A Ryan Weller Box Set Books 1 - 3

by Evan Graver

  “What makes you so sure that he’s here?”

  “I bugged his boat.”

  They walked past the marina office and followed the dock toward the glistening steel hull of the forty-four-foot Amazon, Alamo. When they came alongside the boat, Greg yelled, “Ahoy, the boat.”

  Mango Hulsey, clad in nothing but surf shorts, emerged from the main salon. “I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.” He swung his muscular five-foot-ten-inch frame onto the dock and shook Greg’s hand. His smile faded to a fearful expression. “What’s wrong?”

  “You name it,” Greg said.

  Mango ticked points off on his fingers. “Pirates, sharks, Kilroy, the cartel.”

  “Kilroy kidnapped Emily.”

  “That rotten son-of-a-bitch!”

  “What’s wrong, honey?” Jennifer asked, stepping into the cockpit. She was a head shorter than her husband, with dirty-blonde hair, watery green eyes, and a runner’s physique. Her smile turned to a frown when she saw Greg.

  “Can I buy you a drink?” Greg asked.

  “Sure, I’ll drink for free all day long. Come on, Jenn.”

  “Fine,” she muttered. Jennifer locked the salon door, and they headed for the restaurant.

  On the way, Mango asked, “Who’s the bodyguard?”

  “That’s Short Rick.” Greg hit the highlights of the man’s service history.

  “I’d ask why they call you Short Rick, but I think I already know.”

  “And I’ll kick your ass if I hear you call me that again,” Rick said.

  “What’s in the case?” Mango asked.

  Greg replied, “A present for you.”

  “Are you trying to bribe me?”

  “Nope, just a gift for a friend. Something another friend was working on and thought you might like.”

  They took seats at a table overlooking the crowded harbor. Rick put the case on the table and slid it across to Mango.

  Mango undid the latches and opened the lid. “Whoa! That’s awesome.” He withdrew a prosthetic leg and held it up. A realistic silicone foot was attached to the tibia shaft. Mango massaged the foot, feeling the titanium bone structure underneath it. Hidden under the aluminum calf cover were miniature robotics, which replicated the movement of calf muscles, the Achilles tendon, and manipulated the foot bones.

  Mango slipped off his below-the-knee prosthesis and started to pull on the new one.

  “Wait a minute,” Greg said. He turned the box and pulled out a rubber compression sleeve designed to fit over Mango’s stump. “I was able to get my hands on the last mold of your leg and have it replicated for this one. This sock has electrical sensors sewn into it. They pick up the movement of your thigh and knee muscles and transmit them through the sleeve to receptacles in the prosthetic cup.”

  After pulling on the new sleeve, Mango tugged on the leg. “It’s a little loose.”

  “It’s supposed to be,” Greg said, pulling a small hand pump from the box.

  Mango fitted the pump to where Greg indicated on the leg and inflated the ballistic nylon air cells around his stump. The tiny imbedded circuits in the air cells mated with the ones on the sleeve.

  “There’s more adjustments you can make to it,” Greg said. “There’s a manual in the box.”

  Mango stood up and began pacing up and down the bar area. “Holy cow, this thing is awesome, bro!”

  Jennifer sat with her chin on her hands, watching her husband jump up and down, something which would be perilous at best with his old prosthetic.

  “The toes spread out when I land,” Mango said. He sat down and flexed his calf and knee muscles, watching the robotics in the leg and foot respond. “This thing is unbelievable.”

  Jennifer looked over at Greg. “I know you didn’t come all this way to give my husband a new leg. What’s Ryan gotten himself into now?”

  Greg smiled. There was no fooling her. She’s always been shrewd. She and Emily are friends and that’s my advantage. When their drinks arrived, he explained to her about Emily. He felt he had the best shot at getting Mango’s help if Jennifer was onboard. “Kilroy wants to trade Emily for the gold,” Greg said to finish his monologue.

  “When are we leaving?” Jennifer asked.

  Greg smiled. “Pack a bag, the helicopter is waiting.”

  “Are you sure, Jenn?” Mango asked.

  Jennifer Hulsey stood. “I’m going to pack. Emily needs our help.”

