Wood's Reach

by Steven Becker

  Mac had him in a headlock, trying to subdue him. He didn’t want to kill him, just disable him enough to figure out what to do with him. But someone on the boat had other ideas, and he saw the reflection of the sun on a dive tank as it came slamming down on Hawk’s head. Immediately, the struggle ended.

  “Who—” Mac started.

  “Evil man,” he heard Cheqea screaming on deck.

  Hawk was facedown in the water now, and carefully, Mac went to him. There was nothing he could do. The man was dead.

  “Why did you have to do that?” he screamed up to the boat.

  “Evil man,” Cheqea screamed back.

  Mac knew he was fighting a losing battle. He needed to figure things out before another boat came over to investigate. Swimming the few feet to TJ’s boat, where Mel helped him aboard, he sat on the swim platform with his back against the transom, trying to catch his breath.

  All three were dead. Ironhead’s body was over a hundred feet below the surface and would probably never be found. He suspected Wallace was still in the hold where he had left him.

  “We have to get rid of this.” He looked at Hawk’s body, floating not five feet from him. He turned when he heard someone wailing behind him. “What’s that?”

  “Cheqea got grazed by that shot. No real damage, but she’s carrying on about some kind of evil,” TJ said.

  Mac was out of patience. He stood, walked through the transom door, and called to Trufante, “Give her whatever she’s got in that bag of hers. Have Pamela take her into the cabin. She seems to be able to communicate with her.”

  Trufante took the women and went inside. It was quiet on deck now, with Alicia, TJ, Mel, and Mac staring at each other, wondering what to do.

  TJ was first. “If Cheqea is all right, I say we tow his boat out a ways and scuttle it.”

  Mac nodded, looking at Mel.

  “He may be right. There’s no explaining our way out of this. Better to go missing. It’ll be dark in a couple of hours. I agree with TJ,” Mel said.

  Alicia nodded her ascent. Mac turned and grabbed the boat hook from under the gunwale, extended it, and reached over the side for Hawk’s body.

  “I’ll take it and his boat. You guys just follow,” he said.

  Mel looked at him. “I’m coming with you.”

  Mac gave the hook to TJ and jumped back in the water. “Hold on. I’ll get him aboard,” he called to Mel. TJ released the hook, and Mac grabbed the body, sidestroking to the trawler. He reached the transom, climbed out of the water, and dragged Hawk’s lifeless form aboard. Leaving the body on the deck, he went to the wheelhouse and started the engine. He looked back, then dropped the engine into reverse and backed down on TJ’s boat. When he was a few feet away, he called over for Mel to climb onto the gunwale and jump. She landed on the deck and came beside him, giving the dead body a wide berth.

  Together, the boats ran out to the three-hundred-foot line, deep enough that Mac had no worries about the wreck being discovered. Mel had run the boat while he prepared to scuttle it. He dragged Hawk’s body down the stairs and stashed it in the same hold as Wallace. Then, he weighted the bodies, left the door open, and started to locate the thru-hull fittings, opening each one as he went. Water started to flood the lower deck, but he knew it would take an hour or so before it was high enough to endanger them.

  The trawler was starting to list to starboard, drifting beam to the waves. TJ steered alongside, allowing Mac and Mel to hop off the sinking boat. He moved a few hundred feet away, far enough that his boat would be free of the inevitable whirlpool created when the trawler sank.

  A cloud of smoke floated from the cabin when Trufante, Pamela, and Cheqea finally emerged to join them at the rail and watch Hawk’s ship take the first wave over her port side. The ship rolled, taking more waves. It wasn’t long after sunset that it finally disappeared below the surface.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Despite having Mel next to him in the forward berth, Mac slept little after their watch. He had reversed the shifts from last night to mitigate any effects from the shortened decompression stop, but rest eluded him. Trufante and Pamela had taken the first watch, with TJ and Alicia on now. He couldn’t get comfortable after the beating his body had taken, and the knife wound throbbed incessantly, the ibuprofen he had taken earlier doing nothing to help the pain.

