by Chris Niles
She paused to hover in the warm blue water, isolated from the sounds of the surface, surrounded only by the familiar hollow hiss of each breath pulled from the tank on her back and the soft gurgling of the bubbles as she exhaled through her regulator. She carefully finned away from the Island Hopper, searching for the distinctive lines of the Katherine K’s twisted hull. Every breath calmed her nerves, and she took a moment to appreciate the beauty of a healthy reef in a calm sea on a sunny day. Below her, schools of fish flitted this way and that, searching the reef for food, their scales glittering in the filtered light.
There’s nowhere on Earth more peaceful than under water.
Kate glanced at the dive computer on her wrist and took a quick heading. The sea floor fell off to the south, dropping from sixty feet at the ledge to over four hundred in the center of the Straits a few miles out. While the Keys didn’t offer dramatic wall diving like some other popular Caribbean spots, it was still easy to lose track of depth.
Not long after she’d earned her dive master certification, she’d seen two inexperienced divers go deeper than the dive plan. One kept signaling his buddy to ascend, but the other kept descending. Kate went after him at one hundred five feet and found the diver erratic and incoherent. Narc’d. She guided him slowly up to sixty feet before he shook his head and looked around as if he wasn’t sure how he’d gotten there. She never wanted to see another case of nitrogen narcosis, and she certainly didn’t want to experience it. On nitrox, she could go deeper for longer with lower risk, but she wasn’t planning to stay down by herself for very long.
She continued along at twenty feet for a few more minutes, drifting back and forth above the reef, hoping to catch her first glimpse of the Katherine K. Finally, she passed over a tall formation of stony coral. The reef dropped down then opened up onto a flat area that could only be Katherine K’s deck. Grinning around her regulator, she pulled a fist pump to a nearby goliath grouper who’d been lazily swimming along beside her.
Kate slowly rolled over and spotted the Hopper’s hull a few hundred feet to the west. They could let out another couple hundred feet of rode to get close enough for their first dive. She started the video camera, then rolled back over and finned a wide loop above the wreck, comparing the structure and size to the details they’d been able to find for the Katherine K. The hull was twisted in the center, with the bow listing to starboard and pointing southeast toward deeper water. The stern had torn away amidships. It listed to port and rested atop a coral formation with its transom facing northeast.
Kate dumped air from her BC and dropped twenty more feet until she was hovering just above the Katherine K. She dropped two bright orange foil bottom markers, then pulled a neon inflatable sausage mounted on a small reel of fishing line from her pocket. She pulled her alternate from its clip and rolled it so air flowed to inflate the sausage. Filament unspooled from the reel as the sausage shot to the surface to mark the location for Steve and Chuck to move the Island Hopper and join her.
Markers dropped, Kate checked her computer. Plenty of air. She needed to start getting photos, but she paused to hover above the old tugboat, listening to the quiet rhythm of her inward breath and the gentle gurgle of bubbles pouring through her regulator with each exhale. Every surface of the Katherine K was encrusted with thick coral growth, their bright colors slightly muted in the deep water. Blue tangs, huge queen angelfish, and schools of tiny sparkling French grunts darted in and out of the wide gash in her hull. But as Kate swam closer to the torn boat, she realized more than the grunts were sparkling.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Kate exhaled. Then she pushed even more residual air from her lungs. Her body dropped three feet deeper, hovering just inches from the reef supporting the Katherine K. She sipped air from her regulator to stay in position in front of the gash separating the boat’s bow and stern. The reef’s fish, unaccustomed to divers, had given her a wide berth and clustered in deeper waters behind what was left of the wheelhouse.
The dark area belowdecks beckoned to Kate. She knew she should let Chuck be the first to find his grandfather’s legacy, but the temptation was too strong. With a flick of her fins, she slowly floated into the darkness of the big tug’s hull and shone her dive light downward. Behind the crust of coral along the edges, the tug’s darkened bilge was loaded with metal cases and rotting crates. Bright flecks glimmered in the beam of light. She pulled more air into her lungs and rose a foot, then two, and finally paddled herself backward to open water.
