by Matthew Rief
I smiled as I followed him alongside Ange, heading down the small set of stairs just outside the doors. As we reached the bottom step and moved along the gravel driveway towards my Tacoma, I spotted a silver Mercedes with its driver’s-side window rolled halfway down. It was parked along the other side of the street, roughly a hundred feet away from us. There was a guy looking in our direction, his eyes concealed behind a pair of dark sunglasses and the rest of his body undistinguishable behind the tinted window and shadows of the interior.
When we reached my Tacoma, I saw that we were hidden from the Mercedes by the other vehicles in the lot and a small cluster of cocoplum bushes.
Handing the keys to Ange, I said, “Start her up and wait here a second.” She looked at me, confused, as I placed the set of keys into her hand and added, “I’ll be right back.”
“What’s going on?” Jack asked.
I didn’t answer and was out of earshot a few seconds later, keeping to cover as I moved down towards an adjacent side street. After eight years in Naval Special Forces and six years working as a mercenary, I’d learned to trust my instincts. I knew all too well that if I ignored them, it could mean a very bad day.
Keeping my distance from the Mercedes, I crossed Mangrove Street and wrapped around the back side of a tackle shop and a scooter rental pavilion. Moving in close, I crouched down and approached the driver’s-side door from the back. With my right hand pressed against my Sig, ready to draw it at a moment’s notice if necessary, I stood up tall and casually stepped in front of the half-open window.
“Something I can help you with?” I said, causing the guy to snap his head sideways and backward as I caught him off guard.
He looked at me through his dark sunglasses, and his mouth dropped open as if a weight were tied to his bottom lip. Without a word, he slid a jittery right hand towards the ignition, clasped the key already inserted, and started up the engine. Putting it in gear, he hit the gas, screeching the tires over the pavement and sending the Mercedes flying south on Mangrove Street.
I stood unmoving with my hands on my hips, watching as the car took a sharp left, almost hitting a woman on her bicycle before disappearing from view. Well, that was odd, I thought, shaking my head. I walked back across Mangrove Street towards the gravel parking lot of Salty Pete’s.
Ange and Jack stood where the driveway met the sidewalk, both having confused looks on their faces.
“What the hell was that about?” Ange said, still looking in the direction where the Mercedes headed.
I shrugged. “No idea. But whoever that guy was, he was watching us for some reason.”
Ange stood for a moment, working something out in her mind. “Wait,” she said. “You don’t think it was one of those predators from last night, do you? Or maybe a friend of theirs?”
Jack glanced at her, his expression shifting from confused to intrigued. “Last night?” he said. “What did you guys get into now?”
“It was nothing,” I said, waving a hand at Jack. “Just a couple of drunk jerks trying to take advantage of a woman.” Then turning to Ange, I added, “And, no. I don’t think those guys were professional criminals. Professional assholes, yeah. But that guy in the Mercedes was following us for a different reason.”
I walked past Ange and Jack, heading towards my Tacoma.
“What reason is that, bro?” Jack said.
I shook my head. “I don’t know. We should keep our eyes peeled for him or others wherever we go.” I hopped into the driver’s seat, reached for my waistband and pulled out the dagger. “But for now,” I said, “I’m much more interested in figuring out who this is and how their dagger managed to wind up in Florida Bay.”
Ange took a quick look around, then they both climbed in. On the drive back over to the marina, I decided to call Professor Murchison’s office over at the college. I’d sent him a text the previous day and was surprised that I had yet to receive a reply. He was usually quick to respond and eager to enlighten with any knowledge he possessed on a subject.
After the third ring, a woman’s voice came over the speaker. It was his assistant, and when I inquired about the professor, she told me that he was in Switzerland and that the service was poor in the remote region he was visiting. When I asked how long he was supposed to be there, she said he should be back in civilization in the next few days, providing he didn’t decide to extend his stay. I thanked her, hung up the phone and pulled my Tacoma into the Conch Harbor Marina parking lot, easing the front tires a few inches from a railroad tie in the front row.
We walked down the dock towards the Baia and sat around the outdoor dinette, going to work on our laptops and brainstorming our plan for the following day. The excitement of setting out on another treasure hunt overtook me, and I felt like I was chasing a child’s dream going after a second potential wreck.
When we finally hit the sack, I lay in the main cabin’s king-sized bed beside Ange and thought about the guy in the Mercedes. I’d never seen him before and hadn’t a clue what he wanted. But after years of doing the kind of work I was good at and dealing with all sorts of scumbags, I knew that one thing was certain: he was following me. And if I ever saw him again, I’d do more than just casually ask if there was something I could help him with.
SIX
The next morning, we awoke early, cruising out of the dark marina and arriving at our destination just in time to watch the sun rise slowly over the Upper Keys. It was a beautiful day to be out on the water, with a slight breeze from the southeast and not a cloud in the sky.
We hadn’t seen any other boats out on the water except a few shrimp trawlers cruising out for a day’s work, but that didn’t stop us from casting intermittent glances all around us with binoculars just to make sure that no one was following us. When we were confident that we had the stretch of ocean to ourselves, we went straight to work.