  In the brief periods that the pain abated, thoughts of the three dead bodies they had left behind took its place. He didn’t take violence lightly, and although there had been no alternative, he regretted the killings. Slowly, he eased himself out of the bunk, trying not to wake Mel, and moved silently through the cabin, where Trufante, Pamela, and Cheqea were asleep. He climbed the ladder to the bridge and sat on the aft bench.

  “No sleep?” TJ asked, turning to face him from the helm seats.

  Alicia was typing something on the laptop, but looked up. “You okay, Mac?”

  “Yeah. You’d think it would have been easy, but no,” Mac said.

  “Want to talk about the dive?”

  Mac looked out over the ripples on the water visible in the moonlight. They were back in Sister Creek, but instead of the main channel, they had taken a side canal and were surrounded by mangroves. The privacy was reassuring, but with it came the mosquitoes and black flies. He swatted at something on his forehead and tried to find the flaw in their plan.

  “Sure. Pretty simple, really. No depth concerns, the deepest canals I’ve seen in here are twenty feet. With the scooter, we should be able to cover the two miles pretty easily,” Mac said.

  “I’ve got a full charge on it,” TJ said. “Daylight’s in about an hour. We should gear up soon.”

  Mac looked toward the east, willing the sun to rise. There was nothing dangerous about what they were about to do—he was just ready for this whole affair to end. “I’ll go down in a few and get the gear organized.”

  They sat together in silence for a few minutes, the only noise the buzzing of the bugs and Alicia on the computer.

  “What’re you so busy with?” Mac asked her.

  She looked up, and he could see the shadow of the rings under her eyes in the reflection of the screen. “Filing the claim for the wreck. I want to get this in before there are any questions.”

  Mac nodded. As he had expected, Mel had convinced everyone to do this legally. He had no expectations of getting rich even if it did yield. The silver he was hoping to recover this morning was going to be his payback. The sky lightened slightly, giving the first indication of dawn. “Ready?” he asked TJ.

  They climbed down to the deck and worked in the dark, setting up their tanks. Mac was grateful for the simplicity of the standard BC and regulator setups that TJ had aboard as backups for his charter customers. After the last few days of technical diving, it was a welcome relief. Their plan was to get in the water just as the sun broke the horizon. They would be in the dark for the first section, but it would be easy to navigate the main channel with the phosphorescent light of the compass. They knew it would be a challenge without lights, but both preferred stealth to convenience, and once they reached the side canals, there should be enough sunlight penetrating the murky water.

  Mac and TJ sat side by side on the swim platform, with Alicia behind them, waiting to hand off the scooter and a backboard they had rigged with inflatable floats. The first rays of sunlight were visible now, and Mac gave the thumbs-up sign. Together they slid into the water and looked back to Alicia. She handed TJ the scooter and Mac the backboard.

  It was awkward navigating the dark canal, but after several near misses with the bottom, they finally got the hang of the setup. With the backboard tied to a short line directly behind the scooter, they each grabbed a handle. Without being able to communicate, Mac navigated with the compass, steering the unit with his handle, and TJ held the other, working the throttle. The buzz of several motors passed overhead as they crossed the main channel, probably fishermen out to get the morning bite. But they were plenty deep to av
oid the propellers. Finally the sun gained sufficient altitude to cast enough light on the water for them to see, and they entered the side canals. Mac worked through the canals by memory, finally making the last right turn and entering the canal where he had seen Hawk stash the treasure.

  The scooter pulled them down the dark canal, until the bridge pilings were just visible in front of them. They had passed the spot where he remembered seeing Ironhead dive, but the bridge was the only landmark. They would backtrack from there. The visibility was bad, his hand barely visible at arm’s length, but that was to be expected—the benefit being they would be invisible. Even if someone saw their bubble trail, it could easily be explained as an underwater spring or manatee.

