by Tom Clancy
Ricci, on the other hand, didn’t have any such worries. He’d arrived in town with money enough to buy that nice house on the water, an’ likely had himself a hefty pension from the police force, not to mention military benefits that covered his meds an’ checkups at the V.A. hospital in Togas, plus Lord knows what other cookies the government might’ve tossed him. Ricci was a loner with no wife or kids, an’ it was a sure thing that sooner or later he’d be on his way to greener pastures.
Dex frowned, his brow creased in thought. What the fuck was he supposed to do? He had to make a livin’ here, year in, year out, or see his family starve from hunger. Had to be able to walk down the street without lookin’ over his shoulder for Phipps or some other asshole deputy followin’ behind in a sheriff-mobile, ready to bust balls for any lame excuse could be concocted on the spur of the moment.
He took a drag of his cigarette and puffed a swirl of smoke and steam from his breath into the brisk salt air, his comments to Ricci as they’d left the wharf once again recurring to him.
“Regular as you are ’bout where an’ when you dive, buggers ought to have you figured….”
An’ regular as clockwork he was. Lining his gear up on the deck the same exact way every mornin’ they went out, puttin’ it all on in the same order every time, an’ then divin’ to his normal spots, takin’ no longer’n half an hour to fill his first couple totes with what he found on the underwater ledges at the head of the cove. Soon as their markers came to the surface, Dex would haul the bags aboard, knowin’ Ricci was on his way down into the thickest part of the eelgrass forest, where he’d drift with the current ‘stead of against it like divers usually did, so they’d be swept back toward the boat rather than away from it if they lost their bearin’s. Drift divin’, as it was called, was risky business, but by lettin’ the current carry him along, Ricci could cover the most amount a’ bottom area in the least amount a’ time — and it was at the bottom where he’d find the best, plumpest urchins.
Dex, meanwhile, was supposed to lift anchor, throw the outboard into reverse, an’ keep his eyes peeled for Ricci’s bubbles while backin’ up slow an’ easy to tag along behind him. Some divers clipped a float line to themselves so the tender could stay on the lookout for the bright-colored marker rather’n have to keep his eyes peeled for bubbles, which were a helluva lot harder to spot. But in these waters there was so damn much eelgrass that the line would just get tangled up in it.
Dex glanced at his wristwatch. Just a few minutes to go ’fore Ricci was down maybe five, six fathoms. Too far to make it back up without air, an’ right when his air supply would run out. Dex would wait a little while longer, then throttle up the engine in forward, haulin’ ass away from there as fast as he could, knowin’ his partner was drownin’ to death somewhere below, his lungs swellin’ in his chest till they burst like balloons got stuck with a pin.
Yeah, Dex thought, he’d sold Ricci out, no puttin’ it any different. Sold him out, and now good as killed him. But what was there to say?
He’d had no choice, he thought. No choice at all.
Things were as they were, an’ there was really nothin’ more to say about it than that.
* * *
Ricci had been at his bottom depth for nearly half an hour when he hit the jackpot.
Having filled two of his three totes with smallish urchins from the upper levels of the slope, he’d sent their floatlines to the surface, left them for Dex to recover, and then descended below the eelgrass canopy. The going proved rough much of the way down. As he had noticed leaving the harbor channel, the changeable winds had produced fairly strong turbidity currents, forcing him to waste a lot of energy fighting the drag, and stirring up so much sand and detritus that he’d been unable to see further than five or six feet in any direction at some points during the dive. Although conditions improved once he neared the floor of the cove and began to go with the drift, his outer field of vision had remained limited to about a dozen yards, making him wonder if he’d have to cut his dive short without bagging any first-rate specimens.
Then the recess had revealed itself to him through pure chance. Hidden from above by a wide ledge of rock, its entrance sheeted over with eelgrass, it would have gone unnoticed had the current not disturbed the fronds just as he’d been swimming past.
