“Do you trust me?” Reid said softly, meeting her eyes.
Taking a deep breath, Nadia stepped closer and pulled her shorts off, tossing them back behind her in the sand.
Reid checked the regulator and put the dive tank on Nadia’s back. “This is the mouthpiece. You just put it between your teeth like this.” She opened her mouth wide, demonstrating how her teeth held it in place. “Then, you just breathe. Give it a try.”
Nadia copied what she had just done, biting down on the rubber and inhaling through her mouth. Her lungs instantly filled with oxygen.
“See? That wasn’t so bad. Now, since you’ve snorkeled, you probably know how to put the mask on,” Reid added, handing it to her.
“What about you?” Nadia asked as Reid pulled the other mask onto her face, then pushed it up on her forehead.
“I’ll be okay free-diving,” she replied, pulling her fins on.
Nadia nodded and put on her own fins and mask.
“Okay, we’ll walk out until it’s over our heads, then you just go under and swim down. Watch for me to give you hand signals,” Reid stated. The water in front of them was shallow for about twenty yards, then dropped off to six feet.
Nadia followed as they headed into the water. Reid instructed her when to pull her mask down and use the regulator, then they both went under, swimming out into the slightly deeper water. Reid stayed beside her, making sure she had the breathing pattern down. Nadia gave her a thumbs up signal and began to swim around.
Every two minutes, Reid surface for air, then she swam back down. Once she was sure Nadia would be okay, she went in search of rocks along the bottom, flipping them over one at a time until she found a large lobster.
Nadia watched in amazement, then began doing the same thing. She turned nearly a dozen rocks, swimming into the deeper water closer to the boat, before she found a large lobster of her own. Realizing she’d gone into deeper water, she held onto the crustacean, while it tried desperately to pinch her, and swam over to Reid, who was up catching her breath.
“I got one!” Nadia shouted, spitting the regulator out and kicking her feet to tread water.
“Way to go!” Reid cheered. “Let’s head in.”
*
Louie already had the fire going and was carving the fruit when the two women came back, cheering and laughing, while wielding three large, Bahamian lobsters in the air.
“Louie, dinner is served my man!” Reid danced around the fire with a lobster in each hand. “I may not be good at catching fish, but I can damn sure catch a lobster!”
He shook his head and laughed.
“I’d kiss this thing if it wouldn’t pinch my lips,” Nadia added, equally as excited.
“Give me those things before you both get your noses pinched off,” Louie chided, taking the lobsters and cutting the heads off one by one.
“Well, that killed the mood,” Nadia grimaced, turning away.
“If we don’t kill them first, they will scream and be tortured as they cook while still alive. This is humane,” Reid told her.
“I know.” Nadia walked back to the dinghy to put away the dive tank and mask she still had on and retrieve her shorts from the sand.
Reid was cutting open each lobster tail and claws, pouring a mixture of fresh squeezed lime juice and coconut water inside when Nadia returned. Louie had found three large rocks, which he’d placed around the edges of the fire, forming a triangle to hold the grill grate. Reid put the lobsters on the grate, along with the plantains, and went to work mixing the mango, onions, avocado, pineapple, tomato, and lime that Louie had cut up for her. Then, she went over to the seasoning she’d brought from the boat and added cilantro, as well as a few other spices for taste, creating a fresh, island salsa.
When the lobster was finished cooking, Reid took apart each one, putting both the claws and the tail onto separate plates. Then, she topped the meat with a generous helping of salsa and passed the plates to Nadia and Louie.
“Wow, this is delicious,” Nadia murmured, savoring each bite. “Where did you learn to cook?”
“I’ve been in the islands a long time and have been treasure hunting just as long. When you spend weeks on a boat or an uninhabited island, you get creative.” Reid shrugged. “I learned through trial and error what flavors worked well together and which ones to never pair up.”
“It has a very exotic taste. I love it,” Nadia said.
“Thanks.” Reid smiled.
“Who wants pirate water?” Louie asked, holding up the rum bottle when they finished eating.
“How about a Pina Colada?” Reid said.
