by William Kerr
“Think so.” Quickly surveying the outline of the barge, Matt added, “Drop those buoy lines. I’ll tie ‘em off on the bow and stern of the barge, while you take some new bearings on the pier and water tower. And keep a copy of the bearings for us in case the buoys break loose in heavy weather. We might want to come back and check this thing out.”
Matt heard a chuckle in his receiver unit, followed by, “Is that the former Navy guy talking, or the archeologist?”
Matt laughed as he watched the weighted buoy lines drop through the water. With one last look at the strange contraption sticking out of the sand, he said, “Maybe a little of both, but mainly curiosity. There’s something about this thing…I don’t know. We might just want to make another visit; that’s all.”
Once the lines were secured to the barge and Matt could look up and see the rounded bottoms of the inflatable buoys, their distant orange rising and falling with the movement of the waves, he called to the surface, “When I give you the word, move the boat forward and give me some slack on the anchor line. And don’t be too slow doing it. I’m down to less than three-hundred pounds of air, and breathing through gills is not my specialty.”
CHAPTER 3
Mayport, Florida
Later that afternoon as Native Diver pulled alongside its assigned berth at the marina, Matt sat with his feet propped against the topside console dash. Punching in several numbers on his cell phone, he explained to Park, “Calling an old friend. She heads up the state’s archeological division over in Tallahassee. Maybe she knows something about that thingamajig we found.”
Switching off the ignition, Park griped, “You couldn’t do it after helping me tie up, could you?” A quick jab to Matt’s right shoulder emphasized his feigned irritation before he clambered down the ladder to the main deck and jumped to the pier with a nylon line in hand.
“C’mon, Steve,” Matt yelled down. “This is important and, besides, who’s already promised to buy the beer?” Just then, Matt heard over the phone, “Florida Division of Historical Resources, Bureau of Archeological Research.”
Dropping his feet to the deck, Matt leaned forward and cupped his hands over the mouthpiece to shield it from the surrounding marina noise. “Dr. Brandy Mason.”
“Who’s calling, please?”
“Matt Berkeley, North American Archeological Research and Preservation Association. NAARPA.”
“Oh, Mr. Berkeley, yes sir. It’s been awhile. If you’ll hold a moment, I’ll get Dr. Mason.”
Matt watched the activity along the several slips as boats pulled in from their day’s run for overnight stays or for refueling before continuing up the St. Johns River towards Jacksonville and other marinas along the riverfront. “Be with you in a minute,” he called to Park, who was securing the lines on cleats bolted into the pier.
“Yeah, I do all the hard work,” Park shouted back, “and whatta you do?”
“Mr. Berkeley,” Matt heard over the cell phone, “Dr. Mason’s on the line.”
Waving Park off, Matt asked, “Brandy?”
“Where in the world are you this time, Matt?”
“In your backyard, sweetheart. Mayport, Florida. How’s Tallahassee treating you?”
Dr. Brandy Mason’s satiny brown skin and athletic good looks hid a forty-year span of fighting to get off the bottom of society’s unforgiving pile. She might have been the wrong color and the wrong sex, but those things had never stood in the way of her commanding a place at the “archaeological table.” Her sheer determination and high level of innate intelligence had left most of her contemporaries in the dust.
Shifting a pile of papers to one side of her desk and pulling out a pad and pencil to take notes, Brandy spoke into a speakerphone. “The bureaucracy in this place is something else. Sometimes wish I was back at Florida State teaching the young and uninformed, but Tallahassee’s a challenge and otherwise downright exhilarating.”
“And how’s my godson, that football-playing brother of yours?” Matt asked. “Since he got traded to the Rams, the only thing I see of him is the back of his jersey on Sunday afternoon TV.”
“Jeff’s knees are gonna be the death of him, but he refuses to retire until he’s got a Super Bowl ring.”
“The way the Rams are playing this year, I’d say he might just do it.”
“What about you, Mr. Matthew W. Berkeley? Staying out of trouble, or should I ask?”
Matt braced himself against the nudge of a 40-foot fishing craft as it worked its way in beside Native Diver, angling toward the adjoining pier. “Me, trouble? No way. I’m working hard and loving every minute of it. Reason I’m calling, I’ve found something and not real sure under Florida law what I can do with it.”
