The Girl Beneath the Sea (Underwater Investigation Unit #1)(82)

At first I think it’s a shark, but then I realize it’s worse.

Seventy feet. The pressure at this depth is so intense my skull feels like it’s about to implode.

I can see the outline of two divers.

They’re spreading out so one can meet Dad from the front while the other sneaks up in the shadows from behind.

The one descending in the darkness has his knife drawn. He’s going to kill my father.

Eighty feet. My joints hurt. My sinuses are about to collapse. I’ve never gone this deep this fast before.

Free divers spend years training their bodies for this kind of abuse. Their joints have cartilage and deposits built up over hundreds of dives and recoveries.

I had eight seconds to prepare for this.

Ninety feet. Everything aches.

The shadow diver’s right below me.

He’s wearing body armor and has a knife and gun.

All I have is speed and surprise.

Sometimes that’s enough.





CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

CLEAT

The weight belt hits the back of the shadow diver’s head. Not enough to knock him out, but enough to stun him.

He probably thinks he’s been attacked by a shark.

I make him wish he had. A shark would take one bite and let him go. I’m taking him out of the picture.

I let go of the belt, grab the back of his pack, and start slashing at the hoses going to his regulator, then stab his vest, puncturing the thick rubber, making it impossible for him to inflate it and use it for an air supply.

My blade slides through his vest, and I accidentally stab him in the shoulder. Blood begins oozing from the wound. His knife hand swings back at me, and we roll in the water.

His gear is streamlined for combat, but I’m even sleeker.

I rip his mask from his face, which is instantly hidden behind a mass of bubbles.

He’s trying to control the hoses, but it won’t make a difference. I cut them all. They writhe around like an angry hydra as the air escapes.

I see the gun strapped to his chest breather and pull it free. His arm shoots through the water and grabs my wrist. His knife swipes at my wrist, almost catching it. Almost.

I kick his chest with both feet and slide away. My back hits the Kraken, and I roll over.

The other diver is coming at me, his knife pointed at my face.

BANG!

The gun I took from the other diver is loud underwater, and I feel the concussion in my chest.

The bullet hits his chest breather.

I fire again, and a jet of bubbles shoots out, blocking the second diver’s face.

The knife arm comes at me, and I slip out of the way, but he turns fast. His gun is drawn now, and the muzzle’s swinging toward my body.

BANG!

He fires and misses. I think.

I pull myself over the Kraken and under the far wing.

Before the diver can reach me, I move to the front of the submarine and catch a glimpse of the diver I cut swimming fast for the surface.

He’s going to get the bends real bad. But he doesn’t have a choice. It’s that or dying.

I can no longer ignore the screaming in my lungs.

BANG! The other diver fires at me, and I shoot back.

I have no idea how effective these bullets are underwater, but I’m pretty sure at a yard or so they’re not fun.

I swim farther out of range, my lungs ready to tear apart.

He’s flattened out over the Kraken, taking aim at me, waiting for me to come closer.

Oh god. I’m about ready to pass out.

I either have to head for the surface or think of something fast.

Everything goes white as something incredibly bright lights up the seafloor like the sun.

I have to cover my eyes. The diver turns, and I hear something like a scream.

When I glance up a moment later, I see his body swimming for the surface, a cloud of blood billowing from his leg trailing behind.

Dad is hovering over the edge of the Kraken, turning off the underwater torch he used to burn the diver. From the amount of blood entering the ocean, the burn went deep. So deep it didn’t cauterize.

Damn, that’s harsh.

Dad swims over to me, and I start furiously making hand gestures in our underwater sign language.

He puts a finger to his mouth, signaling me to be quiet. All of a sudden, I’m thirteen, and we’re hiding from an aggressive bull shark off Bimini.

Dad holds up his hand and removes his regulator from his mouth and pushes it toward me.

Breathe, Sloan. Breathe, he’s telling me.

I take a deep breath and let my lungs fill up with air. He places his spare in his mouth, then takes a small underwater clipboard from his pouch and writes a question mark on it.

I take the board and the pen and draw a crude picture of the Fool with one man aiming a gun at another and two stick figures swimming to the surface.

I write “George” under the man at gunpoint.

Dad nods and looks up. He takes the board from me and erases the picture, then writes, “We have to save him.”

I give Dad a thumbs-up, indicating we should surface. He shakes his head and points to the Kraken, then writes “Fixed” on the board.

I take another breath of air and swim over to the rear of the submarine, where Dad had been working. A small hatch, not much bigger than a large doggie door, hangs open underneath.

I stick my head inside and emerge in a tiny compartment filled with air. The interior area is no wider than my shoulders and lined with Pelican cases. At the far end is the porthole Dad peered through. Below that is a small control stick and a display panel.