The first order of business was to create a survey of the ocean floor using active sonar equipment. Active sonar works by sending out a loud, high-pitched sound referred to as a ping. When the ping comes into contact with a solid object, the sound wave is reflected back to the sonar device. The sonar then uses the amount of time it took for the ping to return, combined with many other sound pulses, to generate a replication of the seafloor. Back when I’d purchased the Baia a year earlier from a retired surgeon named George Shepherd, he’d informed me that the boat was equipped with built-in side-scan sonar, which allowed me to navigate safely through the many narrow cuts and channels in the Keys. It also came in handy at times like this, when I desired a digital replication of the seafloor.
Firing up the equipment and linking it via USB to my laptop, we began our search. Jack and Ange sat around the outdoor dinette, watching the laptop screen as the world below came to form. Most of our search area was less than twenty feet deep, allowing us to see the bottom clearly from the deck. But there were a few locations where the water was deeper, so we focused primarily on those spots with the sonar.
I kept the Baia at a steady ten knots, which was slow enough to give the sonar adequate time to do its job. It was a slow and arduous process, fueled by a constant supply of Colombian medium roast coffee, coconut water, freshly sliced mango, and leftover lobster. We kept at it long into the night, and by noon the following day, we had ourselves a complete map of our search area.
“What do you think, Jack?” I asked as the three of us peered at the laptop screen, looking over the fruits of our labor.
He shrugged. “It’s hard to tell, bro.” Then, pointing to a few unique underwater formations, he added, “These spots here seem promising. The problem is that dagger was probably underwater for nearly three hundred and fifty years. If there was anything else with it, it could be scattered for miles.”
I nodded. Aside from the search and discovery of the Intrepid, I didn’t have a lot of experience in the treasure hunting department. But I did know about salvage and the incredible effects the ocean can have on objects and shipwrecks over long periods of time. During
my time in the Navy, I’d spent a few years as an instructor at EOD school at Eglin Air Force Base in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. There, I was able to fine-tune my knowledge of salvage among some of the best in the world.
After eating a quick lunch of BLT sandwiches and potato chips, I headed into the guest cabin and came back out holding a large plastic hard case. Jack and Ange both smiled as I appeared, and I set the case on the aft deck beside the transom and unclasped the plastic hinges. Lifting open the lid, I revealed a yellow cigar-shaped device that was a foot wide, five feet long and looked like a torpedo.
“In the words of Salty Pete,” I said, glancing down at the device, “let’s mow the lawn.”
Ange leaned over. “Finally, a little excitement.” She was wearing a pair of denim shorts that complemented her long, tanned legs nicely and had just a white bikini top covering her upper body. She stood tall and turned her gaze aft, looking out over the water through a pair of aviator sunglasses. In an excited voice, she added, “I call the first hit.”
I smiled as I lifted the device from its case, hooked it up and set it into the water off the back of the swim platform. Much like the guy walking around on the beach with a metal detector, the magnetometer picks up anything metal resting beneath the waves. And I’d pulled out all of the stops when I’d purchased this one. It was top-of-the-line and powerful enough to detect even the smallest metal objects through over a hundred feet of water.
Once the magnetometer was on and working properly, I let out enough slack in the tether so that we’d drag it twenty feet behind the Baia. Jack had the laptop up and running with a combined survey of the entire seafloor, which we could use to mark locations where the magnetometer found something, or hot spots as we called them.
I maneuvered the Baia to the northwest corner of the grid, turned us around and cruised steadily south, the yellow torpedo shooting through the water behind us just a few inches under the surface. After less than five minutes of towing the magnetometer, we heard its digital control station beep to life. Ange, who was standing on the swim platform, turned to face Jack and me with a big grin on her face.
Reading her mind, I idled the Baia, grabbed Ange’s mask from the storage compartment beside me, then walked over and handed it to her.
“Just seventeen feet to the bottom,” I said, stepping onto the swim platform beside her and leaning over the stern. I glanced at the magnetometer’s control screen, then pointed below and added, “Looks like it’s coming from right there.”
By the time I looked back up at Ange, she’d already slipped out of her shorts, revealing a sexy white bikini bottom.
Still grinning, she slid her mask over her face. “If I find this thing on the first bite, you owe me the finest bottle of champagne, Dodge.”
I laughed and replied, “If you find a wreck on the first hit, I’ll buy you a case of it.”
She smiled, stepped towards the edge of the swim platform, and dove headfirst into the water. She hit the water perfectly, barely making a splash, and I watched as she glided through the clear water towards the bottom.
I knew that if we dove down every time the magnetometer went off, we’d probably be at this for weeks, but I humored Ange. It was the first hit, after all. From here on out, though, we all agreed that the best course of action would be to finish mowing the lawn, gather up all of our data, then search the areas with the highest activity first and work our way down the list.
Less than a minute later, Ange broke the surface holding an object in her hands that was covered in rust, barnacles, and seaweed. Ange slid her mask down to hang around her neck, then handed me the object, which I realized was an old abandoned crab pot. The metal links were mostly broken, and it was covered in so much muck that you could barely see inside it.
“At least we know the meg is working, bro,” Jack said, laughing as he leaned over the sunbed to see what Ange had found.
