“Vere? You show me!”
“I will,” Chad said. His hand arced up fast, clenching the machete he’d taken from the survival kit. With all his strength he twisted and slashed, aiming just below the Russian’s chin into the exposed softness of his neck.
The submariner’s instant, primal reaction was to lash back at the sudden pain and shock of being wounded. Taking Chad by surprise, he drove his diving knife hard forward, a spasm driven by a surge of adrenaline. The tip plunged through the layers of the white spacesuit, past the liquid cooling garment and deep into the flesh, muscle and gut of Chad’s belly.
Blood spurted from both men’s wounds and they fell back, stunned. Each did a fast internal assessment. Is this it? Am I fatally hurt? And then, How will I know? Chad’s hands went slack and the machete fell, clattering onto the metal below.
In that brief frozen moment, bubbles appeared in the water at the hatch. A head came up through the surface, and when Svetlana raised her mask, she stared in disbelief. Blood was spurting from the severed artery in the sailor’s neck, around the fist he had pushed into it, trying to staunch the flow. Chad was lying back on the instrument panel, his hands clutching at the handle of a knife buried in his stomach.
“You morons!” she screamed.
She pulled herself up next to the sailor and slapped his fumbling hand away, reaching in to see if she could apply direct pressure to stop the bleeding, but immediately saw there was no use. The cut was wide and deep; there were foaming pink bubbles and exposed meat and tendons where the knife had sliced through his trachea and jugular. Each gush of blood as his heart pumped was weaker. His eyes were wide, looking at her in disbelief. He tried to speak, but was unable, his air whistling out through the mortal wound.
She twisted in the small space to look at Chad, who was staring down with a concerned expression at the knife in his guts.
“How badly are you hurt?”
He looked up at her, saying nothing. The body of the sailor spasmed and slumped.
“Where is the stone?” she hissed.
Chad looked back down at the knife handle, puzzled, ignoring her.
After the two men had left the Zodiac she’d realized there was a better way to search for the stone. She spun now and reached up along the side of the instrument panel over her head, feeling for the tool Michael had used. Her fingers closed around the metal cylinder, and she pulled it down, twisting and turning it on. She looked at the dial of the Geiger counter, hearing it begin to click. She rapidly started moving from locker to locker, throwing open doors and reaching in, listening for a reaction.
She stopped as a better thought struck her. She turned and looked at Chad, who lay motionless, his eyes following her as she moved towards him. She touched the rounded end of the tube to the fabric of his suit, starting by his feet and moving up his legs, swinging it left and right.
As she passed his knees she heard extra clicks. Sweeping up his thighs the clicking increased, the noise becoming a continuous chatter. She kept going, up his torso, but the sound decreased, so she moved it back down until she got maximum signal.
The bastard had hidden the stone in his crotch. He looked at her, his skin ashen, and managed to smile. “Right by the family jewels.”
How to get it out? The spacesuit’s long zipper was in the back, clumsy to get at, and time was short.
She looked at the knife in his belly. It sickened her to think of pulling it out. But how did he cut the sailor? There must be a second knife! She glanced around below Chad and spotted the machete.
She pulled the cloth of Chad’s suit taut and hurriedly began cutting. She hacked through the white outer cloth and the layers of metal-coated plastic. Her fingers dug in, making an opening as she sliced into the airtight rubberized nylon.
Chad tried to push her away. She grabbed the knife handle sticking out of his belly with her other hand, and twisted. He screamed, and she kept cutting.
The innermost layer was the toughest, with hundreds of plastic cooling tubes sewn into a tight mesh against his skin, but once she cut a small hole in the woven fabric it parted, and she was through. She saw fresh blood; she’d cut his upper leg. No matter.
She reached into the slit with both hands, opening it as wide as she could, and then slid one hand between his legs. She felt the cloth of a bag with a hardness inside it, and worked her fingers underneath, prying it out. Like extracting the head of a newborn, she squeezed it through the layers, and with a final yank, the bag came clear. She grabbed the Geiger counter and held it close to the blood-smeared surface; the clicking went crazy.