He leaned closer and saw Coffin’s glazed, lifeless eyes staring at the sky. Drying blood trickled from his mouth.
Sanders put his fingers to the base of Coffin’s neck and felt for a pulse: nothing. Then he sprang to his feet and ran.
He stopped at the water’s edge, just long enough to pull his flippers on his feet, then dove over a small wave and swam frantically toward the boat.
“He’s dead!” Sanders gasped as Treece dragged him aboard. “They must’ve thrown him off the cliff.”
Treece squeezed Sanders’ wrist. “You’re sure?”
“Positive! No breathing, no pulse, no nothing.”
“Shitst”
Roughly, Treece cast Sanders’ hand away.
Sanders thought: That’s a strange elegy-shit. But what more was there to say? The expletive was eloquent enough, conveying anger and dismay.
He looked at Gail. Her whole body was shivering, and her breaths were short, almost sobs. She stared fixedly at the water. He went to her and put his arms around her. She did not react to his touch, did not recoil from the cold clamminess of his wet suit. He breathed on her hair and whispered, “Okay… okay.”
She looked up at him and said flatly, “I want to go home.”
“I know,” he said.
“I want to go home now. It can’t be worse than this.”
Sanders started to speak, but Treece, gazing at the cliffs, spoke first: “No goin’ home now. He’s ready to make his move.”
Sanders said, “What move?”
“I imagine he thinks his divers are ready; doesn’t need us any more. I thought we had a bit of time, but we have got no bloody time at all.” He slammed the gear lever all the way forward. The engine growled, the propeller cavitated, then bit into the sea, and the boat lunged toward the reefs.
When they had reached the reef and set the anchor, Treece said to Sanders, “Can she dive?”
“I’m not sure. I’ll…”
“I can dive,” said Gail. “I can’t be alone up here. I’ll get down all right, if I take my time.”
“I hate like hell to leave us empty topside,” said Treece. “Charlotte’s not too handy with a shotgun. But I don’t see we have a choice. He may not try anything else tonight, figure he shook us good enough for one day.”
They dressed, and Gail mounted her regulator on an air tank.
“You two take the lights,” Treece said.
“Keep ’em trained on the nozzle of the gun. Use your free hands to collect the glass. I’ll try not to get ahead of you.” Treece started the compressor and tossed the air-lift hose overboard. “Christ, that monster makes a din. If it weren’t for the bloody gun, we could leave her quiet and use bottles.”
They went into the water and switched on the lights.
Treece looked at David and Gail, nodded his head, and dove for the bottom.
The dog stood on the bow, watching the lights recede into the darkness, sniffing the warm night air.
Sanders and Treece reached the bottom first. Gail lingered behind, descending as fast as her ears and sinuses would permit. There was something different about the air she was breathing; it seemed to have a faint taste, mildly sweet, but it was having no ill effect, so she continued to the bottom.
They were working away from the reef, perhaps ten yards from the little cave, in a new field of ampules.
Sanders’ light was steady on the mouth of the air lift, and he picked the ampules out of the hole one by one.
Gail settled across the hole from Treece and lay on her stomach, a canvas bag at her side.
She felt no tenseness at all, no worry; she was surprised, in fact, at how relaxed she felt. Even when the air lift uncovered an artillery shell, her mind registered it as a thing, not a concern.
Treece did not bother to remove the artillery shell. He dug around it, and when the air lift exposed another piece of ordnance-a long, thicker brass canister-he simply avoided it, too. Soon, however, he could not avoid the shells; they were everywhere, mixed in with thousands of ampules.
Treece signaled for a move to the right, and pushing off the bottom with his left hand, he floated six or eight feet away. Sanders followed directly behind him.
It took Gail several seconds to realize they were gone. She stared at the hole in the sand, thinking vague, dreamy thoughts, enjoying the pretty yellow air hose that snaked through the water after David.
Her eyes followed the hose, and when at last she saw the two men, she ambled casually along the sand, letting her light play on the colors in the reef.
She didn’t want to shine the light in the new hole Treece was digging; she preferred to watch two yellow fish that cruised around the reef and glowed when the light struck them. But she saw Sanders look at her and point insistently at the air lift, so she swung her body around and drifted to the bottom.
She yawned, feeling wonderful-warm and cozy in the black water.
Sanders worked within the beam of his own light, intent on gathering the ampules as fast as he could, face pressed close to the bottom.
It was Treece who first noticed that the radius of light was too small. He raised his head from the hole and saw Gail’s light bobbing aimlessly in the water, beam swinging from surface to bottom and side to side.
By the time Sanders thought to look up, Treece had already sprung. He kicked violently toward Gail’s light, tearing the Desco mask off his face as he moved. He wrenched the light from Gail’s hand and shone it on her face; her eyes were closed, her head hung limply. Treece dropped the light and reached for her head, pulled the regulator out of her mouth, and knocked off her mask. Then he put a hand behind her head and forced her face into the Desco mask. He raised his knee and, carefully, shoved it into her stomach.
Sanders didn’t know what was happening; all he saw was the beam of the other light, lying in the sand. He swung his light upward and found motion, fixed on it, and pushed off the bottom. Treece’s hands surrounded Gail’s head. Weak streams of bubbles-from the mask, from Gail’s regulator, and from Treece’s mouth-shepherded them to the surface.
Treece reached the diving platform, exhaled the last of his breath, and let his mask fall from Gail’s face. He pushed her onto the platform, face down, and, while he hauled himself after her, began to press rhythmically on her back.
Sanders’ head broke water. He saw Treece kneeling, heard him saying, “Come on… give me a hearty one… come on… there we go… there we go… whups!” There was a gagging sound, a splash, then Treece’s voice again, “There we go… one more time… there we go… okay… there’s the girl… one more time… that’s a good one.” Treece sat back on his heels.
“Sonofabitch! That was frightful close.”
Through a fog of semiconsciousness, Gail felt a scratchy pain in her throat and tasted acid, watery vomit.
She was nauseous; a heavy, throbbing ache filled her skull. She groaned feebly and heard Sanders say, “What happened?” Then she felt herself being lifted, and Treece’s voice saying, “Know in a minute.”
Treece lay her on the deck, on her side. He bent over and opened one of her eyes with his thumb. “Okay?”
The other eye felt heavy, but she forced it open and whispered, “Yes.”
Treece picked up her regulator hose and held the mouthpiece under his nose. He pushed the purge valve, and air from the tank squirted up his nostrils. “Lordy.” He grimaced. “By rights, you should be having tea with the Angel Gabriel.”
“What is it?”
“Carbon monoxide.”
“Exhaust?” Sanders said. “From the compressor?”
“Not from the compressor. I told you, it’s vented right.”
“From what then?”
“Someone knew what he was doing, probably backed a car up to the air intake.”
