Relinquary

1 Snow tested his regulator, checked both air valves, ran his hands along the slick neoprene of the suit. Everything was in order, just as it had been when he last checked it, sixty seconds before. "Another five minutes," the Dive Sergeant said, cutting the launch to half speed. "Great," came the sarcastic voice of Fernandez over the sound of the big diesel. "Just great." Nobody else spoke. Already, Snow had noticed that small talk seemed to die away when the team neared a site. He looked back over the stern, watching the froth of the Harlem River spread out behind the propeller in a brown wedge. The river was wide here, rolling sluggishly under the hot gray haze of the August morning. He turned his gaze to ward the shore, grimacing slightly as the rubber cowl pulled at the skin of his neck. Towering apartment buildings with broken windows. Ghostly shells of warehouses and factories. An abandoned playground. No, not quite abandoned: one child, swinging from a rusty frame. "Hey, Divemaster," Fernandez's voice called to him. "Be sure you got your training diapers on." Snow tugged at the ends of his gloves and continued looking toward the shore. "Last time we let a virgin out on a dive like this," Fernandez continued, "he shit his suit. Christ, what a mess. We made him sit on the transom all the way back to base. And that was off Liberty Island, too. A frigging cakewalk compared to the Cloaca." "Fernandez, shut up," the Sergeant said mildly. Snow continued to gaze over the stern. When he'd come to Scuba from regular NYPD, he had made one big mistake: mentioning that he'd once worked a Sea of Cortez dive boat. Too late, he'd learned that several of the Scuba team had at one time been commercial divers laying cable, maintaining pipelines, working oil platforms. To them, divemasters like him were pampered, underskilled wimps who liked clear water and clean sand. Fernandez, in particular, wouldn't let him for get. The boat leaned heavily to starboard as the Sergeant angled in closer to shore. He cut the power even further as they approached a thick cluster of riverfront projects. Suddenly, small, brick-lined tunnel came into view, breaking the monotony of the gray concrete facades. The Sergeant nosed the boat through the tunnel and out into the half-light beyond. Snow became aware of an indescribable smell wafting up from the disturbed waters. Tears sprang involuntarily to his eyes, and he stifled a cough. In the bow, Fernandez looked back, sniggering. Beneath Fernandez's open suit, Snow could see a shirt with the Police Scuba team's unofficial motto: We dive in shit and look for dead things. Only this time it wasn't a dead thing, but a massive wrapped brick of heroin, thrown off the Humboldt Rail Bridge during a Shootout with police the previous night. The narrow canal was lined on both sides by concrete embankments. Ahead, a police launch was waiting beneath the railroad bridge, engine off, bobbing slightly in the striped shadows. Snow could see two people on board: the pilot and a heavyset man in a badly fitted polyester suit. He was balding and a wet cigar projected from his lips. He hiked up his pants, spat into the creek, and raised one hand toward them in greeting. The Sergeant nodded toward the launch. "Look who's here." "Lieutenant D'Agosta," one of the divers in the bow replied. "Must be bad." "Anytime a cop is shot, it's bad," said the Sergeant. The Sergeant killed the engine, swinging the stern around so the two launches drifted together. D'Agosta stepped back to speak with the dive teChild, Lincoln is the author of 'Relinquary ', published 0013 under ISBN 9780765354952 and ISBN 0765354950.