She told them about the figure-eight navigation in the dark. “You won’t want to do that with Jerry,” Regio told Virgil. “He drowns, I’m out of a job.”
“There’s always room for a rent-a-goon in Vegas,” Virgil said.
“That’s really funny,” Regio said, with a snake-like stare.
Across the street at Morgan’s Inn, Lange patted Virgil on the back. “That was everything we needed to know, pal. Including the figure-eight. She seemed damn impressed.”
“Like I told you, I can dive,” Virgil said. “I don’t do overheads, but I’ll do anything else you got.”
“So when are we doing it?” Rae asked.
“We’re thinking tomorrow night, at least for a trial run,” Regio said. “It’s supposed to be quiet water out there. Like Rolf was saying, there’s a cold front coming, and it’ll get rougher when that goes through.”
“Bring the cash,” Virgil said. “Lots of cash.”
Regio smiled. “We will do that. And we’ve got a few things for you to look at.”
Inside their room, they had two oval-shaped lift bags of two hundred pounds lift capacity each, two black torpedo-shaped mesh bags to hold the drug containers, and two pen-sized waterproof LED flashlights with sliding hoods.
“You need to figure out how to hook all this up to your equipment,” Lange said. “When it’s time to pick you up, you’ll be right on the surface and you hit us with a hooded flashlight. It’s bright, but with the hood pushed out, nobody will see it but us. We’ll drift up to you, you hook the ladder, you get out of your plate and wing and we’ll pull it aboard with the tanks. You come up the ladder, we’ll help you if you need it. Then we’ll all be there for the lift bag, if it’s got anything in it.”
“That’s a lot of weight,” Virgil said. “The gear weighs close to a hundred pounds by itself, and that’s before the lift bags, and there’ll be drag from the boat.”
“We’ll have three guys on board to do the lifting.”
“Plus me,” Rae said.
“Plus Ally,” Lange said.
Virgil said, “Okay. That should work.”
Regio handed Virgil a thick gray watch and a thin white booklet: “This is your GPS watch. Good to three hundred feet, already been tested. You need to figure it out with the instruction book. We’ll give you the exact GPS coordinates for the pickup spot.”
Rae: “And you’ve got all these numbers, this GPS shit, figured out?”
“Down to a couple of yards,” Regio said. “The last thing we need is to have Willy pick up a million bucks’ worth of dope and then not be able to find him.”
Rae to Virgil: “You know how to read all this shit?”
“Sure. Can’t drive a boat without it,” Virgil said.
She shook her head. “I dunno. You can’t make change for a one.”
Virgil asked Regio, “Once I’m in the zone, how do I find the shit? If the Coast Guard couldn’t find it in six months...”
“We’ll explain that to you when we’re on the boat. You just figure out the watch.”
When Virgil and Rae were alone in the motel room, Rae put a finger to her lips and moved close to Virgil’s ear. “They rented the room. Might be listening.”
Virgil nodded and said, aloud, “Let’s get showers and change clothes and see if we can sneak away from those motherfuckers and get something to eat. I’ll break some goodies out of the car.”
“There’s that shrimp place... we could walk there in five minutes.”
“Let’s go.”
They put oncotton jackets and were out the door in twenty minutes, walking slow. Halfway to the shrimp restaurant, with no sign of either Regio or Lange, Virgil pulled Rae into the parking lot next to a plumber’s shop and fired up a joint and handed it to her. “This is our excuse for stopping, if anyone’s watching,” he whispered. He got on his phone and called Lucas. “We’re doing it tomorrow. Are you set?”
Lucas: “We’ve been ready for a week. I’m not getting cold feet, exactly, but they’re getting cool. Are you sure you’re up for this?”
