I told myself, That’s ridiculous. Absurd—you’re imagining things, Ford.
I knew that was true, too. Tomlinson was my closest friend. I barely knew the boy—why would I feel some sensory connection with him? Plus, there is no validity to a perception that has been catalyzed by hope alone—or by fear. That variety of skewed thinking was the source of all superstition.
After another ten yards, I stopped again and tried the flashlight. Its beam created a milky tunnel through the silt. Was there an opening ahead? I couldn’t be sure. I pressed ahead a few more feet before deciding that I was wrong. It was another illusion spawned by wishful thinking.
The vent was so cramped, I couldn’t move my elbows, but I could move my right wrist. Eight times, I tapped the flashlight against my tank. Not hard—I didn’t want to risk disturbing the rocks overhead. The possibility of being crushed was too real and the thought of being trapped here unable to move, biding my time until I ran out of air, was terrifying.
Three more times I signaled, but there was no reply.
It brought me back to my senses. Intellect displaced imagination, and I began to back out of the vent. As I did, I felt a sickening, visceral dread. It was an out-of-body sense of unreality. My movements became robotic as I paused to signal one last time, then waited in a roaring silence—a silence that became hypnotic, pounding inside my head. It communicated a single, throbbing reality: They’re gone . . . both dead. You can’t help them by killing yourself.
It was an unavoidable truth. I backed out of the hole, expecting the tunnel to collapse each time my elbow collided with a rock or when I had to brace a knee and apply force to lever myself backward another few inches.
When I was finally free, my mind functioned by rote as I continued exploring the area. I saw a few more coins, bright and solitary in the shallows. The sight catalyzed an irrational anger in me. Yes, Arlis had found Batista’s gold plane—so what? I had no idea if there was a ton of gold beneath me or if the treasure included only the handful of coins I had seen fluttering into the depths. It no longer mattered. The plane wreck had cost two more lives. Nothing was worth that.
I kicked toward the shallows, my eyes moving from the bottom to the surface still hoping for a miracle. Once again, I searched the surface, hoping to see two pairs of legs dangling, but there was nothing.
Now even King was gone. I could see the underside of the inner tube still tied to my marker buoy, the hose floating in a loose coil, but the jet dredge was unattended.
I nursed a momentary hope that the son of a bitch had drowned, but only because I was still in shock. As I began to recover, though, my focus switched from the death of my friends to how I would now deal with the skinny drifter, with his slicked-back hair and his smirking contempt.
King had intentionally sabotaged my rescue attempt, slowing me as we’d positioned the jet dredge. He had caused me to lose a precious ninety seconds when I’d dropped the spare tanks. It was King who was responsible for the final cataclysmic collapse that had taken Tomlinson and Will, probably crushing them both.
King. He had taunted and manipulated me, confident that I, like most people, would not stray beyond the boundaries of normal behavior. But the man had no idea who he was dealing with. King and Perry were both about to find out.
I realized that I was hyperventilating. The realization produced a reaction that I found perversely comforting. A cold flooding calm moved through me that was familiar. It leached color from the glowing orange numerals of my dive watch. It dulled the undulate sky above. The reaction gave me focus.
King was up there. Maybe the sound of the ledge collapsing had spooked him. Maybe he had simply attempted further sabotage by abandoning me.
It didn’t matter. The man was somewhere onshore, and I would find him. There was no rush now. King and Perry wouldn’t murder Arlis. Arlis was key to controlling me. They wouldn’t kill me, either—not right away, at least—because they needed me to recover the gold.
Gold. They had Arlis as leverage. But I had leverage, now, too. I had two additional coins in my vest and there were more coins on the bottom of the lake. Play it right and their collective greed would give me the opening I needed.
I’ll kill them both.
That’s what I was thinking.
My gauges told me that I had burned another quarter bottle of air while worming my way in and out of the vent. It was additional evidence that Will and Tomlinson had perished if they had jammed themselves into a tunnel.
