinging from chest to chest. No one spoke. There was only the wind blowing through the cave, and the stream flowing, untold volumes of water folding and rolling down into the rocky throat, and the immense weight of darkness and depth pressing down on them.

  Bowman took off his pack and helmet. He put his rebreather face unit on, tightened the black rubber straps behind his head, and snugged the chest pack tight. He grunted back into his pack and replaced his helmet. He took several test breaths, sat on the edge of the pool, and lowered himself carefully down into the water. He turned to face the rock, held the lip momentarily, and then disappeared beneath the surface. His helmet lights grew fainter, like candle flames slowing dying, and then they were gone.

  Watching the lights fade, Hallie felt afraid. Not for herself. She had dived many such sumps—the Boneyard being a recent example—and they did not frighten her. But, somewhat to her surprise, the thought of losing Bowman so soon did—more than it should have, her rational side muttered. Then again, what did “should” mean? What needed to pass before she should feel that kind of fear for Bowman? Wrestling with such thoughts, she waited for the appointed five minutes to pass, and they passed very slowly indeed. She just wanted to get into the water and have this over with.

  After donning her gear, she entered as Bowman had done. The water was cold—about sixty-five to seventy degrees Fahrenheit, she estimated—but not painfully so. They would not be submerged long enough to require wet suits. She lowered herself carefully beneath the surface, took a half dozen test breaths, and then let go of the rock. She sank slowly and her boots touched the sump’s silty bottom. She waited, double-checking the rebreather and getting her own respiration under control. Across the top of the glass faceplate, alphanumeric data glowed softly green:

  DT was how much dive time had elapsed. Three hours was the rebreather’s maximum. Every minute of use would be depleting that from now on. PPO stood for partial pressure oxygen, the percentage of oxygen in her breathing gas. Anything over 1.8 could induce fatal toxicity. DIL was the amount remaining of diluent, the exotic chemical mix that scrubbed carbon dioxide from the air she breathed. DPT was her current depth. MXD was the maximum depth achieved on the dive. DIR was her compass heading, 313 degrees, or northwest, and BATT showed that the unit’s batteries were still at 100 percent capacity. DECO reported any danger of incurring decompression sickness, “the bends.” As long as it stayed green, she was good.

  She dropped down the twenty-foot manhole, came to rest floating just above the silty bottom, and began pulling herself along. Each helmet had three lights. One was turned on for dry passages. For diving, they used all three. Hers bored luminous tunnels into the milky water. Viz was only about five feet. She knew Bowman would have tried to be very careful, but there was no way to avoid stirring up some silt. The cloudy water scattered her light beams so that it was like driving into thick fog at night. She kept going until the descending passage leveled off. There Bowman had tied off one end of the line from his caving reel to a projection in the rock, and she spotted it on the bottom of the sump right away.

  As always, the hardest part had been getting started, and now she was relaxing into the dive. Without fins, she had to pull herself hand over hand along rocks on the sump’s floor, which began to incline downward again. No matter how carefully she moved, she stirred up more silt. Bowman had stirred up surprisingly little. The rebreather emitted no bubbles, made only a soft sighing sound as she inhaled and exhaled. She descended gradually, clearing her ears to equalize the pressure every two or three breaths.

  She flicked her gaze upward and the HUD was there:

  Arriving at the bend in the tunnel, Hallie knew she was about halfway through. The unstable weight of the big pack on her back and the near-zero visibility made the going awkward, but at least there were no squeezes tight enough to require doffing the pack. The one thing that gave her pause was the awareness that she was doing this dive on a system without redundancy. That violated the cardinal rule of cave diving, which stated that every one of a diver’s systems should be triply redundant: lights, reels, cutting tools, computers, air, regulators, everything. And that was just for ordinary cave diving. This was even more extreme.

  Finally, the sump began to angle upward. She glanced at her HUD:

  She ascended slowly, giving her body plenty of time to off-gas accumulated nitrogen, keeping the decompression light green. Eventually she was able to stand on the gently sloping bottom. Breaking the surface, she turned 360 degrees, orienting herself. It was as she remembered. She was in the middle of a subterranean lake whose smooth surface stretched like black satin far beyond the reach of her lights. Overhead, the cave ceiling rose in a curving dome almost one hundred feet high. The rock here, with heavy iron content, contained bright red strata sandwiched between thicker striations of whitish lime, giving the appearance of a giant layer cake.

  Bowman stood at the edge of the sump, waiting. She tapped a fist on top of her head, the diver’s signal for “All okay,” and slogged toward him, the water growing shallower as the bottom angled up. The sump wall here was vertical and two feet high, almost like being in a swimming pool. She took off her pack, shoved it as far as she could up to Bowman. He set it aside, bent over, and extended both hands. Hallie braced her boots on the rocky face of the sump and grasped his wrists. Bowman popped her out of the water like an angler landing a perch, grabbed her by the waist, and set her on her feet on the cave floor.

