How much gas had he lost? He didn’t have time to check his gauge. He regained control of his dangling torch and cast it around the space. He’d drifted up and was pinned against the top of the wreck, which was actually the inside of the starboard hull of the capsized ship. Far below, he saw the beam of the diver’s helmet torch through the silt. He was working at the bomb, filling one of the lift bags attached to it. It would be risky to try to swim down and stop him. He would be nearly out of breathing gas now. There was no doubt that Rausing knew what was happening, given the video feed.

Tusker glanced down at his wrist. The Aquastar was gone. It must have been torn from his wrist in the struggle with the Depth Charge diver. The watch he’d worn on every dive he’d done since age nine was now ticking away somewhere in the bowels of the wreck. Tusker didn’t have time to curse. He had to stop the bomb, even if it meant breathing down his tanks to nothing. There’s only one way back to the surface now anyway.

Consigned to the Depths

350 feet beneath the Indian Ocean. The same night.

In the bottom of the bomb room, Murray caught his breath after his struggle with the scuba diver. Amidst the settling silt, he inflated the two massive lift bags that were slung on the bomb, left on their first dive by McElroy, whose bloated body floated somewhere above. Murray slowly inched the now-buoyant cargo towards the opening in the wreck. It was awkward going in the cramped confines of the cluttered room, made harder by the almost zero visibility. Once outside, he would hook it to the hoist dropped from the Depth Charge, which lay on the seafloor. Dive Control had already told him that Aitkens had been “incapacitated.” I better get double pay for this.

He maneuvered toward the exit hole. Suddenly, out of the blackness, he was hit, hard, and knocked back into the wreck. The blow extinguished his head torch and he spun downwards in darkness, landing with a grunt on a pile of wooden crates that disintegrated into a cloud of dust on his impact.

Immediately, the other diver was on him, holding his helmet by the umbilical and shaking him. Murray struggled to gain his footing and clawed at the other man’s mask. He managed to pull it sideways, flooding it and rendering him blind. Now was his chance. He pushed the flailing diver aside and used his umbilical to pull himself up the hull to the opening. Never mind the bomb. This was more than he’d signed up for.