Peter Benchley - The Deep

They could see the other boat, outlined against the moonlight. The corpse’s head bobbed to the surface, jerked up by the rope, then sank again.

Gail turned away and said, “My God!”

“Don’t waste sympathy on him,” Treece said.

“He can’t feel a thing.”

There was a thump against the leeward side of Corsair , followed by a grunt and another thump.

“What’s that?” Sanders said, worried that, somehow, more of Cloche’s divers were attacking. He looked over the side and saw white foam boiling up beside the boat.

Treece shined the light on the water, then quickly turned it off and said, “Next thing, they’ll eat the boat.” He went forward.

Sanders felt an acid pool rise in his throat, and he gagged at the taste. The few seconds of light had branded a nightmare image on his brain. What had thumped against the boat was a body, not that of the man tied to the other boat, but of the man Treece had killed earlier by preventing him from exhaling. And what had slammed the body against the boat was the broad, flat head of a shark. The head was the size of a manhole cover. Two nostrils flared on the snout, and the jaws snapped as the tail thrust forward, forcing more and more rubber and flesh into the mouth. The eyes looked sleepily evil, two-thirds covered by a white shield of membrane. While Sanders had watched, the head shook fiercely from side to side, and a two-foot crescent of flesh had begun to tear away.

Now, in darkness, Sanders could still see the white foam and hear the slapping of the tail and the crunch of teeth against bone and sinew.

“What is it? “Gail asked.

Sanders shook his head, trying not to vomit.

Gail looked out over the dark water at the receding shape of the other boat. “It’s so quiet,” she said.

“Aye,” Treece said, standing at the wheel. “Death is that.” He started the engine.

The trip back to St. David’s didn’t take long, for the night was calm and the moonlight bright.

They were still several hundred yards at sea when the offshore breeze brought them the strident sounds of taxi horns.

When he had secured the boat to the dock, Treece shut off the engine. Above the low murmur of wind they could hear the distant bleat of several taxi horns, apparently stationed at intervals around the island. The horns were blown in staccato bursts, with no rhythm or organization. Treece frowned. “What the hell is he up to now?”

“He?” Sanders said. “That’s Cloche? Those taxis?”

“Aye. There are no cabs on St. David’s. He’s making bush again.”

A shiver touched Sanders” spine. “I’ve about had it. I hope he’s not going to try anything more tonight.”

“If he was, you wouldn’t think he’d announce it.

Besides, what’s he think he’ll get from another visit? He doesn’t know anything about the cave, and he’s not fool enough to believe he can make us tell him.”

“Then why…?”

“I don’t know. He’s saying something, that’s for sure. If I had to guess, he’s spooking the Islanders, telling ’em to stay indoors-all bush.

But you’re right: If he’s doing that, it’d seem he’s planning to pay us a visit.”

Treece snapped his fingers at the dog and pointed to the path. “Well, whatever. I’ll go get a couple of Kevin’s cannons and fix him a royal welcome. Too bad we lost that shotgun. It was a fine people-eater.”

There was no rebuke in Treece’s voice, so all Sanders said was “Yeah.”

Treece started up the path after the dog, with the Sanderses following. “Any weapon’s only as good as the man using it,” Treece said, “and a good man can make a good weapon out of most anything. Ever kill a man with a knife?”

“Me?” Sanders said. “No.”

“There’s right ways and wrong ways. Most knives have three elements to ’em: the point, the sharp side, and the dull side. Depending on what you want to do to the fellow…”

Bringing up the rear, Gail tried to block out the conversation ahead of her. It was all becoming unreal, inhuman… terrifying. It seemed that a new Treece was speaking now-not a wounded man or a compassionate man or a sensitive man: a killer. But perhaps this wasn’t new, perhaps it was the boy talking, the boy who played by his own rules, and when the rules called for killing, he killed. What scared her most was that the man Treece was talking to, explaining the rules to, was her husband. She heard Sanders say, “Yeah, but he could still-was

“Not if you go deep enough,” Treece said. “You snip that spinal cord just like a thread, he goes all to jelly.”

“Stop!” Gail’s voice was so loud that it scared her.

“Hush, girl! Christ, you’ll wake the dead.”

The cut on Sanders” arm had stopped bleeding; a caked crusty streak of brownish red showed through his wet suit.

Treece handed him a bottle full of a dark, viscous brown liquid. “Here. Wash your arm off and lard some of this on it. I’m going to bury the jewels in the wall.”

“What is it?”

“My grandmother used to make it; bloody junk defies chemical analysis. There’s some mango derivative in it, and berry juice, and something that might or might not come from spirea bark. Rest of it’s a mystery. But it works.”

When she heard Treece’s feet hit the cellar floor, Gail said to David, “I’m frightened.”

“I don’t blame you.”

“Not for me. For you. Treece thinks this is a war.”

“That was talk.”

“ Talk . We killed three people.”

“We didn’t have much choice.” Sanders finished swabbing the medicine on his arm. “They tried to kill us.”

Gail heard the trap door close in the living room, and the sound of the chair scraping across the floor.

“This has gone far enough,” she whispered. “I can’t take much more.”

Treece came into the kitchen. From a cabinet he took what looked like a brick of modeling clay, the bottom half of a champagne bottle, some plastic-coated wire, a small rectangular magnet, an egg timer, and a little cardboard box.

He set the paraphernalia on the table and made himself a drink.

“Looks like shop,” Sanders said.

“What?” Treece sat down at the table.

“Shop class. In grade school. You know: modeling, carving, making things for Mom.”

“Aye.” Treece smiled. “But if you came home from school with this, your mom would run like a rabbit.” Treece pulled chunks of the gray claylike substance off the brick and stuffed them into the bottom of the champagne bottle. “Ever use this stuff?”

“What is it?” asked Gail.

“It’s called C-4. Plastic explosive. Fine stuff.”

“What do you use it for?”

“Normally, salvage work. Clearing harbors, knocking down piers, getting old wrecks out of the way, banging holes in reefs so ships can get through. But this time we’re gonna put what’s left of the drugs away for good.”

“Thank God,” said Gail.

“How? With that?” Sanders said.

“Not alone, no.” Treece had filled the bottle-half to the top. He opened the cardboard box, gingerly removed a blasting cap, and set it in the bed of explosive. Then he began to attach the coated wire to the cap. “But set this C-4 up against a load of other explosives-say a cargo of live ammunition-and you’ve got enough to make Bermuda’s own Grand Canyon. Military term for it’s a shape charge. These champagne bottles are indented on the bottom; a lamp goes up inside ’em. Pack the C-4 around it, and when you set it off, the lump sort of aims the force of the explosion where you want it.” Treece tipped the bottle on its side.

“You lay it up against an artillery shell like this.”

He put his hand against the blasting cap. “All the power’s directed at the shell. Boom!”