“Joe, do you read me? Joe?”
Another thing dense water did was limit even the most advanced communications systems. Joe was out of range. He looked left to the stern of the Sophie Celine, there were lights coming around that way. He glanced to the right and saw the same thing.
“Three killers out to get me and only two spears,” he muttered. “Next time, I’m bringing a whole stack of spearguns.”
He decided to go right, moving forward, gripping the speargun with both hands. The lights of the other diver came out of the gloom. Kurt focused on them and fired. The spear ran true, hitting the attacker in the shoulder just below the collarbone and coming out through his back.
A tornado of bubbles whirled as the man writhed in agony like a spiked tuna. Instead of down, he spiraled upward, grabbing at his wound and releasing the rifle.
Kurt let him go and dove for the rifle, which vanished into the gloom.
“Lights on,” he said.
The left wing light was shattered, but the light on his right shoulder came on instantly. Its illumination reflected off the sinking weapon and at the same time also gave away Kurt’s position.
A fair trade.
Kurt dove hard, only to hear the thudding of another rifle. Bolts dug into the silt in front of him and Kurt had no choice but to turn or be killed.
The last two divers were converging on him. Kurt steadied himself and released the final spear, aiming at the man with the rifle. The effect was lethal, right through the neck. The man went limp and began drifting in a glowing pool of blood.
He turned back to where he thought the fallen rifle had hit bottom, arriving on the spot at the same time as the last surviving member of the attacking force did.
Both of them grabbed the weapon, Kurt locking onto the grip and the stock as his opponent grabbed the barrel. Kurt had a better position and pulled it free.
He tried to bring it around and fire, but the other diver was too close. He threw an arm around Kurt’s helmet, grabbing for Kurt’s air hose.
Kurt kneed him in the stomach and the man released the hose but pulled out something Kurt hadn’t expected: an explosive bang stick, designed to kill sharks or anything else it touches. Kurt blocked the diver’s arm and grabbed his wrist to prevent the explosive tip from hitting his side, where it would have blown a hole in him. He’d seen those weapons take out a fifteen-foot shark with one lethal touch. He had no desire to go the same way — or any way, for that matter.
The two were locked together, spinning in a whirl of weightless combat. The light on Kurt’s shoulder reflected off the man’s mask. Blinding both of them, but still they grappled.
Only now did Kurt realize how much larger this man was than him. Grabbing onto Kurt’s shoulder wing, his attacker gained more leverage, and despite Kurt’s best effort, the bang stick began inching closer to his ribs.
The assailant had him dead to rights and he knew it. Kurt saw a lunatic’s grin on his face as he closed in for the kill.
And then a wave of light enveloped them both as a yellow blur came out of the dark and hit Kurt’s attacker like a speeding bus. Kurt reeled backward, thankful to see Joe in the Turtle pushing the man through the sea like a bull might a gored matador.
Joe didn’t stop until he rammed the man into the seafloor, crushing him under the weight and force of the Turtle and leaving him half buried in the silt.
Kurt dropped down to the bottom, grabbed the rifle again and waited for Joe to circle around.
The Turtle eased in next to Kurt. Joe’s smiling face was easy to see inside his helmet. “Would it be wrong to paint a dead bad guy symbol on the Turtle’s flank?” Joe asked.
“Not as far as I’m concerned,” Kurt said. “What took you so long?”
Joe grinned. “From out there, I couldn’t tell if you were just having fun or in real trouble. Wasn’t until I heard the rifles that I figured you were probably outgunned.”
Ironically, sound traveled a lot farther underwater than the projectiles or the radio transmissions.
“Have to hand it to the Russians,” he said. “They come up with some interesting firearms.”
“That ought to go nicely with your collection,” Joe said.
Kurt collected unique guns, gathered from all around the world. He’d begun with dueling pistols, had several rare automatic Bowen revolvers and had recently expanded to six-shooters from the Old West, including a Colt .45 he’d used to dispatch the last villain they’d faced.
“It will at that,” he said. “Though I have a feeling it’s going to get some more use before it becomes a display piece.”
“You realize we’re doing this backward,” Joe said. “So far, we’ve expended a great deal of effort to take the low ground. Not exactly classic military strategy.”
“With a little luck, they don’t know we’re here yet,” Kurt said.
He hit the thrusters and swam back to the wreck site, where the civilian divers, who were being used as slave labor, were gathering extra oxygen tanks from the equipment platform.
They turned defensively at Kurt and Joe’s arrival.
“Better switch on the closed-captioning,” Joe said.
“It’s okay,” Kurt said, activating the display. “Guards dead. We’ll get you out of here.”
One of them pointed upward and scribbled furiously on his whiteboard.
Worse chicken scratch Kurt had never seen.
“How long have you been down here?” he asked.
Four fingers were held up.
“Four hours at ninety feet,” Joe said.
They would have to be on Nitrox or Trimix, not pure oxygen. But, even then, having spent this much time at the bottom, they would need hours to decompress on their way to the surface. A quick inventory told him there were not enough tanks. Not even close. The divers were dead unless another option was found.
Kurt put a hand on the lead diver’s shoulder and shook his head. “You can’t go up.”
The diver shook his head right back and pointed to the surface again.
“You’ll get the bends,” Kurt said.
The diver read the words on the small screen and then pointed upward again. Following that, he made a strange motion with his hands.
“I don’t know what you’re trying to say,” Kurt replied.
The diver seemed panicked. Kurt needed to calm him down. He pointed to the diver’s whiteboard. “Write slowly.”
The diver took the board into his hand, erased what he had scribbled before and wrote more methodically this time, like a child patiently trying to perfect his ABCs. When he was finished, he turned the board around and showed it to Kurt.
He’d written one word. It was easy to read.
BOMB!
33
The diver pointed furiously toward the half-excavated wreck. He wrote something more on the board.
When you attacked — they set bomb.
Kurt began to see the pattern. These guys wanted the relics. But if they couldn’t have them, they were determined to keep anyone else from getting them. “Show me.”
The diver hesitated.
“Show me!”
Reluctantly, the diver began to swim, kicking slowly and leading Kurt toward the wreck. As they arrived, the diver shone his light down into it. The team had used the vacuum to excavate tons of silt. They’d pulled articles from the sediment and discarded everything that didn’t look Egyptian. Muskets, rotting barrels and old boots rested on the bottom like a garbage heap.
The ship was a skeleton. Most of the outer planking was gone and only the ship’s ribs, made of thicker timbers, remained. Gliding over the top of these ribs, Kurt saw what the diver was talking about. Not one bomb but two, blocks of C-4 wired to timers, just like they’d tried to use in the warehouse. The problem was, these explosives had been dropped inside the bones of the ship like steaks tossed into an animal’s cage.