The Stone Monkey

the captain went into seizure. He kicked out hard, struck her in the face with his foot. The spotlight went out and the regulator popped from her mouth. The blow pushed her backward.
    Darkness, no air . . .
    No, no . . .
    Rhyme . . .
    She made a grab for the regulator but it floated somewhere behind her, out of reach.
    Don’t hold your breath.
    Well, I fucking have to . . .
    Blackness all around her, spinning in circles, groping desperately for her regulator.
    Where were the Coast Guard baby-sitters?
    Outside. Because I told them I wanted to search alone. How could she let them know she was in trouble?
    Fast, girl, fast . . .
    She patted the evidence bag and reached in desperately. Pulled out the Beretta 9mm. She pulled the slide to chamber a round and pressed the muzzle close to the wooden wall, where she knew she wouldn’t hit Sen, and pulled the trigger. A flash and loud explosion. The blowback and recoilnearly broke her wrist and she dropped the weapon through the cloud of debris and gunpowder residue.
    Please, she thought . . . Please . . .
    No air . . .
    No . . .
    Then lights burst on silently as the dive chief and his assistant kicked fast into the corridor. Another regulator mouthpiece was thrust between her lips and Sachs began to breathe again. The dive chief got his secondary regulator into the captain’s mouth. The stream of bubbles was faint but at least he was breathing.
    Okay signs were exchanged.
    Then the foursome made its way out of the bridge and to the orange rope. Thumbs-up. Calmer now that the risk of confinement was gone, Sachs concentrated on ascending leisurely, no faster than her bubbles, and breathing, deep in, deep out, as they left behind the ship of corpses.
    •   •   •
    Sachs lay in the cutter’s sickbay, breathing deeply; she’d opted for nature’s air, turning down the green oxygen mask the corpsman offered her—it would, she was afraid, only increase her sense of confinement, having something else pressed close against her body.
    As soon as she’d climbed onto the bobbing deck she’d stripped off the wetsuit—the tight outfit itself had become another carrier of the pernicious claustrophobia—and wrapped the thick government-issue blanket around her. Two sailors escorted her to the sickbay to check out her wrist, which turned out not to be badly injured at all.
    Finally, she felt well enough to venture up top. She popped two Dramamine and climbed the stairs to the bridge, observing that the helicopter was back, hovering over the cutter.
    This ride wasn’t for Sachs, however, but to evacuate unconscious Captain Sen to a Long Island medical center.
    Ransom explained how they’d probably missed the captain during their search for victims. “Our divers did a long search, banging on the hull, and didn’t get any response. We did a sound scan later and that came back negative too. Sen must’ve wedged himself in the air pocket, passed out, then come to later.”
    “Where’s he going?” she asked.
    “Marine station in Huntington, part of the hospital. They have a hyperbaric chamber there.”
    “Is he going to make it?”
    Ransom said, “Doesn’t look good. But if he survived twenty-four hours under these conditions then I guess anything’s possible.”
    Slowly the chill subsided. She dried off and dressed once more in her jeans, T-shirt and sweatshirt and then hurried to the bridge to call Rhyme. Neglecting to share some of her underwater adventures, she told him that she’d found some evidence. “And maybe a wit.”
    “A witness?”
    “Found somebody still alive in the ship. The captain. Looks like he got some of the people trapped in the hold into the galley after the ship went down. But he was the only one who survived. If we’re lucky he’ll be able to give us some leads to the Ghost’s operation in New York.”
    “Did he say anything?”
    “He’s unconscious. They’re not even sure he’s going to make it—hypothermia and decompression sickness. The hospital’ll call as soon as they know something. Better have Lon send baby-sitters for him too. The Ghost’ll come after him if he finds out he’s still alive.”
    “Hurry back, Sachs. We miss you.”
    The royal we, she knew, coming from Lincoln Rhyme, really meant “I.”
    She assembled the evidence she’d found underwater, drying the letter she’d found in the Ghost’s jacket with paper towels from the cutter’s galley. This would contaminate it some but