Deep Water

by Whitcroft, Isla;

  Even as the worst case scenario whizzed through her mind, she knew that there was no way she could leave him. Cate had never had been able to turn her back on someone in need and she knew she wasn’t about to start now. She sighed and reached into her bag for her penknife.

  ‘Shhh,’ said Cate, pulling Rafe down onto the ground. They were back at the trapdoor to the tank. So far they had gone undetected, despite a hairy moment when Rafe got giddy from standing up after sitting down for so long. If Cate hadn’t grabbed him around the waist and kept him upright he would have fallen straight onto the outstretched legs of the guard.

  He had been limping too, his leg wound clearly painful and Cate had no idea how she had managed to get him safely up the narrow stairway without incident.

  ‘Rafe, listen to me.’ She spoke urgently, gesturing at the ground in front of them. ‘This is our exit route. Under here is a drain that goes out to the open sea. There are men waiting for us who will help. Michel said you are a strong swimmer.’ She pulled back the trapdoor and felt for the ladder.

  Rafe gazed down into the hole in the ground and then back at Cate. ‘I can’t,’ he whispered, his eyes wide with fear. ‘I’m sorry. I’m afraid of dark enclosed spaces. Terrified. It makes me think of hell.’

  Cate looked at him in disbelief. ‘Rafe,’ she said firmly. ‘You begged me to bring you. Any minute now they are going to discover you are missing. And when they do, well, this island is so tiny they’ll find us in seconds. We have to go now.’

  He shook his head slowly, tears in his eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘You’ll have to go without me.’

  With a sigh, Cate pulled off the goggles and shoved them at Rafe. ‘Put them on,’ she said, flicking the On switch. ‘Quickly.’

  Seconds later, Rafe smiled for the first time. ‘It’s fantastic,’ he said. ‘I can see everything.’

  Cate bent down over the gaping dark hole, hoping her natural night vision would kick in fast as Rafe swung his legs painfully over the side of the pit and down onto the ladder. Just then, Cate heard the ominous sound of a siren sounding somewhere deep inside the island. Cate and Rafe looked at each other in horror.

  ‘They know you’ve gone,’ said Cate, her stomach knotting. ‘Go, Rafe, go! It’s our only chance.’

  She pulled the trapdoor down over her head and, a second later, she heard the sound of footsteps pounding the hard soil above them. The hunt was on.

  The pair of them stood in the corner of the tank looking down at the chute. Cate had her headlamp on now, taking care not to shine it at Rafe, and she could see the filthy water lapping and swirling around the edges of the metal walls. The chute looked smaller than she remembered. Rafe was thin, but he was still bigger than her and she had been a tight fit. What if Rafe couldn’t fit? What if he got trapped down there in the darkness of the tunnel? Most worrying to her was how they were going to get through the tunnel with only one mouthpiece for the oxygen tank. She hadn’t even considered that when she rescued him.

  ‘I’ll go first. If you get stuck I can go for help.’ She looked up nervously. Above her she could hear men shouting, boots thumping on the ground. They were getting closer. It could only be a matter of time before the chamber was discovered. ‘Come on.’

  Cate slung the oxygen tank back onto her shoulders and passed him the mouthpiece. ‘We’ll have to take it in turns with the oxygen. I’ll need some after a minute, OK?’

  He nodded, his face a mask of fear. Cate knelt down at the edge of the chute and turned to give him what she hoped was a reassuring smile. ‘We’ll trust each other.’

  She took three deep breaths to fill her lungs and then pushed down into the dank, dark water. With no oxygen to hand, she was relying on a complete stranger to keep her alive. And if Rafe lost his nerve . . . She shuddered and pushed the thought out of her mind. For a few seconds she concentrated on her flippers, making sure she wasn’t moving too far ahead of Rafe. She counted slowly up to a minute. She could cope with that. She had held her breath for that long in her swimming lessons at school since she was about ten.

  She looked behind her to see if she could spot Rafe. But all she could see was darkness. Her heart lurched. Where was he? Had he chickened out, left her to die in this horrible place?

