Mind the helm."

They had to keep a slight downward pressure on the horizontal dive controls to keep SubLorraine from swinging up and bumping into the bottom of the Sycorax.

"What's our speed?"

Toni turned back around to look at the readout. "Uh. Thirty-three knots."

Patricia whistled silently. "She's never gone so fast." She unclipped the first aid kit from the bulkhead, working as quietly as she could.

"What do we do now?"

"We wait. The Sycorax makes a stop at the Abattoir every Wednesday, when the INS transport brings the latest deportees in from Texas and Arkansas." The Abattoir was the nickname for the Abbott Base Refugee and Detention Center, the INS processing and detention camp at New Galveston.

Toni's expression darkened. "Yeah. I've seen 'em. Why the Sycorax?"

"Three years ago there was a bad riot. They want the extra firepower. You weren't here then, were you?"

Toni shook her head.

"A lot of people died, guards and inmates. That's when they started calling it theAbattoir." Patricia found some gauze and began wrapping her foot. "This is Monday. We just have to imitate a hole in the water for thirty-six hours and the bastards will tow us home."

3.

Becket: Centro de interes

Thomas hitched a ride to the site on an INS helicopter from Houston Intercontinental, skirting east of the Houston dikes. The brown gulf waters were spotted with the shadows of clouds and occasionally interrupted by local boat traffic or the projecting tangles of taller pre-Deluge structures not yet pulled down by storm surge and the persistent wear of waves. Closer to shore the ever-present fingers of telephone poles and power-line towers climbed from the water, getting shorter and shorter until all but the tallest utility towers rose above the waves.

The gray naval tender and a smaller oceangoing shrimp trawler were anchored in an otherwise unremarkable stretch of that same brown water.

But their very presence is the indicator. Their very presence defines the focus, the locus of this investigation. It made Thomas stir inside, come back to life, just to think about it. He tried to put the scene in context with the video, but it wasn't the same. The video had been taken eighty-five feet below the surface of the water.

There was a landing pad on the fantail of the naval dive tender, but the pilot didn't land-just hovered a few feet above while Thomas hopped down, then turned to catch his bag, dropped by the copter's crew chief.

It was hot and humid and the sun shining off the water hurt his eyes. He'd been traveling all night in uncomfortable dress whites, now wrinkled and sweaty, and he felt like hammered shit.

His XO, Lieutenant Graham, met him at the edge of the platform, but remained silent while the noise and wind of the helicopter followed that vehicle away to the east. Graham was a slight black man, and he looked cool and comfortable in khakis.

"Sorry I'm late, Jazz," Thomas said, speaking first. "They kept me on the stand all afternoon."

"Yes sir, I know. I called Admiral Rylant yesterday, uh, five P.M. D.C. time. He also said the sitting court threatened the honorable counsel for the defense with contempt if he didn't show some substantive reason for continuing the cross-exam.

Did the prosecution rest?"

"Yeah. I may get recalled during the defense, though. Hope not-I was justgiving context to the video."

"Hmph. Why didn't they plea bargain? We got the bastard cold, with the cocaine, with the weapons, with the cash."

Thomas shrugged. "He wasn't offered a plea bargain. The decision came down from the attorney general. They want him made an example. He's a senior officer of the INS and they want to send a message."

"That you better not wear the uniform and be a bad guy?"

Thomas laughed. "Maybe. But certainly that you better not wear the uniform and get caught." He pointed at the large oceangoing shrimp boat moored next to the dive tender. "What's that for?"

Graham started moving again, walking forward toward the bridge of the tender.

"Got it from Houston impound. We're using its freezer as a morgue."

The remnants of Thomas's smile dropped from his face. "Oh, yeah. How many so far?"

"The divers are still bringing them up, but the rough count is forty-seven from the hold. The freighter's crew is iffier-the sharks have been pulling them around, so I'm not sure we'll get a good count on them. Certainly we've got at least three different crew members. It remains to be seen if the other parts match up."

"You got facilities lined up?"

