The Devil Went Down to Austin (Tres Navarre #3)(21)

I turned horizontal, aimed my fins, and kicked toward the floating guy. Anybody who could float must be the instructor.

He was dressed in a Farmer John style wet suit—sleeveless, Uneck. The highlight stripes on the suit were blue, as was his mask frame and the middle of each fin. Even his tank was blue. His arms and neck were smoothly muscled, the rest of his body lean, athletic. His hair was a short black cloud that moved in the water the way smoke boils over a petroleum fire. His hands were clasped lightly over his weight belt and his legs pigeoned, scissoring gently whenever he needed to correct buoyancy.

When he noticed me he raised his hand—either as a greeting or a sign to stop, I couldn't tell which.

I looked at the blue man's two companions, gave them the okay sign. Each returned it.

I pointed at them, then at the platform, telling them to stay put.

I looked at the blue man.

Behind the mouthpiece of his regulator, I could see he had a moustache and goatee.

His skin looked extraordinarily sallow, but that may have been a trick of the water. His eyes were preternaturally clear in the mask's pocket of air—milkwhite corneas, pupils the colour of burnt wood, calm to the point of being scary.

He pointed at my chest, then pointed away.

I gestured for the message slate hanging on his belt.

After a moment's hesitation, he handed it over. I put the black grease pen to the white surface and wrote, Maia sez hello.

He took the board, read it, then hesitated, the tip of the pen over it, as if he was considering his next move in tictactoe. He crossed out my sentence, wrote, handed it back.

CLASS —GO away!

My knee bounced lightly against the platform. I tilted off balance like a Ferris wheel basket. I groped for the inflate button on the BC hose, sent a burst of air from the tank into the vest until I neutralized. Matthew Pena just floated there, analyzing me.

I regained enough control to use the message board, then wrote, 5 minutes—Jimmy D insists.

Matthew Pena read, wiped the board clean, clipped it back in his belt. He pointed at his two students, tapped his pressure gauge console. Both checked their own gauges.

Each made finger numbers to indicate they had about 2,000 psi left. Pena gestured, Okay. Wait here.

Then he pointed to me and pointed over his shoulder.

He kicked off into the green murk.

I followed.

Distance was hard to measure, but we sank down to about thirty feet, headed what I judged to be north, along the shore. I had to equalize my ears again. A catfish the size of my forearm flicked by. Giant boulders made a wall to our right. The bottom was furry with tan sediment—nature's shag carpeting.

After about twelve kick cycles, a new shape resolved on the lake bottom—a welded metal sculpture of a diver, canted down at forty five degrees. His limbs and body were sixinch pipes, his mask and fins 2D sheets of steel. Apparently he was a major attraction at Windy Point. He'd been decorated with three different sets of sexy lingerie. A lacy purple bra floated off one of his fins.

It was as good a place as any for a conference with Matthew Pena. Then I looked over and realized I didn't know where Matthew Pena was. He'd disappeared—a ridiculously easy task underwater, where peripheral vision is nil.

I turned my head the other way, then heard a squeaksqueak squeak that seemed to come from inside my skull. It wasn't until my next inhale proved hard to pull that I realized Matthew Pena had come up behind me and turned off my air.

I rotated faceup. Sure enough, Pena was floating above me. His burnt eyes weren't gloating, weren't smiling. They were just

observing, the way a fish observes—impartially looking for something smaller to devour.

My next inhale was a wall—nothing came into my lungs.

Matthew Pena tapped his fingers to his palm in a little byebye wave.

The first rule of diving: Don't panic. I knew that. But rules take on a new dimension when you're thirty feet under with no air. A more experienced diver might've gambled on getting to the valve of his tank without panicking, without getting tangled in his own equipment. I knew I needed a simpler alternative.

I kept exhaling—kept the little trail of bubbles coming out of my mouth, even though I knew there was nothing to replace them with.

Then I reached over, grabbed Matthew Pena's mask and ripped it off his face. The snorkel came with it.

Pena protested with an explosion of white bubbles, grabbed after the mask.

I left him blinking in the green, his vision reduced to smudges. Then I kicked for the surface, holding the BC hose up and keeping my other hand on the weight belt, one finger still hooked on Pena's mask and snorkel.

I tried to avoid kicking up too fast, even though my lungs told me I was dying. The pain was unbearable when the water turned silver and the top shimmered like sun on aluminium foil, but I still wasn't to the surface. A thousand decades later, I broke through and gasped, then found my head underwater again. I used my exhale to manually inflate the BC, kicked to the surface again, got another gasp, went under, repeated the inflation process until I was buoyant.

I floated on the surface, breathing hard.

No problem. Just a little thirtyfootunder chat with a suspect. A little neardeath experience.

Great plan, Navarre.

I put my snorkel in, went down headfirst, and started fumbling around behind me for the Kvalve. I soon realized I'd have to free up both hands to accomplish the task. I pitched Matthew Pena's mask and snorkel out toward the boating channel, then put my face back underwater, found the Kvalve, turned on the air.