Page 8 of Rowe

“In a bayou?”

“A very committed shark.”

Patrick sat on the edge.

“Gator, if the line jerks three times, start the engine. If something comes up that isn’t one of us, don’t invite it aboard.”

“I never invite anybody aboard.” Gator glanced at Cowboy. “Some people just keep climbing in.”

They entered backward, one after another. The water swallowed the jokes first. Cowboy’s fins vanished, then Christopher’s silver tank, then Patrick’s headlamp until all that remained were three pale cones turning beneath the surface. Gator gathered their safety lines through gloved hands and watched the circles of bubbles drift away from where the men had gone down.

The cold closed around Patrick’s neck and wrists. He descended along the marker rope with Christopher below him and Cowboy off his left shoulder. Silt struck his mask in soft bursts. The beam from his headlamp reached less than an arm’s length before it dissolved into suspended dirt. Branches moved through the light like fingers. A strip of blue tarp wrapped around Patrick’s forearm, and for one breath he thought it was a hand.

He tore it free and showed it to Cowboy.

Cowboy’s eyes widened behind his mask. He pressed both palms together beside his cheek in an exaggerated gesture of sleep, then pointed at the tarp as if suggesting a blanket.

Patrick answered with the universal finger.

Christopher turned, saw the exchange, and made a chopping motion: enough.

They reached bottom at twenty-eight feet. Their fins sank ankle-deep into loose sediment. Patrick checked the compass clipped to his wrist and pointed toward the first target. Three headlamps swung together. A support column appeared by inches—a gray surface filmed with algae, then a rusted joint, then the darkness beneath the slab overhead. The concrete itself remained above the water, but its weakened steel supports descended into the bayou around them. The space between those supports was wide enough for a person to enter and narrow enough to become a trap if the structure shifted.

Patrick flattened his hand: slab.

Christopher answered with a closed fist, then pointed to the steel probe attached to his belt. Cowboy nodded and took position behind them, his line trailing back into the dark.

Christopher pushed the probe into the darkness between the supports. It slid six feet without touching anything. He withdrew slowly. A lace of weeds clung to the tip. No fabric. No hair. No chain.

Patrick pointed along the line of supports. They moved in single file, careful not to kick. Even so, each fin stroke rolled up clouds that erased the man ahead. They traveled by touch, one hand on the safety line and one brushing the submerged steel. Every few feet Patrick stopped, checked the joints for cracks, and pressed his palm to feel for vibration from the slab above.

At the far corner, Cowboy’s light caught something pale.

He froze.

Patrick saw only Cowboy’s closed fist hanging in the beam. Then Cowboy pointed. A shape rested against the slab, curved and smooth. Christopher eased forward and brushed away the silt.

A plastic lawn chair rose from the mud, one leg missing.

Cowboy looked at Patrick and spread both hands as if presenting a throne. Patrick shook his head, but Christopher’s shoulders bounced once with a laugh that made a sharp burst of bubbles.

The joke died when a tremor traveled down through the steel.

It was not strong. It did not need to be. Fine silt shook loose from the supports in a straight curtain. Christopher’s hand snapped shut. Freeze.

All three men stopped. Patrick felt his heartbeat in his mouthpiece. The slab above gave a faint grinding sound, transmitted through the steel and water more as pressure than noise. A pebble fell past his head and disappeared into the dark. Patrick counted to ten, then twenty. Nothing else moved.

He pointed back.

Cowboy answered immediately. Christopher hesitated, his light fixed on the gap, then surrendered with a curt nod. They retreated along their own line, moving slower than before. At the marker rope Patrick tugged once to signal Gator. The answer came down the line: one firm pull. Received.

The second target lay several hundred yards away, closer to the channel. They crossed an open patch of bottom where storm debris had collected in drifts. A child’s red boot stood upright in the mud. A screen door lay flat beneath a net of branches. Copper wire twisted around a cypress root. Patrick’s lamp found a string of white beads and followed it to a rosary snagged on a nail. He freed it and tucked it into a pouch without thinking.

Christopher touched his shoulder and pointed ahead.

The tilted slab announced itself as a vertical shadow above the surface, blocking the weak daylight. Below it, rebar and broken support posts descended into the murk, making a web of rusting rods and jagged wire. The storm current pressed against the submerged steel. Each pulse made the hanging concrete flex overhead.

Patrick held out a flat hand, then drew a line in the water well short of the structure: boundary.