Butler Did It! (7 page)

Why, I bet it’s even more afraid of
me, than I am of it.
She speculated.

It turned to face her again, its mouth
slowly gaping open and closed as if trying to communicate, or at
least swallow something previously eaten.

How big is this
thing?

As if it were reading her mind, the
fish turned away from her light, hiding its head, but exposing its
body to her view. It was about one and a half meters long with a
particularly unique tri-lobed tail. It had two pair of thick stubby
fins almost like paddles, whose constant motion kept it stationary
in the water.

Revelation suddenly hit Katherine.
Oh my God! It’s a Coelacanth!

Katherine was marveling at just how
close she could get to a fish that had once been only a legend. She
wanted to reach out and touch it, but knew that it was a predator
and could attack her on a whim. She had been keenly interested in
the news reports during the summer of 2000 when three living
specimens had been photographed in Sodwana Bay in the St. Lucia
Wetlands Park near her home. She had never visited those deep
submarine canyons, those depths were only for very skilled divers.
She knew that one of the three divers who had first photographed
the Coelacanth had died on that expedition, when a problem had
resulted in an uncontrolled ascent.

I know coelacanths have
never been seen in the Seychelles, and especially never in shallow
water. Why is it here?

She suddenly remembered the camera in
her hand and began clicking off photographs as fast as possible.
The camera shy fish kept turning its head away from Katherine.
Despite all of her efforts, the Coelacanth would not come into the
light. Every flash of her camera strobe only drove the fish further
into the dark recesses of the fissure. Instead of forcing the
issue, Katherine backed into another fissure on the opposite side
of the main chamber, effectively giving the fish a route past her.
She waited patiently in the hope that if the fish bolted for
freedom, it would have to pass through the beam of sunlight and
give her a good daylight photograph. Katherine guessed correctly.
After a few minutes, the great fish slowly moved out of the shadows
and into the sunlight. Katherine found that she was holding her
breath, and nearly choked on her regulator mouthpiece. As the fish
approached, she took picture after picture.

This is my great photo
opportunity! This series of shots will give me international
recognition.

The fish, equally curious, slowly
approached the girl, much like a suspicious dog prepared to sniff a
stranger’s hand. The fish edged forward a few inches just by using
its front fins, hovered a few seconds, only to back up moments
later. Katherine marveled at the combined beauty and inherent
ugliness of the creature.

I wonder if it thinks the
same thing about me.

Suddenly, the fish’s scales flushed to
a gray blue. At the same time, Katherine heard a deep rumbling
sound that was getting louder by the second. She glanced at the
blowhole’s large entrance just as a dark shadow passed over the sea
bottom near the reef wall. The Coelacanth suddenly flipped its tail
and flashed out of the entrance. Curious Katherine followed the
fish out to the face of the reef wall. Several hundred feet off the
reef, a large, dark ship hull was silhouetted on the surface. The
ship was long and narrow. Its engines idled ominously. Still trying
to keep the fish in view, Katherine swam closer to the ship,
approaching to a position just above the slope of the reef
wall.

Without warning, a man plunged into the
water above her. At first, she thought it was a diver in a dark wet
suit, but once the bubbles cleared, she saw that it was a nearly
naked black man with his hands bound behind his back. He sank
quickly, thrashing and spinning. Katherine instantly understood
that he would soon be running out of air. Without hesitation, she
wedged her camera in a convenient cleft in a rocky outcrop at the
base of the reef wall and began swimming hard toward the rapidly
descending man. Seconds later, bullets began zipping into the water
around the man like mad bees, only to slow and fall as an
ineffective hard rain as they sank to the bottom. Instinctively,
the man curled into a ball to avoid the bullets. Katherine judged
that, at his rate of descent, she would get to him just about the
time he reached the seabed. As she arrived, the frantic man had one
foot through his bound hands, effectively eliminating his ability
to use either his hands or his feet. His eyes were wide open in
fear. All the while, the firestorm of bullets struck the water
thirty feet above them. Katherine pulled the regulator from her own
lips and pressed them between the man’s, giving him his first
breath of air in over two minutes. He gulped at the compressed air,
his body shuddering to take in more than the regulator could
provide. She could hear him bleat as she wielded her dive knife
close to his crotch and sawed through the plastic cable tie binding
his hands. Once free, he calmed down and passed the regulator back
to her. In return, Katherine gave him her pony bottle of reserve
air, and not waiting for a response, grabbed his arm, and began
pulling him toward the reef wall.

Silently, she prayed that the gunfire
from the dark ship would disturb the normally crystalline water
enough that the shooters would have trouble seeing their target,
and their target’s savior.

Katherine knew that if the gunmen
stopped shooting, the bubbles from their air tanks would lead the
gunmen directly to any place the pair tried to hide. Her heart was
pounding and she had to increase the flow of air through her
regulator to accommodate her rapid breathing.

Don’t panic!
She told herself.
The words of her first diving instructor ran through her head.
More divers die from panic than from sharks
.

She had practiced helping another diver
in trouble, but practicing for an emergency is nothing like the
real thing. She hoped that the gunmen on the dark ship didn’t have
any divers of their own. She needed somewhere to hide quickly;
somewhere where their bubble trails wouldn’t give them away.
Katherine instinctively knew that the only safe place that she and
the man could hope to hide was in the blowhole.

If we can get into the
chimney of the blowhole, no one will be able to see us, and the
bubbles will exit out the top and not out the entrance.

Despite his obvious lack of experience
in scuba diving, the black man put his trust in the woman and let
Katherine lead him away from certain death. It was only when they
arrived at the reef wall, and she tried to pull him into the
blowhole entrance, that he began to thrash around, attempt to break
free, and swim up to the surface. She knew that if he reached the
surface, he was dead, and so was she. She used the haft of her dive
knife to thump his head to get his attention. With urgent hand
signals, she got him to follow her inside the blowhole. Once he saw
the daylight at the back of the chamber, his reluctance ceased and
he followed her up the chimney.

