Sad Wind From the Sea - Jack Higgins [48]
For a brief moment Hagen stood watching and as they disappeared into the reeds Mason said, 'Too late to stop her now.' Hagen nodded and as he tightened the straps of the aqua-lung a vague uneasiness stirred within him.
He worked hard for the next hour. The two remaining boxes were almost in pieces and it took patience and concentrated effort to rope them successfully together. The first box was hauled to the surface without incident. As he ventured into the cabin for the last time and hooked the remaining box to the cable he was conscious of a feeling of distinct relief. It had gone more smoothly than he would have dared to hope. He lifted the box through the entrance and it began a slow and jerky ascent through the water. For a moment he watched it with satisfaction and then he started to follow it. Suddenly one side of the box bulged, and five or six bars squeezed through the strained coils of rope and cascaded downwards to the bottom of the lagoon.
The whole thing happened in a second and the bars seemed to glide down in slow motion. Hagen poised in mid-water gazing at them in stupefaction until one of them grazed his shoulder. The pain of the heavy blow galvanized him into life again and he twisted out of the path of the other bars. He drifted up to the surface and Mason reached down and hauled him over the rail. Hagen jerked away with his breathing-tube and swore violently. 'What luck!' he said.
Mason handed him a lighted cigarette. 'It could have been worse,' he said. 'You'll have to bring up the odd bars singly.'
Hagen laughed sharply. 'Hell, you're right,' he said. 'We can't grumble. Everything's gone marvellously until now.' He slumped down on the engine-room hatch and inhaled the cigarette smoke with pleasure.
O'Hara was busily engaged in freeing the box from its cocoon of rope and Hagen saw that much of the gold had already disappeared from the deck. The old man kept stopping and listening and suddenly he spat into the lagoon and stood up. 'I don't like it,' he said.
Mason turned in surprise. 'What's up with you?' he said.
'It's the birds,' the old man replied. 'Ever since we've been in this stinking plague-spot they've done nothing but make a row. Now there isn't a sound from any of them.'
For a moment they all listened and Hagen was conscious of a cold finger of fear that moved in his stomach. 'He's right,' Mason said abruptly. 'There isn't a sound from the wildfowl.'
Hagen got to his feet. Something was wrong. Something was very damned wrong. There was a sudden flurry of movement and a great cloud of birds lifted skywards from the reeds. 'It stinks,' he said. 'There's something going on.' He moved to the rail and adjusted his diving equipment.
'What are you going to do?' Mason said.
'I'll bring these bars up as fast as I can,' Hagen told him. 'After that we've got some fast thinking to do.'
He worked quickly, with a minimum of effort. There were six bars and he brought them up from the bottom of the lagoon, one at a time. The sixth had fallen a few feet away from the others and when he returned for it he had to search in a small cloud of sand, raised by his feet each time he had kicked towards the surface. He found the bar at last and started to rise, and it was then that he saw the keel of the canoe, moving through the water towards Hurrier.
His first thought was that Rose had returned sooner than she had expected and relief flooded through him. He surfaced a few feet away from the canoe and started to submerge almost in the same moment. Its occupants were two Chinese in drab and dirty uniforms. In their caps was the Red Star of the Army of the People's Republic. One of the soldiers was standing up in the prow, menacing Mason and O'Hara with a machine-pistol. As Hagen submerged the man swung his weapon in an arc and fired a long burst. Hagen descended again and watched the stream of bullets enter the water and then lose their velocity and sink slowly downwards, harmless pieces of lead. He released his grip on the remaining gold bar