Barracuda Read online

  ***

  Disco and Nike traveled back toward the Happy Monkey, secure in the knowledge that the cop would never be able to free himself and would soon run out of air. By the time anyone on the Hummingbird knew he was in trouble, it would be too late. Even if they sent down a diver to help, it would take too long to free him before he drowned.

  Their scooters shot across the ocean floor in a straight line back to Tanya and the boat. The divers’ air supply was running very low, and they looked at each other anxiously. Soon they were below the Happy Monkey and slowly began their ascent to the deco lines with the dormant scooters connected to their BC vests.

  Suddenly, Nike gave Disco the “out of air” sign by cutting his hand across his throat. Disco could see that Nike’s eyes were wide with terror. Disco signaled to him to drop the scooter and swim up to the hanging regulators.

  Nike unbuckled his D ring clip, dropped the scooter, and swam quickly to the first hanging regulator, breathing deeply. Disco ascended much more slowly as he watched the psi in his scuba tank drop below one hundred pounds. He knew that his tank was done, so he shot the remaining air into his BC vest for added buoyancy. Disco rose to the extra deco regulator just as his scuba tank ran out of air.

  He grabbed the second deco line and attempted to inhale a long breath of mixed gas to help him breathe and deco, but there was nothing coming out of the regulator. Now his eyes widened as he tried again and failed. The topside scuba tank must have been turned off. Furiously, he swam over to Nike, ripped the regulator right out of his mouth, and took a quick gulp of air. Before Disco could use hand signals to indicate that they had to use the buddy system on the single air hose. Nike grabbed it back. His panic level was out of control, and Disco knew there was only one alternative. If they swam for the surface, they would die. The two divers fought fiercely over the hose of life until Disco pulled out his dive knife and repeatedly stabbed his dive buddy and friend. Soon Disco had the air to himself as Nike released his grip on the regulator. He was barely holding onto Disco’s BC vest harness when he suddenly pulled his own knife, and with his last breath, struck out at Disco. The blade sliced though Disco’s BC vest, but missed his flesh.

  Disco watched Nike slowly sink like a slow motion movie of a man falling from a tall building to the concrete far below. The red billows of blood turned darker colors as the mortally wounded diver sank farther away from Disco. Disco was celebrating his good fortune at not being nicked by Nike’s blade when he realized his situation was much worse. All the air had flowed out of the hole in Disco’s BC vest and water rushed in. He was becoming severely over-weighted, especially with the scooter still attached, and was sinking rapidly, helpless to stop it. He still had a death grip on the hose and the regulator was still giving him fresh air, but as he sank further, the hose snapped and his life-saving air supply was cut off.

  As usual, things happen in slow motion underwater. Disco realized that he had to drop the excessive weight or he would be dragged to the sea floor. He tried to unbuckle himself from his BC vest, and the heavy scooter, but it was a race against time. The precious air in his lungs was running out. He stared up at the Happy Monkey as he finally dropped his cumbersome load. Hold your breath for a few more seconds and you’ll be at the surface! He kicked with all he had, but it wasn’t enough. The closer he got to the surface, the faster he kicked. I’m gonna make it! I’m gonna make it! he thought. But he nearly lost consciousness a few feet from the surface, and as he inhaled the first terrible mouthful of briny water, he had a comical thought. Who named the boat the Happy Monkey and why? It was his last thought as he fell into unconsciousness and slowly sank, landing on the ocean floor next to his onetime buddy, Nike.

  10

  Micko reached the hanging hose and calmly breathed the gas mix that would save his life. He kept an eye on his dive watch, since his computer was on his BC vest stuck to the submarine. He knew that he would have a long hang, so he just waited it out while the men on board were completely oblivious as to what had just taken place. When he figured his deco was finally complete, Micko climbed on board the Hummingbird, totally exhausted.

