He would just have to get everything done in the eyeblink of time that he would have.

82

“How long has it been now, Emerson?” Reyland called into the radio.

“Twelve minutes,” Emerson called back over the Motorola.

Ruby glanced over at Reyland.

Emerson had just left on the Gator quad a minute after they had gone under. Ruby had overheard him say he was having trouble getting a cell signal for the laptop and wanted to try to get better service out closer to the road.

Ruby looked back across the depression at Ruiz standing there with his rifle. As they sat there, from way up the beach or perhaps from a boat moored out at sea, there was the faint sound of music. It was a slow mariachi song, some sad guitars and lamenting trumpets. Then just as suddenly, it cut off.

“How long can the tanks go for?” Reyland called into the radio after another minute.

“I don’t know,” Emerson called back out of the radio. “Doesn’t Ruiz know this shit?”

“Don’t ask me,” Ruiz said to Reyland. “I was army, man. Delta. Shepard is the one who was in the Marine Raiders. I can hardly even swim.”

Ruby looked at Stick, who looked at Little Jorge.

“Yeah, right,” called Ruiz, looking over at them. “Like I can’t see you stupid fools eyeballing each other. You want to get a good look at your bone marrow in this romantic firelight, please, by all means, try something funny.”

Ruby looked up at the sky. She suddenly remembered what Gannon had said about taking her out on his boat.

She looked down at the black water where Gannon had gone.

There were no stars out tonight after all.

83

The blue hole’s corridor-like passage began to close in narrower and narrower. As Gannon got to the extremely tight pipelike end of it, he suddenly put on the jets and swam hard into the tiny entrance of the cathedral.

He felt his right shoulder slice open on a sharp rock as he squeezed through the pipe, but that didn’t matter. He ripped himself inside into the huge space, swam straight in for ten feet, dropped his light and left it there on the chamber’s floor. Then he turned and swam upward and back over the opening where he had just entered.

Gannon floated there, probing with his hands. There was nothing and still nothing, and he almost went into full out-of-body panic mode, trying to remember where he put it, thinking maybe someone else had found it.

Then his hand found the old duffel fishing rod bag.

Gannon’s heart rate and breathing came faster and faster as he pulled the bag to him and unzipped it.

The yard-long piece of metal he pulled out of it looked like a spear gun except instead of a spike at the end of it, there was a short squat length of steel tubing that almost looked like the coupling for a water hose.