That’s when she realized he wasn’t going to be easy to get rid of. And he was a whole lot smarter and probably more experienced than she thought he was.
About an hour later, Madison nearly ran into Ned rounding the corner from the kitchen.
“I’m about to take off. Can I ask you for a dance, sort of give the singing cowboy some competition?”
“I’m kind of busy. I’ll take a raincheck.” It was what she had to say to stay in control.
“It might increase his ardor, could be real good for you,” he suggested, giving her a wink.
“Like he needed it,” she teased in return.
Ned shrugged. “If you say so. I would have thought you’d have gone for someone who wasn’t so long in the tooth and didn’t lust after anyone in a skirt. He’s kind of obvious, don’t you think? But you know what they say, whatever floats your boat.”
He had just made fun of her in the most gentlemanly manner, catching her off guard.
“And how would you know what sort of man I like to play with?”
“Oh, it’s play, is it? Well then, darlin’, I’m out.”
“I meant that in rhetorical terms,” she protested. “I meant—”
“Sure. It is a big game for you, isn’t it? You like to be in control, because that makes the man need to be stronger, right? Have you ever just let a nice, smooth man take his time, and rock your world, and you didn’t have to do a thing?”
That was unexpected. Madison thought she should be offended. “Supposed to be fifty-fifty, doesn’t it?”
“Only if you don’t trust the one in control. How nice would that be to anticipate, but not know, except to recognize that you don’t have to lift a finger and you let him do all the lovin’ and you get to do all the enjoyin’? Think about it.”
He turned on his heel. She had turned down the dance, after all, so there wasn’t anything left to be said. But it pissed her off to see him clear the doorway and disappear into the night air. Noonan wasn’t anywhere to be found, either.
The singing cowboy acted like he never saw a thing. Except he suddenly looked to like second place to Madison.
Chapter 11
Ned went for a barefoot run on the beach just before the sun rose. He did thirty pushups and a couple dozen sit ups. With his ankles caressed by the surf, he stretched, rotating his arms and doing neck curls in both directions. Satisfied he’d continued his routine on the first morning in a new location, just like he’d been trained, he surveyed his surroundings.
Take care of your body and your mind, and everything else works out.
By the time the grey pink sky turned into a full-blown rose orange, several other runners and bicyclists had joined him. A group of older women walked briskly past him, several of them waving.
Today, they’d start the dive.
Ned thought he would sleep well last night, but he wound up tossing about. He finally changed the sheets, putting the others in the wash. The lull of the machine whir was the last thing he heard before crashing. He couldn’t remember the dream he had, but they had been vivid and filled with bright color.
He made coffee and had a bowl of granola with a banana. He checked his computer for news from base. On his cell, the informal group chat he had with several of the Team guys had deteriorated last night into nonsense. Someone posted a picture he shouldn’t and asked that everyone erase it, which Ned did. He was glad he missed the drama of the night with a bunch of horny single guys trying to…do what? Live a normal life? It was far from normal. Waiting wasn’t normal. Recovering after a deployment wasn’t normal. There was still all the shit going on at home with their community, family, and their uncertain future. As much as they tried to be a force for good, there was still the realization after they came home that nothing really ever changed.
The news was the same. Someone got hurt in a training accident. One of their old instructors was retiring, and a party was planned. Someone else was getting married and another party was planned at the Brownlees, their official Team party after the deployment and the debriefing. He was sorry to miss that one. He liked Coop’s in-laws. Coop was a regular stand-up guy too. Both he and Kyle had always treated Ned with respect.
He finished his breakfast then made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and wrapped it in plastic. He brought two bottles of water and two apples, placing everything in a gallon plastic bag, sticking it in his slender dive backpack along with an extra pair of trunks and T-shirt and some heavy-duty sunscreen and bug repellant. Under his khakis he wore trunks. Hoisting the backpack over his shoulder, he stepped into his canvas slip-ons and walked out to the alleyway and then to Gulf Boulevard. He’d driven past the dock last night and knew it would be just a short walk.
Noonan kept the Barry Bones at a sport fishing club berth, although he wasn’t a paying member. Ned was told the private clubhouse was a popular meeting place for boats taking tourists fishing out on the bay, and the Bones was one of the most requested dive boats. Although not as many shipwrecks as on the Atlantic side, there were still a fair number of good sites for novice divers to check out. Noonan told him he was known to bring back everyone safely, albeit a little drunk.
He wasn’t like any of the big party boats with scores of partygoers who practically had to be lifted off when they came back to dock. Those black pirate ships blasted music and poured booze to excess, feigning to terrorize the quiet beachgoers on the shore. Their Hollywood-style swashbuckling was ridiculous but entertaining for many of the college and younger honeymooners who knew nothing about pirates, boats, or diving. Ned had seen real pirates, and those guys were definitely not funny.
Noonan had piles of wet suits and equipment laid out for his three divers. He pointed to Ned’s pile. “Check them out for me, will you? That suit’s about your size. Might be a little big.”
Ned held up the shortie, the preferred choice for warm water dives, cutting off just above the elbows and above the knees. It was intact but had definitely seen better days. He checked the gauges and connections on the tanks and tried on the one-piece headgear with the built-in com.
