The Passenger (The Passenger, #1)(29)

Red had stretched out on his back and was aiming an imaginary rifle at a high jet. How do you propose that we measure two inches? It’s pitch black down there.

Just use your dick.

Which way is it pointed?

Your dick?

It’s pointed upriver. You can tell by the mast.

What happened to it anyway? Anybody know?

It was bringing a freighter up and they decided to run a couple of extra lines—weather or something—and the tug got gurded and tipped over.

That sounds pretty dumb.

Anytime you lose a boat on the river the first word that comes up on your screen is dumb. Usually preceded by fucking. What else?

I think that’s it. Questions?

Is there any likelihood of this thing breaking up in the sling?

No. Tugs dont break up. Tugs are forever.

All right.

Do I get an A?

I dont know. Red? Does he get an A?

What’s the tug weigh, Bobby?

A lot.

Sounds like an A to me.

The tenders had brought down a pair of Viking commercial wetsuits and laid them out on the deck along with two late-model SuperLite 17 helmets. Red and Western stripped down to their shorts and T-shirts and the tenders helped them into their gear and talked to them about the new EFROM wireless underwater phones they were going to use. There was no visibility in the river even with a light and the divers would be connected by an eighteen foot nylon jumper rope. They sat on the edge of the barge and pulled on heavy steeltoed construction boots and the tenders stood the two pairs of Justus stainless steel tanks on the deck behind them and held the tanks while they slipped into the harness and buckled and adjusted the straps. They buckled on their weightbelts and the tenders sorted the umbilicals and snapped on the safety lines and they looked back and raised their thumbs and pushed off into the river.

The visibility was instantly zero and it went from mud to black in just a few feet. The Ikelights they would normally use in low light were useless. They only made a dim brown smudge in the river and held at arm’s length looked to be fifty feet away. Burning mud, Oiler called it. The round plate of muddy light overhead closed slowly and they descended in darkness, the wall of the river carrying them downstream. Western tried the phone. You there? he said.

I’m here.

They wore balaclavas but Western could feel the cold in his head. A sharp pain. Like eating ice cream too fast. They descended in total blackness and the bottom of the river was suddenly there. Sooner than he would have thought. He almost lost his footing. He put one hand down. A sandy loam under his glove. Firmer than he would have thought. He stood and turned and faced upriver.

We’re down a ways, Red said.

Yeah.

He leaned into the current. The heavy unending wall of it. He turned and put his shoulder forward and began to move up the river floor in the heavy boots.

He could feel the hull of the boat upriver to him by the change in the current. Like a shadow in the moving water. He put up his hands before him. An acoustic feedback. What he touched was the edge of the rudder. He ran his hand over the rough steel plate and knelt and followed it down into the sand.

All right. We’ve got it.

What have you got?

I think it’s some kind of a goddamn boat.

He shaped out the deep castiron nacelles that housed the propellers. The rudder was enormous and he traced it forward and wedged his fingers in at the leading edge. Red pulled up alongside him. Western took the nylon lead rope loose from his belt and fed it through the gap between the forward edge of the rudder and the hull and ran it back and forth a couple of times and then hooked the loop end of it back through his belt.

I think we’re good here.

All right. I’m going to cut you loose. I’ll take my end up front.

This thing is what? Ninety feet?

That’s what Russell has.

I’ll see you topside.

Andale pues.

Western hauled a few yards of the rope loose and started upriver. He thumbed the button on his divephone. You there?

I’m here.

I think we’re doing good.

There’s always something.

Always something. Over and out.

He dragged the rope behind him, one hand on the hull of the tug. A ship was trudging past upriver and he stopped for a moment. The engines overhead made a clanky metallic sound in the sourceless dark. His first dive in the river was two years ago. The weight of it moving over him. Endlessly, endlessly. In a sense of the relentless passing of time like nothing else.

When he got to what he thought was half the length of the boat he called Red again. I’m going up, he said.

Roger that.

He took off his weightbelt and hooked it to one of his lines and let the line go in the dark. He unhooked the jumper and rose slowly up over the canted hull. Past the single chine and on up to the row of tires chained along the upper hull to where it canted back into the tumblehome. He pushed off the deck and rose and broke through the surface of the river and spread his hands and turned, drifting slowly. One of the tenders stepped to the edge of the barge and slung a heaving line out over the face of the river just below him. He reached and got hold of it and the tender gave him a thumbs-up and straightened the rope in the fairlead of the winch and threw the lever and Western swung downriver on his back and then the winch slowly towed him in.

The tenders helped him off with his tanks and his helmet and someone brought him a coffee. He set the cup on the deck and took off his gloves and watched the river until Red surfaced. You get it? he called.