  ***

  Tanya watched the death duel from the boat and knew that her plan had worked. She’d never had any intention of letting that slob Disco ever touch her. His job was done, and now she had to parlay this into her favor with the bosses. A diver herself, she knew that if she turned the air off one of the hoses, Disco and Nike would fight to the death over the other one. If she had turned the air off both hoses, the two men would have immediately surfaced; and although the odds were that they would both have died agonizing deaths from air embolisms from ascending too fast or from a bad case of the bends, she couldn’t take the chance. If one of the men had climbed back onto the boat, he probably would have killed her on the spot before dying.

  Tanya untied the Happy Monkey from the mooring line, reeled in the phony fishing lines, and started up the huge engines. She was headed back to Shark Alley Island, not knowing that Micko was doing his deco hang.

  ***

  “Where is your gear?” Regis cried. “What happened?”

  “Are you all right?” Dr. Collins inquired.

  “Your suit is all torn up, and so are your hands,” Celestial chimed in. “I’ll get the first aid kit.”

  Micko lay on the gunwale bench, breathing heavily as he spoke. “Those Russian bastards tried to kill me, and I’m sure they think they did.”

  “Slow down and catch your breath,” the professor suggested. “Then start from the beginning.”

  Celestial came over and started to swab some antibiotic ointment on Micko’s hand cuts. James removed Micko’s fins, where it was evident that his feet and ankles were also cut.

  The prostate diver finally caught his breath and began. “It’s definitely your skiff down there lying next to the Apogon. When I shone my flashlight, I could easily see the distinct pink paint and the small white rabbit painted at the stern. I also found an empty vodka bottle.”

  Micko reached into the rear loop of his weight belt and produced the bottle that he had found. Everyone recognized it as the private stock of the Russians.

  “I found it between the skiff and the submarine, and since there’s very little marine growth inside, it’s safe to assume that it was dropped there fairly recently. Then I was attacked by two divers riding underwater scooters. I heard the motors, but thought I was getting narced or my first stage was leaking. The scooters had fishing reels jury rigged on them, and the pair of murderous swine wrapped me up tighter than a Christmas present.”

  Micko relayed the skills he used to escape. “The Russkies are sure that I’m dead, so I’ll have to live in the fishing village until this is all sorted out.”

  The other men stared at the weary diver like he was some kind of madman, but as the story sank in, they realized that he’d had no choice but to flee his watery grave without his life-saving gear.

  “You’re lucky to be alive,” James said.

  The others nodded in agreement.

  “The Majestic sport fishing boat had been shadowing us since we departed early this morning. I think they knew of our plans and devised one of their own,” Micko added.

  He unzipped the front of the light dive suit and slid it down to this waist, but when he tried to pull the bottoms off at the ankles, he grimaced in pain. James grabbed the foot straps and gently removed the suit, leaving the diver clad in just his bathing suit. Regis gasped as he saw the raw flesh across Micko’s thighs, calves, ankles, and feet.

  “That spider wire really did a job on you,” Celestial commented as he applied more ointment to the newly revealed wounds. He stopped when he got to Micko’s right thigh. The four men were concerned about their friend, but they couldn’t help staring.

  “What happened there?” Celestial asked with concern.

  The four men were gazing at the scar left by the nine-millimeter bullet hole. The wound looked ghastly, but this cop appeared okay.

  �
��Just an old injury, but it’s much better now,” Micko sheepishly revealed.

  Celestial could see that the officer was reluctant to talk about the nature of the wound, so he lowered the left side of his own pants to reveal an ugly scar. “Bull shark bit me in the ass while I was spear fishing off the coast of Honolulu.”

  “Shit, that’s nothing,” Regis spoke up. He pulled up his shirt to reveal an even uglier scar on his right breastbone. “Two hundred-pound black marlin speared me while I was hauling it into the boat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Hurt like hell, and I bled all the way back to the dock three days later.”

  James pulled up his shirtsleeve to show a spider web-like scar. “Portuguese Man o’ War off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa.”

  Everyone looked at Dr. Collins, waiting to see his red badge of courage and hear the corresponding story. The good professor stuck out his arm in a sign of defiance and pointed to a red welt on his forearm. “Bunsen burner, my lab, Florida, USA.”

