At least he’d come up with a plan, and Jagger had agreed to it. If they didn’t find the cross by tomorrow night—or earlier if the weather shut them down before their deadline—Jagger was going to take Gillian and hide out while Shane acted as the decoy aboard The Evangeline. He’d wait until the storm hit, run the boat onto the rocks off Moque Head, and sink her, hopefully giving himself enough time to dive to safety and rejoin the others.
By the time Tex and his boss figured out there were no bodies to be found, Shane hoped they could all be in hiding somewhere—Charlie and Chevy and Gretchen and the whole lot of them. Until they could find some leverage on Weston Flynn. If Flynn was even their man.
That plan had more holes in it than a bag of doughnuts, but it was all they’d been able to come up with. It would kill him to lose The Evangeline, but at least it would be on his terms. It would kill him more to lose Gillian—or any of them.
Shane finally reached the farthest area he’d explored on his last outing, at just over a hundred feet deep. A few yards into the deeper water stood two tall rock formations that would easily reach the top of a two-story building. Glaciers had carved this ocean bottom out of solid bedrock, and he couldn’t help but be awed by the millennia it had taken to create such a vista.
A narrow opening ran between the tall formations, and he was surprised to see it was wider than he’d originally thought. He approached it with caution. They’d seen some brown seals on the rocks around Scaterie, but so far they hadn’t run into any sharks or other big nasties. Generally, a shark had no interest in a diver who left him alone, but Shane didn’t want to surprise one.
He eased through the narrow opening and shone his light into the blackness, so surprised he almost lost his regulator. He’d expected to run into more rock, but there was only more water. After looking around a few minutes, he saw why this area had shown up as solid rock on their sonar. The passageway led into a box canyon that was surrounded by rock on not only three sides, but above. It was basically a cave. Things that got washed in here would stay here, even for hundreds of years.
With growing excitement, Shane came to rest on the floor of the cavern and used his light to try and gauge the dimensions. He checked his dive calculator. He had forty-five minutes before he was due to meet Gillian at the anchor line. Normally that would give him thirty minutes to search, but because of his depth, he’d have to make a decompression stop along the way, plus he could tell he was running through his tank faster than usual. So twenty minutes of search time, tops.
Beginning at the opening into the cavern, he swam right along the rock wall, making a mental note of where it curved in, or where the rocks were split. Concretions were deep around the base of the rocks, and he inspected the surface of each one with his light.
On his third stop, he spotted a glint of metal. He fanned the water and silt away from the concretion, but couldn’t see anything. Damn it. He needed to know if this spot was worth coming back to. Asking forgiveness from the Canadians and the Nova Scotia government, he unstrapped his knife from its sheath on his calf and hacked into the concretion. Despite the cold water, he was sweating inside his drysuit by the time he chipped away enough to expose the edge of a coin. Not just a coin, but a gold coin. Seawater didn’t damage gold; and its gleam sent Shane’s pulse racing. Where there was one coin, there would be more. Maybe a lot more.
Maybe a ruby-encrusted gold cross.
Shane took the small underwater camera he’d strapped to his gear, took a few shots, and checked his watch. He’d spent eight precious minutes uncovering that coin; he needed to see how big this place was and what else was here, then get back to Gillian. If the weather held, they’d return to The Evangeline, strap on new tanks and both come back to this spot. Maybe even move the Zodiac closer.
Suppose you do find the cross, asshole. Are you really going to turn it over to Tex? Do you trust him to keep his word?
Fuck no. But he’d find the cross first, then figure it out.
For the next twenty minutes, Shane skirted the edge of the underwater cavern. As near as he could tell, it was about half the length of a football field and about the same width. He found no ways in or out other than the passage he’d entered through. The rocks across the top of the cavern were at about fifteen or twenty feet, and what in an aboveground cave would be stalagmites and stalactites were columns of rugged, reddish rock.
