Black Gold (6 page)

Hex was the nearer. She pulled him into the boat first, then they both hauled Paulo in.

'We need decompression, fast,' Paulo gasped. 'How quickly can you get us to the medical centre?'

Amber yanked the anchor up into the boat, started the engine and wheeled it around in one smooth movement. She opened the throttle on full and pointed it towards land.

'What went wrong?' she said. 'I thought we calculated it thoroughly.'

'Hex got trapped,' said Paulo. He slipped off his BCD and the tanks clanged into the bottom of the boat. 'We spent longer at the bottom than we meant to.'

Hex pulled off the last of his dive kit. His fins were ragged where Paulo's knife had cut him free.

Amber looked at the headland. She could see a red shape on the cliff overlooking the tanker. A fire engine. Her intention had been to go straight to the road that came down that cliff, but now it was blocked by emergency vehicles, she'd have to go elsewhere. To the next bay? No, she remembered, she couldn't – that bay was inaccessible by vehicle. She could do what she had planned – go to the next bay along and call Danny – but that would be no good either because it would be too far to drive from there to the medical centre. She would have to make for the beach where the tanker was.

Ahead was the yellow sorbent boom and its pink buoy. Amber grasped the tiller and swung the boat around the edge of the pink buoy.

Hex slumped down on the bench, his head in his hands, confusion in his eyes.

Paulo shook him. 'What's happened,
amigo?'

The radio crackled and Amber grabbed it.
'Fathom Sprinter
receiving. Over.'

'Fathom Sprinter,
this is the coastguard. You are in danger. There has been an explosion in the tanker and you are in a dangerous area. Please use a different beach to dock, repeat, use a different beach to dock.' The voice changed. 'Lynn, is that you? Over.'

'No, it's Amber. Is that Greg? Over.'

'Amber, you can't go to that beach. The tanker's unstable and there's oil all over the water. It could ignite. Over.'

Hex was trying to explain how he felt to Paulo. 'I tried to stand up and just felt dizzy.' His voice was dazed. He looked at his hands, watching the fingers open and close. Across his left hand was an angry red weal. He banged that hand against the boat as the boat hit a wave but he didn't seem to feel it. 'My hands are going numb,' he said slowly.

Listening, Amber went cold. Paulo was looking sleepy too. Numbness; drowsiness – both were symptoms of the bends.

'Amber?' said Greg on the radio again. 'Are you still there? Over.'

'Here, Greg,' she replied. Her voice was brisk. 'I've got two divers here with the bends. I don't have time for a detour; they're showing symptoms and they need decompression immediately. Over and out.'

Hex looked as though he was calm and floppy, but inside he was panicking. He felt trapped in a tingling, fuzzy body that didn't obey him any more. He couldn't even scratch where his skin felt itchy. He was perfectly aware of what was going on, but felt totally helpless.

Amber was alongside the tanker now. She could see the slope of its deck as it poked out of the water. Her heart pounded in her throat as she pushed the throttle further, but the engine was giving her its top speed. The
Fathom Sprinter
was making a deep wake in the water, pushing aside the oily scum on the surface. It was all flammable. Past the tanker now, just the home stretch to go, but still they were surrounded by oil. Ahead on the shore, firemen were waving to her frantically, the fluorescent stripes on their uniforms accentuating their agitation. 'Go back,' their signals were saying. 'Go back.'

She couldn't go back. Every second counted. She was less than 300 metres away from the shore now. Now 200 metres. Paulo and Hex looked as though they had gone to sleep. 'Not long, guys,' she called. Behind her the boat's engine churned the oily water into a coffee-coloured wake.

Suddenly she was surrounded by firemen wading into the water. She cut the engine. She'd done it.

'Those two,' she gasped, out of breath. 'They've got the bends.' A fireman grasped her around the waist and lifted her out. Behind her, more were lifting out the unresisting bodies of Hex and Paulo.