“What’ve you got?”
“Dunno. To make a long story short, Coast Guard asked a friend of mine to check out a barge that sank off Jacksonville Beach during the recent hurricane. I went with him. We found it just inside the three-mile limit, buoyed it as a hazard to navigation, but found something else in the process.”
“What do you mean?” Brandy asked, nodding to a nattily dressed man entering the room. “Just lying there? Partially buried? What?” She pointed to an in-box on the side of her desk as the place for the man to leave an armload of files. Instead of leaving, the man lowered his body into one of the chairs facing Brandy’s desk, lit a cigarette, and half-whispered, “What’s buried?”
Wrinkling her nose at the cigarette smoke, Brandy put an index finger to her lips as Matt’s voice responded, “Let’s say partially buried. Depth, fifty feet. The top was box-shaped with a waffle-like covering. A hard rubbery material. It was sticking out of the sand, three to four feet high, and I couldn’t budge it. No marine growth, so it’s fairly recent or buried and uncovered by the storm.”
“Although pretty far out, part of an old pier structure from a century or so ago?” she asked thinking out loud. “Over the years, coast lines shift, you know.”
Using his hand to fan away the smell of gasoline fumes rising from a nearby boat taking on fuel, Matt answered, “Doubt it. I know there are quite a few barges, tugs, and other things sunk several miles out from the mouth of the St. Johns and to the north as artificial reefs, but do you know of anything off Jacksonville Beach? Especially on state land inside the three-mile limit? Steve Park has been working and diving these waters for years, and he doesn’t.”
“Offhand, I don’t either. Some stuff off St. Augustine, but Jacksonville Beach? Uh-uh. From past times working together, however, I’d bet a bundle you want to see what it is, right?”
“Let’s just say I’m curious,” Matt admitted. “No problem for me to get my NAARPA people and equipment down from Charleston to check this thing out.”
The man sitting in front of Brandy’s desk shook his head and jabbed a finger in his own direction. “Inside three miles,” he whispered as loudly as he could. “Ours.” Again shaking his head, he added, “NAARPA, no!”
“Little too soon for NAARPA to get involved,” Brandy said to Matt. “Especially if the state has to subsidize some kind of operation with no idea what we’re looking for. As you well know, if your people can’t get the money from Congress, you don’t do anything for free. Anyway, at this point, it’s really our responsibility. What is it you want to do?”
“Take a look. Nose around a bit. What’ve I gotta do to get your okay besides tell you you’re the second most beautiful woman in the world, second only to my wife?”
“First,” Brandy enumerated, a chuckle in her voice, “even if you were born white—a fact not your fault—divorce the first most beautiful woman in the world and get on over here. And second, if you can’t do that, give me a fax number and I’ll have Sally, my secretary, fax you the proper forms. I do, however, want you to promise me one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Absolutely no prop wash chutes or dredging around whatever you found. You do that and I’ll be all over your ass, and not the way you’d prefer. Get my drift?�
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Matt laughed. “I love the way you talk. If only you’d said those things before I married Ashley. Anyway, I get your drift. No dredge, no prop wash, and I’ll give you a written report whether I determine what it is or not.”
“You do that, but I’m tied up with some things for the governor this week and next,” Brandy responded, reaching for the stack of files in her in-box and nodding toward the young man seated in front of her. “Work with my right-hand man, Eric Bruder. He’s our chief underwater archeologist. Area code four-eight-seven, twenty-five twenty-five.”
“Got it,” Matt answered as he quickly scribbled the name and number on the white of the console dash. “I’ll call your secretary as soon as I get a fax number from Steve. If I get Ashley to come down, maybe you can come over for a weekend and we can do something together.”
“Maybe, if I can get away. Want to meet that wife of yours. She must be something special.”
“Better believe it. Top-of-the-line model and about three days ahead of me in everything she does. But for the love of God, don’t tell her I said that. She’ll never let me live it down.”
