“How—” Demos fumbled his words. “How… did you find us?”
“We didn’t. They did,” Clay replied, with his eyes fixed on the teenage boy. He let go of the button, plunging the small cavern into near silence. He then approached Demos’s son. Sounds of splashing echoed off the overhead rock.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
The teenager didn’t respond. Instead, he remained fixated on Clay with large dilated pupils.
“His name is Angelo.”
“Angelo,” Clay said, peering into the young man’s face. “Angelo? Can you hear me?” He held a hand up out of the water and snapped his fingers.
Nothing.
Clay reached beneath the warm water and found the boy’s arm. He followed it quickly to the wrist where he lightly pressed the tips of his fingers, feeling for a pulse. After several seconds he let go. The kid was in shock and barely breathing.
“Dirk. Here!” He said the words over his shoulder, and Dirk quickly moved closer. Clay grabbed the teenager’s hands and pulled them out of the water, placing both on Dirk’s gray head. Dirk squealed and clicked loudly.
The noise, along with the tactile connection from Dirk’s rubbery skin, caused Angelo to blink several times. He studied the dolphin with a look of confusion.
“Angelo!” Clay repeated, louder this time.
When the boy abruptly turned, Clay smiled and looked through the teenager’s goggles. “Can you hear me?”
To his relief, Angelo nodded.
“What’s your name?”
“Angelo,” he murmured. “Angelo Demos.”
“How old are you?”
The teenager blinked again. “Seventeen.”
“Are you a senior?”
Angelo stared at him, puzzled, but eventually answered. “Yes.”
“What school do you go to?”
“Leonidas.”
“Nice. You play any sports?”
“Yes.”
With his eyes focused on Clay, Angelo failed to notice Alison behind him, helping another regulator into his father’s mouth. After several long breaths, the older Demos began to relax.
“Yes, I play rugby.”
“Is that right? You any good?”
Angelo smiled unexpectedly. “Yes.”
Without missing a beat, Clay raised the second regulator in his own hand and placed it into Angelo’s mouth, before inhaling more from his own.
“You know, I have a friend who played for Texas Tech. You follow college ball?”
The boy nodded.
“He was pretty good and had a chance to play pro. But he gave it up to join the Navy. Now he’s stuck working with me. Crazy, huh?”
Angelo grinned and nodded again.
“Ah well, to each his own.” Clay glanced back over his shoulder before continuing. “Angelo, I want you to listen to me. You’re going to be fine. Looks like you two just got a little lost. Luckily our friends here managed to find you.”
Angelo looked back at Dirk, and then to Sally.
“What I need you to do,” Clay said, “is to listen to me very carefully. We’ve got some extra air for you, and these dolphins here are going to lead us back out. A piece of cake. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” Clay smiled. “Now tell me what I just said.”
Clay helped the boy wrap one of his hands over the regulator. Angelo then pulled it out briefly to repeat what Clay had said.
“Excellent. It’s just going to take me a minute to secure this second tank, okay? It’s going to feel a little light for a minute while I remove your old one.”
“Okay.”
Behind them, the father studied the dolphins and looked at Alison. “How did they find us?”
Alison had to lift her mask to answer. “Believe me, it’s a long story.” She kept her mask open, waiting for Clay, who had just finished securing the boy’s tank. He quickly moved to the boy’s father and did the same. The truth was that although he’d managed to calm them down, they were far from being out of danger. At this depth, they could still go through the air in those extra tanks too quickly. And if that happened, they were all going to be in a world of hurt.
When he finished, Clay looked at Dirk. “Dirk, lead us out, as fast as you can.”
Alison heard the translation in her waterproof earbuds, including one of the words that didn’t convert properly. But the message got through, and Dirk responded with a series of clicks and whistles.
“He’s ready,” Alison nodded.
Clay reached below the surface, pulled up a thick white rope, and held it out. In one fluid motion, Dirk seized the rope and gripped it between his powerful teeth.
Clay grabbed for the other end, which had multiple knots tied into it. After wrapping Angelo’s hands tightly around the first loop, he clamped his own around a second one further up. “Remember, slow down where it gets tight.”
After only a brief delay, Dirk clicked again.
The older Demos watched the exchange in fascination. “Are you… talking with them?”
“Yes,” Alison winked. “But don’t let that one think you have any food.”
The man didn’t understand the joke, but it didn’t matter. She was busy handing the end of her own rope to Sally. “Here,” she told Demos, “hold onto this and don’t let go. They can get us out a lot faster. If you have a problem, tap me hard on the shoulder.”
Clay looked back and forth between all of them. “Ready?”
“Ready,” Demos replied. His son stared back nervously but nodded in agreement.
Alison pulled her mask into place.
With that, Clay gripped the rope tight with one hand and the teenager’s vest with the other.
“Go, Dirk!”
46
They traveled less than a hundred feet before Dirk stopped. He remained still for several seconds, moving his head back and forth and emitting a long series of pulses resembling loud clicks.
Clay, just behind Dirk, felt a curious feeling in his arms and hands and turned back to Alison in surprise. She smiled inside her mask. What Clay was experiencing was the “buzz” that most humans felt in the presence of a dolphin using its echolocation, causing powerful sound waves to bounce off everything around them. Dirk’s melon, a mass in his forehead, picked up the waves he emitted upon their return. Genetically speaking, a much more advanced form of naval sonar.
But Alison’s smile at Clay was brief. At that moment, something else occurred to her. Echolocation, as it was understood by humans, was an evolutionary ability allowing dolphins to gauge objects and distance in little to no visibility. Yet when Alison twisted around with her bright flashlight, she found they were surrounded by rock and coral. With only three passages visible.
When Dirk continued emitting his loud clicks, Alison finally turned to Sally.
“Sally, what is Dirk doing?”
Sally’s peered back at Alison through the dark water. He look Alison.
“For what?”
Sally paused as if confused by her question.
He look for out Alison. More fast.
“A faster way out.”
Yes.
It was exactly what she had hoped Sally would say. Finding a faster way out was critical given their dwindling air supply. But at that moment, it wasn’t what Dirk was doing that perplexed her. It was how he was doing it.
If echolocation were really just a more sophisticated form of human radar or sonar, then it wouldn’t travel very far in their current surroundings. Some distance down the tunnels perhaps, but given the winding of their paths, it wouldn’t be far at all before the bouncing of Dirk’s pulses would stop returning to him.