Chapter 20

Dana lay down on the deck and prepared himself for a deep free dive. After some stretching exercises designed to loosen the muscles around the lungs and abdomen, he took several "warm up breaths", exhaling more completely than one would think possible. He completely compressed his taught stomach, expelling all the air in his lungs. Then Dana’s abdomen swelled until he looked pregnant, his back arched as he completed the intake into the nether regions of his lungs.

Returning from his inspection of the trawler’s engines, Max froze at the sight of Dana. “I don’t know what you are doing, Dana, but it looks painful,” he said.

“He’s prepping himself for the dive to the torpedo.” Briana said. She stood over Dana and looked down at him, “You know you can’t make it,” she said, “The water temperature is sixty degrees, but that’s at the surface. If the torpedo is sixty feet down, like Moon says, you will have to work in water much colder. Your hands will freeze up and you won’t be able to feel what you are doing.”

Dana stopped his exercises and stood up. He looked out over the ocean and said, “I know. I’ll probably hit the thermocline, and the temperature will drop immediately at least ten degrees. It will be O.K. I can hold my breath at least ten minutes, maybe fifteen if I am pushed, I’ve done it before. I can manipulate my fingers even when I can’t feel; I’ve had to do it before, in big surf up north at Mustang’s. If Max can get me the wires and dummy loads I need, I can do it.”  He turned and faced her, “Everything is very clear to me now,” he said.

“What is clear?”

“Why I’ve been through the things I’ve been through. It just now made sense to me.”

“Why Dana?”

“So I can be here and dive down into that freezing water and save those people. No one else could do this but me- no one.”

“I like you Dana Mathers,” Briana said and squeezed his hand. “You are a brave man.”

Dana turned to face her and said, “Thanks Briana, I like you too, but right now I don’t feel all that brave.”

As Briana started to reply Max came up beside her and said, “I got what we need to disarm the fuse, Dana, I yanked out some of the wiring in the wheelhouse and found some alligator clips. I also have the dummy loads.” Max pulled four pieces of electrical wiring and two white, square shaped, components out of his pocket and held them out for Dana and Briana to see. “I scrounged these off my soaking wet and now useless cell phone. I’ll go ahead and connect the leads to a pair of wires and the wires to the alligator clips. Take this knife. When you get to the fuse, remember you have to scrape away the insulation from the red and the black wires on two of the three pairs and then attach the dummy loads, these square components, before you cut the remaining two wires. If you don’t, the computer on the fuse will sense that it is being tampered with, and set off the torpedo.”

“Understood,” Dana said.

Dana watched Max twist the grease covered ends of the wires. Max steadied himself as a large rolling swell gently rocked the trawler and caused the wooden deck of the trawler to moan and creak. “Make sure you have a good connection to these dummy loads before you cut the wire, that’s very important.”

Dana looked around the deck for Cyrus. He spotted him next to the runway by the wench, kneeling down beside Duncan, holding a towel over his wound. Cyrus raised his head,

“Duncan will live. He’s still unconscious. The bullet went through the outer part of his shoulder. The bleeding has stopped. Briana, where’s Moon and the two other guards?”

“They are over here, Max found some tie wraps in the wheelhouse and we tied their hands.”

“Good, so what’s Lloyd Bridges over there decided? Is he going down or do we get the engines on this trawler started?”

“We’re going to do both, Cyrus.” Max said. “I’ll work on the engines while Dana tries to defuse the torpedo. We’ve got about fifteen minutes.” Max turned to Dana and continued, “If I can get the engines started in the next ten minutes I’ll use the trawler to move the torpedo away from the connection. Otherwise, it’s all up to you, Dana.”

“Who is Lloyd Bridges?” Dana asked.

“Never mind,” Briana said.

Dana shrugged his shoulders, took the wiring and components from Max, and walked to the rail of the trawler. He couldn’t help but notice how serene the sea looked. The wind had died down to a calm breeze and a crying sea-gull passed lazily overhead, completely indifferent to the predicament in which he and his friends had found themselves. Dana’s eyes followed the rope that held the torpedo and stared into the clear, clean, ocean water. He never got over how transparent the water was this far out. You could see at least ten or twenty feet down. He took several deep breaths, and dove off the side.

