The Pharaoh's Secret

32

Kurt pushed the diver to one side and brought the Picasso up to shoot, but the attacking diver was too close and they ended up grappling instead of spearing each other.

To Kurt’s chagrin, the attacker was in a full-face helmet and had on a partial hard suit. Otherwise, Kurt would have simply ripped the guy’s mask off. Instead, they twisted and rolled until Kurt got the man in a headlock, engaged the thrusters and accelerated toward an outcropping of wood and coral that had once been the bow of the Sophie C.

The attacker dropped the speargun and went for a knife, but before he could use it Kurt dragged him across the high point of the bow, slamming the back of the diver’s head into the outcropping at maximum speed.

The diver went limp on impact, dropping the knife and sinking toward the bottom with his arms outstretched, knocked-out at the very least.

Two more men came racing toward him from the far side of the work site. Like the first man, these men were wearing full-face helmets, but, unlike the man he’d just knocked out, they were being pushed through the water by propulsion units of their own.

A spear shot past Kurt, leaving a trail of bubbles in its wake. Kurt dove for the bottom, kicking up silt to act as a smokescreen.

He engaged his own thrusters at full speed and the cloud grew behind him. He remembered an old adage from a World War II fighter pilot he’d worked with years back: Always turn left in the clouds. Why left and not right, he didn’t know, but if it was good enough for the skies over Midway, it was good enough for the bottom of the sea.

He kept the throttle of his dive suit wide open and banked to the left, dragging his foot to kick more sediment. The trick worked for a moment, but the lights of one frogman came rushing out through the cloud. He spotted Kurt and raised a weapon.

Kurt turned, and instead of the whoosh of another spear, Kurt heard the dull, muted thumping of a rifle. It sounded an awful lot like the venerable AK-47.

One of the shoulder-mounted wings of his suit shattered. Kurt continued to move, kicking furiously in addition to the power of the thrusters.

He made it to behind the wreck. “Joe, if you can hear me, I need help in a big way. It’s three against one and these guys are carrying underwater rifles. Their propulsion units look Russian to me, so I’m guessing the rifles are too.”

Kurt could think of two different rifles the Russians had designed for their Spetsnaz commandos and frogmen. A weapon called the APS, which fired special steel-core projectiles called bolts that were nearly five inches long. These heavy bolts cut through the water far better than any standard lead bullet, but they still had a limited range due to the density of water. At this depth, it couldn’t have been more than fifty to sixty feet, but as Kurt’s aching back attested, they could still deliver a thump even out of the effective killing distance.

“Joe, do you read me? Joe?”

Another thing dense water did was limit even the most advanced communications systems. Joe was out of range. He looked left to the stern of the Sophie Celine, there were lights coming around that way. He glanced to the right and saw the same thing.

“Three killers out to get me and only two spears,” he muttered. “Next time, I’m bringing a whole stack of spearguns.”

He decided to go right, moving forward, gripping the speargun with both hands. The lights of the other diver came out of the gloom. Kurt focused on them and fired. The spear ran true, hitting the attacker in the shoulder just below the collarbone and coming out through his back.

A tornado of bubbles whirled as the man writhed in agony like a spiked tuna. Instead of down, he spiraled upward, grabbing at his wound and releasing the rifle.

Kurt let him go and dove for the rifle, which vanished into the gloom.

“Lights on,” he said.

The left wing light was shattered, but the light on his right shoulder came on instantly. Its illumination reflected off the sinking weapon and at the same time also gave away Kurt’s position.

A fair trade.

Kurt dove hard, only to hear the thudding of another rifle. Bolts dug into the silt in front of him and Kurt had no choice but to turn or be killed.

The last two divers were converging on him. Kurt steadied himself and released the final spear, aiming at the man with the rifle. The effect was lethal, right through the neck. The man went limp and began drifting in a glowing pool of blood.

He turned back to where he thought the fallen rifle had hit bottom, arriving on the spot at the same time as the last surviving member of the attacking force did.

Both of them grabbed the weapon, Kurt locking onto the grip and the stock as his opponent grabbed the barrel. Kurt had a better position and pulled it free.