"Yeah. Harris County will lend us their morgue and lab. Most important, they've got a freezer semitrailer for overflow and we're going to need it."

"Who'd you get for examiner?"

"It's still up in the air. You asked for Lawson, but the FBI says he's too busy with something in California. The old man says they'll push them for someone of similar quality."

They reached the steep stair, almost a ladder, that led up to the bridge. "Might as well leave your bag here. We've been hot bunking it with the crew, so I don't know where we'll end up putting you."

The bridge was dark, tinted shades pulled down over the front windows, and the two khaki-clad officers inside were facing a pair of video monitors mounted at the back of the room. They turned around as Thomas and Graham entered.

Graham did the introductions. "This is Captain Nathan Elmsford," he said, referring to a man with the brass oak leaf of a lieutenant commander. Captain, in this case, was his job, not his rank. "And this is his exec, Lieutenant Martin Callard. My boss, Commander Thomas Becket of INS CID."

Captain Elmsford and Commander Becket shook hands. "Welcome aboard, commander." His eyes lingered on the right side of Thomas's face. "That's quite ascar you got there."

Thomas smiled, causing them to stare even more. His smile was a lopsided affair, the scar tissue that covered most of the right side of his face was stiff and unresponsive at the corner of his mouth and right eye. "What can I say-I thought it was an electric razor." He said it deadpan, used to this reaction.

The two naval officers smiled uncertainly.

Thomas continued. "It's good of you to extend facilities to the investigation."

"As if we had a choice. I go where I'm told." Elmsford gestured at an active screen, which showed an irregular dark shape framed by squares. Looking closer, Thomas saw it was the freighter Open Lotus and the sunken warehouses that he'd seen once, already, on the footage from the Beenan woman. The angle was very different, though, and he realized that the camera must be on the hull of the dive tender staring down through the water.

Two divers in Mark VII rebreathers were rising toward the camera, each pulling a long dark bag behind him.

Elmsford said, "And frankly, I'd have been glad not to. I've got some pretty tough personnel but this-" He shook his head. "My lead diver woke up screaming this morning. Nightmares."

Thomas closed his eyes briefly. "Does he have kids?"

"You got that right. Anyway, we're professionals. We'll do our job."

"I never had any doubts. Have you found any ordnance?"

"Weapons?"

"Projectiles. Jacketed slugs. Anything we can use for ballistic matching."

"Ah. We haven't been looking but we can. In fact, I had to pull some of my men off the hold detail-the bodies were too much for them. This'll give them something to do while the rest of my divers build up some surface interval after we finish recovering the bodies."

"It can't have been easy on anybody." Thomas took another look at the screen.

A different pair of divers had left the hold below, another pair of body bags in tow.

Thomas exhaled air between clenched teeth. "I'll let you guys get on with it, then.

Uh, I know you guys are crowded, but do you have someplace I can bunk?"

Elmsford and his XO exchanged looks; then Elmsford said, "Certainly. You can hot bunk with one of us, if you'd like, but the owner's cabin on the shrimper is downright luxurious. It's just that nobody wanted to sleep near the... you know."

Thomas looked at his own XO, Graham, who suddenly found his own shoes extremely interesting. "I see," Thomas said. "Well, I'm not particular." He offered his hand again to the two men and turned to leave. "It's not the dead who worryme."

The owner's cabin boasted a double-wide bunk, air-conditioning, and a stereo, as well several oil-painted female nudes more photorealistic than impressionistic.

Thomas left his bag and followed Graham to the aft deck, where his people were using the shrimper's gantry to transfer the body bags from the water to the refrigerated hold.

"Who are they, Jazz? Where are they from?"

Jazz shook his head. "I have no idea. The crabs have really done a job. I know this, though. They weren't poor. Their clothes are Chinese knockoffs of American and European fashions. Good dental work. Some crowns. But whoever put them in the hold took their ID. There's not a purse or wallet to be found. No jewelry, no luggage. A few toys but they're generic."