  Mango followed her down the dock while Greg and Rick remained at the table, nursing their drinks.

  Thirty minutes later, the Hulseys were back at the bar, bags in hand.

  “I assume you have toys with you?” Mango said to Greg.

  “Accuracy International suit your fancy?”

  Mango grinned at the mention of the bolt-action sniper rifle. “It’ll be like spooning with an old friend.”

  “Hey, watch it, mister.” Jennifer slugged her husband in the arm.

  Greg was another fifty euros lighter by the time they reached the helicopter. The whole trip had been expensive, renting the bird, Mango’s new leg, and paying for two weeks of dock space at the marina for Alamo. It was all right, he reasoned. As Ryan’s benefactor, he was getting a cut of the gold. He rubbed his hands together as the bird took off and headed north.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  By the time Peggy Lynn arrived over the dive site, Northwest Passage was already nearby, and two other cabin cruisers full of Joulie’s men circled the area, acting as guards to keep away would-be pirates and gawkers. Ryan Weller was also dressed and ready to dive. The salvage vessel nosed into two-foot waves and Dennis kept the throttles forward just enough to hold them in place over the wreck.

  “Send the LARS after I’m down,” Ryan said. The dive plan called for him to go straight to the chamber to complete his decompression schedule, and he didn’t want to waste his limited bottom time riding the LARS.

  “Roger that,” Emery said through the helmet radio.

  Ryan tugged at the umbilical to give himself some slack and stepped up on the rail. “Ready to dive.”

  Captain Dennis said, “Dive, dive, dive.”

  Ryan stepped out into the ocean. He plunged into the water, an explosion of bubbles enveloping him. At fifteen feet, the umbilical stopped him, and he did his in-water checks. With them complete, Emery began paying out line, and Ryan dropped into the haze.

  Where’s that grinning beast? he wondered, twisting to look for the tiger shark.

  His boots settled into the ooze beside the Humvee. The storm hadn’t moved it but one of the Humvees that had been chained to the deck was now lying upside down at the entrance to the hold. Ryan maneuvered around it and made his way toward the first spot where Ashlee’s algorithm had indicated the gold might be found. After winding his way through the carnage, he found the first spot. The strong box wasn’t there.

  The next spot was the correct one. Ryan lay flat on his stomach and shone his light under the pile of vehicles. The rusty box was still strapped to a broken pallet, sandwiched between two MRAPs and a Humvee.

  “There it is,” Ryan said. He stood and played his light along the sweeping curve of the hull and up the deck. There was another Humvee strapped to the deck, twenty feet above him. “What do you think?”

  Travis and Dennis huddled around the computer screen, watching the video feed.

  “Can we get a winch on the box and drag it out?” Dennis asked.

  “Maybe,” Ryan replied. “We need to take some weight off it.” He turned to look for a place to attach a come-along cable puller. “We can wrap a strap around the bumper of that MRAP.”

  “Turn back around and shine the light on the other vehicles,” Travis ordered.

  Ryan complied and ran the cone of light along the tangle of steel.

  “We could put a couple of lift bags on that Humvee and lift the front of it on a pivot,” Travis said. “That would free the box and let us drag it out.”

  “Sounds like a good idea,” Ryan said.


  “That would work,” Dennis agreed.

  Ryan made his way back to the first strong box. “We can use another come-along to pull this MRAP over.”

  “We’ll do that first,” Travis said. “If I remember right, we can move the MRAP and the first strong box, then we’ll have an easier path to the second.”

  “It’ll take two of us to do the work,” Ryan said.

  “Yes, it will,” Dennis agreed. “We need to anchor this tub. I’ll have Emery drop a chain. Can you attach it to one of the crane cables?”

  “Yeah, send down some cable clamps for an inch-and-a-quarter cable.”

  “Copy,” Dennis said. “The chain will have a lift bag attached to one end. Shoot it when you have everything attached.”

  “Roger,” Ryan replied.

  He made his way out of the wreck and heard the muffled sounds of the diesels laboring in the waves. A few minutes later, he heard Emery say, “Coming hot!”

