Free Flashback by Nevada Barr

that.
    It looked as though the blast had been centered around the engine compartment. The stern had been severed from the rest of the hull and lay at an awkward angle against a coral boulder. The living coral was gouged by the impact and scored by propeller blades. Jagged chunks of ripped and melted fiberglass reached around what had been a bench seat and was now a lump of charred plastic. A bright orange personal flotation device was tethered to it. Buoyant innards trailed out like intestines from a mutilated trunk. One of the straps had caught on the twisted fiberglass, condemning the float to death by drowning.
    Thirty feet away was the foreshortened bow section. Two cabin doors of clamshell design like those in cowboy saloons had been ripped away.
    One lay on the sand near the wreck, the other was still attached by a length of metal or fiberglass. The rectangle opening into the boat's low-ceilinged cabin was twisted until it resembled a door drawn by a very small child; the lines bent and blurred, none of the corners square. A scrap of cloth-pant leg or sleeve-reached out from the dark interior. Because the water was still, it did not wave or sway but stood out, a flag in a still life.
    Surrounding the two major pieces of the wreck, lying on white sand, scattered across coral, sea fans, sponges and stone, were the shattered remains of the boat's midsection. Much of it was mangled to the point that it was unrecognizable. Here and there were the bizarre anomalies that often accompany tornadoes and explosions. A boat hook, purposely blunt and attached to a long pole, had been thrown clean as a javelin into the sand, its haft sticking up, a piece of paper neatly skewered by the head. The lens of a running light, detached from the hull but otherwise unharmed, lay fifteen feet from the main wreck gleaming ruby-bright, dead center in a circle of green coral.
    The Dry Tortugas's underwater camera rode in a zippered nylon pouch attached to Anna's web gear. She took it out. Even from a distance of twenty feet the photos would not be good. The water was cloudy and the light weak. Later she would take clearer shots, but she wanted to record the lay of the wreck in case anything should shift once they began fiddling with the pieces.
    After the first couple shots Linda tugged her wrist and pointed. Anna's gaze followed the other diver's finger to the forward section of the wreck. The small movements of their fins had moved through the viscous world and finally reached the frozen flag flying from the ruined cabin doorway. The fabric, mottled black and yellow, possibly partially burned, was waving ever so faintly. The motion had disarranged the original drape, exposing what looked very like a forefinger and thumb.
    The two of them began swimming slowly in the direction of the bow. Anna dearly hoped the hand was connected to an arm and the arm to a body with another arm, legs, head and whatnot attached. And she wished she had diving gloves; there was probably going to be slimy bits coming up.
    They stopped again, hovering just above and in front of the door.
    Linda touched Anna's shoulder, pointed to the wreck and waggled her hand back and forth, reminding Anna that the pieces of the boat were possibly unsteady and could fall, crushing or tapping an unwary diver.
    Linda's short blond hair stood out from her head, moving with strange life lent by the sea. Her mouth was distorted and swollen with the froggy humanness shared by the creature from the black lagoon and scuba divers with their mouthpieces in place. Her light blue eyes, crinkled by lines that usually reassured Anna of a life led in sunlight and laughter, were exaggerated by her mask. A slow leak pooled salt water-an ocean of tears-high on her cheeks.
    For an instant, no less powerful because short-lived, a cold fear swept through Anna; a child awakening in a nightmare made more real by the light of day.
    Anna watched her own hand float up, finger and thumb making the okay sign,