The decompression chamber was a yellow cylinder four metres long and a metre wide – a solid metal capsule at one end of the room. Pipes and valves came out of its sides and connected to a big compressor that pumped pressurized air into the chamber.

It was split into two halves, each with a couple of hospital trolleys so that patients could lie down. In one half, through a tiny glass window, another patient wearing a transparent oxygen mask watched Hex and Paulo settle into the new compartment while their three friends stood around an intercom talking to them.

'Interesting outfits,' said Amber to the boys. They were wearing white cotton T-shirts and boxer shorts. Usually they were strictly men in black.

'Mara made us put them on,' said Paulo. His voice through the intercom was a little crackly.

'We're not allowed synthetic fibres in case they have to give us oxygen. They could catch fire.'

'Oh my,' said Li. 'Clothes catching fire.'

Paulo managed a seductive grin. 'This is a regular problem of mine.' But his eyes looked hollow and tired.

'So, no palmtop for you, Hex,' said Amber.

Hex gave her a withering look, slightly blurred by the thickness of the glass. 'The pressure would probably upset it anyway,' he said.

'Doh!' said Amber, smacking her forehead with the palm of her hand. 'How could I not know that?' But she was worried. Hex looked even worse than Paulo.

The chamber began to pressurize. There was a faint hiss, then a high-pitched whine like a jet engine powering up. Inside the chamber, the pressure was rising. Paulo and Hex were now 'diving'.

Mara had downloaded an entire record of the boys' dive from the wrist-mounted computers – depths, timings, the gases they had been breathing. She was closely watching a bank of dials, pressure meters and lights, although they were all controlled by her laptop. 'As we increase the pressure the bubbles should dissolve,' she explained. 'Then we gradually bring them to normal surface atmosphere. Of course it takes longer because they did it wrong the first time and we have to make sure the gases clear properly.'

Inside the chamber, Paulo and Hex started swallowing hard, looking uncomfortable.

Alex moved away from the intercom, his face concerned. 'Are they OK?'

Mara glanced in at the window. 'They're OK – they're descending quite fast and it makes your sinuses pop.'

'What about Hex's wound?' said Amber. 'On his hand.'

A jellyfish sting,' replied Mara. 'But not a bad one. They're Cyanea – not poisonous, just uncomfortable. They get caught in fishing nets and leave tentacles behind when they break away. I see lots of fishermen with stings.'

Li gulped. 'Cyanea?' She spoke into the intercom. 'Hey, Hex, the jellyfish that stung you is two metres across and seventy metres long.'

'Don't believe you,' came Hex's voice faintly.

He sounded exhausted. Amber and Li exchanged worried looks. They both knew that Hex didn't like enclosed spaces.

The patient in the other half of the chamber was now lying down with his eyes closed. 'Mara, who's their room-mate?' Li asked.

'That's Andy,' said Mara. 'Don't take any diving tips from him. He dives too often. He's a dreadful example.' Her eyes were flicking from the dials to the laptop, checking that everything was going according to plan. 'He's also rather accident prone and managed to get himself shot with a harpoon gun this morning.'

Li and Amber looked into the chamber again. The patient had a big dressing on his left arm above the elbow. 'Shot with a harpoon gun?' Li repeated.

'Yes. The police have been here questioning him about it. He was barely conscious and didn't make a lot of sense so they're going to come back when he's more
compos mentis.'

Hex and Paulo were now lying full length on their beds, looking even more like patients.

'We'd better let them rest,' said Amber.

Li nodded. She put her hand on the intercom switch to turn it off, but before she did so, she held up the video camera so that they could see it. 'You guys got some brilliant footage. The drill site's much bigger than we thought. We'll come back later.'

Hex propped himself up on his elbow. 'Make copies,' he called. Both girls nodded at him. He sank back and Li turned off the intercom.

'I can put a copy on my laptop,' said Mara. She put her hand out.

Alex was with Mara, watching the instruments. 'How long do they have to spend in there?'

