“I guess sometimes, what people don’t know, can’t hurt them.”
“Yeah,” Nadia muttered, looking back towards the wheelhouse.
“So, how did you learn to speak English so well?”
“My father spoke English, something he was taught in the military. My mother learned it to communicate with him, then I was taught English as a child from my school teacher who was American, but living and working in Greece. My mother asked her to teach me. I also speak fluent Italian.”
“Wow.”
“What about you? Any languages besides English?”
“Spanish and Swahili,” Reid answered.
“It’s a good thing we both speak English then.” Nadia smiled.
“Yeah.” Reid looked up at the stars. We should probably get back to bed. It’s going to be a long day tomorrow,” she sighed.
NINE
The next morning, Nadia awoke to the smell of coffee cooking on the stove. She stirred, cracking her eyes. The soft sound of island music played in the distance.
“Morning. We’ll be getting underway shortly,” Reid said as Nadia sat up, stretching her arms over her head. Reid watched the thin tank top that hugged her perky round breasts, rise slowly, revealing her taut stomach. She swallowed the lump in her throat and peeled her eyes away as she headed back into the wheelhouse.
Nadia changed into a bikini top and bottoms and pulled on her cutoff shorts from the day before. She recalled their conversation in the middle of the night, as she brushed her teeth and washed her face in the tiny sink, noting that Reid wasn’t the foolhardy deadbeat she thought she was. In fact, she was proving to be quite the opposite. Checking the small mirror before stepping out of the head, she grimaced and quickly threw her wavy tresses up into a ponytail.
The boat motor rumbled to life as Nadia tore open a granola bar. She poured herself the last cup of coffee and rinsed out the pot, before going into the wheelhouse with her breakfast.
“Bring up the anchor,” Reid yelled through the window to Louie who was standing on the bow, holding onto the rail.
Waves lapped against the boat as they slowly picked up speed, heading into deeper water. Reid reached down, turning up the volume on the Harry Belafonte CD playing on the stereo. Jump In The Line blasted from the speakers. The galley table had been removed from between the benches the night before, allowing easy passage through the wheelhouse to the cabin. Nadia sat on the portside bench with her feet up on the seat across from her, looking through the windows as the island they were anchored off of, slowly faded away.
“What’s the plan for today?” Nadia asked.
“When we get to our search spot, we’ll drop the side scanner and tow-fish in the water and drag them along a grid. If we get a hit, Louie and I will dive down and see what we find.”
“What the hell is a two-fish?”
Reid laughed. “Not a two-fish, a tow-fish. It’s basically a metal detector that we pull behind the boat.”
“I see.” Nadia smiled. “Does that work?”
“That’s how most wrecks have been found, with a tow-fish or side scanner. The side scanner helps get a good picture of the bottom, but metal detecting is what gives a clear indication that it’s something man-made that you see on the screen.” Reid finished the last of the coffee in her mug. “If you’re searching in very deep water you’d use an ROV to go down and take a look instead of diving.”
“How deep can you dive?”
“I’ve been down over seventy meters, but there is a lot involved in a dive like that.”
“How deep will the water be that we are looking in?”
“Hopefully, only thirty to fifty feet. We will be able to dive down and stay on the bottom for about three hours, avoiding decompression stops if we’re in shallower water. We can dive as low as a hundred feet with our equipment, but the tow-fish isn’t really strong enough to detect anything past fifty feet, and that includes the centuries of silt that it’s buried under. There really isn’t a reason to search the deeper water,” Reed said, glancing at her. “Have you ever been diving?”she asked.
“No. I’ve been snorkeling a few times while visiting the islands, but only in about ten feet of water at the most,” Nadia replied, finishing her coffee. She grab Reid’s mug and took them into the cabin to wash them in the sink. When she finished, she walked past Reid in the wheelhouse and stepped out into the hot sun on the deck of the stern. Louie was sitting with his eyes closed, absorbing the early morning rays.