  Another minute passed and she exhaled slowly, watching the bubbles leave her mouth and then fought against the need to take a deep breath. Her chest began to hurt, her lungs straining, and then she could hear her heart pounding in her ears. She was running out of time.

  Still nothing. She was feeling light-headed now, the pain in her chest taking over her entire body, the roaring in her ears almost deafening.

  Then she felt a tug on a flipper. Rafe’s hand was reaching alongside hers with the mouthpiece, and suddenly she was breathing again, taking great gulps of oxygen, and feeling it rush through her body. The pain receded and she could hear herself think once more. It was the most wonderful feeling in the world, like coming back from the dead. Somewhere in that tiny cramped space she saw Rafe’s hand give her the OK sign, and somehow she found the strength to give him one too before passing back the mouthpiece. They were going to make it out alive.

  The speedboat surged through the waves towards Snapper Bay. Cate was wrapped in a blanket, silent while Marcus and Henri took turns in telling her off. They hadn’t even allowed her back onto the ship, insisting instead that they take her directly back to camp.

  ‘Cate, that really was the dumbest thing ever,’ said Marcus for about the eighth time. ‘Not only did you put your life at risk in the tunnel but Rafe could have got stuck and drowned.’

  ‘And you broke your word to us,’ said Henri, sounding remarkably like her least favourite teacher at school. ‘As an agent you have to be trustworthy.’

  ‘I thought you had to think on your feet, be proactive,’ said Cate. She’d had enough of being told off. ‘Rafe was on the edge of cracking up. He was in agony from a wound on his leg.’ She played her trump card, an excuse she had thought of whilst Rafe had been hauled to safety onto the naval boat. ‘And I was worried that he might tell his guards that I had been down there so I thought the best thing to do was get him off the island. I bet if you asked him he wouldn’t care about me not keeping exactly to my word.’

  ‘True,’ conceded Marcus after a pause. ‘I suppose you do have a point about needing to bend the rules now and again.’ He turned to Henri. ‘After all, if we weren’t prepared to bend the rules, we would have never have worked with Cate in the first place.’

  Henri harrumphed, looking at his watch. ‘I suppose everything has turned out for the best. Rafe is safe and on his way to meet his father and, in precisely one hour, twenty or so of Australia’s finest will be going in to Razor Island to flush the rats from the trap. And, Cate, before you ask, there is no way you are coming too. I’m not giving you any more chances to get yourself into trouble. We’ve got your kayak waiting for you at the mouth of the bay. Get yourself back to your camp and we’ll call you tomorrow when all this is over. Let you know how it went.’

  Cate wasn’t up for arguing: the thought of her camp bed was now very appealing. Soon Cate was back in the kayak and she waited as Marcus passed over her rucksack.

  ‘I’ve slipped you the night vision stuff,’ Marcus whispered as he put out his hand to push her off. ‘It’s a thank you present from me. You did good, Cate, you did good.’

  Cate looked up at him in surprise as he winked at her. ‘Thanks,’ she mouthed. She dipped her paddle into the still water and headed the kayak back towards Snapper Bay.

  She was just a few hundreds metres from the beach when she felt a soft bump against the rear end of the kayak. She turned round, and for a few seconds it was all she could do not to scream. There, floating in the water just a few centimetres away from her, was a large, mutilated head, lumps of bloody flesh hanging off the skull, wide eyes staring lifelessly back at her.

  For a few terrible seconds, Cate was convinced that a human head was floating besid
e her, but then she noticed the pointed ears and the large snout, and gave herself a mental shake. What on earth was a pig’s head doing floating in a beautiful sea like this one? Had someone thrown it overboard from a yacht, or was it the remnants of a very strange barbecue? Then she saw another chunk of flesh, a pig’s trotter, then a leg, and she understood. Someone had just dumped a large bloodied animal carcass into the water.

  Not that long ago there had been a series of unexplained shark attacks off the coast of Egypt. Unexplained, that was, until someone had pointed out that live sheep being exported from Australia to North Africa were dying and being dumped overboard just about where the shark attacks were taking place. If there was one thing guaranteed to encourage sharks it was meat, particularly fresh bloody meat. Cate’s heart was racing. The creatures were being encouraged to come to this spot to feed and, if they didn’t find the meat they were expecting, they would look for it elsewhere. It was little surprise that the turtles and dolphins were being attacked with such ferocity, and no wonder the sharks had been so aggressive towards Josie and Noah.

