Sam had pleaded with him to let her come along but Tusker insisted it would be easier to do this by himself. He knew that if she was along and anything went wrong, the distraction of worrying about her would keep him from doing the job. But that’s not what he’d told her. “One can dive stealthier than two…”

He wore a six-millimeter hooded wetsuit that Sebastian had pulled out of the back of his workshop. The suit was badly worn and frayed at the cuffs, but would keep him warmer at depth. He shivered, remembering his last freezing decompression. The thicker suit meant more buoyancy, which required more weight to descend. Tusker leaned forward, bracing his feet wide in the tossing skiff, and cinched a belt of lead weights around his waist. Sebastian and Sam helped him don the double tanks and a small “travel” bottle of air from which he could breathe for the swim and the descent. He strained under the additional 150 pounds of weight.

Sebastian opened a large black Pelican case in the bottom of the boat and carefully lifted out the limpet mine, a Russian made Ulitka model, that Fonseka had gotten from the naval base’s armory for Tusker the night before. Sebastian handed the unwieldy device to Tusker, who clipped it to two D-rings on his harness with carabiners. The skiff listed dangerously to one side as he sat on the gunwale. Sam and Sebastian countered it by hiking out opposite him.

“I’ll splash in and wait for you, Sam,” Tusker said. He spat in his mask, wiped and rinsed it, strapped it over his hood, and tumbled into the water. The splash sounded loud. Sebastian looked warily at the black silhouette of the Depth Charge in the distance. Sam quickly shouldered her single cylinder and rolled off the other side of the boat. Sebastian handed the deco cylinders over the side to her, one by one, and she clipped them to her own harness.

Tusker was bobbing alongside the skiff, holding himself away with a hand on its hull. Sam swam around to him. They looked into each other’s eyes in the gloom. Tusker wanted to say something meaningful to her. This would be the last time they’d speak until after he would surface. If he would surface. But before he could open his mouth, Sebastian leaned over the side and whispered loudly to them.

“Get going!” he hissed. “Samanthi, I’ll look out for you when you surface. Julian, we’ll motor in just offshore and keep an eye out for your signal when you surface in a few hours. Remember, three pulses with your torch towards shore every 60 seconds.”