Singapore Sling Shot - Andrew Grant [44]
My assent seemed so slow that I was starting to panic. As a trained diver, I know there’s plenty of air in the lungs. The real danger, of course, is giving in to the overwhelming desire to drag air into your burning lungs. Water, of course, is no substitute for oxygen for most of us. For the last metre or two, I was fighting that desperate urge.
Eventually I got to the surface and gulp air in I did—big time! There was a rip and it was carrying me under the bridge towards Pulau Brani. The tide, it seemed, had turned. That was good, I think. I kicked a little and angled to the left. I wanted to get out of there as soon as possible and figure out what the hell I was going to do next. That’s the trouble with this sort of stunt, you have to make it up as you go along. Because of what I was wearing, I couldn’t blend in with any crowd, even if I could find one to hide amongst. My change of clothes was on the damn fishing boat with Sami. I figured I might pass for a jogger wearing one of those new one-piece running outfits, but that was about it. The face paint wasn’t going to help convince anyone I was just out for a run.
Cutting across the current was tiring. I swam breaststroke, keeping as low in the water as I could. The ambient light plus the glare from the searching choppers turned the water an oily black. Hopefully my head with the black hood over it was lost to anyone looking in my direction.
I was in a small basin. The bridge offshoot that connected Pulau Brani to the Sentosa Bridge was above me. Concrete channelling connected the mainstream to the basin beyond. The basin was lined with docked container ships on both sides. If I wanted to get to the mainland, I was going to have to cross that piece of water. The tide was now drawing me into one of the concrete channels. I went with it. Above, on the access road, I could hear heavy trucks on the move. The container port never slept and that was both good and bad for me.
The moment I was beyond the bridge, I started kicking for the stern of the ship moored closest to me. It was only thirty metres away to my right. I wanted to get into some sort of cover. I was feeling exhausted and I was getting cold.
The slab side of the container boat towered above me. I rested for a moment, clinging to the top of the rudder, then I moved on. The wharf at this point sat up on concrete piles. I swam under into the pitch-blackness. Only when I was five or six metres in did I turn on my headlamp. Ahead of me there were rocks, covered in waterborne debris. The rocks and the crap covering them climbed to the low concrete ceiling. At least there was room enough for me to get most of me out of the water.
Knee deep in the foul, oily tide, I could stand upright, my head just a centimetre or two from the concrete above. The first thing I did was start dissembling the Browning. If I were taken by the police I didn’t want it on me, and the last thing I wanted to do was shoot an innocent Singapore cop. I thumbed the rounds out of the magazine and flicked them away. The magazine went in another direction, as did the shoulder rig. The barrel, body and slide I would drop as I swam.
I tried calling Sami, but under a metre or two of concrete, the signal wasn’t going anywhere, even if he were still in range. I wasn’t prepared to risk the cellphone yet. It was in a sealed bag in my pack. I didn’t want to drown it. Standing there, shivering, I knew I had to be moving or I was going to be a candidate for hypothermia. I debated what to do with the knife. In the end I pulled the sheath off my belt and put it into the pack. My biggest dangers now were the cold and armed police and probably a mass of heavy machinery if I made it across the water to the other side.
I waded back out until the water was chest deep, then I started swimming again. This time,