Nighthawk

41

Kurt had been pulled back into the water, a surprising sensation. He’d recovered by kicking hard and pulling his legs clear. No sooner was he free than he felt something heavy wrap around his neck and pull tight. At first he thought it was a metal chain, but he came to realize it was a diver’s weight belt.

He grabbed at the belt and pulled, but it was being twisted tight by whoever had swum in behind him. As he struggled with the first attacker, a second diver moved out of the shadow beneath the Zodiac. This one wore a gray wet suit and a squared-off mask. He carried an eight-inch knife, which he thrust toward Kurt.

Using the man behind him as leverage, Kurt twisted to the side. Instead of puncturing his rib cage, the knife only skewered his buoyancy control device, or BCD, sending a flood of bubbles into the water. Before the man could strike again, Kurt kicked him in the face, shattering his square mask and knocking his regulator free. A second kick caught him in the teeth and sent the man fleeing toward the surface.

One down, Kurt thought, one to go.

The weight belt was choking him.

As he struggled, both Kurt and his assailant were sinking fast. They grappled all the way to the bottom, where they crashed into the sediment with surprising force.

With somewhere to plant his feet, Kurt gained back some control. He fired an elbow backward into his attacker. The grip loosened but the man grabbed Kurt’s main air line and ripped it free.

Kurt felt the helmet pulled to the side, saw a second explosion of silvery air bubbles and was tackled and forced down into the silt before he could do anything about it.

Kurt was on his back. His attacker — whom Kurt recognized as Urco’s associate Vargas — was holding him down, pressing him into the sediment as if to bury him. It was a simple strategy. Kurt would black out before long.

Holding his breath, Kurt reached for his own knife, but Vargas kicked his wrist and knocked it free.

In desperation, Kurt fired a punch upward, hoping to catch Vargas in the neck, but the blow was deflected by one of the man’s large forearms. A second punch hit Vargas in the solar plexus but did nothing to make him back off.

As Kurt fought, the struggle took on a surreal appearance: sediment swirled around them; the light strapped to Kurt’s wrist flicked this way and that. Kurt sensed his muscles growing weary from lack of oxygen. He saw Vargas pull out his own knife and raise it for a lethal blow. It came plunging down hard. At the very same moment, Kurt thrust his knee upward, slamming it into the man’s groin.

Both impacts occurred simultaneously.

Vargas spit out his regulator and doubled over in agony. Kurt felt the impact of the blade and watched the water around them churn red in the light.

With a last desperate grab, Kurt reached upward and grabbed Vargas’s mouthpiece and snapped it off with a twist.

Vargas reacted with instinctive panic. He pushed off the bottom with both feet, launching himself toward the surface and leaving Kurt behind in a swirling haze of crimson water.