  Reversing course, he tapped TJ on the shoulder and motioned to the bottom. He set the scooter down, and together, remaining only an arm’s length apart, they started combing the rocky floor. The first pass yielded nothing, but the sun was higher now and, along with the incoming tide, improved the visibility. His air gauge read two thousand pounds, enough to recover whatever was here and make it back to the boat—if they found it quickly.

  Able to work farther apart now, they went back over the same ground. Mac noticed something off to the side and, at first thinking it was a shark, saw TJ signaling to him. His heart sank when he saw it was only an old lower unit from a discarded engine. Faced with the reality that there was nothing here, he checked his gauges and signaled TJ that the dive was over. The silence of the water was overwhelming as he tried to figure out what had happened to the packages he had seen Hawk place just the other night and how to tell the crew they were not there. They reached the main channel, and he navigated across until they turned left. With the poor visibility, they had to surface before reaching the boat.

  Alicia, Trufante, and Mel were all standing on the swim platform, eagerly waiting for them, and he saw the disappointed look on their faces when he handed up the empty backboard.

  “It’s not there,” he said, stripping off his gear.

  “What could have happened to it?” Mel asked.

  “I got a good mind it was his ex. She’s in everyone’s business,” Trufante said.

  They all turned to look at him. “Makes sense. She could have seen him put it down there the other night.”

  “I know her,” Mel said. “Maybe we should pay her a visit.”

  ***

  Mac and Mel walked to the front door. TJ was waiting with the boat at the dock of a vacant house, in the canal across the street. The house had all its windows covered with hurricane shutters, a sure sign it was vacant. They had decided against taking the boat, preferring to walk, thinking it was the better, less alarming option.

  Mel knocked on the door, and together they waited. A few minutes later, a woman whose hair was died a vibrant orange opened the door, a glass of wine in her hand. Her bloodshot eyes indicated it wasn’t her first.

  “Mrs. Hawk?” Mel asked.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Melanie Woodson. You were my English teacher in middle school,” Mel said.

  “Oh dear—Mel?”

  “It’s me. This is Mac,” she introduced him.

  “What can I do for you, dear? It’s been a long time.”

  “I was wondering if we could come in and talk to you,” Mel said.

  “I suppose,” she said, opening the door wider and moving inside. “If it’s about my ex-husband, I’m afraid I can’t help you, though.”

  If this was not going to yield any information, Mac wanted out fast. The house looked like his grandparents’: dimly lit, with plastic covering the aged furniture, and the place smelled of cats. “Come on, Mel. This is a dead end.”

  “Wasn’t that you here the other night?” the woman asked Mac.

  She must have been watching. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, sensing there was no love lost when it came to her ex. “He has something of mine,” he probed. If she had seen him, she might have seen them place the cache in the canal.

  “If it’s what they put in the canal, he took it before they pulled out of here a few days ago,” she said. “Would you like some tea?”

  Mac looked at Mel, telling her with his eyes to decline.

  “No, thanks, but I’ll take a rain check,” Mel said.

  They said goodbye and left the house.

  “It’s on the boat,” Mac said.

  ***

  The weather could have been better, but it could have been worse. With the wind from the northeast, the sportfisher battled the chop that quickly grew into five-foot swells as they moved away from land. Mac was playing the odds, not wanting to wait in case someone had seen them scuttle the boat. He also had another problem: he didn’t know the exact location.

  “Once we hit the three-hundred-foot line, we’ll start watching the depth finder,” he said to TJ, who was at the wheel.

  “Coming up on it. This is the ballpark, but it might take a while,” TJ said. “You sure this dive plan is going to work?”

  “Let’s find it first,” Mac said. Turning to the deck below, he called to Trufante, “Throw some baits out there. Make it look like we’re trolling.”

  “Right on,” Trufante said and disappeared into the cabin.

