Barracuda Page 19

  Micko knew that a diver rocketing to the surface like a projectile was going to die a painful death from an air embolism. The diver had dropped his weight belt, BC vest, and tank. A diver only does that in a full panic situation.

  Suddenly, there were divers everywhere—some ascending, some descending, and some just floating. The scene was so surreal. Once again, things appeared to be happening in slow motion, when in actuality, they were moving at warp speed.

  Micko held onto the safety of the buoy line as three more divers rocketed to the surface. There were fewer bubbles now, so he could see more clearly. Two of the floating bodies were streaming clouds of dark liquid from missing limbs. One diver kept trying to reattach his severed right arm like it would just snap back into place.

  When he saw Micko, he had a look of uncertainty on his face. He motioned Micko to help him put the arm back on, and in the next second, his eyes rolled back into his head and he slowly drifted down toward the ocean floor.

  Micko gingerly pulled himself up the line toward the surface as he watched the carnage below. Denise looked up at him with a deer-in-the-headlights stare, and Micko motioned sternly for her to ascend.

  She looked back down, fascinated by the diver who was attempting to reach the mooring line without any legs. Blood was gushing out at the knees, making the diver look like some kind of stunt man. The diver managed to get one hand on the line before he went still and slowly dropped to the ocean’s basement, one hand still reaching out for the lifeline.

  Micko was horrified that he was helpless, but he knew that he would also become a victim if he didn’t get his sorry ass out of there. He was only twenty feet from the surface. When he looked back down, he saw a flash of silver strike Denise, and then dive back into the depths. Her right leg was amputated mid-thigh and was now pirouetting downward into the deep water. Denise was slowly following her missing limb, with her arms outstretched toward Micko as she descended backward. The look on her face pleaded with him to somehow help her. She drifted to the bottom, and the last Micko saw of her was the pale bone sticking out from her thigh where her shapely leg used to be attached.

  ***

  Before Steve and his rescue team could set up their dive gear, Carol screamed, “That man needs help!”

  Steve looked over the starboard side of the Happy Monkey and saw a diver clad only in a dive suit splashing wildly on the surface. Steve could see the blood spurting from the man’s nose and mouth, and he immediately knew that the diver had made an emergency ascent and was suffering from an embolism. He thrashed about while screaming in agony.

  “Everybody, grab your snorkel and fins for surface recovery!” Steve ordered. “Leave the scuba for later.”

  The men and women of the rescue team were quickly in the water just as several other mortally injured divers bobbed to the surface. The scene was chaotic. Carol and Steve swam to attend to the first diver, who splashed savagely as they tried to help him aboard. Just as quickly as he surfaced, the man went still.

  “Help me get him up the ladder, Carol,” Steve urged.

  The two rescuers had great difficulty dragging the dead weight aboard. Carol ran for the pure oxygen canister, but Steve said, “It’s too late, Carol. Let’s save it for someone who may benefit from it.”

  Steve pulled the dead man out of the way as other rescuers pulled two more injured divers from the water. One female diver was bleeding from the nose, but she was conscious and speaking.

  “The devil! The devil!” she gasped. “He did this!”

  Carol administered pure oxygen to the woman as the second diver went into convulsions and flapped around the Happy Monkey’s deck like a hooked flounder. This aquatic dance lasted only a few moments before he exhaled a final loud gasp and expired.

  The rescuers stared at the dead man until Steve ordered, “Bring him over here and out of the way. I have a feeling that we will need all the room we can spare.”

  The dead man was pulled to the front of the boat and laid to rest next to the first diver. The woman seemed to be responding to the oxygen, and she was moved into the galley. Her eyes were wide, and all the blood vessels in the whites were broken, making them bloodshot. She kept trying to speak, but Carol kept the oxygen mask tight on her face, stroked her hair, and said, “Breathe deep and slow. You’ll be okay. You can talk later. Just breathe for me.”

  “What should we do now, Steve?” one of the rescuers who was still in the water asked.

