Wood's Tempest

by Steven Becker

  Trufante whistled his approval as they approached the boat, and he offered—and, surprisingly, Mel accepted—his help aboard the boat. Mac waded out and boarded, keeping a careful eye on the two of them. Both were happy now, but he knew from experience that that mood could turn on a dime and things would return to normal. With a “take it while I can get it” attitude, he started the engine and sent Trufante to the bow to release the line from the trawler.

  With the sun just behind them, the water was brilliantly lit, displaying the palette of color that taunted thousands of amateur artists, and at the same time revealing the hazards below them. Without the help of the chartplotter, Mac navigated the winding route to Marathon by memory, and they soon pulled up to the dock behind Keys Fisheries. Mel went to the office while Mac and Trufante unloaded the catch. A half-hour later, with a large check in his pocket, Mac fished a dozen hundreds from his wallet and paid off an eager Trufante, who disappeared like a yellowtail with a barracuda in pursuit.

  Mac shrugged, checked the lines, and, with Mel beside him clutching a bag with the hard drive in the dry box, walked to the parking lot. Mac thought he glimpsed Trufante walking upstairs to the bar as he opened the car door for Mel. Both were still smiling—a very unsettling occurrence.

  Four

  “Would you watch the road?”

  Mac pulled his attention back to the two-lane road in front of him. As spectacular as the water looked from a boat, the view from the Long Key Bridge put it in a different light. It felt as if a magnet was pulling his eyes to the water as they passed the aqua flats. Shades of brown speckled with white-sand patches drew his eyes. He knew there were likely lobster or stone crabs there. Then, as they approached the center of the span, the blues became deeper, finally settling on an indigo that could only be described in paint color nomenclature. He knew the pass well. He and Wood had rebuilt the bridge together, and Mac remembered every pothole and cut that held lobster and fish.

  His attention was brought back to the dry box sitting on Mel’s lap. Hopefully, TJ would be able to download its contents. Mac was torn between hoping it would reveal the location of some long-forgotten treasure, or having nothing useful. There was something to be said for his disparate life. Some might call it boring, but he was satisfied. Mel had struggled with island life at first after leaving the ACLU and moving back from Virginia. The last year or so, her fight against Big Sugar had given her the why she needed. Together they were happy. But Mac knew if there was something on the treasure hunter’s hard drive, he would be like a sailfish stalking a bait ball. No way he could ignore it.

  The late-afternoon traffic was light as they moved through Islamorada and entered Tavernier. With the majority of the bridges behind him, Mac focused on the road as they drove through his least favorite part of the island chain and entered Key Largo.

  Mac turned right off US 1 and onto the side street that led to TJ and Alicia’s dive shop. Mac checked the time; he hoped TJ would be back from his afternoon charter. Seeing the large red and white dive flag flying over the shop, he turned into the crushed coral driveway. The lot held a half-dozen cars, many with dive stickers. Running a business here was hard, especially in the off-season, and Mac was glad to see that the couple appeared to be doing well.

  He parked off to the side, and they went to the shop. A buzzer attached to the door alerted Alicia, who sat behind the counter with her nose buried in a computer. She looked up and smiled, quickly coming around the counter and hugging Mel and then Mac. There was a special bond between Mac and the diminutive woman, who had been a desk-bound analyst when he had met her. He and Trufante had guided Alicia through her first field action. It was good to watch her grow from the shy and clumsy geek to a happy and fulfilled woman.

  “How are you guys?” she asked.

  “You look great,” Mel said.

  “Getting out as often as I can. With summer over, the dive business has slowed down. TJ’s got the group today.” She looked at a large digital clock on the wall. “Should be back anytime. Let me get him on the radio.”

  “No need. We can catch up while we wait.”

  A few minutes later, Mac heard TJ on the radio. He was already halfway down the dock, with Alicia and Mel right behind him, when he saw the converted sportfisher enter the canal. Mac waited with the bow line while TJ spun the boat 180 degrees and, using the wind, allowed it to settle against the dock. Mac climbed aboard with a line, while Alicia waited by the stern ready to toss the line to TJ.