  The chain landed in a tangle, fifty feet from the cable Ryan had determined would work best for their situation. It was still attached to the crane’s winch drum, and the cable’s bitter end had been bolted to the Santo Domingo’s deck to keep it from running completely off the drum if the drum brake slipped. He walked over to the chain and found a small kit bag attached to one end. Inside were the cable clamps, wrenches, and a clevis pin. He bent the loose end of the cable around a thimble and crimped it to the main part of the cable with a clamp. Careful to monitor his breathing, Ryan worked steadily. If he started breathing heavily, he might over breathe the gas coming through the lines, causing a buildup of carbon dioxide inside the helmet. If it got bad enough, he could pass out from lack of oxygen.

  He used four cable clamps to crimp the loop into place and tightened them with the wrench. Sweat rolled down his forehead and dripped off his eyebrows. Reflexively, he brought his hand up to wipe it away and forgot his head was encased in the helmet. He blinked back the water stinging his eyes.

  Ryan attached the chain to the crane cable with the clevis pin. The thimble would prevent the clevis pin from wearing on the cable as it jerked around in time with the motion of the vessel on the surface. When he had the clevis pin screwed into the U-shaped clevis, he slid a cotter pin into the hole to keep the pin from worming its way out, then he walked over to the lift bag. He used his bailout bottle to inject just enough gas to get the chain to rise. He stepped back to avoid being tangled in the chain and cable rode while he tilted his head to watch the bag drag the cable up through the water column. With each foot the bag rose, the air inside it would expand. What had been a tiny balloon at the bottom would be a massive ball at the surface. As the air expanded, the speed of the bag’s ascent would also increase. A safety relief valve would prevent the bag from overinflating. Normally, a diver would ascend with the bag to control it, but Ryan didn’t have that luxury.

  “You’ll have to grade this one on speed and distance out of the water,” Ryan said.

  “Should shoot out about five or six feet,” Travis said. “We sent Stacey and Don out in the inflatable to collect the bag before it collapses.”

  “All right,” Ryan said. “Ready to come up.”

  After his ten-minute stop at one seventy-five, Ryan was quickly reeled in. He entered the chamber two minutes after he surfaced.

  Through the small window, he watched Travis finish gearing up. He’d been Ryan’s safety diver and only needed his hat snugged down to the neck ring and topside checks ran. Travis carried an assortment of tools on his belt and gave Ryan the hang-loose hand gesture before jumping over the side. Ryan lay down on the bench, closed his eyes, and started his breathing exercises. Three counts in, pause, four out.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Travis Wisnewski felt the crush of pressure as he dropped through the water column. This was his third dive on the wreck. So far it had been one of the easier salvage jobs he’d worked on. The sea temperatures were moderate, and he didn’t require heated or cooled water to be pumped through his suit. Visibility was nearly thirty feet outside the wreck and would expand as the seas moderated. What light that did filter down through the water was augmented by his powerful dive lights. Today, he’d forgone the dry gloves and wore a pair of white cotton with blue latex on the palms and fingers. The rubber made a solid grip on the light switch as he flicked it on.

  He stood outside the hull, looking at the sea life slowly attaching itself to the steel. Small, wispy beards of growth swung in the current. A school of black drums hovered nearby. It was nice to see life on the wreck. “Let’s do this.”

  He worked his way to the MRAP hiding the first strong box, climbed another MRAP that the first was leaning on, and began to work a thick nylon strap around the tow hooks on the first truck’s rear bumper. He latched the come-along hook to the strap and spooled out the cable as he jumped off the MRAP. He landed with a soft thud on the steel hull and walked toward another MRAP they’d identified as their anchor while studying the video footage.

  The come-along’s cable didn’t stretch all the way to the anchor. Travis dropped the come-along and pulled another strap from his pouch. He stepped forward to secure it to the anchor MRAP. As he started to feed the strap through the truck’s bumper hook, he spotted a tie-down chain hanging from a padeye in the hull’s deck. He grabbed the chain and put both hooks on the padeye, fed the nylon strap through the chain loop and then stretched the strap between the come-along and the tie-down chain.

  “Is that gonna hold?” Dennis asked.

