CHAPTER 44
In the sunlight, listening to the wind whisper through the Bahamian pines ringing the blue hole, Eric thought again that it looked so peaceful here. Safe, even. But they had returned to this bottomless pool of water because it wasn’t safe. Because somewhere in its depths there were two dead bodies.
And now Eric had to find them.
He took a deep breath, trying to forget about his date with Ashley. He hunched back over his ROV, sealing an exterior panel. He hoped that his modification would allow DORA to make it past the restriction, because if it didn’t, at best they would be wasting their time here. At worst, he would get his ROV trapped.
They were back at The Staircase because this was the one place where hard evidence—a possible tentacle captured in a digital image—had been gathered, and because Mack wanted to know what happened to his friend. Needed to know.
When they’d been unable to continue here before, it had been in part because DORA wouldn’t fit through a restriction in the hole’s cave system. Probably wouldn’t fit, anyway. Eric hadn’t been willing to risk it. To address that problem, he’d ordered in a part from Florida. When it had finally arrived yesterday, he’d replaced the rear propeller with a smaller one and tested the device in a shallow offshore lagoon. DORA ran about the same as before, but a bit slower. With the modification, the opening would probably be large enough to allow DORA to pass. By a hair or two, anyway.
He was anxious anyway. DORA’s girth hadn’t been the only reason he’d turned her back at the restriction last time. Eric hadn’t been confident enough to try his luck. Submarine cave navigation using an ROV was simply too difficult. Now, after a lot of practice, he knew he was getting better at operating the little ROV in tight spaces.
He could do this. Well, DORA could, anyway.
“Are you ready?” Val stepped up beside him, zipping the back of her wet suit with a pull cord.
She was still mad at him. He felt bad about what he’d said about Mack, and that he’d done it in front of her, but couldn’t understand why she hadn’t taken his side.
He said, “Almost. Where’s Mack?”
“He went to take a break.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“What?”
“That lusca thing Clive told you about. That you looked up?”
“Yeah? What about it?”
“Could it be possible? Some half-shark, half-octopus thing? ”
Val laughed at him. “Obviously you’re not a biologist.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you wouldn’t realize that that idea is ridiculous. Have you taken much biology?”
He shook his head. “Just 101, a long time ago. I was always more interested in physics, engineering.”
“Well, even in 101 they should have taught you something about evolution. Unless we have a mad scientist working in the Bahamas, we aren’t going to have blended phyla in the animal kingdom.”
“No, I guess not,” he said.
“But our whole idea of an undiscovered marine species has some backing. And not just from Breck’s picture here, or the stories we’ve heard lately.”
“How so?”
“There isn’t any real credibility to the lusca legends. But there have been globsters that have washed ashore in Florida and the Bahamas. Those lend some potential credibility to there being a large, undiscovered cephalopod here.”
“Globsters?”
“Whenever you hear about some unidentified organic mass washing up on shore, which later turns out to be part of a dead shark, or maybe a jellyfish? That’s what they call a globster. The most famous one, attributed to a sea monster in Florida, was probably from a whale, but after a few separate analyses, the tissue samples are still inconclusive.”
“Listen, Val, about the other night—”
Eric stopped as Mack appeared from behind the bushes. He limped toward them, adjusting the sleeve of his wet suit and grumbling. Eric knew it was even harder for him to walk on the rough ground back there, in his prosthesis, than it was for him and Val. He wondered if he really was the bigger asshole.
“What are you two talking about?” Mack said.
“Nothing,” Val said.
Mack spit into the tea-colored pool. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
Eric saw Val rubbing her stomach as she looked into the hole, a concerned look on her face. “Are you all right?” he said.
“I’m fine.” She reached for her tank.
Eric swore as DORA thudded into the cave wall again. He knew she had made contact because the on-screen image had shuddered. He needed to do better than this, or he was sure to get her stuck again. And this time, she was too far back to allow anyone but the most experienced cave diver to go back to retrieve her.
He had guided DORA as she descended behind Val and Mack, who were now probably 120 feet down in the main shaft, helping feed out the ROV’s cable as she progressed forward. She was hundreds of feet beyond them now, in the side tunnel.
Eric had again followed the dead men’s primary safety line. He was careful not to snag it, or to sever it. If the line was cut and then disappeared in the sediments of the cavern, Eric could always follow DORA’s own cable back out, but without an intact safety line, they would have no way to ever find out where the divers had disappeared. These caverns were a labyrinth in every sense.
DORA was making great progress. She had followed the line through a large chamber with a number of stalagmites rising from the floor, and past another long, low cavern lined with hundreds of fragile calcite formations running from floor to ceiling. Eric had winced when he was fairly certain he’d run DORA into one of them, hoping he hadn’t broken it off. Now the ROV was nearly to where she’d made it last time. But besides bumping the ancient formation, Eric had already run the ROV into the sides of the tunnel several other times.
He was struggling to concentrate. His mind was on something else. Someone.
He knew it was so petty to still be thinking about Ashley now, when they were here, looking for the body of Mack’s dead friend, but he couldn’t help himself. He took a deep breath.
Focus.
