Wood's Reach

by Steven Becker

  “Help me, please. I’ve been in an accident,” he said meekly.

  The door opened and she stepped outside. “Wow, you look bad.”

  “I could really use a ride to the hospital,” he said.

  She rubbed her head. “I’ve been smokin’ a little. Maybe I should call an ambulance, or the sheriff.”

  “Oh, no. That won’t be necessary. A little bit of smoke would be cool, though,” he said, cursing that the painkillers had been ruined by the water.

  She walked back into the house, closing the door behind her, and he considered his options. The hospital was out of the question. The police would have alerted them to be on the lookout for survivors of the explosion, and there would surely be questions. There had to be a better way—maybe a vet, or a private doctor.

  The door opened and the woman came out holding a pipe. Flicking the lighter, she pulled the flame into the bowl, held her breath for a second, and handed it to him. He took it and inhaled deeply, immediately feeling the smoke enter his lungs. While he waited for the magic to happen, he took another hit and handed the pipe back to her. He followed her gaze to his feet. Blood was pooling on the tile floor.

  “I don’t care what you say. I’m going to call for help,” she said, going for the door.

  He had to act. As fast as his injury would allow, he sidestepped around her and put his hand on the door. “That won’t be necessary. Maybe we should go inside and see about patching this up—see if you’ve got anything stronger than the smoke too.”

  She was scared and looked like she might scream. He was about to reach out to stop her when he saw her tank top. “What’s this Turtle Hospital?”

  “Just a place down the road. Takes in injured turtles and stuff,” she said, calming slightly.

  “Call them. Tell them an injured turtle washed up on the beach.”

  She looked at him strangely.

  “Look, you want me out of here. Make the call and I’m gone. Nobody gets hurt,” he said, moving away from the door. Either she was going to do what he asked, or he would take matters into his own hands.

  “Okay. I’ll get my phone,” she said and went inside. A minute later she was back. “They’re on their way, but you’ve got to promise this is going to be cool.”

  “Yeah, sure, I promise,” he said. “Now this is how it’s going to go. All you have to do is direct them to the beach down there.” He pointed to a spit of sand just outside of the reach of the lights.

  He waited with her in an uneasy silence, passing the pipe back and forth several times before they heard the sound of a car pulling in the driveway. “Remember,” he said as he walked away from the patio. Looking back, he saw her meet a man and a woman who exited what looked like an ambulance. Suspecting a trick, he crept around the side of the house, surprised to see the markings on its side said Turtle Ambulance.

  Hobbling down the beach, he moved behind a cluster of scrub palms and hid. Without a weapon, he was counting on surprise to take one of the pair coming toward him. The woman was leading them to the spot he had pointed out. Just as she passed him, he lunged forward from his knees and grabbed the ankles of the man. The surprise was total, and he met little resistance.

  He had the man by the legs and quickly reached up for his arm before he could react. With a twist, he grabbed his hand, pulling it behind the man’s back. “Okay. Everyone is going to listen carefully and we’ll be fine.” They stood in a semicircle, the girl and woman on each side of the man. “Let’s take a nice walk back to your little ambulance and go see this hospital of yours.” They didn’t move. “All I need is one of your doctors to stitch me up, and you’ll never see me again.” Their eyes were bugged out, but they nodded.

  Leaning heavily on the man for support, they walked back to the ambulance. “You two in back,” Mike said to the women. They climbed in, and he shut the door. “And let me have your phones.” He collected their phones, closing the door behind them. Having to contort himself to ease the pain, he made it into the front seat. “Drive,” he ordered the man.

  They turned onto the highway and followed US-1 north for about a mile before making a left into the hospital’s parking area. The driver clicked a remote. Before Mike could say anything, an automatic gate slid open, he drove in, and they parked by the office of what looked like an old motel.

  “Get out,” he ordered the driver. He opened his door and slid out. With an eye on the man, he hobbled around the orange-and-white ambulance and let the women out of the back. “Okay. All together now, let’s find a doctor.”

