Invisible Armies

Chapter 41

The difference is enormous; she is able to maneuver and swim again, in a way impossible without fins. She carefully puts the last two fins on Keiran's feet as well, then takes him by the arm and begins to swim towards the light. After a moment he catches on and starts to kick furiously as well. Moving awkwardly, encumbered by the spare tank and speargun, it takes them several minutes to swim a few hundred metres, past the furthest edge of the oil slick. Danielle makes sure they ascend as they go, to save air, improve visibility, and minimize their risks of nitrogen narcosis and decompression sickness.

About halfway there, the water around them suddenly roils violently. Then a powerful current sucks them backwards and down. Even though they are kicking as hard as they can, they drop thirty feet in a few seconds, making Danielle's ears pop painfully, before the disturbance ends as suddenly and mysteriously as it began. She keeps moving, utterly bemused. Nothing like that has ever happened to her while diving. She's never even heard of anything like that. Then she realizes: the eddy current from the ship, as it sank. As if the sunken vessel was trying to reach out with its last pulse of strength, drag them down to join it in Davy Jones' much-fabled locker. Had they been a little further back they might well have been sucked down. She hopes that's what happened to Laurent.

Danielle keeps kicking. Her legs are tired, but at least the exertion helps fight the cold. By the time clear unslicked ocean is above them, they are only twenty feet deep. Danielle inflates Keiran's BCD and hers a little further, and slowly, finger on her BCD purge valve, ready to descend again if the air is too hot or smoky to breathe, they ascend to the surface. Keiran's breath has slowed a little, but he has already used half of his air. Danielle has consumed less than a fifth of hers.

The transition from water to air is as always disorienting. It feels a little like being born. They are downwind from the thick black cloud that obscures the ship, a cloud fed by ten thousand tongues of flame beneath it, but smoke rises; the air here at sea level is clear. And the warmth from the flames is welcome after immersion in near-freezing water. Danielle lifts her regulator from her mouth and takes a tentative trial breath. The air is clean and cool. She inflates Keiran's BCD, and then her own, so they act as life preservers, holding their heads above the waves, and gently pulls the regulator from Keiran's mouth. He bit down on its rubber mouthpiece so hard that his mouth is bleeding, but his eyes are focused, he seems otherwise okay.

"You all right?" she asks.

He says in a shaking voice, "I don't think I like scuba diving."

"It's more fun under better circumstances."

"I'll take your word for it. Do we have to go back down?"

"Probably not," she says.

He releases a deep sigh of relief. "Thank Christ for that. Now what? Wait for help?"

"Yeah. I hoped one of the lifeboats would come free and float loose when the ship sank. But I guess not."

"You never know. We'll see when the smoke clears. Looks like it's letting up."

The smoke does seem to be thinning out, and the edge of the flaming oil slick already seems further away than it did when they reached the surface. The oil is finally burning itself out. She hopes Keiran is right and a lifeboat somehow survived the sinking and the inferno. It is at least possible, they are made of metal, and would have been shielded from the flames right up until the ship sank. With no lifeboat, they will have to hope that help arrives very soon. It isn't water or sharks that will kill them. It is the cold. Even these full wet suits will only protect them so long in the North Pacific water. It is only hours, not days, until they freeze to death.

"Holy Christ," Keiran says.

Danielle follows his gaze and gasps. A lifeboat has survived. And it is occupied. She stares at the twenty-foot-long metal hull as it emerges from the cloud of black smoke, carrying two men in fire-ravaged scuba gear. Their suits have melted and run ragged on their bodies, burning the skin right off their body in places, leaving raw patches of muscle soaked with blood. The lifeboat's metal hull is marbled and warped with the heat. The men's faces are awful to look at; their lips have been burned away, and sheets of charred skin hang loose from their cheeks, reminding Danielle horribly of roast chicken. They are still alive, still moving, but not for long.