  Slowly, cautiously, she dipped her paddles gently into the water, keeping them close to the surface in a desperate attempt to create as little water turbulence as possible. Logic was telling her that if there were sharks around they would be concentrating on the easy meat, but even so, every splash of water and sudden movement of the kayak made her stomach lurch.

  It seemed like hours before she finally heard the sweet sound of the waves breaking on the shore. She was nearly there. Only when she felt the nose of the kayak grinding onto the soft sand did she allow herself to step out into the ankle-high water, before sprinting up through the fizzling foam to the safety of the high beach.

  She threw herself down onto the ground, panting with fear, adrenalin pounding through her body. She lay there for several minutes, looking up at the night sky, marvelling at her narrow escape.

  The camp was silent although it wouldn’t be long before morning. She reached her tepee and dumped her rucksack on the floor then stripped off her wetsuit and changed into shorts and a T-shirt. Too fired up from her near miss, she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep for a while. She felt sticky and dirty from her time in the chute and wondered if she would wake the camp if she had a shower.

  She grabbed her toiletries bag and torch and headed out as quietly as she could to the shower area. On the way, she passed Michel’s tent and paused. She was so desperate to see him, to talk to him about normal everyday things. And most of all she really wanted a hug.

  ‘Michel,’ she whispered quietly. ‘Are you awake?’ There was no reply. Cate pulled back the net and crept slowly into the tent. ‘Hey, Michel, it’s Cate. Wake up.’ There was no sound from his bed. Feeling slightly foolish, Cate felt up and down the bed. It was empty. She shone the torch up and down the tent, puzzled. Where was he? A few metres away Cate stood outside Jacob’s tent listening, but she could hear no breathing there either. Feeling more and more worried she checked them all. Every teepee and tent was empty. It’s like the Marie Celeste, she thought. Where would they all go at this time of night?

  Cate glanced over to the kitchen and saw a tiny gleam of light pushing out from under the door and a feeling of anxiety took hold of her. This was wrong, very wrong. If the lamps were on in the kitchen, the light would have been spilling out from the windows as it always did. But for some reason all the blinds had been closed so tightly that not a drop of light was getting through.

  She thought for a few seconds and then headed to the shower area and beyond to the outskirts of the forest. If this was as serious as her instincts were telling her, she was going to need a weapon. Keeping the torch beam low on the ground, she began to search for the pathway she had run down a few days before.

  Cate walked as fast as she dared, doing her best to dodge roots and cracks, but even so, once or twice she stumbled and fell to the ground. Then she was in the clearing, the large rock as she remembered it, almost blocking her path. She shone the torch around slowly, the pile of coloured stones she had placed as a makeshift marker showing up clearly in the narrow beam. Carefully, she pulled them away and slipped her hand into the tunnel. She felt something small and hairy running over her fingers and shuddered, but bravely persevered. Then she was touching the gun. She pulled it out and inspected it. It was still dry, the chamber full of bullets. She checked that the safety catch was still in place and then stuck the gun into her belt. At least she had some sort of protection for whatever battles lay ahead.

  Just then, she heard a dull boom and the ground beneath her rocked and bucked as if it was suddenly alive. Above her, birds flew out of the trees, squawking into the night sky, and then there was silence again. What was that? An earthquake? She crept towards the rear of the kitchen.

  As she got nearer she could hear a loud, angry voice. It was Jacob.

  ‘Stop this madness. This will destroy everything. The turtles, the beach, the marine eco structure. Miles, I demand you stop this right now!’

  ‘You can demand away.’ Miles’s voice was low and menacing. ‘But you can’t stop anything now. Over the next few days the entire cliff and beach will be blown up and mined by my good friends from Cotia who are working away as we speak. By the time anyone realises what has happened they, I and several tonnes of indium B will be on a ship somewhere in the Pacific, in international waters. No one will be able to stop it.’

