demand that you step off the high board and deal with water issues while en route to your destination. Sometimes, difficulties that can’t be controlled become tolerable only when viewed as assets.
Looking at it that way, I had a lot going for me.
I was alone—it meant I didn’t have a partner to worry about. The fact that there was a single spare tank meant that I didn’t have to lug a lot of extra equipment. The tunnel was claustrophobic, it was potentially deadly, but if Will and Tomlinson had made it then chances were good that I could find my way through the maze, too.
King and Perry? I told myself that they were additional motivation. I was tired, my nerves were raw and I was scared—but not of the animal we’d heard banging around in the brush. I was afraid that if I failed underwater, I’d miss the opportunity to deal with King and Perry one-on-one when I returned to the surface.
With that kind of motivation, failure wasn’t an option.
As I stood to collect the last of my gear, Perry asked me, “What do you think that hissing noise was? Seriously.” He was pacing between the truck and the shoreline, the rifle cradled beneath his arm as if he were hunting pheasants. The man’s eyes never stopped moving, and he rammed the words together, talking faster than he had an hour earlier. If he was using drugs, I guessed it was some type of amphetamine. I also guessed that he had amped up recently.
I said, “What’s it matter? You’ve got a gun, and you can always hide in the truck.”
The man nodded, oblivious to the veiled slight.
I knelt to secure the octopus hose on the spare regulator. As I did, King moved close enough to grab my night vision mask, then backed away a safe distance before inspecting it. “How do you turn this gizmo on?”
“Put it down,” I snapped.
He had the mask pressed against his face as he felt around for the switch. “This is a pretty fancy piece of equipment for a nerd like you to be carrying. How much this thing set you back?”
I was walking toward King, intending to take it away from him, when he found the monocular’s switch. After a pause, he said, “Goddamn, Perry, you gotta take a look through this thing! It’s like daylight, all of a sudden . . . And you can see about ten times as many stars!”
The man began turning in a circle, looking at the sky, then he stopped and aimed the monocular into the shadows of the swamp. After a moment, he said, “Holy shit! There’s something out there!” He paused. “What the hell are
I stared into the darkness as Perry said, “What do you see? Is it that animal we heard? Damn it, let me look, it’s my turn!”
They sounded like two kids squabbling over a toy.
In my bag, I had a palm-sized flashlight, an ASP Triad, ultrabright. I switched it on, then listened to King complain, “Dumb-ass, now you scared them!,” as Perry whispered, “Jesus Christ, I see them. There must be three or four. What are they?”
Across the lake, staring back at me, were three sets of orange eyes bright as coals. I thought they were small crocodiles at first. As I watched, the animals turned and crashed through the brush toward the swamp. They were reptilian, low to the ground, like crocs, but their movements were snakelike. All three possessed a dense, four-legged musculature, yet they moved over the ground as if swimming on their bellies. As they ran, they held their heads erect like cobras.
In an amphetamine rush, Perry said to me, “They’re too small to make that crashing sound we heard. Don’t you think? Unless, maybe, they were all running around together. Hey—
With the flashlight, I tracked the animals into the brush before I switched it off. “I think they’re Nile monitor lizards,” I told him. “They’re all about the same size, four or five feet long—so they’re probably from the same hatch.”
“Hatch?”
I said, “Monitors lay eggs.”
King said, “You
I stared at him without answering as Perry said, “
I replied, “Pet-store people started importing monitors from Africa fifteen or twenty years ago and they sold a lot of them cheap. Some escaped, they bred, now they’re all over Florida. In some counties, there’s a bounty on them.”
“No shit! So they’re dangerous? If they pay a bounty, they’ve gotta be dangerous. Maybe there’s a bigger one around. Do they hiss?”
No doubt about it, Perry was speeding his brains out and his tongue had to work fast to keep up. I told him, “They kill small dogs, they eat bird’s eggs. They eat rodents, too—so you better stay on your toes.”
Perry said, “Rodents, huh?” Then he said, “
King was laughing. I didn’t reply.
“Fucking pet stores,” Perry muttered, sounding nervous. “You gotta be shitting me. Are they poisonous? Like snakes? They remind me of snakes, the way they move.”
I wasn’t in the mood to engage in conversation with Perry. I was still staring at King. “Turn off the monocular and give me my dive mask. I’m not going to ask again.”
King said, “Or you’ll do what?” He was still laughing as he pretended to use the monocular to focus on me. “You got a gun or knife hidden somewhere? You’re all talk, Jock-a-mo. If I don’t give you the mask, you’ll do what?”
“Quit screwing around!” Perry yelled. “I’m tired of your shit! Give him his goddamn mask!”
I had taken two steps toward King when he held out a palm, stopping me, then said, “Sure, Jock-o, you can have your mask. Here.” He lobbed it high over my head.
I could hear him laughing as I hurried to retrieve the mask from the lake before it sank.
For more than an hour, Arlis Futch had not spoken a word, but now he called from the shadows, “Ford! You watch yourself when you go into that lake. You hear me?”
I was in knee-deep water, wearing my BC, bottle strapped on, my night vision mask tilted up on my forehead and my hands full of spare gear. There was something unusual about the old man’s voice, a quality that was menacing, serious and real. It caused even Perry, who had been jabbering nonstop, to go silent.
I called back, “How’re you feeling, Arlis?”
He coughed—returning to his role as a sick old man, maybe—and said, “Those scum ought to at least let you carry a knife. You got your knife?”
No, Perry had my knife. It was still stuck in his belt. I couldn’t tell if Arlis was actually warning me about something dangerous in the water or if it was a ploy designed to rearm me.
King hollered at him, “Shut up and mind your own business, Gramps. What you’d better be worried about is your boyfriend coming back with more of those Cuban pesos.”
I called to Arlis, “I’ll be fine, don’t worry,” before saying to Perry, “We have a deal, right?” Intentionally, I said it loud enough for King to hear.
King said, “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
What it meant was that he had left Perry and me alone long enough to discuss the jet dredge. I had asked Perry what it would take to convince him that they stood to profit by helping me. More coins is what Perry wanted. Give him proof, he had told me, and he would force King back into the water to handle the hose.
Playing it off, Perry said to me, “Sure, sure, whatever you say. Just do your part.”
As I backed into the water, my fins feeling for balance on the slick rocks, I heard King asking, “What’s he talking about? What deal? Did you two cook up something behind my back?”
I rinsed my mask, fitted it onto my face and flipped the switch on the night vision monocular, the lens of which was hinged tightly against the faceplate.
“Give me ten minutes,” I said, looking at Perry. “I’ll keep my part of the bargain.”
That really galled King. He was still interrogating Perry as I lay back, allowing the buoyancy of water to float me, and began to kick toward the middle of the lake.
I was carrying one oversized LED spotlight and two smaller lights clipped to my BC, but I didn’t need them to
