.././.\\.\//.///\...//>>>>>>>

The man in the van is a lot of things, but he's had too many opportunities to supremely fuck me over to not hold true to his word about providing a boat. He could've killed me at the cul-de-sac house—in exchange for one less shot at Luis, of course—but he didn't. He could've had his driver run me over when I delivered Luis to him outside the gyro restaurant, but he didn't.

Still, there's a catch.

"He's not direct about anything," Zandra says when they're finished smoking. "He said the boat would be near the Curd Queen."

Glenn holds a set of binoculars to his eyes. From the edge of the shoreline, he scans the Wisconsin River downstream and upstream toward the Curd Queen.

"I don't see a boat nowhere," Glenn says and pulls the binoculars away.

Zandra nods. "Exactly."

"I don't get it," Glenn says.

Bexley walks to Glenn and reaches out for the binoculars. "Give me those."

You're thinking what I'm thinking.

"You only looked at the water. That's too obvious," Bexley says, scanning the shorelines upstream. "Of course, I'm not seeing anything there, either."

Getting warmer.

With a limp, Zandra starts back up the trail. Chad follows. Bexley hands the binoculars back and climbs off the shoreline.

"Hey, can someone tell me what's going on?" Glenn says.

The four of them walk the trail, with Zandra in the lead setting the slow pace. It doesn't take long until they reach the sink site of the Curd Queen. The first responders may be gone, but they left plenty behind. It's almost as if the wreckage of the Curd Queen rose up and out of Devil's Hole and onto the shore.

Pick your shit up, people.

None of the responders' trash is all that useful, but something tucked between two trees and covered with camo netting is. Zandra slips the lawnmower out of from under her sleeve and cuts away at the netting.

"There was a boat under there? Wow," Chad says.

Well, yeah. What else did you think it was going to be?

"He dragged it a long way," Bexley says.

"I doubt he did anything. He's got people for that. I bet he took credit for it, though," Zandra says.

The boat measures about 14 feet long. It's wide with a flat bottom, and in another life might've been used for duck hunting. Relative to deeper-hulled fishing boats, it's a lot lighter. It'd normally be hauled with a trailer, but it's obvious the boat was placed between the trees by hand.

The perfect design for both staying stable on the water and lugging through the woods.

Glenn looks inside. Everything needed for the dive is there: a five-horse outboard motor, scuba gear, dive lights, an underwater torch, burlap bags, contractor bags, tape, not a life jacket in sight, and a six-pack of beer to top it all off.

"I can make this work," Glenn says after inventorying the contents of the boat and cracking open a beer. "We're splitting the haul two-thirds and one-third."

Wrong.

"I think you know better than that," Zandra says.

"Yeah, there are four people. How are we supposed to split that into thirds?" Chad says.

Glenn ignores Chad and says, "I'm the one who has to go down there and get the stuff."

"And how long is that going to take you?" Zandra says.

"Couple hours," Glenn says.

"You're going to be underwater for two hours," Zandra says.

"Yeah."

"And how deep is the Devil's Hole, exactly?" Zandra says.

What Glenn says next takes everyone by surprise.

"Well, it's only 50 feet. It's not some portal to hell, either. It's just called Devil's Hole, and a bunch of people made up stories to go with it. It's not even a hole. It's a depression in the bottom of the river, where the depth suddenly drops to 50 feet. I think the depth keeps most of the current out, too," Glenn says. "What are you getting at Zandra? You want to strap up and go down there yourself, be my guest."

Zandra rubs her palms together. "You're going to down there for two hours of a depth of 50 feet."

"Is there an echo?" Glenn says. "Yeah. Fifty feet. Couple hours."

"That won't work," Zandra says.

"Why the hell not?"

Because of something called the 120 Rule, as explained by the manual I found at "grandma's house" with the other scuba gear. The 30-page manual was the only part of the gear that looked like it still worked.

