"Nah. It's probably ninety percent rust. Doesn't seem worth it."

The divers finished disconnecting the hose, pantomimed blowing kisses with their hands, and followed the hose up into the green murk."So, any more chores while we're in the area?" Patricia asked this lightly, dreading the answer.

"Sorry. We've got some salvage work over at the refinery, but we've got all that stuff located. Can't justify the expense."

Thank god. "What? You drag us two hundred miles from home for this piddling little job?" It took all she had to sound pissed.

Mateo came back. "You know the drill, darling. If I can do it without outside contractors, I have to do it with my boys alone. I thought you'd like it-after all you get travel time, both ways, plus you milked this job for over twice the bottom time I estimated. You'll make out. Considering how small the recovery was, we're going to lose money."

"Milked? That does it, Mateo. You're definitely off my Christmas card list. You there, Toni?"

"I'm here, boss."

"Good, cause we're leaving these raggedy-ass bozos behind. Give me a minute to wind in my antennae; then start home-bearing one thirty-five. Keep it under three knots and I'll be there shortly."

"You got it, boss."

Mateo came back on the VHF. "Now, darling, don't go away mad... just go away."

"You'll never drown, Mateo."

"Huh?"

"I have great comfort from this fellow: methinks he hath no drowning marke upon him; his complexion is perfect gallows."

"Say what?"

"You'll never drown because you were born to be hanged. Go do your salvage job, bozo. I'll see you next time."

"Right-oh."

"Beenan out."

She blew the ballast tanks with high-pressure air rather than pump them out. She didn't like to do it, since it took a long time to replenish the air bank, but she was in a hurry. The radio buoy clicked into its slot about the time the sub started drifting off the bottom and she kicked the thruster in at one hundred percent, zero to thirteen knots in twenty seconds. The flywheels, already down to forty percent, dropped farther as she pulled over four hundred kilowatts from them.She didn't care. She switched back to the Gertrude and said, "Start singing, Toni."

"What?"

"Start singing. I want a homing signal for the passive sonar."

"O-kay."

There's a little switch on the Lorraine's Gertrude that runs an automatic pinger, but Patricia didn't want that. She needed something warmer, human-something alive. Later, she couldn't remember what Toni sang, something bluesy, perhaps, and she could remember thinking Toni had a nice voice, but mostly she wanted something she could run to.

She nearly overran Lorraine, dropping the thrust to nothing when the hulls came out of the murk, and she had to use a little reverse thruster to match speed. The sling was still trailing in the water, pulled down by streamlined weights. She nosed SubLorraine into it without thought and hit the switch to tighten the winches, concentrating on matching headings until the wings met the frame guides and eased the submarine up to its mating collar.

She pushed the seat back around and opened the top hatch.

Toni, at the helm, waved as Patricia popped out of the personnel tube. "Did it get that cold down there?"

Patricia frowned, then realized she was still wearing the polyfleece undersuit.

"Umm. Cold... yes." She looked around. To reduce speed, Toni had let out the sheets on both sails. "Let's get some speed on."

Toni switched on the autohelm, and trimmed the sheet on the port side. Patricia took the starboard sail. The boat crept up to eight knots, taking the wind two points off the starboard bow. Patricia picked up the binoculars and began sweeping the horizon, finding what she was looking for all too soon. The INS Fastship had moved farther south from its previous position. Not toward them, but not away, either.

Patricia wanted to go back below, fire up the turbogenerator, and run the thrusters at one hundred percent, but even then they could hope, at best, to achieve twenty knots. The INS Fastship with its jet turbines and water jets had a top endurance speed of thirty-five knots and a short-duration pursuit speed of forty. It had a semiplaning mono-hull with a slight concave bottom that generated lift at the stern, reducing drag.

Toni watched Patricia, perched on the edge of the cockpit. Patricia put the binoculars back in their cabinet and said, "There's five lithium hydroxide cartridges in the starboard storeroom, the one forward of the galley."

Toni nodded.

"Put them in the sub, in the lockout chamber. Then get together somegrub-stuff we can eat uncooked, put it in the lockout chamber, too." Patricia could still taste the vomit in the back of her throat despite several drinks of water on the way back. Food didn't sound appealing at all. "Oh, and get your stuff."

Toni stared at her. "My stuff? What's going on, Patricia?"

"I'm sorry, Toni. This isn't fair and it isn't right, but I found something when I was down there and it could get us both killed."

