The Steel Shark

Chapter 6

Joe pointed to the red emergency suit under Vivian’s seat, but she gave him a puzzled look. She must not know exactly what he was pointing to. Maybe her head wound was more serious than he’d thought. He pointed again. She followed his gesture and found the suit.

Relief bloomed across her face as she took it out. Clumsily, she began to put it on with her good hand. Not that it would help if he couldn’t get her out of the sub.

He studied his yellow submarine. The bastard piloting the giant sub had crushed his ship into the mud. Hopefully, the door release remained intact.

Blood ran down Vivian’s face and splattered onto the floor. Head wounds always bled a lot, right? It didn’t mean it was serious. Not really.

He anchored himself on the ocean floor and yanked on the hatch. The sub remained as immobile as a building, the weight of the ocean anchoring it. He’d expected that, but he had to try. He couldn’t let Vivian die in the sub. Not on his watch. Not Vivian.

Frantically, Edison dug. The dog couldn’t dig the sub out. He was fouling the water and making it hard to see.

Joe swam over to him, grabbed a handle sewn onto the top of Edison’s BCD and hauled him away. Edison looked at him, brown eyes wide with anxiety.

Joe tugged the dog back to the front of the sub. That was the only part not buried, and the only place they could extricate Vivian. He would figure it out.

She still struggled with her emergency suit. He was glad it was loose-fitting. She’d never be able to get into an ordinary wetsuit with a broken arm. He wished he’d sent her off to get the flag and stayed in the sub himself, but he’d mistakenly thought she would be safer inside than out.

She finished and gave him a thumbs-up sign. In the regular world, that meant you were OK, and in the diving world, it meant you wanted to surface. Both interpretations were accurate.

She pointed up at hairline cracks in the bubble. Water dripped through and pooled on the floor. It wouldn’t be long before the cockpit was full. That would equalize the pressure and make it easier to open.

Vivian wasn’t going to wait that long, and he didn’t know how to tell her to. She lay down on her back, positioned both feet against the bubble and pushed. Fresh blood ran down her face inside her hood. The bubble didn’t budge.

If those jackasses could reverse the big sub, she could get out. How could he tell them? He couldn’t exactly knock on their front door. He didn’t have a radio and, even if he did, he had no idea what their frequency might be, or if they were even listening.

The other sub was, in fact, ominously quiet. It had to be some kind of equipment malfunction. Otherwise, they’d have seen the two tiny subs before they hit them.

Unless it was deliberate.

Dull thuds vibrated below his hands. She was kicking the crap out of the bubble. With the pressure above, she’d never get it open.

He took the dive knife out of his pocket and worked it under the mud into the hatch release. The knife slipped from his numb fingers. He grabbed it with his other hand and accidentally cut a dark line in his palm. He was so deep underwater his blood looked green instead of red, like Vulcan blood.

Her kicks seemed to be losing steam. She must be getting tired. He hoped she wouldn’t wear herself out. She’d need to save something to get to the surface.

But the surface was a long way away.

First, he had to open the hatch release. A thread of blood drifted up from his palm. Hopefully, the great white shark they’d followed earlier had better things to do than circle back and eat him.

He worked the knife blade into the broken hatch release and levered. The hatch moved. He thrust the knife in farther, turned it. The hatch moved again.

She’d stopped kicking.

He slid the blade around and pressed down on the release. The hatch creaked.

He braced his back against the giant submarine’s hull and lifted with his legs. She strained from the other side, bloodied face inches away.

The hatch cracked open, and water rushed in. She dropped back. Together, they watched the cockpit fill with seawater. It wouldn’t fill all the way — the air inside would prevent that — but it ought to fill enough that they could open the hatch once the pressure had equalized. He held up his hand, palm out, to tell her to wait. Her eyes were wide, and she looked like she was hyperventilating. Vivian was the toughest woman he knew, solid under pressure. Except underwater.

He was making her worst nightmare come true.

