Apex (Ben Bracken 2) Page 3

  The water visibility isn’t great, and I can’t see a fat lot beyond 40 yards. The plane must be dead ahead, but I can’t see it yet. I can sure hear it, as the rumble settles a little, and softer splashes highlight the debris that is falling from the sky alongside its previous owner. I start swimming where my instinct tells me. I wasn’t turned around in the water at all, so it should be dead ahead about 100 to 125 yards. Follow the rumble. My limbs are a little jellied, as I put them to work. I’m nervous, and the image of burning disaster families fight their way into my brain again, but I beat them away with furious propulsive kicks.

  A dark shape begins to loom up ahead and slightly right, down on the bottom, although in the haze its features are as yet ill-defined. Has the plane sunk that quickly? I aim for it, swimming about 5 feet below the surface, kicking and paddling along at an urgent speed. The shape on the bottom alters, and extended pieces appear to poke from a central dark mass, their perspective and reach changing as I move through the water. And then my brain catches up: it is a shipwreck, with a jagged, broken mast leaning out of a decayed and smashed deck. It is quite a sight, covered in a thick green moss, its lower half embedded fully in the deep seaweed. It’s an hypnotizing sight. I’ll file this one away, in case I ever get the chance to come back and investigate this one under different circumstances.

  As I pass the downed vessel, I begin to need oxygen, so I pop up to the surface to take a deep gulp, and as I do so, I check that the plane is still ahead of me. Breaking the surface, the low sun hits my eyes, even more orange than the last time I saw it only a couple of moments earlier. It will be dark soon, and darkness is no setting in which to explore a rocky sea bed. Ahead of me, there is smoke, and a giant broken wing reaching skyward, getting more vertical all the time. The plane is definitely sinking, straightening the wing and pulling it down with it. I can’t see the plane itself, but judging by the amount of wing I can see, it mustn’t be too far under water.

  I need to be in that plane before it sinks fully. It will help my investigation and recovery massively if the submerged travel distance is less, plus it’s far less dangerous. I press on with renewed vigor, sweeping long crawl strokes and kicking furiously. The mask is keeping up its part of the bargain, holding better than I would expect of a £2.99 kids novelty scuba mask.

  Suspended beneath the surface, looming in front like a huge twisted metal whale coming up for air, is the plane. It is enormous, its tail section missing, and it hangs there, buoyed by presumable air caught in the parts of the cabin that are still pressurized, the front cargo hold being my best guess the way the tail sinks ever lower. The damage to the plane is totally complete, and any flames that may have been alive as it hit have been extinguished. Or at least, they have down here. I’m sure there is burning surface debris, that I’ll need to watch for as I come back up to seek air.

  I approach, and still marvel at how underprepared I am, how appropriate the metaphor ‘in at the deep end is’ here, and how I still don’t have a clue what it is I’m looking for. The sides of the craft are scorched, burned on its sudden descent from the sky, and the charred lettering emblazoned along the plane says ÓdýrAir. Who knows what that means, and it’s not one I immediately recognize, but I suspect that, as the saying goes, it ain’t from round these parts. Since the rear of the plane is missing its tail, there is an opening from which bubbles are boiling from irregularly, as the air from the cabin is slowly escaping. That’s my entrance.

  I make a quick trip to the surface for air, which is much hotter, acrid and unpleasant now I am so close to the crash site. I make it a short visit, and dive down again, following the scorched curvature of the plane to the opening, through which I slip gently.

  I try to engage an emotionless autopilot, as I enter the cabin of the plane. I used to do this often in times of impending violence, horror and carnage, to detach myself from what I was about to witness. I can turn it on and off at will now. If shit is heading towards the fan, my eyes seem to glaze but my brain retains lucidity, and I subconsciously sieve out the horrors and only process the details that are crucial to the success of the exercise. Like a computer reading an image and processing it as a binary output. Just a series of positives and negatives. It keeps me calm when the world around me is crumbling in the most destructive and gruesome of ways. And I fully expect to face carnage in this cabin, with difficult choices to make.

