Chapter 41
“CHIEF’S BY ME, moving along the rail north side of Ruby’s,” said Bud Rankin in the earbud tucked beneath the hood of my wet suit. “It is eight fifty-nine and forty seconds. He’s preparing to drop.”
I said nothing, just swept my attention out and along the perimeter of that electric halo of light, looking for an intruder.
“Bags are gone,” Rankin said.
I saw the bags fall. I saw them hit the churning water forty yards in front of me. The dry bags slapped and spun on the writhing ocean surface. My attention darted away, back along that perimeter of light.
“Anything, Chief?” I asked. Fescoe was supposed to remain on the rail, advise us of any effort to retrieve the dry bags from below the surface.
That was going to be difficult in the extreme in any case. Inside the bags, Sci had placed two small pressurized CO2 tanks hitched to a switch activated by a pressure gauge. Deeper than six feet and the tanks would expel their charges, inflate the bags, and drag anyone holding them to the surface. If the pressure-gauge trigger failed, Sci could activate the tanks by radio.
Fescoe cleared his throat, said, “Not a goddamned—”
The explosion came without warning, a brilliant flash, crack, and roar that threw a ballooning plume of flame that witnesses later described as flat blue with a central core that burned as bright as mercury.
Del Rio was on the pylon almost directly below the explosion.
For a split instant I saw my friend backlit, jerked, and bent backward against the waistband of his lineman’s belt before the force of the blast struck and body-slammed me. The hit tore my feet from the pylon, caused my rope to lose purchase. I was aware of falling.