Straits of Fortune - Anthony Gagliano [38]
There was no sense trying to stay in the kayak now, so I kicked myself free of it while I was still almost upside down. I’m thinking, This is suicide. When my legs were free, I twisted out of the life jacket, extended my arms, and swam straight down into total blackness, knowing I was dead, still not quite believing it. So this is the way I die, I thought without panic.
I went down maybe ten feet, then leveled off and swam toward what I hoped was the south. I needed desperately to surface. I was out of air. Under normal circumstances I could hold my breath for one and a half minutes, but the excitement had burned up every molecule of oxygen in my lungs. I made a deal with myself for ten more seconds and swam hard. When I had counted to ten, I made the same deal again. I made it till twelve, and then I arched my back and swooped for the surface.
I came up gasping at the edge of a pool of white light no more than ten feet ahead of me. Another searchlight—not as powerful as the one I had shot out but good enough to catch me if I lost my luck. I took another gulp of air and dove again, this time not as deep. Again I leveled off, but instead of swimming away from the boat, I swam toward it, hoping to get on the other side of him. The water above me turned yellow-green and lingered there, and I knew if I came up too soon, he would have me and it would be over.
The boat passed above me. I could feel myself being sucked upward. I kicked and tried to pull myself away but only succeeded in maintaining my position. Then the glow was gone and the water was quiet. I played the ten-second game again and made it to eight only with the utmost effort. I came up facing in the wrong direction. I could see the lights stretched north and south across the still-distant shore. I turned around and saw the shadow of the speedboat about fifty yards away and moving east, the light probing the water in the general direction I had at first begun to swim. If I hadn’t turned back, he would have had me for sure.
I watched the light on the boat for a few seconds, marked its location, not sure which way to go. If he found the life vest, he would assume that I’d gotten rid of it because I needed to get underwater and the vest’s inherent buoyancy would have prevented that, in which case I would still be somewhere in the area. Or he might think that I was dead and therefore floating on the surface of the water. In either case he would keep looking. He would start near the place where he had rammed me, and for a while he’d restrict himself to a fairly tight perimeter of the site. When that failed, he would become more systematic.
I watched the light angle south, and then I turned and swam north with the current, not that there was much choice. I swam easily, with smooth overhand strokes. I was fairly certain he had night-vision goggles, but even with them he would have to be extremely lucky to spot me. The ocean had kicked up into a light chop, so there were little swells to hide behind. Even so, I stayed under as much as I could and surfaced only when I had to. I was glad now that I’d thought to take the ephedrine; I was going to need it.
The next time I came up, I could still see the light. Williams was still out there prospecting, still fairly close to ground zero and about two hundred yards away. Now and then the light would swing unexpectedly in a different direction, as though he knew that I was in the vicinity and hoped to catch me off guard. But it never came anywhere near me, so I swam on. I didn’t think I had much of a chance, but there was nothing else to do except swim.
We were the only two human beings in the vicinity, and under those conditions who’s to say what strange channels open up between predator and prey? There came a time when despite the splash of the waves and the distance between us I was sure I sensed his thoughts and felt his anxiety as he scanned the water for me. I could hear him listening, and it was then that I would hold myself beneath the surface of the water and