Free Sharkman by Steve Alten Page B

nitrogen bubbles in their blood, a dangerous condition known as the bends.
    Cameron Reeves joined David Watkins on the dive platform mounted along the trawler’s stern. Both commandos were wearing dry suits, with their main Nitrox tanks on their back and their two Heliox cylinders strapped in place along their flanks. In addition, Watkins carried a backpack containing a harness attached to an inflatable bladder.
    Reeves looked up as Onyx climbed down the aluminum ladder to join them. Kneeling on the swaying platform, she carefully worked one bare foot at a time into each flipper, the muscles of her legs and buttocks flexing beneath her wetsuit.
    The former Navy SEAL stared at her painted red toenails. “I didn’t know Muslim women went in for that.”
    “How many Muslim women do you know?”
    “Point taken. However, you really should be wearing a dry suit and rubber boots; it’ll be cold down there.”
    “I prefer to feel the water; it is easier to swim. You have done this before?”
    “Deep salvage dives? A few. The key is to keep your focus and watch your time. It’ll take us about seven to ten minutes to reach the sub. That leaves us fifteen minutes to locate the package and inflate the harness. Do your praying and wait for us outside the torpedo room, and we’ll surface together. Remember, we decompress at a hundred and fifty feet, then every thirty feet, just to be safe.”
    She winked—then stepped off the platform and plummeted feetfirst into the sea.
    “Hey, wait!” Reeves turned to Watkins, who was testing his regulator.
    “Let her go, buddy. One way or the other, that crazy bitch’ll get you killed.”
    Reeves nodded. She’s reckless . . . like a wild stallion. Is she really interested, or is she just playing me? Shoving the regulator into his mouth he checked the air flow, then stepped to the edge of the platform and jumped into the sea.
    Watkins joined him in the water, the two divers floating along the surface while they checked their equipment. After several minutes they deflated their buoyancy control vests and descended together through a frenzy of air bubbles, falling rapidly into the deep blue underworld.
    The pressure squeezed Sabeen’s ears, forcing her to slow. Pinching her nose, she filled her cheeks with air and popped open her ear canals, relieving the ache. The American commando was right—only halfway down and the cold was already seeping through her wetsuit.
    She had been through far worse.
    Sabeen continued her descent, the royal blue waters deepening into shades of gray until the bottom came into view and she saw it—a long, dark, log-shaped beast, a third of its girth poised over a crevasse so deep and vast it sent a shiver through her spine.
    Orienting her approach so that the submarine appeared as it did on the sonar images, Sabeen quickly located the weapons bay and the blast that had most likely sunk the warship.
    Sixty-seven meters . . .
    Sabeen had never dived this deep before. She could feel the weight of the sea pressing in on her skull and face mask and felt herself trembling. Locating the fifteen-foot-wide blast hole, she switched on her underwater light and entered the dark, hollow chamber.
    Time, depth, and current had swept away the evidence of a crime scene. Her eyes caught movement and she turned, her light catching the golden-brown flank of a shark. Eight feet long, with a prominent first dorsal fin, the sandbar shark swam in jagged, dizzying circles around the female diver until Sabeen realized there was more than one creature present.
    Perhaps a dozen sharks moved through the flooded torpedo room, each one circling a rectangular crate—the crate her men had given their lives to transport halfway around the world. Sabeen quickly realized what was attracting the sharks—the water was warmer—she was no longer shivering. It’s the radiation . . .
    Then she saw Mahdi.
    Her cousin’s face was bloated and gray, his eyes open in death. The commando’s upper