By the time he completed circling the cavern, he’d found at least thirty more glints of metal—quite a bit of it gold. The Marcus Aurelius had been bringing money and supplies for the early French settlement near Louisbourg, so they would’ve had gold aboard. Maybe a lot of it. Duncan Campbell might have been a larcenous ne’er-do-well, but his employer wasn’t.
As Shane swam back toward the passage leading out of the cavern, he caught a glint of silver he’d missed earlier, embedded near the edge of the rock wall. He stopped to look at it, even though it was probably another piece of silverware. It had a flat, curved edge that looked wrong for silverware, though, so he took out his knife again and dug into the hard marine matter.
It was a plate, and plates in those days often had maker’s marks. The concretion here was softer, being exposed to more current, and it didn’t take him long to free the plate enough to pull it out.
He fanned his hands over the metal disk, rubbing to try and remove the concrete and rocks and shells that covered it, but they were crusted on too hard. If it had an identifiable mark, it could be enough to confirm that these relics were of the right sort to be from The Marcus Aurelius.
His dive watch told him it was time to meet Gillian, though. He unzipped the front of his BC and slipped the plate inside it, then rezipped. After slipping out of the cavern entrance, he began to coil the tether line around his arm as he followed it back to the ship railing they were using to anchor the Zodiac.
His head spun with ideas. He couldn’t swear that cavern held some of the remains of The Marcus Aurelius, but his gut told him he’d found it. Whether he’d uncover the cross was another matter, but with any luck and cooperation from the weather, they could come back today or early tomorrow and find out before the storm moved in. This time, they’d bring something to dig more effectively into the concretions. If the cross was here, it was embedded in that stuff; it wasn’t floating around on the ocean floor, waiting to be found.
With this solid a lead, maybe Tex would even give them an extra day to look.
Yeah, because Tex is such an understanding guy.
When he got back to the anchor line, Gillian was waiting. She pointed at her watch and shook her finger at him. He grinned. She wouldn’t be so fussy when she heard what he’d found. He took her hand and brought it to his chest, pressing it against the hard metal plate that rested beneath his vest.
She gave him a flirtatious crinkle of her eyes behind her mask until she realized, eyes widening, that he was trying to show her more than his love and affection. She felt around the edges of the plate then looked back at him. He nodded and pointed upward. First they’d ascend, then they’d play with the plunder.
They secured their tether lines to their weight belts and began the ascent. Shane wasn’t sure how deep Gillian had dived, but he would need to make compression stops. He hadn’t been extremely deep but didn’t know what the cavern had added to his perceived depth. The water had been colder. It had been darker. He’d run through his gas faster.
Figuring he’d been at about one twenty, he divided it in half and stopped at the sixty-foot mark. He pointed at his watch and held up three fingers. He had to wait three minutes before ascending farther, to give his body a chance to adjust to the change in compression.
It was slow going when he wanted to get topside so badly, but he knew to take the rules seriously. Every year, a few divers miscalculated or ignored the deco rules and ended up dead. So he stopped every ten feet, waited a minute or two, and pushed on. Gillian stopped with him.
The last deco stop was at ten feet. In such shallows, the wa
ves battered them around, but they could see and, by holding onto the anchor line, could keep their position somewhat steady. The dark oval of the Zodiac floated above them and, far beyond it, outside the range of the sunkers, lay the deep, smooth hull of The Evangeline.
A deep boom sounded from beyond them, and Shane looked up and around. They might hear thunder at this depth, but he saw nothing that—
He barely had time to turn a questioning look toward Gillian when a wall of water hit him with enough force to blow the anchor line into the air with him still clinging to it.
He hit the water hard when the line came back down, and he thought he might have lost consciousness briefly. The only certainty was that when awareness returned, he still had the anchor line wrapped around his wrist, but it no longer had any tension on it. The Zodiac wasn’t at the other end.
His heart pounding hard enough to make his buoyancy vest feel too tight, Shane surfaced and looked around, pulling his regulator out of his mouth and gulping in air. He breathed a sigh of relief when Gillian popped up about ten yards away.
