Death in the Kingdom (13 page)

I moved on again. There was another grinning skull looking up at me, resting against the base of what had probably been a sonar or radio console. This skull had gaping eye sockets, and one of them was home to a small orange crab that waved its defiant claws in my direction. I didn't dwell on the tiny beast's macabre home. Shit happens, and a whole bunch of it had happened here.

There was still a curtain covering the doorway to the captain's cabin. Remnants of canvas, or whatever the curtain had been made of, were covered by a thick coat of algae. It hung halfway across the tunnel of the sub's core, moving lazily in the water current as if caught in a breeze. It was an eerie sight in a place that didn't need any more nerve-racking props. I reached out to pull the damn curtain away and it disintegrated in a cloud of pale green particles that made the water even murkier. ‘Clever, Danny,' I chided myself.

I moved through the cloud of crap and pushed the torch into the cabin. This really was tiny, even smaller than I had anticipated. It was the size of a small walk-in wardrobe. Light from my torch bounced back at me from the remaining fragments of what had been a mirror set on one wall high up to my left. The bunk was down on my right. It was just a rectangle of naked springs covered in brown rust and green weeds. A large starfish sat on the centre of what had been the captain's bed. A small metal table was fixed against one bulkhead. Jumbled in the corner where table and bulkhead met at right angles was a smorgasbord of knick-knacks in a bed of slime. I could make out a mug and a hairbrush. There was also a photo frame, probably metal, its contents long gone. The safe was attached to the floor under the table. Just perfect for smashing one's feet against when one sat down.

I turned the other way and examined the opposite bulkhead. This one contained a wardrobe recess. The curtain for this was gone, but one forlorn weathered coat made of what I took to be oilskin, still hung there at a drunken angle. Beside the wardrobe was a chest of drawers, covered in algae and weeds like everything else in there. I had been told the drawers were metal. Two of the three drawers had fallen most of the way out. The third drawer, the bottom one, was still closed. I let the spear gun fall away on its bungy and removed the short jemmy I carried in the pouch on my chest. It took me just a second to lever the remains of the two hanging drawers away from the bureau. The metal was so thin it just crumpled like tin foil.

I presumed the remaining drawer had a lock, but it was invisible under the crud that had grown across its front. I put the jemmy where I figured the top edge was and pushed. The end of the bar went in effortlessly. I pushed down and felt something give. The drawer wouldn't slide out, but I hadn't expected it to, not after all these years. Instead, the whole front panel simply detached itself and fell away. I aimed the torch closer to look inside. There it was, untouched by time, algae or anything else.

The lead outer casing still gleamed with a dull, deep-grey sheen, even after all this time.

I reached in and withdrew the box. Even with the weightlessness of the ocean it felt heavy, twenty-three pounds heavy to be exact. I had developed a plan of how I would handle it when I found it. I wanted to be able to swim, and if I had to, fight off whatever I came across as I made my way topside. Like my leather holdall, the wire mesh pouch I wore across my chest had been made to carry my prize. I dropped the jemmy and used both hands to fit the box into the pouch. The torch, still attached to my wrist, sent its beam flashing and bouncing around the cabin like a crazy light show as I worked the box inside the holdall.

Knowing the weight of the box had been a bonus right down the line. I had on two dive belts. Just as soon as I had the box stowed, I dropped the smaller belt and my weight equalised. I knew my balance would be altered slightly, causing me to me be a little chest heavy, but that would be manageable.

It was well and truly time to go. I turned and pushed myself out of the cabin and back into the control room. Relief was welling up inside me, but I had to contain it. There was still much to do. I had to navigate the tunnel of horrors and get topside. I settled my breathing and started back the way I had come. Knowing the way back was clear, I didn't hang about. I wanted out of there as quickly as I could. I went across the control room in two kicks and back into the core tunnel. As I passed through the first of the three open hatches I saw it, or rather them.

Trickling along the surface above me was a silver bead necklace: bubbles climbing towards
Victor's
stern. Except they weren't my bubbles. I gasped and damned near blew the regulator out of my mouth. There was someone else in here with me.