Once the bubble was as full as it looked like it was going to get, he forced the hatch open wider. It moved much more easily now.

Her hand came through the edge of the hatch, then her arm.

She pushed through the small opening, and he pulled from his side. A tight fit. Bubbles rushed out of her suit as she exhaled. For a brief instant, he thought she wouldn’t make it, but then she popped free, and they both shot back almost a yard.

Edison swam up close to her, and she reached down to pet his back. Edison was best in the world at comforting panicky people. As Joe’s psychiatric service dog, he’d had plenty of practice. Vivian hugged the dog hard, and Edison licked the inside of the bubble surrounding his head.

With a visible effort, she let go of the dog and turned to Joe. He pointed toward the surface. She probably couldn’t see much in this darkness, but up was where they wanted to go.

Slowly, he kicked off from the side of the sub. He tugged on her suit while holding on to the handle on Edison’s suit. Joe’s flashlight dangled from a strap on his wrist. He had everything he needed.

He spared a glance toward the black sub. Tiny bubbles drifted up along the sides. The prince was probably already dead, and he felt torn. After he got Vivian to safety, he’d check.

Vivian had found a flashlight and turned it on. He guided her hand so the light shone on his face. He pointed to her suit, to the surface, and blew out air in a steady stream. He held his breath and waited for the bubbles to disperse, then shook his head.

She nodded. Hopefully, she remembered the briefing he’d given her on the emergency suit: Once you pull the tab to go up, don’t hold your breath, instead breathe out in a steady stream to avoid an embolism or a collapsed lung. Or at least he hoped she remembered, because he didn’t have any other way to communicate with her. He had to get her to the surface as soon as he could, in case the black sub had run into him on purpose.

Carefully, he pushed her, turning her around so her back was to him. He reached across her and pulled the tab. Her suit headed toward the surface. In a few seconds, he couldn’t even see her boots, just the tiny speck of light on the back of her suit rising toward the surface.

He wished he could have hung on and ridden her suit’s momentum to the top, but he worried Edison might hold his breath, and the dog’s lungs or ears might be damaged. As smart as he was, Edison couldn’t understand the safety briefing.

They’d have to go up the old-fashioned way, slowly. If someone from the large sub had bad intentions, he’d do the best he could. At least Vivian was out of danger.

He turned toward the smashed submarine. A light flickered, and he aimed for it. Unlikely the pilot was alive, but Joe had to check. Vivian had survived the initial impact. Maybe the prince had gotten lucky, too.

Edison swam nearby, yellow legs paddling hard. He was part Labrador, a water dog. He’d always been a strong swimmer, but had become even stronger since they started going out diving from the yellow submarine.

The giant sub hadn’t stirred. Was it disabled? If so, ought he try to rescue the people inside? He had no idea how. They probably had an adequate air supply, and no giant bubbles indicated a hull breach. He’d send someone down after he got to the surface. They’d nearly killed Vivian, and he wasn’t feeling too kindly toward them.

He looked in the direction where he’d first seen the prince’s submarine. A light sputtered, but there were no more bubbles. The little sub must have been crushed under the giant hull.

Joe swam toward the trapped submarine. Shattered plastic glittered under the beam of his dive light. The impact had broken the cockpit bubble. The flashlight blinked off. He banged his light against his thigh, and it came back on, but who knew for how long. Quickly, he swept his light over the remains. A pale hand stretched out from the mud.

Joe swam down to touch it. The hand felt so cold he almost dropped it. Gritting his teeth, he peeled back the man’s diving suit to feel his wrist.

No pulse.

How could there be? The body was crushed under the hulking black submarine. Joe wished he could bring the body to the surface. If he left it here, it might never be recovered. The visibility was low, and it was a big ocean. A dive team could search for a long time without finding something so small as a human body.

He held up a hand to tell Edison to stay still, then descended until he was eye level with the hand. A slow examination in a grid pattern revealed no way to extract the corpse.

He’d have to leave the body for someone else.