He glided closer to investigate, sweeping the area with his flashlight, using his free hand to part the long, serpentine strands of kelp ribboning up to the surface. Schools of silvery herring and other tiny fish Ricci couldn’t name bulleted in and out of the light as he shone it into the opening.
The penetrating high-intensity beam revealed the hollow to be quite small, cutting no more than twelve or fifteen feet into the slope of the ridge, its entrance barely wide enough to admit Ricci in his scuba outfit and tank — a tight squeeze. Still, he felt a surge of excitement over his find. The interior of the cavity was filled with mature, whoppingly big urchins. Urchins galore, clinging three and four deep to every vertical and horizontal surface. The incredible concentration would allow him to stuff his goodie bag to the top just by gathering those nearest the entrance, leaving the rest of the spiny creatures to do whatever they did when they weren’t intruded upon by foraging predators, human or otherwise.
He reached down to his thigh and pulled his urchining knife from its scabbard.
Before getting started, Ricci checked his watch and gauge console, then did some quick mental computations based on the scuba instruction he’d received in the Navy. Though his psi dial showed an ample reserve of air, he was already edging beyond a no-decompression profile and would need to make a decompression stop on ascent. Not atypical for him, but very definitely something to remember.
He swam into the recess, his legs scissoring behind him, taking pains not to scrape his air tanks on the ceiling. Given his imminent plans to kiss his urchin-hunting career good-bye, he found his excitement over the score puzzling, and maybe even a little bit funny. Me in a nutshell, he thought. Never a natural at anything, but bent on giving the job his dogged best to the end. It was the old blue-collar ethic Ricci guessed he’d inherited from his steelworker father, and often wished he could wring from himself once and for all, having learned the hard way that a job well done could just as soon bring on problems as any sort of credit or reward — and worse, that you occasionally wound up getting screwed for your diligence.
Ricci went at his newfound bounty, the tote in his left hand, the knife in his right. The urchins crawling slowly over the backs of those on the rocks were easy pickings, and so plentiful that it took him just a few minutes to fill the mesh bag to a third of its capacity. Pleased with his rapid progress, he got down to collecting the others, sliding the flattened tip of the knife under the suction discs at the tips of their tubular feet, then carefully working them loose from the surfaces to which they were anchored. A slower task than the first, it needed to be performed with some delicacy if he was to avoid cracking their shells — which would be an unfortunate waste, since they were worth zilch to him unless brought up alive.
Ricci had been absorbed in his task for about twenty minutes when his thoughts wandered back to the twinkle of brightness he’d noticed from the skiff. Might have been from something left behind by an ecologically challenged sailor, or a bit of shiny flotsam tossed up onto the island by the surf. Might have. But he couldn’t shake the idea that it also could have been the sun glancing off the lens of a pair of binoculars — or a telescopic gun-sight. Maybe his long years of soldiering and police work had lent undue weight to what ought to have seemed an overly imaginative notion, but why discount it offhand?
And it wasn’t just his experience that had to be considered. Pete Nimec, after all, had nailed Cobbs’s personality type right on the head. Ricci had humiliated him, shaken up his confined little world as if it were one of those snow globes people bought at souvenir shops, and Cobbs would be stewing in his own juices until he regained some of his pride. Word spread fast in a small town, and he’d
want to be sure he got even with Ricci before the tale of his ass-kicking found its way into local folklore. It might be that he’d take some time to plot out his reprisal, but Cobbs was a hothead, and sort of crazy. The far greater likelihood was that he’d act while he was still worked up — and try something as extreme as it would be rash.
Ricci dropped an urchin into the tote, pried at another with his knife. Okay, he and Pete had Cobbs’s number, but what exactly did that have to do with the sparkle of light on the beach? If he assumed Cobbs was out to take him down, that one was obvious. As shellfish warden, Cobbs was authorized to carry firearms, and had access to a speedboat for patrolling the bay compliments of Hancock County. He also knew where Ricci did his diving. He could pull the boat aground or moor it on the far side of the island, then conceal himself in the brush until he was ready for whatever move he intended to make.