He struggled to make headway down into the depths. He swam sideways toward the rope and once he reached it, he used it to climb downward toward the torpedo. The sunlight faded as he burrowed down deeper into the ocean. Straining his eyes all the while for the image of the torpedo, he could feel his hands harden and lose their sense of touch. He balled his hands into fists occasionally, trying to restore their flexibility.

None of this was new to him. He had conditioned himself over the years to be comfortable in fifty five degree water. From his earliest days when his father took him to the beach, he would swim for hours in the chili Pacific. Sixty degree water temperature felt warm to him. And every day since he had started surfing, he went swimming without the protection of a wet suit after every surf session.

But as he entered into thermo cline depth, he felt the shock of the sudden drop in water temperature and his head pounded and throbbed with pain. He blinked his eyes over and over to maintain consciousness and focus his thoughts. He pulled harder on the rope. He knew his only chance was to go as fast as he could. The more he exerted himself, the more his blood would circulate and warm his body. But the trade off was critical. His physical exertion not only increased his blood flow, it increased the use of the small amount of oxygen he had left in his lungs-lungs that were contracting from the increase in pressure the further down he went.

The outline of the torpedo finally came into view, wedged underneath a great, black, oil pipeline. Covered with tea colored barnacles and pink and blue coral, its diameter was wide enough for a car to pass through. Swarms of golden Garibaldi and pinkish-orange vermillion rockfish flitted nervously over and under it. The giant, black, pipe protruded from the ocean floor and ran for several yards, a foot or so above the bottom. Several yards further down it submerged again. Dana marveled at the immense fitting in the middle of the pipeline where he assumed the FPSO connected and extracted oil.

He followed the line down to the large C clamp in the middle of the torpedo. The blinking LEDs of the fuse led him to the backside. He went to work scraping the insulation from the black and red wires where he would insert the dummy loads. He could feel the air in his lungs pressing against his throat, trying desperately to escape. It was only the first crisis. He knew he would have three or four more before he could no longer push back against it, and the oxygen-less air would rush out from his lungs. He only hoped he could hold off until he reached the surface. His numb fingers could not feel the wires. He had to go slowly and make sure he only scraped insulation and not copper.

Once the first two wires were scraped down to the bare metal, he attached the dummy load, securely twisting the bare wire to bare wire. Then he deftly cut each wire from the fuse at the point just past where he had attached the loads. The fuse’s LEDS continued their countdown. All that was left was to cut the last two wires and disable the fuse. With trembling, half-frozen, hands, he held the wires between his thumb and forefinger and began to saw them with the knife.

But before he could cut down through the insulation of the wire, he felt a sharp pain on his right side from a blow that sent his body spinning away from the torpedo and landing on the dark, cold, sand below. His body spun two full turns and the force of the blow sent him several yards from the torpedo. Amazingly, through it all, he kept his breath and his grip on the knife. Dazed, he lay still and then he checked his side for blood, but there was none. On his way back to the fuse, he caught sight of the monster responsible for the brutal attack. A giant, blue and white blur, shaped like a bull shark, turned sharply and headed back toward him.

Dana swam for the space between the pipeline and the ocean bottom. He found a spot at which the sea floor pushed upward and nearly touched the pipeline so that there was only a small crack between the pipeline and the bottom. Within this small cavity his back would be protected. He squeezed his thin frame as far as he could into the crevice. He pointed his knife, a short, shiny stub only a few inches long, in the direction of the oncoming behemoth. He swung it back and forth as fast as he could. He believed if he could hit the shark’s nose and he could discourage it from attacking again.

Its image grew larger second by second, until he could clearly see its coal-black, mindless, eyes and jagged, protruding teeth. Only a few inches of being within the range of Dana’s wildly swinging toy of a knife, the shark veered away. Dana heard splashing and faint cries. He wasn’t sure where they came from, but from the direction the shark was heading, he guessed that they must have been coming from the surface. Pushing himself up out of his hiding place, he could see the shark speeding upward, toward the surface. It must be the commotion of a wounded, larger prey, Dana said to himself.

He cut the last two wires of the fuse with a single motion. There was no longer any point in being careful. He could only last a couple of minutes more before the used air in his lungs forced its way out of his body and it was replaced with deadly, cold, seawater. The LEDs of the fuse went out, and Dana ripped it from the straps that held it in place. He grabbed the line and headed for the surface. He could not wait to see if the bull shark had left, there was no more time or air. He had to get to the surface now!