Think or Swim: Part III

When he surfaced and looked back at the Malaga Barrier, Mao could see a major security operation cranking up. Floodlights were arcing out across the night sky, someone was barking commands, boat engines revved and helicopter rotors began to thump the air.

He shrugged off the two oxygen tanks, attached his face mask and scuba suit and let the lot sink into the dark water. Then, he took a risk: He fished the communicator out of his backpack, switched it on and waited for a location signal. But it was a calculated risk because the device was using Galileo, the flawed satellite navigation system the EUSA had introduced in 2013, after the American GPS had been outlawed. With luck, no one would lock onto him in this quadrant and even if they did, they'd probably get an inaccurate reading.

Galileo showed him that Nerja, a holiday resort to the east of Malaga, was the nearest coastal town. If he could make landfall somewhere below it, he'd throw on the change of clothes in the backpack and then break into an empty holiday home.

Calling up ProPedia and searching for Nerja, he found exactly what he needed: "<strong>Hacienda Brûlé</strong>... elegant, geometric structures ... wind-powered... muscular Finnish carpentry... Med-cool... linen... Nordic/Japanese... rest-space... workplace... best craftspeople from the Gulf of Bothnia... staff from... shuttle service... low-key utopian..."

He scanned another screen and turned off the communicator. It sounded perfect. Certainly too posh for guard dogs, not to mind armed security types, he thought. It probably had some kind of sensor fencing, and definitely retina ID, time locks and pressure alarms, all of which should not be that difficult to deal with. The real danger might be mature Scandinavian housewives prowling for anomalous sex. But after midnight?

He began swimming towards Spain.

Ploughing the rolling waves of the Mediterranean, Mao Kelly was, for the first time in five years, at peace with the world. Naked, apart from the backpack, he felt as if the had been born for the water, like the sea turtle, which can be found in all the world's oceans, except the Arctic Ocean. He'd learned that in primary school in Dublin.

His parents had told him that for many Chinese, turtles symbolise health and longevity. Maybe that was why they ate so much turtle soup. Meat, skin and innards, nothing turtely was wasted in the Kelly kitchen. Seeing turtles in your dreams meant something, too, they'd said, but he'd forgotten what.  

An object brushed against his leg. Sea turtle? Not very likely in the fished-out Mediterranean? Mine? Very possible in the Mediterranean, given the low-intensity war going on between the EUSA and the Salafist  Maghreb states. But a mine behind the Malaga Barrier? Unlikely. So what could it have been, then?

"Think or swim", he said to himself, and ploughed on.

When the clouds pulled back, he saw a silvery chain of pin-prick light stretching out along a dark shoulder of coastline. He was almost there.