Tahoe deep, p.26
Tahoe Deep, page 26
part #17 of An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller Series
I swam around to its stern. There was an access ladder.
I climbed up it, clambered over the edge of the boat.
Mae rushed up. “Street said to stay here and watch the man who pushed Daniel. Was that right? Is he okay?” She looked past me toward the lake.
I turned to see. Daniel was still on Spot’s back. Street was holding one of Daniel’s arms. Probably helping him to keep his grip on Spot’s neck.
“Yes, Daniel’s okay.” I didn’t know if it was true. Daniel would be seriously hypothermic by now. But it seemed appropriate to reassure Mae. And I believed that Street would see to it he was able to warm up in the sun, in a sheltered place, perhaps next to Spot for warmth.
“Did you see the man who pushed Daniel?”
“Yeah. He waved at that other boat over there and then jumped into the water with another diver from this boat. Two divers from that other boat also jumped into the water.” The boat she was pointing at held the man who watched me back at the dock and stepped onto the boat as it pulled away from the pier.
“Did you see where the divers went?”
“Most of them, no. Especially the divers off that other boat. That boat is too far away to see into the water beneath it. But the guy who pushed Daniel off this boat seemed to dive straight down. His companion went more that way.” She pointed. She looked around and said, “North.”
I glanced over at the lounge. Looking through the windows, I could see a bit of the video screen. I asked, “Do you know what was on the video before Daniel recognized the diver?”
Mae frowned. “I think they had been showing a picture of an ROV coming up from the depths with some kind of package in its robot arm.”
“And now the divers are going down to try to intercept the robot.”
“And get its cargo,” Mae said.
I nodded.
“But I could intercept them,” Mae said. “Or at least the guy who pushed Daniel. I could kill that guy for doing that.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I could do a freedive.” She looked over at the rack of scuba gear. “There are a bunch of weight belts and flotation vests. I could use the weight belts to pull me down fast. I would aim for the guy who pushed Daniel. He probably wouldn’t see me coming from above. I could rip his face mask off. He pushed Daniel to his potential death.” Mae sounded outraged. “Daniel never hurt a soul. I want to hurt the guy who beat on him. I want to hurt him bad.”
“Mae, I appreciate your thoughts. I know how you feel. But this could get you killed. That diver is probably far below us. You could run out of air. He could grab you and hold you down. You could drown. Daniel would be much worse off if he didn’t have you.”
Mae didn’t even pause to think about it. “I’m going.”
“How would you find the man who pushed Daniel?”
“He’s got a wetsuit with an orange chevron shape across the shoulders. It’s easy to see.”
“I saw two men with that wetsuit.”
“Right. But this guy has a tear across the chevron. So it’s more like a right-handed chevron. Like a big checkmark.”
“What if you didn’t go down in the right place?” I asked.
“The water is very clear. As I get close, I’ll be able to see which guy I’m after and steer toward him on my descent.”
“But you don’t even have swim fins.”
“I don’t need them.” She grabbed three weight belts off the rack and put them around her waist, one by one, the quick-release buckles in front. “I’ll descend head first. With my arms in front of me, I can angle them and hold out my hands like fins. I’ve learned I can glide where I want as long as I don’t try to go too far sideways.” She ran to the lounge, grabbed the bag she’d brought, reached in and pulled out a face mask, one of the ones she always carried. Then she ran over to the equipment rack, lifted a flotation vest off the rack, and put it on.
“I don’t think it’s smart,” I said. “We can find the guy when he comes up.”
Mae shook her head. “Maybe not. I don’t want to wait. I want to surprise him.”
“Let’s say you succeed in surprising him. You knock off his facemask. Then what?”
“Maybe I can pull his air hose out of his mouth, too. Either way, without a face mask, he’ll probably return to the surface. Of course, I’ll need to come back up right away. I’ll pull my flotation cord, the cartridge will fill my air vest, and I’ll be back on the surface in two minutes or less.”
