Wood's Tempest

by Steven Becker

  I stood next to Mason, who was by the binnacle studying the charts showing the water that lay ahead. We were heading back into familiar territory now, and we both looked for anything that could aid our escape.

  When I had first seen her, I noticed that the ship rode low in the water. In an effort to improve the trim and gain more speed, we decided to dump the ballast and bring the treasure into the bilge. Having used the cover of ballast stones before to hide the silver we had recovered from the wreck of the Ten Sail in the Cayman Islands, we hoped to lighten the load.

  I left Mason and grabbed Rhames and several of the freedmen. We went below and, forming a chain, started bringing up the ballast stones and replacing them with the treasure. Saving a layer of rock to conceal what lay below, we soon felt much lighter, and I could see from the old water line that we had risen a good foot.

  Back on deck, I saw the effort had gained us a knot or two of speed. That was well and good, but we were without a destination. Our plans had been to sail to Panama and cross the Isthmus, hoping to lose the label of pirate that had been plaguing us since the U.S. Navy sank the Floridablanca, and Gasparilla with her. But heading into the unknown waters of Central America in this ship was not a good idea.

  Our safe haven for the last year had been Great Inagua. It was in exactly the opposite direction of where we wanted to go, but I knew our old ship the Cayman would likely be there. We were also in good favor with Potts, the governor, whom we had helped ascend to his current post from his position as the clerk for the corrupt governor of the Caymans. I also knew Lafitte would be wary about leaving the gulf waters and entering the eastern Caribbean.

  Plotting our course on the chart, I saw that the Tortugas lay in our path—another boon, as we knew those shoal-ridden waters. I could only hope the captains of the ships behind us didn’t.

  Mac could not have been more drawn in if it was a best-selling adventure novel.

  When he finished reading, Mac put the papers down and stared out at the water. Somewhere within the range of his vision, Van Doren had hidden his treasure.

  Before Mac could continue reading, Ned’s voice came over the VHF. Mac picked up the microphone to answer, only to hear Farnsworth order Mac to stand down and surrender himself.

  Mac turned off the radio without answering, started the engines, and tossed the dock lines. Backing out of the slip, he saw several uniformed park service employees hustling out of the sally port. Mac had learned from Kurt that the NPS had no jurisdiction outside the park boundaries, so he wasted no time and spun the wheel, heading toward open water.

  The pages of Van Doren’s journal rustled in the wind, and just before they scattered across the waves, Mac grabbed them and stuck them in the compartment below the wheel. He looked back, seeing the park service men running toward the dock, and a minute later smoke rose from one of their boats as the engines started. The soft-sided twin engine was coming after him. There was no point in estimating the speed of the boat. As soon as it came up on plane, he knew it would catch him.

  The only question—how quickly?

  Thirty-Five

  Ignoring the jarring of the choppy seas, Mac pushed the throttle to its stop in an effort to reach the park boundary. He looked back often to check on the park service vessel in pursuit, and couldn’t help but sympathize with what Van Doren must have felt with Lafitte’s men chasing him through these same waters. The instruments had changed, the boats had changed, these were different times, but the waters and shoals were the same as in the nineteenth century. The pages might reveal the secret, but as the boat slammed into the waves, there was no way to decipher it.

  Mac saw the park service’s RIB boat struggling with the head seas and spun the wheel slightly to starboard, changing his course to go directly into the waves. Taking a slight angle was preferable both for speed and comfort, but he saw the inflatable slow as the soft bow had to fight through each wave, while his steel hull sliced easily through them.

  Slowly, he started to pull away from them. Checking his position in real time on the chartplotter gave Mac an advantage that Van Doren didn’t have. He was in the southeast channel now, moving quickly toward the boundary line. Boundaries ashore were often based on landmarks, such as rivers or mountains. There was nothing to tell him he was safe here except the dotted line on his screen. With what he had seen of Farnsworth and his crew, Mac worried that they would not respect the boundary.

  Mac knew the park service could call the Coast Guard or the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission for either permission or help. He was banking on both agencies still either being shut down or in emergency response mode. Looking down, he saw the red line was underneath the icon of the boat on the screen, but he was in no position to relax. Checking the gauges, he kept the engine red-lined and crossed into federal waters.

  He had to make a decision. Running only saved himself. It had been a gut reaction and probably the right one at the time. There was nothing he could do for Kurt and his family from inside a cell. Now, he was free, if at large, and needed to figure out how to help his friends.

  Something was nagging at him from the earlier pages in Van Doren’s journal. There were several entries from before the chase, describing how they had recovered the sunken treasure. After training as a commercial diver and spending a half-dozen years working on oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, Mac had an interest in the origins and history of diving. What Van Doren had described using appeared to be some of the most innovative techniques of the time.

  Diving bells had been around in one form or another since Aristotle. Advances were made over the years, but none were widely publicized, as they gave an advantage in warfare, as well as salvage, to the country that used them. Van Doren, working independently, had used some of those innovations. He started to wonder if his original assumption was wrong. Maybe Van Doren had stashed the cache underwater, where only he could recover it?