“I’m with Reid,” Nadia laughed.
Reid poured some water into a pan from the jug they’d brought from the boat and set it on the rack over the fire. She then took two pieces of coconut and a spoon, and began scraping the inside into small white shreds. Once she had enough, she added the hot water to the first coconut full of shreds, mixing until it turned into coconut milk. After doing the same thing to the other one, she grabbed a few extra pieces of cut fruit and floated them in the milk. Lastly, she added a couple shots of rum to each coconut mix, and handed one of them to Nadia.
“It’s going to be warm, but if we take some coconuts and fruit back to the boat, I can make it again and put it in our freezer,” she said.
Nadia took a small sip, tasting the coconut and rum mixture on her tongue. “This is pretty good,” she exclaimed, taking a longer sip.
Louie shook his head and poured himself a shot of rum. “I’m going to go back to the boat and do some fishing before it gets dark,” he said. “I’ll try to get us something tasty for tomorrow night.”
“Sounds good. I’ll run you out in the dinghy.” Reid set her coconut down and began putting the dirty dishes into a plastic bag. “Do you want to go back or stay here?” she asked Nadia. “I plan to hang out for a while and watch the sun go down.”
“I’ll stay,” Nadia replied, drinking some more of her drink, before gathering the seasoning and other items from the blanket into a separate bag.
Reid grabbed the two bags, leaving the blanket behind since Nadia was sitting on it. She stowed everything in the inflatable, and Louie helped her push it out to water that was knee deep.
“Come on you piece of shit,” Reid growled, pulling the starter cord for the little outboard over and over until it finally sputtered to life.
“I was wondering who was going to win,” Louie laughed, shaking his head.
Reid shot him a bird and pushed the little raft to full throttle. The short ride to their boat was quick. Louie tied the dinghy line to the cleat on the swim platform and climbed out. Reid handed him the bags, then the dive tank, masks, and fins, before following him aboard the boat. She rinsed out the dive masks with fresh water and stowed them away, as well as the tank. Then, she stepped through the wheelhouse to the cabin and walked back out with a small, brown paper sack.
“I’ll clean these out on the swim platform with the washdown hose like we do when we shower,” Louie said, emptying the dirty dish bag.
“That’s fine,” she replied. “Just don’t drop anything in the water or you’ll be diving down to get it,” she added. It was simply too difficult to shower in the tiny head, so they’d taken turns showering in their bathing suits on the swim platform, using the freshwater washdown hose.
TWELVE
Nadia watched the dinghy as it raced across the top of the water. It was much faster without the added weight of Nadia and Louie, plus their accessories. She grabbed her phone, snapping a couple of pictures of Reid speeding towards her.
The trip from hell had actually turned into an adventure. She hadn’t been sure what to expect when they set out and truthfully, she thought her father had thrown her into the hands of two bumbling island idiots. However, the past thirty-six hours had certainly changed her way of thinking, but more importantly, her impression of Louie and Reid.
“Miss me?” Reid joked, walking up to her with a bag in
her hand.
“No,” Nadia said matter-of-factly, but the beautiful smile on her face revealed the truth. “What’s that?”
“Dessert.” Reid wiggled her eyebrows and sat on the log near the fire that was still burning. “But, you didn’t miss me…so, I won’t be sharing,” she teased.
Nadia laughed, sipping her drink. “This is really good.”
“Glad you like it.” Reid took a drink from her coconut and reached for the paper bag. “These are Ms. Vita’s famous rum balls,” she said, opening the sack. A half dozen chocolate covered cake balls were wrapped in wax paper. “Have you ever had a cake pop from the bakery?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, these are moist, gooey cake similar to cake pops, but they’re soaked in very strong, island rum and have a thick, hard chocolate shell. It’s a good thing I made those drinks. We’re going to need them to wash these down.” Reid grinned. “Ms. Vita makes everything herself, including the rum, from an old family recipe that has been around for hundreds of years, or so she says. Anyway, you can’t eat many or you’ll be falling down drunk. Ask your father,” she chuckled, offering her one.
