Artifact

Chapter 23

  The night air was humid and still. The only thing moving in the room was Peta. She stirred, vaguely awake. From somewhere she heard voices.

  She turned over, kicking off the clinging sheet. The voices kept up a steady racket, and she realized they must be coming up from the street below her window. She wished she had earplugs. Somehow she needed to get back to sleep, get some rest. God only knew what tomorrow would bring.

  The voices outside weren't all that was keeping her awake, though. Since Arthur's death, Peta had sublimated any thoughts of men; none could ever take his place. When her mentor and lover had been alive, she'd had a healthy libido and often found herself aroused by some passing man's firm ass, or long fingers, or broad shoulders. Now those feelings brought only guilt.

  She also considered herself pretty immune to charm, especially when she knew intellectually that it was a con. But Blaine's eyes, his ready smile, his - for lack of a better word - charisma, had burned a neat little picture in her mind. It made her squirm with competing emotions of desire and embarrassment.

  She turned onto the other side.

  Sleep, damn it, she thought. Stop thinking.

  The unseen strangers below her window laughed as a bottle shattered.

  She flipped onto her stomach, tucked her head more firmly into the pillow, and stretched out on the sagging mattress. The air was close, the voices echoing eerily. Not very patiently she waited for sleep to return. . . .

  A grinding noise broke through the fog in her brain. A buzzing. Can't they stop with that racket? she thought sleepily.

  She rolled over and opened her eyes. It was morning, bright morning; the type of brilliant sunlight that said dawn had passed hours ago. While her eyes adjusted, her mind identified the sound she'd been hearing: an inboard motor.

  She swung her legs off the bed and rushed to the window, trying her best to ignore the rough, splintery feel of the wood floor. Pushing aside the sheer curtain, she looked out to see a boat emblazoned with the Oilstar logo moving at top speed toward the mouth of the harbor, out to the open sea. Simon's boat.

  "Shit. " As Peta stepped away from the window, a splinter penetrated the soft skin of her arch. On her other foot, she hopped to one of the chairs and yanked out the splinter. She grabbed her jeans from the other chair and pulled them on. The fading watery growl of the engine reminded her that with every passing second Simon moved farther out to sea and, she thought, to a dive that was likely to kill him.

  Hurrying, she picked up her T-shirt from the floor. An inch-long roach tumbled out of it, another resident of this fleabag hotel having his early-morning sleep disturbed.

  She was tempted to step on it, bare feet or no. After all, she thought wryly, she was paying to have the room to herself. Instead she pulled on the T-shirt without checking for any more residents, and looked around the floor for her sandals.

  As she put them on she wondered why Blaine hadn't kept his promise to awaken her.

  She remembered her thoughts during the evening. What the hell was wrong with her? Trust wasn't something she gave out that often - now the right pairing of eyes and smile and she acted like a lovesick lamb.

  She opened her door and almost tripped over someone who lay snoring, slumped over only a few feet from her room. It was as if he had fallen asleep on guard duty, she thought. Frikkie's words echoed in her head:Take care of her, or - Another roach to squash, she thought. When she had time. Right now what she had to do was catch up with Simon. For that, she'd need a boat. Diving gear.

  She charged downstairs to the front desk, where a sleepy-eyed Trini woman in a simple dress stretched to its size limits looked at her as though she were crazy.

  "Eduardo Blaine. Which is his room?"

  The woman looked confused.

  "Senor Blaine?" Peta repeated.

  "Ah, si. " The woman nodded and pointed with her thumb along the hallway beside the stairs. "Room two. End of the hall on the left. " She smiled conspiratorially, as if she thought Peta was going to sneak into Blaine's room and give him an early-morning quickie.

  "Gracias," Peta called out as she ran down the hallway to the door marked with a gold-plated number 2 hung at a drunken angle. Banging loudly, she yelled, "Blaine? You there? Blaine, wake up!"

  She stood there, waiting, the time slipping away. Simon's boat was now well out of the bay for sure, bouncing over the water.

  The bolt clicked open.

  "You said you'd wake me. You said that you'd be up, and wake me before Simon could leave. "

  Blaine - in white Jockeys, no shirt, and looking more asleep than awake - held the door open wide and backed up to let her in. He raised his left arm as if to check a watch that wasn't there.

  "What time is - God, my alarm. I must have. . . Maybe Simon hasn't left - "

  "I just saw his boat heading out of the harbor. Thanks for the help. "

  "Okay, okay! Relax. Let me get dressed. I got a boat. We'll catch him. "

  "He's already got close to ten minutes on us. "

  Blaine smiled, but the charm that had worked so well the night before had lost its appeal. "No problem, I have a very fast boat. "

  "Hope it works better than your alarm clock. "

  He grinned boyishly. Peta guarded herself against any impulse to forgive him.