He continued to spin and finally spotted the Zodiac. Whatever had happened, the inflatable boat had been blown fifty yards to the east but was still upright. As soon as he saw Jagger in the water, grasping the edge of the inflatable, Shane said a prayer of thanks and turned to swim toward Gillian.
She’d taken out her regulator as well and was looking back toward the mainland with a horrified expression. Shane followed her gaze to where The Evangeline was anchored.
Only then did Shane understand what had happened, because The Evangeline, his beautiful boat, his home, his place of safety, was nothing more than a smoking hull. The explosion—because only an explosion could cause that kind of damage so quickly—had sent a miniature tsunami fanning in all directions.
Now, flames licked from the engine room and spread across what was left of the foredeck. The aft deck had already begun sinking, ready to join the layers of wrecks off Scaterie Island.
At first, Shane thought the smoke from the explosion had irritated his eyes. Only when he jerked up his mask and propped it on his head did he realize he was crying. He couldn’t stop, even when Gillian swam beside him and put a hand on his shoulder.
What the fuck had happened?
“Shane!”
He blinked and looked at Gillian. “It’s Jagger,” she said, and he hated the pity on her face. Hated it. He spun in the water and looked back at the Zodiac. Why wasn’t Jagger coming to get them? Instead, he was lying almost flat in the boat and yelling.
“What’s he saying?”
A high-pitched whine sounded next to Shane’s ear, and the water in front of him splashed as if something had hit it. Jagger pointed behind them, so they turned again.
In a split second, Shane’s combat training kicked in. He spotted the distinctive red hull of The Breton, and the distinctive outline of a man with a rifle pointed at him. Grabbing Gillian’s weight belt, he jerked her underwater while using his fins and his heavy thigh muscles to propel them backward just in time for the next bullet to pass where they’d been a few seconds earlier.
Tex seemed to have decided they were all expendable, but why?
EPISODE 8
CHAPTER 28
Why the hell was Tex trying to shoot them now? Shane blocked the whole issue of The Evangeline out of his mind; he’d have to mourn later. Their deadline had at least thirty-six hours to spare, a solid lead to the Templars’ cross had finally popped up, and now Tex was trying to kill them?
Something had happened to change the rules. Something bad.
Another shot sliced into the waves a few feet in front of them. Next to him, Gillian lowered her mask, slipped her regulator back in her mouth, and flipped on her gas. Good idea. They both had a little time left on their tanks, and full pony bottles as well. Shane got back into his gear and motioned for her to follow him toward the Zodiac—or at least where he thought the Zodiac was. The fog had gone from chicken broth to pea soup, which would work to their advantage. It was hard to shoot a target you couldn’t see.
Jagger had taken refuge in the water and floated the inflatable in front of him like a big rubber shield. If Tex had been smart, he’d have sailed close enough to shoot a hole in the Zodiac and sink it, or he’d have hit the portable gas tank and blown the damn thing up before tackling The Evangeline, ruining their escape options.
Shane had doubted Tex’s humanity, but never his intelligence. So not only had the rules suddenly changed, but Tex wasn’t thinking things through carefully.
He and Gillian swam underneath the Zodiac and surfaced next to Jagger. Shane ripped out his mouthpiece. “You okay?”
Jagger nodded, but he looked like hell. His shoulder had healed enough over the past two weeks for him to operate the inflatable, but not enough for swimming. He needed to get back to the mainland.
“Why’s he shooting at us?” Gillian had raised her mask and peered over the edge of the Zodiac toward The Breton.
“I don’t know, but I’m going over there to find out. Something’s changed and we need to know what it is.” Shane had no idea what he’d do when he got there, unarmed, but he could at least provide enough diversion for the others to get help.
“That’s a really b-bad idea.” Jagger’s voice was shaky, and Shane took note of his blanched face and too-bright eyes. “You’re not even ar-armed.”
“If I can surprise him, his gun won’t matter.” Tex had to be alone on that boat. Otherwise, Son of Tex would have been on deck with him, watching the fireworks and playing shoot the diver.