I threw the pot back into the water with a splash, then held my hand out to help Ange up the ladder.
“I guess you’re off the hook,” she said as I pulled her up and handed her a towel.
I grinned. “I guess so. Lucky for you, I was going to buy you a bottle of champagne tonight at dinner anyway.”
As she dried off, I stepped into the cockpit and brought the engines back up to ten knots.
“One down,” Jack said, nestling back into the cushioned half-moon seat around the dinette, “a thousand more to go.”
SEVEN
Silberhorn
Bernese Alps, Switzerland
Professor Frank Murchison lay flat on his chest, his body barely fitting through a narrow crevice deep within the dark cave. He extended his wiry frame as far as he could, then stretched out his hands, which tightly gripped a Nikon D3 camera housed in a rugged waterproof case. Holding the camera steady, he snapped a few pictures, the bright flash illuminating the darkness for an instant each time.
Once satisfied, he eased the expensive camera back onto his chest, then reached with his right hand for the flashlight strapped to the side of his belt. Switching it on, he scanned the beam in front of him, admiring the ancient cave paintings that artistically adorned the flat wall of rock.
Incredible, he thought as he brought his left hand up to his face and wiped a fine layer of sweat from his brow. There was barely enough space for him to complete the action, with the never-ending slabs of rock sandwiching him together from both sides.
He continued to admire the cave paintings that had been seen by just a small handful of eyes over the past thousands of years. It was hard for him to tell for sure at first glance, but judging by their design, location, and medium, he imagined that they dated back roughly five thousand years.
Once he’d taken enough pictures, he inched his way backward, traveling for over five minutes before reaching a space large enough for him to dust off his pants and jacket and rise to his feet.
Frank Murchison was just under six feet tall, weighed one hundred and eighty pounds and had thinning dark hair and tanned skin. Though he was in his early fifties, he moved and had the energy of a man much younger. Having spent twenty years as a professor of history and archeology at Harvard, he’d finally had enough of the cold and headed south to work at the closest college to the equator in the United States: Key West Community College. It might not have been the best career move, but Frank had never regretted the decision for a second. To Frank, no longer teaching at one of the most prestigious universities in the world simply meant that he had more time to go on funded academic expeditions around the world—an aspect which had always been his favorite part of the job.
He grabbed his backpack from the ground, stowed his camera, then headed back towards the opening of the cave alongside the two mountain guides who’d found the paintings. The three of them had traveled deep within the bowels of the intricate cave system, to portions few men had ever reached before. It had taken two hours, and they’d used both Frank’s high-end electronics and the incredible memory of the two men to navigate without becoming lost in the thousands of branches and sharp turns.
The cave had only been discovered a few months earlier, when climbers had fallen through a thin sheet of ice on the southern slope of Silberhorn, a twelve-thousand-foot mountain between Bern and Valais. Though it had yet to be extensively explored, it was believed to be one of the longest caves on earth, following many of the same geological patterns as nearby caves such as Hölloch and the Grotte aux Fées.
Few people had explored it since its discovery. This was due primarily to its isolated location and the fact that navigating the cave was treacherous, resulting in three deaths in only a few short months.
As the trio trekked their way towards the opening of the cave, the dark rock faces surrounding them on all sides slowly transitioned, giving way to thick sheets of ice and hard-packed snow.
A swift, bone-chilling breeze swept into them as they spotted the faint glow from the outside world radiating from less than a quarter of a mile ahead. Frank wore
a thick blue North Face jacket and pants, along with waterproof hiking boots. The light from the distant sun bled through portions of the ice, revealing his tanned skin and part of his thinning dark hair that snuck out from under his thick Ushanka hat.
Near the entrance of the cave, the three grabbed the rest of their gear. Large hiking backpacks that contained everything they’d needed for their two-day journey to and from the train station at Jungfraujoch, the highest railway station in Europe.
Stepping out of the narrow entrance, which was almost completely covered in snow and ice, Frank took a deep breath of fresh air and stared off in the distance at the beautiful mountain range surrounding him. Massive snowcapped peaks and, far off in the distance, beyond the cloudless horizon, a lush green landscape littered with crystal-clear lakes and rivers.
After pausing for a moment to take it all in, Frank joined his companions as they began their two-day journey, passing through some of the most awe-inspiring scenery in the world. When his tired and hungry body finally reached the train station in Jungfraujoch, he paid his companions a generous fee, then decided to spend one night at the Hotel Alpina. Once showered and changed, he sat out on the hotel balcony, which had a great view of the small village and the mountains surrounding him.
After ordering a plate of rösti, a popular Swiss dish similar to hash browns, and a Swiss lemonade soda called Elmer Citro, his first order of business was to check his messages. Leaning back into his solid oak chair and reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his smartphone, which displayed only a dark, blank screen. His phone hadn’t had a single bar of signal throughout the entire duration of the trek. So though he was eager to upload the hundreds of photos he’d taken to his laptop, his first order of business was to turn on his phone and check his messages.
After scrolling and reading through droves of work emails from colleagues and contacts all over the world, he paused as he saw a message from Logan Dodge that had multiple attachments.