The mug of beer in Park’s hand moved with slow deliberateness to his mouth as he looked through a wide expanse of windows at boats passing on the muddy Intracoastal Waterway. With his chair kicked back against the wall, he asked, “After you spoke with Ashley, you said she might come down. When?”
“First of next week, I hope,” Matt answered, a smile spreading across his face at the thought of his wife. “Soon as one of her people finishes a case up in Greenville and can get back to Charleston to mind the store. Her first vacation since we got married, if I can get her down here.”
“Gotta be something else, having a private detective for a wife,” Park quipped, lowering the front legs of his chair to the floor. “Maybe she can figure out what the hell it is we found out there.”
Matt held up his empty mug to the waitress, who nodded. She pointed at Park, her eyebrows knitted in a question mark. Seeing Park’s glass almost empty, Matt gave a thumbs-up in reply. At the same time, he said to Park, “You didn’t hear me. First vacation in four years. Fact, if we don’t put a label on whatever it is sticking up in front of that barge before she gets here, you’ll probably be doing it yourself if it’s done at all.”
“You’d leave me for a woman? Your wife, no less. Damn it, man, where are your priorities?” Park joked.
The waitress stopped at the side of the table. Across her formfitting T-shirt stamped in bold letters was “EDDIE’S FISH CAMP, PALM VALLEY, FLORIDA.”
“Killian’s Red…” she said, clunking a mug of reddish, froth-covered beer in front of Matt, “…and Bud Light,” as she placed a similar mug in front of Park. The waitress hesitated a moment, hands on her hips, eyeing Matt, then Park, then back to Matt, before she asked, “You two brothers or somethin’?”
“No,” Matt answered, a chuckle in his voice. “Just old friends. Why do you ask?”
“’Cause you look alike. Same size, almost.” She surveyed them appreciatively. “Both got blond hair, good lookin’ in a…well, you know. Neither one of you look like Tom Cruise, or, you know, somebody like that, but better than the average guys we get in here for Friday afternoon happy hour.”
“Well, thanks,” Matt said, a wide grin on his face. “And probably a helluva lot older than the average too.”
“Yeah,” Park tossed in. “And with our magnetic personalities, you can—”
“That’s it, Steve!”
“What’s it?”
“Magnetic,” Matt answered. “A magnetometer. Do a survey without disturbing the bottom or damaging anything, and we can do it without having to get Brandy’s or anybody else’s authorization.” Looking up at the waitress, he said, “If you hadn’t said all those kind words, deserved or not…”
“Wha’d I say?” the waitress asked, a puzzled look on her face.
“Just enough to make the old gray matter start working,” Matt said. “And while you’re at it, how about bringing us both a double order of fried shrimp, hushpuppies, and grits? We’ve got a lot of talking to do, and we can’t do it on empty stomachs.”
As the waitress walked away, Park asked, “Magnetometer, huh?” He shrugged his shoulders and set his jaw in an I-should’ve-thought-of-that grimace.
“Know where to get one without having to pay an arm and a leg?” Matt asked.
“Maybe. Aqua Explorers, a salvage and raising company up in Fernandina Beach.”
“Call ‘em. If we can get it tomorrow, I’ll run up and pick it up. Who do I charge it to?”
“Not me,” Park answered. “And the Coast Guard’s not gonna pay for a magnetometer, not since we already found the barge.”
“Then I’ll put it on my own account.” Gesturing over his shoulder toward the Atlantic some two miles to the east, Matt added, “And who knows? This could be the biggest find of the century, or the biggest waste of time you ever saw. Whatever, a magnetometer oughta tell us just what the hell we’ve got out there.”
CHAPTER 4
Saturday, 13 October 2001
Offshore, Jacksonville Beach, Florida
To Matt, the day couldn’t have been more perfect. Sunlight danced off the water with a dazzling brilliance. A slight onshore breeze lent a linen-touch freshness to the air, and the swell was hypnotic in its gentle roll. To the east spread the wide expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. Less than three miles to the west lay the northeast Florida coast, the whites and pastels of hotels and condominiums stair-stepping their way above the sands of Jacksonville Beach.