  The boatload of battered old salts laughed merrily as they replayed the scene from the movie Jaws. Micko was relieved that this levity took some of the pressure off their current situation.

  When the laughter ended and Regis untied the Hummingbird from the mooring, Micko said to the scientists, “We are all in a great deal of danger from these crazy Russians, but I have an idea.”

  ***

  The Renegades were a wild bunch as they loaded their dive gear onto the Thor. Denise gave instructions from dockside as the crew readied the craft for the dive on the Saratoga. The weather was perfect and the sea was calm. Denise noticed that several of the Renegades were standing on the bow pointing south. As she approached the noisy divers, Rat asked, “What’s that? A convoy?”

  The other Renegades laughed as Denise looked. The majestic dive boats were pulling the fireworks barge, and a small armada of fishing boats trailed behind.

  “Shit!” Denise cursed. “These damn boats are filing past our route to the Saratoga. If we don’t hurry, we’ll have to wait until they cross the atoll to the Majestic resort before we can drive the Thor to the wreck.”

  ***

  Tiki was repairing his fishing nets when Chino burst into the yard.

  “They hurt Flacka!” he screamed. “The Russians hurt Flacka!”

  Tiki calmly placed his repair tools on the ground. “Tell me.”

  “Flacka didn’t show up at work, and her friends were worried, so they sent me to her home,” Chino said. “She is badly beaten, and she told me that it was Disco and another goon. She’s afraid that the Russians are going to kill that cop and the scientists.”

  Tiki stood up and thought for a moment. A short, muscular man with long black hair and fiery black eyes, he was the leader of the rebel movement, and all the natives loved and trusted him.

  “Our plans do not change,” he stated. “We will take back our land and chase the Japs and Russians back to where they came from. Take me to Flacka.”

  ***

  The Hummingbird was on a slow course back to the Majestic when they encountered the flotilla.

  “It’ll be a slow ride back, so I hope nobody’s in a rush,” Celestial proclaimed.

  “Damn!” I want to get back and download the video from the satellite link,” Dr. Collins complained.

  “As long as we have time, I might be able to retrieve some footage from the camera’s memory stick. The entire footage will be downloaded from the satellite, but we might have enough here to answer a few questions. I can download from the satellite to the memory stick until it’s full. Then we can view it, erase it, and then download it again, and repeat the process. It’s time consuming—but we do have time,” James quipped.

  Micko was feeling better, but his mind was racing. He had enough evidence to hang the Russians, but would he be able to survive until Buddy arrived with help? Looking up at the wheelhouse he saw Regis and Celestial engaged in some playful banter as Celestial steered the boat. The scientists were deeply involved with the u/w camera and arguing as usual. He told himself to stop worrying and to enjoy the rest of the day.

  He looked out over the atoll and marveled at the brightly colored sails of the locals as they formed a flotilla. The sailors proudly displayed their finest sails used only for special occasions. Numerous native dugout canoes paddled by muscular men brought up the rear of the impressive little entourage.

  But Micko was only able to enjoy the sight for a little while. He desperately needed to get back on land and see Flacka. She was paramount in the execution of his next plan, and he also feared for her safety. She had been perfect with the planned blackout, and he knew that the rebels would listen to her again. His mind was racing but he was distracted by a commotion from the scientists in the galley.

  “Mother of God!” cried the incredulous Dr. Collins. “Do you see what I see?”

  “Holy shit!”

  “Un-fucking believable!”

  “Freaking impossible!”

  “Oh my god!”

  The expletives were flowing as Micko raced to the galley to see what the intellectuals were raving about. “What’s all the cussing about?” he demanded.

  An excited James stammered, “Most of the video is boring stuff, but I’m downloading the interesting stuff onto a new memory stick with one gigabyte of memory. Professor, rerun the video we saved.”

