“Aha!” Max cried. Around the ROV was a debris field stretching far beyond the lights’ perimeter. They had been off by a few feet, but in this kind of work that could be the difference between success and failure. “Juan’s around here someplace.”

“Won’t he swim to the light?”

“If he can. Don’t know what shape he’s in.”

The little ROV threaded its way around the shattered wreckage, and this time it was the tech who saw a weak glow emerging from behind an old boiler. He guided the robot around the piece of machinery, and the light revealed the Chairman slumped up against the boiler, his hands resting palm up next to his dive light on the bottom. His head was canted over onto his shoulder in the unnatural pose of death. There were no bubbles emerging from his regulator.

“No,” Max whispered, and then repeated it a second time even softer. The third time he barely made a sound. “No.”

He couldn’t accept what he was seeing. He couldn’t believe Juan was dead. That he’d failed his best friend.

This time he shouted, “No!”

He reached over the tech’s shoulder and grabbed Little Geek’s joystick and used it to ram the ROV into the Chairman as hard as its little motors could push.

Rather than fall over from the impact, Cabrillo’s corpse straightened. His head rose off his shoulders, and an arm came up to grasp the micro-sub.

The tech gasped. “Was he asleep?”

“Judging by how thin the bubbles are coming from his regulator, I think he passed out.” Max couldn’t contain the smile plastered across his face.

—

JUAN HAD BEEN DREAMING of his late wife, killed in a single-car crash while he was away on a mission for the CIA. He knew in his heart that her loneliness had turned her to drinking. Her blood alcohol level that night was twice the legal limit. It didn’t matter that she’d been out with friends. And that they hadn’t stopped her from getting behind the wheel. Her death was his fault. Period. And when he was especially down, her memory haunted his dreams.

Cabrillo jolted awake to a blinding light shining into his eyes. His predicament rushed in on him a moment later, but it took his air-starved brain another few seconds to understand what had happened. It was Little Geek. That was the source of the light. He reached out for the small ROV and felt the extra tanks Max had secured to it like a pack mule’s panniers. Hanley had even positioned them so their umbilical air feeds were within easy reach.