Kate repeated the process, carefully penetrating the bowels of the Katherine K’s stern, where she found more cases and crates. She gently pulled away the top of one of the wooden boxes, revealing a cascade of gold coins covered in light silt. She replaced the cover then inched away from the ship’s hull.
Once she was clear of the bow section of the hull, she swam a few feet north from the coral head, rose about ten feet above the bottom, then floated. In her excitement, she’d already used far more air than normal at this depth. She focused on controlling her breathing while she waited for Chuck and Steve, who were descending along a weighted line Steve had dropped from the stern to guide the lift bags.
When Steve reached the bottom, she waved him around to the side of the wreck to start taking photos. Then Chuck dropped down in front of her. She pointed toward the wreck, grinned, and beckoned him to follow. At the gash in the hull, she pointed her light into first the bow section, then the stern. Among the cases and crates, loose gold and jewels glistened in the darkness.
Chuck’s body began to shake. He buried his mask in his hands and sobbed.
Kate tapped his inflator, and the two of them rose a few feet. As she held him in a hover over the wreck, she tried to imagine finding something so important to a beloved relative — tried to imagine even having a relative who had sacrificed so much for her. She didn’t have to imagine the relief Chuck had to be feeling because she felt it, too. Shark Key was finally safe from the hands of Monty Baumann.
When Chuck collected himself, the hug he gave Kate around all the gear was really more like patting her on both shoulders, but his joy was obvious. He twirled his finger in the water and pointed it straight at the Katherine K, grinning around his regulator.
Kate looked at his pressure gauge. He was already below two thousand pounds. She waggled two fingers at him then pointed at the instrument.
He grimaced and gently finned a quick circle around the tugboat.
Steve came around the bow of the ship, camera flashing. He waved Kate and Chuck over to a spot along the side of the wheelhouse then pointed to a crusted bronze placard. Beneath the layer of growth, the letters K A T were visible.
Steve and Kate worked with Chuck to count and photograph the cases, chests, and as many of the loose articles as they could before Chuck ran low on air. The three finned together back to the stern line and communicated in crude signs. Chuck would ascend while Steve and Kate began removing cases and attaching the lift bags to the stern line. Once on the surface, Chuck would gather some extra collection bags, weight them, then send the bundle back down to them.
Kate gently backed into the bow compartment, then chose the sturdiest looking case. She cradled the straps of a lift bag around it before gradually adding air with a small inflator hose. The case began to rise from the place it had rested for eighty years, stirring up silt and clouding the water. She guided it out toward Steve, who floated it free of the hull then swam it out to their impromptu staging area below the Island Hopper.
Chuck’s feet dangled from the swim platform fifty feet above them. Steve rigged the case to the stern line with a carabiner, added more air to the lift bag, then watched the first case of treasure make its way to the surface.
Steve and Kate repeated this process with several lesser-weathered cases, then they gently coaxed a few of the rotting crates into bags and sent them to the surface. Kate checked her pressure gauge and signaled to Steve that they needed to ascend. The two friends swam to the guide li
ne then slowly made their way thirty-five feet up. As they floated beside the line for their safety stop, the colorful fish began to return to their home on the wreckage of the Katherine K.
Kate surveyed the scene below her and smiled as her breath passed through her regulator, into her lungs, and back out in soft bubbles rising to the surface.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Tina revved the engine and yelled out the window. “Lucas! Lucas, get your fat ass out of that tent and get in the car!” She tore out of the parking lot the second her son’s butt hit the seat. A hundred feet out of the driveway to Shark Key, she whipped the car onto the shoulder behind an old gray Chevy. A fat man in a threadbare red hat stood at the railing of the low bridge holding a fishing pole.
Tina leaned across Lucas and shouted out the passenger side window. “Can’t catch anything if your line ain’t in the water.”
The man fumbled in his tackle box.