"Fingerprints? Tattoos?"

"Crabs and fish, but I think we'll be able to get some plantar prints from those who wore lace-up shoes. We'll have to go after birth records, then."

Thomas nodded. "Okay. Have the medical examiner try for stomach contents.

Give me an idea of their diet and we'll know where to send the footprints."

They walked to the edge of the open hold. The humidity of the hot gulf air was mixing with the cold below, making fog. A ladder leaned against one corner of the hatchway and they climbed down into the fog.

"That feels good," Thomas said, as the cold air enveloped him.

A voice from below said, "The first five minutes is nice. Can't recommend it for much longer, though."

At one end of the hold a plywood table had been rigged, three feet wide by seven long. The speaker was one of two figures standing at the head of the table. He was holding a camera against the mouth of a corpse in a zipped-open body bag, taking shots for dental matching. It was easy to do since the crabs had eaten away the cheeks and tongue. As he worked, the acquired images began appearing on the screen of a portable workstation set on two crates against the wall.

"How are you doing, Leo?" Thomas asked.

Master Chief Investigator Leo Bernstein, a slightly heavy man with male pattern baldness eating up patches of his hair, was the unit's forensic supervisor. He wore a field jacket and a decidedly civilian sweater over his undress denims. "I've been better. I'm going to get pneumonia going in and out of this hold."

The other person at the table, First Class Investigator Barbara Mendez, said, "Maybe you shouldn't go back and forth. Why don't you just stay down here sothat nasty hot air doesn't throw your metabolism into unbalance?" Mendez was using a measuring tape to record the length of the corpse, then recording the information on the workstation with the dental and facial shots.

"I'll give you unbalance," Bernstein told Mendez.

Thomas said, "You trying for the plantar prints?"

"Not here. Don't want to mess them up. We could just as easily rip the skin off by removing the shoes and socks. If it were one or two, I'd go ahead and do it, but I won't really have enough supplies until we get them in the lab."

Thomas nodded. "Okay. As soon as the navy brings up the last body, we'll get this bucket moving over to Houston. You can finish the cataloging under way."

"Aye, aye, sir."

"Carry on."

Thomas and Jazz climbed out of the hold and walked back to the owner's cabin.

"You got any word on the submersible that found this mess?"

"Our Fastship Sycorax has been trying to intercept it, but it gave them the slip yesterday and they haven't been able to reacquire it. You think they had anything to do with this?"

"Do they carry twenty-five-millimeter cannon? How about fifty-caliber machine guns? What became of their surface tender, anyway?"

"Sycorax put two ratings aboard. They sailed it back to Buffalo Bayou."

"I don't suppose they found a cannon aboard?"

"No, sir. No weapons of any kind."

"Well, then, I don't think they had anything to do with it."

"Then why did they run? Doesn't that sound suspicious to you?"

Thomas shrugged. "If I had to guess, I'd say it sounds like they're scared, Jazz.

But it doesn't mean they did it. But I don't like to guess. I'd rather ask them." He stretched and a jaw-popping yawn reminded him how tired he was. "I'm going to get some sleep. Wake me up in four hours, okay?"

Floating morgue or no, he was unconscious in five minutes.

Jazz's voice, vibrating the walls of the cabin greatly amplified, woke Thomas. He stared blearily at his watch. It was less than two hours since he'd closed his eyes.

"-is Lieutenant Hamilton Graham of the INS. You are intruding upon a crime investigation and are subject to arrest for obstruction of justice if you do not leavethe area immediately. I repeat, if you do not leave this area immediately, you will be arrested, detained, and your vessels confiscated."

Thomas stumbled to the head and splashed tepid water across his face, then opened his bag and took out a clean set of khakis and dressed quickly.

He stepped into the shrimper's pilothouse and found Jazz talking into a handheld radio. "I don't care if they're from NBC. I don't care if they're from CN-fucking-N.

If they don't pull that boat back, I'm going to throw their asses in the Abattoir faster than you can say 'citizenship check.' "