  But I immediately see that my concern is misplaced. The cabin is empty. Two hundred and sixty blue fabric seats, with no owners I can see. They can’t have all fallen out, can they? The sea would be littered with them!

  The cabin is empty of rubbish, hand luggage, pretty much any evidence of life whatsoever. It’s as clean as a submerged whistle. What the hell is this?

  I see that the front of the cabin is not yet filled with water, so I swim down the centre aisle to go and check it out. I use the headrests for leverage, and pull myself along swiftly, and make good ground. I’m not doing badly in terms of my current oxygen store, and by the looks of the things I can fill up at the end of the cabin in any event. But a dark shape in one of the rows catches my eye, a shadow in between seats, which sets alarm bells jangling and I pick up speed. I peak my head around the seat, and see my first evidence that there was anybody on this plane at all. A woman is slumped in the seat, a black figure-hugging trouser suit revealing her gender, as opposed to her head or face - because her head is missing. It’s gone, but not without argument. Ragged strips of meat and a thick white nub of spine poke from the collar of her shirt. Her head was evidently twisted clean off with a blunt force impact, presumably during the plane’s impromptu tumble from the sky. I check the rest of her body, and she seems largely unharmed, save for her right knee facing the wrong way, the suit fabric around the knee ripped. God knows how that happened, and it’s chilling to acknowledge that that really is the least of her problems.

  I check her pockets. Nothing at all. So empty as to raise suspicion. Maybe her pockets were emptied as she got on the plane. I turn to go, in search of the mysterious cargo and clues to its whereabouts, when I catch a glint of something shining in her left hand. It had been shut tight, but I must have loosened it while examining her. I open her fingers a touch, and a gold object rolls into the middle of her palm. An earring. Long and dangly, very glamorous, with a sizable ruby encased in thicker gold. It’s really something, and my mind nags at the significance of it. Why is a headless woman holding an earring? It’s not like she could have known she was going to loose her head, surely? And why prioritize your earring in a crisis situation like this? On a whim, I take it. It’s too valuable to leave her anyway, and just might be of use in a bartering situation when straight cash might just not be good enough. Crudely put: finders keepers.

  I pocket it, and leave the dead woman in search of air. I need it now, and there is still air up at the top of the cabin. I swim over the seats now, paying attention for anymore unfortunate headless passengers, and get to what feels like the first couple of rows. Peeking my head out, I am brushed with hot sunlight blazing through the cabin windows. The plane has achieved an equilibrium with its floatation it seems, and will remain suspended for now. The heat is odd though. It’s too much for mere sunlight - no, surely there is a fire in the cockpit ahead, through the door. My thoughts drift to survivors, but I can’t picture any given what happened to headless lady back there. I could bash my way into the cabin, and throw gay abandon to my instruction. I don’t know what to do.

  Cargo. There can’t be too much of it. If there was a fully stocked hold, it would surely sink us, but that isn’t happening as yet. I wonder if the contents of the hold have escaped from another hole somewhere in the plane’s wounded body, and my sought item is floating off somewhere untraceable. The ocean is an eager eater of secrets - just ask the captain of that old shipwreck back there. Even though this cargo might be safer in the ocean wilderness than in human hands, my instructions were to get my reluctant mitts on it.

  I approach the win
dows of the cabin, trudging through the water and out onto the sodden carpet of the aisle, then lean across to the window to scout the surface for escaping containers or bags. There is a fair amount of debris, but nothing that immediately reeks of anything out of the ordinary or important. But my stomach does a perfect triple salchow at the sight on the rocks. Camouflage clad marines cover Morte Point like ants, with a few fluorescent police in for good measure. Jesus, the cavalry are here. And down in the water, heading out to the plane at speed, is an inflatable rib powered by a bruising engine, racing across the surface to me. Divers sit on the edges, ready to drop into the water.

  This is what Jeremiah warned me about. He said I had to beat them to it. Well, save for a miracle, I ain’t going to do that undetected. At least not at this rate. But if they catch me, it would be catastrophic. That would be curtains for my extra-curricular career, and these are the very people Jeremiah told me should not get their hands on the cargo.