“Are you going diving today?” he asked without looking up.
“Not likely,” she chuckled.
“Oh, come on. It’s a piece of cake.” He smiled.
“I’ll man the boat while you guys do your thing.”
“Suit yourself. You’ll be missing out though,” he said as the boat began to slow to a stop.
“We’re here,” Reid stated, walking out of the wheelhouse.
*
Nadia watched as Louie and Reid got both the tow-fish and side scanner ready to go into the water. Each one looked like a three foot long torpedo. The tow-fish was white with one hundred feet of yellow cable on a spool and the side scanner was yellow with the same length of red cable on a different reel.
Reid spooled the cables back into the wheelhouse where she had each monitor set up on the helm. After plugging everything in, she helped Louie deploy the tow-fish over the starboard side of the boat, then they put the side scanner in the water, shortening its cable until they were only fifteen feet apart with the tow-fish in the front. She pushed the throttle lever, moving the boat forward enough to stretch the cables out away from the boat, but not far enough to be caught up in the prop wash. Then, she put the throttle back into neutral and checked each screen to make sure they were getting a good picture.
“Looks good,” she yelled through the open wheelhouse door. “Keep an eye on the lines.”
Nadia looked back at the wheelhouse where Reid was watching the monitors as they slowly towed the devices along a tight grid.
*
Three hours later, Bob Marley was back in the CD player. One Love was blaring through the speakers when Reid noticed the tow-fish monitor picking up an anomaly in only twenty feet of water. She quickly marked the waypoint on the GPS and looked at the picture on the side scanner monitor as it crossed the same path. The bottom was slightly rigged and rocky since it was near the edge of the reef. They were three-quarters of the way through the ten square mile search grid, but Reid stopped the boat anyway and took a second look at the screens.
Louie walked through the open wheelhouse door when the boat stopped. “Do you see something?” he asked.
“Not sure,” she replied, looking at the still image in the side scanner screen and the magnetic strength lines on the tow-fish screen. “Could be nothing, but it could be the holy grail.” She shrugged. “Deploy the anchor and put up the diver down flag,” she said as she turned off the motor.
Louie went up to the bow to get the anchor on the bottom and Reid began reeling in the tow-fish. As soon as the anchor was in place, Louie reeled in the side scanner cable. Together, they dried and stowed both towable devices in their cases.
Nadia looked over the side at the clear, turquoise water. She could easily see the sandy bottom. “How deep is the water?” she asked as Louie and Reid went to change into their warm water, shorty wetsuits.
“About twenty feet,” Reid answered, zipping up her suit as she stepped out of the wheelhouse. She tested the regulator on the tank, then pulled it on, followed by a weight belt and her mask, which she pushed up on her forehead. “I don’t want to waste a lot of air time,” she said to Louie, who was putting on his equipment. “Let’s swim a small grid with the handheld units and see if we can figure out what the tow-fish picked up.”
“Okay.” Louie nodded.
“We shouldn’t be down long, a half hour max,” Reid said to Nadia before she stepped onto the swim platform and jumped in.
Louie waved as he followed h
er in.
Nadia peered over the side and was able to see them both in the shallow, clear water. She watched them swim around for about ten minutes, then pulled her t-shirt off, revealing her bikini top, before sitting on a deck chair, and kicking her feet up on the side of the boat. The early afternoon sun was warm and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.
TEN
Louie swam a zigzag pattern, swinging the handheld metal detector back and forth through the shadow of the boat above them. The white sand on the bottom was almost as pristine as the sand on the beaches of the islands. A few schools of fish swam by, along with a two foot wide stingray, which he stopped to admire.
Reid paid less attention to the marine life as she swam near the deeper edge of the reef and worked her way back towards the boat’s shadow, slicing the metal detector from side to side in a slow, steady motion. When it beeped on a pass, she moved to her right, scanning the area. The detector picked up a strong signal, indicating something metal was in the area. She pulled a small hand-paddle from the net bag attached to her weight belt and bent down, scooping the sand.
