Peter Benchley - The Deep

“It’s my bet these chaps are still a bit wary of the water. Put ’em in a panic, they’re like as not to hold their breath on the way up, or lose their way and drown in the cave. But even suppose they don’t. If we cut all their air hoses, they’ll be spooky as hell about going back down there. And Cloche doesn’t have extra equipment.”

“So they wait for us to come up and then shoot us.”

“We won’t come up. It’s dark. They’d have a hell of a time following a bubble trail. We’ll stay on the bottom, go out of the cove and around the corner. There’s a place about fifty yards down where we can land.”

“He won’t give up-especially when he finds that guy floating off the reef.”

“No, he’ll be back. But all we need is the rest of tonight to get that glass out of there and destroy it.”

Sanders paused briefly, then said, “Okay.”

They heard splashes and fragments of conversation.

Someone said, “Where’s Kevin at?” and Cloche replied, “Drunk, I suppose. He is of no consequence now; he gave us full value.”

A few more splashes, then silence.

Treece waited for ten or fifteen seconds, then crept out into the open. Cloche’s boat floated twenty yards out in the cove, off Corsair ’s stern, so Corsair protected them from view as they moved along the dock. They slipped into the cockpit and lay on the deck.

“Fins, mask, and tank,” Treece whispered.

“Don’t fool with weights. They’ll make too much noise.”

The necks of the steel air tanks gleamed in the moonlight, and Sanders saw that it would be impossible to pull the tanks out of the rack without being seen.

“Old Indian trick,” Treece said, removing a two-pound lead weight from a nylon belt. He reached to the transom and uncleated the stern line, letting the stern swing a few feet away from the dock, then recleated the line. “When you hear the splash, grab a tank and go over the side between the boat and the dock. I’ll be right along.” He threw the weight as hard as he could—a straight-arm arc that used the muscles of the shoulder, not the arm—and the weight cleared the bridge of the other boat by several feet and splashed into the water beyond.

Sanders rose, removed a tank from the rack, held it overboard, and slid into the water after it, aware of the sounds of footsteps and voices and the cocking of a rifle. Treece joined him. They checked each other’s tanks, making sure the air valves were turned on, and the air was good. “Hold my hand till we get to the bottom,” Treece said. “We’ll stay there for a minute and have a look-see. Their light’ll tell us where they are.”

Hand in hand, they sank below the surface and kicked to the bottom.

Kneeling in the bushes at the top of the hill, Gail heard the splash and the voices. She got to her feet in a stooped stance, ducked as a beam of light swept toward her, then rose again and looked down, half-expecting, dreading, to hear a gunshot.

But there was nothing, only the incessant taxi horns. Holding the cleaver—scared of it but glad of it, as she had been of the shotgun—she started down the path.

Near the bottom of the path, with her hands in front of her like a blind person in a strange room, she stepped on one of Kevin’s legs. Shocked, she lurched backward and fell into the bushes, cracking branches as she fell.

She heard a voice: “Kevin?”

She held her breath.

“Go over there and look around.”

A splash; sounds of a man swimming.

She exhaled and inhaled, and her nostrils filled with the stench of feces. Terrified, she extricated herself from the bushes and scrambled up the hill.

On the bottom of the cove, Sanders and Treece knelt together, still holding hands. Forty or fifty feet away, the cave was as visible as a proscenium stage in a dark theater, illuminated not by hand-held lights but by huge floodlights. As they watched, a diver swam out of the cave and turned on a flashlight. He carried a mesh bag full of ampules. Two other divers passed him, heading for the cave, switching off their flashlights as they entered the pool of light.

Treece tugged at Sanders” hand, and they kicked toward the cave. When they were within ten feet of the entrance, just outside the range of the floodlights, Treece let go of Sanders’ hand and gently pushed him against the face of the cliff, signaling for him to wait.

Treece dropped to his stomach and pulled himself along the sand until he could look inside the cave.

Then he withdrew from the light. He flicked on his flashlight, located Sanders, and swam to him.

Treece held the flashlight in his left hand and shined it on his right, pointing to Sanders, then to the near side of the cave, then to himself, then-in an arching motion-to the far side of the cave. Then he shined the light on Sanders’ face, to see if he understood.

He did: he was to position himself at one side of the entrance, Treece at the other.

They flattened themselves against the cliff and waited. In the shimmering light, Sanders caught an occasional glimpse of Treece’s face, of the shining knife blade in his hand.

Moving water disturbed sand at the entrance to the cave: something was coming out. Sanders saw Treece’s knife rise and hold steady.

The man on Treece’s side came out first, a few feet ahead of his companion. His head appeared, looking down at the sand, then his shoulders.

Treece jumped him: a flash of red-brown skin, an explosion of bubbles, a fist grabbing the man’s air hose and wrenching the mouthpiece from his mouth, drawing the hose taut, the knife slicing easily through the rubber tube.

The head of the second man emerged from the cave.

Sanders raised his knife.

The man looked up and saw Sanders. His eyes widened, hands flew to his head as Sanders leaped.

The man knocked Sanders’ knife hand away and reached for Sanders’ mask.

Sanders dodged. His shoulder hit the man’s chest, and they tumbled to the bottom, clawing at each other.

They rolled along the bottom, punching and kicking, each trying to keep his head away from the other’s grasp. Sanders breathed in spurts, holding his breath after each inhalation, fearful of having his hose cut when his lungs were empty.

They were several yards inside the cave now, floating and bumping on the sand in a grotesque waltz: the man held Sanders’ right wrist, keeping the knife away from his neck. Sanders’ left arm was wrapped around the man’s side, pinning his right arm.

Sanders could not stab the man, could not cut his air hose; he was waiting for Treece. Frantically, he looked to the mouth of the cave, expecting to see Treece swimming toward him. Instead, Treece was poised in a fighter’s crouch, facing out of the cave, awaiting the two flashlights that moved swiftly toward him.

The man’s right arm wiggled free. His hand inched upward and slammed into Sanders’ groin, fingers clawing at his balls. Sanders kicked upward with his left leg, deflecting the hand. Then he saw the hole in the cave wall, a dark tunnel above a pile of stones.

He touched a foot to the bottom and pushed off, dancing the man toward the wall. The man’s heels hit a rock, and he tripped, but he did not release Sanders’ wrist. Sanders leaned against him, forcing him onto the wall, butting him to make him jerk his head back toward the hole.

The man’s head was a few inches below the hole.

Sanders’ foot found purchase on a rock, and he shoved again, driving the man up, exposing the black flesh and puffed arteries.

The pig eyes-beads in the slimy green head-showed in the hole, the mouth waving hungrily, half open.

The moray struck, needle teeth fastening on the man’s neck, throat convulsing as it pulled back toward the hole. Blood billowed out the sides of the moray’s mouth.