by Chris Niles
William banked, and the little plane dove down to their search altitude. “Ready up? Turning into the first search leg.”
Kate held her binoculars close and leaned her forehead against the windows, scanning the clear water below. She could see wide natural reef formations of dive sites she knew were nearly sixty feet to the bottom. The Katherine K was bound to be heavily encrusted, but from this altitude, her shape would be unmistakable, coral or no.
After nearly two minutes, the dark blue of deeper water had gradually given way to the light turquoise of her beloved sandy flats. William’s voice snapped Kate out of her trancelike scan.
“Clear of the pattern. Turning for the next run. Blink your eyes and take a drink, kids!”
“You are having far too much fun with this.”
“What’s the good of life if you can’t have fun?” His face scrunched behind his mirrored aviator sunglasses. Kate thought he was winking until he reached up behind the lens, a tear sparkling on the back of his finger.
After forty minutes of arcing back and forth across the same line of the sea, finding only wrecks that Chuck confirmed on the charts, Kate’s eyes burned and her shoulders ached. On the next turn, she stretched her arms up overhead and asked the question.
“Are we there yet?” All three men burst out laughing.
“Don’t make me stop this plane, young lady!” William waggled the wings and pulled the plane’s yoke gently back. “But seriously, I’m sure you’re both getting pretty tired. I’ll pause the pattern. We can climb and take a little spin around the crater to give you two a longer break. Kate, can you grab some drinks from the cooler in back of you?”
“Gladly.” Kate unsnapped her seatbelt and climbed up onto her knees, stretching down into the cooler behind her seat. “We got choices, people! Orange, green, or blue. What the hell flavor is blue, anyway?”
“I’ll take a green, please”
“Blue for me.”
Vince rolled his neck and stretched. “Got any Budweiser?” Kate choked back a swear and handed an orange bottle over the seat to him. She chose an orange for herself, too, wrangled herself back to her seat, then cracked the seal.
“Heading back into the track. Heads up, y’all.” William banked the plane and continued talking. “We’ve got about an hour left on this grid, then if we don’t have any hits, we’ll head back to the airport, refuel, maybe take a little nap, then we’ll come on back out and start from the west and work back toward the middle. We’ll keep that up til we hit something. But I feel good about this morning.”
Four turns later, just as they entered an inbound leg, Kate’s shout startled even herself. “I think I’ve got something! Ten o’clock, closing in. Can you get lower?” She pulled the binoculars to her eyes and scanned for the shape deep in the water.
“Where, Kate?”
“Coming up on it now. Can you circle? Get lower? You’re passing it …”
Kate heard Chuck fumbling with a chart up in the front seat. “Katie, honey, I think that’s the Edgar.”
Kate slumped in her seat. “Don’t call me Katie.”
William flew two circles around the coral covered wreck as Chuck called Steve on the sat phone to confirm the coordinates. The reef Kate had gotten so excited about was, in fact, the M/V Edgar, a 1950s tugboat that had run around during a storm and had finally been cleaned, towed, and scuttled in seventy feet of water as an artificial reef. The coral growth on her was still new, and Kate hadn’t led any dives on it yet, but Steve had taken a group out to it just a few weeks before, and he confirmed the coral growth was thickening up and fish were finding it.
“The Katherine K is going to be a lot more encrusted, and based on Gramps’s notes, I think it’ll be a little shallower. He wasn’t as good at free diving as he thought he was — I beat him every time we went deeper than fifty feet when I was a kid.”
“Chuck, he was in his seventies when you were a kid. Of course you beat him.”
“Heh. Nothing slowed that old man down, and if he thought he couldn’t win, he didn’t bother. He put up a fight, for sure.” Chuck’s voice softened as he remembered the grandfather who raised him. “Everything he did, he did for dad and then for me. I wish I’d have realized it at the time.”
William waggled the plane’s wings. “Ready to go back in?”
“Is it lunchtime yet?”
“It will be after we finish this grid.”
“Then I’m ready.”
