The channel was only a hundred feet wide, just over two boat lengths, and without daylight to show the reefs bordering it, he had to rely on his electronics. Switching the left-hand display to the side-scan sonar, he zoomed out until he could see both sides of the channel. A dark path was displayed down the middle of the screen before opening up to a sideways shot of the water below the boat. Mac waited for the turn he knew was coming.
Correcting course as the display changed, he followed the channel as it snaked first to the right and then the left before turning once again. He was close now, and there was no need for the chartplotter. Changing that display to the depth-finder mode, he circled the area, looking for the coral tongue that Van Doren described as the resting place of the diving bell filled with gold. It had occurred to him that the crafty captain might have returned and recovered his riches, but Gross seemed sure that it was still here. Mac looked forward to ending this escapade and reading the rest of the journal.
His focus moved back to the depth-finder. the display jumped, showing a sudden spike, about ten feet high and twenty feet wide—exactly as Van Doren had described it. Mac smiled, knowing they were close, and as he circled the area several times, a picture of the bottom formed in his head.
It took several passes before he was satisfied and called for Trufante to drop the anchor. The rattling of the chain startled Mac. The purring of the diesel was merely background noise, and though sound traveled at night, with the boat running at an idle, it was hard to hear from a distance. The noise the rode made as it passed over the roller could be heard for miles. Ned’s eyes caught Mac’s as he looked back, and Mac knew the old man felt it too.
“Keep a good watch now,” he said, as he dropped the boat into reverse and goosed the throttle to set the anchor.
“Pamela, can you climb up on the wheelhouse and keep watch?” Mac asked. “Tru, let’s get geared up. Ned, make sure we’re ready up here.” He cut the engine, and the dark night settled around them. In the sudden silence, every small noise made him jump. Once they were ready, he and Trufante walked through the transom door and, standing on the dive platform, put their fins on.
“Might want this.” Ned handed Mac the spear gun. “This is just the kind of place the big bulls like to hunt at night.”
“If I’m takin’ it, put the power head on,” Mac said.
Ned went back to the cabin and called back, “Only see two rounds.”
“All I need is one.”
Ned came back with the loaded power head and handed it to Mac. He took a giant stride entry into the water. Not wanting their dive lights to be seen from the surface, Mac fumbled, trying to flip the switch with his gloved hand. He finally turned it on and scanned the water below him. After clearing his ears, he shot a small amount of air into his buoyancy compensator and floated toward the bottom. Trufante was right behind him, and they met at the anchor.
Mac signaled that they should circle the area. They set off, with Trufante just behind and to the right. The sea life was distracting, and his finger itched over the trigger of the spear gun, but he knew he had no time to hunt. At night, the lobsters came out of their holes to feed, and were scattered across the sandy bottom. Predator fish were out as well, and Mac knew he could have gotten his limit of bugs and grouper within minutes. But Ned had been right and one thing, and Mac released the safety when he saw a dark shadow ahead.
Maliciously lingering on the edge of their visibility, it was definitely a big bull shark. Mac silently thanked Ned for making him bring the spear gun, and, releasing the safety, took cover behind a coral head. Trufante was behind him. A second later, the shadow slid by.
Mac looked over at Trufante, who had seen it as well. The shape moved away, but Mac knew it wouldn’t go far. He held up two fingers to his eyes, signaling for Trufante to watch for it. Mac’s breathing was generally second nature underwater, but with the big predator nearby, he noticed he was gulping air, and tried to relax. Just as he had his breathing under control, Trufante tapped Mac on the shoulder and pointed to the head of the shark coming toward them. It knew they were there, and was either checking them out or coming in for the kill. Knowing sharks had poor eyesight and hunted by smell, Mac readied the spear gun, assuming the worst. Suddenly, just twenty feet away, the shark accelerated. Mac flinched. The big bull was within range now, and he had to make a decision. At five feet away, he squeezed the trigger.
The shark’s head muffled the explosion as the twelve-gauge shotgun shell dispersed in its brain, but its muscles continued to propel it forward until suddenly, less than two feet away from them, it dropped to the bottom. Mac slowly swam toward it and released the shaft from the carcass. Sliding it back into the gun, he added air to his BC and floated above it. He checked his air gauge. The incident had caused them to lose precious bottom time, and he knew his air consumption was high. He had jammed the tanks with 3400 PSI to start, and now, with only 1500 PSI left, he slowed his breathing and continued the search. It was hard to look away, but Mac turned his attention to the bottom, looking for any kind of straight line, indicating something man-made.
Mac had dived enough old wrecks to know that anything left would be covered with coral, making it harder to discern its true origin. The night dive, which he expected to be a hindrance, turned out to be a help, as he was able to narrow his focus on the path of his dive light as it swept the bottom in a methodical search pattern. In a groove now, both men worked an area ten feet apart, their lights crossing on the edges of their respective search areas.
They crossed the tongue and came back several times. Mac, looking at his watch, saw that they had been down for thirty minutes. Checking his air, he tapped the brass clip attached his BC against his tank. Trufante turned to him, and Mac signaled with one finger across his forearm that he had a thousand PSI remaining. Trufante checked his gauge and signaled that he had eight hundred left. Mac was never one for dive computers, having long ago memorized the dive tables. He knew they would run out of air and would have to surface before there was any danger of decompression problems.
