You know the ones who lived and the ones who were paralyzed for life. Even if I pushed this old scow to the hilt, I couldn't get you to Reykjavik before two hours.
Then, add another five hours on a jet to London and the nearest decompression chamber. No way, my friend.
You go below and rest up. I'll tell you when you can go down again."
"No contest, Admiral; you win." Pitt unzipped the front of his wet suit. "However, I think it would be wiser to sack out above deck so that all three of us are in view."
"Who's to see? The coast is deserted, and we haven't another boat since we left the harbor."
"The coast isn't deserted. We have an observer."
Sandecker turned and gazed across the water toward the cliffs. "I may be getting old, but I don't need glasses yet. Damned if I can detect any obvious glitters."
"Off to the right just beyond that rock that projects from the water."
"Can't see crap from this distance." He stared sideways at the point Pitt described. "It'd be like looking through a keyhole and seeing another eye if I picked up the binoculars and stared back. How can you be sure?"
"There was a reflection. The sun flashed on something for a moment. Probably a pair of lenses."
"Let them gawk. If anybody should ask why only two of us were on deck, Tidi was seasick and in misery on a bunk below."
"That's as good an excuse as any," Pitt said, smiling. "So long as they can't tell the difference between Tidi and me in that wild set of duds."
Sandecker laughed. "Through binoculars from a nine away, your own mother couldn't tell the difference."
"I'm not sure how I should take that."
Sandecker turned and stared into Pitts eyes, his lips twisting from the laugh to a wry smile. "Don't try. Just get your ass below. It's nappy time. I'll send Tidi down with a cup of coffee. And, no hanky-panky. I know how horny you get after a hard day's dive."
An eerie, yellow-gray light showed through the hatch when Sandecker shook Pitt awake. He woke slowly, mind blurred, more groggy from a catnap than from an eight-hour sleep. Pitt could feel the drop in the wave action; The Grimsi was barely rocking, even in the low even swells. There was no hint of a breeze. The air was damp and heavy.
"A change in the weather, Admiral?"
"A fog bank-rolling in from the south."
"How long?"
"Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes."
"Not much time."
"Enough… enough for a quick dive."
Minutes later Pitt had slipped into his gear and dropped over the side. Down again into a world where there is no sound, no wind; down where air is not known. He cleared his ears and kicked his fins hard and descended, his muscles cold and aching, his brain still sluggish from sleep.
He swam silently, effortlessly, as though suspended by a wire through the great fluid backdrop. He swam through the darkening colors, the blue-green now changing slowly to a soft gray. He swam with no sense of direction, save for what his instinct and the landmarks on the bottom told him. Then he found it.
His heart began pounding like a bass drum as he approached the plane cautiously, knowing from experience that once he entered the tangled wreckage, every movement would be a menace.
He flippered around to the shattered opening of the fuselage eight feet aft of the wings and was greeted by a small rosefish, no more than six inches long. Its orance-red scales contrasted vividly with the dark background and fluoresced in the dim light like a tiny Christmas tree ornament. It stared at Pitt for a moment from one beady eye set solidly under a spiny head. then began darting back and forth in front of his face mask as he entered the plane.
As soon as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, they met with a jumbled mess of seats, broken from their moorings on the floor, and wooden boxes floating in confusion against the ceiling. Tugging two of the boxes toward the opening, he pushed them out and watched until they lifted free on their way toward the surface.
Then he spied a glove with its finger sockets still encasing a man's hand. The body attached by a greenish arm to the hand was jammed between the seats in the lower corner of the main cabin. Pitt pulled the corpse out and searched its clothing. He must have been the one who fired the machine gun from the doorway, Pitt reasoned.
The head wasn't a pretty sight; it had been smashed to semiliquid paste, the gray matter and skull fragments straggling in reddish tentacles away from the center mass and swaying in unison with the current. The pockets of the torn black overalls covering the remains held nothing but a screwdriver.
Pitt shoved the screwdriver under his weigbtbelt then, half swimming, half gliding, he entered the cockpit. Except for a broken windshield on the copilot's side, the heart of the aircraft appeared empty and undamaged. But then he happened to look up at his air bubbles rising to the overhead panel and travelin(Y like a shyer snake in search of an escape exit. They eventually ran together and clustered in one corner, encircling another corpse, pushed up there by internal gases expanding under the decomposing flesh.
The dead pilot wore the same type of black overalls. A quick search revealed nothing; the pockets were empty. The little rosefish wiggled past Pitt and begin nibbling on the bulging right eye of the pilot. Panting heavily, Pitt pushed the body upward out of the way.
He fought an urge to vomit into his mouthpiece and waited until he regained control of his breathing again.
He glanced at the Doxa watch. He had only been down for nine minutes, not the ninety his imagination suggested. There was little time left. Quickly he groped around the small enclosure, looking for a log book, a maintenance or check-out list, anything with printing on it. The cockpit kept its secret well. There was no record of any kind. Not even a sticker with the aircraft's call letters adhering to the face of the radio transmitter.
It was like leavin(, the womb, being born again, when he emerged from the plane. The open water was darker now than when he had entered. After checking the tail section, he kicked over to the starboard engine.
No hope here; it was almost totally buried in the bottom silt. He got lucky on the port engine. Not only was it easily accessible, but the cowling had broken off, leaving the turbine casing bare for inspection. But fate wasn't playing the game. He discovered the area where the identification plate should have been. It was gone.
Only the four little brass screws that once held it remained, neatly set in their threads.
Pitt slammed his fist against the casing in frustration. It was useless to look further. He knew all identifying marks on instruments, electrical components, and other mechanical units on the plane would be erased.
Silently he cursed the brim behind the thoroughness. It seemed uncanny that one man could have considered and planned for every conceivable contingency. In spite of the near freezing water, trickles of sweat rolled down his face under the mask. His mind was turning aimlessly, posing problems and questions, but impotert to come up with solutions. Without thinking! without controlled effort, his eyes began following the antics of the rosefish. It had trailed him from the cockpit and was cavorting around a silver object a few feet beyond the bow of the plane. Pitt kept his eyes on the little fish for nearly thirty seconds, aware of nothing except the sound of his exhaust bubbles, before he finally reacted and recognized the long silver tube as the hydraulic shock absorber of the nose wheel.