  With the boat secure, Mac and Mel stepped aside to let TJ and Alicia finish their business. The talk amongst the divers was all positive, and Mel helped several take pictures with TJ. With his short, sun-bleached dreadlocks, he looked the part of a Keys divemaster. Several customers tried to tip him as they disembarked, but he refused, urging them to come back for more.

  A helping-hand chain was quickly formed to unload the dive gear, and soon it was just the four of them on the dock. “Business looks good,” Mac said. With all the competition in the Keys, and most of the commercial dive boats packed like cattle cars running out to Pennekamp Park every day, Alicia and TJ had tried a different business plan. They offered custom-blended mixed-gas charters designed to maximize the divers’ bottom time. The enriched oxygen blend known as NITROX generally came in thirty-two or thirty-six percent mixes. The added oxygen allowed longer bottom times by mitigating the effects of the nitrogen buildup in the divers’ bloodstream that caused the bends, but it had a drawback. The richer mixes became fatal, causing oxygen toxicity at depth, making the tradeoff not always worth it. TJ had designed a program that gave the divers the optimum mix for each particular dive. This decreased the surface intervals between dives and allowed the dives themselves to be longer. The reviews were positive—most dive shops wouldn’t be filling their charter boats on a weekday in October—but it was a lot of work, especially without a crew.

  “Looking good there, big man,” Mac said. Though muscular, TJ’s genetics configured him in the shape of a bowling ball, a stark contrast to Alicia’s rail-thin figure.

  “Keeping you busy down there?” TJ asked.

  “Got something for you to look at if you have time.” Without needing to be asked, Mac stepped aboard and started pulling the empty tanks from their racks and setting them on the docks. Each one had a piece of blue tape that indicated the percent of oxygen of each mix. He noticed quite a few in the mid-twenties. With standard air being twenty-one percent oxygen, he wondered what effect the slight increase had. “What’s the twenty-six percent blend do?”

  “Brewed that up for a 130-foot dive. With that mix, you can get almost forty minutes of bottom time.”

  Mac knew the standard dive tables by heart. With regular air, the bottom time for that depth was less than twenty minutes. “Nice—as long as they don’t suck air, it’s a big advantage.”

  After unloading and hosing down the boat, they moved upstairs to the apartment the couple lived in. Alicia offered beers to everyone, and they entered the War Room, set up behind a pair of doors that looked like a closet. The environment was stark and cold. At least a dozen large monitors lit up on the far wall after TJ pressed the spacebar on the keyboard at his command center that looked like Kirk’s captain’s chair from the Starship Enterprise. The screens were all showing the same image, but Mac knew TJ had the ability to mix them up as he needed.

  Mel moved toward the captain’s chair and handed him the dry box. TJ looked at it like it was a bomb.

  “It’s okay. Remember Kurt Hunter? His wife’s a forensic tech for Miami-Dade. She gave it to me,” Mac said.

  TJ opened the lid and removed the drive. “No worries here. Give me a minute.”

  He got up and went to a wire shelving unit full of bins, the only piece of furniture placed against the side of the room. The monitors on the front wall and TJ’s captain’s chair made the room look full, but with the exception of Alicia’s desk, there was no other furniture. He pulled out a bin and brought it to the chair. Pre-Alicia,
TJ had been a big-time gamer, designing programs and winning competitions. His attention had turned to the real world after meeting Alicia. It was interesting how transferable his skills had been.

  He found the connector he was looking for and plugged one end into the drive. The other end had a standard USB plug, which he inserted into a port in the chair. His hands flew over the keyboard, and several seconds later, the screen showed a list of the files on the drive.

  “Who’d this belong to?” TJ said, scrolling through the directory.

  “Gill Gross,” Mac said.

  “Ah, that would explain the structure.”

  The names of the folders were four-digit numbers, which looked like years. From the early 1600s to the mid-nineteenth century, just about every year had a folder.

