Pokrewne

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Chelsea Handler Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang (epub
Brit Brinson [Dia of the Dead Dia of the Dead (epub)
Cody Goodfellow [Radiant Dawn Radiant Dawn (epub)
Cate Tiernan [Immortal Belove Immortal Beloved (epub)
C J Busby [Deep Amber 01] Deep Amber (retail) (epub)
Carl Ashmore [Time Hunters 01 The Time Hunters (epub)
Cara Lynn Shultz [Dark World The Dark World (retail) (epub)
Buck Rogers 01 Buck Rogers in Addison E Steele (v1.0) (epub)
C M Kars [Never Been Kissed Never Been Kissed (epub)
Domain Steve Alten

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.Watching them prepare their equipment, I concluded that even though they had certification cards, they didn’t know what they were doing.Had they been mine, I would have canceled their tickets, refunded their money, and let them live.Unhappy is better than dead.But George has six children at home and augments his navy chief’s pay with divemaster fees and tips; he probably thought it over too many times and decided they would change their attitudes when they got into the water.Once on the bottom, their cocky look-Ma-no-hands attitudes got worse.I watched them as hard as I watched my own group, who followed me like baby ducks follow their mama.The kids refused to follow George and, after a brief tour of the upper decks of the Mahi, produced lights and plunged into the hull.I turned my charges over to George and went, knowing they would get into trouble.They did.A black wall of silted water hovered bulkhead to bulkhead, just inside a hatchway, evidence of their incursion.After tying my guideline onto the ship’s ladder and yanking it tight, I crept forward into the silt, feeling blindly along the companionway to one of the ship’s holds.I didn’t bother with a light.The first diver found me within the first twenty feet.When I touched him, he turned and ripped off my face mask in his panic.I put a headlock on him and dragged him toward the hatch.When we emerged from the silt into clear water, he tried to bolt for the surface.I collared him again, this time applying intense and specific pressure against one of his nerve trigger points, an experience so urgently painful it got his full and immediate attention.He stopped struggling and got quiet, the way people do when experiencing great pain, and I released the pressure, still keeping my fingers close to the spot in case he needed reminding.I brought him to another divemaster and signaled that this one had to go up.When I was certain he would do as he was told, I put my mask back on, cleared it, and went back in.The other two were together and it took me a long time to find them.When I did, in relatively clear water at the dead end of a large ventilation duct that branched out into smaller ducts that were impossible for a tanked diver to get into, they weren’t as panicky as their friend, probably because they could see, but they were anxious.The cloud of silt lay beyond the last bend in the duct and they had realized their problem and stayed put.I tied them onto the guideline and had them hang on to my weight belt.We inched slowly into the silt, our only path to the surface the thin guideline.It took some time, longer than it should have taken.Halfway there, or where I believed was halfway there, the computer beeped its alarm, an urgent sound, demanding our immediate departure for the surface.All divers know that sound.The hand on my belt pulled me backward as one of the kids tried to get past.I blocked his path.We struggled briefly and suddenly I was fighting two terrified young men, each trying wildly to move ahead of me in the tight confines of the old duct.This was not what I was trained to do.Killing them would have been easy.My problem was keeping them alive in spite of themselves.As we fought, I kept moving forward, following the line.My bulk, increased by my tank and other equipment, prevented the boys from moving me out of the way.There just wasn’t enough space.I used my fins to keep them back, roiling water at their faces.The walls of the shaft opened into a bigger space.One of the youngsters slipped the line and eeled past me, kicking and gouging, an unseen, maniacal force.I got a hand on his gear, but he shook me loose.Then he was gone.Some people seem determined, aimed at their own destruction like lemmings.There was nothing I could do for that one.I went back for the remaining diver, slowly feeling through the murky water, dependent entirely upon sense of touch, forcing my body to go through the motions and my mind to keep the terror down to manageable levels.We found each other, outstretched fingers brushing in the dark.Touch galvanized him.The kid’s arms and legs climbed over me, punching me, kicking me, elbowing and kneeing me.It was like dancing with an octopus.I lost my mask.A knee to the jaw knocked my regulator loose.An elbow crashed against my temple.I saw stars.I went for the pressure point I’d used on his companion but couldn’t find it, the kid jumping around like he’d taken a big PCP hit, making it impossible to get my hands on him.I couldn’t get him off me and I couldn’t reach him.Every time I tried, he’d move away, out of reach.I’d just exhaled when I lost my regulator and needed air.Fast.I couldn’t see in the dark murky water, but black spots began appearing, overlaying the black in front of my eyes, and the roaring of blood in my ears got suddenly louder than the bubbles from our regulators.We kept fighting and moving along the line and suddenly we were in a tightly enclosed space again.I grabbed the kid around his neck, cutting off blood supply to his brain.He went limp, stopped struggling, and for a moment I wondered if I’d killed him.I let up and he punched me, a weak and ineffective punch, but it made me smile.Keeping his neck in the vise of my right arm, I reached behind me, feeling for one of the two regulators I use, found it, and shoved it in my mouth before the black spots entirely covered my vision.Joni Mitchell was right when she wrote about not missing something until it’s gone.I located the line and hauled on it.Still tight.I began dragging the kid along with me.It took longer that way.He’d become passive in my grip, but I didn’t trust his judgment enough to let him loose.We followed two more turns and the computer beeped again.We had one minute to get out of the Mahi and begin our ascent.I towed the kid along until the black became lighter and suddenly we were out of the blackness and into the blue-gray amphitheater of the Pacific.George and the other two divemasters hovered above, guardian angels, there to lead us home.I signaled with two fingers and turned the kid over to one of the other instructors.George shook his head, holding up one.Gathering my line, I went back in and they took the kid to the Mako.He wasn’t very far inside.I found him by accident, making the same wrong turn he had, just ten feet inside a dead end in an old service compartment.He’d cut his line to get free of me, but some of it dragged behind him, and I discovered it against the bulkhead and followed.The young man had given up to his terror.I pulled on the rope and I felt something float toward me, bubbles erupting from a regulator, no fight left.Reaching out, I groped in the darkness until I grasped a hand that closed on mine.I squeezed and got no response other than the gentle pressure already there [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]