  When she pulled off the full-face mask, he put his hands on her shoulders. Keeping his light on her chest, he peered straight into her eyes and held his gaze there and, crazy though it seemed, one mile deep in a supercave, on a mission that could save millions of people from horrible deaths—or not, if they failed—Hallie decided he was going to kiss her.

  AND, AS CRAZY AS IT SEEMED, SHE REALIZED THAT IT WOULD not be unwelcome. Yes, there was a developing crisis on the surface. Yes, they were on a mission more important than anything she’d ever done. And yes, she and Bowman had k
nown each other for only just over a single day. But if life had taught her anything, it was that messages from her gut could be trusted. More, actually: should never be ignored. Her aborted time at BARDA had been a painful object lesson. Even more of one had been her father’s early death. It was not that she and he had not had wonderful times together. They had, too many to count, and that was really the sharp end of this death. The future should have held decades more times like that. Except there was no “should” in time’s passage or acts of nature. The only things “should” applied to were people, to her, to decisions she could make, actions she could take. It did not require a second lesson like the loss of her father to drive that one home. And last of all, wrapping around everything else, was this: things are different in caves. As the old curandero had hinted and as she knew, caves were amplifiers, like great mountains. Mere dislike could quickly curdle into rage. And affection—well, that could turn to something else, too.

  But Hallie had learned to recognize the look in a man’s eyes before he kissed her for the first time. Some looked hungry, some fearful, others worshipful, and suddenly Bowman didn’t look like any of those. Instead, he seemed serious, focused, clinical almost. Then she understood. He was checking for any signs of vertigo or pupillary dilation. Finally he smiled, let his hands drop, and took a step back.

  “You look fine. How’d it go?”

  She cocked her head, squinted at him. Had he been toying with her? Like winking back at BARDA? She couldn’t tell. “No problems. The HUD mask took a little getting used to, but otherwise, okay. How about you?”

  He seemed surprised by the question, as though caught off guard by the fact that someone might be caring about his welfare.

  “Same. I had some time on these rebreathers. It’s not your typical cave dive, though. The situational awareness is something you can’t simulate.”

  “You mean the fact that we might as well be on the far side of the moon.”

  “Right.”

  “I think the only one we have to be concerned about is Rafael.”

  At the word “we” Hallie saw him glance at her, but he did not appear to take it as any kind of challenge. “I agree.”

  “He’s just older and doesn’t have as much time underground as we do.”

  “Whose idea was it to bring him?”

  “Mostly David Lathrop’s. There was concern at his agency about relations with Mexico. Arguello covers that, and the native population as well.”

  “You have to admire his grit.”

  That conversation ended, and then it was her turn to look into his eyes, and it wasn’t for vertigo or disorientation.

  “How was I supposed to take that wink back at BARDA, Mr. Bowman?”

  “Doctor Bowman to you, ma’am.” He was smiling. Great teeth, Hallie thought. When she was growing up, her mother had told her, countless times, Pay attention to a man’s teeth because they’ll tell you a lot about him. You want good breeding teeth when the time comes. Her mother, the horsewoman.

  He appeared to consider her question very seriously. “Well, maybe it was gratitude. I thought we were finished. But then you pulled that group together—a very impressive thing to see.”

  “Maybe?” She watched his eyes and once again thought of ice in great mountains: Alaska, the Alps and Andes, ancient ice of glaciers and crevasses, night-blue ice only the passage of centuries could create, too deep and cold for any life. But now, so much closer, she saw something that had escaped her before—tiny specks of gold glinting in the blue ice. Or was it a trick of light, reflecting off some odd cave crystal? She moved her head slightly, changing the angle, but those gold flecks stayed.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked.

  Why indeed? “I thought there might be something in your eye.”

  “My eyes feel fine.”

  “And they look fine.” What had they been talking about? Oh yes. “So it was about gratitude for some team building.”

  “I was very grateful. We all were.”

  “Anything else, Dr. Bowman?”

  A half smile, the cool blue eyes thawing. “You’re a beautiful woman, Hallie.”

  You’re a beautiful woman. She had encountered that approach before, the “open and honest,” feigned-neutral-innocence posture. But there had always been something neither open nor honest lurking just below the surface, a dark craving. Bowman’s words did not strike her that way. It was her turn to toy.

  “But, Dr. Bowman, I might have a husband.”

  “Nope. You don’t.” His smile was too satisfied for her liking.

  “How would you know?”

  “Did you forget what Lathrop said about us?”

  Unmarried, live alone, no significant others, and have no children. “I had forgotten that. It works both ways, doesn’t it?”

  He understood. “Sure does.”

  Without thinking, she said, “That surprises me. About you, I mean.”