“What did he do, eat a whole bag of them and puke?” Nadia questioned, taking one of the balls.
“No. He ate about half a bag and fell out of his chair at Blackbeard’s, breaking his arm.”
“I remember when he had a cast. That was about five and a half years ago, I think. He told me he hurt it while fighting a thug who was trying to rob him.”
Reid laughed hysterically. “I beat him in a poker game, winning about a grand, and he got so pissed. When he jumped up to leave the table, those rum balls hit him hard and he stumbled, falling over the chair. When he reached out to catch himself, he landed wrong,” Reid explained, biting into one of the balls, savoring the flavors.
“That figures.” Nadia shook her head. “I can see why he ate so many though. These are amazing. I barely taste the alcohol.”
“Yeah.” Thinking back, she mumbled, “That was the night we decided to work together for the first time.”
“I didn’t know you actually worked together,” Nadia replied, drinking more of her homemade Pina Colada to wash down the chocolate.
“I’ve been a treasure hunter for years, a lot longer than I’ve known him. Anyway, he knew what I did and sought me out. He wanted to find gold treasure. We wound up cutting a deal and he funded a few of my searches. He made some good money off of my finds.” Reid rolled the bag closed and took a few long sips of her drink. “I didn’t screw him over, Nadia, despite what he’s told you,” she sighed, shaking her head as she stood up.
“He thinks you can’t be trusted.”
“Do you want to take a walk?” Reid asked, looking into her golden brown eyes.
“Sure.” Nadia got up and fell in step next to her as they casually strolled through the sand along the shoreline. “What happened?” she asked. “All he said is you’re a worthless piece of shit that screwed him over and you owe him a lot of money.”
Reid exhaled a deep breath. “A little over three and a half years ago, Guillermo heard about a plane that had gone down somewhere in the Caribbean in 1973 with a ton of stolen diamonds aboard. The plane had never been found, so the stolen gems were never recovered. He wanted me to find the diamonds so he could sell them on the black market and make a killing.” Reid pushed the sand with her toes as she slowly walked. “He put up fifty thousand dollars to cover the cost of the boat rental and the equipment, as well as the wages for the salvage crew that I hired. Long story short, I found the plane and the diamonds, but like with any wreck discovery, it had to be legally recorded. The company who actually owned the stolen diamonds, took everything we recovered. I was given recognition for the discovery, but the only monetary value we received was from the insurance company, which was three thousand dollars.”
“Wow,” Nadia said.
“Guillermo blamed me for everything, threatening to kill me and so on. I kept myself from going to jail and potentially, him from prison, by being honest about the discovery. All he saw was dollar signs. All of Exuma Island knew how pissed he was and I was sick of hearing about it, along with his empty threats. I was also broke, having spent the last of my money on that search too. So, I kept the three grand from the insurance company and took a job on a salvage crew that was working a project in East Africa.”
“Is that how you met Louie?”
Reid nodded. “Speaking of,” she said, pointing towards the boat. Louie was screaming at the top of his lungs while holding up a fish. She laughed. “Damn, that man can fish.”
“Why does he think you saved his life?” Nadia questioned.
Reid paused in the sand, watching the bright orange and red colors of the sky as the sun fell below the waves on the horizon. “When we met, Louie was a fisherman named Imaku Dujambi on Unguja Island, the largest of the islands located off the coast of Tanzania in East Africa. He had an old, handmade, wooden boat with a jalopy outboard. Fishing was his passion and on Unguja, it was also his source of income,” she stated as she slowly began walking back towards the fire. “I was a salvage diver on the Little Nina, a salvage and recovery boat that was anchored over the wreck of a British merchant shipped named HMS Mary Anne, which was also used as a slave trade ship. It sank in 1605 and was about a mile off the coast of Unguja. The boat was small with very cramped quarters, so me and a couple of the other divers were staying in a resort area about two blocks from the marina. Every morning, we’d walk to the marina and ride out to the ship in a dinghy and spend the day diving the wreck. Then, before sunset, we’d ride back to shore.”
