Corkscrew by Ted Wood Page B

out to fish for pike, and a couple of regular fishermen waved to me in a puzzled way when they saw I was still in uniform.
    The divers were working off Wolfgang's big inboard/outboard. It was flying the red/white "Diver below" flag, and in case anybody around hadn't learned what it meant, he had a big double-sided sign on the deck: "Keep Away. Diving."
    I slowed and waited about forty yards off his stern until he saw me and called me alongside, indicating the path he wanted me to take. I came up slowly, and he reached over and took the bow line and secured it. I tied my stern line to his rear mooring cleat and got into his boat.
    "Nothing yet," he said. "But they've only been in the water fifteen minutes. They're over there." He indicated a spot about halfway to the rock. A stream of bubbles was crinkling the surface of the water. They moved slowly ahead, toward the rock.
    "It's deep here, right?" I asked.
    "One of the deepest spots in the whole lake." He nodded. "If somebody put the boy here, they didn't expect him to be found for a while."
    "Fisherman's luck," I said.
    A powerboat came south through the narrows, pushing a three-foot bow wave as it raced toward us. The driver saw us and veered off, not slackening his speed, and we bounced on the wake.
    "Dumb bastard," Wolfgang said automatically. "Kids. They don't consider anybody."
    We stood looking at the stream of bubbles for a couple more minutes; then the stream split, one side turning toward the west. After a moment the second half of the stream turned after it.
    "They've seen something," Wolfgang said. "Look, they've stopped." We waited another thirty seconds, and then a small orange float popped up to the surface and bounced there.
    "That's it." He started the motor and pulled in the anchor rope; then we inched toward the buoy. As we approached, a head bobbed up next to it, black and slick, with the diving mask pushed up on top like the mouth of some strange aquatic mammal. He waved to us and pointed down. Wolfgang motored up close enough to talk, then put the engine in neutral and called down, "What've you got down there?"
    The man pointed down again. "I think this is what you're looking for. It's got yellow rope on it with a loop, about yea big." He made a circle of his middle finger and thumb, opened slightly. It looked as if the loop were about four inches in diameter.
    Wolfgang looked at me, and I nodded. "Could be it. What's it fastened to?"
    The man shook his head and pointed to the hood over his ears, then swam closer and clung to the side of the boat. I leaned down to him and asked him again. "What's the rope tied to?"
    "The guts of an old engine block. No pistons or sump or crankshaft, just the block."
    Wolfgang reached down and shook his hand. "Well done," he said heartily. I nodded, and Wolfgang glanced at me and grinned. "How about that, Chief. Good work, huh?"
    "Fantastic. Thanks," I said. "Can you bring it up for me?"
    Wolfgang turned to the diver again. "How heavy is the engine, roughly? Fifty kilos?"
    The diver nodded. "Yeah, a hundred pounds, I'd say." He waited while Wolfgang looked at me for guidance. "Great work," I told the diver. "Can you get a rope through it and we'll hoist it in?"
    "Gimme the rope," he said. Wolfgang stooped and unshackled the anchor rope, handing the end to him. "Tug when you're ready," he said.
    The diver held the rope in his left hand, adjusted the mask with his right, and then sank out of sight, trailing bubbles.
    Wolfgang looked at me. "I have a little brandy in the medicine chest for when the divers come up. Would you like some?"
    I grinned. "That's my kind of first aid, Wolfie. But no thanks. I have to go and talk to some kids who were here at around the time it all happened. It wouldn't do to breathe firewater on anybody."
    "You decide." He turned back to the rope, feeling it carefully through finger and thumb, like a fisherman waiting for a rainbow trout to start mouthing the bait. Then it jumped in his hand, and he