  But they have resources and man power. Hang on, what am I? A piece of sodding driftwood? This plan will change, but the objective will remain. If I can get out, and avoid detection, I can watch from the beach, out of sight in the rocks. When they have the cargo, I’ll come up with a way to intercept it, forcefully if I have to. I’ll let them do the dirty work, and intervene when the time is right. I like the sound of it. But I need to get out first.

  The left side of the plane is facing the shore, leaving the right faced out to sea. If I exit from the right, I won’t be seen, so I dive back into the water to look for an emergency exit on the right hand side. It doesn’t take me long, as three rows back, there is one, as if by magic. I read the instructions to turn the handle and pop the seal, then push outwards. Easy, as the entire door frame lifts away gently and floats softly upwards. I exit, pop up for a quick breath, and head with thunderous kicks down to the seaweed, reaching with my fingers to what feels like soft, slippery strips of leather. I grab and pull myself in, letting the fronds envelope me hungrily.

  Glancing upwards, I can see the fierce blues and smoldering oranges of the dusk above, creating a grand halo around the silhouette of the jet. I lock my fingers onto the seaweed, holding fast, and try to act, well, seaweed-like. The much smaller outline of the rib is bobbing along at speed, and slows alongside the plane. Four wet-suited divers throw themselves into the water, dropping and spreading ungainly, directing themselves immediately to the plane and its openings. Before they have even got themselves settled and orientated, they begin kicking for the broken tail.

  This is not recon or rescue behavior. This is an operation laden with purpose and a clear objective - finders keepers. They are not taking in their surroundings at all, and make no indication that they have seen me, which is just fine by me.

  They seem to have been given a time limit too, and on thinking about it, you can see why. Even though Morte Pointe is quiet as a craggy crypt it is not far at all from the settlement of Mortehoe, Woolacombe, and over the other side of the hill, to Ilfracombe, I believe. The sunshine has brought the holiday-makers out in force, so the population of these places has swelled by perhaps three or four times its normal occupancy. A plane crashing into the sea will not have gone unnoticed.

  So, yes, in the mind of my possible antagonists, getting the dodgy-looking behavior out of the way early can only be a good thing.

  I watch as all four divers disappear into the tin belly of the jet, bubbles gurgling out as carbon dioxide nuggets seek the surface. To my left, just visible, is the frame of the earlier shipwreck. I look up, to see that the coast is clear, and begin to pull myself along the weed bed, hand over hand, like a horizontal vegetative ladder. I travel with speed and ease, the task easy, but I feel my own oxygen reserves will not last forever.

  Something out of the corner of my eye heads towards me with such speed, agility and suddenness, that I damn near shit my pants, causing me to exhale a quick rasping gasp. All I can see is a muscular form at speed with teeth and black eyes. The panic in me rises with instant blaze, but retreats immediately as the shape banks to one side, to reveal a dog’s head atop a muscular black body with flippers. A seal, that’s all. I could laugh, if I wasn’t in danger of drowning. Christ, they look different underwater. They look like playful pups on the surface, with their cute little eyes and goofy calls, but here, on their turf, they are anything but. They are mean, dextrous predators. You never can change a book by its cover, I think, as I watch the seal, spin through a 360 while turning to come back for another look at me. It must think I’m a particularly big crab, shuffling along on the sea bed like this. I hope they don’t eat crabs.

  I start moving again, and reach the shipwreck I saw before. It has a hull half sunken in the sand and weeds, but the cabin still sits proud yet eroded. I have no idea how old it is, such is my grasp on history, but it must have been here for a bloody long time. The wood is discolored, worn and thinned, and the bolts on the structure are all bloated with dull orange rust. The far end of the vessel seems to covered in a dark dusting, giving the ship the appearance of having a five o’clock stubble. Barnacles. Black and thick, covering the bow.

  Oxygen. I need oxygen. If I go up, I’m taking my chances, and heightening the risk of my discovery exponentially. What can I look for? Where can I get some air? I must have about a minute left, so I’ll just hang tight, behind the cabin here, and think for a moment. At my best, I have a two and a half minute breath, and I’m getting a bit too close to that for comfort. I desperately don’t want to go to the surface, but I may have no choice soon.

