Elements of Risk: A Noah Stark Thriller

by Ridgway, Brady

  The captain was wearing a white shirt with four bars on the epaulettes and had seen better days. He had probably not drowned. Half his face had collapsed, leaving a gaping black hole where his right eye had been. His ear was missing too. Ragged pieces of flesh waved gently in the water from a large hole in his cheek. Small fish were already nibbling at the edges. The remains of his teeth poked through the side of his face.

  I shone the torch over him, examined him, made him real. I could deal with a dead man. When I had looked over him thoroughly he held no more terrors for me and I continued my search for the osmium. Time was short.

  I returned to the case and snapped open the second catch. Inside was a camera and some spare lenses; no osmium.

  I didn’t think that it would be in the pilots’ luggage, so I began to search through the cupboards in the galley. There were only smashed cups and glasses.

  Osmium being the densest material, I knew that five kilograms was going to be quite small. I hadn’t thought of that before the dive. I imagined that it would be easy to find; like the camera case.

  I pushed past the Captain, who was still doing his Boris Karloff impression, to the passenger cabin. There were eight big leather passenger seats. More bodies. Both the passengers were still strapped in their seats. One was a woman. She was sitting with her back to the bulkhead and looked quite peaceful. The other was seated facing her, probably the courier. The table in front of him was still extended and his face was smashed in, broken nose, missing front teeth. There weren’t any boxes or cupboards in the cabin.

  I was about to return to the galley to search through the suitcases when I noticed a door at the back of the cabin. It was partially open; I couldn’t see inside. The aisle was too narrow for swimming and I couldn’t walk normally as my fins were getting in the way, so I pulled myself along using the seats. When I reached the door I pulled it open. It was the toilet. It was empty.

  But there were some cupboards there, under the sink. I opened a cupboard. Inside were a number of small plastic containers, a black sports bag and another hard black plastic case. I opened the case first.

  Inside, protected all around by foam rubber, were five glass vials. I shone the torch on them. Metal crystals sparkled in the beam: it was the osmium.

  I closed the case, clipped it to my harness. I was curious to see what was inside the other containers, so I unzipped the sports bag. Inside, in tightly packed bundles, were what looked like banknotes. I pulled one of the bundles from the bag. They were American hundred dollar bills; thousands and thousands of them. I hadn’t brought a lift bag with me, but I could not leave that behind, so I clipped the bag to me as well.

  The first plastic container opened easily. Inside were a number of well-stuffed transparent plastic bags, each the size of an airport novel. They were filled with what looked like white powder. They would have to stay behind. I had run out of the means to carry them. I didn’t like drugs anyway: using or dealing.

  I had a sudden urge to look at the computer again. I don’t know why; perhaps it was a subtle change in pressure. But when I did look, I couldn’t understand what was going on. All the figures were static except for the numbers in the bottom right hand corner of the screen. They were slowly increasing. I realised that it was my depth gauge. It showed that I was descending.

  I stared at it dumbly for a few seconds, trying to work out how I could possibly be going down. And then I remembered the slope that the plane was sitting on. It was sliding down the slope. The numbers stopped for a moment; stopped for long enough for me to see that the depth was two hundred and eighteen meters; way beyond the maximum depth of the equipment. The aeroplane lurched and the numbers started increasing rapidly.

  I dropped the plastic container and started frantically pulling my way up the aisle towards the door. But I couldn’t move. Something was holding me back. I pulled hard against the seat in front of me, but I was stuck. I grabbed the torch and shone it on myself, trying to see what was holding me back. Out of the corner of my eye I could see that the numbers were spinning like the reels of a slot machine.

  I saw what the problem was. I’d forgotten about the money. The large sports bag, clipped to my waist, was wedged between the seats, holding me back. There was a small knife clipped to my bailout hose. I drew it and hacked at the handle of the bag: quicker than trying to unclip it. It sliced right through the webbing. But for a moment it stayed wedged between the seats, blocking my exit.

  I shoved it as hard as I could and the bag came free. I stepped over it and, torch in one hand and knife in the other, I surged up the aisle towards the door.

