Okay, thought Maddie, all I have to do is follow the current back towards the shore. Above her she could clearly see the iridescent stripe of turbulent green-gold water above. That the GPS unit was gone bothered her. She didn’t know if anyone else had one that could be programmed to the homing signal on her bag, maybe Kirk? This had been his stupid plan anyway, but none of them would know that she hadn’t made it to shore for another two hours when they were supposed to meet in four separate groups for dinner: she and Kirk as a couple celebrating their 15th anniversary; Eric, Roland, and Scott as buddies on a surfing holiday; and Yvonne and Maxim as an engaged couple looking to buy a vacation condo with Martin posing as Yvonne’s father and Goldstein as the real estate agent.
Maddie rehashed the plan as she swam parallel but well wide of the current. Rehearsing what was supposed to happen this evening kept her mind off her situation, and away from the panic that threatened to overwhelm her. She was beginning to get tired, and it was difficult not to try and surface to get her bearings visually, but that would mean risking the strong waves on the surface and removing her mask. Ditching the red case was also tempting; it’s dead weight growing heavier by the minute as she began to run out of energy to keep swimming. Maddie pushed that thought from her mind and concentrated on swimming. She had to keep the case, it had the transmitter and there was still a chance that someone else could use it to find her; she needed to keep it with her as long as she could. The water glowed deep green above and midnight blue below. How far out was she? It had taken her twenty minutes to swim the 750 metres from the drop point, and it was hard to tell if she was further out now. Her arms and legs felt tense and stung with the strain; the cold was getting to her. The water was warm but it wasn’t body temperature and she felt her heat concentrated in her torso while her extremities seemed chill and waterlogged.
A few scattered pieces of coral boulders appeared in the distance, a small sign of hope. Infused with a burst of adrenaline Maddie kicked her legs in a tight rhythm, holding the red case close to her chest to try and maintain as streamlined a form as possible. Within five minutes, she had reached the first coral boulder and gripped it gingerly with the hand that was linked to the cable while reaching around with the other to do what she had not dared to do before now, look at the air gauge that hung at her side. There was about 15 more minutes of air; not good news. Maddie automatically slowed her breath, forcing herself to breathe calm and slow. She estimated that she was about 8 meters below the surface now so she would need at least that much time to decompress. There was only one option, she would have to use that fifteen minutes to ascend, and surface to see where she was. If she was close she could keep going into the surf and follow the plan, she’d just be a little late. If she was too far out she’d need to ditch it all, the red case, the tanks, the mask. Maddie stopped thinking and started swimming, she could keep thinking about her options, few as they were, while she was on the move. Air and time were both in short supply.
As she neared the surface, the movement of the water intensified. It was difficult to gauge how deep she was so she was being as careful as possible, trying to keep her breathing even, her ascent slow. The last thing she needed now was decompression sickness in even the mildest form. She’d ascended enough that what handholds she might have had were well below her so she hesitated to look at the gauge again, not wanting to slow down or lose time. The surface was about 6 metres away so she began counting the minutes out in her head; when she reached sixty-Mississippi for the fifth time she allowed her self to rise another three metres. Damn, the surface was rough; she could feel the pull of the waves even though she was well under the surface. If she was lucky, they were moving towards shore; towards shore and not back into the cloudy form of the rip current that she could still discern far to her left. Maddie risked a glance at the gauge; she had to surface and she had to surface now.
The mask dangled around her neck with the regulator, as she hadn’t the courage to jettison them just yet. Something about the useless equipment was comforting, as if it’s mere presence might serve as a talisman against her rising terror. Huge swells pulled her towards the shore, but that shore was a long way off. An unexpected rolling punch of ocean water shoved her under filling her nose with a deep breath of saltwater and driving her panicked and kicking back to the surface this time facing the open ocean. Maddie struggled with the clasp to the tank straps, cursing the red case, the lanyard and the cable equally. Flinging the mask away, she flipped the regulator over her head, leaving it dangling from the tanks as she looked at the cable around her wrist. Not good; a blotchy blue and purple colour, at least the coolness of the water had kept it from swelling and any blood from where the cable and the lanyard had cut into the skin stanched by the pressure of the lines themselves. Maddie would have liked to have left them there, imbedded in the tender skin of her wrist, but the steel aircraft cable was bolted around the handle of bag with a heavy duty cable clamp. She would have to work from the other end to untangle the wadded mess of lanyard, cable and transmitter knotted around her forearm. She thought wistfully of the wire cutters in the toolbox under her kitchen sink and then remembered that she had precious little time for wishful thinking.
Going under again for a moment to gain the relative calm below the surface, Maddie wrapped both legs around the weighted bag in order to descend and to take the tension off the line. It took three minutes, the longest three minutes that she could ever remember. As she’d worked the lines she flashed back to when she was a girl, working the knots out of the gold chains that her mother had casually dropped into her jewellery box. Once her wrist was free, it had truly begun to ache, blood beginning to ooze and feather out into the water. Maddie had held the case tight to her chest for a moment; the breath tight in her lungs, her head beginning to spin she’d let it go, plummeting towards the deep green, the cable looping and spiralling after it along with the transmitter and any hope that Kirk or anyone else might use it to find her. She surfaced, the sun was lower in the sky the shoreline at least 750 metres away and the rip current to her left. She shrugged the tank off of her shoulders and shoved the regulator hoses through her diving belt, pulled the whole kit in front of her and pushed away from it, not wanting to get clocked in the back of the head by her own gear. Maddie took a deep breath; now it was time to swim for her life.
