The door to the lockout chamber clicked open and swung wide, revealing the bow deck of the submarine. He could only see what little was illuminated by the light streaming out of the chamber; the rest disappeared into impenetrable darkness.
He clicked the flashlight on and swam out of the lockout chamber and around the back of the conning tower. A sudden wave of contentment and ease washed over him, strengthening with each muscled exertion.
Nitrogen narcosis, he lazily thought to himself. Why didn’t I think of that before?
He knew the hazards of surface air breathed under so much pressure — tranquility, loss of reasoning, calculation errors, poor choices and over-confidence, not entirely unlike the benzodiazepine family of pharmaceuticals. He did the math. If every thirty feet below sixty was about the same as drinking a martini, that would put him at what, six martinis? Seven? Part of him felt like maybe all the concern was unnecessary. This was going to be easy.
As he swam along the length of the deck to the immediate rear of the conning tower, Dr. Nassiri realized he could hear the tinny clanging of a hammer against steel over the sound of his own hissing, ragged breath. Somewhere inside, Alexis was doing her job. Time to do his. He played his flashlight around the area where the clanging emanated but saw only bare hull. The device, wherever it was, had to be between the pressure hull and the outer hull.
Dr. Nassiri swam down into the massive gash left by the Fool’s Errand where it had stripped away the gun emplacement and large chunk of the outer hull. The clanging now seemed to be coming from everywhere, every direction. He felt for the vibration of the hammer with his fingers, lazily allowing them to crawl over the cold metal skin of the submarine and lead him to the source. The doctor wriggled between the cross-members between the inner and outer hulls.
He sucked at the regulator and felt resistance. Terror flooded over him. He managed one more half-breath, then let the pony bottle fall away from his mouth and disappear into the darkness, empty and useless. At six atmospheres of pressure, he’d sucked through the bottle six times faster than he’d intended. In his shock, he tried to turn around and smashed the face of his flashlight against one of the crossbeams. With a distinct pop, the plastic front imploded and the light vanished.
The clanging grew louder and louder, almost matching the ferocious volume of his heart in his ears. At least the cold water would slow his metabolism, buying him a few precious seconds to try to make it back to the lockout chamber. Dr. Nassiri tried to back his way out. His wetsuit caught on something blocky and plastic.
Clang, clang, clang, clang, the hammer banging on steel just wouldn’t stop. He could feel Alexis on the other side; she was there, right below him, inches away. She was banging with the hammer and he was drowning. Dr. Nassiri pulled at the blocky shape, snapping plastic rivets and freeing it from its mount on the pressure hull. He saw two now-severed wire leads hanging and realized he’d been caught on the transmitter. He yanked hard and it came free.
Boxy transmitter in hand, Dr. Nassiri wriggled free of the tight compartment, losing precious seconds and oxygen as he did. His chest pounded, his vision swam, his lungs involuntarily spasmed, trying to force him to just breathe!
The electronic transmitter dropped from his hand, knocking once against the side of the submarine and vanishing into the all-encompassing darkness. He desperately kicked towards the light of the lockout chamber, hand outstretched, trying to reach for something, anything to pull himself inside. He caught the rim of the outer hatchway and forced himself into the chamber, squeezing it shut behind him. Just as the last of his consciousness slipped away, he sucked in a massive lungful of freezing sea water and his entire world vanished into white.
CHAPTER 16
Klea slept in Jonah’s arms as if she’d hadn’t slept for a thousand years. He held her tight, her body pressed into his, cradling her head against his shoulder, running his hand through her short, dark hair, around the curve of her ear, against the nape of her neck. He kissed the crown of her head like a whisper.
“Colin, it’s too early,” she moaned, so quietly Jonah could barely make out the words. Then she nuzzled closer, sheltering herself against him in the quickening heat of the early afternoon, their third day at sea.
They hadn’t spoken much, not since her little ruse on the morning of the first day. Jonah appreciated her ease with silence.
Sometimes they’d sit far from each other with hands outstretched, barely brushing the very tips of their fingers against each other, as if anything but the slightest contact would overwhelm the senses.
Other times, mostly in the cool evenings, she would crawl over and curl up on top of him, so much so that her much smaller body would be completely suspended upon his, not one stray toe touching the inflatable raft.
With no speaking came no complaining. Jonah understood three days without eating was simply an immutable fact, no more changeable than the sun in the sky.
They’d gone through significantly more water than he’d had anticipated. The orange tent over the raft turned the small inflatable vessel into a floating greenhouse. Try as they might to catch the wind with the tent flaps, the exercise was futile. Jonah couldn’t risk repositioning the raft by paddling with his hands. His hands would accumulate salt and sores would soon follow, to say nothing of passing sharks.
Eyes closed, Jonah first felt a gentle, almost imperceptible nudge against the side of the raft. Then a shadow fell across nearly half of the tented canopy. He shook Klea awake. She startled at first, but Jonah held a single finger to his lips, and pointed for her to hide in the far corner, as far from the open tent flaps as possible. It wouldn’t be good to reveal a woman on board the raft, not until he knew what he was dealing with.
Jonah struggled towards the entrance. He hadn’t realized how weak he’d become, every movement felt like a battle against gravity and his own tired, wasting body.
He threw open the flap and shielded his face against the morning sun with his hand. The bow of a sixty-foot wooden fishing vessel curved over him as it nudged the raft like a collie herding a lamb. The vessel was local to the region, with an assortment of garish whites, blues, yellows, and reds painted over the wheelhouse and curved glassless windows.
An older man leaned over the side of the bow, staring down at Jonah, his dark face framed by day-glow-orange hair and beard. Two middle-school-age boys stood beside him, resembling him in the way that only sons resemble their father. They looked a little young for pirates, a good sign.
“Assalamu alaikum,” said Jonah, using the traditional Islamic greeting.
“Subah wanaagsan,” said the father, smiling to reveal a jack-o-lantern grin and pink gums.
“English?” asked Jonah. The father shook his head. Jonah smiled back, stuck an index finger in the air signaling for the man to wait, and briefly ducked into the tented raft again.
“I think we’ve got a ride,” Jonah said to Klea. “But they don’t speak English.”
“That won’t be a problem,” she said, pushing her way past him to reach the tent flap.
Jonah realized he shouldn’t have been surprised when Klea stuck her head out of the tent and spoke to the father in rapid-fire dialect. He wasn’t able to see what was happening, but Klea seemed to be holding her own in the very animated conversation. While he’d been in prison, he didn’t pick up much more than the essentials of Moroccan-accented Darija Arabic; Klea’s fluency was more evidence that she was a quicker study than he was. Within moments, she ducked her head back inside.