Into the Deep
“BISHOP!”
“Captain?” Maya came to a screeching halt in front of the Captain’s office. “Is it Station 42, sir?”
“Yes, they have requested for you. Now go!”, Captain Harrera spoke quickly in his gruff voice before giving a quick glance to the Lieutenant standing at attention by his door.
“Yes sir. I’ll grab my gears and leave immediately”. The excitement in Maya’s voice is evident.
But before Maya can fully turn to go, the Captain once again stops her, looks her directly in the eye and says,. “Bishop, be careful.”
“Yes sir!”, Maya smiles and makes a quick exit, hearing the Captain yelling at Cutler who is on desk duty that day to get everyone else on ready for the call that is about to come soon.
*************
Maya surveys the scene in front of her. Pier 31 looks like a pure chaotic mess. A fast ferry, 10 minutes into their journey has taken water and 30 minutes ago has fully sunk. On the dock, rescued victims are being helped to the large triage area and the deceased solemnly carried to the covered tents. The flashing lights coming from the first responder vehicles bathing the place with dizzying aura, with the cacophony of family members calling out for their love ones, people crying over lost souls, first responders shouting out orders all intermingle with the background chorus of the rescue boats zipping in and out of the dock. Even though she is surrounded by disarray, Maya feels nothing but calm and determination. Adrenaline firing her up for what is to come. Spotting the command centre tent, she lengthens her stride heading there.
“Listen up people!” Fire Chief Ripley calls to attention to the fire fighters from various stations that have been milling about. “As of now, we still have more than 100 people still missing. The first group of responders has been deployed but there is still a lot of underwater grid search and surface rescue to be done. We also have widened the search area based on the current direction. Divers, check-in with Captain Griffin for your dive plan. Station 26, 16 and 17, you are on ….” Maya doesn’t wait to hear the rest of the instruction as she heads directly to where the dive team congregates.
It has been a while since she’s been called up for underwater rescue. The last operation she was involved in was about 3 months ago, helping out Station 42 when they needed an extra diver. She has been a certified rescue diver with the SFD for five years now. Captains from stations that specialised in Marine operations have always approached her to be fully housed with them and to be fully attached to Rescue 1, SFD Diving Team but she has always declined. She enjoys leisure diving and going through the gruelling training to be a certified rescue diver and doing monthly training is just a way for her to extend her skills and help people at the same time. Thus, she prefers to be a backup diver when the need arises and there have been plenty of opportunities where her service is needed.
“Hey Bishop! You can’t get enough of us huh?” greets John Kilan from Station 42, a fellow rescue diver that she has worked with on various occasions. Despite the light hearted address, Maya can see his expression is grim, underlying the severity of the situation.
“You know you miss me, Kilan?”, she teases back before turning serious. “What have we got?” and turns to look at the various screens and Captain Griffin. The man in question is still conferring his tablet as more data pours in. Behind the Captain, on the monitor, she can see some dive teams that have been assigned to their search grids. More divers are being called in from all over the state and beyond. Maya’s attention is being drawn to the 3D visualisation of the ferry lying on its starboard, sitting precariously on a sill before the bottom of the estuary slopes down to drop another 10 metres deep.
“Alright, nice of you all to join us today”, Captain Griffin says with a wry smile. Stocky in build, bald and close shaven grey beard, Maya has always liked the Captain. He has kind eyes and a dry sense of humour but more importantly his experience makes him a good dive master to carry out complex operations and is hellbent on keeping his divers safe. He has suspended his own team of divers for breaking protocol and has no qualms to give courtesy calls to other Captains to inform them of their errand divers, as Maya found out. In one particular operation, Maya exceeded her dive time and even though her tank still had enough air, Captain Griffin gave her a good dress down. When Maya returned to Station 19, Captain Harrera nonchalantly informed her that her heroic acts had earned her two weeks of desk and scut duty.
Pointing at the visualisation of the ferry that Maya saw earlier, Captain Griffin starts his briefing. “The ferry is sitting at a depth of 32m, on a sill. As you can see here”. He pointed to another screen showing the sonar imagery of the underwater terrain and the ferry location in the estuary. “Its location is between these two narrows. High tide is expected to start in approximately two hours with strong current going south west from here”, he traces the path of the current and the drop to the bottom of the ridge .
Someone from the far right of the group chimes in, “It’s full moon tonight”. Hearing that, Maya and several other divers groans knowing that their task just got harder. Currents in the narrows are normally strong but with a full moon it will be stronger with a very choppy surface. Captain Griffin nods, acknowledging the remark and continues. “Temp is about 15 celcius with less than 1 metre visibility. We are going on a 4 diver team per boat. Set your dive time to 50 minutes each, 2 times dive and then rotate out. No heroics! Questions?...Good!”