  Chapter 18

  The Captain’s body was blocking the entrance to the galley. I shoved him out of the way, pulled myself past, shone the torch on the door; it was still open, dragging along the bottom, throwing up a plume of silt in its wake as the plane slid inexorably down.

  I checked quickly to see that I still had the osmium, that I had not cut it free together with the money. It was there. I grabbed the door on either side like a parachutist about to jump; except I wanted to go up, not down. I heaved myself through the door and away from the plane. I was free.

  I still had the torch in one hand and shone it on the plane. It slid away from me. The co-pilot was still struggling to free himself from the window. The billowing silt looked like smoke. It seemed as if the plane was on fire. Then it disappeared into the smoke and was gone, taking the buoy line with it. I was alone again.

  I looked at my computer. The depth gauge showed two hundred and thirty metres. I was way beyond the maximum depth of the equipment; but I was still alive, still breathing. I had drifted away from the bottom. When I shone my torch around me there was only green. In the weightless environment I wasn’t even sure which way was up; there were no bubbles to guide me.

  The cold began to take hold. I shivered. That first shiver was like a run on the bank. Once it started, it didn’t stop. My jaw began banging up and down like a theme park skeleton’s; so much that I thought that I might lose my mouthpiece. I clenched my teeth as hard as I could. My jaw continued to tremble, but the mouthpiece stayed in.

  I decided to assume that I was pointing up and finned carefully while watching the depth gauge. The numbers started to decrease. I was going up. My time to the surface was displayed at the bottom left of the screen. It automatically calculated my decompression time: where to stop and for how long. It read ninety-six minutes: more than an hour and a half. I had plenty of gas, but I was sure that I would freeze before then.

  Between the ‘time to surface’ display and the depth was the ‘ceiling depth.’ That was the minimum depth that I could ascend to. It was called the ‘ceiling’ because if I ascended beyond that depth the gas that was dissolved in my bloodstream and in my tissues might suddenly effervesce like that beer bottle. The bubbles in my veins would then coalesce at my joints causing excruciating pain. I would double up: crunch my body over to escape the agony. It wouldn’t help. I would have a full-blown case of the bends. Death would follow and I would welcome it.

  The gauge told me that I could ascend to thirty metres. I was already at one hundred and thirty, so I continued to fin slowly towards the surface. I put the knife back into its sheath. It wasn’t easy. I was shaking so much that I nearly stabbed myself a couple of times before I managed to get it secured. That would have been a disaster. Any nick in the suit would let freezing water in, send my core temperature plummeting, condemn me to an icy death.

  I didn’t want to let go of the torch; it was my security blanket. So, while holding tightly to it, I wrapped my arms across my stomach, trying to preserve what little warmth I had left. The osmium, safe in its plastic box, dangled in front of me, banging softly against my legs as I finned.

  The cold made me forget. I forgot that as I rose the compressed air that I had injected into my dry suit to give a little buoyancy at depth was expanding. I was supposed to vent it during the ascent. If I didn’t I would become more and more buoyant as t
he bubble grew inside my suit. If I did nothing about it, I would rocket upwards, breach the surface looking like the Michelin man. At least death would come quickly.

  The comforting green lights that had been my constant companion flickered out. Instead, bestial red eyes blinked slowly at me. My ears started buzzing; my mind became fuzzy. For a while I could not work out what was happening, why the eyes had turned red, what the buzzing was, and why I just wanted to go to sleep and get away from their irritation.

  Somewhere in the depths of my consciousness I remembered Denis telling me. ‘If they flash slowly there is too little oxygen.’ Why was there too little oxygen? I looked at the computer. There were a whole lot of things on the display begging for my attention.

  The numbers at the bottom right were decreasing rapidly. I was passing through forty metres, heading for the surface like a Polaris missile. In the middle the single word ‘DOWN’ flashed alternately to a whole lot of arrows pointing in that direction. Above that my oxygen pressures, which should have been around one point three, were showing zero point three. If I didn’t do something soon I would be unconscious in seconds; and the only good thing about that would be that it might be a painless death.

