Exhausted and gasping, he floated on his back and swooped air into his lungs. Thus far he was feeling no symptoms of decompression sickness, but that didn't necessarily mean he could dismiss it as a serious concern. The first indications were usually a bone-deep pain in the joints of the arms or legs, and could take minutes or even hours to become apparent. Still, he had fair odds of getting away clean. The nitrogen gas in the bloodstream that caused the bends when you ascended too rapidly after long descents--decompression stops being meant to give it time to dissolve through respiratory processes--tended to accumulate in fatty tissue, and he'd worked hard to stay in peak shape for more reasons than just impressing women at the gym.

He took a few moments to recoup, aware he couldn't spare too many more. Not safely anyway. The skiff was nowhere in sight, but it was almost certain the water was being scanned for signs of his reappearance--though he did not yet know whether it would be from the island, the skiff, or both. Whichever, he wasn't going to let himself be spotted.

He glanced around get his visual bearings, then double-checked them on his compass, having no idea how far he'd drifted from the dive site, or which direction the current might have taken him in. He quickly found that he was near the mouth of the cove and within a hundred yards of its southeastern flank. The skiff wasn't anywhere in sight, not that he'd expected it would be. To the contrary, he thought he could guess where Dex must have brought it.

His breath slow and almost regular now, Ricci allowed himself another twenty seconds to recover his strength, reached into his satchel for the eight-inch J snorkel he'd separated from his spare oxygen canister before ditching it, and put the mouthpiece between his lips. Then he turned facedown and lowered his head underwater, blew into the snorkel to make sure its airway was clear, and began to swim toward shore, his legs loose and straight behind him, his fins stroking smoothly, gliding unseen beneath the surface of the bay.

It was, he thought, a bad run of snake eyes. He'd been set up twice in as many days, and on both instances had felt bound to confront his opposition when it was their two against his one--only this time he couldn't count on Pete Nimec popping out of nowhere to even the odds.