  “Stay there,” Steve replied. “A dozen divers went in, and they’ll need our help when they surface.”

  ***

  The men on the Hummingbird watched in horror as divers began popping up out of the water and screaming in agony. Their thrashing only impeded the rescuers’ efforts to get them to safety. The men felt helpless, but they knew that Steve and his crew were doing the best that they could.

  “I hope they die quickly,” the professor murmured.

  “What are you talking about?” Regis shrieked, overcome by the horrific scene playing out below him.

  “When a diver who is down that deep makes a beeline to the surface, the compressed air he’s breathing at depth suddenly expands, forming large air bubbles in his bloodstream. These bubbles flow through his bloodstream like marbles until they reach an artery and cause a stroke-like condition that is very painful and almost always leads to death,” James answered.

  “That’s why we must surface slowly and hang a various levels while inhaling mixed gases,” the professor added. “This reduces the air bubbles and removes the excess nitrogen from out bloodstream. I merely meant that I hope they don’t suffer for hours in excruciating pain.”

  Celestial kept the Hummingbird clear from the rescuers and the surfacing divers. No one needed a boat knocking into their heads.

  Regis was running about the boat nervously asking, “What’s happening? What in God’s name is going on?”

  “Calm down, Regis, please!” James pleaded. “The barracuda must have frightened these divers into an emergency ascent.”

  ***

  Micko surfaced into a midst of would-be rescuers. He was immediately surrounded and asked, “Where’s Denise?”

  Steve waved the swimmers away and swam with Micko to the Hummingbird ladder. Micko squeezed out of the re-breather and handed it up to James along with his weight belt. Then he looked solemnly at Steve and said, “I’m sorry. She didn’t make it.”

  The two men climbed on board the Hummingbird, and Micko quickly told them all that had happened.

  Steve was in denial. “Denise has swum with barracuda before. She just hasn’t completed her safety hang yet.”

  Micko brought him up to speed on the giant barracuda, the attack on the sharks, and the video. Since Steve had already seen the shark carcasses on the carrier flight deck, he suddenly understood what was happening. Abruptly, he stated, “It’s all my fault. If I had gotten out there earlier and secured that hatch opening, nobody would have died.”

  Micko gently responded, “No, Steve. No one could have prevented this. The Barrett brothers opened Pandora’s box, not you. We all need to figure out how to destroy this monster.”

  Steve’s rescue team floundered about on the water for another ten minutes when Rat suddenly appeared in his full dive gear about one hundred feet away. Celestial brought the Hummingbird about and drove to the diver, who was waving his arms extended over his head, the universal diver distress signal. The captain slowly backed the boat so that the ladder was close to the diver. Steve jumped in and assisted the excited diver on board.

  “What the fuck was that?” Rat kept repeating.

  “Calm down and tell us what happened,” the professor instructed. “Almost a dozen divers are still missing.”

  “They ain’t coming back!” Rat exclaimed.

  “Get the oxygen, Regis,” Micko ordered.

  Regis brought the canister, and James administered the healing air to Rat for ten minutes while the professor checked his vital signs. When the scientists
were sure that their patient was all right, they removed the mask.

  “Talk,” the professor commanded.

  Rat explained how he had convinced the Renegades to jump off the Thor before it was even tied up to the wreck. He was sure that Denise would try to stop them from going ahead with the scavenger hunt, so they decided to get her out of the way.

  “We were already suited up,” he said, “and it was Sheila’s job to knock Denise overboard so we could dive and scavenge without her stopping us.”

  Steve took a step forward with his fist clenched, but Micko held him back.

  “I was the first one overboard,” Rat went on, “but Sheila blew past me. That threw me off my rhythm and slowed me down. I got entangled in the fishing rope dangling from the ship’s superstructure.”

  “It probably also saved your life,” James added.

