"Okay. Better fix our guns right here, though."
It was good advice. Rick removed the safety cap from his spear, making sure the barbed shaft was properly seated. Now he needed only to flick off the safety catch and fire. Scotty did the same.
"You go right and I'll go left," Scotty suggested softly. "Be better if there's a little spread between us. We'll also want to find places where we can look out. There's some weed along the shore, and I think I remember a brush pile around a stake near the right-hand edge of the lawn. One piling is there. There's a bunch of old pilings off to the left where the original pier was. I can see if there's cover there. If not, I'll find something."
Scotty had worn his waterproof watch. It was just four minutes to eight. Time to get going.
The boys shook hands, grinned at each other, and pulled their masks back on. They ducked under the blind, side by side, and swam to the front of the structure where brush from last year's cover remained.
Cautiously Rick peered out, then sucked in his breath. A truck had been wheeled out of the barn. It had a dish antenna on top. And next to the truck, a mass of black plastic was slowly inflating. A flying stingaree!
Rick looked quickly for a spot to which he could swim. Near the edge of the cut lawn was the piling Scotty had mentioned. It was tall, with a light on it for night navigation. Rick realized he had seen it on earlier trips, but had not noticed it particularly because his attention had been on the house and its occupants. Slightly upstream from the tall piling were a series of stakes, saplings pushed into the bottom to indicate the limits of water deep enough for a boat. Around three of the pilings brush and grass had gathered, picked up from the current. The middle pile was highest. Rick decided to head for it.
Scotty was also searching for a hiding place. Apparently he found one that was satisfactory, because he gripped Rick's shoulder for a moment, then submerged. Rick saw him as a shadow, hugging the bottom.
Now was the time. Rick took a deep breath to quiet his taut and shaky nerves, then sank to the bottom and began the last leg of the trip. It was only a few dozen yards to the sapling he had chosen. He reached it and glanced upward. The mass of debris made a black blotch on the bright surface of the water. Moving with infinite caution and using the sapling as a guide, he swung his legs under him and rose to a sitting position. The debris was still above the level of his eyes, so he swung his legs back again and knelt. The kneeling position brought his head to just the right level. He lifted his face and looked at the debris. Working cautiously, he brought a hand up and poked a hole through. His fingers enlarged the hole until he could see sufficiently.
The flying stingaree was tugging at the rope that held it! The shape was almost perfect, Rick thought, but he doubted that it had been designed to look like a sting ray. More likely it had been picked to look as little like a conventional balloon as possible. Well, it had served its purpose.