  “Can you open 1733?” Mac asked.

  “Sure.”

  The 1733 Plate Fleet had been lost in a hurricane off the Keys. The wrecks had been found and salvaged in the seventies and eighties. They were now off-limits to salvors. Mac didn’t expect to see anything new, perhaps just an insight into Gross’s mind.

  TJ opened the file, and Mac immediately recognized the name of the ships. None of this was new information, but Gross had done his homework. A similar file existed for the 1715 fleet that had met its demise along the east coast of Florida.

  “Lot of information here,” TJ said.

  Another screen changed, and Mac turned to Alicia, who was pounding on her keyboard. Mel leaned over her. “Here’s a list of every Spanish wreck by value,” Alicia said. “We can cross-reference these to the years they were lost and see what Gross was up to.”

  “Or—” TJ stopped and hit several keys. The directory re-sorted itself, showing the most recent files on top. The two that TJ had opened were on top. He clicked the third.

  “Showoff,” Alicia said.

  For the next several minutes, the room was filled with the sound of keyboards clicking and screens flashing. The data war between TJ and Alicia was well underway when Mac moved toward the door where Mel was standing, her face illuminated by the light from her phone. When he reached her, she handed it to him. Mac took the phone and squinted at the display. With a flourish, she took her glasses off and handed them to him.

  Mac might have suffered, squinting to read the email if they were in public, but, rationalizing the use of the glasses to himself due to the low light in the room, he carefully put them on. The display was clear now, and he started reading.

  Ms. Woodson,

  Although we’ve never met, I feel that we should know each other. My name is Vince Bugarra of Treasure Hunters, Inc. Your father and I were acquainted and worked together back in the nineties. By the way, my deepest condolences on your loss.

  It has come to my attention that you may be in possession of some data retrieved from Gill Gross’s computer. I would like to speak with you about this at your earliest opportunity, and in that regard, I plan on being in the Marathon area for the next few days.

  Sincerely, Vince Bugarra

  Five

  Bugarra had Trufante cornered in the bar. Several inquiries had led him to the lanky Cajun. It had taken more drinks than he planned, and his patience with the deck hand’s tales was waning. If drinks weren’t going to be enough, he decided to throw money into the mix.

  “They’re old friends and there’s a rather large reward for information …” Bugarra let the sentence hang and got the reaction he wanted.

  “So, you’re interested in Mac and Mel?” Trufante asked.

  It was as if Bugarra had wasted the last hour, but he had finally broken through. “You have a boat, we could go see them now.” He pulled a stack of hundreds out of his pocket long enough for Trufante to see them, then slid the bills back out of sight.

  Bugarra followed Trufante’s gaze as he looked around the bar, then down to the marina below. He had overheard Mel saying something about heading to Key Largo. She had been secretive as usual around him, but he knew that Mac’s center console was still tied up to the seawall near the lobster boats. Trufante tossed down his drink and seemed to do a calculation in his head. Bugarra waited, already knowing what the answer would be.

  “Gotta be just a run out there and back. I can’t have you in the house either. Just a quick look.”

  Bugarra could tell Trufante was wavering and decided to seal the deal. “One more for the road?” Bugarra looked down the bar, caught the bartender’s attention, and ordered two shots of Pilar white rum. He had been dealing with people like Trufante for a long time and knew that the extra few dollars spent on top-shelf liquor, brands that they would never drink themselves, often paid dividends. Bugarra downed his in one gulp and watched Trufante roll the rum around in his mouth as if trying to get his taste buds to remember it. Finally, his large Adam’s apple bobbed and he turned and led the way out of the bar, down the stairs, and across the parking lot. Bugarra sweetened the pot a little more once they were on the boat, sliding two hundreds into Trufante’s hand as he pulled the keys out of a small compartment concealed in the console.