  To be honest I didn’t see all of that; couldn’t have seen all of that. But my brain registered enough to know that I had to stop my ascent. I instinctively reached for the dump valve. I pulled it so hard, I was surprised that I didn’t rip it right out of the suit. A cloud of bubbles erupted from the valve. I held the lanyard down until the bubbles stopped. My ascent slowed, stopped and then I began to sink again. I had gone past my ceiling, so I watched the gauge until it reached the required thirty metres and started to fin to stop myself descending any further while carefully adding some air to my suit for buoyancy.

  When I felt stable, I looked at the gauge again. The depth showed exactly thirty metres. But the time to surface was still an hour and twenty-eight minutes. I hoped I’d be able to find the boat when I got there.

  Chapter 19

  The red eyes flickered out and the green eyes blinked on again. With a rebreather it’s easy to stay at a constant depth. Unlike on Scuba, where the volume of your lungs is constantly changing as you breathe in and out, the rebreather’s counterlungs ensure a constant volume. Although there is no reference, unless you add air to the dry suit your buoyancy doesn’t change at all. It’s like being held in place by a crane.

  But the lake was a huge sensory deprivation chamber. My only reference was the torch light; a pallid green glow in the endless dark. There was nothing to do except stare into the friendly green eyes, watch my dive computer, wait for the ceiling depth to change: indicating that I could ascend.

  I was beyond shivering. The cold had reached my core and I could feel my muscles and even my brain slowing down. I was getting colder by the minute and I was concerned that if I didn’t start moving soon, I might freeze to death and stay suspended at thirty metres forever. So I vented a little air, which caused me to start sinking. To prevent myself slipping back down into the abyss, I had to fin slowly, marking time. The osmium container banged softly against my legs. A little warmth began returning to my legs, but my body was still frigid.

  Only the slow ‘time to surface’ countdown reassured me that I was not in some time-warp, some parallel universe that would hold me in its icy grip for eternity. After an interminable fifteen minutes another number changed, my ceiling depth. I ascended a little, finned slowly up to ten metres, tantalizingly close to the surface. There was still more than an hour to go though; rising to the surface any sooner would mean an agonising death.

  I thought of Denis and Martina waiting for me. I hoped they were waiting for me. I had been under water for almost an hour. The whole dive was going to last nearly two hours. I hoped they had the patience. Then I remembered the plane’s slide down the slope. The jolt would have been the buoy coming loose. The line had probably snapped. I hoped that it had snapped. It was tied to the boat. What if it had pulled the boat under? What if Denis and Martina were already at the bottom of the lake?

  That seemed unlikely. I was sure the line would have snapped long before it pulled the boat under. What if they had seen my bubbles though? I had released a large cloud of bubbles when I dumped air from the dry suit. What if they had seen them and feared the worst?

  I shook the irrational thoughts from my head, concentrated on keeping up a regular rhythm in my finning, thought warm thoughts.

  After two more decompression stops, the last at only three metres, my computer finally released me to the surface. My head was out of the water for a few seconds before I realised I had arrived; safe at last. I inflated my buoyancy compensator, lifted the mask from my face. It was snowing. Big wet flakes landed on my face and in my eyes. There was no sign of the boat. I did a slow three-sixty searching for it. Nothing. I could see the lights of Romanshorn on the Swiss side and Friedrichshafen on the German shore reflecting off the pendulous clouds. The boat might be twenty metres away and I would not be able to see it.

  I had no idea what the currents in the lake were. For nearly an hour and a half I had been at the mercy of them. I might have drifted some way from the dive site, towards the point where the water left the lake. I had no idea where that might be. Although I could see the reflection of the lights from the shore, I wasn’t even sure which was Romanshorn and which was Friedrichshafen. If I swam to the shore, if I could even make it that far in the icy water, I might end up in the wrong country.

  I waited for a while, but there was still no sign of Denis. The cold began attacking me again. While underwater I had been moving continuously. But on the surface the cold began draining the life from me.

