Peter Benchley - The Deep

“What that noise?”

“What noise?”

Gail clutched the shotgun to her middle, one hand around the trigger guard, the other on the pump slide.

“ That noise.”

“I don’t hear no noise.”

“Well, I do. Somethin’ on that boat.”

“Shit. Dog only thing on that boat.”

“Somethin’ inside that boat.”

“You jumpy, man.”

“You go “head over. I gon” cuddle this boat up to that boat and have me a look.”

A laugh. “You be careful. That dog bite your ass.”

“I shoot that sucker with a spear gun.”

A splash, another, a few incoherent words, then silence.

Gail waited. She heard the sound of a paddle sweeping through the water, looked aft, and saw the shadow of the other boat drawing near.

She stepped around the bulkhead, the shotgun at her waist. The man was in the stern of the other boat, looking down at the water and paddling. She didn’t have to see his face; the angry red scar shone black against his dark chest: Slake.

“What do you want?”

Slake looked up.

In the brief glimpse Gail had of his face, she saw surprise, then glee. What followed seemed a single motion: he dropped the paddle, bent to the deck, righted himself. Something shiny in his hand. A twanging sound, tightened elastic released. A flash of metal. The thunk of a steel spear in the bulkhead six inches from her neck.

Then (she would not remember all of this) the click-clack of the shotgun cocking. The roaring boom of the twelve-gauge shell exploding. The sight of Slake, three yards away, as the nine pellets struck him in the sternum-a baseball-size hole, red ooze flecked with white-staggering backward across the cockpit, striking the windward gunwale, sagging, hands clutching at his chest. A gurgling rush of breath. Echo of the explosion across the still water. Eyes rolling up in his head. Skin color graying as the blood left the head. Slump to the deck.

The steady chug of the compressor.

Open-mouthed, she watched the twitching body. The slap of water against Corsair ’s hull brought her out of shock. She put the shotgun on the deck, walked aft to the compressor, found the wing nut, and turned it. The motor sputtered and died.

Sanders freed the last two inches of gold rope.

He tapped the aluminum tube and saw it withdraw from the hole, gathered the rope in his right hand, and backed out onto the reef. The light was fading fast, but in the blue-gray mist he could still see Treece and the reflections off the air lift and the outline of the reef. Assuming that they would keep digging for more gold, Sanders opened his wet-suit jacket and stuffed the gold rope inside.

Sanders sensed a change in the sound patterns; something was missing. He exhaled, drew another breath, and realized what was missing: the compressor. He strained to fill his lungs one last time, looked at Treece, and saw a glint and a shadow falling toward him. The glint moved-a knife. Treece’s air hose stiffened, the glint slashed back and forth, and the air hose went limp. Treece turned and raised his arms over his head.

Two men struggled in a twisting ball of shadows, a flurry of arms and hoses and bubbles, the shape of the knife falling to the bottom. Thrashing and kicking, the forms rose toward the surface.

Sanders held his breath, fighting panic. He kicked off the bottom and followed the thrashing figures, rising slowly, remembering to exhale, searching for other shadows in the gloom.

The shape of the figures changed. He could see Treece clearly now, his long body extended vertically, flippers kicking steadily. His hands were clasped around the other man’s head. The man’s regulator and mouthpiece floated away from his tank. For a moment, Sanders thought Treece was helping the man reach the surface. Then, as he saw the man’s arms-pinned to his sides-struggling to wrestle free, saw the legs kicking feebly, Sanders knew what Treece was doing: his hand was clamped over the man’s mouth and nose, preventing him from exhaling. The compressed air in the man’s lungs would be expanding as he was dragged to the surface. With no exit from mouth or nose, the air would be forced through the lining of the lungs.

Sanders had a split-second recollection of a diagram he had seen in a diving book: a ruptured lung, a pocket of air in the chest cavity collapsing the lung, forcing still more air into the chest cavity, that air ramming the collapsed lung and other organs across the chest cavity and collapsing the other lung. Bilateral spontaneous pneumothorax. The man might well be dead before he reached the surface. Briefly, Sanders wondered if the man would feel pain or would simply pass out and die of anoxia.

Sanders was ten feet from the surface, and now all he could think of was getting air. The tightness in his chest lessened as he rose nearer the top; he knew he could make it. But what was up there waiting for him?

Suddenly his head was snapped backward, and he was pulled toward the bottom. Something had grabbed his air hose. He reached for his mask, trying to wrench it off his head, but the pressure on the straps was too great. His flailing hands found the hose and pulled against the downward force. In the twilight blue, he could only see a few feet of the yellow hose. Then there was a flicker of steel, and he saw, rising at him-climbing his air hose-a man with a spear gun.

Sanders’ head throbbed with the need for oxygen.

He yanked frantically at the hose, but the man had a firm grip.

They were six feet apart when the man released the air hose, raised the spear gun, and aimed it at Sanders’ chest. Sanders kicked at the gun with his flippers, hoping to deflect the aim, but the man was patient. His cold eyes watched and waited for an interval between kicks.

A fuzz of dizziness passed through Sanders’ brain, and he knew he was dead. He waited for the flash of pain that would come as the spear pierced his wet suit and stabbed between his ribs. Maybe he would pass out first….

The man fired. Sanders saw the spear coming at him, felt the blow as it struck his chest, waited for the pain. But there was no pain.

A yellow blur. The spear gun jerked upward, spun out of the man’s hand, and fell. The man’s fingers tore at his throat; the mouthpiece flew from his mouth. Huge, gloved hands on each side of his neck knotted a length of air hose around his throat.

Then Sanders fainted. The pain in his head was gone, and he felt as if he were flying through a warm darkness.

He awoke on the surface. Gail’s hands cradled his face, holding the back of his head against the diving platform. He became aware of a face against his, a wet mouth engulfing his mouth, a blast of breath rattling down his throat. His eyes fluttered open and saw Treece’s face pull away.

“Welcome back,” Treece said.

Sanders’ mind was still foggy. “Did I drown?”

“Gave it a try. Another couple of seconds, you’d’ve been up there with Adam giving us the celestial eyeball. You’d better be glad the duchess was a greedy bitch.”

“What do you mean?”

“That bastard hit you full in the chest with his spear.

If it hadn’t been for the gold, you were dead.”

Sanders looked down and saw a neat hole in his wet suit. The spear had penetrated the rubber but had caromed off the gold rope he had stuffed inside his jacket.

Gail put her hands under Sanders’ armpits and, with Treece pushing from below, hauled Sanders onto the platform.

“How many were there?”

“Three. One’s floating out there somewhere, making terms with the devil. Your girl splashed another one all over their boat. The third one’s here.” Treece yanked his right hand, and a rubber-hooded head popped out of the water, a piece of yellow hose still wrapped around his neck.