Comparing open-space diving to cave diving is like comparing a game of paintball to actual combat. The same is true of wreck penetration. It’s not recreational sport, it’s an unforgiving craft.
An overhead environment sparks involuntary physiological responses. Pulse and respiration increase proportionally as visibility and space decrease. The fight-or-flight sensors become the brain’s primary supplier of data, and both the hypothalamus and the medulla begin a chemical dialogue with the spinal cord, releasing epinephrine to fuel a blooming panic.
If you’re human, you react, and there is no ignoring it. The responses can be mitigated only by a hell of a lot of training, preparation and experience.
If Will and Tomlinson had attempted to escape through a vent, their air consumption would have doubled, even at twenty feet. In all probability, they’d run out of air long before I had returned to the water.
Even so, I was reluctant to surface. I couldn’t give up without at least checking the rubble below. I dreaded the thought of finding the bodies of my friends, but the idea of leaving Tomlinson and Will Chaser here, alone, on the bottom of this remote sinkhole, was even more repugnant.
I checked my dive computer to confirm that I hadn’t accumulated a decompression obligation. I still had almost half my air remaining, and I needed time to think about how I would handle King and Perry when I surfaced.
No rush, I reminded myself as I kicked downward, descending headfirst into the blue. It had taken me less than two minutes to bounce-dive to the bottom and recover the spare tanks. Because of the depth, I couldn’t risk lingering. But neither did I have to hurry.
At a hundred feet, visibility began to deteriorate, but I could still decipher the shape of limestone blocks and shell rubble that comprised a new underwater hillock—the term mogote came into my mind. Silt spiraled downward into the hillside, the flow line defined by a sumping whirlpool vortex.
It would have been interesting to introduce the chemical fluorescein into the lake, then trace that brilliant green dye to its emergence points. No telling where this underground river flowed, and there were probably many exit points—adjoining sinkholes, flowing surface rivers, the Gulf of Mexico sixty miles west or even Florida Bay a hundred and fifty miles to the south. It was not only possible, it was a probability that had been well documented by Florida hydrogeologists.
At the top of the hillock, I paused and used my flashlight. The beam penetrated the murk below, a solitary white laser in which silt became animated, boiling like smoke from a subterranean fire.
After checking my gauges—105 ft—I followed the beam down the hillside, kicking slowly. I told myself that I was looking for more coins. They would be useful for convincing King I had discovered a great treasure. But I was, in fact, on a reluctant search for two bodies.
As I descended, a peripheral awareness confirmed that the landslide had covered much of the plane wreckage. Only the nose of the plane was visible now. The vague geometrics of the cockpit windows were as bleak and unresponsive as the eye sockets of a skull. Atop the fuselage, I saw what may have been several more coins. Ironic, if they had come to rest here.
I wanted to swoop down and grab the things. It was pleasant to imagine myself showing King a fistful of gold while I searched his face for the greed that soon, I hoped, would allow me to lure him into the water, just the two of us alone, King and me.
No, I decided. Retrieving the coins was a bad idea. The desire to collect the things was an emotional response, I realized—a
red flag at any depth below sixty feet. I was now at a hundred and ten feet, deep into nitrogen narcosis territory, where spontaneity can be a methodical killer. A few more coins, I decided, were not worth the risk of going even a few meters deeper.
Still using the flashlight, I started up, ascending more slowly than my bubbles, as I continued to search the rubble. I saw several more cattle skulls and another mastodon tusk—this one was a broken brown chunk of ivory, possibly the mate of the tusk that Tomlinson had found. I was tempted to take a closer look, but that, too, was irrational under the circumstances. It was another red flag, and I knew it was time to surface.
A few seconds later, though, I saw something that brought me to a stop. Protruding from beneath a slab of limestone was a lone black swim fin. I recognized it immediately. It was an old-style Jet Fin, similar to the Rocket Fins I wore. They were made of dense black rubber, open-heeled, heavy, wide and functional. I prefer fins that aren’t buoyant, and the same was true with Tomlinson. He had joked that wearing dated old fins was a style statement—our lone similarity when it came to such things.