  Rat went on to say that while he was cutting himself free, he watched the carnage below. When he looked at his depth gauge, he saw that he was only at 75 fsw, so he knew he didn’t have to decompress. He watched the huge fish rip his fellow club members to pieces and then disappear below the carrier. He was virtually unscathed from the massacre for which he was partly responsible.

  Rat had a million questions, so James explained things expeditiously. The Renegade listened intently and then sat in stunned silence.

  Steve was in a state of deep depression and didn’t want to talk about the day’s events, or more importantly, what still needed to be done. Micko shook him. “Steve, snap out of it! We have a lot of work to do and we need your help!”

  He laid out a quick plan. Shorty would take the Thor back to the Bikini resort, make out the proper reports, and alert the authorities in Majuro. Steve would power the Happy Monkey back to the Majestic resort and make the proper reports and notifications. Micko and the scientists would be dropped off on a small sandy beach near Regis’ shack while Celestial and his mate returned to the pier and secured the Hummingbird.

  The men were still silent but they agreed. They all knew that attempting to recover the bodies would be an act of madness. The killer fish was a huge deterrent, and the bodies would be molested by foraging fish within minutes of their sinking. The poor divers were gone forever.

  ***

  Hiroshi supervised the off loading of the barge in a very disagreeable mood. He had listened to Tanya, but he knew that she had been lying through her teeth. Andrej and the desk clerk had already confirmed that it was her passkey that had been used to enter the office and remove the Bible, not Nike’s. His mood turned even fouler when he saw one of the locals pull a boat up to the fuel end of the dock and pick up the rest of Steve’s party. Hiroshi had wanted to store fifty five-gallon drums of fuel at that end of the pier. Now he had to store them on the short end of the wharf near the dynamite shack.

  So many things had Hiroshi infuriated. Those damn Russians were screwing everything up. The entire reason for their stupid resort was to clean laundered funds for the two organized crime families. The ruling powers would not accept failure from either the Russian or Japanese mobsters. Failure meant death. The Russians were playing with his life. By losing the Bible, all their death warrants were sealed. No excuses were accepted. No replacement Bible would be sent. The Majestic would be sold, and a new method of money laundering would be found. The crime families would probably end this unholy alliance and launder their own money separately.

  Now the Russians had killed a New York cop and still hadn’t recovered the Bible. This was not good. The home office would probably deal with them right after the grand opening. Many of the syndicate members and their wives were on hand for the festivities. They were having a grand time gambling in the casino, dancing in the nightclubs, and drinking in the lounges. The gangsters were throwing big bucks around in an attempt to impress their peers and their women. After all, this was a huge event, the grand opening of the casino and dive resort that would make millions in legitimate cash and launder many millions more. The crime lords were thick as thieves, but they still didn’t know about the missing ledger.

  When the barge was finally unloaded, Hiroshi ordered it to be pulled back out into the atoll but out of the way of boat traffic. Mara helped set a temporary anchor for the one hundred-foot barge, and then carried the barge crew and fireworks team to shore in the Lily II. The Lily I would stand guard for the first shift to prevent the rebels from vandalizing the live ordinance aboard the barge. The fireworks display was scheduled for eight o’clock, so the barge personnel would have plenty of time to relax and enjoy the earlier festivities.

  ***

  Leaving the Saratoga, the Thor went east toward Bikini Island. The Happy Monkey raced west back to Shark Alley Island, and the Hummingbird loafed in the direction of the fishing village. Rat had been transferred back onto the Thor along with the recovered bodies of the divers and the injured woman. Celestial, Regis, Micko, and the scientists were alone again to work out new plans. The men were tossing out ideas on how to kill the barracuda when they noticed a small skiff off to their right heading toward the Apogon.

  “Regis, give me those binoculars,” Micko requested.

  Regis went back out on the rear of the deck and collected the binoculars from a salty old sea bag. “Here you go, copper,” he joked, somewhat back to his old self.

  Micko took the glasses and stared for several long moments at the driver of the skiff.