“Here’s your buddy list and rescue grid. We are still within the golden hour but we don’t have much time, so, suit up and get out there!”
*************
“Comm checks!” Maya hears the distorted voice of their tender, Aria Lopez coming through her full face mask.
“Read you, loud and clear”, Maya responds and she hears Kilan reply in kind. She does a final check on her gears, making sure all is secure and turns to ask Kilan, her dive partner for this operation, “Ready?”. Kilan nods and both of them hear Lopez clearing them to go.
With a nod to one another, both Maya and Kilan backroll at the same time for a negative entry. The jolt as her body hits the cold water, enveloping her body and pushing against her drysuit is always thrilling and nerve wrecking at the same time. However those feelings are fleeting before Maya once again is calm and razor sharp focused on the task ahead.
“You good?”, Maya checks on Kilan as they begin to descend. Upon receiving confirmation, Maya continued, “We are at…5 metres ….7 metres ….” and she keeps on reporting their progress. Their field of vision limited, coloured only by the white beam from their torch light, the world beyond the reach of their lights is a solid wall of darkness. Eventually, the stern of the ferry begins to take shape in front of them.
They have been assigned the upper deck where various private rooms are located. The visibility in the ferry is just slightly better than the outside. Maya slowly swims on what used to be the aisle, approaching the private rooms that will be above her. Kilan, to her right, swims over the seats slowly combing every row below him. Their approach, slow, deliberate and methodological while dodging and pushing away many floating items.
Maya hears her name being called. She turns to where Kilan is and sees him pointing below. Following the light beam, she sees two bodies wedged in between the seats, their hair fluttering in the water, obscuring their faces.
Maya nods to Kilan and says, “Secure them”. They were on a rescue mission, the bodies will have to be recovered later once they have finished making sure all of the victims, if any, has been rescued.
“Kilan, did you hear that?”. Maya whips her head to the left, shining her torch attempting to reach beyond the darkness. She angles her head, trying to pinpoint the source but it’s proving to be difficult to hear beyond the sound of their own regulator.
“Go, I’ll catch up”, Kilan says while quickly swimming down towards the two bodies, working fast.
Propelling her body forward, she reaches the first room. The door was open and the room fully submerged, but Maya still swims up. Shining her light to every corner of the room, making sure nothing is missed. Backing out of the room, she glances back to track Kilan’s progress and report her own progress to her partner and Lopez in her communication feed. The banging sound is more prominent as she gets closer to the second room and seeing that the door is closed, she prays that there are survivors.
She pounds on the door a few times and hears the same banging reciprocated. Bolster by the sign of life, Maya pries the door with her tool and pushes it up. Shining her torch up at the new opening, she sees the silvery shimmering water surface. “Lopez, we’ve got an air pocket. I’m surfacing”
Maya ascends the short distance and breaches the surface. Directly above her, she sees the window of the ferry reflecting back her light, still intact but it’s leaking water from the sides. Slowly turning around, she can see the end of two rows of seats with a table in the middle all on their side, jutting out of the water. An overhead compartment that is secured to the wall now fits two crouching women, huddling together with the water up to their shins. The woman with long dark hair has her hand up, blocking Maya’s light from blinding her. She shifts her light away from the two figures, finds her footing on the wall and stands in the water that reaches up to her waist. Maya opens her mask and clips it to her BCD.
“Hey, are you guys alright?” she asks, trying to gauge the two women while converting her communication device to a surface kit.
The woman with the long dark hair makes a move to get down from her position to stand, but Maya stops her. “Ma'am, please stay there. Best to be out of the water as much as possible. Are you two hurt?”
Ignoring Maya’s warning, the woman hops down from her perch to stand. From her profile, Maya can see that the woman was already wet, her hair still dripping. She adjusts the pea coat that's wrapped around the other person, who now Maya can see clearly, is a shivering pale looking teenager. “I’m fine", the woman says. "But you have to get her out of here first. She has a mild head injury, a hematoma on the side of the head and is experiencing a mild headache. But I’m more worried about hypothermia in this condition. Her heart rate is over 100 per minute and tachypnea”, she continues calmly, her hands rubbing comforting circles on the teenager's back.
Maya does a double take at hearing a complete medical presentation of the teenager. It’s like gunslinging jargon between paramedics that she hears out in the field or between medical personnel in a hospital. Not something you would expect to hear 30 metres below the surface. Intrigued, she takes a closer look. She has thrown several white snaplight around the room and now with better lighting, she can see the woman is breathtakingly beautiful. But what attracts Maya more is the elegance in which she carries herself especially given the situation and the constant calmness she exudes to comfort the scared teenager. Before Maya can ask, the woman quickly adds, “This is Anna and I’m Dr. Carina Deluca”. The accent creates another dimension that further captivates Maya.