It was Tomlinson’s fin.
I approached the thing slowly until I saw to my relief that the fin wasn’t attached to a foot. I lifted it, inspected it, then pried away a few layers of rock from beneath it, searching for the remains of my friend. I even banged out a signal on my tank before positioning the fin beneath my arm, then continued my ascent, my mind trying to fix the details of this lake, this moment, in memory.
Underground rivers are also referred to as “lost rivers.” I could think of no better description for this place.
According to my dive computer, I had accumulated a brief decompression stop at twenty feet. The obligation was only two minutes, but I would double that just to be safe. My gauges also told me that my air was low now, redlining at 1000 psi. I had very little time remaining.
As I kicked toward the surface, I looked for a comfortable place to wait while I decompressed. Water was clearer now where the overhang had broken away and that’s where I chose to stop, backing into the crater as if it were a cocoon.
I neutralized my buoyancy and carefully—very carefully—locked my arm into the vent to anchor myself. From that vantage point, I could see the jet dredge above, still unattended, and the mountain of rock below where a good, good man and a very tough kid had ended their lives.
Because I had only one free hand, I decided to store Tomlinson’s fin inside the vent until it was time to surface. I am not an emotional person, but there was something funereal and final about placing my pal’s fin, alone, in a space so dark. I couldn’t make myself do it and I stared at the thing as I battled an overwhelming flood of emotion that I suspected was normal dissemination. Grief, sorrow, guilt and regret. They are all variations on a common theme, and that very human theme is loss. Inexorable, inescapable loss.
The buddy system just gives bad luck a bigger target, Tomlinson had joked—but it was far more profound than a joke because this time he was right.
The man often was.
Three minutes into my decompression, just for the hell of it, I tapped my flashlight on my tank, eight slow bell notes, before clipping the light to my shoulder harness. It was the Morse abbreviation for F-B. Fine business. Everything’s okay. It wasn’t intended as a signal. It was offered as my farewell salute.
A moment later, though, I was shocked to hear—at least, I believed I heard—TAP . . .TAP . . .TAP in response. I was so startled that I dropped Tomlinson’s fin. As I lunged to grab the thing, I heard yet another clanging series of sounds. Much louder, it seemed.
Impossible.
No, the sound was easily explained because the source of the noise was me. I had clipped the flashlight too close to my tank so that metal clanked against metal whenever I moved.
By the time I figured it out, I had been decompressing for nearly five minutes and I was too low on air to waste more time. There would be no more futile signaling, no more imagined replies.
It was time to surface. King and Perry were waiting.
THIRTEEN
KING KEPT HIS DISTANCE AS I SLOGGED TO SHORE, but he couldn’t resist looking at the fin I carried beneath my arm and saying, “Looks like you found your girlfriend. Rescuing her one piece at a time, are you?”
The man’s attempts at humor always had a vile edge.
I shrugged, my expression blank. I said, “Where’s Captain Futch?,” as I stopped to place the fin at the base of a cypress tree, then removed my BC and empty bottle.
From the truck, I heard Arlis call, “Is that you, Doc? Did you find ’em?”
I answered, “How are you feeling, Arlis?”
He hollered back, “The Yankee scum’s got me tied up again. Damn cowards didn’t want to risk two against one!” Once again, he asked, “Where’s Tomlinson and the kid? Are they with you?”
I looked from the truck to King, then toward the edge of the clearing where Perry was preoccupied pissing in the bushes. The rifle, I noted, was leaning against a nearby palmetto. It meant that King was carrying the pistol. He had dried off and dressed, leaving his sodden underwear to dry on a wax myrtle tree. The pistol was probably hidden in the back of his pants.
No . . . the fool had put it in his pocket. I watched him wrestle it from his pants as I walked toward the truck. I was hoping the thing would go off accidentally and maybe sever his femoral artery, but no such luck.