“Do we each have a spare?” Ned asked.
Noonan gave him the thumbs-up, pointing to four tanks secured in a stand on board. Ned took his equipment and stepped off the pier and onto the boat. Below deck, were two bedrooms—one was probably Noonan’s with an oversized bed no larger than a single on land. The other room had four bunks, no wider than a double ironing board, but otherwise spacious and adequate. He knew that’s where the three of them would sleep, if the dive required they stay overnight on the gulf.
The galley kitchen had a big stainless steel sink, a microwave and built-in coffee maker, and a one-burner propane cooktop. A small stainless fridge was secured underneath the countertop. Beyond was the head with shower. He stowed his pack, setting it on a lower bunk, and poured himself a mug of coffee, climbing back up to see if he could help Noonan with anything.
“No, I think I got everything. I got a fridge down there if you need to keep anything cold, and sorry, I was going to get donuts but never left the ship.”
“No worries, Noonan. I’m good. Hope you got beer for the return trip.”
“That I do,” Noonan said as he organized ties, buoys and ropes, placing them in several plastic containers smelling of fish and probably used for storing fresh catch. Ned figured the empty large blue container with a drain in it at the stern near one of the outboards was for placing things they found on the dive.
“What time are the others coming?”
“Madison’s usually early. But I said eight o’clock.” Noonan checked his watch, “Anytime now.”
Ned saw Madison’s shapely form in her dark turquoise suit, carrying a pair of bright pink flippers. She’d also brought snorkel gear which Ned found amusing. She gave him a big smile and waved.
“Hey, Noonan, how deep are we going?” Ned thought perhaps he’d misunderstood.
“Less than a hundred, maybe eighty, how I pegged it. I was out th
ere two days ago and located it with sonar, marked it with a buoy.”
“Morning,” Madison said to him. Her fresh face was more exposed now that all that blonde hair was tied back in two long braids she lashed together with hot pink bands. She could have made a beautiful Viking princess in a movie shoot, if they wore wetsuits.
“You have a nice night?”
She wrinkled up her nose.
“I warned you about the cowboy.”
It was nice to see her laugh. “He’s not a cowboy.”
“And?”
“He’s a good dancer.”
“And?” He was enjoying the tease. He also noted she wasn’t as frosty as she’d been last night, which meant one of two things, and both of them were sending visions to his head that were damned distracting.
She shrugged. “I’m not used to waiting in line. And that’s all I’m going to tell you!”
Well, good for you. He’d been right about her.
She filed past him, greeted Noonan, and examined the equipment he’d left out for her. She’d brought her own secondary tank, brightly colored in psychedelic patterns. Ned continued to sip his coffee. Noonan showed her the headpiece they would wear and demonstrated the wire for the com.
At last, the third diver, Travis Hicks, arrived, running down the dock in red flip-flops, an open palm trees shirt exposing a white hairy chest, matching red trunks, and a Yankee baseball cap worn backwards. He also wore thick glasses and would need a mask enhancement.
Shortly before nine o’clock, they took off in the forty-one foot Barry Bones, headed due West. Ned deposited his mug in the galley downstairs and then took a seat up front next to Madison, avoiding the loud twin diesels at the rear. Travis sat next to Noonan on the bridge, watching the scanners logging the depth of the Bay. It took nearly five miles out before the floor dropped below thirty feet, and quickly, they were in much deeper waters.
Nearly an hour after leaving shore, they came upon a red buoy bobbing in the relatively calm blue waters of the Gulf. Noonan dropped anchor and turned off the engines well in advance of the marker. He had been showing Travis the debris field ahead that led to the barge they were going to explore.
“You’re going to have to swim in a ways to get to the main hull. I didn’t want to disturb it when we dropped anchor.”
The four of them congregated in the galley table so Noonan could share the pictures he’d brought.
“Here’s what the barge looked like new. The Regina Cubana. It slept nearly twenty-five men, and had a regular run all over the Cuban and Florida coastline. But who we’re looking for is Otis. He was the cook’s dog. That mutt had traveled all over the Caribbean, but they lived in Cuba, and that’s where the cook signed on. Never traveled without the dog.”
“You said it was the dog’s collar we’re after?” asked Ned.
“Yes, and I have a picture of it.” Noonan scrambled through a folder of maps and pictures, magazine clippings. He pulled out a drawing of a necklace around the neck of a pretty island girl. It appeared to have jewels encrusted around the choker with a cross dangling in the center.
“That’s no dog collar,” gasped Madison.
“No, it’s not. And apparently, the gems are nearly worthless, except that they are old and have history. It was a piece of costume jewelry created for the governor’s wife to wear when she was out in the countryside. It was a replica of the real thing that is in a British maritime museum in Antigua. Story has it that this was the mistress’ slave girl, and when the woman died, she left her the fake. The family, of course, inherited the real one. She was our cook’s wife, but not for very long. When she passed, our man took to the sea with his favorite mutt, Otis, who didn’t mind wearing this thing around his neck on all the voyages he went on. This dog and the collar were considered to be good luck to the men who worked the barge.”