“All on one breath of air,” I said.
She nodded. “That’s what freediving is.”
“What about a wetsuit? The water is very cold.”
“It’s more than very cold,” Mae said. “When you get down to seventy feet, you go through the thermocline. The water temp drops to thirty-nine degrees. Even if I had more air to breathe, that temperature will freeze my muscles. So one breath is enough.”
“One of these wetsuits might fit you.”
“No, I can see that they’re all for men. A wetsuit that’s too big is worthless. Anyway, I don’t have time.”
“The scuba divers could already be far away.”
“Freedivers with weights descend much faster than scuba divers. I’ll have over a minute to find and strike Daniel’s attacker,” Mae said. “I’ll go down, hit him, inflate my flotation vest, and come back up. If I make it back up before I run out of breath, I’ll survive. If I don’t, I’ll be too numb to feel the pain of death.
Eileen walked up and faced me. “What’s going on? I saw you jump overboard with Spot.” Her calm demeanor suggested she hadn’t seen Daniel get pushed overboard.
“Someone bumped our older companion, and he fell over.”
Eileen inhaled.
“We jumped in to make sure he was okay. I thought he might have trouble climbing back aboard. So Spot and Street swam with him to shore.” I turned to point. I could see them on the beach. “They’re already there. But I do have a favor to ask.” I pointed over toward Blondie, who was sitting watching us, her brow furrowed with concern now that Street had jumped overboard and swam away. “If you could please watch Blondie, our other dog, while we deal with the festival activities.”
Eileen was staring off toward Spot on the distant beach. Then she reached for her phone and looked at it. “The captain texted me. I have to go to the bridge.”
“Can you take Blondie with you?”
Eileen frowned, then nodded. “No problem,” she said. She took Blondie’s leash, and they walked toward the spiral staircase.
I turned to Mae. “Are you certain you want to do this?”
“Yes.” Mae pulled on her face mask. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, exhaled slowly.
She spoke in a low voice with a hint of venom. “May the devil drown!”
She took another, deeper breath, and jumped off the back of the boat.
I found a face mask that seemed to fit and put it on. I pulled on a flotation vest and grabbed three weight belts. I carried them down the rear ladder to the small platform at the stern of the boat. I kneeled down on the platform. Water splashed over me. Even though I’d just been in the water with Daniel and Street, it still felt very cold. I hung onto the platform supports so I could bend over and put my face in the water. With the face mask underwater, I could see. I scanned back and forth, looking for Mae. She was nowhere to be seen. There were multiple dull, dark shapes moving this way and that, divers whose images were hard to perceive from the surface. The only clear indications were the streams of bubbles from their exhalations. The expanse of white bubbles against the deep blue backdrop of water seemed to go down forever. Against the distraction of those bubbles, it was impossible to see a lone freediver, leaving no trail of bubbles.
The sunlight streaming through the shallower depths was easy to see, brilliant rays of light interrupted by bubbles, masses of bubbles rising up from unseen scuba divers, bubbles that obscured everything beneath them. And when there were pauses in the bubble plumes, I still couldn’t see because farther down, 60 or 70 or 80 feet, even Tahoe’s water was not clear enough to let divers be seen from the surface.
I looked in all directions. From the Mountain Belle, even if I plotted a very steep descent, moving only a small bit to the side in any direction, it still made for a huge area. A descent without knowing where to aim would be pointless.
I kept my face underwater, searching, watching. I had to repeatedly lift my head out of the water to breathe. At one point, I didn’t rise up enough, and I choked on inhaled water.
I coughed long and hard, then lowered my face down once again.
Mae was down there somewhere. I didn’t know how long it had been. But it seemed like over two minutes since she’d jumped in. If she hadn’t already inflated her flotation vest and begun her ascent, she’d be in danger from lack of air. She’d told me that two minutes and thirty seconds was her longest time ever. And that was with proper relaxation beforehand. With the tension of Daniel being pushed into the water, her metabolism would race, and she wouldn’t be able to last nearly as long. She had to stop descending and start back up before she reached the halfway point of her time limit or she’d die.
