I was not certain why a diver in the Navy would have heard anything about me beyond what was in the news, which wasn’t always nice. But his words were a welcome salve to my raw mood, and I was about to let him know this when he glanced at his watch, then stared down at the platform and met Ki Soo’s eyes.
“Dr. Scarpetta,” Jerod said as he got up. “I think we’re ready to rock and roll. How about you?”
“I’m as ready as I’m going to be.” I got up, too.
“What’s going to be the best approach?”
“The best way-in fact, the only way-is to follow his hose down.”
We stepped closer to the edge of the pier and he pointed to the johnboat.
“I’ve already been down once, and if you don’t follow the hose you’ll never find him. You ever had to wade through a sewer with no lights on?”
“That one hasn’t happened to me yet.”
“Well, you can’t see shit. And that’s the same thing here.”
“To your knowledge, no one has disturbed the body,” I said.
“No one’s been near it but me.”
He watched as I picked up my buoyancy control vest, or BC, and tucked a flashlight in a pocket.
“I wouldn’t even bother. In these conditions, all a flashlight’s going to do is get in your way.”
But I was going to bring it because I wanted any advantage I could possibly have. Jerod and I climbed down the ladder to the dive platform so we could finish preparations, and I ignored overt stares from shipyard men as I massaged cream rinse into my hair and pulled on the neoprene hood.
I strapped a knife to my inner right calf, and then grabbed each end of a fifteen-pound weight belt and quickly hoisted it around my waist. I checked safety releases, and pulled on gloves.
“I’m ready,” I said to Ki Soo.
He carried over communication equipment and my regulator.
“I will attach your air hose to the face mask.” He spoke with no accent. “I understand you’ve used comm equipment like this before.”
“That’s correct,” I said.
He squatted beside me and lowered his voice as if we were about to conspire. “You, Jerod and I will be in constant contact with each other over the buddy phones.”
They looked like bright red gas masks with a five-strap harness in back. Jerod moved behind me and helped me into my BC and air tank while his buddy talked on’
. “As you know,” Ki Soo was saying, “you breathe normally and use the push-to-talk button on the mouthpiece when you want to communicate.” He demonstrated. “Now we need to get this nice and secure over your hood and tuck it in. There, you get the rest of your hair tucked in and let me make sure this is nice and tight in back.”
I hated buddy phones the most when I wasn’t in the water because it was difficult to breathe. I sucked in air as best I could as I peered out through plastic at these two divers I had just entrusted with my life.
“There will be two rescuers in a boat and they will be monitoring us with a transducer that will be lowered into the water. Whatever we say will be heard by whoever is listening on the surface. Do you understand?” Ki Soo looked at me and I knew I had just been given a warning.
I nodded, my breathing loud and labored in my ears.
“You want your fins on now?”
I shook my head and pointed at the water.
“Then you go first and I will toss them to you.”
Weighing at least eighty pounds more than when I had arrived, I cautiously made my way to the edge of the dive platform and checked again to make certain my mask was tucked into my hood. Cathodic protectors were like catfish whiskers trailing from the huge dormant ships, the water ruffled by wind. I steeled myself for the most unnerving giant stride I had ever made.
The cold at first was a shock, and my body took its time warming the water leaking into my rubber sheath as I pulled on my fins. Worse, I could not see my computer console or its compass. I could not see my hand in front of my face, and I now understood why it was useless to bring a flashlight. The suspended sediment absorbed light like a blotter, forcing me to surface at frequent intervals to get my bearings as I swam toward the spot where the hose led from the johnboat and disappeared beneath the surface of the river.