The Deep Zone: A Novel (19 page)

“Actually,” said Bowman, “I’ll be going through first and running out the line.”

She gave him a look. “But I’ve been through here before.”

“I know that. But I’m expendable and you’re mission critical. We can’t afford to lose you. If there’s anything unexpected in the sump, it’s best I find it first.”

“Okay. You’re right.” She was annoyed, but could not argue with his logic.

“I’ve never seen rebreathers this small.” Ron Haight was holding
his up, turning it over, examining it like some exotic treasure. “Most of ’em are like big suitcases.”

“They are. I mentioned that DARPA had a lot of things going. These are another. They’re half the size of standard rebreathers.”

“Do they use the same scrubbing system?”

“No. These use lithium trioxide to scrub the carbon dioxide from our recycled breathing gas.”

Cahner whistled. “Volatile stuff. Explodes if it gets wet.”

“But the best carbon dioxide scrubber there is, ounce for ounce.”

“I am just curious about one thing,” Arguello said. “How much does such a device cost?”

Bowman chuckled. “You don’t want to know.”

The unit was like no rebreather Hallie had seen or used. It had a full-face mask like those worn by commercial divers. The mask was connected by a short, flexible hose to a chest pack held in place by a webbing harness. The chest pack was about the size of an old Yellow Pages phone book and, with its lemon-colored plastic shell, looked something like one.

“Let’s get through this quickly.” Any wait longer than thirty seconds had Bowman sounding impatient. “These units do not have voice comm, so we won’t be able to talk to each other underwater. The packs’ weight should keep us negatively buoyant, so you won’t be pinned to the sump’s ceiling. I’ll dive first. Hallie next. Then Rafael, Al, and, Ron, you will be the sweep diver. Questions?”

Bowman looked around, his helmet light beam swinging from chest to chest. No one spoke. There was only the wind blowing through the cave, and the stream flowing, untold volumes of water folding and rolling down into the rocky throat, and the immense weight of darkness and depth pressing down on them.

Bowman took off his pack and helmet. He put his rebreather face unit on, tightened the black rubber straps behind his head, and snugged the chest pack tight. He grunted back into his pack and replaced his helmet. He took several test breaths, sat on the edge of the pool, and lowered himself carefully down into the water. He
turned to face the rock, held the lip momentarily, and then disappeared beneath the surface. His helmet lights grew fainter, like candle flames slowing dying, and then they were gone.

Watching the lights fade, Hallie felt afraid. Not for herself. She had dived many such sumps—the Boneyard being a recent example—and they did not frighten her. But, somewhat to her surprise, the thought of losing Bowman so soon did—more than it should have, her rational side muttered. Then again, what did “should” mean? What needed to pass before she
should
feel that kind of fear for Bowman? Wrestling with such thoughts, she waited for the appointed five minutes to pass, and they passed very slowly indeed. She just wanted to get into the water and have this over with.

After donning her gear, she entered as Bowman had done. The water was cold—about sixty-five to seventy degrees Fahrenheit, she estimated—but not painfully so. They would not be submerged long enough to require wet suits. She lowered herself carefully beneath the surface, took a half dozen test breaths, and then let go of the rock. She sank slowly and her boots touched the sump’s silty bottom. She waited, double-checking the rebreather and getting her own respiration under control. Across the top of the glass faceplate, alphanumeric data glowed softly green:

DT was how much dive time had elapsed. Three hours was the rebreather’s maximum. Every minute of use would be depleting that from now on. PPO stood for partial pressure oxygen, the percentage of oxygen in her breathing gas. Anything over 1.8 could induce fatal toxicity. DIL was the amount remaining of diluent, the exotic chemical mix that scrubbed carbon dioxide from the air she breathed. DPT was her current depth. MXD was the maximum depth achieved on the dive. DIR was her compass heading, 313 degrees, or northwest, and BATT showed that the unit’s batteries were still at 100 percent
capacity. DECO reported any danger of incurring decompression sickness, “the bends.” As long as it stayed green, she was good.

She dropped down the twenty-foot manhole, came to rest floating just above the silty bottom, and began pulling herself along. Each helmet had three lights. One was turned on for dry passages. For diving, they used all three. Hers bored luminous tunnels into the milky water. Viz was only about five feet. She knew Bowman would have tried to be very careful, but there was no way to avoid stirring up some silt. The cloudy water scattered her light beams so that it was like driving into thick fog at night. She kept going until the descending passage leveled off. There Bowman had tied off one end of the line from his caving reel to a projection in the rock, and she spotted it on the bottom of the sump right away.