And then I saw Mae below me. Still descending. Maybe 50 or 60 feet down. She was maintaining a dancer’s form, head down, her body straight, her toes pointed and trailing behind. She used her arms like wings, angling them to glide this way or that. I could see that she also angled her feet, controlling the angle of her descent.
As I stared through the icy water, I began to make out the man she was chasing. He was ten feet below Mae. The torn checkmark chevron on his suit was an unmistakable identification.
The mass of bubbles rising from the depths increased. Mae and the scuba diver disappeared into the rising curtain of air bubbles. I was about to jump in when I realized that without a visual fix on Mae, I had little chance of finding her.
But as I stared, it seemed there was some movement to one side, movement without accompanying bubbles.
A freediver?
The movement gained some clarity. I waited. Held still. Stared.
The moving object was a diver. Barely visible. I thought it was Mae. Maybe 65 or 70 feet down. Her vest seemed full as if it had been inflated. As she rose, there was a tiny stream of bubbles coming from her mouth. She wasn’t making swimming motions because the flotation vest was bringing her to the surface at a good pace. Her arms were at her side. And her bare feet were pointed, the most streamlined posture for rising to the surface at maximum speed. I wanted to yell encouragement. All looked good. She would be on the surface in less than a minute.
Except that as she rose into the penetrating sun rays, the light illuminated something else just six or eight feet below her pointed feet.
A scuba diver without a mask was swimming after Mae, kicking furiously with his fins. He was gaining on her. It was clear that he would grab her ankles in a moment. And even if he didn’t kill her with a weapon, once her path to the surface was interrupted, it would be less than a minute before she’d run out of air and die.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
As I realized that Mae was being attacked, I did like she did before she jumped in. I took three quick breaths to blow off some of the CO2 in my system. Then I took a deep breath, exhaled completely, took an even larger breath and, holding three weight belts, jumped in after her.
As the weights pulled me head first down into the depths, the water temp became much colder than the surface water.
Very quickly, the pressure in my ears became painful. I pinched my nose and blew lightly to force air into my eustachian tubes and equalize the pressure.
A face mask also needs to be pressurized when you go deep or it will squeeze into your face, and your eyes and flesh will bulge out. So I breathed small amounts of air out of my nose and into the mask.
I realized I hadn’t put the weights around my waist. As I held the weights with my arms stretched out at the sides of my head, I was only able to steer my descent just a little. They pulled me down very fast, face first, into the depths. The water quickly turned deep, dark blue. I scanned the scene below me, looking for Mae and the man chasing her. But all I saw was bubbles spilling up from the divers below. There were a few vague dark shapes visible through the bubbles, but nothing clear. I angled my arms so that I rotated as I descended. I tried to see 360 degrees. There was nothing. Where there had once been a diver swimming up fast, overtaking Mae, I now only saw waves of bubbles billowing up from below.
My body ached in the freezing temperatures. The water was so cold that I doubted my perception. I had no wetsuit, no hood. Without any protection, even my brain was being frozen.
Same as Mae.
Mae had gone in without a wetsuit, wearing her street clothes. She knew that a freedive was short enough that if she returned to the surface before succumbing to lack of air, she’d survive the cold.
Her determination gave me focus. I would do whatever I could to help her.
But first I had to find her.
I’d been in the water for at least a half minute, maybe 45 seconds, racing down into the dark. I didn’t know how deep I was, but I assumed I was 60 or more feet down. I should have already come to Mae.
I scanned in all directions as I plunged down, trying to see where Mae was.
Then it felt as though I’d been dropped into ice.
Mae said the thermocline was 70 feet down, the point where the water below didn’t mix with the water above. I’d never been in 39-degree-water. It was brutal. It seemed to burn my skin. Even if I had an air supply, without a wetsuit my life expectancy would be a few minutes at the maximum. I could feel my muscles going numb from cold. I was losing control of them.