  The professor looked perturbed that Micko was interfering, but he relented and placed the one-gigabyte memory stick into the camcorder and hit the “play” button. What the three men viewed next would be forever etched into their nightmares. The LCD screen was small—only two-and-a-half inches, so it was difficult to see the gray images that emerged. At first, all that could be seen was the passageway funnel with a few fish scattered about. Then the gray reefers came into view as they entered the lagoon from the open ocean end of the funnel.

  “Watch and see what happens,” Dr. Collins instructed.

  A wagon train of sharks had almost passed the camera’s line of sight when a flash of bright silver torpedoed past the lens. Micko thought the image was just overexposed until it kept happening again and again. Something was streaking through the camera’s line of sight with lightening speed. His mind could not decipher what he had just witnessed.

  “Look!” the professor exclaimed.

  Suddenly, a swarm of injured sharks could be seen cartwheeling down the walls of the gateway. The video was grainy, but it was evident that the injured sharks were missing one or two fins. The uninjured sharks beat a hasty retreat back into the open ocean as their fallen comrades writhed in pain on the floor of the passageway. Some just lay on their sides, mouths agape, trying to force oxygen through their gills. Others kicked their tails violently in an attempt to escape, but they only managed to swim in tight circles as they descended to the ocean floor.

  Micko’s mind finally figured out that something had attacked these sharks, but he couldn’t figure out what beast was capable of inflicting such devastating wounds to the top predator in this food chain.

  “Look upon the face of pure evil,” growled Dr. Collins.

  Abruptly, a shadow appeared above the contorted sharks. Micko strained his eyes to see what was hiding. Like a huge submarine, a gigantic barracuda glided into view. The creature hovered over its victims, seeming to enjoy watching their death throes. Very calmly and deliberately, the beast began to consume the sharks that lay on the bottom.

  “Holy shit! That barracuda dwarfs the sharks! It must be twenty feet long!” Micko blurted.

  It was now clear that the barracuda was responsible for the shark massacre on the flight deck of the USS Saratoga. The huge fish hid in the shadows, and then with lightening speed and great accuracy severed the sharks’ pectoral or dorsal fins in one motion. If the barracuda swam past the sharks, slicing the fins as it raced by, it never had to face the sharp teeth or strong jaws of its adversaries. The sharks didn’t stand a chance against such a skilled warrior.

  Micko was about to ask a few hundred
questions when he saw the barracuda stop feasting and turn toward the video camera. The fish swam ever so slowly toward the lens. The sunlight penetrated deep into the passageway and the silver sides of the barracuda lit up like a swimming lamp. The great beast bared its awesome arsenal of jagged teeth to the camera, and for several moments just stared into the lens. The big black eyes were cold and humorless, but a hint of intelligence was evident. The monstrous creature looked up at the sunlight, and then back at the camera before quickly turning perpendicular. A huge flash of silver overexposed the automatic settings on the camera. When the camera reset itself, the beast was gone. It was like someone using a mirror to blind another person with the sun.

  Dr. Collins turned the camera off and stroked the long hair of his white goatee.

  “Don’t tell me that fish blinded the camera on purpose!” Micko remarked.

  “I’m not asking you to believe anything because I still don’t believe my own eyes,” the professor responded.

  “This video answers a lot of questions, gentlemen,” James added. “Let’s just suppose that this barracuda had some of the same strange reactions to radiation as the other unusual creatures in this lagoon. We’ve already seen and accepted giant groupers, lobsters, and angelfish. Why not a giant barracuda? We just saw the hunting technique of a normal barracuda fishing for small fish. Since this fish is larger, it feeds on larger prey.” James smiled with satisfaction at his theory.

  “A lot of what you say appears to be on target,” the professor replied, “but why attack sharks when there is abundant food in the atoll? This monster appeared to have staked out this underwater portal and then ambushed the top predator. He killed more sharks than he needed to devour, and the remaining carcasses will be dragged out to sea with the tide change, so he won’t harvest his kills.”

  Micko jumped in, “C’mon now, Professor. You don’t think this fish is staking out his territory and warning the sharks to stay away?”