  “I am the doctor,” the girl said. “If you’d given me the chance, we could have fixed you up back there.”

  He shot her an angry look. “What’s your name, honey?”

  “Jen. Now let’s get you inside and patch that up,” she said, leading him around the front of the office to a glass door. She reached into a pocket of her lab coat, and he grabbed her hand. “Easy there. You’re going to have to trust me a little,” she said, pulling out a key. The door opened, and she led them to a small exam room.

  “Looks like a regular doctor’s office,” Mike said.

  She ignored him and went to the side table, where she started putting supplies and instruments on a metal tray. “You want to take that off, or do you want me to do it?” she asked, looking at his shirt.

  He peeled it off, wincing when the dried blood pulled away. “Those are sterilized, right?”

  “Yes, we care about our patients here.” She moved around to look at him. “Lie down on your good side.”

  Moving to the table, he lay as she requested. “You got something for the pain?” He glared at the man and woman, also in the room. “Nothing that’ll knock me out.”

  “I can give you a local,” Jen said, loading a syringe with a clear fluid. Without warning, she reached over, stuck him, and pushed the plunger, releasing the anesthetic. “That should do it. Lidocaine.”

  His side immediately went numb, and she went to work stitching the wound. He watched as she opened the seal on an envelope and extracted something. With her back shielding her, he couldn’t see what she was doing.

  “Hey. What’s that?”

  She hesitated. “It’s a delayed release antibiotic. State of the art.”

  “Damn turtles got it good,” he said.

  Just minutes later, she wrapped a fresh bandage around it. He got up and turned to her. “And something for the pain.”

  “The lidocaine should hold you for a while. I guess you’re not the type to listen if I warn you about getting it wet.” She started cleaning up, returning the unused supplies to the shelves.

  He looked around but didn’t see any pills. But it was a hospital—there had to be painkillers here someplace. Didn’t turtles feel pain? “When I ask for something, I usually get it,” he said, moving to the table and taking a scalpel. Rubbing the blade sideways with his finger, he glared at her.

  “Just a minute,” she said and left the room.

  “You two stay here,” he told the man and woman, then went to follow Jen. She unlocked a door and went into a small storeroom, took a bottle off the shelf and dumped half a dozen pills into her hand, almost dropping them when he reached for her arm.

  “Put them back, I’ll take the bottle.” He grabbed the bottle and pills from her, popping three in his mouth and dry-swallowing them before closing the cap. “Thanks for your help.” He walked back the way he had come and turned into the hallway, where he found the door leading to the parking lot. Outside, he looked at the street, then back at the water. His mind started to clear as the painkillers took effect. He went back inside.

  “All of you. Into the office,” he ordered.

  He walked around to the wrapping station in the gift shop and grabbed a packing tape dispenser. One at a time, he bound and gagged them. On his way out, seeing the T-shirt display and realizing he was topless, he grabbed an XL from the shelf before leaving.

  He needed a way out. It wouldn’t take long for them to free themse
lves and call the police. Walking away from the street, he looked for a place to hide. They’d never suspect him of staying on the property.

  Near the water, dark netting surrounded a fenced-in area holding huge black water tanks. He opened the gate and entered. The tanks were lit from above, and he could see turtles in most. Too exposed to hide, he left the pen and walked to a small cove on the right. To the end, just hidden behind the tanks, was a twin-engine center-console, hanging above the water from two steel arms. Staying to the shadows, he approached it, found the control box, and lowered the boat into the water. Careful of his side, he slid down into the hull, unhooked the cables, and looked at the helm. The keys were in the ignition, and he took one last look toward the hospital and street to see if anyone had seen him. One at a time, he started the engines. The transmissions clicked when he pushed down the throttles, and the boat started forward. Slowly, to keep the engine noise down, he idled out of the cove and into open water. Once clear of the breakwater, he turned to the west and pushed the throttles down to their limits, steering a course that would take him under the bridge.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Around midnight, the wind strengthened, kicking up the seas and making sleep difficult—not that he would have had much luck anyhow. It had still been dark when they had released him from the hold, and now the first rays of light were just breaking the horizon. Usually it was his favorite time of day, but sitting on deck under the watchful eyes of Ironhead, the sunrise was ruined. Alicia was back in the cabin, refining the chart, but they still needed the missing information. Without it, this might be a very long day.