The 120 Rule is used by scuba divers to figure out how long they can be underwater before they require decompression. Decompression is no joke. The pressure of being underwater forces gases into the bloodstream. These gases need time to dissipate or they'll become trapped in the blood. This can be avoided if the diver rises—decompresses—slowly, but if the diver rises too quickly, the gases create bubbles in the blood. That's how you wind up with the bends. It's uncomfortable at best and fatal at worse.

The 120 Rule determines how long a diver can be underwater without needing decompression. Start with the number 120. Subtract the depth. What's left is the number of minutes you can spend at that depth without decompression. If the depth of the Devil's Hole is 50 feet, the time he can spend down there is 70 minutes, because 120 minus 50 is 70.

Because Glenn is going to go down and up and down and up as he works the wreck, and because he can't afford to take his sweet time down there, he's at serious risk of the bends.

In other words, Glenn is going to shit the riverbed halfway through his dive.

"You don't have two hours to work with, I'm sorry to say. You only have one," Zandra says.

"Why?" Glenn says.

"You'll get the bends and we'll all be fucked," Zandra says. "I can explain this in detail to you or you can just accept that I'm a psychic who knows certain things."

"The bends never bothered me," Glenn says. He starts to unpack the boat so he can drag it onto the water.

Bullshit.

"You sure you're willing to risk it?" Zandra says. "There's a better way."

"There is?" Chad says, rocking onto his toes for some reason.

Shut up, Chad.

"Tell me," Glenn says.

"You don't know where the cases with the stuff are. We do," Zandra says, referencing the large speaker cases in a supply room on the Curd Queen. "You could cut your time in half, keeping you safe from the bends."

Glenn rubs his chin. "What do you want?"

"I think a 50-50 split sounds good, don't you?" Zandra says.

"My employers aren't going to like that."

"I don't care about your employers, but I bet they'd rather have half than nothing at all."

It takes a minute, but Glenn comes around to the idea.

"Half to me, and the rest is split between the three of you," Glenn says.

Chad scratches his head and says, "I don't know, Zandra. Half plus a third plus a third plus a third, that adds up to 125. Are you sure about the math?"

And are you sure you're not going to forget how to breathe at some point?

Glenn gets the boat ready, refusing any help from the other three out of an abundance of caution, saying, "None of you knows what the fuck you're doing."

We're good at one thing, though.

Zandra pulls Bexley to the side. "Give Chad your gun."

Bexley is taken aback. "What? No."

"We can't have Glenn out there working alone. He might take off. Someone needs to be out there with him," Zandra says. "It can't be me, and you're the only one in any condition to drive, so it has to be Chad."

"Why can't it be you?" Bexley says.

Because Chad is disposable.

"Because my ankle fucking hurts, that's why," Zandra says.

Bexley sighs. "Fine, but that's not why. You think Chad is disposable."

Yes, that is what I thought, you freak. What the fuck.

"How many times does he have to show you his heart before you believe what you see?" Bexley says.

I see an idiot who doesn't know how fractions work.

"Then look at it this way. He's a man, and you're a woman," Zandra says.

"That's very old-fashioned," Bexley says.

"In situations like this, stick to what works," Zandra says.

"Whatever."

Bexley gives Chad a hug and her pistol, while Zandra lets Glenn know he'll have a passenger.

"Just don't get in the way," Glenn says to Chad.

Chad cracks his neck and heads into the boat.

With Chad in tow, Glenn motors the boat upstream of Devil's Hole. Since the boat didn't come with an anchor, he wedges it into a sandbar near shore and hops out with the rope. He ties the rope to a tree and then pushes off again, letting the current take the boat downstream.

Once the boat is over the wreck site, Glenn wraps and ties the rope around one of the bench seats. That holds them in position. Using Zandra's advice on where to find the cases, Glenn starts the dive. Zandra and Bexley watch and smoke from the shore. Chad passes the time looking bored.

Glenn doesn't need an hour. He's done in 30 minutes, bends free and burlap sacks full.

"Holy shit. I've never seen so much of that in my life," Bexley says when Glenn dumps the burlap sacks out on shore.