Toni frowned, her head askance, her lips pursed. "Take off your sunglasses."

Patricia pulled them off, blinking in the bright sun, and looked at Toni.

Toni's tan paled two shades. "You're not kidding."

Patricia shook her head.

"What did you find?"

"Survival first. Information later."

Toni swallowed and turned away.

Patricia checked the GPS and adjusted the autohelm, then went down into her cubby in the port hull. Her satphone and portable workstation were stowed in the locker above her bunk. She hooked them together, then took the video data cartridge from the polyfleece jacket and slid it into the workstation.

She was sweating like crazy and while part of it was the polyfleece, part of it wasn't. Still, you work on the factors you can control. While the workstation booted, she stripped, then put on some fresh underwear, light shorts, and a long-sleeved T-shirt.

The entire video file was twenty minutes long but it contained stretches of stillness while she was cycling out and into the lockout chamber. She trimmed it to the original narration and the footage showing the shell and bullet holes, plus the entire sequence from the opening of the hold hatch to the closing. This gave her a file of just over three minutes running time, including a lovely shot of herself vomiting. She couldn't edit it out-she was in the frame the entire time the hold was open.

The file was twenty megabytes of full-frame, six-hundred-line video. She started it compressing and climbed back up to the cockpit.

Toni was carrying her duffel, her portable stereo, and a plastic bag to the personnel tube. "How's it going?" Patricia called.

She shrugged. "Okay, so far. I've got the lithium cartridges down there, and this is food." She held up the plastic bag. "What about water?"

Patricia nodded. "Good point. There's a bunch of water jugs under the sink.

They should be full."She looked to the southwest. "Better hurry."

The INS Fastship was easily seen naked-eye now, and it'd changed aspect: much narrower, indicating it was heading toward them. While Patricia watched, a tiny dark shape separated from the main mass and rose into the air. She felt nauseated and it had nothing to do with the boat's motion.

Toni was watching, too. "What is that?"

"An RPV."

Toni looked blank.

"A surveillance drone-a remotely piloted vehicle. They're coming to check us out." Patricia turned back to the port hatch. "Hurry!"

Besides enhanced video the damn things were wired for radio capture. If it got overhead before she finished her phone call, they'd know she was broadcasting. Her satphone provider was based in Houston and subject to the surveillance provisions of the Emergency Immigration Act. The INS might have the escrow keys to decipher the phone call.

The file wasn't finished compressing, but it was close. She connected to her net provider and started cee-ceeing everybody she could think of: the Houston Post, the Texas Department of Public Safety, the UN Refugee Monitoring office in New Galveston, the New Galveston Assembly, the Chicago Sun Times, and even the INS themselves: national headquarters on D.C. Island. After a moment's hesitation, she added the Honorable Katherine Beenan, U.S. Representative from the state of Texas, then started to delete it.

No. Mom can just deal with it.

The compression finished, and she attached the file and hit "send."

The connection was good, one fifteen kilobaud, and the file had compressed to a quarter of its original size so it took just a little less than a minute. As soon as she had the upload confirmation, she killed the connection and took the phone and workstation on deck.

Toni was just coming back on deck from the starboard hull, carrying four gallon-jugs of water. Patricia looked for the drone and couldn't see it until she craned her neck back.

Well, there wasn't any doubt that they were its target. It was making a slow circle overhead, about a thousand feet up, and Patricia knew it could stay there for about twenty-four hours on its fuel load.

Patricia followed Toni over to the personnel tube and lowered the jugs to her, then the workstation and satphone. Toni stowed them, then started to climb back out again and Patricia said, "Stay there, okay?""Why?"

"If we have to bug out, it's going to be very soon."

Toni swallowed. "It's a little tight down there. How about I just stay here in the hatch?"

Oh great! She's claustrophobic! "Sure. Just so we can get going quickly."

Patricia went back to the cockpit and slung the binoculars around her neck. She didn't really need them to see the growing bulk of the INS Fastship.

The VHF crackled and a voice said, "Boat on my bow. This is the INS vessel Sycorax. Lower your sails and prepare to be boarded."

She used the binoculars. They had a boat swung over the rail on the port davits, men already aboard.

Make your decision, girl. Tough it out or run.

The guilty flee where no man pursueth. They could be doing a standard screen for illegals or boat safety or smuggling or a noncompliant toilet.

Or they could be coming to find out if she'd seen what she'd seen and to keep them from ever telling anybody else.