  Sometime last night, he had heard the sound of an outboard motor approach and what he thought was a hull scraping against the boat. Now the boat was gone, but Ironhead was back, looking uncomfortable, wearing a Turtle Hospital T-shirt. He wasn’t sure how he had found them, but the reef was less than a mile wide, running parallel to land. There were few boats out at night, and finding a ship the size of Hawk’s trawler would have been easy.

  He looked toward land. Marathon was just visible—a thin line on the horizon, the high-rise at Key Colony Beach to the right the lone identifiable landmark. With the right tide, he could swim it, but the ebb tide removed the possibility for now. With the near full moon, he estimated current would be running at almost two knots, moving away from land faster than he could swim. But even with the right tide, he couldn’t leave Alicia. Ironhead sat there glaring at him, a strange look on his face. Hawk called for him to take the wheel, and Mac noticed that he was favoring one side when he moved. There was no apparent injury, but he filed away the observation, a plan for the thick-necked thug forming in his mind.

  The engines started and Hawk called for Wallace, who was standing on the bow, to release the line attached to the buoy. He slid the dock line through the eye of the mooring line and signaled that they were clear. Ironhead steered a large circle to escape the other buoys, then headed just south of east. Mac stared down at the water, changing from almost clear to green to blue as the depth increased.

  “Get your gear sorted,” Hawk ordered him. “We’ll be on the first numbers in twenty minutes.”

  Mac was surprised they would be diving this quickly. “Don’t you tow an array first and make sure something’s down there?”

  “If you want a neon billboard that says you’re searching for treasure, that’ll work great, but we’re going to do this the old-fashioned way,” he said.

  Mac understood his point, though it would mean a lot of bottom time for him. Pulling a side-scan sonar array was the simplest and most effective method for locating anomalies like shipwrecks underwater, but anyone fishing or diving nearby would quickly notice them. Commercial fishermen would easily pick up the search grid and know they were looking for something. They had a permit for exploration, but it wouldn’t stop everyone else from just “diving” the area.

  He went into the cabin. “You having any luck?” he asked Alicia.

  “Kind of tweaked the coordinates a bit by adding the projection of the Earth’s surface to the chart,” she said, moving to the side to give him a view of the screen.

  The straight lines he had seen yesterday now had slight curves to them, adjusting to the round orb. “That should help a little, but this is still a wild-ass guess.”

  Hawk came over. “I’ll need the first pair of coordinates now.”

  “You know this is a shot in the dark,” Mac said, trying to take some of the pressure off of her. “You can’t think that we are just going to stumble on a ship that’s been lost for hundreds of years on a handful of dives.”

  He looked over to Alicia. “If she’s as good as her reputation, we ought to. If not, I have no use for her.” He turned to him and smiled. “Or you.”

  Alicia wrote down the numbers on a piece of paper, and Mac watched as Hawk plotted them on the chart.

  “Two hundred and ten feet, Travis. Better put your big boy pants on,” he said. “That’s why no one has found it—too deep.”

  Mac knew he was right. One hundred thirty feet was the maximum depth for recreational divers, and until recently, unless you had a submersible vessel, the depth would have discouraged anyone who’d thought to look.

  The dangerous shoals and proximity to the Gulf Stream virtually guaranteed that early Keys inhabitants were all in the wrecking business in one way or another: either recovering or brokering the goods that washed up on shore. As technology improved, they were able to dive the shallow wrecks.