  "Okay, wait in the lobby. I'll get dressed and be out in a minute. "

  "Please hurry. "

  As she waited, feeling each second tick by, she thought through the possibilities. Could Blaine's boat beat Simon's? If not, what would happen if she had to dive after him? It had been a while since she had done a tech dive. Mixed gases - nitrogen, oxygen, helium. She knew it was not something to rush into. Rushing could get you killed.

  "Let's go," Blaine said, running out of the hotel. She followed him to the town's small wooden dock. At the last boat in the line, he stopped. "Jump in. "

  Peta stared. "Thisis fast?"

  The boat looked like a fisherman's trawler, built for steadiness, perhaps, but surely not for speed. It did, however, have everything in it she would need for the dive, like the several pairs of tri-mix tanks which lay amid the more usual tourist dive gear.

  "Don't knock my boat. " Blaine untied the stern line. "Unless you want to swim after Simon. "

  "That might be faster. "

  "Just start her up," he said, running to untie the bow line. "Hit the silver button. "

  Peta pushed the button, and the inboard started with a substantial roar that immediately garnered her respect.

  Blaine finished untying the lines and, jumping onto the deck, clambered back to the wheel. "Okay," he said. "Now hold on. "

  He opened the throttle and the squat boat reared up like Trigger at the end of a Lone Ranger movie. Peta flew back into her seat and tasted salty spray on her face.

  "I'm impressed," she shouted over the roar.

  "You should remember. . . appearances can deceive you. "

  Blaine turned the wheel and curled around the bigger boats, the fishing vessels taking the day off, the moored dinghies waiting for the leisure sailors to return, baked nut-brown and three sheets to the wind with multiple Caribs and Red Stripes. The boat maneuvered wonderfully, its stern sitting deep in the water while the rest of the hull nearly hydroplaned.

  "That one should fit you," he said, pointing to a black wet suit. With its frayed collar and wrists it looked as though it had been through one too many dives already.

  "You sure you don't have something a little more colorful? I would have preferred a stylish neon orange flare on the side. "

  Blaine grinned. "I'll remember that for next time. The rest of the dive gear's back there. "

  Peta nodded and turned to the piles of equipment. The masks, fins, and regulators looked like standard Caribbean tourist issue. Not top-of-the-line, but with the right gas mix, she'd be fine.

  She moved to the rows of tanks. The first few cylinders were bat
tered and air-filled, at least if the rubber caps over their first stages were true indications of their state. The smaller double tanks stood beside them. Tri-mix tanks - a nitrogen-helium mix and oxygen - which could be adjusted up or down based on depth or bottom time. Unfortunately, only one set of the tanks appeared to be filled.

  "You only have one working set of the tri-mix back here," she yelled. "Looks like I'll be going it alone. " She didn't relish the idea of diving without a buddy, especially since that was one of the reasons she was so mad at Simon.

  "If only one of us can go, it should be me," Blaine called back to her. She wasn't sure if his reaction was chivalry or South American machismo, but it didn't matter to her which it was. There was no way she would hang out on the surface.

  "No chance. Simon's my responsibility. "

  Thankfully, Blaine quit arguing. She shucked her land clothes and pulled on the wet suit. When she was suited up, she moved forward to stand beside him so that she could see where they were headed. "Is it far?"

  Blaine shook his head. "About ten minutes for this boat. We should be able to see the rig as soon as we curve around that spit of land there. " He pointed at a large rock outcropping that sheltered San Gabriel's harbor. "Then we head straight on. If Simon isn't down, he'll probably be able to see us. "

  And what then? she thought. If he saw her would that make him stop and wait?

  Not Simon. He'd hurry up and dive. If she was going to stop him, she'd have to follow him down and get him to surface.

  Piece of cake.

  Underwater communication was so very easy, she thought sarcastically, especially with the paltry array of hand signals used by divers. A big O made with the thumb and index finger for "I'm okay. " A slashing palm over the neck for "Out of air. " Thumbs-up for "Let's surface. " Crawling fingers for "Critter around. " Or her favorite, a vertical open palm cutting the water to indicate a reallybig critter around. As in, "Watch your butt or you'll be some prehistoric creature's breakfast. "

  Blaine cut the boat hard, steering around a coral reef she saw only in the boat's wake, then moved back on course for the point of the small peninsula ahead. It was obvious that he knew these waters extremely well. After a few more seconds, the boat was out far enough that Peta could see the small drilling rig and make out the shape of a boat tied up to it.