  They didn’t need the glow from the setting sun; Trufante’s thousand-dollar grin could have lit the way to Mac’s island. Bugarra was vaguely familiar with the area from studying charts, but as Trufante drove the serpentine route necessary to dodge the shoals and sandbars, he was quickly lost. At about the same time that the center span of the Seven Mile Bridge dropped below the horizon, they entered the cluster of mangrove-covered islands. By the time they had passed between a pair and cut behind another, he had no idea where they were. To make matters worse, the Cajun was driving by memory and the chartplotter remained off.

  When Trufante cut the wheel hard to port and slid into an unmarked channel, he saw Travis’s trawler tied to the solitary piling. It was the only sign of life Bugarra had seen—-beside some birds—in the past forty minutes. Trufante stopped next to the large trawler, reached over the gunwale, and retrieved two dock lines, which he used to tie off the center console. Without a thought, he vaulted over the side and landed in what was for him calf-deep water. Bugarra looked down at his shoes and slowly took them off before joining Trufante in the water.

  Together they waded to the beach. Bugarra wasn’t sure where they were going until Trufante opened a gate, woven with mangrove branches to conceal it, leading to a well-worn path. As he followed, a touch of paranoia crept into his thoughts. If Travis had gone to so much trouble to disguise the place, there could be security cameras or even booby traps. He tried to match the Cajun’s footfalls, but his shorter legs couldn’t quite equal the taller man’s stride. As they approached the clearing and he saw the house, Bugarra relaxed slightly. There were no turrets or concealed gun placements, just a new-looking stilt house. He doubted the door even had a lock. It was a strange phenomenon out in the boonies that if you were going to lock your house, it had better be a fortress. Often it was easier to leave the doors open and let anyone take what they needed without doing damage.

  Trufante confirmed that by walking upstairs and letting himself into the house. He entered, only to return a minute later with a beer in hand. “You seen what you want? We gotta go.”

  Bugarra took one more look around the clearing and climbed the stairs to the house.

  “The deal was to see the place, not search the house.”

  He walked past Trufante and went inside. In another life, he would have called it tasteful; in his current one, it seemed small and cramped. On the dining room table was an open laptop. After a quick scan of the bedroom, he came back and sat in front of it. Hoping there was no password, he pressed the spacebar and waited for the computer to come to life.

  The email program had been left open, and he skimmed the inbox, noticing his own. Wondering if he should delete it, he opened it and looked up when he heard Trufante enter.

  “I’m gonna drink one more beer and we really gotta go.” He went to the small refrigerator and took out two beers.

  One he opened, and Bugarra thought he was going
to offer the other to him, but Trufante walked out, saying something about a “boat beer.” Knowing he was running out of time, Bugarra focused on the emails. It appeared Ms. Woodson was involved in the good fight against Big Sugar, something he could side with her on. The salvage business was more efficient in clear water, and the sugar magnates around Lake Okeechobee were clearly responsible for the decrease in visibility over the last few years.

  He had a measure of her, at least, and opened the Finder app, skimming her files. Computers weren’t in his wheelhouse, but he had people for that, and took several pictures of her recently opened files. Overall, he decided the trip had been worth it. There was no sign of the hard drive or its files, but he knew his Sun Tzu and how important it was to know your enemies.

  “Beer’s about empty. I’m heading to the boat with or without you,” Trufante called up from below.

  Bugarra left quickly and walked down the stairs, thinking the Cajun might be crazy enough to leave him. There was no sign of Trufante in the clearing, so he continued onto the path. After closing the gate, Bugarra saw him sitting on the rocket launcher drinking his beer and grinning.

  Mac and Mel entered the War Room. The keyboard battle was over, though there was no obvious winner, and their attention was quickly drawn to the screens. Two images were displayed side by side. Mac knew one. “That’s the Sumnter. We just dove her.”

  “Gross had completed a good deal of research on several immediate pre-Civil War era vessels,” TJ said. “It looked like that had become his focus, but the 1628 file was recently opened as well. From what we figure, that’s where the money is, unless you’re Vince Bugarra, who needs to salvage just enough Spanish gold to keep his backers lined up. He makes his money fundraising.”