  The red line on the screen was clearly behind the boat now, and with GPS tracking on, Mac would have a record of the crossing. That didn’t stop him from wanting a little more water between him and the park service boat, and he continued for another mile before dropping speed and looking behind him. The inflatable seemed to be hovering around the line, as if daring him to come back and cross it. He switched the radio back on and set it to channel nineteen, one of the stations assigned to law enforcement. He heard no communication between the park service and any other agency. Relaxing his grip on the wheel, he changed course to the south, putting the seas on the front quarter of the trawler, instead of directly ahead. The boat immediately responded and settled into the easier line.

  Mac was going nowhere, and he knew it. He was on the perfect platform to recover the treasure—if he could only find it. In addition to fishing, the Ghost Runner was set up to dive and salvage. It lacked only mailboxes, the large pipes that treasure hunters used to blow sand off the bottom. Mac had gotten around that by using a high-pressure raw-water pump and several fire hoses. It wasn’t as easy as dropping the huge pipes and running the props, but it was equally as effective. The only problem was that he needed a crew.

  Trufante, for all his problems, knew the equipment and procedures. Being only a few miles away put his resume on the top of the pile. Getting him aboard without going to jail himself was a problem, and Mac swung his gaze to where the park service boat had been. With seas running four feet, from this distance they blocked his sight angle. Switching the right-hand screen from the depth finder to radar, he zoomed in and quickly located the boat. It was still sitting where he had last seen it at the park line.

  Knowing they were in a standoff if the park service boat had radar and was tracking him, he took a chance, recalling Kurt complaining several times about how the feds were reluctant to spend their budget on equipment. He changed course to the northwest and, still staying outside of the red line, started to work his way behind Loggerhead Key. He kept one eye on the radar and, seeing the icon of the park service boat remain static, set a cou
rse that would put him just behind the narrow island, both out of sight and beyond the park boundary.

  He would have to wait a few hours for darkness before he could enter park waters and find Trufante, but that would give him the time he needed to finish reading the journal. Mac had Van Doren’s voice in his head, and he was sure if he continued to read about the escape, he could find the treasure.

  Justine checked Kurt’s vital signs and bandage. He was feverish and in pain, but lucid, and Justine updated him in a muted whisper while Allie used her body to strategically shield them from Bugarra. It was important, if they had any chance of escape, that they keep up the illusion that though Kurt needed medical attention, he was in worse shape than he really was. Justine had been trained as a first responder, and she was careful to layer everything she said to Bugarra in medical jargon. So far, he had bought it.

  Looking over Allie’s shoulder, Justine could see that he was on the phone, though she couldn’t hear the conversation. He disconnected, stood up, and came toward them.

  “Get him ready,” Bugarra said. “We have to go.”

  “He needs a doctor.”

  “It looks like he’s doing just fine. Take some extra towels if you want, but we’re out of here now.”

  Justine scowled at him, grabbed the towel strips she had torn, and asked Allie to bring the two remaining clean towels. Bugarra made a move to lift Kurt, but Justine intercepted him and, with Allie’s assistance, helped him up. The first few steps were a struggle until Kurt discovered how much weight he could put on his injured leg. Justine was pleased when she saw how well he could walk, but silently encouraged his limp.

  Even though the lobby was empty, shattering Justine’s hope that they would be seen, Bugarra glanced back impatiently several times until they were finally outside. With every step, Justine was looking for a way out, but nothing had presented itself.

  “Give me his keys,” Bugarra said.

  Justine thought they might have caught a break, but after Bugarra showed her the barrel of the gun hidden in his jacket, she reached into Kurt’s pocket and came out with her keys.Hitting the lock function to beep it, she found her car and led them toward it.

  “Can you drive?” Justine said to Allie in a commanding tone that implied an order, not a question. Several scenarios had already played out in Justine’s mind. She had caught both Bugarra and Allie off guard. Allie answered yes enthusiastically. Justine couldn’t blame her; the ink was still wet on the sixteen-year-old’s license.

  Bugarra directed Allie to the driver’s seat after she helped Justine load Kurt into the backseat. Bugarra was in the front, sitting sideways. There was nothing Justine could do unless Allie read her mind, and as careful as the new driver was behind the wheel, Justine doubted that was going to happen. Without revealing his destination, Bugarra began giving Allie directions.

  They turned left onto Atlantic, and when the signs for the airport appeared, he asked her to turn in. Justine couldn’t figure out where they could possibly be flying to, until he had Allie pull into the FBO lot and Justine saw the seaplanes.

  It had all started at Fort Jefferson, and she supposed that was where it would end. The problem was Kurt, but heading to the fort had its benefits that Bugarra might have overlooked. If she could attract the attention of the park service personnel there, surely they would take care of one of their own.

  Justine and Allie helped Kurt up the narrow steel stairs to the plane and got him settled in a seat. A few minutes later, the pilot, a different man than had flown them down a few days ago, stepped aboard and closed the door. Justine had hoped it would be Gary, who knew them from the earlier flight. He would have figured out what was going on and helped them. The new pilot acted familiar around Bugarra—not a good sign. Justine resigned herself to waiting until they reached the fort before taking any action.

