Ryan Lockwood - Below

Sturman glanced at his air gauge. Twelve hundred psi of air remained in the tank—maybe eight minutes of bottom time, if he wanted to be really conservative. Sturman was rarely conservative with his own air, but he never put his clients at risk. The divers he had in tow would almost certainly run out of air sooner. He had let the foursome leave in pairs ten minutes ago, and had been studying a patch of giant white-plumed anemones sprouting from the deck like oversized cauliflower. The Metridiums fluttering in the current were each over a foot tall and practically as wide.

Sturman looked at his watch. It was time to round everyone up and return to the surface. Two of the divers had returned ahead of schedule and rested on the deck beside him near the base of the anchor chain. In another minute, he would need to go looking for the other two, but he could wait a little longer. He preferred to keep the whole group together as a dive wound down and air ran low. Just then he noticed a faint light in the distance, moving toward them down the hull.

As the light approached, Sturman realized something wasn’t right. There was only one beam pointed toward him, closing on him fast. Every diver had brought down a dive light, and they had been instructed to stay in pairs.

Sturman made eye contact with the pair next to him and signaled for them to ascend to the safety stop near the surface. The divers gave him an “okay” signal with thumb and forefinger, the universal scuba message indicating they were all right and understood. The two divers began to kick upward as Sturman finned toward the lone diver approaching along the foredeck.

Looking into the diver’s mask, Sturman could see by the man’s expression that he was terrified. Jack, Sturman remembered. His name is Jack. Jack was trying to pantomime something to him, but since he was unable to speak underwater, it wasn’t clear what he was trying to get across. And their air was running out.

Sturman held up his hand in the other diver’s face, palm outward: Stop. He then looked the panicked man in the eyes and gave a large, exaggerated shrug: Where is she? Where is your dive buddy?

The diver looked back at Sturman for a moment, exhaling a burst of bubbles through his regulator, then shook his head and shrugged back. Either this guy didn’t understand the question or didn’t have the answer. Sturman squeezed the man’s shoulder and pointed to the mooring line, then gave a thumbs-up: Ascend the chain now. The man shook his head no—understandable, since it was his wife he had left behind. Will squeezed the man’s shoulder again, harder this time, and locked eyes with the man, repeating the command to ascend.

One thousand psi. Sturman was beginning to worry. He had made sure the reluctant diver had begun his ascent up the mooring line and then, with a series of powerful kicks, had set off alone down the length of the sunken destroyer. Past huge double guns, each large enough to shove a soccer ball into the barrel, past a metal bridge rising several stories off the deck. He had covered almost the full length of the wreck, but hadn’t seen any sign of the missing woman.

His mind went through scenarios as he weighed the possibilities and his options. He had about six minutes before he would have to ascend. The woman probably had simply been separated from her husband, and would head up soon on her own. She had logged a lot of previous dives, and Sturman had taken this group out before without incident. But there was another possibility. She could be trapped somewhere, or lost within the ship. Not likely, though. No. She had simply become separated from her dive buddy, so he hadn’t been able to help her.

Eight hundred psi. Sturman had reached a large opening amidships and headed down into the darkness of the hull. Now he was moving along the upper interior deck, passing through hatches that mercifully had had their doors removed. If it had been dim in the water outside the ship, in here it was truly black. The little bit of sunlight that filtered down through over a hundred feet of particle-laden water was unable to penetrate the intermittent openings in the ship to offer any illumination in its belly. The waters of Southern California were not the clear waters of the Caribbean.

Sturman’s whole world had become the single cone of light emitted by his powerful dive light, which reached through a dozen or so feet of black water swirling with detritus before being absorbed by the darkness.

Six hundred psi. Sturman swam through an opening in the deck, down into the next lowest level. Looking up into the light streaming down from a hatch through particles in the water above him, he thought, not for the first time, that being inside this ship was almost like being in an underwater cathedral.

He wondered how quickly he would be able to get out of here when it was time to scramble for the surface. He needed five hundred psi for an adequate safety stop. Damn lady must be crazy. What the hell was she up to? Stay calm, Will. He took a slow, deep breath. If she was here, he would find her.

Four hundred and fifty psi. The ship was a labyrinth. It all looked the same. In his light, Sturman saw only empty spaces and small, square rooms no matter where he was in the innards of the wreck. Walls and hatches crusted over with barnacles. An occasional fish darting through the beam of light. It was past time to head for the surface.

Fairly certain he had thoroughly searched the upper level, Sturman reached another hole in the floor, a stairwell leading into the next level down. Two levels under the main deck, he reminded himself. He figured he was somewhere near the stern of the boat now, but everything looked the same. He had been inside this boat many times, but never in a hurry. He had always planned on where he would go, followed a predetermined route. He forced himself to think about the locations of emergency escapes on each level.

Three hundred psi. A few minutes of air left. Sturman could only hope the diver had gotten to the surface on her own. Maybe she had ascended while he was in here searching, but he had no way of knowing. He glanced again at his gauges. Now three levels down into the ship, he was somewhere near the outer hull and a hundred and twenty feet down. He was going through his air so fast now that he could have watched it drop on the gauge as he took each breath. One more hatch , he thought, then I need to surface.

The seriousness of it hit him. Jesus, don’t let her be trapped down here.

No more time. He had to ascend—now. He reached the next room, and finning through it, he saw a faint light maybe thirty feet ahead and to the left. One of the holes cut into the hull before the boat had been sunk. Essentially an emergency exit. He headed toward it as he sensed his air supply dwindling, moving impossibly slow in the water, as if the ship wasn’t going to let him leave. He entered the next chamber and something glinted in the beam of his dive light.

He’d found her.

Two hundred psi.

Like an animal caught in a trap, the woman was thrashing in the beam of light, kicking up sediment and clouding the dark water. No bubbles rose from her mouthpiece. She may have just now run out of the last breath of air and was in a state of desperate panic to free herself. Sturman kicked toward her, pulling his regulator out of his mouth. He spun her around forcefully as he reached her, holding the mouthpiece in front of her foggy mask. She spit out her own mouthpiece, snatching his and forcing it between her lips.

She drew a huge breath, exhaling an explosion of bubbles around his face. Sturman reached back and grabbed the Spare Air canister attached to his buoyancy control vest. There was no way this lady was going to relinquish his mouthpiece and share it so they could buddy breathe together, and there wasn’t enough air in his main tank for both of them anyway, so using his octopus was out of the question.