William guided the plane back in line to restart the search track where Kate had spotted the Edgar. Chuck flipped the satellite radio to Radio Margaritaville to help everyone relax. As they flew a track, banked to the west, blinked a few times, then flew another track, everyone on board hummed along to the familiar tunes.
“I think …” Vince’s voice barely rose over the drone of the engine. “Can we go back over that last line again?”
Kate looked across him out the starboard window. “Did you have something?”
“I’m not sure. I think maybe, but I’m not sure. It was nearly straight under us, a bit more than halfway down.”
“Okay, I’ll adjust a little to the east and see if Kate picks it up. Chuck, anything on the charts here?” The papers already rustled in the right seat.
“I don’t think so. If something’s there, it might be clean.”
William brought the plane around in a tight circle, lined up a hundred yards east of the center line from the last track, and dropped his altitude to five hundred feet. Thirty seconds later, Kate yanked her binoculars up. Five more seconds, she began to hum, and five after that, she shouted, “THERE! Fifty yards ahead and just off port. See it?”
“Roger … got it. Circling.”
“That’s about fifty feet of water, heavy coral. Looks like natural reef on both sides, so it doesn’t look like a boat at all. It’s no wonder no one has found it yet.”
Kate pulled a camera with a telephoto lens from her bag and began snapping pictures.
“Call Steve and give him the GPS numbers. We’re going diving!”
Chapter Forty-Six
Kate smelled the red snapper before she saw the tray piled high with sliders. After shoving one in her mouth, she grabbed a second on her way to Serenity to collect her gear. She returned with a mesh gear bag on her shoulder and Whiskey on her heels.
“…anchor up to the west of it and let the current hold us right over the top. Then we can set a guide buoy once we see what’s down there.”
“Steve, are you sure you’re up for this?” William asked.
His face looked rested but still a bit puffy. “Absolutely. It’s better if I keep busy.”
“Just let us know if you need a break, okay?” He glanced at Kate, his eyes filled with concern.
She knew her responsibility — stay close and keep Steve grounded.
Chuck said, “From what we could see, Steve, it looks to be around fifty feet down and dropped right on the reef. Hard to tell, but I reckon it’ll be pretty torn up. It barely even looked like a hull — I’m surprised you saw it at all.” He clapped Vince on the back.
Vince glanced around the group. “Uh, yeah. Thanks.”
“Chuck, you’re not going, are you?” Kate tapped his crutches lying on the deck beside his chair.
“It’ll be fine with just a brace. In the water, it doesn’t have to carry my excess weight around.”
“Great, then, don’t you guys think we’ll learn more by getting out there and checking it out than by speculating? Let’s get the propellers turning.”
“Patience, grasshopper!” Steve crouched and whirled his hands in his best “wax on, wax off” Karate Kid impression. “Let’s say we roll out there in the Island Hopper, and we hit the lode on the first dive? Then what?”
“Then we pull it up and come home.”
“Kate, do you think we’re talking about a little trinket you can carry up and dangle from your weight belt during your safety stop?” Steve rubbed his eyes then continued. “We cou
ld be looking at several heavy cases. We need lift equipment, guide lines, storage space … and security. Til now, no one has had any clue this stuff was down there, but as soon as we start raising stuff up, we’ll need protection.”
“Whiskey is all the protection we need.”
“He’ll be useful, for sure. But this is gonna be more involved than you’re imagining. And if we don’t find what we’re looking for pretty quickly, then we have a different set of challenges. Once we’re on the reef and confirm it as the Katherine K, I’d like to stay there until we’re sure one way or the other. Depending on her condition, we may not be able to do that in one afternoon. It’s been thirty years since anyone was in there, so there’s thirty years of growth. We’ll have to be careful of the reef, the hull might have eroded. We might need cutting tools. Salvage operations are a lot different from recreational sightseeing dives, kiddo.”
“We could sail the Knot out for support. We’ve got two extra staterooms, full kitchen, and some storage lockers we could empty out. And freshwater showers.” Michelle smiled.