The wicked cold ache in my body was overtaken by the need to breathe. The need was desperate. Overwhelming. I tried to resist the sharp panic of drowning.
Mae had explained that, in the beginning, the need for air was more perception than physical need. A freediver needed to resist that terrifying perception. Mind over matter. But I couldn’t resist. My lungs wanted to expand. As much as anything I’d ever experienced, I wanted to suck in lungfuls of air.
But there was only water. I was far below the surface.
I was distracted by movement. To my side. Down below. I moved my arms to let the weights pull me in that direction.
I saw two figures. The scuba diver without the mask was swimming down into the depths. He was holding Mae. Dragging her deeper despite her flotation vest. Forcing her to drown.
Mae struggled. She writhed and jerked. Air bubbles escaped her mouth as she fought. Her vest no longer appeared inflated. Had it not worked? No, it was carrying her to the surface when I first saw her. Something had happened that caused it to deflate.
The man had her from behind, one arm locked around her. She was helpless against his size and strength.
I adjusted my downward glide to come from directly above and behind the man. The bubbles from his exhalation rose up around me, obscuring my vision. I had no choice but to make my best guess as to his position.
For a brief moment, the bubbles stopped and I could see.
I was almost on him. I transferred my weight belts to my left hand and used them to strike his head from behind. He was wearing a thick neoprene hood, so the blow was cushioned. But it startled him. He let go of Mae and twisted trying to see what happened, trying to grab me.
With my right hand I grabbed for his air hose and jerked it hard. It came out of his mouth. I held the mouthpiece toward Mae. She understood, grabbed it, put it in her mouth and inhaled.
The man was reaching down toward his leg.
His hand came up with a knife, a long blade, shiny despite the darkness of our depth. Because I had a face mask, I could see better than he could. I grabbed at the free end of the weight belts so that I had them at each end. By rotating my body, I got the belts around his forearm. He stabbed up with the knife. I leaned to the side, dodging the blow, and twisted the belts on his arm. My need to breathe was causing black spots in my vision. I was close to losing consciousness. And the cold was taking all the strength out of my muscles. But I managed to jerk the weight belts hard as I kneed the man in his stomach.
The thickness of water reduces any attempt at a blow to a fraction of what it would be in air. Nevertheless, the blow made the man bend at the waist. His knife struck again but hit one of the weights on the belts. I turned and swung my elbow across his mouth. My skin was numb from the cold, but I could tell my elbow hit something hard. I hoped it was his teeth. Then I dropped the weight belts and grabbed his wrist with both of my hands. I tried to break his wrist, hoping the pain would cause him to loosen his grip on the knife.
It worked. He dropped it, the shiny blade shooting down into the deep blue. He reached up and jerked off my face mask.
Now I couldn’t see. Where once I could clearly see Mae and the scuba diver, now I saw vague shapes that seemed like more divers. But all was obscured by the never-ending curtains of bubbles.
The cold was paralyzing. I could barely move. And my need to breathe seemed greater than any desire I’d ever experienced. In my wavering consciousness, I realized that I was down to a few seconds before I passed out.
I also realized that Mae was still there, somewhere in the bubbles. If the scuba diver still had a hold on her, maybe my last act could be to break that hold. I twisted one last time. The diver was just a dark shape. It seemed there was another dark shape. But I knew I might be hallucinating as I went unconscious. I got my hands on the diver’s neck. He made a guttural scream as if in agony beyond any pain I could cause in my weakened state. As if with a herculean effort, he got away from me and, in a huge cloud of bubbles, started swimming up.
Something hit me in the face. The scuba regulator. Mae was handing it to me. I grabbed it, felt it being pulled away because it was still attached to the diver.
I hung on and put it in my mouth and breathed hard and fast. Over and over.
