Creedence Clearwater was playing on the tapedeck. They sat on the small deck of the inflatable and pulled off their masks and spat out the regulator mouthpieces and leaned back into the tanks and loosened them. He made a circling motion with one hand and pointed upward and kicked off toward the surface. He pushed out through the door and looked for Oiler. He’d looked in every possible space for the pilot’s flightbag and he was pretty sure it wasnt there. The bubbles from the regulator sorted themselves along the dome of the roof overhead. What’s missing? Kollsman altimeters and vertical speed indicators. Good stainless steel Heuer watch on the copilot’s wrist. Western wedged his knees against the backs of the seats at either side. It had been held in place by six screws by the holes there and there were three jackplugs hanging down where the pigtails had been disconnected. There was a square space in the panel where one of the avionics boards had been removed.
The gauges were analog and when the circuits shorted out in the seawater they’d returned to neutral settings. The twin throttle levers in the console were pulled all the way into the off position. Western shone his light over the instruments. The copilot was still strapped into his seat but the pilot was hovering overhead against the ceiling with his arms and legs hanging down like an enormous marionette.
Western went forward and pushed his way into the cockpit. The light made a corolla in the airspace of the double glass. Oiler was swimming down the outside of the fuselage with his light. He doubled under and got himself turned around and made his way back. Sheets of paper with the ink draining off into hieroglyphic smears. Everything that could float was against the ceiling. He kicked his way slowly down the aisle above the seats, his tanks dragging overhead. The workbasket was sitting on the floor inside the door and Western reached and got the other divelight and pulled himself into the plane. Their mouths open, their eyes devoid of speculation. The people sitting in their seats, their hair floating. He gestured with his head and Western pulled up in the door and Oiler shone his light down the aircraft aisle. He was just inside the plane crouched against the bulkhead. Oiler had cut away the latching mechanism and the door stood open. The tender sat up and took off the headset and began to rifle through the toolbox. Smell of oil and the rich tidal funk of mangrove and saltgrass from the islands. There was an onshore wind coming up past the western tip of Cat Island and there was a light chop to the water. Strobing faintly where they passed behind the concrete balusters. Western watched the tender and he blew on the tea and sipped it and he watched the lights moving along the causeway like the slow cellular crawl of waterdrops on a wire. From time to time the sea would flare with a soft sulphurous light where forty feet down Oiler was working with the cuttingtorch. The tender was lying on his elbows with the headset on watching the dark water beneath them. The air temperature was forty-four degrees and it was three seventeen in the morning. Mozart’s second violin concerto was playing on the tapedeck. The Coast Guard boat that had pulled up a hundred yards off sat rocking in the swells with the running lights on and beyond that ten miles to the north you could see the lights of trucks moving along the causeway, coming out of New Orleans and heading east along US 90 toward Pass Christian, Biloxi, Mobile. He sat wrapped in one of the gray rescue blankets from the emergency bag and drank hot tea.
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