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“So you touched her?”

The diver rolled his eyes. “No, Agent Otto, we sat back and told her she had nice t.i.tties. She was still alive. We were trying to save her.”

“Do you remember what she said?”

Cantrell stared back. “You’ve got my report right in front of you. Read it for yourself.”

The man didn’t want to repeat the words. Why not?

“But do you remember? Can you tell me?”

Cantrell sighed.

“Yeah. She said, I took out the reactor. Then she said, They bit me. I killed them. I shot two of those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.”

Clarence read from the statement. Cantrell had it word for word.

“Okay, so what happened then?”

“The ’Hawk dropped the collection cage,” Cantrell said. “Clark and I put Walker inside, then got in with her. We were just about to return to the Brashear when the pilot spotted a second body. Clark and I went back into the drink. Petrovsky was eviscerated, among other significant damage. We loaded him into the cage.”

A cage normally meant for two divers and a container had four people in it, two of them infected. Clarence wondered if there was something to that.

“Did you continue to search for bodies?”

Cantrell shook his head. “Command wanted the Seahawk to return and look for survivors from the Forrest Sherman. No part of the helicopter had touched us or the bodies, if that’s what you’re wondering. The ’Hawk dropped our cage into the water, Brashear’s crane took us up, we got in the airlock just like normal. This time, however, there were two man-size, airtight containers waiting for us. We loaded the bodies into the containers. Feely was talking to us at that point. We went through the bleach bath, then carried the body containers to the morgue trailer.”

Clarence called up Feely’s report. Cantrell’s recall matched the report exactly, as if he were reading directly from it. All except for one thing.

“It says here that when you entered with the bodies and went through the decon bath, you smelled bleach.”

Cantrell paused. “Of course I smelled it,” he said. “They bathe us in it. The suits smell like it when we’re done.”

“I’m not talking about when you’re done. You’re quoted in the report as saying, I smelled bleach during decon step. Maybe a seal leaked.”

Cantrell’s eyes narrowed. Was that a look of … anger?

“That is not accurate,” he said. “Maybe I typed it wrong.”