Jeffery Deaver - The Stone Monkey

S-O-S.

Amelia Sachs, calm as tea when she hit 130 miles per hour in her Camaro SS, would wake up sobbing after dreams of herself imprisoned in chambers and tunnels and mine shafts.

Can't do it! she thought again.

Then sighed through her regulator and pulled herself into the narrow space, turned left as best she could and kicked her way deeper into hell.

God, I hate this.

Nine hundred pounds of pressure on her gauge.

She eased forward, moving along the shaft that was just wide enough to accommodate her and her tank. Ten feet. Her tank suddenly caught on something above her. She fought down the shiver of panic, clamping her teeth furiously on the mouthpiece of her regulator. Rotating slowly, she found the wire that had snagged her and she freed herself. She turned back and found another blue-white face protruding through another doorway of the dumbwaiter shaft.

Oh, my Lord…

The man's eyes, opaque as jelly, stared in her direction, glowing in the bright light. His hair rose outward from his head like the coat of a porcupine.

Sachs eased forward and kicked slowly past the man, struggling to ignore the chilling sensation of the crown of his head brushing her body as she swam past.

S…

The sound, though still feeble, was louder here.

O…

She continued down the shaft to the very bottom of the dumbwaiter and, pushing aside the panic as she neared the exit, she forced herself to move calmly through the doorway into what was the galley of the Dragon.

S…

The black water here was filled with trash and flecks of food – and several bodies.

Clank.

Whoever was signaling couldn't even make an entire letter now.

Above, she saw the shimmering surface of a large air pocket and a man's legs in the water, dangling downward. The feet, in socks, moved slightly, almost a twitch. She swam quickly toward them and burst to the surface. A bald man with a mustache was clinging to a rack of shelves that were bolted to the wall – now the ceiling of the kitchen – turned away with a cry of shock and undoubtedly from the pain of the blinding light shooting into his eyes.

Sachs squinted. She recognized him – why? Then realized that she'd seen his picture on the evidence board in Rhyme's town house – and the one she'd seen in the cabin just a few minutes before. This was Captain Sen of the Fuzhou Dragon.

He was muttering incoherently and shivering. He was so blue he looked cyanotic – the color of an asphyxia victim. She spit the regulator out of her mouth to breathe the air that was trapped in the pocket and save her own store of oxygen but the atmosphere was so foul and depleted that she felt faint. She grabbed the mouthpiece again and began to suck the air from her own supply.

Pulling the secondary regulator off her vest, she stuck it into Sen's mouth. He breathed deeply and began to revive somewhat. Sachs pointed downward into the water. He nodded.

A fast glance at the pressure gauge: 700 pounds. And two of them were using her supply now.

She released air from the BCD and, with her arm around the limp man, they sank to the bottom of the galley, pushing aside the bodies and cartons of food that floated in their way. At first she wasn't able to locate the doorway to the dumbwaiter shaft. She felt weak with panic for a moment, afraid that the moaning she'd heard meant the ship was settling and buckling and the doorway was now sealed off. But then she saw that the body of a young woman had floated in front of it. She gently pulled the corpse aside and opened the dumbwaiter doorway wide.

They couldn't both fit into the shaft side by side so she eased the captain in before her, feet first. Eyes squeezed shut, still shivering violently, he gripped the black hose of his regulator desperately with both hands. Sachs followed him, imagining all too clearly what might happen if he panicked and ripped the regulator from her mouth or tore her mask or the light off: trapped in this horrible narrow place, thrashing in panic as she breathed the foul water into her lungs…

No, no, stop thinking about it! Keep going. She kicked hard, moving as quickly as she could. Twice the captain, floating backward, became jammed and she had to free him.

A glance at the gauge: 400 pounds of pressure.

We leave the bottom with five hundred. No less than that. That's an iron-clad rule. No exceptions.

Finally they got to the top deck – where the cabins were located and the corridor that led to the bridge and, beyond that, precious Outside, with its orange rope that would take them to the surface and a boundless supply of sweet air. But the captain was still dazed and it took a long minute to maneuver him through the opening while making certain that he kept the regulator in his mouth.

Then they were out of the dumbwaiter and floating into the main corridor. She swam beside the captain and grabbed him by his leather belt. But as she started to kick forward she braked suddenly to a stop. The knob on her air tank was snared. She reached back and found it was caught by the jacket on the body that'd been in the Ghost's stateroom.

The gauge: 300 pounds of pressure.

Goddamn, she thought, pulling fiercely at the snag, kicking. But the body was jammed in a doorway and the tail of his jacket had wound tightly around the tank knob. The harder she pulled the more snugly she was held.

The needle of the pressure gauge was now below the redline: 200 pounds remained.

She couldn't reach the snag behind her.

Okay, nothing to do…

She ripped open the Velcro of the BCD vest and slipped out of it. But as she turned to focus on the tangle the captain went into seizure. He kicked out hard, struck her in the face with his foot. The spotlight went out and the regulator popped from her mouth. The blow pushed her backward.

Darkness, no air…

No, no…

Rhyme…

She made a grab for the regulator but it floated somewhere behind her, out of reach.

Don't hold your breath.

Well, I fucking have to…

Blackness all around her, spinning in circles, groping desperately for her regulator.

Where were the Coast Guard baby-sitters?

Outside. Because I told them I wanted to search alone. How could she let them know she was in trouble?

Fast, girl, fast…

She patted the evidence bag and reached in desperately. Pulled out the Beretta 9mm. She pulled the slide to chamber a round and pressed the muzzle close to the wooden wall, where she knew she wouldn't hit Sen, and pulled the trigger. A flash and loud explosion. The blowback and recoil nearly broke her wrist and she dropped the weapon through the cloud of debris and gunpowder residue.

Please, she thought… Please…

No air…

No…

Then lights burst on silently as the dive chief and his assistant kicked fast into the corridor. Another regulator mouthpiece was thrust between her lips and Sachs began to breathe again. The dive chief got his secondary regulator into the captain's mouth. The stream of bubbles was faint but at least he was breathing.

Okay signs were exchanged.

Then the foursome made its way out of the bridge and to the orange rope. Thumbs-up. Calmer now that the risk of confinement was gone, Sachs concentrated on ascending leisurely, no faster than her bubbles, and breathing, deep in, deep out, as they left behind the ship of corpses.

Sachs lay in the cutter's sickbay, breathing deeply; she'd opted for nature's air, turning down the green oxygen mask the corpsman offered her – it would, she was afraid, only increase her sense of confinement, having something else pressed close against her body.

As soon as she'd climbed onto the bobbing deck she'd stripped off the wetsuit – the tight outfit itself had become another carrier of the pernicious claustrophobia – and wrapped the thick government-issue blanket around her. Two sailors escorted her to the sickbay to check out her wrist, which turned out not to be badly injured at all.