Ocean Prey (A Prey Novel #31) - John Sandford Page 0,86

dropped a bit more, and the muddy bottom showed up as a near-featureless gray plain beneath him. He dropped until he was at the bottom, then hovered again. He put the flashlight away, brought up his arm with the attached magic wand, and snapped it forward. No red light.

Thinking: Shit.

Shook it harder, the red LED blinked at him and he turned to scan his surroundings. To his left, he saw a tiny light. He went that way, the light growing brighter as he approached. Then he saw another light, and a third.

He reached the first light, swept his gloved hand over it, stirring up sediment, but revealing the black plastic can sitting on the ocean floor. The can had two plastic straps around it: one held a diver’s weight tight to the can, while the other held a square box, which powered a band of brilliant LED lights.

All right . . . Enough junk to kill a hundred junkies, but still, a thrill to find it, a feeling of accomplishment, there in the dark at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean . . .

He stripped one of the lift bags from his plate, separated the actual lifting bag from the cargo bag, and stuffed the first of the cans in the cargo bag. He gave the lift bag a shot of air, and it rose gently above him, held down by the weight of the cargo bag. He dragged the bag to the second can, retrieved it, saw two more lights beyond it. He gave the lift bag another shot of air, retrieved the third and fourth cans, and saw two more. Another shot of the air to the lift bag, lightening the load he had to move himself.

He was working his way to the south end of the drop string. When he’d retrieved the fifth can, he saw two more, but the cargo bag would only take one. The lift bag was now straining hard toward the surface, held down by the weight of the loaded cargo bag.

He began to untie the second lift bag roll, but he fumbled it, and fumbled it again—and recognized the fumbles. He checked the computer: he’d been down for sixteen minutes and was getting narced. What to do: he thought it over, the thoughts coming slowly, like the water drops on a turned-off shower head. A bit cloudy, he decided, but no more than that. He did a number puzzle: (1 + 2) × 3. Answer, nine. Or is it seven? No, nine. The brackets made the difference. Sometimes, his mental puzzles didn’t have them, sometimes they did. With brackets, the answer was definitely nine. Okay. Took eight seconds, but that wasn’t too bad.

He grabbed the seventh can, stuffed it in the second lift bag, saw no more. Looked at his compass, headed north, finning, staying in touch with the bottom, the Genesis dangling from its tethers. Shook the magic wand. No lights. Farther north. Shook it again, and saw lights to his right. The cans were right there, in a string, twenty or thirty feet apart, and he stuffed the eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh cans.

(1 + 2) × 3. What? Nine? Maybe twenty seconds this time. He checked his down-time. He’d been on the bottom for almost twenty-five minutes. Time to go.

The lift bags were like hot-air balloons, with the cargo bags hanging below. As with hot-air balloons, the bottom end of the lift bag was open, to allow air to be shot inside. When filled with air, the bags would begin to rise, lifting the cargo bags, like the baskets below a hot-air balloon.

Virgil gave the lift bags a shot of air, until they began to gently ascend, lifting the cargo bags off the bottom. He held on to their tethers, and let them pull him. They rose easily, and then more quickly. There were air-release valves operated by cables on each of the bags, and he released some air to slow the ascent.

At sixty feet, he stopped, waited more or less a minute, to decompress, until his computer told him he could continue up. His brain was clearing now, (1 + 2) × 3 took only a second.

Instead of ascending directly, he started a diagonal ascent to the east, using the Genesis and towing the bags, which would allow him to move toward the pickup point, and, at the same time, hit his decompression targets—a minute at fifty feet, three minutes at forty, a bit longer each ten feet