“So what’s the word, Jock-a-mo? Are we rich yet? You’d better by God have those truck keys!”
I ignored him as I went to the driver’s-side window and looked in, seeing Arlis lying on his back, hands tie-wrapped behind him, his face now so swollen that I wouldn’t have recognized him under other circumstances. The skin between his left ear and jaw was stretched bright in demarcations of purple, green and jaundiced yellow. On the towel next to him, blood was starting to cake.
King was calling to me, “Stay the hell away from that old man! You still don’t seem to understand who’s in charge here.”
I said to Arlis, my voice low, “They’re both dead. It’s just you and me now.”
I watched the man wince, his eyes closed tight. “Are you sure? Did you find them?”
I said, “They’ve been down there for more than an hour and fifteen minutes. There’s no way they could still be alive. And there was another landslide—a whole wing of the lake fell. King caused it.”
Arlis raised his head to look at me through his one good eye. “Fix it so I’ve got ten minutes alone with those bastards, Doc. I don’t care if they kill me, I’ll find a way to get a few shots in of my own first.”
I said, “We will. We both will, trust me. But now it’s time to move on to other things.” I gave it a second, waiting until I was sure Arlis was still looking at me, before I mouthed a question, Where are the keys?
The man took a deep breath, shaking his head, as if trying to erase this nightmare from memory. Then with his chin he motioned toward what might have been the ashtray or the center console as he said something that sounded like “Cut me loose and let’s get going.”
“You’ve got them?”
He replied, “Yeah.”
“Where?”
Arlis was trying to sit up. “Cut me loose and you’ll see. I’m going to kill those two for doing this to us. Run them over with the truck. You just watch me.”
I shook my head as I whispered, “No. You’re getting out of here the first chance you get—and without me. Understand?”
I leaned in to get a closer look at the man’s eyes, saying, “Do you know what they did with our cell phones and the VHF?”
“In their pockets, I guess,” Arlis whispered as he lay back. His pupils appeared okay, his breathing was steady and the bleeding had stopped.
I told him, “You’re going to be okay. If I talk them into cutting you loose, take off. Don’t wait. You’ve got to go for help.”
“Not without you,” he replied.
“It’s not your decision to make. W
hen you get the chance, start the damn truck and go. Hear me?”
I turned away from the window because Perry was jogging toward us, yelling to King, “You dumb shit, don’t let him near that truck. If the dude’s got the keys, he’ll drive off and leave us!”
Behind me, King was pointing the pistol at me, his voice oddly calm as he said, “Problem with you, Jock-o, is it’s so damn hard to get your attention.”
There was a pause before I heard Whap-WHAP! and realized that the man had pulled the trigger. I ducked reflexively, trying to shield my head with my arms. It sounded like two rapid-fire pistol shots, but, in fact, I’d heard only one shot, plus the simultaneous impact of a slug puckering the truck’s front door close to my knee.
As I ducked, I spun toward King, who was still pointing the pistol. He stood between me and the lake, ten long yards away, a bizarre grin fixed on his face like some kid who had just made a great discovery.
The power of pulling a trigger, that’s what he had discovered. A tiny little chunk of metal could make a big man jump.
“There!” he yelled. “Now I have your attention.” King took a step toward me but decided no, he was close enough. “If you have the keys, you better toss ’em my way. How about it?”
He leveled the weapon, enjoying himself as he thought about pulling the trigger again, letting the idea move through his brain. This time, put a slug closer . . . Maybe even wound me. He was sighting down the barrel, thinking about it.
I said, “In my BC, there’s something I want to show you.”
“The keys?”
“You’ll see.”
Perry was next to King now, rifle held at waist level. He said, “What are you talking about? BC—what’s that mean?”
Still grinning, King said, “Partner, haven’t you been paying attention? It’s the life-vest sort of thing divers wear. Pull a cord, the thing inflates and floats them to the top. But I guess Jock-o’s girlfriends sorta missed that lesson.” His attention returned to me. “Are they both dead?”
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