William added, “We just can’t get under any of the bridges, and the wind has been flat for days, so we’ll have to motor out around the island and through the shipping channel.”
Vince waved his finger and gulped down his mouthful of snapper. “What if …” He shook his head. “Never mind. It’d be perfect, but it’s too risky.” He took another enormous bite of sandwich.
Steve perked up. “What are you thinking?”
His eyes flitted from side to side. Finally, he swallowed and met Steve’s gaze. “What if we borrowed the Tax Shelter?”
Steve’s eyes bulged. “Borrowed?”
“I’ve skippered it before. Baumann thinks I’m still on his side. You guys can take off in the Hopper, then I can call him in a panic saying you all look like you found something and I need to follow. I’m here, the boat is here. It’d be almost stupid to not take it, right?”
“That’s almost brilliant. What’s the risk? What’ll trip us up?” William looked skeptical.
“He’s pretty OCD about the damn thing. He will probably want to send another of his guys to crew her. I’ll say I have someone here. Tell him I’m ready to go and can’t wait for him to send someone down. But he might pitch a fit. He knows I love that boat and might think I’m just making up a reason to take her out. But … yeah, this might actually work.”
“Can he track its location?” Steve asked.
Vince laughed. “The tech is there, but he wouldn’t know how to check. He can’t do anything himself. Couldn’t find his junk without a hooker to do it for him.” Several heads turned. “Sorry. Too much? I forget you people are little more refined than my usual companions.”
“Refined?” Chuck pointed to the holes in his t-shirt and the frayed hem of his cargo shorts. “We drink our beer from the can and we clean our own fish. But do we try to treat the people around us with respect and keep the conversation appropriate for mixed company. I’m not a prude, but I do feel like certain things should just be … private.”
Vince’s cheeks turned red. “I get that. My normal crowd, you gotta talk like that to fit in, you know? I’m sorry.”
“Forgiven. Just keep it in mind.”
Kate scanned the table. While everyone was distracted, she dropped a whole slider to Whiskey, who swallowed it in a single bite. “So Steve, you’re coordinating surface support. Make sure we have plenty of straps and lift bags and sacks. I can run the dive plans — we can use nitrox for better bottom time and shorter surface intervals. If we need to, we can set a hot mix at least for the two of us. Chuck, is your gear oxygen clean?”
“No, I’m still using that old regulator you tripped over in the shop the other day.”
“Jeesh, Chuck. Maybe once your ship comes in, you’ll get a new setup. You’ll have to surface more often and take longer breaks, but we can deal with that. Steve, how many lift bags do you have? I’ve got two pony tanks we can use for those.”
William chimed in. “We’ve got extra pony tanks, too. Neither of us is nitrox certified, but we do have wreck certs so we can help look, and I can help lift and stow at the surface so Steve can stay on bottom longer.”
“Great, so we’ve got William, Michelle, Steve, me, Chuck, and Vince, right?” Kate’s gaze bounced from one to the next as she counted in her head. “Steve and I on nitrox, the rest of you on air … the Hopper’s compressors will keep up fine, I think. William, have you ever mixed enriched air before?”
“Not yet, but I have a feeling I’m going to learn.”
“It’s definitely an art, so we’ll make sure one of us is with you, and I’ll mix myself if we need to go hot.”
William raised an eyebrow at her.
“That’s a more concentrated mix of oxygen than normal enriched air. Gives us even longer times underwater, but it’s a little riskier, and you’ve got to get it just right.”
Steve pushed his chair back. “I think we have a plan. Michelle, why don’t you come out on the Hopper with Kate, Chuck, and me, and William can stay with Vince on the Tax Shelter. William, you cool with that?” He glanced at William’s waistband.
“Completely.” William inched closer to where Vince was sitting, his lean form towering over the smaller man.
“Vince, can you get me on board now? I’d like to see what we’ve got to work with there…”
Vince led William past a table where Tina, the redhead who’d helped with dinner last night, and her son were finishing their lunch. They headed down to where Tax Shelter was docked. The others gathered the rest of their gear then started loading the Island Hopper.
