Page 101 of One Minute Out

I find the hose and grab the mouthpiece, then pop it into my mouth, inhaling deeply.

Saltwater rushes into my mouth and lungs.

Gagging, I realize the bullet that hit the tank must have ricocheted and damaged the hose to the regulator, so I release it and yank down on the emergency regulator, tucked into my vest, knowing that if the hose on the octopus is also damaged, then I’m a dead man.

The panic welling in my chest now is as painful as the pressure against my eardrums.

I put the octopus in my mouth, push the purge button so I can spit out the seawater, and then I try a shallow breath.

Air has never felt so good going into my body.

Breathing normally now, I continue to sink, so I pump just a little air into my vest to slow my descent, then open my pack to retrieve my mask. I get it over my eyes, and then clear it of water by lifting the bottom of it off my cheeks and breathing out my nose.

Then I pinch my nose through my mask and simulate several sneezes, and this quickly regulates the pressure in my ears and the pounding pain goes away.

I pull my fins out and slip them over my boots, then more securely tighten my BCD to my body. I tie off the regulator hose to slow the loss of air from the tank. It continues to leak—I can feel bubbles brushing against my face—but it’s better than it was.

Finally convinced I’m not going to die in the next ten seconds, I look at the illuminated depth gauge and find myself nearly seventy feet below the surface. From the deck of the Primarosa it looked like about five hundred yards to the nearest shoreline, and farther to the marina at Rovinj, so with the leak in the hose I don’t have any time to wait around.

I add more air to my vest, finally arresting my descent at eighty feet, then pull the red flashlight and turn it on. With it I see I am ten feet above the sandy and rocky ocean floor. I turn off the light and begin kicking to the east, using the illuminated compass on my BCD to guide me.

That went well, I think with no small amount of sarcasm.

•••

Jaco Verdoorn leapt off the back of La Primarosa and into the tender. Already three Greeks armed with submachine guns and powerful flashlights were on board, and the tender captain fired the engine and spun the craft tightly back around to the east.

“Watch for bubbles!” Verdoorn ordered the men. He snatched a light from the hands of one of the gangsters, knowing his handgun was no more useful than the other weapons on board against a man more than a couple feet below the surface.

He was furious now, wild with rage. This was all bad; the death of the Greek, the poor security of the yacht that allowed the assassin to board, the inevitable questions that would come from Cage about Verdoorn’s own actions that did not prevent this... but still, Jaco recognized that the prevailing emotion he felt as they shot over the water scanning back and forth with the flashlights was one of incredible excitement. He wondered if he, right now, was closer to killing the infamous Gray Man than any other man had ever been, and he relished this opportunity more than anything he’d ever done in his life.

Jaco was in the zone.

As the Zodiac began weaving left and right, covering virtually the only track the diver below could have reasonably taken to get to land, Verdoorn called into his radio back to La Primarosa. “I want three divers suited up and armed with spear guns. Put them in the reserve tender and send them to our position. I saw him when he went in the water and he did not have a spear gun. We’re going to kill him right here, right now!”

Seconds later one of the Greeks at the bow shouted. “Bubbles! One o’clock! Twenty meters!”

The tender adjusted course and soon Verdoorn could see the bubbles himself. All the men shined their lights on them, till Verdoorn ordered them to shine straight down. The water reflected the light and they couldn’t see any signs of the diver other than the bubbles he made.

Verdoorn, an avid diver himself back in the shark-infested waters of South Africa, regarded the bubbles a moment, and then he smiled. “That’s constant. Not just from breathing. Bladdy bastard’s sprung a leak!”

He knew he’d hit Gentry’s tank as he’d fallen into the water. Apparently, the scuba gear had taken some damage.

Shouting into the radio, he said, “Hurry those divers! He’s four hundred meters from land!”

•••

I keep kicking my freediving fins, using the light as sporadically as possible to make certain I don’t slam into a rock wall. I’m fifty feet below the surface now, just a few feet over the bottom as it slowly angles up towards the shoreline.

I check my air and realize the leak in my regulator is worse than I thought. I’ve expelled almost one third already, and I’ve only been in the cold water five minutes or so. Normally I could make a tank this size last an hour at this depth with this level of exertion, but now it looks like I have less than fifteen minutes to get where I’m going or I’ll have to swim it on the surface.

I see the glow of lights shining down, so I know my bubbles have ratted out my position. There’s not much I can do but keep kicking towards the shore, hoping I make it before the tank bleeds dry.

I push this out of my mind as I press on, and I begin thinking about Roxana, about Talyssa, about the younger sister’s drive for the acceptance of her older sister and the older sister’s drive to assuage her guilt and risk her own life to fix her mistake.

I am amazed by the reserves some people have, and I wonder about the drive inside the bellies of the men in the rubber boat above me, what lengths they will go to in order to kill me tonight.

I hear the faint sound of another tender now, and I have an idea that those above, or at least the ones in charge of them, are more than passionate about seeing to my demise.

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