'A few hours. Then I'll keep them in the centre tonight for observation and see how they are in the morning. But there'll be no more diving for a month.'

Li handed the video camera to Mara. 'A month!'

'It takes a while for gases to dissipate. Even you guys have got a few extra gases dissolved in your blood after that dive down to the tanker yesterday. Hex is particularly vulnerable – the dive computer shows that he was using air at twice the rate he would if he was swimming normally when he was down at his deepest, so he'll have more gases in his blood than Paulo. Quite a lot of the cases of decompression sickness I see are because something went wrong at the bottom, someone panicked, or had to struggle. They start breathing really fast – more gases get dissolved in the blood . . .' She shrugged. 'The main thing is, you got them here in time. If you'd had to get us to pick you up from another bay it might have meant a delay of another half hour.'

Li patted Amber on the shoulder quietly and Alex nodded.

Mara then connected the video camera to her laptop and brought up a program to copy it onto her hard drive.

'How's it going with the Clean Caribbean Consortium?' said Alex.

'An inspector's coming tomorrow,' said Mara, 'travelling down from Barbados. They want to come in person, particularly because it's a major company like ArBonCo. I'm also going to show them the medical notes of patients I've treated recently. I've been overrun by children with skin irritation and asthma, and lots of older people with respiratory problems.'

The video file finished copying. Mara pressed
PLAY
and the footage began to run.

Alex saw the dull red metal pipes like a tree plantation in the gloom. He'd seen it before on the monitor's tiny camera, but now he saw it on Mara's laptop screen he realized how big it was. He whistled softly. 'Well done, Hex and Paulo.'

Mara was horrified. 'This is huge. It's a major site. If this goes into production it will be a vast platform. There will be helicopters and boats going out there every few days and this coast will become like a bus terminus. The pollution will increase tenfold. It will kill the ecology and the dive schools will be gone for good.' She turned to Alex, Amber and Li. 'This footage really shows what we're up against.'

'Well, it had to be something big,' said Alex.

'Leave this to me,' said Mara. 'I'll guard it with my life. You go off to the festival now and celebrate.'

'Festival?' echoed Amber.

'There's a concert in the stadium at Willemstad. Reggae bands, jazz – you name it, they'll be there. Go on – let your hair down. You deserve a good time.'

Alex looked at the little windows in the decompression chamber. 'They do too. They worked really hard today.'

'Seriously, guys,' said Mara, 'you can't be in Curaçao at this time of year and miss the festival. I'll be keeping an eye on Hex and Paulo. You go and chill out, have a change of scene. You've done nothing but work since you came here.' She gave them her most severe look. 'Doctor's orders.'

Amber, Li and Alex would rather have stayed, but they got the distinct feeling that Mara wanted to be left in peace to do her job. 'We'll bring you popcorn,' said Amber as they headed out of the door.

Being in the decompression chamber, Hex decided, was like being in a space station. The room was cylindrical, the ceiling a mass of white-painted valves and pipes, dotted with red sprinkler nozzles. A slightly battered space station; the paintwork was scratched and the floor was marked with lines where the trolleys had been moved about. Now he was lying down, he felt better, probably because they were now effectively underwater again so their bubbles had dissolved. Funny. He would have thought a place like this would set off his claustrophobia but he was so relieved to be feeling normal that he was quite comfortable. Or maybe the fact that it was painted white inside made it seem bigger? He propped himself up on his elbow. Paulo was sitting cross-legged, inspecting a handle on the ceiling.

'The trouble with something like that,' he said, 'is that you're tempted to pull it to find out what it does.'

'Leave, boy!' said Hex sternly. His voice came out strangely flat.

Paulo looked at him oddly. 'Why are you using that funny voice?'

'I was just about to ask you the same thing. You sound like you've got a cold.'

'It's the pressure. It makes your voice like that.'