Inside the cave, the force of the waves
had carved a long series of ledges. They slanted up from water
level toward the blowhole chimney. She led the man to a ledge large
enough for the pair of them to climb onto and sit upright. As soon
as they broke surface and spit out their regulators, he spoke in a
British accent.

“Oh, Thank y…” he groaned weakly,
coughing up water.

She quickly put a hand over his mouth,
and pointed up at the blowhole exit. Kobi tried to focus on the
woman who had pulled him into this cave. There was some light
coming from the back of the cave and he could just see her pale,
yet beautiful face.

Removing her hand from his mouth, she
noticed that his face was badly battered. One eye was nearly
swollen shut and he had cuts and bruises all over his torso. With
every movement of the water in the chamber, the man rocked on his
ledge, and with every movement of his body, he groaned softly under
his breath.

I’ll bet he has broken ribs,
Katherine thought
, and maybe internal injuries, too. I have to
get him some medical help quickly.

Above them, numerous voices argued over
the rumble of an idling outboard motor. Quietly, the pair listened
to the dialogue being shouted back and forth above them, and waited
in abject terror, knowing that at any moment they might be
found.

A voice from a bullhorn echoed down the
blowhole.

“WHAT DID YOU FIND?”

A second voice that sounded much closer
answered, “Not a thing.”

“WELL, THE SON OF A BITCH HAS TO BE
HERE SOMEWHERE. KEEP LOOKING. DID YOU FIND ANYTHING IN THE
SPEEDBOAT?”

“It looks like a rental from Praslin. I
found paperwork that says the renter was some woman named Katherine
Annenberg.”

Damn
, thought Katharine,
we’ll be stranded here without that boat
.

Kobi gave Katherine a questioning look
from his one good eye. She sighed and nodded.

He smiled painfully and whispered, “My
name is Kobi. Thank you for my life, Katherine.”

“We aren’t out of this, yet.” She
whispered back. “You are badly injured. Do you have the strength
for an escape, if we get a chance?”

“I don’t know, I think some of my ribs
are broken, but I will try,” he hoarsely whispered, obviously in
intense pain. “It hurts just to speak, let alone
breathe.”

The loudspeaker buzzed again and the
guttural voice boomed across the shoal.

“OKAY, FOLKS! WE’VE PLAYED THIS GAME
LONG ENOUGH. WE KNOW YOU ARE HIDING ON THE ISLAND. COME OUT WITH
YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR, AND I PROMISE THAT YOU WON’T BE
HARMED.”

The look that Kobi and Katherine
exchanged showed that neither believed that bold lie.

Despite the intense pain of his
injuries, Kobi steeled himself, and spoke.

“
If you get the chance, you
must leave me and go for help.” He paused as a wave of nausea and
dizziness passed over him. “Tell my father …that I am very sorry …”
As Katherine watched, his one good eye rolled back in its socket
and he slowly collapsed.

Katherine caught him before he fell
into the water. She moved back into the water herself and stretched
him out full length on the ledge. She checked his pulse and pulled
back the lid of his one good eye. The man was unconscious, his
pupil dilated. She knew what that meant. On top of all his other
injuries, the man had a concussion.

She raged at the impossibility of her
situation. They couldn’t stay in the blowhole, or he would die. She
couldn’t go without being discovered by the men outside. Moreover,
she couldn’t do anything to treat Kobi’s injuries. Soon the
inevitability of her situation came home to roost. She would have
to wait until the hunters left, and only God knew how long that
might be.

She ducked instinctively the second she
heard the bullhorn again echo down the blowhole chimney.

“THEY HAVE TO BE HERE! KEEP LOOKING.
THERE IS NO PLACE ELSE TO GO.”

“So, what do you want to do about the
dive boat?”

The loudspeaker voice paused for a
moment and then barked a command.

“TOW IT OUT INTO DEEP WATER AND TOSS A
GRENADE IN IT. WE DON’T WANT TO LEAVE ANY EVIDENCE
BEHIND.”

“Not a problem.”

“What do we do when we find the Kaffir
and this Annenberg girl?”

“PUT THEM IN THE BOAT FIRST, OF
COURSE.”

Katherine huddled on the shelf,
shivering from the chill in the cave and from fear. She prayed that
their hiding place wouldn’t be discovered. It was right in the
middle of this prayer that she remembered that she had left her
camera with the precious Coelacanth photographs on the sea bottom
near the reef wall.

God Dammit!
She silently cursed
in frustration, going from prayer to profanity in less than a
second.
Damn my miserable luck.

Katharine pulled herself back up onto
the ledge next to the unconscious man. The voices above had moved
away from their area and she hoped they were going away. Time
passed slowly. As the sounds from above got further and further
away, Katharine relaxed a little. Finally, after several minutes
without sounds, she decided to climb to the top of the blowhole and
see if she could get a glimpse of what was going on. As she neared
the top, she could hear the faint rumble of a boat
motor.

I guess we got lucky that they
didn’t find the top of this hole. It must be well camouflaged.
She discovered that the hole would have been difficult to see from
above as it came out under a slight overhang of granite, which
shaded a trough shaped pool of still water.

That’s weird
, she thought,
when the tide shoots water up here, it must blow sideways.
It was easy to see where the wave action had carved the long,
narrow tidal pool.

It was not a deep pool and she was able
to clamber out of the hole and sneak across into the heavy growth
of palms behind it.

If the situation was not so terrible
this would be quite a romantic little spot
, she thought. Her
photographer’s eye was assessing it for possibilities even as she
cowered warily in the undergrowth.