Page 102 of One Minute Out

I suspect there will be divers in the water now, and my shitty situation has only become more so.

I look down to the air pressure indicator, see that half my air is gone, and I wonder if I’m fucked.

No. I’m not. I tell myself that nobody on or in this water tonight has more drive to execute his mission than I do.

It may not happen tonight, and it sure doesn’t look like it right now, but I’m going to find these guys above me, and I’m going to fuck them up.

•••

The tender with the three divers turned hard to port fifty meters ahead of the northernmost of the trail of bubbles appearing on the gently undulating waves. They were just one hundred fifty meters from the Rovinj marina, but they estimated they were closer to land than their target below.

Verdoorn used his flashlight to indicate a position in the water, and he called out to them from his craft, just ahead and to the right of the telltale trail.

“Right there! I want you all in the water there. Get down and spear the diver. Bring his body up to me!”

The South African wished he’d had time to throw a tank on himself. If he had a scuba rig with him on board he would have donned it right over his clothing and dived in, ready to wring the Gray Man’s neck if his hands were the only weapons available to him.

Just as the three divers sat on the gunwale of the smaller tender closer to shore, one of the Greeks on Verdoorn’s craft shouted out. “Wait! He’s changing directions!”

Verdoorn looked at the surface of the black water and, sure enough, the bubbles had begun trailing from due east to southeast, towards a tiny spit of land far from the marina and only about one hundred meters distant.

The South African said, “That way! He’s running out of air and going for the nearest land. Get ahead of him and dive!”

The smaller tender raced off, the divers held on tightly to keep from tipping back and in, and soon it had traveled fifty meters to the southeast.

The dinghy turned sharply to slow, and then the divers rolled backwards into the water, grabbed their spear guns from their hips, and turned on their underwater flashlights. The seafloor was only twenty-five feet below the surface here, but there were rocks and valleys and swim-throughs all the way to the shoreline.

One of the three banged his flashlight on his tank to draw the attention of the others, then used his light to indicate a shallow cavern just off to their left behind them, farther from shore than the divers.

Here a steady stream of bubbles rose swiftly towards the surface, moving along towards the shore.

All three men spread out, keeping their lights on the bubbles and the hidden portion of the seafloor below them, and they converged from the east, west, and south, their spear guns loaded and cocked with enough tension to drive the steel shank straight through a diver’s body.

As they arrived above the narrow little chasm, their beams shot back and forth, until the origin of the expelling air became apparent.

All three men held their positions above the source, unsure what they were looking at for a moment, but they finally put it together.

It was a scuba tank with its regulator removed, spewing air from its open valve. The spewing gases propelled the device in the water; the attached buoyancy-control device had just enough air to keep it jetting along slowly but steadily, some dozen feet above the ocean floor.

But there was no diver attached to the equipment.

All three men spun around, back to the north, and they began kicking as hard as they could as they ascended, certain now the Gray Man could only be found at the surface, because he only had the air left in his lungs.

•••

Two minutes ago I knelt on the ocean floor, thirty-three feet below the gentle waves. Here I took off my BCD vest, turned off the tank, removed the regulator, and then reopened the valve slightly. Sucking in one last mouthful of unpressurized air directly from the tank, I used one hand to reach down to pull two stones from the seafloor, while with the other hand I pointed the bottom of the steel canister towards the south and cranked open the valve the rest of the way.

The entire scuba rig began jetting away like a very slow torpedo, and I turned to the northeast, kicking myself into shallower water while ascending slightly as I swam.

The stones are keeping me from shooting to the surface now, but once I’m halfway up, I drop one of them. I’m not breathing so there are no bubbles; the only trail evident on the water above me should be the air from the tank, now probably fifty yards away or more and heading in the opposite direction.

I’m hoping the tenders take the bait, and by the fact that I can’t hear the outboard motors any longer, I feel certain they have.

At five feet below the surface I kick as hard and as fast as I can, until my lungs scream in agony, and then I let the other rock drop from my hands. The only things weighing me down now are the few items in my pack, so I rise easily to the surface.

I don’t take my head out of the water, only blow out through the snorkel and then back in, still kicking but making sure to kick in a way that doesn’t make a splash or allow my long fins to come out of the water.

God, I love breathing.

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