He tried to bring it around and fire, but the other diver was too close. He threw an arm around Kurt’s helmet, grabbing for Kurt’s air hose.

Kurt kneed him in the stomach and the man released the hose but pulled out something Kurt hadn’t expected: an explosive bang stick, designed to kill sharks or anything else it touches. Kurt blocked the diver’s arm and grabbed his wrist to prevent the explosive tip from hitting his side, where it would have blown a hole in him. He’d seen those weapons take out a fifteen-foot shark with one lethal touch. He had no desire to go the same way — or any way, for that matter.

The two were locked together, spinning in a whirl of weightless combat. The light on Kurt’s shoulder reflected off the man’s mask. Blinding both of them, but still they grappled.

Only now did Kurt realize how much larger this man was than him. Grabbing onto Kurt’s shoulder wing, his attacker gained more leverage, and despite Kurt’s best effort, the bang stick began inching closer to his ribs.

The assailant had him dead to rights and he knew it. Kurt saw a lunatic’s grin on his face as he closed in for the kill.

And then a wave of light enveloped them both as a yellow blur came out of the dark and hit Kurt’s attacker like a speeding bus. Kurt reeled backward, thankful to see Joe in the Turtle pushing the man through the sea like a bull might a gored matador.

Joe didn’t stop until he rammed the man into the seafloor, crushing him under the weight and force of the Turtle and leaving him half buried in the silt.

Kurt dropped down to the bottom, grabbed the rifle again and waited for Joe to circle around.

The Turtle eased in next to Kurt. Joe’s smiling face was easy to see inside his helmet. “Would it be wrong to paint a dead bad guy symbol on the Turtle’s flank?” Joe asked.

“Not as far as I’m concerned,” Kurt said. “What took you so long?”

Joe grinned. “From out there, I couldn’t tell if you were just having fun or in real trouble. Wasn’t until I heard the rifles that I figured you were probably outgunned.”

Ironically, sound traveled a lot farther underwater than the projectiles or the radio transmissions.

“Have to hand it to the Russians,” he said. “They come up with some interesting firearms.”

“That ought to go nicely with your collection,” Joe said.

Kurt collected unique guns, gathered from all around the world. He’d begun with dueling pistols, had several rare automatic Bowen revolvers and had recently expanded to six-shooters from the Old West, including a Colt .45 he’d used to dispatch the last villain they’d faced.

“It will at that,” he said. “Though I have a feeling it’s going to get some more use before it becomes a display piece.”

“You realize we’re doing this backward,” Joe said. “So far, we’ve expended a great deal of effort to take the low ground. Not exactly classic military strategy.”

“With a little luck, they don’t know we’re here yet,” Kurt said.

He hit the thrusters and swam back to the wreck site, where the civilian divers, who were being used as slave labor, were gathering extra oxygen tanks from the equipment platform.

They turned defensively at Kurt and Joe’s arrival.

“Better switch on the closed-captioning,” Joe said.

“It’s okay,” Kurt said, activating the display. “Guards dead. We’ll get you out of here.”

One of them pointed upward and scribbled furiously on his whiteboard.

Worse chicken scratch Kurt had never seen.

“How long have you been down here?” he asked.

Four fingers were held up.

“Four hours at ninety feet,” Joe said.

They would have to be on Nitrox or Trimix, not pure oxygen. But, even then, having spent this much time at the bottom, they would need hours to decompress on their way to the surface. A quick inventory told him there were not enough tanks. Not even close. The divers were dead unless another option was found.

Kurt put a hand on the lead diver’s shoulder and shook his head. “You can’t go up.”

The diver shook his head right back and pointed to the surface again.

“You’ll get the bends,” Kurt said.

The diver read the words on the small screen and then pointed upward again. Following that, he made a strange motion with his hands.

“I don’t know what you’re trying to say,” Kurt replied.

The diver seemed panicked. Kurt needed to calm him down. He pointed to the diver’s whiteboard. “Write slowly.”

The diver took the board into his hand, erased what he had scribbled before and wrote more methodically this time, like a child patiently trying to perfect his ABCs. When he was finished, he turned the board around and showed it to Kurt.

He’d written one word. It was easy to read.

BOMB!