She turned the VHF off. If it ever came to court, she could always claim she'd never received their hail.

The autohelm was slaved to the GPS and as long as the winds remained favorable and the batteries held, Terminal Lorraine would head for the Strand.

Patricia turned on the underwater telephone and set it to ping every minute. As long as they didn't sink her, or turn off the Gertrude, or any of a number of more likely and less sinister things, they'd be able to track the boat from the sub.

If Patricia messed around any more, the cruiser would be within audible hailing range and she wouldn't be able to pretend not to have noticed it.

"Out of my way, girl," she said to Toni and dropped through the tube into the sub and slammed the hatch. Toni had gone forward to get out of Patricia's way as she climbed down, so, of course, she was now in Patricia's way. Patricia jerked her thumb back toward the lockout chamber and said, "Move!" Her voice wasn't kind and it wasn't soft, but she was more interested in keeping Toni alive than being diplomatic.

Toni moved awkwardly past in the tight cylinder, unable to avoid rubbing against Patricia; then Patricia wiggled clear and scrambled for the chair, spinning it forward and hitting the sling control and then reverse thrust, dragging SubLorraine back even before the sling was fully distended.

As she'd hoped, SubLorraine was negative now, with the extra crew and gear.

Patricia pushed the stick forward, but left it in reverse thruster. This sharply tilted thefront of the sub up and the ducted fan pulled them down. Behind her, she heard Toni swear sharply as the girl slid backward and banged against something in a cascade of bags, water bottles, and other equipment.

The hulls of Terminal Lorraine passed out of sight and the surface receded in front of Patricia. She killed the thrusters and switched off the active sonar and kicked in the directional hydrophone of the passive sonar. The high whine of the Fastship's turbines was loud in the speaker and bearing thirty degrees off the sub's stern.

Without the reverse thruster, all the extra weight in SubLorraine's forward section caused them to tip forward, causing yet another slide of equipment.

"Quick. Shift everything to the back of the lockout chamber."

"Why are you whispering?" Toni asked.

"Because they might have passive sonar... so don't bang around. Okay?"

They were back over Bolivar Roads in waters 140 feet deep. The bottom was also nice and silty, something Patricia wouldn't mind hitting at the rate they were sinking, but she didn't want to hit it nose first. They could get stuck.

Toni shifted back, practically climbing up the sub, dragging water bottles and Patricia's workstation with her, but the nose stayed down. Patricia watched the pressure-depth gauge. They'd been dropping slowly, at first, but now that the nose was pointing farther down, the depth was increasing by ten feet a second and had just passed seventy-five feet.

Patricia could've changed things several ways. She could've blown ballast. She could've used reverse thrusters. Instead she flew the sub down, using the forward speed to glide, so to speak. A few seconds later, they passed a hundred feet and Patricia pulled the stick back. The nose came sharply up and she leveled the sub. As her speed dropped, SubLorraine began sinking again, this time more slowly, on an even keel. They'd lost most of their headway when the sub skidded into the bottom, kicking up a cloud of silt which removed what little vision they'd had through the water and blocked the dim green light from above. The interior of the sub dropped to deep darkness relieved only by the glow of display panels.

"Are we okay?" Toni hissed from the back of the lockout chamber.

Patricia turned the speaker down on the sonar and said, "Yes. Now let me concentrate a minute, okay?"

They could hear the INS Fastship's turbines and water jets through the hull now, growing steadily louder.

"How could they possibly hear us over that racket?" Toni said.

"Signal processors. They can subtract their own noise profile. So hold it down."

Patricia turned her seat halfway around, so she could reach the sonar controls, andwaited, her legs propped against the bulkhead.

The Fastship passed a hundred yards to the south of them. The bearing from the pinger on Terminal Lorraine was merging slowly with the bearing of the INS Fastship's turbines. Then the turbines revved back, dropping substantially in volume, and the sound of outboards came through the speaker.

"They put an auxiliary in the water. They're going to board her."

"Isn't it about time you told me what's going on?"

Patricia tried to think of a way to tell her-something simple, something that wasn't as horrible as the truth. In the end, she chickened out. "Turn on my workstation-in the tan case. There's a file on the desktop called 'wreck video.'

Play it."

She plugged a headset into the sonar and listened with one earpiece pressed to her head. Her other ear could hear the muted sound of her own narration from the workstation.

"-presence of sharks makes me think the crew went down with her."