The inmates at the table chuckled.
‘Styx. Undersea,’ the officer said dryly.
The chuckling ceased.
‘That’s very funny,’ Charon said, grinning broadly and looking at his pals. ‘You nearly got me goin’ for a moment there, I tell yer.’
The officer’s expression remained blank. ‘You got twenty minutes to pack your sack before we leave.’
Charon’s grin hung on in there but it was becoming a struggle. ‘You’re pushin’ this joke pretty far, ain’t yer, sir?’
‘It’s no joke,’ the officer said. ‘You can either go easy, or we can do it the hard way,’ he said. The severe- looking accompanying guard took a step closer, a restraining system in his hands.
Charon’s smile dropped off his face as his colleagues got to their feet and stepped back. ‘I got two months left to do.’
‘I don’t make the orders, son. I got a relocation order here for you signed by the governor himself and no matter how weird it is - and I agree with you that it
‘But I’m white-collar. I processed a coupla bad cheques. There has to be some kinda mistake.’
‘I’m sure someone’s sortin’ it out right now. But until they do you’re comin’ with me,’ the officer said, nodding to the other guard who came forward to join him. Together they manhandled Charon through the room.
‘This is crazy!’ Charon shouted. ‘You can’t put me in undersea . . . For God’s sake! I wanna speak to a lawyer!’
A small fishing boat puttered over a rolling black ocean in a growing squall at a minute to midnight. The lights of Galveston Island on the east coast of Texas were little more than a faint glow behind it. The top of a wave broke over the bows and struck the front window of the wheelhouse that was only slightly roomier than a phone kiosk and looked as though it had been stuck on the deck as an afterthought. Paul stood inside, bathed in a fluorescent green glow, his hands gripping the wheel tightly, his eyes flicking between the darkness ahead and a radar tube at his side. Several blips blinked on the glowing circular screen with each sweep of the scanner, the nearest of them only a few hundred metres away. For a second he thought he saw an even brighter object on the periphery of the screen, mixed in with the rain and the rolling swell, and he maintained an unblinking stare on the same spot until it appeared again.
Paul leaned out of the open door, keeping a hand on the wheel, and was immediately pelted with rain and spray as he looked aft for Stratton and Todd. Both were wearing glistening yellow sou’westers and were dragging a heavy bundle to the stern. ‘We’re coming up on the perimeter buoy!’ he shouted.
Stratton and Todd paused to squint at him, unsure what he had said.
‘Perimeter buoy!’ Paul repeated, cupping a hand around his mouth.
Stratton gave him the thumbs-up and crouched to carry out a final check on the contents of the bundle before clipping it shut. It contained a mixed-gas partial re-breather diving system with extra-large gas bottles and a full- face mask, a set of extra-long glide fins, a digital depth gauge with a pre-programmed ascent schedule and depth alarms, a strobe system, a flashlight, an inflation jacket with an expandable bladder that could reach the size of a VW Beetle when filled and a transponder which he turned on. A small, intense blue LED light blinked slowly on and off and Stratton closed the flap of the bag and clipped together a single large buckle, yanking it hard to ensure that it was secure.
‘How long will that set give you?’ Todd asked, blowing through one of his clenched hands to warm it.
‘Ten hours,’ Stratton said.
‘Is that how long it takes to decompress?’
‘There’s a couple of hours to play with.’
Todd shook his soaked head inside his yellow hood. ‘First you have to swim and find this thing, then open it, turn it on, put the mask on and all that. It sounds impossible.’
‘The toggles glow in water - that’ll make it easy to find. One tug and the bag opens. The set’s already pressured up. All I have to do is put the teat in my mouth and breathe.’
Todd remained unconvinced. ‘And you’ve got to do all that on one breath.’
‘The main umbilical’s only thirty metres from the ferry dock,’ Stratton said, attaching the end of a long nylon line to a strongpoint on the bag. ‘I should be able to make that.’
‘Without a face mask?’
‘I can’t miss the umbilical. It’s a metre thick. This line’ll be looped around the bottom of it. I find the umbilical, I find the line, I find the bag.’ Stratton was running through the scenario in order to convince himself as much as Todd that it was possible.
‘And what about your decompression stops? You have to hang about at certain depths for hours.’
‘I’ll be going up the umbilical, attached to it by the line. The depth gauge is pre-set to the dive stops. I simply tie myself off at each depth and wait. It’ll be boring but it’ll work.’
‘You’ll either drown or freeze to death.’
‘It’s a living.’
‘You’re bloody mad - with all due respect.’
‘Truth is, if I have to depend on this lot to get out of there I’m screwed anyway.’
‘I can’t tell when you’re joking or being serious.’
‘I lost track years ago.’
‘So why’re we going to all this trouble?’ Todd persisted.
‘Every op has to have emergency RVS.’
‘What?’
‘Rendezvouses to head for if everything goes wrong . . . even if they’re tough to get to.’
‘Impossible, more like.’
‘Don’t dramatise. It irritates me.’
Todd looked apologetic. ‘Sorry . . . You’re right. It’s not impossible - just very, very dodgy.’
‘As long as it’s
Todd looked bemused. ‘Who?’
‘Them who tell us what to do.’
‘Sorry, I’m confused.’
‘For us, on the ground, it’s all about how we’re going to do the job. For the suits who send us out it’s all about win or lose, success or failure, blame and responsibility, medals and demotions.’
‘But no one expects you to pull this off anyway. The person who ordered it will surely take the fall.’
‘He’ll take the blame. But then there’s the blame and the
Todd obeyed but remained puzzled. ‘Then you’re even more insane,’ he decided.
‘Perimeter buoy port side!’ Paul called out from the bridge.
Stratton went to the side of the boat to see the large red metal buoy holding firm in the heavy sea just ahead. Below the flashing beacon was an illuminated sign warning anyone against trespassing beyond it.
‘Less than a mile,’ Stratton said, tidying up the bag and ensuring that all was ready. He peered into the darkness, the wind whipping at him, his oilskins flapping open noisily to reveal a black wetsuit beneath.
Todd joined him in the search, shielding his eyes from the swiping rain.‘You been doing this work long?’ he asked.
‘Breaking into prisons?’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘A bit.’
‘Is that why you’re so cynical?’
‘No. That came early on.’
‘I’d like to get the chance to be that cynical . . . I mean, working for who we do . . . I’m just a tech,’Todd said. ‘One day I might get a chance to do a task . . . not like this, of course. I’d never do what you do . . . So how did you get to do this kind of stuff, anyhow?’