He was becoming discouraged after crossing the tongue for the third time. Another ten minutes had passed, and he figured Trufante was below five hundred PSI now, their predetermined limit to find the boat and end the dive. He decided on one more pass toward the tip of the tongue that would lead them in the direction of the boat. They had crossed this area once from the opposite direction, but everything had started to look the same a long time ago.
As Mac looked down to where the coral dropped to the flat sand, a thought came to him. Van Doren would have needed a feature distinguishable from the surface to mark the treasure. He wouldn’t have had the resources to search the bottom, as Mac and Trufante were doing. The tip of the coral tongue would be a logical place to drop it.
With a renewed sense of purpose, Mac released air from his BC and descended to the sand. They had been searching the bottom from above, which was the most efficient method of scanning a large area, but now that he suspected where the cache might be, he wanted a look from the ocean floor.
Slowly, hugging the bottom, he moved along the sand, shining his light against the coral. As he crossed the tip of the structure, his excitement started to wane, and he was about to signal Trufante to surface when something caught Mac’s eye. At first he thought it was a fish swimming across the light, but when he moved the light back, the reflection was still there.
Mac could feel his heart beating in his ears as he approached the object and, trying not to get his hopes up, fanned the sand away. A small piece of metal emerged, and he fanned harder, exposing more of it. Trufante must have seen the silt, and swam next to him. Together they worked to uncover the object, but with little air remaining, Mac soon realized they would need more firepower than their hands. He gave the thumbs-up signal to Trufante, who nodded back, and both men shot air into their BCs and started to ascend.
“I can tell from the look on your face that you found something,” Ned said as he took Mac�
�s fins.
“Bronze,” Mac replied. “Looks big—like a bell.”
“Really?” Pamela jumped down from her spot above the wheelhouse.
“Gonna need the firehose and some fresh tanks,” Mac said, as he pulled himself onto the dive platform, handed Ned the spear gun, and slid out of his BC.
“Y’all are going to need at least an hour before you go back down there. The closest decompression chamber is in Key Largo,” Ned said. He looked at the spear gun. “Guess that came in handy after all.”
“Big goddamned bull. And I mean big,” Trufante said.
“Clock’s ticking, then. Let’s get everything ready,” Mac said. “Might want to reload the power head.”
“That’ll be the last round,” Ned said. “Checked the shotgun, too.”
Bugarra spun the wheel to port and headed out the south channel. The park service boat was equipped with a spotlight set in a cradle on the dash, and, steering with one hand, he used the light to guide the boat through the markers. When he reached the last one, he turned to the south and set course for Loggerhead Key, the direction Travis had taken.
He soon realized that he was heading the wrong way. There were no navigation lights or moving shadows that would indicate a boat, only the light from the tower on the key several miles ahead and the fort behind him. Travis was probably running dark, and without the moon, although the night was black, the outline of his boat would still be visible.
Scanning the water, Bugarra thought he saw a trail of bioluminescence off to the east, like the disturbance a propeller makes as it cuts through the water. Turning the wheel, he set a course toward deep water and wide of the mark. There was no reason to run up on Travis. As long as Bugarra had him in his sights, he would let Travis do the heavy lifting and find the treasure.
He sensed movement behind him and looked back to see Justine staring at the same phosphorescent wake. That only confirmed his suspicion, but instead of pushing down on the throttles of the twin-engine boat, he backed off and studied the chartplotter. This area was known for its shoals and coral heads lurking just below the surface. The soft-sided boat drew little water, but one brush against the coral would likely puncture it.
After choosing a fairly straight and wide section of deep water that would use Garden Key and the fort to screen his approach, he started toward where he thought he had seen the boat. Passing the fort and keeping a small island to port, he saw the flash of two lights. They weren’t navigation lights, and he puzzled for a second, realizing they were dive lights. He grinned, knowing he was getting closer.
Thirty-Nine
Mac checked the tanks stowed behind the starboard bench. Six was his usual, and he saw that he had four filled plus the two empties from their dive. There was a compressor aboard, but it was loud and would probably be heard at the fort. During the day, the racket might warrant a visit from a ranger, but that kind of noise at night would surely attract attention, which was the last thing he wanted.
“We’ve got air for two more dives. I’d like to get another one in now and uncover enough of what we found to figure out how to recover it, then get some rest and dive at dawn.” Exploring at night was one thing, but from Van Doren’s description, they needed a block and tackle to lift the gold-laden bell over the side. Recovering it at night would be very risky.
“Makes sense,” Ned said. “I’d like to have a look before you destroy anything.”
Mac couldn’t say no. Ned had proven himself capable and actually would be better able to appraise their find. “When was the last time you dove?”
“It’s like riding a bike. You worry about you; I’ll take care of me.”
Mac shrugged and went to the cabin to get a bottle of water. Now that he wasn’t diving until morning, Trufante already had a beer in his hand. “I’m going to need you to keep an eye above and below,” Mac said.