As always, the hardest part had been getting started, and now she was relaxing into the dive. Without fins, she had to pull herself hand over hand along rocks on the sump’s floor, which began to incline downward again. No matter how carefully she moved, she stirred up more silt. Bowman had stirred up surprisingly little. The rebreather emitted no bubbles, made only a soft sighing sound as she inhaled and exhaled. She descended gradually, clearing her ears to equalize the pressure every two or three breaths.

She flicked her gaze upward and the HUD was there:

Arriving at the bend in the tunnel, Hallie knew she was about halfway through. The unstable weight of the big pack on her back and the near-zero visibility made the going awkward, but at least there were no squeezes tight enough to require doffing the pack. The one thing that gave her pause was the awareness that she was doing this dive on a system without redundancy. That violated the cardinal rule of cave diving, which stated that every one of a diver’s systems should be triply redundant: lights, reels, cutting tools,
computers, air, regulators, everything. And that was just for ordinary cave diving. This was even more extreme.

Finally, the sump began to angle upward. She glanced at her HUD:

She ascended slowly, giving her body plenty of time to off-gas accumulated nitrogen, keeping the decompression light green. Eventually she was able to stand on the gently sloping bottom. Breaking the surface, she turned 360 degrees, orienting herself. It was as she remembered. She was in the middle of a subterranean lake whose smooth surface stretched like black satin far beyond the reach of her lights. Overhead, the cave ceiling rose in a curving dome almost one hundred feet high. The rock here, with heavy iron content, contained bright red strata sandwiched between thicker striations of whitish lime, giving the appearance of a giant layer cake.

Bowman stood at the edge of the sump, waiting. She tapped a fist on top of her head, the diver’s signal for “All okay,” and slogged toward him, the water growing shallower as the bottom angled up. The sump wall here was vertical and two feet high, almost like being in a swimming pool. She took off her pack, shoved it as far as she could up to Bowman. He set it aside, bent over, and extended both hands. Hallie braced her boots on the rocky face of the sump and grasped his wrists. Bowman popped her out of the water like an angler landing a perch, grabbed her by the waist, and set her on her feet on the cave floor.

When she pulled off the full-face mask, he put his hands on her shoulders. Keeping his light on her chest, he peered straight into her eyes and held his gaze there and, crazy though it seemed, one mile deep in a supercave, on a mission that could save millions of people from horrible deaths—or not, if they failed—Hallie decided he was going to kiss her.

AND, AS CRAZY AS IT SEEMED, SHE REALIZED THAT IT WOULD
not be unwelcome. Yes, there was a developing crisis on the surface. Yes, they were on a mission more important than anything she’d ever done. And yes, she and Bowman had known each other for only just over a single day. But if life had taught her anything, it was that messages from her gut could be trusted. More, actually:
should never be ignored
. Her aborted time at BARDA had been a painful object lesson. Even more of one had been her father’s early death. It was not that she and he had not had wonderful times together. They had, too many to count, and that was really the sharp end of this death. The future should have held decades more times like that. Except there was no “should” in time’s passage or acts of nature. The only things “should” applied to were people, to her, to decisions she could make, actions she could take. It did not require a second lesson like the loss of her father to drive that one home. And
last of all, wrapping around everything else, was this: things are different in caves. As the old
curandero
had hinted and as she knew, caves were amplifiers, like great mountains. Mere dislike could quickly curdle into rage. And affection—well, that could turn to something else, too.

But Hallie had learned to recognize the look in a man’s eyes before he kissed her for the first time. Some looked hungry, some fearful, others worshipful, and suddenly Bowman didn’t look like any of those. Instead, he seemed serious, focused, clinical almost. Then she understood. He was checking for any signs of vertigo or pupillary dilation. Finally he smiled, let his hands drop, and took a step back.

“You look fine. How’d it go?”

She cocked her head, squinted at him. Had he been toying with her? Like winking back at BARDA? She couldn’t tell. “No problems. The HUD mask took a little getting used to, but otherwise, okay. How about you?”

He seemed surprised by the question, as though caught off guard by the fact that someone might be caring about
his
welfare.

“Same. I had some time on these rebreathers. It’s not your typical cave dive, though. The situational awareness is something you can’t simulate.”

“You mean the fact that we might as well be on the far side of the moon.”