“You hear me?” the kid said, but weaker this time. Then: “Hey, wait a minute — I’m not gettin’ any more air outta this thing!”
Hearing that, Dex hesitated for only an instant, then braced himself against the outer collar of the hatch so he could pull Tommy out of there. The cloudy water swirled around them and seemed to somehow be getting denser, closer. It was getting harder to see details.
“I got nothin’,” said Doc, gesturing first to his mouthpiece, then toward the surface as he flippered himself into upward motion.
“Get outta here. We’ll get this guy,” said Mike Bielski, reaching for Tommy’s nearest leg.
“Tommy! Let’s go…” said Dex. “C’mon.”
The kid didn’t kick or try to hold on. He didn’t say anything either, and that made Dex try to move even faster. When they had him free of the hatch, Dex could see Tommy’s eyes behind his faceplate bulging out of his head. The dumb ass was trying to hold his last gulp of air when he felt the regulator shut down.
“Hey, relax, man. Here…” Mike released his mouthpiece and passed it to Tommy, who grabbed for it just a little too frantically, then sucked in the sweet air mixture.
He’d been unbelievably stupid, and Dex was pissed.
But this was not the time to let his emotions screw things up.
“I’ve got him, Boss,” said Mike.
Dex nodded. “Can you stay with him all the way up?”
“Just like you taught us…” said Bielski.
Dex watched as Mike slowly headed to the surface with Tommy in tow. Sharing a single tank, they worked their way topside, but paused every ten feet or so to make sure Tommy was okay and not panicking after-the-fact. They hadn’t been deep enough for the bends to be much of an issue but a freak-out could occur at any depth and be just as deadly.
Just as Dex was ready to follow them, he noticed a glow coming from the hatch’s interior. Tommy’s dive light, where he must have dropped it. Floating over to the circular opening, Dex lowered himself toward the beam of the Princeton Tec. It lay on a flange above the inner hatch, and as Dex retrieved it, he saw the beam swipe across the concavity of the open hatch.
Four numbers had been stenciled across it: 5001.
Staring at it for a second, he wondered what the designation meant, then spun around to orient himself toward the surface.
He caught up with Mike and Tommy five feet from the top. Breaking the water, he saw Don and Kevin Cheever waiting on the step-deck to haul Tommy’s sorry ass aboard. His fire-engine red dry-suit looked even brighter in the afternoon light, but nowhere near as brilliant as his expression. He certainly didn’t look like a guy who’d been a minute or so away from a pretty bad way to check off the planet.
Ripping off his mask, in between gulps of air, he started talking. “You guys’re not gonna believe—!”
“Shut the fuck up,” said Dex. “You goddamned dummy! You pull another play like that and you’re never diving with us again, you hear me?”
It got so quiet on the deck, even the slap of the waves against the hull and the screechy seabirds seemed to stop for a second. Feeling the collective stares of everybody burning him, Dex stepped forward and stood over Tommy, who sat cross-legged on the deck like a little kid.
Nobody wanted to be the first guy to say anything. It was like they were all waiting for Tommy to offer up an answer, or an explanation that might get them past this ugly point. In all the time they’d been diving as a team, nothing like this had ever happened. Dex knew they’d never seen him lash out like that (because they hadn’t known him during his days as a Navy Chief).
Time seemed to be stretching out, sagging in the middle, slowing them all down. Even Tommy sensed it, as his dark eyes flashed from one guy to another, looking for an ally who simply wasn’t there.
“Hey, guys, sorry… I just got caught up in the moment,” said Tommy. “I won’t let it happen again.”
No way he’s getting off that easy, thought Dex. “You might get away with that daredevil shit in the Fire Department, but not out here. No way I spend the rest of my life feeling guilty because I lost somebody on my watch — because I let them act like an asshole. You got that?”
“Yeah, I got it. Dex, I mean it. I’m sorry — I just saw that thing, shining down there. It looked like gold and I kinda lost it.”
“I thought that’s what you said on the link,” said Don. “You said you saw gold… and silver.” He pushed back his baseball cap, trying to look casual as he scratched his head, but there was no suppressing his obvious interest.
“What gold?” said Andy Mellow.
“You heard me. As soon as I got through the second hatch, I could see it — Like in the movies, you know, those things that look like bricks…”
“Bullion,” said Doc. “Is that what you mean?”
“Like the soup?” said Tommy. “Is that what they call it?”
“You sure what you saw?” said Don.
“No shit. I’m pretty sure…”
“Doesn’t sound like it,” said Mike, sounding the least interested of all of them.
“You think I’d bullshit you guys at a time like this? I saw this slab… the bullion thing. Not a bunch all piled up… like the way they always show you the gold… you know, like in that Fort Knox place.”
“That’s only in the movies,” said Mike. He had that grin on his face that usually meant he thought you were sounding like an idiot.
“So what’re you sayin’?” said Don. “Now it sounds like it looked like gold… which to me means you’re not so sure now.”
Tommy moved to his knees, grabbed a rail to steady himself, and sat down on a storage bin. “I’m sure. I’m pretty sure.”
“And you only saw one brick,” said Doc.
“If there’s one, hey, there could be more…” Tommy grinned.
“Visibility isn’t all that great,” said Dex. “We’ll need to check it out.”
“No time like the present,” said Andy.
“Uh-uh. It’s getting too late,” said Dex. There was no way he wanted them even thinking about going back down there at this hour.
“Yeah,” said Don. “The wind’s coming up too. Smart to just start heading in.”
“Storm?” said Mike.
Don shrugged. “Hard to tell.”
“That’s okay,” said Dex. “That’s why they invented tomorrow. Everybody still on?”
A chorus of grunted assents rose up around him, but he could feel their collective resentment. Gold. The word sank through his thoughts like an anchor. Something about gold that got guys spinning out of their usual orbits.
Buried treasure. Getting rich. All that sort of thing. He was reminded of the old Bogart movie, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. The ultimate statement on “gold fever.”
Funny thing was — it didn’t take much to get a real good case of it spreading through a group. Fast. Like a virulent plague. These guys were all so close to letting it take them over, it was scary.
“You sure it’s safe to leave everything?” said Don.
Dex grinned. “That tub’s been down there for sixty years and nobody’s been the wiser. Now all of a sudden, what? You think everybody’s going to be lining up to get our gold?”
Mike and Doc chuckled softly, but nobody else seemed to see much humor in it.
“You’re probably right,” said Andy. “But it doesn’t hurt to be careful, does it?”
It was time to get these guys refocused. “The best thing we can do is keep things quiet until we can get a better look at what Tommy thinks he saw down there. Trust me, I know what I’m talking about.”