  It had been a different set of circumstances, almost a mini-vacation, when she had taken the trip before, and she remembered staring out at the water below. There was nothing to be gained by forcing the plane down, if she could have even attempted that. She squeezed Kurt’s hand. He responded in kind, allowing her the freedom to close her eyes. Since there was nothing she could do for the next forty-five minutes, she knew whatever rest she could get would benefit her later.

  She jostled awake when the plane banked on its approach. Leaning across the aisle, she checked Kurt, who appeared to be okay. Her stomach bounced into her throat when the plane began descending, and when she looked out the window, she saw the last of the sunlight illuminating the whitecaps beneath them. The landing had been scary on relatively flat seas earlier, and now she gripped the armrests as the pilot eased the plane on top of the first wave.

  The pontoons hit the water hard, and the plane skidded across the crest of a wave and into a trough. She thought they were going to flip when one pontoon lifted, but the tapered edges of the pontoon gained some traction and settled back in. She looked over at Kurt, who was wincing in pain as the boat slammed into each wave. Finally, the plane slowed, and she breathed out and sucked in the stale cabin air. She was already nauseated, and the short taxi to the beach proved to be harder than the actual landing. She greedily gulped the fresh air when the plane finally came to a stop and the pilot opened the door.

  There was no time to recover, as Bugarra again showed the pistol hidden under his light jacket and motioned with his head for them to exit the plane. With an arm around Kurt, Justine helped him out the door, making sure that he had solid footing on the pontoon before she guided him to the beach. Allie came to help after deplaning, and the trio stood staring at the door, wondering what Bugarra was going to do.

  He exited the plane and had them walk ahead of him into the fort, where he turned into the director’s office. Justine had been banking on the park service seeing Kurt’s injury and protecting him, but as they entered the office behind Bugarra, she observed the familiar way the two men greeted each other. The director barely looked at Kurt as he led them to an interior office. Once inside, her nausea returned after just one breath of the stale, clammy air.

  The feeling only got worse when he shut the door and threw the bolt.

  Thirty-Six

  Mac sat back and started reading again.

  We sailed through the night, finding ourselves off the western tip of Cuba as the sun rose. There had been no rest for me or the crew, as it took all hands to keep the ship running at her best speed. Daylight showed Lafitte’s two ships still behind us. We hadn’t lost them, but neither had we given up ground. The wind had been in our favor to this point, but there were some high clouds that told me it was going to change. As soon as it did, the schooners in pursuit would have an advantage. Something would have to happen before that. Mason and I plotted our position and course on the chart, both agreeing that the Tortugas was still our best chance to lose Lafitte’s men.

  Mason had shown me a fuzzy area of the map. He said there was a narrow channel running through, and thought that if we could maintain our advantage and reach it before the wind changed, there would be a good chance at least one of Lafitte’s ships would run aground there.

  Rhames was with us now, and I asked if there was anything at all we could use for a weapon aboard. He replied that a keg of nails, the diving bell, and the chain rode for the anchor were the only things that were even steel.

  An idea came to me that with the chain, it might be possible to rig a boom across the channel. Then we wouldn’t have to worry about the pursuing ships finding the channel and not running aground. Our problem was time. With Lafitte’s ships less than a mile back, we would only have about a quarter of an hour to rig it, not enough time to fix both ends. After much discussion, we came up with a plan to use the ship as one end of the boom and use the diving bell filled with gold as the other. Shayla and the men had been distressed about my decision to drop the gold we had just recovered back into the sea, but my logic prevailed. After jettisoning our ballast earlier, we needed the weight of the gold to hold
the bell in place and knew if the boom failed, we could retrieve it later, as long as it was dropped on some kind of landmark.

  Finally, it was agreed. With Mason at the helm, Rhames and I took every able body to run out the chain and free it from the anchor. Laid out on the deck, it spanned two lengths of the ship. The bell was loaded and wrapped in a cargo net. With the ship listing to starboard due to its weight, I had no doubt it would serve its purpose. I only hoped we would be able to recover it as I’d promised. Rhames rigged a block and tackle from a stout spar off the main mast to lower it, and we went back to the chart table.

  Mason estimated that we had an hour before we reached what he called the tongue, a feature that, although it wasn’t present on the chart, he swore he knew. We dropped sail in order to lure Lafitte’s ships closer and made the final preparations.

  I watched Lafitte’s ships close on our position from high in the rigging, which also gave me a good view of the ocean floor. Mason had said we would be running in between three and four fathoms, and the coral tongue rising ten feet from the bottom was easily visible. I wanted to see it for myself, so we would be able to return and recover the bell and our treasure.

  Climbing back to the deck, I checked the block and tackle we had rigged to hoist the bell. I studied the chain, trying to anticipate its route, and saw nothing on deck it could snag on. The list to port became even more noticeable when the men hoisted the bell and swung it over the side. We were ready.

  I moved to the forepeak for a better view of the bottom and looked into the clear water. The man working the lead beside me had advised that we were in five fathoms, and the bottom showed the dark blotches I knew to be coral. Ahead was a white patch, and I called back to the crew to be ready. The coral seemed to narrow as we approached the deeper sand, and just before the bow was over the white bottom, I called for the bell to be dropped.