Slowly, I dropped deeper, and closer to the bottom, I realized the hose must be snagged, explaining why it was so taut. I was not sure which way to move, and tried going several feet to my left, where something brushed against me. I turned and met the dead man face to face, his body bumping and nudging as I involuntarily jerked away. Languidly, he twisted and drifted on the end of his tether, rubber-sheathed arms out like a sleepwalker’s as my motion pulled him after me.
I let him drift close, and he nudged and bumped some more, but now I was not afraid because I was no longer surprised. It was as if he were trying to get my attention or wanted to dance with me through the hellish darkness of the river that had claimed him. I maintained neutral buoyancy, barely moving my fins for I did not want to stir up the bottom or cut myself on rusting shipyard debris.
“I’ve got him. Or maybe I should say he got me.” I depressed the push-to-talk button.
“Can you copy?”
“Barely. We’re maybe ten feet above you. Holding.”
“Hold a few minutes more. Then we’ll get him out.”
I tried my flashlight one last time, just in case, but it still proved useless, and I realized I would have to see this scene with my hands. Tucking the light back in my BC, I held my computer console almost against my mask. I could barely make out that my depth was almost thirty feet and I had more than half a tank of air. I began to
hover in the dead man’s face, and through the murkiness could make out only the vague shape of features and hair that had floated free of his hood.
Gripping his shoulders, I carefully felt around his chest, tracing the hose. It was threaded through his weight belt and I began following it toward whatever it was caught on.
In less than ten feet, a huge rusty screw blossomed before my eyes. I touched the barnacle-covered metal of a ship’s side, steadying myself so I did not float any closer.
I did not want to drift under a vessel the size of a playing field and have to blindly feel my way out before I ran out of air.
The hose was tangled and I felt along it to see if it might be folded or compressed in a way that might have cut off the flow of air, but I could find no evidence of that. In fact, when I tried to free it from the screw, I found this was not hard to do. I saw no reason why the diver could not have freed himself, and I was suspicious his hose had gotten snagged after death.
“His air hose was caught.” I got on the radio again. “On one of the ships. I don’t know which.”
“Need some help?” It was Jerod who spoke.
“No. I’ve got him. You can start pulling.”
I felt the hose move.
“Okay. I’m going to guide him up,” I said. “You keep pulling. Very slowly.”
I locked my arms under the body from behind and began kicking with my ankles and knees instead of my hips because movement was restricted.
“Easy,” I warned into the microphone, for my ascent could be no more than one foot a second. “Slowly.
Slowly.”
Periodically, I looked up but could not see where I was until we broke the surface.
Then suddenly the sky was painted with slate-gray clouds, and the rescue boat was rocking nearby. Inflating the dead man’s BC and mine, I turned him on his belly and released his weight belt, almost dropping it because it seemed so heavy. But I managed to hand it up to rescuers who were wearing wet suits and seemed to know what they were doing in their old flat bottomed boat.
Jerod, Ki Soo and I had to leave our masks on because we still had to swim back to the platform. So we were talking by buddy phone and breathing from our tanks as we maneuvered the body inside a chicken-wire basket. We swam it flush against the boat, then helped the rescuers lift it in as water poured everywhere.