Mustapha said he didn’t worry about government rules. Austin had hired the boat. Mustapha would take them wherever they wanted to go. What they did there was their business.

Austin had told the captain he would need a secluded place with a launching ramp. Mustapha had described an abandoned boatyard whose owner had gone into bankruptcy. The boatyard was across the harbor from the marina. Carina would ride with Mustapha and rejoin Austin there.

The boatyard was reached by a dirt road with more craters in it than the dark side of the moon. Austin wandered among the wooden skeletons of unfinished boats and inspected the boat ramp. The blacktop was eroded along the edges, but the main part of the ramp was in relatively good shape.

Zavala was fifteen minutes overdue. Austin stood at the edge of the road wondering whether his friend’s resourcefulness had been put to the test. He cocked his ear at the rumble of an engine. A cloud of dust and feathers was heading in his direction. A truck lurched through the potholes, gears grinding in protest, its engine coughing asthmatically. The truck skidded to a stop in a haze of purple exhaust smoke and amid a cacophony of clucks from the chicken cages piled precariously behind the cab.

Zavala emerged from the truck and introduced the driver, a brawny Turk with a gold-capped smile and heavy five o’clock shadow.

“Good morning, Kurt,” Zavala said. “Meet my pal Ahmed.”

Austin shook hands with the driver and walked around behind the truck. The submersible was under a green plastic tarp lashed down with ropes. Zavala had used additional ropes to improvise a backup system for the ancient trailer hitch. “I had to jerry-rig a tow system,” Zavala said, gazing with pride at his handiwork. “Not bad for government work.”

“Not bad at all,” Austin said with a roll of his eyes. The improvised setup must have made for anxious moments on the coastal road’s tight curves. He wondered how the NUMA bean counters would react if they knew their multimillion-dollar submersible had been roped to the bumper of a chicken truck.

Ahmed backed the trailer onto the ramp. Motorized rollers moved the launch platform off the trailer and into the water, where it floated on two long pontoons.

Mustapha arrived with Carina. He threw out a towline to Zavala, who tied the other end to the launch platform. Austin peeled off a wad of Turkish lira for the grateful truck driver and thanked him for his help.

Before he left to deliver his chickens, Ahmed tucked the trailer into a corner of the boatyard. Austin and Zavala rowed out to the motor cruiser in the skiff, and Mustapha immediately got under way. The motor cruiser steamed out of the harbor and entered the bay with the submersible in tow.