Bloody Passage - Jack Higgins [7]
I hung onto a rail with some care for they were covered with black mussels and her plates were encrusted with dog's teeth, a razor-edged clam quite capable of opening you up like a gutting knife.
The name across the counter was clearly visible, S.S. Finbar. I'd checked up on her after that first discovery. A Clydeside freighter of three thousand tons. Strayed from a Malta convoy in the summer of 1942 and sunk by Stuka dive bombers.
She was tilted slightly to one side, her anti-aircraft gun still in place on the foredeck and remarkably well preserved. I moved toward it and paused, hanging on to the rail, adjusting my air supply again.
There was a sudden turbulence in the water and I glanced up and saw an Aquamobile descending, two divers hanging on behind. It drifted to a halt ten or fifteen feet above me. The divers were wearing bright orange wetsuits and black masks. One of them waved cheerfully, dived down and hung on to the rail beside me.
I leaned close, putting my mask close to his. The face seemed oddly familiar, which didn't make much sense and then he reached over and in one quick gesture ripped my air hose away from my mouth.
The whole thing was so unexpected that I took in water at once. I started to struggle, instinctively clawing for the surface and he moved fast, grabbing for my ankles, pulling me down.
I was going to die and for what, that was my final thought as everything started to go. And then I became aware of the other diver dropping down, towing a spare aqualung, holding its air hose out towards me, silver bubbles spiralling out of the mouthpiece. It seemed to grow very large, to completely envelope me, then I blacked out.
I surfaced to a world of pain, my head twisting from side to side as I was slapped into life like a newborn baby. I suppose I must have cried out because somewhere, someone laughed and a voice said, "He'll live."
I opened my eyes. I was lying in the bottom of an inflatable boat. Justin Langley was bending over me wearing an orange wetsuit, his long blond hair tied at the nape of his neck in a kind of eighteenth-century queue. Gatano, in a similar suit, worked the outboard motor.
Langley smiled. "You don't look too good, old stick."
I tried to sit up and he pushed me down without the slightest effort. At the same moment his friend called, "We're here," and cut the engine.
A Cessna seaplane drifted toward us through the mist, we slid in under the port wing and bumped against a float. I tried to sit up and Langley shoved me down again. There was a hypodermic in his right hand now and he smiled.
"Go to sleep like a good boy and we'll try to see you don't get airsick."
Whatever it was, it was good. I felt the needle going in, but he probably enjoyed that part. And then, total darkness. A split second in time that must have been in reality five or six hours before I returned to life again.
It was cold and damp and very dark. I was walking, supported on either side, descending some steps that seemed to go on forever. When we finally stopped, there was only a narrow circle of light. I was aware of Langley's face looming very large, serious now and two men on their knees levering a round iron grid out of the floor. It was very dark down there and quiet.
Langley slapped my face. It didn't hurt at all. He said, "Still with us?" And then he turned and nodded to the others. "Down he goes."
I didn't attempt to struggle, I was incapable of that. A rope or a strap of some sort was looped around me and I was lowered perhaps ten or fifteen feet into darkness. There was a clang as the iron grid was replaced, footsteps echoed away.
I became aware of two things almost in the same instant. That I was only wearing the bathing shorts I had put on that morning and that when I stretched out my arms on either side, I immediately touched damp stone walls.
Not that it mattered, not then, for as yet, nothing touched me. I slumped down in a corner, knees to my chest in the fetal position and drifted