With no other boats on the horizon and two orange buoys marking the location of the sunken barge dead ahead at less than 2000 yards, Native Diver moved on a southerly course, paralleling the coast. Matt eyeballed the dive boat’s compass, taking continuous bearings on the town’s water tower and the end of the Jacksonville Beach pier, or what was left of it from the earlier storm. At the same time, Park eased the wheel slightly to the left, his attention glued to the small radarscope’s distance indicator.
“Almost there,” Matt called out. “If the distance is right, shut her down right now, and you’ll be set to make the first run.”
Park slipped the throttle into neutral and allowed Native Diver to gradually settle in the water. “If you’ll put out the cable, I’ll try to keep her in position.”
Matt nodded and climbed down to the open stern of the dive boat. After checking the coil of black insulated cable to make sure it was laid out properly to unravel without kinking, he examined the magnetometer’s yellow, squash-shaped, fiberglass casing to ensure its water-tight integrity at the cable and antenna connections. He couldn’t afford to allow water into the near-foot-and-a-half-long casing which housed the magnetometer’s sensor. Satisfied that the stability wings protruding from two sides of the casing’s narrow neck were firmly secured, he chuckled to himself when he turned the casing over and saw the name Tommy Towfish painted in black.
“Chart shows only forty-five to fifty feet of water in this area, so I’m only putting out thirty-five feet,” Matt called over his shoulder as he dropped the sensor over the side and paid out the cable before clamping it off to prevent more from running out. “If you’ll hold her at three to four knots on the first run, the catenary oughta keep little Tommy Towfish a good twenty feet off the bottom and clear the top of the sunken barge.”
“North-south, east-west?” Park asked. “Understand the accuracy and strength of the signal on those things depend a lot on the magnetic field and what direction you’re going.”
“That’s the old solenoid sensors. Guy over at Aqua Explorers says this is the latest. A toroidal sensor. You can stand on your head, and it’ll still give you a good signal.” Matt punched the ready button on the magnetometer’s display unit and said, “Trial run. Do a ten-minute north-south track.”
“Got it,” Park answered as he eased the boat forward.
Hoping to see a steady line indicating a large metal object, Matt
watched only small blips appear on the magnetometer’s onboard display screen. “Nothing but beer cans and metal stuff somebody’s tossed overboard. Thought we’d at least pick up part of the barge.”
At the end of ten minutes, Park asked, “What now?”
“Do a slow one-eighty and make another run, but a little farther to the east.”
“On the way.”
With the turn completed, Matt kept his eyes glued to the display unit. “Got something. Strong signal. Probably the barge. Let’s keep running this pattern, back and forth, north-south, a little to the east each time, and see what we get.”
“What’s it look like?” Park asked.
“A line. That’s all. A single line on each run is all we’ll get as long as we’re moving over something made of metal and large enough to show up, but when we put them all together? Patience, my friend. The world of computers will reveal all.”
Matt had lost count of the turns and sweeps Native Diver had made, when suddenly he called, “Nothing that time. Looks like we’ve moved too far east. Why don’t we pull up the fish, tie up to one of the barge’s buoys, and open a can of beer from the cooler? I’ll download what we’ve got into the laptop. If we’re lucky, we’ll find out if there’s really anything down there besides the barge.”
With the “fish” onboard and a data link connected between the magnetometer display unit and an IBM ThinkPad, Matt typed in the download command. Immediately, a graphic display popped onto the ThinkPad screen. A blue bar moved from left to right—15 percent, 45 percent, 75 percent—before being replaced with “DOWNLOAD COMPLETE.”
Sipping on the beer Park placed in his left hand, Matt worked the computer keyboard’s red track point, guided the cursor to the SURVEY 1 icon and double-clicked. A single line made its way across the monitor screen.
“What the hell?” Park huffed, one eyebrow cocked upward in disbelief. “That all we got?”
“Watch, O ye of little faith.” Matt directed the cursor arrow to the command bar and clicked on MERGE. Lines representing each pass of the boat over the bottom began to form across the center of the screen, gradually revealing a definite shape. “That’s gotta be the stern of the barge,” Matt said. He watched the barge’s configuration take shape. “Still the barge…Whoa! There! It’s moving past the barge onto…what?”