I jammed my torch and the butt of my spear gun against a tangle of pipes to stop my downward movement, and flicked off the light, my heart thudding louder than a bass drum. There was now no light. None at all! I really was in total darkness. I hung there, fighting my terror. I was cold; the suit's insulating properties 110 feet underwater were being countered by the ice in my veins. The relentless pressure of the water was tightening my chest and giving me a headache.

Where was the other diver?
Who
was the other diver? It wouldn't be Tan or any of the others. They had their own hands full. That meant it was someone else, someone from the white cruiser, in all probability. Had he, she, it or they come right into the hull? Were they waiting for me further down? Or had they just checked the way inside was open and pulled back to wait outside? Had they seen my torch beam? Had they … ?

Then I got it. The bubbles were my own. They'd pooled against the second lip of the watertight compartments. I noted, and in fact almost smiled, at the shimmering puddle of mercury silver formed by my exhaust trail as I'd gone through the hatch opening. Obviously the lip had been fractured in the blast that had sent
Victor
to the bottom and the bubbles were trickling through, moving up to the highest point they could reach. Relief washed over me and my heart rate dropped by about a hundred percent. I was spooking myself. ‘Idiot,' I thought. At this rate I was going to be out of oxygen before I got out of the fucking sub. I groped for my torch and was about to flick it on when something stopped me.

There was a very faint flash of yellow in the blackness below. It was moving. I wasn't alone after all. My first instincts had been right. The owner of the light was coming up the gut of the submarine to meet me. I could make out the lip of the second hatch against the brightening circle of light. The diver was just beyond the hatch. Bubbles caught in the beam of light were still trickling up towards me. Maybe his exhaust trail had combined with mine to cause the pool caught by the lip of the hatch to overflow and send the bubbles my way. Whatever the cause, I'd had a warning, and it was up to me to make the most of it.

Was there only one diver or were there more coming? If I stayed, I had some cover where I was. I could probably backtrack and try to get out through the conning tower, but what if I couldn't? I'd be down on air and cornered if there was a fight brewing. At least I knew I could get out the way I was going, so I decided to stay where I was.

Maybe it was one of the others?

The pipes I was wedged against had been pushed away from the buckled bulkhead to my right. I tried to make myself as small as possible and put as much of me behind their protection as I could. That wasn't easy considering I was in a two-tank dive rig. I thought I made less of a target standing, so I hooked my right fin under a pipe to keep me upright. The light from the other diver continued to grow brighter.

I had the spear gun in my left hand. I had no illusions that whoever was coming towards me would be armed and out to kill me if they found me. I knew that recreational divers did not dive in the dark, especially with a fucking gunboat sitting above the dive site. Thing was, did they know I was there? Had they seen me enter? Had they seen my light inside? I doubted the latter because I knew light didn't penetrate blackness like this easily. Their light beam would have hidden the distant glow of my own at first. So, having decided on plan B, I hung there in the dark and waited to try and identify the diver coming my way.

The intensity of the light beam was growing by the second. The other diver was moving quickly. Whether he would see me before he got to my lair or blunder right up to me was in the lap of the gods. I raised the spear gun and pointed it towards the circle of light. This little unit was a very effective weapon at close range. Made from aluminium, with a steel cylinder of highly compressed air to power it, the gun worked exactly the same as a conventional air gun, except the pellet had been replaced by a two-foot spear. The short spear was simply pushed into the gun's muzzle until it locked into position. All it took was a squeeze of the trigger to drive the spear away. Its velocity over ten yards was equivalent to that of a bullet from a .22 rifle. A spear was already locked in position and I had five more in the clips fixed to the air cylinder under the gun's barrel.

The diver was getting close. Was he friend or foe? Whichever, he would see me in seconds. I needed to anticipate he was a bad guy. I aligned the spear gun, pointing the wicked double-barbed shaft straight at the light beam. I had to assume the guy coming at me was holding the torch more or less in front of his face. I thumbed on my own torch as I pushed it around my shield of pipes. The two torch beams met and the inside of the sub hull lit up.