  Several hours later, Mac looked up from the depth finder, his eyes tired from staring at the screen. Fortunately, at this depth, the bottom was sandy, with very little in the way of features, making a wreck the size of Hawk’s trawler easy to spot. They had loaded a half dozen dolphin into the fish box, and every so often, he heard Trufante call “Fish on” and help Mel and Pamela, who manned the rods. Cheqea must have been in the cabin. It was a good thing they had a diversion, because although treasure hunting was glamorized in movies, in real life it required hours and hours of drudgery.

  “Is that it?” TJ asked.

  Mac looked back at the screen. There was definitely something there. “Throw the buoy,” he called down to Trufante.

  “Got to pull this fish in.”

  “Now! The fish can wait,” Mac yelled back. Trufante tossed the yellow float they had rigged with a twenty-pound weight and four hundred feet of line. Mac turned to TJ. “Let’s circle back and get a better look.”

  Mac zoomed in on the bottom, carefully watching the screen as they passed over the wreck again. There was no scale for the length, but the numbers on the side showed it rising forty feet from the ocean floor—just about right.

  “I’m going down to rig everything,” he said to TJ.

  He would circle the site while Mac prepared for the dive. The plan was problematic before it started, the first issue being that they had nowhere close to enough anchor line. It would take close to six hundred feet of rode to safely anchor in this depth. The second problem was the depth. Three hundred feet usually required mixed gasses that they did not have. Instead, Mac would use the rebreather and limit his bottom time to ten minutes. Even with that short of a dive, he would have over two hours of decompression stops. To facilitate entering the wreck, they had rigged tanks to several lines. Dropping one at a hundred feet and the other at sixty would eliminate the need for him to carry them. In addition, TJ would hang at the hundred-foot depth, and Alicia would relieve him when he ascended for his sixty-foot stop. The plan was sound, except it would leave Trufante at the helm.

  “Ready,” he called up to Trufante. He turned the mask around on his head, checked his gauges, and did a giant stride into the water. Dropping ten feet to avoid the surface chop, he waited for TJ, who met him a minute later. Together they slowly descended to the bottom of the hundred-foot line, where they gave each other the okay sign.

  Mac dropped further into the dark water, running the dive profile through his head again. At two hundred feet, he shivered when he hit a thermocline, but soon the top of the trawler came into view. Swimming toward the buoy line that lay alongside it, he unclipped the weight and took the free end of the line with him. In just the few hours it had been in the water, the ship had already attracted fish, but he ignored them and mo
ved to the cabin door. Switching on his dive light, he checked his gauges and started counting in his head. He had five minutes to find the coins.

  After securing the line to the door handle, he entered the dark cabin. He moved to the stairs and started to descend, but thought twice about it. If he knew Hawk, the treasure would be in his cabin. Thankful that he knew the deck layout already, he spun around, following the companionway to the door at the far end.

  The contents of the room were spread over the floor, and some of the artifacts Hawk had kept were visible, but Mac was looking for something bigger. Moving to the locker, he struggled against the weight of the water to pull the door open, then was pulled inside by the force of the water entering the cavity. Slowly he regained his equilibrium and checked his watch. Two minutes remained, but when he looked up he saw four canvas bags.

  There was no way to navigate back through the ship with his fins, so he removed them and slid them under one of the bags. Grabbing one bag in each hand, he walked through the ship, the extra weight helping to keep him on the deck. He reached the line and pulled in twenty feet, where he tied on the first bag. A few feet away, he tied on the next one. He had less than a minute left, but his decision was easy. There was no way he was repeating this or leaving anything behind. Without the weight of the coins, he floated back, grabbing on to anything he could to help pull him along. By the time he reached the bags, he was already almost a minute over his time limit. Hoping there was a safety factor in the decompression schedule, he grabbed the remaining two bags and trudged back through the ship. Tying them both to the line, he released it and pulled himself toward the surface.

  The decompression stops had been painfully boring, especially not knowing if the bags really contained the coins. Hawk was surely capable of a ruse. Finally, he was at sixty feet and Alicia met him with a fresh tank. TJ gave the okay sign and finned towards the surface. After another hour, he looked at Alicia and gave the thumbs-up to surface.