That’s where Davis was right now. Only this time he didn’t have a panel of levers to slap and start a fresh flow of air. This time it was all in reverse. Deep in the Red Sea, coherent to begin, but knowing he would fade fast. The regulator in his mouth was useless, which meant the only air available was fifty feet over his head. His lungs were already heaving, pushing the wrong way to rid themselves of the quart of sea water he’d just sucked in.
Control was everything. He kicked toward the surface, wishing to hell he had fins.
Not fast enough.
Reaching down, Davis dumped the two lumps of coral he’d been using as ballast.
Not fast enough.
Control.
The tank and harness were slowing him down, dragging through the water like a giant sea anchor. He unsnapped one buckle, then a second, and the rig sank to the bottom. Free of the drag, Davis kicked for all he was worth. He was wearing only the mask now, and he looked up to find the surface. It looked like it was a mile away. His old scuba training kicked in. Exhale as you rise in an emergency ascent. Easy for the instructor to say in class. Even easy to practice in a swimming pool. Not so easy to do in open ocean when you hadn’t taken a breath in over a minute. When you were burning through oxygen as every muscle in your body strained for speed.
The surface was getting closer. The surface was fading to gray. He kept trying to exhale, but there was nothing left. Gray turned to black.
Then, finally, light.
Davis broke the surface, gasping and coughing up water. Sweet air filled his chest, hot and dry and wonderful. His vision came back and he fell still. Davis looked up and saw nothing but sky. Then the boat twenty yards away. He didn’t start swimming right away, only stayed where he was, treading water and breathing. Just breathing. The old man was standing in the boat and gesticulating wildly. The hammer was still in his hand. Davis remembered. Clang, clang, clang. What had that been all about? He looked out to sea, expecting to see a freighter or a battleship bearing down. He didn’t see anything.
The old man yelled something, but Davis couldn’t make it out. Not that he would understand anyway. He swam closer and soon had a hand hanging over the starboard gunnel.
“Haboob!” The skipper yelled, clearly concerned.
“What?”
“Haboob!”
He started gesturing for Davis to get in the boat. When he didn’t right away, the old guy pointed up at the sky and made wild motions, spinning and twirling. Like a whirling dervish. Davis wondered if a tornado was about to hit, but when looked up he saw a perfect dome of blue above, liquid and aqueous in its own right.
He tossed his mask into the boat and heaved himself aboard. That was when he saw it. To the south, a wall of brown that blocked out the horizon. Blocked out everything. It had to go up five thousand feet, maybe ten, the top edge boiling and churning like some massive oncoming wave. Davis had experienced desert storms before, north of here on the Saudi peninsula. He knew they were mostly wind, occasionally a trace of rain thrown in to torment the woeful, arid world below. He also knew that such storms could cover half a continent and last for days or even weeks.
The old man was already cranking the motor.
“Yeah,” Davis said, “maybe we should head home.”
Seconds later, their concrete block anchor had been hoisted aboard and they were doing exactly that.
The old man kept his eyes locked on the sky as the boat plowed through waves. There was concern in his eyes, so Davis was concerned too — men who spent their lives on the sea weren’t prone to idle worry. The wind had definitely picked up, maybe twenty knots, and three-foot seas slapped the bow, casting rhythmic sheets of salt spray over everything. The mountain of roiling brown was getting closer, almost blotting out the coastline.
Davis hadn’t made any gesture like he’d wanted to go back down and retrieve the scuba gear, and the old man didn’t seemed concerned about the loss. By leaving it there, Davis figured he was saving the owner a terrible death by drowning. And for his own purposes, Davis had no need to go back down on Shark Reef. The wreckage had told him all he needed to know. He knew why the airplane had crashed. And he had a pretty good idea of what was now sitting in FBN Aviation’s hangar. One look in the cockpit had made everything clear.
As he eyed the storm, Davis noticed the old man chewing khat again. When the skipper saw Davis looking, he held out a small plastic bag full of the dried leaves, a gesture not unlike a good ol’ boy from South Carolina offering up a pinch of chewing tobacco. What the heck? he thought. He took a small pinch, but the old man made a bigger gesture with his hands. Davis took some more. He put it in his mouth and started chewing. It was slightly on the bitter side, but not bad.
Davis looked at the sky again and wished there wasn’t a storm on the horizon. He was already fighting enough heavy weather. Rafiq Khoury’s dubious corporation. Bob Schmitt’s suspect airplanes. A squad of Sudanese soldiers. For all he knew, the whole Sudanese army. Davis needed help. But what were the chances of that? Even if he could get in touch with Larry Green, what could the general do? Send in the Marines? Special Forces? Order an air strike on FBN Aviation’s hangar? Davis knew, in a general sense, what Rafiq Khoury was up to. And there wasn’t much time to stop it, not given what Johnson had told him about the flight schedule. Yet the scenario Davis had was no more than a hunch, and nobody in Washington, D.C., was going to authorize an attack on foreign soil based on Jammer Davis’ best guess. Certainly not in time to make a difference.
So Davis was flying solo — again. And there was only one way he could stop whatever was happening. He had to pay another visit to Rafiq Khoury’s hangar.
The little boat struggled for headway. The seas were serious now, bigger waves that came spilling over the side. The old man handed Davis a bucket, something that didn’t need any translation, and he started to bail. The wind was coming from onshore as the storm pushed air forward to announce its arrival. The huge wall of brown seemed to hover right over them, clouds at the leading edge rolling and curling in a wild transfer of energy.
Davis could just see the beach as the gust front rolled over the village. They were two hundred yards from shore, but his exposed skin was already getting sandblasted by wind-driven particles. Davis squinted against the dust and watched the world turn shades of khaki as clouds blocked the sun.
The old man said something. Probably, “Look,” because he was pointing toward shore.
When Davis saw it, his heart skipped a beat. Soldiers.
The old man eased off the throttle, and they both watched two uniformed men walking across the beach, their heads bowed into the wind, their uniforms pressed to their bodies by blasts of molten air. One of them stopped and pointed, noticing the little boat offshore. The whole world seemed to pause as they all stared at one another. Everyone wondering what to do. Wondering what the other guys would do. One of the soldiers broke the impasse. He pulled the rifle from his shoulder and trained it on the boat.
The old man said something else. Probably, “Shit!”
“Yeah! Go!” Davis responded, waving toward open water.
With the wind blowing toward them, Davis easily heard the first shot over the whine of the little outboard. He had no idea where the round hit, but wasn’t waiting for the next. He ducked down behind the stout hull of the boat. The old man had the same idea, his hand the only part of him exposed as he kept a grip on the motor’s steering arm. It wouldn’t take long to get out of range, particularly since the visibility was going down fast. A minute, maybe two, and they’d be safe. But then what? Davis wondered.