“You sure Old Man is up to this?”
“We’ll see,” Mac said, taking the bottle of water back to the cockpit and checking his gear. Trufante followed him onto the deck.
“Think we should get right above it and use the pressure washer,” Mac said.
“It’ll silt the water up good. Likely bring more sharks; they get all excited. Not much for current, probably still blood in the water from the one you shot.”
Having heard enough of Trufante’s doom and gloom. Mac ignored him and went to the helm. Not that he was going to ignore the threat, but they had no options—he needed to do another dive tonight. “Where’d we come up?” he asked Ned.
“’Bout a hundred feet ahead.”
Mac had dropped the anchor directly over the tongue, but now they needed the stern of the boat there to feed the hose over. “Tru, get the anchor—we’re going to have to reset.”
Mac waited for Trufante to climb onto the foredeck and release the safety. He called out to stay clear and started the windlass. Line came in as the boat was pulled forward. When they were directly above the anchor, Mac dropped a weighted buoy over the side to mark the position and retrieved the rest of the rode. With the anchor secure, he idled forward about a hundred and fifty feet before dropping it. Easing the engine into reverse, he set the hook and let the line pay out until the buoy was only a foot from the stern. “Clip it off. We’re good.”
“Might ought to drop a stern anchor so she doesn’t swing when the tide shifts,” Ned said.
Mac grudgingly admitted Ned was right, and reprimanded himself for not thinking of it. To retrieve the diving bell, he would need to be on top of his game.
Between resetting the anchor and preparing the pressure washer and gear, the hour had almost expired. Mac and Ned geared up again and, a few minutes later, dropped into the water. They were directly above the bell and, without having to waste any time or air in locating it, went right to work.
Ned stopped Mac several times as he used the pressure washer to clear the sand away from the bell. The wait for the silt to settle seemed like hours, but Mac knew he was right. The bell had rested here for almost two hundred years, bronze was made of copper and tin, and, from what he’d seen so far, there was no indication of the shape it was in. He couldn’t assume that it was still intact. Going too fast in this type of operation could easily destroy what they were after.
Mac took over the pressure washer. He could only work for a minute or so at a time before the visibility was reduced to less than a foot. Then they had to wait. Each time the water cleared, Ned inspected the newly uncovered section and nodded. By the time the needles of their air gauges were into the red, Mac had half the bell uncovered. Before they ascended, he motioned for Ned to stand back, and blasted a hole underneath it.
Again they had to wait for the silt to settle, but when it did, Mac pressed his body against the sand and shined the light in the hole. The dull glint of gold flashed back.
“We’ve got it,” Mac said, after climbing back aboard. “First light’ll be at six. We’ll be in the water shortly after.”
Mac knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep, and settled into the captain’s chair while the others went below to get some shuteye. He would have liked to finish reading the journal, but the risk of using a light overpowered his desire to find out what happened to Van Doren and why he hadn’t come back for the bell.
Instead, Mac scanned the horizon for any activity. The radar would be useful as well, but again, not worth the risk. It was already close to two a.m., and he slouched in the chair, getting as comfortable as possible for the next few hours.
Bugarra sat off the end of Long Key, using the binoculars he had found in the console of the park service boat to scan the waters. He had seen Travis head in this direction, but this was the last spit of land he could use as cover for a hundred miles. The newly risen moon was hovering just above the horizon, and its light outlined anything solid above the water. Bugarra focused on the area where he had seen the dive lights earlier. Slowly moving the binoculars back and forth, he finally settled on a dark spot that looked like the outline
of Travis’s trawler.
The boat was unlit, so he examined the water below it, hoping to catch a glimpse of the dive lights, but none appeared. Bugarra knew the limits of night diving and assumed Mac was waiting for first light before proceeding. If there was cell service, Bugarra would have called Travis, but without it, and after seeing the other boats anchored in the harbor, he was reluctant to air his dirty laundry over the public airwaves.
“Get comfortable. We’re going to have to wait for morning.” He had thought about going back to the fort and decided against it. There had to be a limit to how much Farnsworth would allow, and with the amount Bugarra had paid, he imagined he was close to that limit. Better to stay out and wait.
He was tired and the thought of grabbing a few hours of sleep was appealing. But looking back at the hostages, he caught Justine’s eye and saw her determined look. If it weren’t for her husband’s wound, she probably would have taken the girl and swum for the point of the key just off their bow. Wanting to remove the temptation, Bugarra pushed the throttles forward and idled toward deeper water. When the depth finder indicated fifty feet, he left the helm and dropped the anchor. Long Key was only a shadow now, and with the temptation to try an escape removed, he brought the binoculars back to his head and watched the trawler.
Mac woke his crew an hour before dawn. He was anxious to get started, and there was at least an hour’s work before they were ready to dive. Instead of the thin hose for the pressure washer, he broke out a hundred-foot length of firehose, which he attached to the saltwater wash-down. It wouldn’t have the pressure of the smaller hose, but the volume should clear the bell quickly. With only two tanks of air remaining, he had to be efficient.
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