Chapter Forty-Seven
“Drop here, then let out about a hundred and fifty feet.”
“Aye Aye, Capt’n!” Kate peered over the bow through the clear water to the sandy bottom fifty feet below. She crouched beside the anchor well and counted as the anchor rode reeled out.
The sun sparkled on the surface of the Florida Straits, and the boat bobbed in the low ripples. Once the anchor was set, Kate climbed around the wheelhouse into the aft cockpit, wove around the long dive benches, then adjusted the arms of her thin wetsuit. She pulled a wide blue Bimini awning toward the stern, creating shade over most of the dive prep area.
“Thanks. The air is so still out here, I think I’d be baked like a soufflé in the first ten minutes.” Michelle wiped a bead of sweat from her temple.
“It helps when the tanks don’t explode, too.”
Steve chimed in from the front, “That’s actually a myth, Kate. Even with hot nitrox fills, the worst that could realistically happen is the tank’s burst valve could pop and lose the seal. These puppies are tough. But we don’t know what we’re gonna find down there, and I don’t feel like servicing a bunch of perfectly good tanks. So, let’s pretend it’s good for the tanks.” He strapped a buoyancy compensation vest onto a tank wrapped in green and yellow stickers.
“Chuck, is that Jacques Cousteau’s original dive gear over there?”
“Ha ha.” He slid to the end of the bench, then began to rummage in his faded mesh bag.
“I’ll set you up here.” Kate heaved a plain tank into the cradle beside Chuck. “You’re on the end so you can backroll right over the starboard gunwale here.” She turned back to her own gear.
Michelle hovered at the edge of the dive deck. “I feel a little useless here. What can I do to help out?”
“You could raise the flags and toss out a current line? You’ll find everything you need in the locker on the bow.”
“Aye, aye.” Beneath a two-fingered salute, Michelle winked at Kate then started up toward the bow. She met Steve near the back of the dive deck. Her soft voice carried in the still afternoon air. “Are you sure you’re up for this?”
His tight smile didn’t make it to his eyes, but he nodded and started toward his gear. Michelle touched his arm as he passed.
At the aft camera table, Kate unloaded her electronics onto the rubber mat then began c
hecking all the housing seals.
Steve dropped his own small camera housing beside hers. “What all did you bring?”
“Everything. I just got a new head-mount for the video camera with an extra mount for a light.” She picked up a chunky plastic housing connected to a web of straps. “I also brought the housing for my phone for quick snapshots and peeking around corners, and then of course, the big high-res with strobes. If she’s really been undisturbed for this long, I’m sure it’s a gorgeous site. I want to get some really good shots before we start lifting anything. If there’s anything to lift, of course.”
“There will be.” Chuck kept his eyes on his gear.
“I think it’s best to do a complete circuit around her, both to make sure we’re in the right place and to identify all the possible penetration spots. Then we can start back at the deepest end and look for any areas where the coral looks thinner or younger than the rest.”
Steve and Chuck nodded agreement. Kate peered over the edge and surveyed the coral formations beneath their stern, comparing them to the aerial photos from her tablet. “This looks different from down here, but I’m sure we’re close. I use less air than either of you, so let me drop in first. I’ll stay shallow and have a look around to make sure we’re in the right spot. If we need to move, I’ll come back up. Otherwise I’ll throw up a little marker buoy, then you guys can hop in with the big camera and join me.”
“Sounds like a plan. Good diving!”
The three fist-bumped. Kate slipped on her fins, shrugged into her buoyancy compensator, then pulled the straps tight.
Steve double checked her gear.
She emptied a bit of air from her BC then rolled off the port gunwale into the water. After the initial splash, she signaled okay to the boat.
Steve helped Michelle lower Kate’s cameras to the water’s surface.
Kate secured her gear, rolled in the water so she was facing the sea floor, then stretched her body flat. She drifted gently deeper, pinching her nose and clearing her ears as she scanned the coral. At twenty feet, she added a quick burst of air to her BC to stop her descent.