“You’re right,” Gillian said, although she didn’t look as if she liked it. “If you can create a diversion, maybe get the jump on Tex, then Jagger and I can start up the Zodiac and get to the mainland for help.”
Shane looked over his shoulder. From surface level, the mile and a half of choppy water to Main-à-Dieu harbor looked impossibly far—at least as much as he could see in diminishing visibility. The fog moving in would help camouflage the boat, though, and Jagger could navigate in pitch dark as long as he had a compass. Gillian had one clipped to her drysuit. This could work.
Of course, unless he managed to sneak up on Tex and get the rifle away from him, he might not live to enjoy it.
“Assuming the best, I’ll get control of The Breton and sail her back to Main-à-Dieu. I’ll meet you at Chevy’s lighthouse.”
Shane reached for his regulator, but Gillian laid a hand on his arm, her brown eyes serious. Worried. “What do you think this means?”
Shane gave her a salty kiss, and then another. “I don’t know. But I’m damned sure going to find out.”
He looked at Jagger and nodded toward the Zodiac. “Let me help you back in before I leave. Fog’s too thick for you to be much of a target.” Normally, Jagger wouldn’t need help. Normally, Jagger would’ve reamed him one for even suggesting it. But they’d passed normal a long time ago, and his friend only nodded.
After a struggle, Jagger positioned himself by the short portable ladder and Shane heaved him over. By the time he had struggled to a seated position on the bottom of the inflatable, Gillian had removed her tank and BC, thrown them in, and climbed up the ladder next to him.
She looked down at Shane and he smiled, thinking of the corny things he wanted to say. Be careful. Or, No matter how this turns out, I’m glad I met you. Maybe even the L word.
Instead, when she returned his smile, he just wrapped his mind around it to hold onto, crammed in his mouthpiece, and flipped backward and ass-side up, thrusting his legs to propel himself downward and away from the boat.
They’d been diving with the Zodiac moored off Ragged Rocks Cove, on Scaterie’s south coast, but The Breton had stayed in the deeper water one cove to the west, nearer the Main-à-Dieu passage. As he swam, Shane visualized the position of The Breton, and where he’d last seen Tex on deck. Chances were, unless he was preparing to pull up anchor and head back to the mainland himself, the murderous asswipe was still trying
to get a better shot.
Halfway there, Shane found himself pulling hard on his regulator and checked the gauge. Gas was down to the red zone, so he switched to the pony bottle hung in a sling over his left ribcage. The water had grown rougher, and he guessed the time at around three p.m. Whatever happened, it needed to happen before dark.
He finally spotted the back end of The Evangeline, steadily sinking near a massive rock that had broken its fiberglass hull like an eggshell.
It’s just another obstacle. Ignore it, and go around. Shane cut to the portside of his dying boat and, once past it, immediately saw the dark shadow of The Breton, still sitting in place. He located its anchor line and followed it up, trying to think of the different scenarios he might encounter.
Best case: Tex was still on the foredeck with his binoculars, giving Shane enough time to climb up, ditch his dive gear, pull out his knife, and give old Tex the surprise of his miserable life.
Worst case: Tex had spotted him leaving the others, had figured out what Shane was up to, and was sitting up top like a big, ugly spider, leaning over the rail with his rifle and waiting for Shane to surface. At which point it would be Adios, Shane.
Chances were good that reality would fall somewhere in between, so as Shane neared the fixed starboard-side ladder of The Breton, he peered through the water before surfacing. No Tex leaning over the rail, at least not that he could see.
Holding on to the bottom ladder rung, he next pondered his equipment. He’d need it to dive again for the cross, but he didn’t want to make his boarding more difficult than it already was—never mind more noisy—by clanking up the ladder with tanks and hoses. He decided to risk a few extra seconds on a compromise, rigging up an awkward bundle of BC, mask, regulator, tanks, mask, and weight belt. Once they felt secure, he tied the whole mess to the bottom ladder rung using his tether line. The compass he kept, along with his knife.
Lovely, Dark, and Deep (The Collectors) Page 25