puts the game fishing boat between us and the dive boat, he reasoned.
He was hoping that the killer’s attention was still fixed on the dive launch. Carmen had gone over the starboard side of that and swum under both boats to escape.
For a few more seconds Carmen hesitated so Andrew finned slowly up towards her, still waving one hand. He could see she was looking but thought she probably did not recognize him. To make things quick he stopped waving and held out the alternate regulator on the air tank and squeezed it to expel some air.
Then he was up with her. She shrank away from him until he gave her another thumbs-up and held out the regulator towards her. Suddenly she nodded and pushed herself down. Andrew took out his regulator and grinned at her and to his enormous relief he saw her smile in return. Without a face mask she was obviously having trouble seeing properly but now he was sure she had recognized him.
She took the regulator, cleared it and began breathing through it. Andrew did not wait. No time for explanations, he thought. So he reached out to grab her arm with his free hand and she clung to him, the air tank held firmly between them.
We must get away from here fast, Andrew told himself.
Already they had begun to sink as he had stopped finning and he decided they needed to go right down deep to hide themselves as well as they could.
Otherwise the killers will spot us against the clear sand of the bottom, he reasoned.
To make sure that Carmen understood clearly what he intended he moved his right hand between their faces and pointed downwards. She nodded, then used her own right hand to grip her nose.
She is equalizing the pressure, Andrew thought, having just done the same thing automatically.
As they sank Andrew rolled over so that he could keep watching the boats. He also kept glancing at the depth gauge on the dive computer: 15, 16, 17, 18. Every metre down made the boats harder to see. Andrew’s fins touched bottom at twenty-two metres. By then the boats were two dark blobs about fifty metres away.
Still much too close. We need to go deeper and further out, he thought.
That was not the direction he really wanted to go. That was north and then east back to the reef. Worse still he knew that the current was flowing west into the deeper water so it would be harder to swim back later.
But the killers will expect us to try to get ashore if we can, so we must take that risk, he reasoned.
So he allowed the current to push them west. That meant they kept sinking down the sandy slope into that terrifying blue depth. Andrew made no attempt to swim, only moving enough to keep himself upright and facing the boats.
Sixty metres away, seventy metres, he estimated. By then the boats were becoming indistinct. And twenty-seven metres down. We can’t go much deeper, he thought anxiously.
Both were qualified to dive to thirty metres and had been a few metres deeper but his real concern was down time and the dissolved nitrogen he knew would now be accumulating under pressure in their bloodstreams.
We may not have enough air to decompress safely, he thought.
The air gauge showed 225psi so Andrew felt there was some margin for manoeuvre. But then his eyes detected movement at the stern of the launch and a stab of fear made him go tense. He quickly took out his regulator and put his mouth next to Carmen’s ear.
“Don’t move! Don’t breathe!” he said, as clearly as he could.
Andrew focused on the tiny moving shape. It is definitely a diver and he is leaning down from the dive platform to look, Andrew thought. He will expect to see my body on the bottom but he mustn’t see any bubbles, he added. So he just froze and held his breath. Carmen did the same. The whole time they slowly drifted away on the current.
The shape of the boats and diver became so indistinct that Andrew could not tell if the man was still there or not. But they had to breathe as the pressure was building up to agonizing levels in nose and eardrums. The pain was like a steel band squashing his skull. So Andrew nodded and began breathing and quickly equalized. Carmen did the same.
Holy mackerel, forty-five metres! Andrew thought as he studied the depth gauge. Time we headed north and up.
So he took the risk of being observed and began slowly finning. That hurt as his wound had tightened up and with every painful movement he felt apprehensive about what further damage he might be causing. But there was no help for it as he had the fins and the face mask, not Carmen. And much as he loved her he was not going to give up that face mask. It was one of his deepest fears and his most frequent nightmares. That dated back to when his supposed girlfriend had ripped his mask off and locked him in the strongroom of the wrecked Merinda along with his grandfather’s bones.
I’m going to give up diving, Andrew promised himself. In future I will have the courage to admit I am a coward when it comes to being underwater.
The distinct sound of a small motor starting up made him look anxiously back up towards the boats. These were now at least a hundred metres away and were quite difficult to see.
That’s the outboard on the rubber boat, Andrew thought. He experienced the sour taste of bile as terror welled up and he felt nauseous. Here they come!
But they didn’t. Andrew was just able to make out the shape of the small rubber boat and he saw it move away from the launch and then slowly circle the game fishing boat. Then it went back around the other side of the dive boat before heading off east, towards the reef.
They are looking for Carmen alright but think I have drowned, Andrew decided.
So he kept on swimming. Now he used his compass and the visual clues of the sloping seabed and that horrible deep blue gloom to maintain direction. He stayed down close to the seabed but angled slowly up the slope so that the depth became shallower all the time. Within two minutes he had come up to thirty-five metres and swum at least another hundred metres.
By then the boats were no longer visible but Andrew could faintly make out the buzz of the outboard motor. It did go over to the reef and now it is coming back out to the dive boat, Andrew decided.
As he swam Andrew had to grit his teeth against the now throbbing pain in his side. But he knew there was no help for it.
I have to do this or we both die, he told himself.
So, clenching his teeth hard on the mouthpiece, he pushed himself to keep going. The whole time he kept looking at Carmen to check that she was coping. To his relief she kept looking back at him and nodding.
After another two minutes Andrew was sure he had swum another hundred metres northwards and the depth gauge now read thirty metres. He showed that to Carmen and then slowed and allowed them both to settle on the bottom. His plan was to allow five minutes for decompression and also allow himself a chance to recover his energy and breath as he was starting to gasp and feeling very weak. For a few seconds he studied their drift and decided that there was now almost no current.
Must be getting close to the top of the tide, he deduced.
While they rested Andrew gingerly felt his wounds with his right hand. He bent over to try to look but that hurt too much and all he could detect was a small rent in the wetsuit.
I can’t see any blood seeping out, he told himself in an attempt at reassurance. But the thought of the blood and the predators it might be attracting kept him looking around for any sign of sharks. Or even barracuda, he added. They did not normally attack divers but would if conditions were right.
As they rested there Andrew heard the sound of the rubber boat’s outboard getting definitely louder. He tensed and his eyes scanned the surface. It is coming this way, he thought.
His breathing rose with the mounting fear and he had to make a deliberate effort to stop himself hyperventilating. He saw Carmen’s eyes go wider and she