Louie noticed sand moving through the water around him and turned to see her digging. He quickly swam over to her, helping with the dig as they slowly revealed a large ship anchor that had been buried under years of silt. Reid shook her head and pointed up.
*
Nadia was nearly asleep, listening to the steady rhythm of the steel drums on the radio, while the lull of the ocean softly rocked the boat. She had no idea Reid and Louie had surfaced until she heard them talking.
“Find what you were looking for?” she asked, peering over the side at the two people bobbing in the water.
“Hell no. It was an anchor,” Reid growled, climbing up onto the swim platform.
Louie followed and they began removing their equipment as soon as they were aboard the boat.
“It’s not here,” Reid mumbled. “There would’ve been a trace near the reef, unless it didn’t sink right away.”
“How deep is that drop off?” Louie asked, unzipping his wetsuit.
“Twenty-five hundred feet probably,” Reid replied, shaking the water out of her hair before removing her wetsuit. She was wearing board shorts and a bikini top under it.
Nadia’s eyes traversed the toned body in front of her through the dark lenses of her sunglasses. She noticed for the first time, Reid had a tattoo down the middle of her back that looked sort of like a pirate treasure map. It was a curvy, dotted line down her spine that ended just above the waistband of her shorts with a pirate-style compass next to the base of it. Small X marks were along the line with script writing next to each of them on the left side and some on the right. The very top of the line stopped between her shoulder blades and the space around it was blank. The entire tattoo was black and grayscale.
Nadia walked over, tracing her finger down the curvy line as Reid rinsed the dive masks with fresh water. “Is this a map of your island girlfriends?” she teased.
Reid turned around with a grin on her face, ignoring the simple touch. “Are you looking to get added?” she laughed playfully.
“What? No.” Nadia backed up a step, swallowing the lump in her throat. “I…”
Reid grabbed her wrist, pulling her away from the edge of the boat before she fell in. “It’s a map of my discoveries,” she said honestly. “All of the planes and ships I’ve found.”
“Don’t worry about a thing. ‘Cause every little thing, gon—” Louie sang along to the music on the stereo as he walked out of the wheelhouse, stopping in mid lyric when he saw the two women standing close together in what looked like an intimate conversation. He quickly turned around, going back inside.
Reid looked towards the wheelhouse, shaking her head as she let go of Nadia’s wrist and moved away to store the masks with the rest of their dive gear.
“He told me you saved his life,” Nadia said.
“What?” Reid closed the compartment and turned to face her.
“You saved his life. That’s how you met, right?”
“Not exactly.” Reid ran her hand through the longer strands of hair on the top of her head, finger combing them as she walked across the deck to the wheelhouse. “We’ll be getting underway soon,” she said as she opened the door.
Louie was sitting on the port side bench seat with his feet kicked up on the opposite side, eating a stinky can of sardines. He moved back to let Reid pass by as she went down to the cabin to put her tank top on and make herself some lunch.
A few minutes later, Nadia walked into the wheelhouse with a growling stomach. Reid was sitting next to Louie, studying a chart and eating a banana covered in peanut butter, while Louie was on his last bite of sardines. Nadia grimaced at the mixed scent of their meals as she stepped past them.
“Are we done with this area?” Louie questioned, peering over her shoulder at the chart.
“No. We have about three more miles to search here,” Reid replied. “If we don’t get another hit, we’ll head over to Acklins Island and drop anchor. Our next site is off Mira Por Vos Cays, which is next to Acklins Island,” she added.
“Are we going into the port?” Nadia asked.
Reid shook her head. “Acklins Island is uninhabited, at least the area we are going to be in is. You have to go all the way around to the other end to find civilization.”
