Meanwhile, Ricci bent over one of his gear bags, unzipped it, and began to extract his scuba apparatus and arrange it on the deck in front of him. He put on his diving hood, then slid his arms into his vestlike buoyancy compensator--the double bladders of which would draw their air from his tank--and fastened the quick-release buckles of its cummerbund around his waist. He had four twelve-pound weights evenly arranged on his nylon-webbing weight belt, and an additional two pounds each on ankle bands to help keep him balanced and relieve tension on his spine. Although the total fifty-two pounds would be excessive under average diving conditions, Ricci had often found that he needed it to remain at the depths inhabited by the urchins in the powerful, spiraling undercurrents.

After donning the belt, Ricci put on his mask, gloves, and fins, then reached into the bag again for his two dive knives and their harnesses. His chisel-tipped urchin knife went into a scabbard secured to his thigh, a pointed titanium backup blade into a similar rig on his left inner arm. Finally he used an elasticized lanyard to hang an underwater halogen light from his wrist.

Once suited up, he opened his second gear bag and extracted three nylon mesh totes, all of which had been packed in long, neat rolls that were held snug with bungee cords. He clipped their float lines to snaplinks on his buoyancy compensator, then raised himself onto the gunwale and sat with his back to the water.

"Don't forget your spare O2," Dex said. He took from the well an aluminum canister/snorkel assembly about the size of a bicycle pump, put it into a waterproof satchel, and carried it over to Ricci.

Ricci hung the satchel around his shoulders.

"Okay," he said. "Ready to go."

Dex cocked a thumb into the air.

"If you can't send me up some whore's pussy, I'll settle for the eggs she been droppin'," he said, and grinned as if he'd gotten off a sharp witticism.

Ricci went over the side with a backward roll, swam over to his floating tank, slipped it on, and attached the BC's narrow low-pressure inflator tube, which would draw air from the tank through a twist valve within reach of his hand. For backup--and lesser, more incremental adjustments in buoyancy than this method easily allowed--his BC also had over its right shoulder strap an oral-inflation assembly consisting of a large-diameter air hose much like that of a vacuum cleaner or automobile carburetor, with a mouthpiece that could be actuated at the touch of a simple button-and-spring mechanism.