When they reached the fire, Reid sat on the old blanket and stretched her legs out in front of her. Nadia sat down beside her, pulling her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them.
“The man in the battered old boat always fished around the reef about twenty yards from where our ship was anchored,” Reid continued. “I’d see him on the dock in the morning and evenings quite often, and he was out there fishing at the reef seven days a week.
“One of the divers I was working with had a handheld radio and played music during our rides to and from the ship. It didn’t pick up any local stations, so we were stuck listening to the same mixed CD he’d brought from home, day in and day out. One of the songs was Louie Louie by The Kingsmen. After the first week or so, we found ourselves singing that song as loud as we could whenever it came on. Anyway, one morning at the dock, I heard the fisherman singing the song to himself as he walked past us. Then, I heard him singing again the next time I saw him. I sort of nicknamed him Louie after that and he never corrected me. I assumed he didn’t speak much English, since most people on the island spoke Swahili.”
Nadia laughed.
The last of the sun’s rays fell below the sky in front of them as Reid stoked the fire with a stick. “One afternoon, I had just come up from a dive and was taking a break on the bow of the ship. Louie, the fisherman, was out there as usual. I noticed he was having a difficult time getting the outboard started on his boat. He kept pulling the starter rope and then retying it back around the flywheel since there was no cowling on the old, outdated motor. At one point, he didn’t get the rope secured and when he snatched back, it came loose, flinging him overboard. I leaned over the rail, watching and waiting for him to come up. When he didn’t surface, I thought he may have hit his head or something, so I dove over the side of the ship and swam out to him.”
“Oh, my god,” Nadia said.
“I reached him in time and pulled him back up into the little boat. Come to find out, he couldn’t swim. We sort of became friends after that and over the course of the next year, I not only taught him how to swim, I taught him how to wreck dive too. I made him my assistant, paying him a wage out of my earnings from the salvage crew, and took him diving with me during the week. He still fished on the weekends and sold his catch at the market.”
“Wow. So, you did save his life.”
“Not really,” Reid laughed. “If he’d moved about fifteen feet, he would’ve been able to touch the bottom. He was figuring that out by the time I got to him. When he told you I saved him, it wasn’t necessarily because he was drowning. I changed his life.”
“I can see the genuine trust and friendship between the two of you. That’s hard to find,” Nadia said softly. “So many people in this world are selfless. My father included,” she added.
“I’m sorry he forced you into this mess,” Reid replied.
“It’s okay. I got to meet you,” Nadia said, looking over at her.
Reid smiled and pulled her eyes to sea.
THIRTEEN
The anchor light on the top of the Lady Pearl shined brightly in the distance where she bobbed in the water, but it was almost too dark to see the actual boat itself. A million twinkling stars sparkled in the sky above.
“Do you think it’s out there?” Nadia murmured.
“What?”
“The ship you’re looking for. Do you think this is where it is?”
“I don’t know,” Reid sighed. “Finding anything in these waters is like finding a needle in a haystack. There are shallow pockets, but most of the Caribbean is well over 2000 feet deep.” Reid poked the fire again with the stick. “I’ve been researching the Duchess for many years. I’ve read everything from old captain’s logs to pirate tales passed down through history, and everything in between. I’ve tracked each explorer and treasure hunter who has set out to find her. As far as I know, no one has ever searched the areas I’m looking in. So, maybe I’m right.”
“It’s a pirate ship, right?”
“Yes and no. The Duchess was originally a French Navy Corvette, which was a small war ship. The smallest in their fleet. Henrique Broussard took her from the French Navy, painted her black, outfitted her with black sails, and renamed her Dame Noire, Dark Lady. She was a light, fast ship, with plenty of room in her cargo hold. Sometime around 1698 or 1699, a Dutch mercantile ship captain named Archibald Van Smit, disappeared while in Port Royal, Jamaica. Right around the same time, the Dame Noire also disappeared. Capt. Van Smit was written into the log book on his ship as having been lost at sea. Some old tales and a captain’s log book document the Dark Lady sinking off the coast of Jamaica. I don’t believe any of that.”
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