The voice came out of the intercom: Andy, in the other compartment. He had woken up and his gas mask was off. The intercom was above Paulo's trolley so he moved over to make room for Hex.

'I'm Paulo and this is Hex. What are you in for?'

'I got shot by a guy with a harpoon,' said Andy.

'I beg your pardon?'

Andy moved so that they could see the fleshy part of his upper arm. It was bandaged. 'I work at the aquarium. I was collecting specimens of fish – we're all diving like mad at the moment to preserve whatever we can so that we can repopulate later. On one site I saw a light – a guy swimming along. I thought it was someone I knew – another ichthyologist. I tried to catch up with him and he shot me with a harpoon gun.'

'A harpoon gun?' repeated Hex.

'That's a bit unfriendly,' said Paulo.

'Where was this?' asked Hex.

'San Juan Bay,' said Andy.

Paulo and Hex looked at each other. San Juan Bay was where the tanker was.

'Then what happened?' said Paulo.

'No idea. I was hyperventilating and panicking and doing all those things you shouldn't do if you have an emergency underwater. But it was such a shock. I had this harpoon stuck in my arm.' Andy was breathing hard as he relived the experience; no question that he was telling the truth.

'I bet it was a shock,' said Paulo. 'Did you see what your attacker was doing? Do you know why he did it?'

"Fraid not,' said Andy. 'I was bleeding into the water, and the first thing I thought about was sharks. That's when I got my act together. I surfaced as fast as possible and got back in my boat before I became some shark's dinner. When I got here with that harpoon sticking out of me, the police came and questioned me but I could hardly speak. I've been better since I got in here, but I doubt I'll be much use. One guy in dive gear looks very much like another. I can't really give a description.'

Paulo was certain there was more to know, but he had to remind himself that ordinary members of the public were not used to keeping their wits about them when someone attacked them.

Hex tried a different tactic. 'What time did this happen?' Andy should at least be able to answer that. All divers kept an eye on the time.

'About noon.'

'Why did they put you in here?' said Paulo.

Andy sighed. 'Bad diving practice catching up with me. I'd already done quite a lot of dives that morning. I've been pushing it recently – we all have, or the fish will be wiped out. I'd been down to about fifty metres already today and yesterday I did sixty and seventy metres. The San Juan Bay dive was one dive too many – and the harpoon attack . . .'

This didn't quite add up, Hex thought. His suspicions created scenarios at lightning speed. Could ArBonCo have noticed them and planted a spy to get information out of them? With all these environmental activists around, he wouldn't be surprised if they had. 'You were collecting fish from deep down? Don't they die if they come up to our pressure?'

'They don't die if you pierce the swim bladder,' said Andy. 'That's a big air-filled space they use for buoyancy control. It doesn't hurt them.'

A surge of noise filled the chamber, like a roar of air. 'What's that?' said Paulo.

Andy shouted the answer. 'Air change. They do that every twenty minutes. Or we'd suffocate. Nice meeting you.' He moved away from the intercom and lay down on his bunk again.

Hex made sure the intercom was disconnected before he talked to Paulo. His face was serious. 'Noon. When was that explosion on the tanker?'

'About two this afternoon.'

Hex nodded. 'Have you been wondering why the tanker didn't blow sky high?'

Paulo nodded. 'If the chamber of oil and air had exploded there shouldn't have been anything left.'

'But there was some sort of explosion in there – what was it?'

Paulo thought about the circumstances. 'Andy saw someone – who obviously didn't want to be caught. Shortly afterwards, there's the explosion.'

'A bomb?' suggested Hex.

Paulo frowned. 'Why?'

'Because,' said Hex, 'someone doesn't want that tanker investigated.' He fixed Paulo with a grim look. 'We are not supposed to know what we know.'

'Dios,'
breathed Paulo. 'At the moment we're one step ahead – but if they can do something like that, they're not far behind us. How much longer have we got in here?'

Mara had confiscated their watches when she had taken their underwear. 'I don't know,' growled Hex.