  Without hesitating, he said, “Don’t misunderstand this. But it doesn’t surprise me. About you.”

  It felt like something in what he had just said should offend her, but she wasn’t sure what. “Why not?”

  “You’re not the most approachable woman I’ve ever met, Hallie. I would imagine not many men have the confidence to storm those walls.”

  Storm those walls. She wasn’t offended. It was hard to be offended by the truth.

  She shrugged. “Not many men do. Oh, they try, but—too tall, too assertive, too many degrees, too …” She looked for the right word.

  “Detached?”

  She nodded. But Hallie did not feel detached just then, and she knew her eyes showed it.

  “Some might put all those in the plus column.”

  She waited, wanting to see what would happen, what he sensed. Many men’s brains, she had found, dropped into their crotches at moments like this. But for her it was as though a sphere of the thinnest crystal floated between them. A crude movement would shatter it, and such a thing, once lost, could not be retrieved.

  Bowman made no move to kiss or grope. He just stood there, his head cocked slightly to one side, a hint of smile flickering on his face. He looked at her from beneath his eyebrows. She realized he was waiting to see what she was going to do.

  She pulled off her helmet and, standing on tiptoe, which she rarely had to do for this purpose, kissed him lightly on the cheek. He tasted of salt and mineral-tinged cave water. After she kissed him there, she stepped back, smiling like an imp, waiting to see what would happen. He picked up her hand and kissed her fingertips.

  She watched him do that, then stood there looking into his eyes. He looked straight back, and for just an instant she saw a flash of pain; then it was gone, his eyes softening again.

  She spoke first. “I guess that wasn’t very professional.”

  “I think it was—” Distracted by something, he looked away from her. “Light coming.”

  “Goddamn,” she said.

  “Amen.”

  They watched Arguello rise dripping from the sump. He handed his pack up to Hallie, and Bowman hoisted him onto the cave floor with not much more difficulty than he had exhibited in lifting her. Shivering, pale, Arguello took off his rebreather.

  “Piece of p-pie.” His voice shook.

  “Piece of cake.” She patted him on the shoulder.

  Arguello grimaced. “Yes. Cake. Of course. I knew that.”

  “No problems, then?” Bowman was watching Arguello as he had watched Hallie.

  “Not really. I have dived, of course, but not much in visibility so low, and once I almost lost the guideline. But I got him back quickly.” Arguello’s English was excellent, but Hallie understood that the stress of the dive was scrambling his grammar. “It was colder than I had thought it might be.” Arguello, whippet-thin, had not an ounce of extra body fat.

  “Maybe I’ll brew up some hot tea for everybody,” Bowman said. “We could all use a bracer.”

  “Let me do that. You pay atte
ntion to the divers.” Hallie went to a flat-topped rock nearby, set up one of the little mountaineering stoves they were carrying, and began heating water in an aluminum pot. In the cave, the small stove’s hissing formed a steady high note over the wind and the flowing water’s bass lines. The burner’s circle of flame under the pot cast a sapphire glow.

  Before the water boiled, Al Cahner surfaced in the pool, splashed around, and waded to the edge. Arguello took his pack and Bowman reached down to lift him out. They locked hands and Bowman heaved, and Hallie was surprised to hear him grunt with the effort.

  “You’re heavier than you look,” he said to Cahner.

  For a second, Cahner just stared. Then, pulling off his rebreather unit, he smiled and said, “Maybe I absorbed some water. Like a sponge?” Bowman chuckled and Cahner continued: “Well, that was really something. I mean, I have done some serious scuba diving, but that, my friends, was … extraordinary.”

  “Did your rebreather work okay?” Bowman asked.

  “Oh, yes, fine. I loved the heads-up display. Never used one like that before.”

  “Tea’s almost ready,” Hallie called.

  “In my pack you’ll find a bit of medicinal,” Bowman said, still standing with Cahner. “I’d say we could all do with a tot. It’s in a red flask.”

  She went to his pack, opened it, and found the flask. Back at the boulder table, she poured a good dollop of liquor into each metal mug of tea, stirred in sugar and a little powdered lemonade, and carried three over to the men, who were standing beside the sump awaiting Haight’s arrival.

  “Here you go. Service with a smile.”

  “Thank you.” Cahner blew on the hot liquid, sipped gingerly, his eyes going wide. “Whooo. Rum.”

  Arguello took a mug, but Bowman declined the third. “Why don’t you have that one?” he told Hallie.

  “There’s more back there.”

  “He should have been here by now.” Bowman was watching the surface of the lake.

  “Haight? No worries about him. He’s probably the most experienced cave diver among us.” But she understood that Bowman had refused the rum-laced tea in case he might have to dive again. She went ahead and sampled the spiked tea herself. It exploded in her mouth, seared her tongue, and burned all the way down to her stomach. Maybe the best drink she had ever tasted.