James Tabor: The Deep Zone

We’re going back , she signaled with a twirling forefinger. Now .

He nodded.

She went first, frog-kicking and pulling herself along with handholds to get more speed. She had dropped her primary reel in the Boneyard. No time to be rewinding line now. Brewster was breathing so hard it looked like his regulator was free-flowing. At the Jaws of Death she slipped through. Brewster got stuck again, flailing and scrabbling. Hallie hung back, knowing that panicked divers not infrequently took their buddies with them. Two minutes passed before he finally muscled through.

And then, suddenly, his bubbles stopped. He grabbed his secondary regulator. No bubbles. She could not believe he had breathed both tanks dry that fast, but here they were. She gave him her primary regulator on its seven-foot hose. His eyes were bulging as though someone were pumping air into his skull.

Breathing from her own secondary, which she carried on a shock-cord necklace, she started out again, careful not to pull the regulator away from him. Fifty yards from the cave mouth, it began to feel as though she were sucking air through thick cotton. She took several long, deep breaths, locked the last down in her chest. Brewster spit his reg out and tried to grab her. He breathed in water, convulsed, went limp. She grabbed his harness and began swimming backward, towing him on her chest.

Hallie was a national-class free diver who could remain motionless at forty feet for almost five minutes. But hauling Brewster, who weighed more than two hundred pounds, and whose double-steel tanks weighed another hundred, she was burning through oxygen. No choice. She swam on toward the circle of light. It was small and too far away and she knew they were not going to make it. Hypoxia hit, burning in her chest, her peripheral vision contracting, thoughts slowing. She felt sluggish and numb. Very soon her blood CO 2level would trip an autonomic breathing reflex, and that would drown her.

Nothing to do about that.

Swim .

She kept kicking hard, pulling on rocks with her free hand, her vision darkening to points of light like the last two shimmering stars in a black sky. Beyond thought, beyond feeling, her body kept working, hauling, pulling. Then she was falling away from the dimming stars, away, and then she was gone.

She did not remember bringing herself and Brewster through the cave entrance. When she came to, she was swimming toward the platform, Brewster in tow.

“Need help here!”

People ran down from the picnic area, hauled Brewster onto the platform.

Gasping, she puked into the water. “Put him on his left side!” Hallie said. She dumped her own gear in five seconds, climbed onto the platform. Brewster’s face was gray, lips and fingernails blue. She cleared his airway, rolled him onto his back, performed fifteen chest compressions, started CPR. Sour fluid came out of him. She breathed, pumped, breathed, pumped. She heard someone calling 911.

“I thank he’s a goner.” A woman in the crowd, nearly hysterical.

This was country; EMTs would take time. Hallie began to feel light-headed, her arms burning. She kept at it, breaths and compressions, over and over and over. It could have been ten minutes or an hour, she wasn’t sure. Was that a siren? She couldn’t be sure about that, either. Foul liquid kept leaking out of Brewster’s throat and nose, but she ignored it. A child in the crowd was screaming. A man bent over her, red-faced, fearful.

“Lady, I don’t think he’s gonna—”

Just then Brewster bucked, convulsed, spewed vomit. She rolled him over onto one side as two EMTs in blue jumpsuits shoved through the crowd.

“What happened?” The EMTs, sweating like laborers from their run in the heat, were breaking out oxygen and defib kits.

Hallie and Brewster knew exactly what had happened. But she said, “Equipment failure. His regs silted up.”

Hallie leaned close, as if to give Brewster a light kiss, and whispered into his ear. “You were lucky.”

Vomit-smeared, eyes stretched wide, he grabbed her hand. Squeezed, pulled her back down. Whispered, “Thank you.”

“No worries.”

She patted his shoulder and left.

MARY WAS THERE, RED-EYED, GREEN-FACED, CLUTCHING A mug of black coffee in one hand and a Marlboro in the other when Hallie came in. The paramedics had taken Brewster to their local hospital, worried that he might have aspirated vomit and possibly collapsed a lung as well. Hallie had sat with two state troopers, giving information they needed for their report. It was almost two by the time she made it back to the shop.

“I got a call. What the hell happened?”

Mary’s voice was deeper and rougher than cigarettes could make it. Insurgents in Iraq had done that, bringing her Apache down with a Stinger and filling her lungs with fire.

Hallie told her.

“Jesus Christ. How are you?”

“Trashed. Can I take the afternoon?”

“For sure. Those guys want a word with you, though.”

Mary nodded toward the back of the shop, and Hallie saw the red, wrinkled mat of scar tissue on the left side of her friend’s face, a sight she would never get used to. Then she let her eyes travel farther.

She hadn’t noticed the two men by the racks of masks and fins. Gray business suits, white shirts, and ties with wide, diagonal stripes. One tie was red and gold, the other blue and green. Both had little American flag pins in the right lapels of their suit jackets, short, razor-cut hair, and cheeks shaved so close they gleamed.

“I don’t think they’re looking to dive.” Mary blew smoke toward the men.

Hallie approached them. “Can I help you?”

“I’m Agent Fortier,” said the one with the red-and-gold tie. “This is my partner, Agent Whittle. We’re with the Department of Homeland Security.”

They showed ID folders with gold badges and photos.

Hallie flushed, folded her arms across her chest, pissed off just by the sight of them. “Let me guess. You’re worried we’re diving with terrorists, sowing mines in harbors or some such bullshit. Am I right?”

Fortier’s mouth dropped open. Apparently people usually showed more respect. While Whittle coughed and examined a wet suit’s price tag, Fortier maintained a neutral expression. “Can we speak privately, Dr. Leland?”

That surprised her . Hallie wasn’t called “doctor” around here, where people just knew her as a dive instructor and guide.

“Nope,” she said. “Let’s do this tomorrow. Rough day at the office, gentlemen.” She started to walk away, already tasting an ice-cold Corona, then stopped. “In fact, let’s not do this at all. You want to see me, I have a lawyer you can talk to first.” It wasn’t true, but she thought it might get them off her back.

“Dr. Leland,” Fortier’s eyes flicked from side to side. His voice dropped to a whisper. “This is a matter of national security.”

That did it. She whirled, eyes flashing. “I know exactly what it’s a matter of. What, BARDA didn’t screw up my life enough already?”

The agents exchanged glances. Then Fortier said, “You’re right. We are here because of someone from BARDA.”

“Uh-huh. So you can just—”

“We have a message from Dr. Barnard.”

That stopped her. “Don Barnard?”

“Yes.”

Dr. Donald Barnard had been her boss at the CDC. The only one who had stood with her when her world came crashing down.

“Is Don all right? Why didn’t he just call? Or come down himself? What is—?”

“Dr. Barnard’s presence was required in Washington. He is… very busy.”

Fortier looked truly worried—whether about Barnard or something else, Hallie couldn’t tell.