Джон Сэндфорд - Ocean Prey [calibre]

To the north, he could see the LED lights of another can, and he got himself away from the tangle of plastic straps, turned on the Genesis, and went after it. He fitted six cans in the first cargo bag and had five in the second, when his computer told him that his time was up. His bottom time had been shorter because of nitrogen build-up from the day before, but he’d done good.

He shot squirts of air into the lift bags, and he and the bags rose slowly until the computer told him he was at the first decompression stop. He waited for a full minute, then began the diagonal run back to the pickup, struggling to keep the bags rising as slowly as possible. They wanted to circle each other, and with slightly different amounts of air in each bag, and slightly different weights, they wanted to rise at different rates. Each bag had a release valve, but releasing exactly the right amount of air from each was tricky—as they rose, the air expanded and the bags tried to drag him up.

He hovered a stop at thirty feet, where he rested. He was sucking too much air, he thought, struggling with the lift bags, although his computer said that he had plenty left. His leg itched from the cut, and from the saltwater inside the suit. A boat seemed to be coming toward him, high-speed screws, so probably shallow draft, still some distance off. A sport-fishing boat? He got the Genesis going and headed east, into the ocean, praying that the boat wasn’t trolling. A big hook in the face—or in the bags, for that matter—really wasn’t something he needed to deal with.

He continued pushing east until the boat was well past, then surfaced and checked the GPS. Worried about the boat, he’d overrun the pickup point, so he turned back west and steered over to it, adjusted the lift bags until they sat at the surface, then added air to his wing until his head and shoulders were above water. With nothing but low rollers, he could see red and green boat lights out across the ocean; none seemed to be coming his way. He had twenty minutes to wait. He removed the regulator mouthpiece, and settled in to do that.

Rae sat on the deck and watched the condo lights go by on shore. A tranquil night, and beautiful, the salt air heavy and soothing in her face. The three men sat back by the cockpit talking; she couldn’t quite hear what they were saying. Then Cattaneo called out to her, “Ally, we’re coming up to the turn.”

“All right.”

Cattaneo was watching the radar for anything that might be Coast Guard. The only thing near them, as they came around, was a radar blob that was closing from the north on a line parallel to theirs, and not far away; they could clearly see the lights getting larger by the moment. When they came around in the turn and headed south, their radio burped, and a woman’s voice said, “Sailboat off Deerfield turning south, this is the powercat Uncaged coming up on your starboard side. If you hold your course we’ll stay well off to starboard.”

Cattaneo got on the radio and acknowledged the other boat’s call, then said, “Goddamnit, I hope Willy’s keeping a good watch. They’re running down the same line we are.”

The boat that went by looked like a fat white wedding cake, a catamaran at least three tiers high. A man on the cat’s flybridge raised a hand to them as it went by.

“Gonna get me one of those,” Regio said, as he watched it go. “Fuck a condo down here. You could live on a boat like that and wouldn’t cost you anything like a condo.”

“That boat cost anywhere between a buck and a half and two when it was new,” Cattaneo said. “You can get a damn nice condo for that price.”

They were talking condo prices when Rae’s phone rang: she took it out of her pocket, looked at it, frowned, and answered. A man’s voice, artificially cheery: “We’re calling to alert you to an opportunity to insure your car against . . .”

Rae said, “Fuck you,” and punched off.

Cattaneo laughed and asked, “What was that?”

“He wanted to alert me to an opportunity,” she said. She felt a chill crawl down her spine, but forced a skeptical grin. “Like Willy and his Salvation Army pot.”

“Got a cousin up in Jersey doing that, phone work,” Lange said, faking a shudder. “You know what they say when somebody listens to the pitch and then declines the offer? They say, ‘Fuck you very much.’ The guy who’s listening never picks it up. They think you’re saying, ‘Thank you very much.’”

“Another bit of garbage information from the brain of Matthew Lange,” Cattaneo said.

Rae: “I’m getting a little chilly, I think I’ll get my wrap.”

She went below and got a zip-up cotton sweatsuit top, carried it back up to the cockpit, handed it to Regio, and said, “Hold this, help me get it on.”

He held it so she could get her arms in it, and helped tug it up over her shoulders. “Thanks.” She zipped it. “How much longer?”

“Thirty minutes,” Cattaneo said.

Ten minutes later, Cattaneo’s phone rang. He looked at the screen and said, “Uh-oh. Trouble. It’s the boss. Ally, if you want to go up on the bow or down below, this might be kinda private.”

“Sure,” she said. “Go ahead and not trust me.”

She dropped down the ladder into the salon, then stepped into one of the cabins. Davenport’s call had been an alert to warn of possible trouble. She’d gotten the sweatsuit top, and had asked Regio’s help with it, so that he would have hefted it, and would know that there was nothing in the pockets. Nothing heavy, like a gun.

She had an edge now, something like fear, but maybe not quite there. Apprehension. Trepidation.

Moving quickly, tense but not in a panic, she ripped the tape from her ankle to free the Sig, made sure there was a round in the chamber, that the weapon was cocked and locked, and stuck it in her sweatsuit pocket. She moved over to the cabin door and tried to hear what was being said. The phone call was apparently over, but the three men were talking in low tones—or Cattaneo and Regio were. Lange was louder, and it sounded like he was objecting to something, his voice intense.

Trouble, all right , Rae thought.

Cattaneo called her: “Hey, Ally?”

She hesitated, then stuck her head out the cabin door. “We there?”

“Not quite, but we’re getting close. Could you come up and help spot?”

“’Kay.”

Rae climbed up to the cockpit and Cattaneo said, “Probably best if you’re on the deck . . .”

“Gimme a flashlight, I’ll flash him,” she said.

Cattaneo dug around in his equipment bag, then handed her a compact Maglite.

Rae climbed up on the deck and turned, and saw Regio had a gun. “Hey. What the fuck you guys thinking about here?”

Cattaneo said, “Ally, I’m sorry, but we’ve had a major problem.”

Rae’s hand was in her pocket, gripping the Sig, flicking the safety. Regio was smiling at her, Lange had his face turned away, and Regio started to bring the gun hand up.

Rae slipped the Sig from her pocket and shot Regio twice in the heart, two flat shocking bang s with spark-like muzzle blasts.

She knew she hit him in the heart because Regio was only six feet away and she could almost reach out and touch him. Regio, astonished, looked down at his chest and then dropped straight into the cockpit with a butcher shop thump .

Rae was already pointing the pistol at Cattaneo’s head and she snarled, “If Matt or you makes a single fuckin’ move, I’m gonna shoot you in the fuckin’ head, Jack, and I’m not going to miss, and then I’m gonna shoot Matt if I have to. I’m faster than either one of you assholes, so keep that in mind.”

Lange was freaked, looking down at Regio: “What! What! You killed him!”