  But what if the wreck was deep, and valuable? The European settlers and sailors were notorious for being shortsighted and closed-minded. Hundreds had died by their refusal to adopt local diets. Their views toward navigation had leaned toward the scientific, and where the rudimentary instruments and technology had fallen short, they’d filled the gaps with fiction. They would have had no way of recording a deep wreck.

  Indigenous tribes had accurately navigated the oceans for a thousand years, relying on more natural methods. They used the stars, of course, but learned the subtle feel only acquired through generations on the water to learn the swells and currents that would push a boat off course. With their instinctive feel for the ocean, they could easily have marked a treasure, hoping a future generation might profit by it.

  He’d been thinking last night about the Indians that had inhabited the islands in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The indigenous people had been the original wreckers, salvaging long before Europeans had settled in any numbers. They were so skilled at recovering the bounty of the sea that when the Europeans finally realized the financial rewards, they had hired them to do the work. As news spread of the treasures being dumped on the ocean floor, clusters of settlers built Key West, Vaca Key, which was now Marathon, and Indian Key. Was it possible that this was a treasure map leading not to some ancient Mayan ruin, but to a more recent wreck? The relics that he and Wood had found years ago dating from an old Mayan canoe had been inshore. There was no reason for the elaborate tattoos to conceal the location.

  “You going to get on with it?” Hawk asked.

  Mac snapped back to the present and went out on deck. His gear was still in the mesh bag. Ironhead was gearing up and Mac studied his setup.

  “Side-mount?” he asked.

  “Bloody back is a problem. You ever try it?” he answered.

  When it came to talking diving and equipment, the barrier between the men broke down. Mac had used the harness system, allowing multiple tanks to be carried alongside your body instead of on your back while cave diving. “Yeah. It would be good to have two tanks, especially if we’re going over two hundred feet.”

  “Here.” He tossed Mac a harness. “There’s a rebreather setup under that bench.”

  Mac had wondered how they were going to get any bottom time at that depth. The maximum depth for nitrox, a standard gas mixture with an increased oxygen content, was much shallower, and he didn’t see any equipment for a helium mix, which negated the risk of oxygen toxici
ty. He opened the lid and pulled out the backpack-mounted gear. His confusion must have been evident, his experience with the equipment limited.

  “Let me give you a rundown,” Ironhead said.

  Mac was cautious as the man ran through the system setup and operation. Above the water they were enemies, but forced to work in the conditions below, they would need to count on each other for support. The mixed-gas closed-circuit rebreather would allow them time at depth without the risk of oxygen toxicity. The side-mount tanks would be used for the lengthy decompression stops, and as an alternate air source if the more complicated equipment failed. With just a single regulator attached to each tank, the redundant and simple systems provided a degree of comfort.

  The boat slowed, and he grabbed the gunwale as they turned abeam into the waves. This was a day better spent under the water.

  “Get ready,” Ironhead said. He turned away and inspected the bandage on his side. Using his teeth to hold the end of the roll, he pulled off several feet of duct tape, wrapping it tightly around the bandage to protect it. Satisfied with his work, he reached into his gear bag, removed a container, and dumped several pills into his hand. Placing them in his mouth, he grabbed a bottle of water and swallowed.

  Mac heard the anchor drop and the chain roll through the guides. “You sure you’re okay with that? It looks pretty bad,” Mac said. If they were going to be buddies underwater, he needed to know Ironhead’s mental and physical state—and both looked bad.

  “Boss ain’t going to listen to any excuses,” he said, struggling into a heavy wetsuit.

  Mac followed his lead and put on the thick suit. The seven-millimeter cold-water suit was bulky, but at the depths they were diving, the water would be considerably colder than the surface. He calculated the extra weight he would need and then subtracted four pounds for the second tank. On his right arm, he strapped the computer matched to the rebreather equipment and scrolled through the screens, familiarizing himself with its operation.