  "I see his boat. "

  "Yes," Blaine said. He looked back at her. "One person topside. Simon must be down already. "

  "Shit. "

  The closer they got to Oilstar's exploration platform, the more ominous it looked. No one moved on the skeletal structure, and the small main cabin's windows were shattered, smashed - Peta guessed - by locals cruising by and taking potshots for their momentary amusement.

  She looked at the boat they were chasing. Simon's pilot, probably some local he'd hired for the day, stood up and calmly watched their progress.

  Peta checked her watch. Simon could have been down five minutes, maybe ten. Depending on depth, he was good for another fifteen or twenty minutes. Add one screwup - something to make him breathe too hard, not shift his mixture right, get snagged on a rock - and it could all go wrong fast.

  She pulled on her fins and strapped a rusty old dive knife to her leg. It looked like a relic that hadn't cut anything other than stray fishing tackle since the American invasion of Grenada. Grabbing a face mask, she spat into the lens and smeared the slick liquid around before dangling the mask in the water. Funny, she thought. Who knew why spit defogged a mask?

  She dug out a weight belt and slipped on twelve pounds. It was more than she'd use normally, but with 120 feet to the seabed and who knew how much deeper into the cave, she had to be sure of getting down fast and staying there.

  The boat bumped. Peta bounced out of her seat.

  "Sorry. Getting choppy. The sea can turn nasty quickly out here. " Blaine didn't look particularly perturbed.

  Peta clamped the belt tight and looked up to see him pull alongside the other boat.

  "How long has he been down?" the Venezuelan shouted.

  The Trini in Simon's boat shrugged, exposing the bottle of Red Stripe he'd been hiding behind his leg. "Dunno," he said sleepily in a thick accent. "Five minutes, maybe. Maybe more. "

  Peta stood up. It made little difference. However long he'd been down there was too long, and discussing it wouldn't make it any shorter. She double-checked her gear and assured herself she was good to go. Pulling on the buoyancy vest with the double tanks, she strapped it tightly to her back with twin wide Velcro straps. The tanks were heavy; she cinched them a little tighter, and gave the vest a shot of air. Then she pulled the mask down, popped in the regulator mouthpiece, and made a big O with her right index finger and thumb.

  "Good luck!" Blaine shouted.

  Without missing a beat, she sat on the edge of the boat, facing into it before she slowly tilted backward, flying head over heels into the water.

  After the amusement-park fall into the water, Peta quickly oriented herself, dumped the air out of her vest, and turned facedown, away from the light and the path of her ascending bubbles. She kicked smoothly, straight toward the bottom. With the press of a button she started the timer function of her dive watch, then looked at it to make sure the seconds were ticking down.

  While she was traveling to the bottom, she kept her air mix heavier on oxygen than she would have it when she entered the cave. She'd have to check depth and cut back the oxygen to something around a 15 or 16 percent mixture - quickly. If she took too long to do that, the excess oxygen would turn toxic in her bloodstream.

  To get her mind off the dangers of the dive itself, she focused on how to find Brousseau. It occurred to her that the oil rig team had probably planted markers when they got to the bottom, showing the direction to the cave. A rip current could play havoc with marking poles, but if they were still there, she could follow them straight to the deep hole. . . and Simon.

  The light began to fade, and with it the colors. Everything settled into a murky gloom. She took a quick glance at her depth gauge. Sixty feet. It would soon be time to turn on the headlight. She checked her time. . . passing three minutes into the dive. She was tempted to push it, kick a bit harder, but she resisted. It wasn't just a question of speed. She knew she could swim faster than Simon. The problem was, if she did push herself, the exertion might make her breathe too fast. If she did that, the oxygen- nitrogen mix would be wrong no matter how she tried to balance it, which would makeher the one in need of saving.

  That was another danger she didn't need to focus on.

  Her depth gauge was nearing one hundred feet, the edge of the recreational dive limit, when she saw something dark ahead of her.

  She reminded herself that this was no rec dive.

  Thinking, hoping, that the dark shape was the first outcropping of the sea floor, she turned on her light. Its pale glow caught the floating soup of "snow" in the water, making the tiny falling debris shine around her like fireflies.

  Ahead of her, the shape moved, closer than she'd thought. The blackish grayness changed, and she saw her light reflected against white teeth. She thought of the hand symbol: making a fin with your hand to warn other divers.

  Except there were no other divers down here. Nothing alive here at all except for her - and the shark seemed to have noticed that fact.