*
With everyone finished with lunch, they began the slow, daunting task of dragging the tow-fish and side scanner up and down the grid once more. Nadia looked down into the clear water, watching the tow-fish skim along two feet under the water. Thinking back to her life in Greece, this was the last thing she expected to be doing when she planned the trip to visit her father. She went down into the cabin and retrieved the cell phone from her bag. She’d put it on airplane mode to save the battery the day before, so it still had a good charge. She snapped a photo of Reid at the helm on her way out of the wheelhouse, then she took a picture of Louie, manning the cables for the devices. The last picture she took was of the tow-fish underwater.
ELEVEN
After having found nothing at their first location, Reid had pulled the towed devices in and headed for Acklins Island. The twenty-five mile trek had taken a little over an hour and a half, most of which Nadia sunbathed and Louie cat-napped.
Reid motored through Mira Por Vos Passage and around the jagged, southern tip of Acklins Island to the shallows on the opposite side.
“Drop the anchor,” she yelled through the open window to Louie.
He gave a thumbs up and pushed the button. Leaning over the bow rail, he watched the anchor enter the water and make its way to the sandy bottom, fifteen feet down. When it was secure, he held up a closed fist.
Reid cut the engine off, powered down all of the electronics, and stood up, stretching her back. Louie had walked along the side of the wheelhouse towards the stern, meeting her when she stepped outside.
“What do you say we go ashore for dinner? I’m sure you’re both itching to get off this boat.”
“I thought you said this island was uninhabited,” Nadia remarked.
“It is, but that doesn’t mean we can’t walk around, build a fire, and snag a few fresh fruits and veggies.”
“Sounds like a good plan,” Louie added, moving to get the dinghy that was strapped to the top of the wheelhouse.
Reid climbed up to help him and together, they lowered the raft into the water. Louie pulled it back to the stern, tying it up next to the swim platform, while Reid filled a plastic bag with plates, knives, forks, a small pot, a grilling pan, napkins, spices, two onions, matches, rum, a small hatchet that she’d found onboard, the metal grate from the grill, and anything else she thought they might need.
“If you two want to take anything, get it now. We only want to make one trip,” she said, loading the bag into the dinghy. Nadia and Louie were behind her, ready to go when she turned around. “I guess you guys really do want to get off this boat,” she laughed.
On
ce Louie and Nadia were in the raft, Reid went back for one of the dive tanks they’d used during the day, as well as two masks, and two sets of fins. Then, she climbed into the back and pulled the rope to start the motor. The small outboard spit, sputtered, and coughed a few times, but she held the throttle wide open. When they were about ten yards from the boat, the water went down to six feet, and then three feet, despite being fifty yards from shore. They stopped and walked, pulling the raft ashore with them when the water level went to only a foot deep.
As soon as they were on shore, Reid and Louie located two old driftwood logs. They moved them about four feet apart and began looking for more wood to make a fire in the middle.
Nadia unrolled an old beach blanket that she’d found on the boat while they were diving earlier in the day, and spread out the stuff from the bag. Then, she grabbed her phone and snapped a few pictures of the boat bobbing in the water in the distance, as well as their homemade, beach fire pit.
Louie returned with an armload of wood and Reid was behind him with the bottom of her shirt doubling as a basket. She had two coconuts, a huge mango, a pineapple, a tomato, an avocado, a lime, and a handful of plantains in it.
“Where did you find all of that?” Nadia asked with raised eyebrows as Reid deposited the load onto the blanket.
“In the trees,” Reid replied.
“What are you making?”
“Hopefully, lobster and plantains with mango salsa,” Reid answered, walking over to the inflatable boat. “Come on,” she called, waving for Nadia to follow her.
Nadia walked over. “What do you need me to do?” she asked skeptically.
“Take your clothes off,” Reid mumbled.
“Excuse me?”
“I meant your shorts.” Reid shook her head. “We’re going to go find some lobsters.”
Nadia stared at her and the dive tank.
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