"I did. Then I came back." A coughing fit. "You can court-martial me later, sir. I'll plead guilty."
Carter found him by feel. A shoulder, the strap of a vest, a face slick with oil. Mike's light was gone too. They hung there together in the black, treading water, their heads in the last of the Anahita's air, and listened to her die around them, the long shrieking complaints of bulkheads giving way somewhere far off, the deep thrumming groan of the hull as she settled.
"She's going down by the stern," Mike said. "We've got maybe a minute. Maybe less."
"The charges. They'd have blown out the hull plating. There'll be a breach somewhere in this hold."
"Yes, sir. Port side, low, aft of the tractors. I saw it before she rolled. I felt the water coming through." A pause. "Which is up now. I think. I think it's up."
"You think."
"I'm a hundred percent sure I think, sir."
Carter laughed. He would never be able to explain that to anybody, not to the debriefers in Germany, not to Elena, not to the therapist the Navy had paid for in Portland for two years who had written the words survivor guilt on a yellow legal pad and underlined them twice. He laughed, in the dark, in the belly of a sinking ship, with water up to his chin, and Mike Chardi laughed with him, and for perhaps five seconds it was the best moment of his life.
Then Mike said, very quietly, "Sir. If I don't — if this doesn't —"
"Don't."
"Let me say it." Mike's hand found his arm in the dark, his right forearm, and gripped it hard, right over the trident. "Lena knows. About everything. Life insurance, the house, she knows all that, it's handled. But the kid. Somebody's got to teach him to fish. My old man never taught me anything. Somebody's got to teach that kid how to do things. You hear me?"
"You're going to teach him yourself."