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She wasn’t sure exactly what happened next. One m
inute, the winch was whirring as it lifted the diving stage. The next, the wind kicked up hard enough to drive a line of swells against the GD’s haul, rocking the girl’s big ass to starboard. It shouldn’t have been that remarkable, except that the winch motor made a grinding sound and then there was a high-pitched metallic rasp.
George and Mike flew to the mechanicals to see what’d happened, and Boone nearly skidded onto deck like he’d hauled ass the second things had gone fubar.
Tara’s gut dropped as she typed out a query to Jud: Report status
No answer.
Jesse appeared at her side without his oxygen, his expression like a dark storm. “Something happened to one of the cables.”
That was all she needed to hear. “Bobby!” Tara called, her brain going on autopilot.
The man was there in an instant, already knowing why she’d called him. She was Jud’s standby diver. It was her responsibility to go to his assistance.
She checked her dive computer then grabbed her helmet. “Gonna use the scuba,” she said, referencing the self-contained underwater breathing apparatus she’d wear harnessed to her back. It would give her an extra bail-out cylinder in case Jud’s air had been compromised in the accident and more freedom of movement than an umbilical connected to surface-supplied air.
Bobby had her fully kitted in thirty seconds.
Tara turned for the deck’s open edge, catching Jesse’s concerned expression just before she performed a stride entry, maintaining a vertical posture until she was fully submerged.
Her hand found the shot line that connected the dive buoy to the dive site on the bottom, and even though she registered the cold temperature and the waves trying to pull her this way and that, her sole focus was on descending as quickly as possible, being careful to equalize her pressure to prevent barotrauma as she went deeper. Twenty feet. Thirty. Forty.
Diver 3 in the water
She peered upward but was already too deep to make Bobby out. It was good that he was coming, because he could handle assessing the equipment damage.
Fifty. Fifty-five. Darkness enveloped her. Her helmet light only penetrated a few feet in front of her. Tara touched bottom and oriented herself in the direction where the stage should be.
It only took her twenty seconds to locate the tall square structure—and then Jud himself.
He was calmly sitting on the bottom facing the metal box.
Tara made an okay symbol with her fingers, asking him with hand signals if he was injured.
Jud pointed to his foot.
Leaning down, Tara found that the stage had trapped one of Jud’s feet beneath it when it hit the bottom. She dug at the sand, attempting to create a cavity beneath his foot that would free him. But the bottom was more compacted than she expected. They needed to move the stage.
Just then, Bobby arrived, and Tara signaled the problem to him.
Bobby gestured that he would lift the stage, allowing Tara to haul Jud out of the way.
She gave him an okay symbol and grabbed Jud under his arms from behind.
Hands under the stage bottom, Bobby strained until it finally gave enough that she could pull their teammate free.
She hooked a buddy line to Jud’s suit and sent two pre-programmed messages:
Diver retrieved
Status good
With a thumbs-up, she told Bobby she was hauling Jud to the surface.
Jud’s dive computer told her he’d missed his maximum dive time without decompression by six minutes, so she followed its guidance on the depth ceiling where he’d need to make his first deco stop.
Shot line in her hand, they ascended to forty-five feet. Tara made a gesture of her hand rising and falling over her chest, asking about his air. Jud gave her an okay, and then they ascended to his next ceiling. They stopped again at thirty feet. At fifteen feet, Tara made him pause for the final safety stop. Even though the water churned around them, she didn’t want to risk him further injury.