“Look, you ain’t no fisherman. And if you ain’t fishin’, you’re watchin’. I need to talk to your boss.”
“Lady, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Some asshole just took off in his three-million-dollar yacht. I can get it back for him. With a hold full of money. Now call your boss.”
Fifteen minutes later, a sleek silver Mercedes skidded into the lane leading to Shark Key. Tina met Baumann on the dock where the Tax Shelter had been tied up.
“Have we met before?”
Tina pulled her shoulders back and arched her spine to take full advantage of Baumann’s leer. “Briefly. I seen you at the big fundraiser on the bay last weekend.”
His brow furrowed.
“I wasn’t a guest. I brought the special refreshments … in the second-floor lounge?”
“Ah, yes. Right, right, right. Refreshments.” Baumann nodded, his gaze scanning the sky as if he might find a clearer memory of the night within the puffy white clouds. “You’ll forgive me if I’ve forgotten your name?”
“I never gave it.”
“Then you have me at a disadvantage, Miss …”
“Ransom. Tina Ransom.” She held out her hand, but Baumann had turned to scan the horizon beyond where his yacht should have been. She dropped her hand.
“So, where’s my boat?”
“We need to get something clear first. Charles Miller’s my first cousin. My Grandma Gigi was married to his grandfather, so she was the original owner of this land. We ain’t got no other cousins. So I’m entitled to half this place, and half of whatever else they find out there. What happens between you and Chuck for his half? Well, that’s between the two of you. I’ll help you get it, long as you guarantee me my cut.”
Baumann spun on his heel. “You’re a white trash waitress from Miami who’s dealing drugs on the side. Why on earth would I believe you?”
“Because I know what’s under that water. In 1931, the night Al Capone got sent up the river by the tax man, his secret vault in the basement of the Lexington Hotel in Chicago was emptied. Millions of dollars’ worth of gold and jewels disappeared into thin air. Except it wasn’t thin air. My grandma and Tommy Miller took it. When they got to the Keys, Miller hid it. He hid it from his own wife, and he left it to rot. And now my cousin has found it for us.”
He stared at her, blinked. Remained silent.
“What does this mean for you? I hate to tell you this, but Holt is screwin’ you over. They picked him up in the middle of the ocean a couple days ago, and he’s flipped. He’s helping them, and using you to do it.”
“Unlikely. My business is under complete control.”
“If you believed that, you wouldn’t have sent Mister Fake Fisherman to keep an eye on him.” She rested her hand on her hip. “Who, by the way, you should fire for gross incompetence. Not only did he not see your greaseball leave, I made him the minute he showed up on the bridge.”
“Thank you for the unsolicited advice, but my business is my business.”
“Holt tell you they found the wreck?”
Baumann froze.
“Yeah. Hours ago. Things are movin’ fast, but not so fast your boy didn’t have time to call you. They all came skiddin’ in here this morning and a bunch of them loaded up that little dive boat then booked out of here like it was on fire. Your boy rolled out of here with the black guy on your boat a couple hours later after one of them got a phone call.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I got eyes. I got ears. And I know how to be invisible. They’re planning to use your boat to carry it all. So not only will you get your precious Tax Shelter back, it’ll be loaded with millions of dollars of untraceable assets. You just gotta guarantee me my half.”
Baumann’s fists tightened at his sides. He sucked in a deep breath, then popped the trunk of his car. “Fine.”
“Good. Glad that’s settled.” She dangled a set of keys on a red float. “I lifted the keys to a pretty little Bayliner from the office while they were loading.”
Baumann raised his eyebrows. “You might be smarter than you look. Now help me with this.” He pointed to a case deep in the trunk. After they dragged it forward, he opened it, handed her a pistol in a waist holster and two extra magazines, then tucked extra ammo into his own pocket.
“Lucas! Help the man. Carry that for him.”