  “That’s Chuu, Hiroshi’s right-hand man. I wonder why he’s going out there.”

  “Maybe he’s going to confirm your death,” Celestial chimed in. “Just because the Russkies said you are dead doesn’t mean the Japs will believe it.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t take him for a diver,” Micko returned.

  “Let’s just get back to the village and form a plan,” the professor said.

  ***

  Steve raced the Happy Monkey back to the dock and jumped out, leaving Carol and the others to tie her up. He saw Andrej and Alex sitting in the Neptune lounge sipping cocktails. They seemed anxious and concerned about something already, and Steve knew he was about to really ruin their day. “Andrej, we must stop all diving immediately,” he blurted.

  Andrej looked up at him with a startled expression. “There is no diving from our boats until after the grand opening.”

  “I mean no one can dive until the barracuda is killed.”

  “What in God’s name are you talking about?” Alex asked. “Have you been drinking or smoking some of that funny stuff?”

  “I just came from the lagoon,” Steve explained. “The New York cop dove on the Apogon and never surfaced. The Thor dropped divers on the Saratoga, and they were attacked by an oversized barracuda. More than a dozen divers are dead. You can’t allow any more divers to enter the water until the beast is killed.”

  “Dead divers, dead cops, barracudas—what in the hell are you talking about?” Andrej demanded, beginning to lose his patience with the dive master.

  Steve told the pair what had happened, but left Micko’s part out to reinforce his death story. Buying his story, the Russians began working on how they could blame the entire incident on the Bikini resort and the cop for hot-dogging with a local fishing boat.

  “We lost no one, so we are okay,” Alex said.

  “Steve, go down to the wharf and give the armada dynamite from the shack,” Andrej barked. “Then have them go out to the Saratoga and start dropping it. We’ll kill this stupid barracuda before the fireworks tonight and be done with it. Diving begins again the day after tomorrow as scheduled. After the two Lily boats drag that rusty barge back to Eneu, the diving will continue.”

  “That’s awfully dangerous,” Steve protested, “and it will be destructive to the reef and many other innocent fish.”

  “Give those native boats dynamite and blow that fish to kingdom come!” Andrej snapped. “Whoever brings me the head of that fish gets five thousand dollars.”

  Steve was about to suggest that they put a ransom on the barracuda and let the local
fishermen catch it for a prize, but the tone in Andrej’s voice killed that idea. He hesitantly went to the wharf and talked to Mara. The natives were very poor, and the idea of dynamiting the atoll was shocking, but the allure of the five-thousand-dollar reward was tremendous. A native could never make that much money in a lifetime. Before long, two dozen boats took up positions surrounding the grave of the USS Saratoga, and on Mara’s command, the bombing began.

  Ten minutes later, it was over. Each explosive blast shook the water horizontally, and then huge plumes of water shot up vertically. Within minutes, hundreds of fish rose to the surface. Most were small in size, but a few large amber jacks were also killed and randomly floated by.

  Steve had known this would happen. Most of the large predators would flee the lagoon if they escaped the first blast. The odds were that the barracuda had either fled or sank to the sea bottom in his death throes.

  The natives searched for the five thousand-dollar barracuda, but to no avail. Mara directed them back to the dock and thanked them all for their participation in the barracuda hunt. He apologized to Steve for their failure.

  “Mara, those are your people and they did your bidding, even though they didn’t really want to,” Steve said.

  “No apology is necessary,” Mara replied. I just hope the thing is killed. If not, hopefully it left Bikini Atoll for good.”

  ***

  Celestial moved the Hummingbird close to shore near the small village and Micko jumped out.

  Pointing to a canary yellow hut Regis said, “That’s my humble abode, and you are very welcome to stay with me. Although I have to say I don’t usually share my house with dead men.”

  Micko waded through the water until he reached the sand but stopped short in his tracks when he saw a young man wearing a Renegade bandana wrapped around his forehead. The man was retrieving a bait trap from under some mangrove trees.