I saw a faceplate, wide eyes then the long rubber-powered spear gun that was aiming at me. I knew our guys only had hand-held powerhead lances. ‘Foe!' my brain shrieked. I fired, aiming directly at the mask of the other diver. The razor tip of my stainless steel spear hit the faceplate square on. Time stood still before the short spear punched through the glass.

It might have been a reflex action but the guy's spear gun fired and I felt a thump in my chest. I gasped my regulator out of my mouth in shock. I'd been hit, but there was no pain, which was normal when a body went into shock. I pushed a gloved hand across my chest and turned my torch to see my fate. I would have laughed, but I was in enough danger of drowning as it was.

The head of the other diver's spear had embedded itself into the damned box on my chest. I stuffed the regulator back into my mouth and took a deep breath. I turned my torch back down the tunnel. The diver was no longer moving and the water around him had darkened. His body had drifted down to rest where the deck and bulkhead met. The torch hung from his gloved left hand, its beam illuminating a nest of human bones protruding from a carpet of debris. The long rubber-powered spear gun had fallen to join the bones.

I didn't have time to examine the guy who had tried to kill me. I could see by the shape of his body he was either a bulky guy or a totally out of shape woman. I attempted to pull the four-foot spear out of the box strapped to my chest. It wouldn't move. I grabbed the shaft with my free hand and rotated it against the trapped spear head. As with most conventional underwater spears, the head was detachable. I unscrewed the shaft and let it drop away. I didn't have time to worry about the head embedded in the box. All I wanted was to get out of there.

I loaded another spear into my gun and started down the hull again. I passed over the body of the dead diver without looking down. I had no fear of further attack from him. Having a shaft of steel driven through your head from front to back was inclined to take the fight out of anyone. I was breathing hard again, too deeply, too quickly! Claustrophobia had me well and truly in its grip. I almost didn't care if there were a second diver waiting outside in ambush. I just had to get the fuck out! In fact, it was probably my panic that saved my life as I burst out of the sub's hull like a cork out of a bottle.

As I emerged my torch was pointing straight ahead of me and I immediately saw the second guy through the milky water. He was sitting in the saddle of the underwater scooter that rested on the coral sand right in front of me, no more than ten feet away. The scooter was parked at an angle, its single headlight carving a hole in the darkness away to my right. The guy was wearing twin tanks on his back and the damned things didn't slow him one bit. He came out of the scooter's saddle and launched himself in my direction, grabbing for the dive knife sheathed on his right thigh as he came.

I didn't hesitate. I pointed the spear gun and fired. The shaft caught my attacker in the chest. Its force reversed his motion, sending him back the way he had come. He hit the scooter that was starting to drift off the bottom and slowly tumbled over it. He ended up kneeling on the coral, side on to me. His head was tilted down as he regarded the foot of metal that stuck out of his chest. A foot sticking out of his chest told me that there was a foot of the same unyielding steel inside him. The man was still alive, but a thin stream of blood was escaping from the spear's entry point. I kept him in my torch beam as I debated whether or not to finish him off or just get the hell out of there.

The scooter, freed of the weight of the pilot, was now five or six feet above us, its light stabbing away into the murk as it went into a slow spiral, heading towards the surface. I had my torch on the other diver. Should I finish him or not? Killing someone in cold blood when they are disabled was about as cold-blooded as it got, despite the fact that he would have taken me out given any chance at all.

The debate was short-lived, and the decision taken out of my hands by a most unlikely temporary ally, if you can consider a fucking great shark an ally. I didn't know if it was the same Tiger that Tan and I had seen on our first dive, but it was a big mother. It came out of the blackness and through the feeble cone of light my torch was throwing on the scene. It was moving like a damned freight train as it carved its way across my light beam, gathered up the stricken diver in its gaping jaws and vanished into the darkness in a matter of seconds. I was left looking at a faint black ribbon trail of blood hanging in the water. Maybe it was the blood that had tempted the shark in. Or maybe he had been initally drawn in by the light from the scooter, then the scent of blood had taken over. They say sharks can pick up one part of blood in millions of parts of water. Whatever the reason, both shark and diver were gone in a matter of seconds, leaving me puffing on my respirator like a smoker deprived of weed for too long.