Kurt grinned. “You might be right about that.”
Now in his thirties, Kurt Austin had grown up in the Pacific Northwest where he’d spent most of his time boating, fishing or swimming. Years working in his father’s marine salvage business meant he learned to dive as a teenager. He spent countless hours underwater since, working for his father first, before a stint in the Navy and several years with a special CIA unit that did subsurface recovery and engineering.
Since leaving the CIA, he’d been with NUMA, the National Underwater and Marine Agency, a branch of the federal government focused on the exploration, study and preservation of the world’s oceans.
Strangely, the farther he’d gone on his journey, the more technology came between him and the water. Skin diving gave way to wet suits and then to dry suits. Those layers gave way to hard-shelled, deep-diving units, which encased him like an undersea astronaut. More often than not, he now used submersibles, either robotic units piloted from the surface or manned subs that were pressurized and heated and comfortable enough to wear shorts and T-shirts. And so, after finishing a project on Oahu, Kurt had decided to get back in touch with the water and the rhythms of the sea.
Being in Hawaii, that meant surfing, and over a period of weeks Kurt pushed himself to tackle larger and faster waves with a relentless desire to improve.
After several weeks, he was almost as good as the local guides he’d grown to be friends with. His skin was so tanned, he might have passed as a Hawaiian—except for a mop of prematurely silver hair.
“The rhythm of the sea is changing,” Ike said, turning and gazing out behind them. “Can you feel it?”
Kurt nodded. “Swells coming through faster. Closer together.”
There was a storm out there. It was beyond the horizon but growing toward cyclone strength. The waves pushed ahead of it were starting to line up.
“Gonna get too rough to ride soon,” Ike said.
“Let’s make the best of it, then,” Kurt said.
He dropped forward on his board and began paddling toward the break zone.
Ike did the same and they moved closer to shore, increasing their pace and separating. One huge swell after another rolled beneath them until Kurt sensed a monster wave, the largest of the day.
This was the wave he wanted, the one that carried danger and power in equal measures. He paddled faster, began to roll up the face of the swell and got to one knee. He stood and turned with perfect timing, dropping in and accelerating just as the top of the wave began to curl.
Ike was up ahead of him, already slicing a white wake in the water as if his board were powered by rockets. Kurt cut across the wave behind him and couldn’t help but grin at the incredible feeling that poured through him as if he’d tapped into the power of the sea itself.
Accelerating down the face and cutting to the left, he stayed just ahead of the curling top that was forming a pipeline behind him. He dropped his hand and trailed his fingers in the water, drifting back until all he saw around him was a tube of translucent blue, a sheet of liquid glass.
The wave roared like a living thing and began to close on him like Scylla and Charybdis. Just before it was about to crush him, Kurt turned out and zipped into the open again.
He saw Ike up ahead and another surfer who’d picked the same wave. They maneuvered a little too closely and Ike had to cut back. His turn was sharp enough to avoid contact, but the other surfer was overmatched by the speed and power of the breaker and he went down.
Kurt turned to avoid him, but then the sea surprised them all as the wave peaked suddenly and closed out all at once.
The entire front crashed simultaneously, a change from the long, curling break they’d been enjoying. A mountain of water landed on Kurt’s shoulders, knocking him from his board and driving him under.
He was forced deep and slammed into the sand. An outcropping of lava rock gashed his arm and he felt the snap of the surf leash attached to his ankle as his board was ripped away.
The huge wave held him down, but Kurt’s experience diving prevented any panic. He steadied himself as the undertow returned and the swirling sediment around him cleared enough to see the light from above. He planted his feet and pushed off the bottom.
Breaking the surface, Kurt immediately glanced around. Another wave was barreling down on him and his board had been flung into the shallows and tossed onto the beach. Ike was there in the shallows as well, pulling himself back onto his board and paddling frantically to get back out into the water.
Kurt quickly realized why: the other surfer was nowhere to be seen. He’d gone down and stayed down.
Kurt took a deep breath and dove just as the following wave crashed over him. He felt the surge rushing by, lifting him and then releasing him as if he was just beyond its grasp. He heard the muted rumble of the wave crashing up ahead and fought to see through the sand that exploded and swirled back toward him.
In the gloom ahead, he spied a flash of color, yellow and red, dimmed by the water’s hue and blurred b
y the limitations of human vision underwater. He kicked hard and used his arms in a powerful stroke, lunging forward, until he grasped the surfer’s board. It was wedged into a gap in the lava rock, stuck tight. Feeling along the board, Kurt found the leash, used it to pull the unconscious wave rider toward him and ripped the Velcro cuff that held him.
The undertow returned. The next wave was coming. He pulled the limp surfer to him, pushed off the bottom once more and emerged beyond the crest of the wave.
He swam toward the shore; the next wave crashed behind them and shoved them forward in a burst of foam and spray.
As they cruised into the shallows, several other surfers rushed out to help. They grabbed the injured man by his arms and legs and hauled him onto the sand.