  A muddy droning causes me to look up, as a second rib makes its way across to the plane. I got out of there at the right time. That’s now ten of them around the plane, if the team is equivalent to the first. The plane in the distance is still calm, hanging in space, and I can imagine the divers marauding inside like invading parasites in a carcass.

  I hold tight to the cabin, and poke my head inside, curiosity getting the best of me. It is darker, but the cabin is only small, lined with windows. Air can exist underwater. It’s already there, in the water, in any event. Water is rich in oxygen, just not in way that us poorly-evolved humans can use. And as I glance around the cabin, guessing that it must have been here for some 150 years and marveling at both the carpentry and the sheer lack of anything I recognize as useful nautical equipment, save for the vast traditional steering wheel, I see some water that Ican use.

  In the recesses of the angled ceiling, where the corner between wall and ceiling meet at a crooked angle, is a little pocket of air. A bubble that never made it out, perfectly and amazingly harnessed by the angle of the sunken cabin roof. Incredible. I pull myself in, and over along the roof. As I approach, the bubble is neat, a last piece of air that got stuck in the mayhem and disarray of the ship’s final moments, and by some quirk of fate, rested just perfectly in the corner here. It seems to be about ten inches across and a good eight inches or so deep.

  I can’t think too long about how old it must be, or what the risks are of breathing it in. But it is simply cradled in a piece of wood, and while it might not taste too great, it’s not like it has rust in there or anything. I’m struck with wondering if oxygen has a sell-by-date, as I lean in to take a gulp of air from the 1800s. I don’t think many people can say they have done this, and if I ever get to the point where I can share my exploits with someone, I think they would scarcely believe it. I slowly post my chin into the space, open my mouth and breathe a couple of slow rhythmic breaths. On the third breath I withdraw.

  There was enough room to put my face in, but I didn’t want to bring my nose into play. The nose plays a huge part in our sensation of taste, and taste is a sensation I quite like the idea of bypassing when it comes to breathing ancient air. But the air was there nonetheless, and the oxygen nourishing, the taste that remains earthen and solid. Like a crutch you could lean on. It is nothing short of amazing, a pure exhilarating experience. A hundred and fifty year old oxygen, before we put the planet in an industrial chokehold
- I feel as close to greatness as I’ve ever been.

  Whether it’s the untainted pure air giving me fuel to burn, or I just simply have enough air to get back to the shore with (which is far more likely), I resume my seabed ladder crawl to the shore. Progress is steady, assured, and swift. I want to get out, get my bag, which is the only evidence of my being there, and find a vantage point. My seal friend comes along for the ride, and as I pull myself along, I pray that none of the divers take a look down, alerted by the frolicking sea dog and see a bloke in shorts, a t-shirt and a novelty scuba mask swimming away from their little search party.

  The growth of the weed begins to angle upwards, towards the surface, and as we go, I turn onto my back. The sun is lower in the sky now, and there is a lot of glare here - I can afford a controlled bob between the rocks, enough only to allow my lips to break the surface. With everyone shielding their eyes from the western sun, preoccupied with the plane, I’d be amazed if anyone noticed my quick gulp.

  On my back, still gripping the seaweed beneath me for stability, I take my breath in the shallows. The waves lap around me, gently lifting and lowering me rhythmically, as if I am an infant resting on Mother Nature’s chest. I’m calm. Energized. Alert. I’m fucking enjoying myself.

  Some people like collecting beer mats. Some like keeping tabs on birds, bugs, animals, whatever. Some like walking, running, going to the gym. We all get our kicks from somewhere. I’m open enough to enjoy all the above. But I’m never happier, nor more focussed, than when I am getting shit done when the chips are down. When there’s something at stake, an objective to fulfill, I am in my element. I never know it, and I’ve never really noticed it before. But now, floating between the shallow rocks off the Atlantic, using my wits, guts and training to elude a mysterious force, I am in my absolute unrelenting element.