  Cate was almost rigid with horror. She, Henri and Marcus had made a massive, dreadful error. They had assumed that the danger was on Razor Island, but it wasn’t. It was right here in Snapper Bay.

  ‘Miles, you’re one of us.’ Noah sounded shell-shocked. ‘You’ve been our leader, for God’s sake. We look up to you, dude. What are you thinking?’

  ‘What am I thinking?’ Miles was suddenly shouting. ‘I am thinking that, unlike all of you spoilt brats who have rich parents who pay for your flights and holidays and universities, I have nothing, not a penny to my name. I worked for the Eco Trust for years and what did I get in return? A filthy house to live in and a battered old car to drive. Did any of you think for one minute that I might need a bit of help?’

  ‘Mate,’ said Jacob. ‘Calm down.’

  Miles carried on. ‘When I accidentally found a very valuable commodity right here on Snapper Beach I wasn’t going to overlook it. It was my lottery ticket, come up right there and then. And I sold it to the highest bidder.’

  There was another boom. The kitchen swayed and rocked alarmingly and Cate heard Maria cry out in fear.

  ‘Don’t worry, Maria. It’ll soon be over,’ said Miles, more cheerfully this time. ‘I must say I’m looking forward to getting my payout and clearing off around the world. First class all the way.’

  ‘But what about Josie?’ It was Michel talking now, his voice calm and even. ‘You said she is your sister. She has no one else in the world. You can’t leave her.’

  ‘Be quiet,’ said Miles, his voice menacing again. ‘You don’t mention my sister’s name, you hear? Not unless you want my gun in your mouth.’

  Cate felt sick. It was all she could do not to rush into the kitchen in a mad attempt to rescue Michel, but if Miles was armed then this would be the worst course of action. She felt for the gun in her belt. Was she ready to use it? She had no idea, but one thing was for sure: somehow she had to get Miles out of that kitchen, away from her friends.

  Suddenly Cate heard the crunch of footsteps coming up from the beach. Instantly she moved away from the window and crouched down behind a bench.

  She recognised his face through the gloom. It was the Cotian bodyguard, who had held a gun to the head of Marissa, who had probably had a hand in killing the poor seaplane pilot. And now he was heading for her friends. It was time to act.

  As soon as he passed her, she walked calmly out of the shadows and pushed the gun into the small of his back. Immediately he raised his hands.

  ‘Lie down and stay quiet,’ she whispered in Spanish.

  He grun
ted quietly in surprise but did as she said. With her left hand still pushing the gun into his back she used her right to search him. A pistol was attached to his belt, and Cate pulled it out with a shudder. This man had come armed to kill.

  Cate was desperate to smack him hard over the head with her gun. Instead, she contented herself with jabbing her gun even harder into his back as she pushed his gun into her pocket with her free hand. ‘Keep your face down and put your hands behind your back,’ she hissed into his ear.

  ‘I knew we should have killed you,’ grunted the Cotian as she tied his hands tightly with her belt.

  ‘You can talk when I tell you to,’ Cate said. ‘In fact, you can talk right now. And this is what you are going to say . . .’

  Cate stood at the side of the kitchen door, her gun pointed directly at the bodyguard in front of her. Not taking her eyes from his face, she slid her arm out and rapped hard on the wooden door. ‘Now,’ she said, jabbing the gun into his stomach. ‘Talk now.’

  ‘Hey, Miles, it’s me, Paco.’

  ‘Louder,’ said Cate. ‘Louder.’

  ‘Miles,’ he shouted. ‘It’s Paco. Let me in. I’ve come to take over. We need you on the beach.’

  ‘If anyone moves they’re dead.’ Miles sounded very much as if he meant it.

  Stay still, Michel, she prayed. Don’t try anything stupid.

  Cate heard footsteps and then the door opened, bright light spilling in a pool onto the porch. Still holding his gun, Miles stepped out and peered into the night.

  ‘Hey, Paco man, where are you?’ he called.

  In one swift movement Cate brought her gun up and cracked it over the back of his head. Miles staggered and fell as Michel and then Jacob were up out of their chairs like greyhounds out of a trap, making sure that Miles wasn’t going to get up again any time soon.