Page 79 of Identity Unknown
“I’ll lead us to where sonar shows the wreckage on the bottom about a hundred feet down,” Liam continues his briefing.
Steadying myself with a rail, I check the dive computer on my regulator and the one strapped around my wrist. Both read that I’ve got a full tank.
“And hopefully it’s reassuring to know that I grew updiving for oysters in the bay,” Liam is saying. “I know my way around. Sometime we should go when I can show you the cool stuff.”
“Are there really sharks?” Tron won’t let it go, reminding me a bit of Marino right now.
“Oh yeah. You might see one today.”
“Something to look forward to,” I mutter.
“For the most part they don’t want to mess with us any more than we want to mess with them,” he says.
“Oldest story in the book,” I add.
“For the most partisn’t good enough,” Tron replies. “I don’t want to have to shoot anything, but I will.”
“Blood in the water, and we’ll have even more sharks,” is Liam’s answer. “Lucy and Tron will buddy up. And Doctor Scarpetta, you and I are dive buddies.”
We attach rolled-up salvage and collection bags, and flashlights to D-rings on our vests. I tuck folded plastic garbage bags inside one of my wetsuit’s thigh pockets, and set up my dive computers while Tron and Lucy put on tactical nylon belts. They holster Heckler & Koch P11 underwater guns that fire flechettes, or metal darts, instead of bullets.
Henry drops the anchor, attaching a dive float to it while the captain cuts the idling engines. He places the folded bright yellow body bag out of the way on the wide dive platform, and we step down to it. The metal ladder is off to the side well away from the powerful outboard motors. Just beyond is the red dive float connected to the anchor line.
“Since nobody’s been down yet,” Liam says, “we don’t know exactly how close we are to the helicopter. We may haveto swim a little way once we’re on the bottom. But based on what we’re seeing on sonar, we’ll be in the right ballpark.”
He clips a lanyard to the handles of an underwater camera, looping the cord over his shoulder. Pulling his mask over his eyes, he places the regulator in his mouth, covering it with one hand. With the other he protects his hoses and dive computer, stabilizing the camera close against his side. Striding off the back of the boat, he splashes down, bobbing in the water, inflating his vest.
Tron and Lucy are next, and then it’s my turn. Putting on my mask and making sure the seal is tight, I turn on the mounted camera. I take a big step off the platform, splashing down, the water cold against my face. Pressing the inflator button, I add air to my vest, peering through the water-dotted lenses of my mask. Using my snorkel to conserve the air in my tank, I swim to the dive float, joining the others.
“I’ll go down the anchor line first,” Liam tell us. “Doctor Scarpetta will be right behind me at all times. Once we locate the helicopter, how do you want to handle it?”
He’s asking me this, and I explain that I can’t know what I’ll do until we get there. It’s important that nothing is disturbed before I see it while filming everything we do. Regulators back in our mouths, we release air from our vests in loud hisses. Liam’s head slips below the surface in a froth of bubbles. I’m right behind him, sunlight filtering through the water.
Following the yellow nylon anchor line feet first, I pause every few seconds to pinch my nose and blow, clearing my ears. I havemy knees hiked up, careful not to kick Liam with my fins. I make my way down hand over fist to the sound of my rhythmic breathing and loud clinking bubbles. As we descend, suspended silt shines like gold flecks. The light dims, and I keep a check on my dive computers.
When we’re forty feet down, I can see Liam below me but nothing below him, and I clear my ears again as the water pressure builds. A small school of striped bass shadow by, vanishing in the murk. A loggerhead turtle paddles close, giving me a bug-eyed smile. Seconds later I catch the vague shape of something much bigger zigzagging languidly the way sharks move.
Oh God.
I continue glancing up at Lucy and Tron, and at sixty feet they’re no longer backlit by the sun. It’s as if we’re in an eclipse, and I search for the sharklike shadow again, seeing no sign of it. Eighty feet down it’s as dark as dusk, the temperature hovering at fifty degrees Fahrenheit. I can feel the chill through my wetsuit as we reach the sandy bottom, turning on our flashlights, careful not to shine them in each other’s eyes.
We illuminate the anchor half buried in sand, the chain tied to the nylon rope stretching up and disappearing in the gloom. Following Liam, we stay in sight of each other at all times, bubbles boiling up, giving the OK sign every so often. We fan out our fins gently to the sides, swimming froglike, stirring up the bottom as little as possible.
Our lights paint over rippled sand scattered with barnacle-covered rocks and old oyster shells polished white, a horseshoe crab lumbering along like an armored vehicle. I illuminate a green glass Fresca bottle, and the partially buried wooden keelof a boat that sank long ago. We glide over several truck tires, a triggerfish swimming by flat and leathery gray with lips pursed, showing its snaggly teeth before flashing off.
A rusty anchor is entangled with fishing line that moves in the current, and an oyster bed covered in silt looks like a pile of tarnished coins. Scuttling on top, a dark-colored crab stares at us with rampant claws like an outlaw brandishing guns. We swim single file over a patch of seagrass, my light finding a seahorse hovering upright with a curled tail, fluttering its fins like a hummingbird.
According to my dive computers we’re 103 feet down, and 72 feet southwest of the anchor line when we discover the first broken pieces of the rotor blades. They snapped off from the mast, possibly as the helicopter hit the bottom and tumbled. Some forty feet away we find the tail boom that separated from the upside-down cabin, and the sight is jolting.
The silvery inflatable floats are still mounted to the skids, and had they been deployed we wouldn’t be here. I shine my light through the windows, the cockpit completely filled with water. The pilot is upside down, harnessed in the right seat, his bent arms and legs floating up. The doorframe is bent and I motion to Liam that I need some help.
We steady ourselves by hooking our legs over the helicopter skid. Carefully, we pull the door open, scraping it along the bottom, sending up a cloud of silt and sand that completely obscures visibility. We hold ourselves in place for several minutes until we can see what we’re doing again.
Liam directs his light on me as I unclip a bright orange salvage bag from my vest. Removing my regulator from mymouth, I place it inside the bag’s open bottom, inflating it with a loud rush of thick bubbles. Taking a hit of air, I give the tethered bag to Lucy hovering nearby. I fill the second bag the same way, handing it over while Liam and my mask-mounted camera film everything we’re doing.
We move slowly, cautiously, staying in a supine position above the marly bottom as we look inside the inverted cockpit, a small eel undulating by while giving me a beady eye. The right seat broke free of its mounts, slamming the pilot’s head into the console. His forehead is caved in from the impact when the seat broke free, his eyes staring blindly through partially closed lids.
The head injury happened when the helicopter hit the water, and if he wasn’t dead before, the trauma would have killed him. Brain tissue shows through the open fracture to the front of the skull, and I wish the officer named Dixie hadn’t mentioned sharks. Worse, I’m pretty sure I may have seen one, and for the next few minutes, I cover the head with a plastic garbage bag as I would do at any scene.