In the water, Ricci was a highly vulnerable target. Cobbs could wait until he was surfacing, then zoom up in his motorboat and clip him like a duck in a shooting gallery. Or if he were good enough with a rifle and had a high-powered scope, he might be able to do it from shore, without ever having to break cover. And Ricci would simply disappear into the vast waters of the Penobscot. Urchin diving was filled with inherent hazards that had claimed several lives in recent years, with the diver’s body having gone unrecovered in two or three of those instances. Between the circulating currents, profuse eelgrass, and marine scavengers, it was a rough environment in which to dredge for a corpse.
After four days and nights of mulling all this over, Ricci had grown convinced Cobbs would be looking to come at him when he was out on a dive. If not this time, then certainly the next. Which had left him to determine where Dex might fit into the picture. Ricci could see how his partner might have gotten drawn into an attempt to scam him out of his percentage of the catch money, and, in fact, had been left with no doubts about Dex’s guilt on that score when the subject of his supposed baby-sitting was raised on the boat. It had been evident in all of his mannerisms — the way he’d nervously rattled on about how lousy he felt because of what happened to Ricci in his absence, expressing a bit too much regret and dismay, fidgeting around and tugging at his beard while never looking him in the eye.
These were textbook signs of deception Ricci had recognized from the countless suspect interrogations he’d conducted during his years as a detective. But there were betrayals, and then again there were betrayals. Ricci didn’t believe Dex had it in him to take an active hand in helping Cobbs settle his grudge. Unless, of course, he didn’t know Cobbs had anything too drastic in mind. Or felt pressed into it. Dex led a difficult, hand-to-mouth existence, and Cobbs and his buddies in badly soiled blue could make it even more difficult for him if they wanted to. Whether suckered or squeezed, Dex could be persuaded to stay mum about anything he witnessed.
At last, Ricci had seen only two options — he could either back away from the situation, or hang tough and go back to his usual routine, keeping his eyes as wide open as possible. He had opted for the latter, and was still confident he’d made the right decision. If it proved absolutely conclusive that Dex had turned on him, was perhaps even willing to let Cobbs get away with killing him, his motivations were ultimately of little consequence. Ricci’s ingrained sense of accountability demanded that there would have to be a reckoning for his breach of trust. And as for Cobbs…
Cobbs would have to be dealt with too. Dealt with very severely.
Now Ricci heard the throb of a motor somewhere above him, and paused for a second to listen. It seemed diffuse, coming from all sides at once — which was how the human ear perceived most lower-frequency sounds underwater — but was recognizable to him as the skiff’s engine being cranked. Nothing out of the ordinary, he thought. Depending on the windage up top, Dex would occasionally open the throttle to keep apace with his drift.
Ricci glanced at his instruments again, noted that he had plenty of air left in his cylinder, and went back to filling the tote, in no particular hurry to get done.
He’d chosen to play a game of Wait and See, and intended to stick it out. Whatever the hell that meant for him.
* * *
Dex had planned to wait until Ricci’s exhaust stopped bubbling at the surface before turning the skiff hard about — no more bubbles equaling no more breathing and a dead man underwater. But it had got to where the tenseness in him was making his stomach hurt as if he’d swallowed a handful of thumbtacks, and he just couldn’t stand there watching anymore.
Besides, what did it matter? he thought. He’d fixed the needle of Ricci’s air gauge to read like his tank was filled higher than it really was — higher by more’n a thousand psi, a quarter of its total hold — then figured the outside time Ricci could stay at the bottom an’ make it back up alive, bein’ generous about the amount of air he’d have used by now under the best dive conditions, which was anythin’ but what the water was offerin’ today, given them funnels an’ crosscurrents Dex had been seein’ from the get-go. Takin’ things combined, Ricci didn’t stand a chance. Was pitiful thinkin’ how he was gonna check out, his insides goin’ all to jelly. Goddamn pitiful. But there was nothin’ to do about it, an’ Dex guessed that by havin’ kept from gettin’ the shakes, he could count himself as holdin’ together okay. Better than okay, under the circumstances. That standin’ an’ watchin’, though. The waitin’ for no more bubbles on the top… Jesus, that was too much.