  “Guess we’ll find out,” Travis said, sweeping the camera along the length of the taut cable. He grabbed the come-along handle and began to ratchet it back and forth to crank in the cable. The big troop transporter shifted forward, the bumper sliding on the slick steel. The rear stayed just past vertical, leaning away from Travis. He continued to ratchet the handle back and forth. Slowly, the big vehicle slid forward until the front bumper hit one of the ship’s ribs. Blocked from sliding, the MRAP’s rear came forward, passed vertical, and fell in slow motion.

  Travis sprung back, tugging his umbilical out of the way. A giant cloud of silt billowed up as the MRAP landed on its top.

  “Five minutes,” Emery said.

  “Copy that,” Travis replied. He waded into the silt bloom, angling for the strong box.

  Through the swirling particulate, his lights found the gleam of gold. He gasped when he saw the pile of bullion spilling out of the strong box. He picked up two bars, weighing them in his hands. “Yeah, baby! This is what we came for.”

  He knelt and began stacking the gold on the deck outside the box. They would need to right the box and fix the latches before reloading it. He’d held the gold bar Ryan had brought up, but holding these was euphoric. Nothing he’d ever salvaged had given him this kind of an adrenaline rush. The doubts that had plagued him throughout the job, and the arguments with Ryan, washed away in his elation.

  “Get out of there, Travis,” Emery said.

  “I’m coming, Grandpa,” he said. Quickly, he shoved two bars into the pockets of his BCD. These were his, payment for services rendered.

  Travis spent most of his three hours of deco time sitting in the LARS basket, staring at the two gold bars. At twenty feet, he could easily see Ryan sitting on the rail. He waited until Ryan looked down and stretched his arms over his head, the gold bars held in each hand like a conqueror.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  By late afternoon, the waves had lessened to a foot in height. The weather service was calling for smooth conditions for the next four days. Ryan mounted the steps from the galley followed by Travis, Stacey, Don, Dennis, and Emery. They’d all pitched in to clean up after supper. Ryan walked to the dressing bench and sat down. He started pulling on his drysuit undergarments. Travis did the same. They would dive together with Dennis as the standby.

  The men dressed with minimal conversation. They’d already discussed how they would recover the boxes. Stacey and Emery helped clamp their helmets into place and perform
topside checks. Each stood, the heavy weight of the gear making the walk to the LARS cumbersome. They stepped into the basket, barely big enough for both, and Dennis raised it with the crane and swung them out over the water. He pressed the lever forward, and the spool began to unwind, dropping the men into the abyss.

  It didn’t take long for them to reach the bottom. Their lights slashed horizontal beams in the pitch-black water. Ryan climbed up the basket and removed the hook. He laid the crane cable over his shoulder and they moved into the hull, heading for the second box of gold. As they walked past the stack of gold bricks sitting beside the overturned box, Travis swept his light over them, letting their gleam energize both men.

  “Ready to tar paper?” Ryan asked.

  “It’s give ’em tar paper. Get it right, eh?”

  Ryan laughed. “I’ll wrap, you crank, Yupper.”

  “Roger that,” Travis said, finding a padeye to attach his come-along.

  Ryan climbed onto the MRAP and attached his strap to the bumper tow hook. He took the come-along hook Travis held up to him and fastened it to the strap. They cranked the MRAP off the Humvee and left it suspended by the come-along. Ryan grabbed several loose tie-down chains and linked them together to attach the MRAP to the hull. They were able to ease the tension off the come-along. Travis unhooked it from the hull and the strap.

  Moving to the Humvee, Ryan took another strap and worked it around the strong box. He had to lie under the Humvee and pass it to Travis, who looped it back to him. Travis passed him the hook of the come-along and he attached it to the strap. Travis hooked the come-along to a nearby MRAP. They extracted lift bags from their work pouches and tied them to the Humvee’s front bumper with short pieces of rope. To coordinate the lift, and keep the Humvee level, they slowly added air to the bags.

  “Takes a lot of air to lift a Humvee at three hundred and fifty feet,” Travis said.

  “More than I figured,” Ryan replied.

  “A little bit more. She’s starting to rise.”