Chapter 28

CHAPTER 28

O utside the sun is hot, the wind a cool whisper that barely stirs the trees. Pink and white dogwood petals litter the grass and pavement, the air fragrant with the lemony scent of magnolias. It’s a good day for diving but the problem will be the visibility, never decent in the bay to begin with.

After yesterday’s storm, a lot of silt will be stirred up. Hopefully, the winds will stay calm and we won’t be fighting waves and the currents. Our feet thump along the marina’s long pier, and I’m conscious of how I must look in bike shorts, a sports bra and tactical boots, all black. Lucy and Tron walk in front of me, and I’m reminded that I need to spend more time in the gym.

I stare at the definition in their arms and backs. And the way their calf muscles clench as they move, things flexing, nothing jiggling, their every movement effortless. Nearby, people eating lunch at the Deadrise restaurant are watching from the covered upper deck. Some are looking out at the emergency lights, pointing and taking video with their phones.

The windowless black van from my Norfolk office is parked with the flashers on in front of the marina. Nathan the death investigator rolls down his window, assuring me that what I need is on board.

“I’ll be waiting right here,” he promises.

Our boat is the Sea Hunter, a thirty-footer with a wide dive platform, racks for scuba tanks and twin five-hundred-horsepower outboard engines. Two police divers are waiting in swim trunks and T-shirts. They introduce themselves as Liam and Henry while handing out dive gear the Secret Service agents dropped off a little while ago.

“I’ll be leading you down,” Liam informs us, about my age I estimate, bearded, with friendly eyes. “Henry will stay on the boat with the captain, ready to assist with the body bags and whatever else is needed.”

“Also, keeping a lookout for other vessels coming through,” says Henry, rail thin and tan, with a nice smile. “The biggest worry is military ships and subs. They don’t publicize their schedules for when they’re in and out of the naval station or doing maneuvers. We’re not going to know most of what they’re doing, for obvious reasons.”

“We’ll hope nothing major comes through,” Liam adds. “But we can’t guarantee it, and whatever it is? It has the right of way.”

“They won’t even slow down, don’t care a flip about us, assuming they even see us,” Henry echoes. “It’s up to us to stay clear.”

On that happy note, Lucy, Tron and I sit down on the aluminum bench seats, taking off our boots. We pull on three-millimeter-thick wetsuits, helping each other with the back zippers. The outboard engines begin chugging, and soon we’re speeding away from the shore, skimming over the light chop, the bow rising and falling more rapidly the faster we go.

We clean our masks with baby shampoo, rinsing them in a plastic barrel of fresh water. My borrowed mask is heavier than I’d like because of the small camera mounted on it. I make sure everything fits properly and that the lenses aren’t going to fog up. Seeing will be hard enough without that added problem.

“The plan is for the three of us to get the body to the surface and into the boat,” Lucy says to us. “Then we’ll let the Coast Guard and others deal with raising the wreckage. I think we’re in agreement? We won’t be able to chat underwater so I’m making sure we understand each other.”

“Nobody touches the body but us,” I confirm. “And it will be me who gets him out before anything inside the cockpit is disturbed.”

A battleship cuts sharply into the blue horizon, slowly making its way to the Norfolk Naval Station. I’m reminded that where the helicopter went down is in the shipping channel, and I think about Henry’s warning. The police can’t secure the scene above or below water. Our law enforcement and forensic concerns are of no relevance to an attack submarine armed with torpedoes.

We’re closing in on the police boats and Coast Guard cutter where debris from the helicopter drifts on the water. I can make out what looks like blue strips of cabin liner and a blue seat pillow. Lucy and Tron continue to talk, and I can feel their eyes on me as I carefully get up from the bench. The boat rocks up and down, leaving a frothy wake, an American flag whipping from a railing.

“Need some help?” It’s Tron asking.

“No thanks.”

I feel as if I’m standing on a seesaw, lifting a bright yellow aluminum tank out of a rack.

“You sure?” Lucy is on her feet.

“I’ve got it.”

Making my way back to the bench seat, I strap the tank to the back of my buoyancy control vest as Lucy and Tron finish getting ready. I’m attaching the regulator hoses as the boat begins slowing down, the police diver named Liam making his way toward us from the cockpit, zipping up his wetsuit.

“The water’s pretty murky,” he announces over the noise of the engines, throwing on his tank as easily as a sweater. “Best thing is to follow the anchor line at all times. Plus, the current can be deceptively strong even when it’s calm like it is right now. But that won’t last as the wind picks up, and you don’t want to be swimming against the current or pushed off course.”

I sit down on the bench seat to put on my fins, strapping a sheathed knife around my left ankle in case I’m entangled in something. Working my arms into the vest attached to the tank, I adjust the straps to fit snugly. I stand up feeling the pull of fifty pounds on my back, and it’s a challenge keeping my balance in fins on a moving boat.

“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 up diving 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 part isn’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 have to 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 have my 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 keel of 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 my mouth, 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.

But in this case, I don’t want the body seeping blood and tissue and attracting predators. Shining my light around the cockpit, I notice a mobile phone mostly covered with sand drifting over the inverted headliner. A bottle of berry-flavored vitamin water is suspended nearby, some of the red liquid gone inside, the cap on. Images flash of Briley Flight Services, the refrigerators stocked with the same brand of drink.

I’m careful not to get my hoses snagged as I reach down for the phone, then the bottle. Tucking them inside the collection bag attached to my vest, I ponder the best way to free the pilot without causing a brown-out and further damage. At least he’s not trussed up in a four-point harness that would be awkward to manipulate with my neoprene-gloved fingers.

Releasing the buckle of his shoulder harness, I free him and he floats away from the seat. I’m careful not to send him into oscillation, banging into everything and stirring up more clouds of silt. Turning him around, I grip him under the arms as he moves away from me, his shoulder knocking into the cyclic. Then one of his legs is caught on the back of the seat, his sneaker coming off and drifting.

I manage to ease him out of the open door, and Lucy straps a salvage bag’s tethers around his chest. Tron attaches the second bag, and he begins to float up as they hold on to him. I follow the anchor line, Liam behind me. We ascend slowly to prevent nitrogen bubbles from forming in our blood, what’s known as decompression sickness or the bends.

I continuously check my dive computer, and I have half a tank of air left. I remind myself to sip and avoid deep breaths. It’s easy to go through a tank shockingly fast when stressed and exerting oneself. Every ten feet Lucy and Tron stop on the rope where we hang perpendicular like windsocks. Then we resume our ascent through blasting bubbles.

At fifty feet below the surface, the dimly lit water suddenly blacks out as if someone closed a metal lid over us. We stop moving, hanging on to the rope while pointing our lights straight up as if we might see what’s happening. We can’t make out anything but suspended silt, another turtle swimming by in a hurry as if trouble is coming.

We’re thrown into complete darkness, something huge slowly passing over top of us. I can feel the vibration in the water as we wait for what seems an eternity, shining our lights around. I’m feeling the thrumming in my very marrow when the anchor line suddenly is ripped from our hands. I watch stunned as it’s tugged away, vanishing in the blackness.