His hand clenched tightly around the stick, his long hair whipping back from under his knit cap, Dex kept on at full throttle, as if by doing so he could leave his guilt behind him, washed away in the white wake of foam trailing the skiff as it planed upwind toward his meeting point with Cobbs.
* * *
His binoculars raised to his eyes, Cobbs squatted in the weeds and bushes behind the strand and watched the skiff approach from his right, northward, Dex driving the little boat so hard that it almost seemed it would take off into the air like a rocket.
He took a deep breath of ocean-and-pine-scented air, wanting to remember the moment in detail, to impress its every sight and sound upon his brain so that he could call them up at whim even when he was old and feebleminded and unable to recall his own name. For several minutes before the skiff had appeared, Cobbs had heard the loud revving of its engine from out on the water, but had tried to curb his expectation until he’d actually spotted it through his lenses. And when he did, when he’d seen Dex was alone, well, Cobbs had felt almost like he was going to lift off into the stratosphere himself. Only at that moment, when the suspense had finally ended, had he realized the true fervor with which he’d hated Ricci. Only then too had he learned the whole of his capacity for murder without remorse or fear of punishment, without anything in his heart but gleeful satisfaction.
Now the skiff veered to starboard and came on dead ahead toward shore, its bow riding up high over the chop, the roar of its engine reaching a crescendo that appropriately matched the joy swelling up inside Cobbs as he imagined how Tom Ricci must have suffered in his last, struggling moments of life.
* * *
Within seconds after Ricci got his first hint that something might be wrong with his air supply, it became apparent that he had a serious problem. Before a full minute had passed, that problem escalated to a full-blown crisis.
The breath that triggered the warning seemed slightly harder to draw from his regulator than normal, and while it could have been attributable to minor overexertion — he’d been working steadily against strong currents for over an hour — a skeptical voice in his head dispelled that idea outright. He was an experienced diver, and pacing himself underwater was second nature.
He took another inhalation, another. Each came with greater effort than the last, and gave that inner voice an edge of added urgency.
Ricci snapped a glance down at his psi gauge. Its dial told him the cylinder had over 1,000 psi left in it — a full twenty-five percent of its capacity — but his mind and body were tellin
g him something else. Although he had stopped all movement, put himself at rest in the water, his tank was barely complying with his demand for oxygen.
The dial was wrong.
The dial was lying to him.
Ricci cast aside his questions about how that could be, and bore in on his essential predicament. He was running out of air. Running out, and would very possibly exhaust what the tank had left in it within moments.
His heart pounded. He felt panic hatching inside him, and chased it off. He had to hang on and stay calm, take things one small step at a time. If he couldn’t think straight, it was time to get somebody to blow taps, because he was good as dead.
He pulled the regulator away from his mouth and reached into the satchel that contained his reserve canister, making sure to exhale into the water as he did so. At his present depth he’d be under almost four atmospheres of pressure, and with the scant volume of air in his lungs, would put far too much squeeze on them by holding his breath.
Quickly placing the flange of its snorkel mouthpiece between his lips and gums, he twisted open the valve and breathed.
Nothing flowed from it.
Somehow he was not at all surprised.
Hang on. Small steps. One at a time.
The thing he needed to do now was to get outside the hollow. No, wait, check that. First he had to get rid of whatever encumbrances he didn’t absolutely need to be carrying.
Ricci released his bulging tote and, given the extremity of his circumstances, was surprised by the keen pang of regret he felt over having to part with his unprecedented take. He almost tossed the spare oxygen tank as well, but caught himself at the last instant, pulled off its J-shaped snorkel attachment, and put it back into his satchel before letting go of the useless canister. Then he put both hands on the rocky floor of the hollow — an area he had just moments ago picked clean of urchins — and thrust backward and out through its entrance.