With his palms facing upward, Tom asked, “Where’s who, Sam?”
“The diver, Tom!” Sam’s piercing blue eyes were focused now. “The man who was trying to kill me…”
Sam tried to stand up, but his balance shook with vertigo.
Tom braced him and forced him to sit down again. “Here.” Tom handed him the oxygen mask again. “Have some more oxygen.”
Sam brushed the mask off. “No time for that, we have to find him!”
“Who?”
“The man that tried to kill me!”
“No one was trying to kill you, Sam.” Tom grinned. “Well, no one except yourself! What were you trying to do, staying down there so long, did you learn to breathe underwater? You broke just about every free-diving record this place holds!”
“No… I was attacked!” Sam said emphatically.
“By who?”
“I don’t know. He had a pair of intense green eyes. A killer’s eyes, cold and hard. He tried to drown me. I got free by stabbing him with his own dive knife.”
Tom’s dark eyebrows narrowed. “You killed him?”
“No. I only got his leg. Maybe his calf or ankle or something…” Sam tried to recall what had happened after that. Then, with enthusiasm, he said, “He followed me to the surface. We can still find him!”
Tom said, “There was no one with you when you surfaced. You were on your own when your head broke the surface. An instant later, you blacked out, and two of the rescue divers pulled you out of the water.”
“Really? He must have been very close, you didn’t see anyone at all?”
“No,” Tom confirmed. “Why do you think he wanted to kill you?”
“Damned if I know…” His lips twisted into a wry grin. “It appears my recent dissertation on climate change certainly got someone’s attention.”
Chapter Eighteen
Tom stood up and scanned the area.
At six foot-five inches, he had plenty of elevation to view the rest of the divers and spectators spread out upon the flotilla, and those on the water. Unable to keep Sam from standing up, Tom helped him balance. His eyes raked the dive platform for any blood or signs of anyone walking with difficulty because of an injured leg.
“I can’t see anyone having trouble walking,” Tom said. “Maybe he never made it to the surface?”
“All right. Maybe he’s still under the water. I don’t know how long he’d been down there, maybe he was still decompressing?” Sam thought about it for a moment. “The question is, where will he try to go once he does surface?”
Tom thought about their location.
The Great Blue Hole was surrounded by the Light House Reef and there was only one way for a boat to get in and out. Outside of the submerged sinkhole the reef was too dangerous for boats to anchor.
He turned to Sam. “He’ll need to surface somewhere around here and board one of these yachts to escape.”
“Agreed, but we’ll need to be ready for him.” Sam was already searching for a better vantage point.
Tom said, “When did you have time to write a dissertation on anything?”
Sam grinned and started walking toward the edge of the flotilla. “I didn’t. Billie did. I just submitted it as my own.”
Tom followed, matching Sam’s shorter steps.
“Why?”
Sam glanced at the first of eight, expensive pleasure cruisers. Their bows were all tied up together to make one large platform. His eyes searched the edge of the yacht for anyone waiting to tell him to get off their boat, and then stepped onboard. “It was Billie’s idea.”
“Go on.” Tom stepped across the two-foot gap between the dive barge and the first of the pleasure cruisers.
“It all stemmed from our inability to determine who knew about the Göbekli Tepe Death Stone.” Sam sighed, as though he’d had better ideas before, and then continued. “As we discovered in the Aleutian Portal, the ancient astronomer’s stone depicts an asteroid that orbits Earth. Based on the calculations of a group of astronomers, it’s set to return to Earth every thirteen thousand years — or roughly sometime during the next two calendar years.”
“Sure. That’s why we went to the pyramid within the Tepui Mountains, so Billie could retrieve the stone tablet, and why she’s still on board the Maria Helena trying to decipher the Code to Extinction — while you’re out here having a good time, and trying to get yourself killed.”
Sam shrugged. “Hey, I was trying to clear my head!”
“Go on.”
“When we found the Death Stone, its previous guardian left a hand-written message informing us under no uncertainties not to allow the Secretary of Defense to discover the stone was still intact, and informing us that she was being watched.”
“Yes. I also recall the Secretary of Defense grilling both of us about the stone’s whereabouts. So, what does any of this have to do with your dissertation on climate change?”
“Everything,” Sam said. “Billie suggested I present a dissertation on the correlation between the shift of the magnetic poles and rapid climate change. There was a convenient global scientific forum, so I got the presentation together and did as she asked.” Sam lengthened his stride, and Tom matched it again.
“Why the hell would you do that?” Tom glanced at the water where another diver surfaced, and then back to Sam.
Sam met his eyes, and shook his head. “Not him.”
Tom stepped across the next gap between yachts. “I thought the idea wasn’t to reveal what we know, and keep the public calm?”
“I didn’t talk about the asteroid. The idea was to draw the attention of whoever it is who already knew about it. The easiest way to find them is to dangle me as bait and see who takes it.”
“By discussing what might happen if the comet returns as the prophecy predicts, and brings with it some sort of asteroid capable of flipping the magnetic poles?”
“No. By discussing what is happening.”
Tom stopped walking, and fixed his steely gaze on Sam’s undaunted face. “You can’t be serious!”
“I am. The world’s changing rapidly. Not like the disaster movies would have us believe the end of days look like, but really no less dangerously…”
“What’s happened?”
Sam continued to walk to the end of the row of yachts. “I’ll tell you while we walk. I want to be sure he hasn’t made it out of the water yet.”
Tom nodded. “Okay.”
“In the past three months the magnetic pole has shifted nearly two hundred miles farther south. It doesn’t sound like much, but in terms of what is considered normal in the Earth’s continuously shifting magnetic cycle, that’s a giant leap.”
“What were the responses?”
“There’s been a slowing of the world’s thermohaline circulation.”
“How much of a slowing?” Tom asked.
“Not a lot, but enough to cause some pretty major secondary problems. Many skeptics of Climate Change have argued that it’s merely the result of a statistical anomaly, and that over the course of the past decade, the average temperatures have resided clearly within the mean standard deviation.”
Tom stopped at the last yacht within the flotilla. A single-engine de Havilland Canada DHC-3 Otter Seaplane rested in the still water, tethered by a single rope to the last pleasure cruiser. It was painted light blue right down to its pontoons, with a single line of red paint running down its fuselage. The aircraft was close enough that they could see it was empty.
He turned to Sam. “You see anyone?”
“No. Let’s head back to the main dive barge and see if anyone has any recordings of the area before the dive. Maybe someone unwittingly captured an image of my attacker.”
“All right, sounds good.” Tom stared at the perfectly still water of the Great Blue Hole. “You said the thermohaline system has slowed?”