There was definitely something above him, something big enough to block out the ambient light.
When he finally managed to turn his face he was startled to see a stainless steel cylinder, the size of a shotgun shell, pushing toward his neck. Just beyond the cylinder he found himself looking into a face mask, and the dark eyes behind the mask looked like the eyes of Death himself.
Before he could register his shock, another diver came through the tight channel between the huge stones going the other way and literally collided with David’s face mask. The diver was a largish woman who put up her hands defensively when she banged into David. At that instant, she looked up and behind David, giving him a full view of the expression on her face, which was suddenly one of total surprise, then fear. A large bubble escaped her mouthpiece as a black-suited arm reached over David’s head and pushed the cylinder on the end of the stick against the side of the woman’s face. There was a nasty thump and then the side of the woman’s head dissolved in a cloud of bone, blood, and a pink galaxy of bubbles.
David recoiled down into the sand at the base of the stones, trying instinctively to turn upside down so he could defend himself. When he finally succeeded, he was face-to-face with the swimmer in the black wet suit. Then the other man reached down and clawed David’s face mask right off his head.
David was blinded instantaneously by the sudden loss of his mask as he felt the man kick upward. Then he was gone. David caught just a blurry glimpse of a black swim fin disappearing over the top edge of the ashlar, some fifteen feet above him, pursued now by the expanding cloud of blood and bubbles streaming from the sagging, inert body in front of him.
David’s head began to pound, reminding him to suck in a deep breath from his mouthpiece, and then a couple more. He was still trying to comprehend what he’d just witnessed. He could breathe, although the saltwater was stinging his eyes. He knew what that stick was — it was called a bang-stick, used normally as a last line of defense against an attacking shark. Two to three feet long with a 12-gauge shotgun shell contained in a small, waterproof power head at one end. You made sure the head was in solid contact with the shark and then you fired it. Then you got the hell out of there before his buddies showed up for lunch.
He examined the woman’s body in front of him. It was hovering just above the bottom, arms and legs outstretched and relaxed, fingers trailing in the sand, and still leaking profusely. She was quite obviously dead. He immediately wondered if there were sharks in the remains of the harbor. No reason why not, he thought, and levitated himself smartly out of the ashlar canyon to go find Judith and the tour guide. He kicked hard to get over to the shipwreck where they were still kneeling down on the bottom, sifting the sandy bottom with their fingers, apparently looking for artifacts. He reached the guide and made the emergency/distress signal, then the follow-me signal. Once the guide saw the woman’s body down between the massive breakwater stones, she went right to the surface and popped a signaling device.
An hour later David and Judith were in a police van parked on the beach, talking to two detectives, while the crew of an Israeli navy launch retrieved the unfortunate woman’s body from the harbor. All the other excursions in the harbor had been canceled. While waiting for the cops to arrive, David had tried to make sense of what had happened down there. Had the killer been hunting him, specifically, or was he some kind of terrorist who just wanted to shoot a tourist? A bang-stick was a one-shot device — once he’d fired it, the killer could no longer do anything to David unless he wanted to get into an underwater knife fight. He’d done the next best thing — ripped David’s face mask off, which then gave him time to swim away. As the detectives approached, David thought fast. His whole plan to go back to Masada would be in jeopardy if he told the cops that it looked as if he had been the intended victim. He’d decided to leave that little bit of information out when he told the cops what he’d seen.
Man in a black wet suit, swimming above me. Waved like any other tourist. I waved back. I was down on the bottom, looking at the big breakwater stones, which form a sort of canyon down there. Next thing I know there’s a woman in front of me, and we bump into each other. Then she looks over my shoulder and — bang! It all happened in deep shadow between two enormous blocks of stone. The bang-stick was probably a 12-gauge, since it didn’t have a long pole on it, and then he ripped off my face mask. That’s what I saw.
You recognized this bang-stick, as you call it?
Sure; I’ve never used one, but I’ve seen the training videos. Used to protect yourself from an aggressive shark.
The two detectives asked him to go through it all again, then told him to remain in the area while they went to talk to the tour guide. David and Judith walked over to the seaside café nearby, where David ordered a brandy to steady his nerves. Judith hadn’t actually seen the woman’s body down between the giant stones, but she was still pretty upset at what had happened. They watched as the cops tried to get the attention of the recovery boat. They saw their tour guide in the back of the boat, and she looked just a little hysterical. A TV news-van crew was trying to talk its way through the entrance; they didn’t seem to be making much headway with the big cop at the gate.
“Well, didn’t this turn out to be a great date,” David said, shaking his head.
“Out of nowhere,” Judith said. “That’s a state park, the ancient harbor. How does an armed man just swim into a state park, with all those people around?”
“There were lots of people visiting the park. He could have been with the snorkel group, or he just came around the breakwater. That poor woman. Talk about wrong place, wrong time. God!”
He hadn’t told Judith that the man first threatened him with the bang-stick, and he wasn’t going to, either. He was beginning to think that it had been a threat, or otherwise he would never had the chance to turn around — the bang-stick was in contact before he even knew what was touching him. Judith was asking him something.
“You don’t think this was some kind of accident? An undersea hunter, shooting in the dark?”
“It wasn’t like a spear gun, where you shoot from a distance,” he said. “It was a bang-stick. First you have to press it against the predator’s skin—then you fire it. This was no accident. He meant to kill that woman.”
“Did the police say who she was?”
“A tourist is all they know right now,” he said, wanting another brandy but deciding not to have one. Their lovely outing had been ruined, and all he wanted to do was get the hell out of there. Like he’d told the cops, he’d never fired a bang-stick, but he’d seen a training video where a diver used one against a fifteen-foot tiger shark, giving it a shot to the gills. The huge creature had been killed instantly.
The detectives came back over to them from the beach and told David he could go back to his hotel. They cautioned him not to leave the country just yet as there might be more questions. Judith asked about the victim’s identity, but the cops just shrugged. A tourist, that’s all we know.