The Lost Night (34 page)

He swam closer and took stock of the dead man’s equipment. Relief swept through him when he saw that the killers had not bothered to drain the victim’s air tank. He stripped it off the bloated body, tucked it under one arm, and helped himself to the diver’s flashlight as well. Throughout the process the dead eyes stared at him reproachfully through the mask.

Sorry, pal, but your gear is of no use to you now. Not sure it will do me any good, either, but it will buy me a little time
.

He eased past the body and focused the sharp light on the twisted rock passage. The urge to swim forward as quickly as possible was almost overwhelming. But impulsive decisions would kill him as surely as running out of air. He forced himself to drift for a few seconds

There it was, the faint but steady pull of the current. It would either be his lifeline or the false lure that drew him to his death. He slipped into the stream of the ultra-clear water and allowed it to guide him deeper into the maze.

The islanders claimed that there was an exit to the sea. That had been proven years ago by a simple dye test. A coloring agent poured into the cavern pool had emerged a short distance offshore. But the island was riddled with caves, and no one had
been able to find the underwater exit point. Divers had died trying.

It was getting hard to breathe off the first tank of air, the one he had grabbed when he had been forced into the water. It was almost empty. He took it off and set it down on a rocky ledge with great care. The last thing he needed now was to stir up the sediment on the floor of the cave. If that happened, he would be forced to waste precious time waiting for the current to clear out the storm of debris. Time meant air usage. He had none to spare. There was, in fact, a staggeringly high probability that he would not have enough air regardless of how carefully he managed the one commodity that meant life or death.

He slipped into the dead man’s tank and waited a beat, drifting upward a little. Sometimes in a flooded cave the current was stronger toward the roof of the tunnel.

Once again he sensed it, the faint, invisible tug that urged him deeper into the flooded labyrinth.

Some time later—he refused to look at his watch because there was no point—the flashlight began to go dark. He used it as long as possible, but the beam faded rapidly. The endless night closed in around him. Until now he had never had a problem with darkness. His paranormal night vision allowed him to navigate without the aid of normal light. In other circumstances, the natural para-radiation in the rocks would have been sufficient to illuminate his surroundings. But the strange aurora that had appeared in the cavern and the explosion that had followed had seared his senses, rendering him psychically blind. There was no way
to know if the effects would be permanent, and not much point in worrying about it now. The loss of his talent would not matter if he did not make it out of the flooded catacombs alive.

He fumbled with the flashlight that he had taken off the body, nearly dropping it in the process of switching it on. The chill of the water was making him clumsy. The thin suit he wore provided only limited protection. Although the island was in the Caribbean, he was in fresh water here in the cave and the temperature at this depth was unpleasantly cold.

Ten minutes later he rounded a bend and saw that the rocky corridor through which he was swimming narrowed drastically. He was forced to take off his tank and push it into and beyond the choke point. He barely managed to squeeze through after it. The nightmare scenario of getting stuck—unable to go forward or back—sent his heart rate climbing. He was suddenly using air at an even faster rate.

And then he was on the other side. The passage widened once more. Gradually he got his breathing back under control. But the damage had been done. He had used up a lot of air.

He got the first clue that the current was guiding him in the right direction when he noticed that the once crystal-clear water was starting to become somewhat murky. It was an indication that he had reached the point where the fresh water of the underground river was converging with seawater. That still left a lot of room for things to go wrong. It was entirely possible that he would discover the exit only
to find out that he could not fit through it. If that happened, he would spend his last minutes as a condemned man gazing upward through the stone bars of his cell at the summer sunlight filtering through the tropical sea.

The second flashlight slowly died, plunging him into absolute darkness. Instinctively he tried to heighten his talent. Nothing happened. He was still psi-blind.

All he could do now was try to follow the current. He swam slowly, his hands outstretched in an attempt to ward off a close encounter with the rocky walls of the cave.

At one point, to keep his spirits up more than anything else, he took the regulator out of his mouth long enough to taste the water. It was unmistakably salty. He was now in a sea cave.

When he perceived the first faint glow infusing the endless realm of night, he considered the possibility that he was hallucinating. It was a reasonable assumption, given the sensory disorientation created by the absolute darkness and the fact that he knew he was sucking up the last of his air. Maybe this was the mysterious bright light that those who had survived near-death experiences described. In his case, it would be followed by for-real death.

One thing was certain. If he survived, he would never again take the light of a summer day for granted.

The pale glow brightened steadily. He swam faster. Nothing to lose.