Rescue

was said except for Cody’s muttering, then a slumping sound as I suspect he sat down on the sand to keep watch.
    Howard beckoned me to put my ear against his mouth. “We... cannot... get... past... him.“
    I shook my head.
    Howard took out his knife, jabbing the point toward Cody.
    I shook my head again, pushing my bootied foot into the sand, then pointing to my ear to show him we’d sound to Cody like Severn’s sneakers had sounded to us.
    Howard nodded, then shrugged.
    I held up a finger. He watched me. I tapped my chest and used my hand to pantomime the dolphin-kick, then patted my black shorty suit
    Another nod.
    Then I held up my snorkel and mask, pantomiming the dead man’s float.
    Howard pointed to my knife, then used his own to angle up steeply toward my heart from below, wrenching his hand to the right.
    My turn to nod.
    He thumbed me on my way.
    I moved back very slowly on hands and knees into the water, the stand of trees still providing cover from Cody. When the water got two feet deep, I lay down. Drooling into my mask and rubbing the saliva over the glass, I put it on, taking the snorkel tube off the left-side strap and adjusting it down on the right, so its blowhole would be high enough to just break the water and provide me air without sticking up much above my ear.
    Then I slid the diving knife from its sheath on the inside of my left calf and began to float, wriggling my feet just enough to bring me across Cody’s cone of vision. I kept floating, hoping the wet suit would look enough like the dark jumpsuit they’d dressed me in for Cody to think—
    “My God Almighty! It can’t be... “
    I could hear Cody come thumping down toward the water. Could hear him, but dared not turn to see him.
    Conversationally, he said, “Ax, you are a prophet, you are.“
    I still lay there. Hanging in the water that way, my arms out to the sides and my feet close together, made me think of Dawna, hanging over her bed. It helped to focus me.
    I heard Cody set down his rifle, heard him sloshing out through the water, felt him grab me by the left arm and lift me.
    “Hey, this ain’t no jump—“
    I drove the blade of the knife under his breastbone and up through his heart, wrenching my hand to the right. Cody made a deep, hacking sound, his hand on my arm jerking violently, the dying eyes rolling back into the small head before me.
    Then I rode his body down into the shallows.
    Tearing the mask off my face, I took a few deep breaths through the nose, fighting off the hyperventilation that the adrenaline triggered. Cody’s body shuddered under me on the bottom before becoming still. By then, Howard was crouching on the shoreline, picking up Cody’s rifle and signaling me to drag the corpse through the water toward the shadow of the trees. I did, and Howard joined me there.
    He whispered, “You think the other one will be back?“
    “Eventually. I don’t see how this changes the rest of the plan, though.“
    “Except to improve our odds.“ Howard hefted the M-16. “Not sure I’m comfortable with this. Never used one when it counted.“
    “Keep it anyway.“ I unzipped the wet suit, sticking the revolver inside and sliding the sling for the boom box over my head so the machine rode between my shoulder blades.
    “Let’s go.“
    We moved upslope toward the wall, two hundred feet away.
    On the outside, the top of the wall was still about twelve feet off the ground. I moved around quietly till I found the door that Severn mentioned, which I remembered from the interior of the courtyard on my first visit to it. I listened, then tried file handle. Locked, as Severn told Cody it would be.
    I came back to Howard. “You’ll have to give me a boost.“
    He made a stirrup of his hands, and I stepped onto them and pushed up with my other leg as he heaved me toward the top. I got a purchase with my right hand and enough fingers of my left to do a pull-up, pausing at the top to look into the empty, now peaceful courtyard, a low-wattage light on by the doorway to the double-bungalow.
    I got an elbow up, then levered myself higher to get the other palm and elbow up, too. Sidesaddling lengthwise onto the flat, foot-thick surface, I motioned to Howard, who tossed me the free end of the rope he’d secured at the bottom. I waved to him, Howard waving back and disappearing along the wall into the darkness.
    I lowered my end of the rope into the courtyard, then rappeled down it to ground level, about twenty feet