“How will we find something like that?”
“It’s platinum and probably glass, if any of it remains. Our metal detector will pick up whatever’s left. Of course, it will look like a pile of rocks,” said Noonan. “It won’t resemble anything in this picture. You’ll have to use your imagination. Two hundred years under water does things. It will be full encased in hardened rock and coral.”
“Were they hauling anything valuable?” asked Travis.
“Probably not, at least not what was listed on the manifest. There were three survivors who managed to escape in a small rowboat, who told the stories.”
“Who hired you?” asked Ned.
“A family in North Carolina traced their ancestry to this woman, the former slave girl, and got permission to petition the estate for our dive. They want the collar. It’s worthless other than the sentimental value of it. And we’re given some rights to items we find worth less than five hundred dollars, but everything has to be catalogued first. And no human remains, no bones or anything that would destroy their graves. Understood?”
“After all these years, you won’t find any remains,” said Ned.
Noonan chuckled. “Depends on what fell on top of them. I’ve seen some things that would scare the liver out of you. Bodies floating to the surface after several hundred years under water, if the conditions of the wreck are right. They just melt into the sea by the time they get close to the surface. Really weird stuff.”
Madison had a disgusted look on her face.
“Most of what was being transported when the freak hurricane hit was perishable: Grain, molasses, honey, and some lumber from Cuba on its way to up near the panhandle. It was a little too far offshore for most those who survived the sinking to be able to swim to safety, unfortunately.”
“Did they carry passengers?” asked Travis.
“Not listed. But back then, there were always stowaways. This was fifty years before the Civil War, the slave trade was still going strong, but there were runaways. Who knows who could have been on board? The accommodations would not be very deluxe, even for the captain.”
Travis and Ned suited up as Noonan helped Madison with her equipment. She strapped her extra tank to a belt around her waist. Noonan asked Travis to man the metal detector. All three of them tested the battery-operated com system and would do so again once in the water. They would be going with a long dive line so Noonan could signal them if he needed them to surface. The Bones didn’t have anything more sophisticated than that. There wouldn’t be any small submersibles sending pictures up top.
Ned followed Madison and Travis into the water. They adjusted their face masks and tested the com, gave the thumbs-up to Noonan, and, one by one, descended into the warm water of the Gulf and into the deep.
Madison’s bright pink fins were easy to spot, her long legs slowly pedaling her forward and down into the darker water. Lack of silt made everything clear, sending down shards of light from the surface. Varieties of colorful small fish curiously hung around them. He could see several sparkling particles floating, catching the sun’s rays before they descended further. The temperature of the water was much cooler, but still not as cold as he expected.
The image of Madison’s shapely form was something Ned liked watching as they continued their descent. He was hopeful for what lay below and the promise of recovering objects long lost. He savored the recreational aspect of their adventure. No bad guys coming after them. No worries about being detected or having a malfunction with their rebreathers. It was just a pleasurable journey into the unknown with someone who was also an unknown factor in his life.
Of all the things he thought he would be doing, this wasn’t one of them. He was following a mermaid in a turquoise wetsuit with pink fins. But, unlike his father, he was going on a treasure dive.
For a dog collar.
Chapter 12
Travis reached the floor first and began swishing the lighted detector over the debris field as Madison and Ned caught up to him. She knew from prior salvage dives that often the more experienced divers were the first to get down to a site, looking for the easy finds. This was different.
It was going to have to be a meticulous combing of the area, identifying the spots they’d come back to and inspect further. Sort of like an archeological survey. She’d brought her waterproof camera and started taking pictures of areas Travis lingered on.
He found some tracings and pointed down to several mounds of reddish-brown rocks less than a foot tall. Madison shot several photos of the area and moved on.
Ned’s flashlight was wider and threw out more light than the ones Travis and Madison had. She gave him a thumbs-up when he located what appeared to be a hole several feet deep and about twenty feet wide. It looked like a crater of some kind.
She dove in after Ned and took pictures. The sides of the crater looked like the frayed edges of a basket. Pieces of metal and crusted timbers long gone lay strewn around the floor. Madison catalogued everywhere Ned illuminated. She stayed close by his side.
“What do you think made this?” she asked into the com.
“Looks like a blast to me. Not sure if it was something dropped from the surface or internal, but it looks more recent than the wreck itself, if that’s what we’ve found.”
She nodded her head.
“Hey, guys, we definitely need to get back here,” they heard Travis call out.
Travis was hovering over a debris field that mounted up nearly twenty feet. At the ocean floor, they found the remnants of a ship’s anchor that was protruding from the sand nearly three feet, with a point fashioned at the end of the curved tip. Next to it was a concreted tube, appearing to be part of a cannon, also buried in the sand floor.
“That definitely didn’t come from a barge,” said Ned.
“Neither of them did. That’s the shape of some of the galleon’s anchors I’ve seen,” said Travis.
The two objects were firmly planted in the seabed and did not budge.
“Noonan’s going to have kittens over these. Make sure you get some great shots, Maddie,” said Travis.
Treasure Island SEAL: Pirate SEAL Rescues his Mermaid (Sunset SEALs Book 3) Page 8