Lucas climbed off his perch on a nearby picnic table and stuffed his phone in his back pocket. He hoisted the plastic case from the trunk then followed his mother down to the dock where she was pulling the cover off a bright red Bayliner. Baumann stepped into the boat’s cockpit.
Tina tossed him the keys. “You got GPS tracking on that beauty of yours?”
Baumann tapped his phone and handed it to her. She zoomed the image in and out a couple times, then fiddled with the menu on the Bayliner’s Garmin. “Lucas, get over here! How do you work this damned thing?”
“I don’t know, Mama.” The boat rocked as he dropped from the dock, rocked a little more when he dropped the case below the gunwale.
“You kids are supposed to know electronics and crap, right? Figure it out.”
“But, Mama…”
Tina’s blood pressure shot up, and her eyes bulged at her idiot son. “I swear, you’ve been nothing but trouble since the day you was born.”
Lucas poked at the Garmin until he found the right option to enter destination coordinates. Tina shoved him astern then untied the boat from the dock. “Now sit down and shut up.”
Baumann goosed the throttle to back away from the slip, spun the boat south, then guided it down the channel and under the bridge. Once they were clear of the shallow water, he opened it up and followed the GPS west toward the Marquesas Keys.
Chapter Fifty
“These piles over here,” Kate pointed at a dark area near the top of the screen, “They’ll be the hardest. It’s tight in there, and the crates look pretty rotted, so they’ll disintegrate the second we try to strap them in. We’ll have to bag everything. There’s not really enough vertical space for the lift bags to lift, and it’s so narrow, we’ll stir up all sorts of silt, too. We’ll lose visibility almost instantly.”
Chuck leaned against the camera table. “Let’s leave those for last. Get everything that’s easier, and then we can rig exit lines. Kate, you can wiggle in there with a pony tank and load up whatever you can. Just keep the sacks light.”
“I wonder how your Gramps got them back there in the first place?”
“The crates weren’t rotten then.” Steve chimed in. “He probably put a few down, then pushed them back as he added more and more cases. They probably still had some residual air in them so they would have been a little buoyant and easier to move. Not easy, but easier.”
Kate flipped to a wide photo of the dive site. “It’s a wonder no one has found this yet. It’s a beautiful site. Look at how the hull and the reef have joined together. You can’t really tell where one ends and the other starts.”
“Once we get this all out, we can set a mooring buoy and I
’ll add it to my itineraries as an exclusive for as long as we can keep it quiet. It’s a little further out than most of the half-day charters, but it’d be perfect for an afternoon dive after the dark, deep Vandenberg.”
“And the treasure story is certainly a great angle.” Kate put on her best TV announcer voice. “‘Ladies and Gentlemen, legend has it that the lost treasure of Al Capone was hidden near this site. Keep your eyes open — you might find a gold coin or a loose emerald or ruby!”
“Hell, they might. With all that silt and growth, I’m sure we’ll miss some. But I think my Gramps would like it that way.”
Steve glanced around the dive deck. “We’re gonna need a bigger boat.”
Kate scratched Whiskey behind his ears, then pulled her mask and cameras out of the rinse tub and hung them on a hook beside her rig. At the sound of a low rumble, she looked up to see the giant Tax Shelter zooming toward them from the eastern horizon. She hopped down off the bench and waved toward the approaching yacht with a flourish. “Our cargo ship approaches!”
Chuck glanced up toward the horizon. “I’ve got a weird feeling about this. I know the Island Hopper isn’t big enough or secure enough to bring all this back in one trip, but that boat belongs to the man who’s trying to steal my home.”
“That’s what makes it poetic, Chuck. I don’t trust Vince at all, so we’ll put him in the water where we can all keep an eye on him. I’ll send Whiskey over there to guard the Tax Shelter, and you know William will keep everything running smoothly.”
“Speaking of …” Steve climbed out onto the swim platform and heaved the first case they’d sent up over the transom. “I want to put these up in the bow storage locker, just to get them out of the way and keep them out of sight.” Michelle and Kate helped him wrestle the heavy cases into the forward compartment.