REMO BARELY NOTED the woman in the diving suit. His legs did the work as he swam, propelling him forward with the speed and grace of a porpoise. He knifed toward the twisted hulk that had been the American scow.
He had already seen the Mexican ship. The hull of that scow had been blasted open by an impact explosion.
When he swam past the woman, she grabbed for him.
Remo dodged her gloved hands. She waved her arms desperately. He waved hello back.
The woman had stirred up trash and silt. It swirled in the stirring currents beside the American scow. No matter. He could clearly see the hole.
The metal had buckled at the point of impact, curling back in twisted shards. On the second half he could see a mirror image of the torpedo hole that had cracked the scow in two before it settled at an angle on the seafloor.
Face stern, Remo kicked away from the scow. The woman in the diving suit was now walking away through an undersea blizzard of trash. She seemed to be having a rough go of it. Every step was a great labor.
Remo swam up to her.
When she saw Remo appear before her, she waved again, this time with far less energy than before. Assuming she was just being friendly, he waved back once more.
Scowling, she swatted his hand and pointed to her oxygen hose. Her panting was steaming up the inside of her helmet.
Remo trained his ears on the hose. He heard nothing but a few pained squeaks. The light of understanding dawned.
O. He formed the letter with thumb and forefinger. I. He pointed to himself. See. He pointed to his eyes. You. He pointed to the woman. Can't. He shook his head. Breathe. He clutched his hands to his throat. Remo smiled, triumphant at his successful pantomime.
The woman tried to shoot him with her spear gun. Remo dodged the spear. Frowning, he began to work out in his head how to say "That wasn't very nice" in undersea charades when the woman's eyes suddenly grew wide.
Remo had felt the pressure of something striking the surface of the water far above their heads. Whatever it was, it was sinking slowly. He followed the woman's line of sight up toward the sun.
It was some sort of steel drum. The barrel was heading for the bottom.
Remo assumed it was more trash. The area around the scows was full of it. But if it was just an ordinary metal barrel, why was the asphyxiating woman in the diving suit now running in panicked slow-motion back in the direction of the submerged American scow? He decided to ask her.
Grabbing her breathing hose, he reeled her in like a fleeing fish.
She was running forward. Then she was running in place. Before she even realized she was going backward, she was face-to-face with Remo once more.
The air in her suit was nearly gone. She panted pitiful gulps. Her eyes bulged wide behind her fogging mask.
With a questioning expression, Remo pointed behind them and up. The barrel was fifty yards back and much nearer the bottom.
She yanked on the hose in his hand, desperate for him to let go. In a hysterical voice she yelled something in a language Remo recognized but didn't understand.
When she saw the look of dark confusion pass across his face, she seemed to realize suddenly that this man who could stay underwater without seemingly needing oxygen might actually be able to hear her.
She screamed again, louder this time and in English.
The echo of words in the helmet was like a ringing bell against Remo's hypersensitive eardrums. "Depth charge!" Petrovina Bulganin gasped. And as she yelled, the explosion came. Fiery hot, it rocked the seafloor and hurled metal missiles straight toward them.
Too late, Petrovina Bulganin thought. We are dead.
I wonder if the hotel restaurant serves that brown rice I like? Remo Williams mused.
Chapter 14
The explosion threw them backward toward the ruptured hull of the American scow.
Remo surfed the bubble of water, riding it back as it expanded from the heart of the blast. The jagged metal peaks in the side of the sunken boat caused by the torpedo rupture flew toward them.
Kicking hard once, Remo rode up over the metal ridge. With a gentle nudge, he kept Petrovina from being impaled on a spear of metal. Her limp body was carried up and over with him. Grabbing her by the diving suit, he tugged her to safety behind the exposed inner hull of the scow.
Tiny metal fragments from the depth charge barrel pinged the side of the sunken scow.
An undersea cloud of trash and churned-up silt spread out from the center of the blast. Veils of darkness stretched like clouds of doom across the seafloor, muddying the water and blotting out the streams of sunlight.
From what Remo could tell before the sea went dark, the boat that had dropped the depth charge was the same one Petrovina Bulganin had come from. The woman's useless oxygen hose had stretched along the seafloor and up to the side of the bobbing boat.
He glanced over at her.
Petrovina's boots were clamped to the scow's hold, keeping her upright. But her head was bowed. Her arms floated ghoul-like in the dirty water. She had lapsed into unconsciousness. Asleep, she would last a few seconds longer than if she were flailing awake, but she didn't have much time left. Her heartbeat was already growing thready.
Even worse for Petrovina, a piece of flying shrapnel had cracked her mask. Her helmet was taking in water.
Remo frowned in annoyance. Why did everything bad always happen to him?
Wishing he could find a loophole in his conscience that would allow him to just swim off, he glanced back up.
The sea was still dark, but not entirely. At least not to eyes trained in Sinanju. Where the silt thinned he could just glimpse the outline of a boat's hull. After launching the depth charge, Petrovina's trawler had puttered closer.
Remo zeroed in on the boat through the sea of floating trash. He grabbed a fistful of diving suit in one hand. The dying flutter of Petrovina's struggling heart carried like sonic waves to his hypersensitive ears.
Touching his toes to the scow's rusty hull, Remo flexed his calf muscles. He took off like a fired torpedo, launching straight up at the bobbing boat. The unconscious Russian agent trailed in his wake. A limp, living rag doll in the last gasping moments before death.
THE MEN ON THE TRAWLER had ridden out the explosion gripping chains and rails. The sea had churned, vomiting an enormous bubble of white that rocked the trawler and nearly capsized her. After the waves subsided and the boat began to chug into the spot where Petrovina Bulganin had walked in her diving suit, the former KGB men scrambled over to the edge of the soaking wet deck.
Their matching black suits looked as if they'd been bought off the rack at Woolworth's back in 1977. Three fat ties dangled out over open sea.
Eager eyes searched the field of risen trash and floating fish for human body parts. They were surprised when the part that popped up right next to the boat was not a woman's arm or leg, which was really what they were looking far. It was a man's head. The head was talking to them.
"Do svidaniya," Remo Williams said.
There were three shocked intakes of air. Three meaty hands grabbed simultaneously for shoulder holsters.
Deciding just this once to opt out of the traditional Russian 9 mm handshake, Remo reached up and snagged three fat dangling ties. He yanked, and the men and their guns were dumped overboard.
"I should have known there were Russians in town," Remo griped as the men fell. "A million tons of rotting garbage can't cover the stench of boiled beets and vodka."
As the Russian agents splashed in panic amid the garbage, Remo lifted Petrovina Bulganin from below the surface and tossed her onto the boat. She slapped to the deck with a watery splat.