DORA entered a long, cylindrical passage Eric remembered well, and he piloted her forward smoothly. After fifty feet or so, he slowed her to a stop. She was there. He leaned back from the controls.
When he had navigated this tunnel previously, on his computer monitor he’d thought it looked like he was watching the view of one of those scopes going down someone’s esophagus. Now he’d reached the sphincter.
“What do you think, DORA?”
He sat upright on the rocky ground, and swatted another midge biting into his neck. The little bastards were no bigger than tiny splinters, but they were leaving red bumps all over his body. On the screen, a puff of sediment rose past the camera. Without any commands from Eric, DORA had settled to the bottom.
Eric leaned forward again and touched the control stick. Hundreds of feet below, through layers of porous rock and water, DORA rose slowly off the bottom, and then pivoted upward until her nose was directed at the restriction. He stared at the dark slit where the tunnel curved upward, as more clouds of dust stirred past the camera. This was where he had stopped the ROV last time. The safety line from the other divers continued, though. From where it had been tied off to a small nub of rock, it angled upward and disappeared into what appeared to be some sort of natural chimney.
“Here goes nothing,” he muttered, and eased DORA forward.
Smooth curves of rock inched past on the screen. Although to Eric it appeared as though the ROV was still moving forward on the level, parallel to the ground he sat on now, he could tell from a digital bubble on the screen that she was slowly making the upward turn. He tapped the stick, and she lurched forward. The screen shook as some part of her struck the cavern wall.
“Shit.”
He pulled gently back on the stick, as a pilot does to make an aircraft climb, and then tapped the thruster again. Suddenly, he could see farther down the shaft. Up, actually. He reminded himself that he was now looking straight up. He could see maybe ten feet forward, maybe more, but it was hard to tell. The motionless safety line left by the divers led the way to the next bend. This was farther than he had dared last time. He nudged her forward again.
DORA bumped once. Twice. But she was still moving. Making progress.
“No turning back now, girl. . . .”
He accelerated, and a cloud of sediment filled the screen. He put the prop in neutral and waited for the dust to settle. When it did, he smiled. She was through.
The cave began to gradually widen and he shouted, even now wishing Val and Mack were here to share in the good news. DORA continued along the line, moving forward in the broad tunnel. He slowed her as the tunnel gradually narrowed, but was still easily passable, then she passed through a minor restriction, and the shaft opened into a huge grotto.
DORA was at the upper part of the chamber. Her lights revealed a great cavity below, filled with gin-clear seawater. Unlike the other grottos, this one lacked many calcite formations, with walls that were mostly smooth. He shook his head. People had actually swum back this far. Cave divers were some crazy bastards.
The chamber had to be fifty or so feet across, and nearly as high—the largest one yet. Here the safety line ended, tied off to a nub of rock, but two other lines began. Each ran into the chamber. The men must have separated here. And based on what Val had told him, this was where the camera had been found.
He piloted DORA into the space and followed one of the lines. It quickly began to slack, dropping far down to the bottom, where it lay in coils. He frowned. He followed it for another thirty feet or so, where it entered another dark recess lit only by DORA’s LEDs.
He pivoted the ROV and steered her back toward the top of the chamber, back to the main line, then followed the other of the two secondary lines. It remained taut, and ran across the top of the chamber to an opening in the ceiling not far from where DORA had first entered. He paused, considering the options. He decided to follow this line first.
The line ran into another tunnel, and he navigated past a few curves. Then, perhaps twenty yards from the chamber, he caught a glint in the ROV’s lights. A reflection, off some sort of small, man-made object. His heart thudded in his chest. He pushed her forward and zoomed on the object. It was round, made of metal....
A spool. A diver’s spool, containing the safety line.
There, the line ended.
“Now what?” he said. He allowed DORA to settle again, and stood to stretch his legs. Overhead, a vulture soared in the breeze coming off the distant ocean. He’d seen the ugly, red-headed birds many times on the island, often picking at the remains of land crabs crushed by the tires of cars bumping along the roads. He walked back to the laptop and sat again, looking at the screen. He’d come this far. He could go a little farther. As long as the tunnel didn’t branch again.
But it did.
After a short distance, there were two options. He pivoted DORA at the juncture. Thankfully, one branch appeared to end almost immediately. He moved DORA down the other one. Ahead was a restriction, probably only two feet across. This may be it.
He eased the ROV to the opening. She probably wouldn’t fit, but . . .
A shape. Something dark was in the ROV’s lights, just past the restriction. He turned her nose to face it, and then he saw him.
A few yards away, sitting down at what looked like a dead end. Facing him. A man.
A diver, in blue neoprene.
He would almost have looked as though he was resting, if the flesh hadn’t been coming away from his lips. His regulator had fallen from his mouth, and in the ROV’s lights Eric stared at the gaping mouth, where white teeth parted in a final scream. No bubbles rose from his lungs. Or ever would again. Eric swallowed. He’d never seen a dead body before.
He couldn’t make out much of the diver’s face, the glare off his mask obscuring his eyes and nose. But dark, curly hair was coming free from the scalp, settling on neoprene-clad shoulders. And the flesh around the lips, now beginning to rot away, appeared to be that of a gaunt, middle-aged black man.
He’d found John Breck.