  I remembered the torch. It would give my position away to everybody, but a single flash of a torch out on the lake would not attract any attention from the shore. I switched it off before lifting it out of the water, pointed it in the direction that I assumed was north and flashed it once; waited. Nothing. I turned ninety degrees and flashed it again. There was an immediate response. A motor coughed. It accelerated and the sound moved towards me.

  The boat was almost on top of me before I saw it. I thought it might run me over. But Denis must have been wearing his night vision goggles because he cut the power at the last moment and the boat came to a halt right next to me.

  Hands reached down for my equipment. I carefully unclipped the osmium and passed it up first. ‘Be careful with that.’ I shouted. ‘It’s worth a lot of money.’

  A hand took the box, but there was no reply. Was it the wrong boat? Had I just given hundreds of millions of dollars to the wrong person? The hands came back and I passed up my weights and the rebreather.

  I didn’t want to go round to the back because the engines were still running, so I waited for the hands to return. They did, pulled me from the water. I hit the deck of the boat like a hooked fish, didn’t even flap around, couldn’t. I tried to get up, but nothing happened. My legs wouldn’t obey, wouldn’t move. I couldn’t understand why it was so quiet. Nobody was talking to me. Then Denis pulled my hood off and I could hear again.

  He flashed a red light into my eyes, slapped my face. ‘Noah! Wake up! What is the matter with you?’

  I managed to turn my head a little. Martina was there too; she looked worried. Denis shook me, saw me looking at them, knew that I was conscious, dragged me to the cabin.

  They stripped the dry suit off me, left the thermal underwear on, dressed me. There were some blankets in one of the lockers. Denis covered me with them. I began to shiver. It was a good sign. There was still life in me.

  Denis turned to Martina, ‘Watch ‘im. Do not let ‘im sleep. Call me if anything changes. I will take us back to the ‘arbour.’ He went back out and I heard the engine accelerate, felt the boat lurch forward.

  Martina sat quietly next to my head stroking my brow. She didn’t say a word, just sat there, looked at me as if I had just returned from the dead.

  The lake was calm. The monotonous sna
rl of the motors was somehow soothing. I closed my eyes. I was just beginning to plummet into a deep dark void when I woke with a jolt. Martina was shaking me. ‘You must not sleep. You are cold?’

  I nodded; bloody freezing actually. But it was manageable. It wasn’t the life-sapping coma-inducing cold of the lake any more. I was coming back to life.

  ‘Merde!’ Denis swore above the roar of the motors. The boat swerved, flinging us from the bunk to the other side of the cabin. Moments later we crashed back again. Denis was obviously spinning the helm from one side to the other.

  ‘Eh. Roastbeef!’ he bellowed. ‘If you are finished shagging down there I need some ‘elp.’ He was still slinging the helm about, but not as violently. I staggered out onto the deck.

  ‘What?’

  Denis had his legs planted firmly apart and he was clinging grimly to the wheel. The single eye of the night vision goggles stuck out Cyclops-like from above his nose. The rev counter for one of the engines was shattered. I didn’t remember it being broken before. I looked again. There was a hole in it. Something tugged at my sleeve and I felt a sharp pain in the side of my face.

  ‘The fuckers are shooting at us.’ Denis shouted. ‘Get the ‘Eckler.’

  The fog in my brain cleared instantly. I forgot the cold. Denis pointed to the gun case on the other side of the deck. He held the boat steady for a moment until I reached it, then continued with his erratic zigzagging, changing course at irregular intervals, trying to throw off the gunman’s aim.

  I had no idea who was shooting at us, or where they were shooting from. My priority was to get a functioning weapon in my hands. Then I would look for a target.

  I snapped open the catches, opened the case and removed the sub-machinegun from its protective foam. I withdrew the magazine briefly to check if it was loaded. It was full. There were three spare magazines nestled in the foam. I grabbed them too, shoved them under my belt. Then I cocked the weapon, flicked off the safety, braced myself in the corner, scanned for a target. I couldn’t see anything. Apart from some lights on distant shores it was all very black out there. Denis had the only night vision goggles.