Ocean Prey (A Prey Novel #31) - John Sandford Page 0,12

egg hunt. That instead of forbidding the dive boats from going there, we offer a substantial reward for one of the pipes. A lot of divers like the idea of treasure hunts. If we offered say, a fifty-thousand-dollar reward for one of those pipes, and outlined the area that we thought they might be in . . . I bet we’d have a dozen boats out there every day, with expert divers. At no cost to us.”

“Plus a few amateurs who’d probably die,” somebody else said.

Bruce shrugged. “It may be distasteful to some, but . . . not our problem. We could have the Coast Guard check each boat and make sure everybody was properly certified. I don’t think deaths would actually be likely.”

He looked directly at Lucas: “The other benefit, of course, is that it might stir up talk between the killers and we might hear about it. Sort of what you’re here to do.”

Weaver jumped in, speaking to Lucas and Bob: “It’s in the paper you read, but we believe each . . . dope container, each can . . . probably carries a location beeper of some kind. You dive down close with your own sonar unit, put out a specific low-power code, maybe a complicated code because it’d be all mechanical, so why not? Then, when the can’s unit picks up the code, it beeps back. You use your sonar unit to track right into the capsule. All we need is one of those cans and we’ll have the code and then we could find the rest.”

Bob asked, “What’s wrong with that idea? The Easter egg hunt? That’s the best thing I’ve heard so far . . . not counting the dead amateur diver thing.”

“It’s a weird way to operate,” the objecting agent said. “We’d have to run it through Washington, the whole fifty-grand thing . . .”

Bruce, annoyed, cut him off and said to Weaver, “Dale, we’re probably spending twenty thousand dollars a week here, counting salaries and everything else. We’re spending that to get, as you said, jack shit. Ask Washington for the money.”

“It’d be a waste of time,” said the agent who hadn’t wanted to talk about it.

After a little more snarling and chipping, Weaver sighed and said, “I already asked for the money. I could hear back today or tomorrow.”

There were a couple of groans and Bruce leaned back in his chair, looking pleased. “Good move,” he said.

* * *

The meeting went on for the full hour, the agents assigned to contact and recontact various underworld characters working between the Keys and Palm Beach, but from the desultory response, Lucas didn’t expect much to come from it.

To Lucas, Weaver looked like a man in the twilight of his career, assigned to run the task force because he had the experience to do it, but without great expectations from anyone higher up. The case was most likely to be resolved by accident, Lucas thought—a cop somewhere arrests a guy who really needs to walk away, and who has a piece of information, and who voluntarily rolls on the killers. Or, he thought, it’d be solved by him and Bob.

When the meeting broke up, Weaver said, “Is there anything I can do for you guys?”

“We’d like to talk to some of the local narcs, here and down in Miami, if that can be fixed,” Lucas said. “Guys who could put us onto some of the longer-time dealers.”

“Sure. How about this afternoon? Three o’clock?”

“Where at?”

“The best place would be at the Miami-Dade North police station,” Weaver said. “They’ve got a bunch of conference rooms down there. I’m sure we could get one. We could pull in people from both Miami-Dade and Broward. And city of Miami and Lauderdale.”

“That’d be great,” Lucas said. “Sure you can fix it?”

“Fairly sure,” Weaver said. “They’ve all been cooperative. I mean, they get federal grants.”

“Ah.”

“Want some DEA agents?”

* * *

Lucas and Bob took the elevator down to the ground floor with Kelly Taylor, the Coast Guard cop, who asked, “Did you get anything out of that?” She was one of those women who could lift one eyebrow at a time, and she did that.

Lucas said, “Not much new.” He had some sympathy for Weaver, running the task force to nowhere; he’d been on a few of those.

“They’ve given up,” Taylor said. “A couple of more weeks and Dale will write a report suggesting that we continue to monitor the possible dive site and arrests of drug-related persons, but that the