by P D Singer
Diving Deep
By P.D. Singer
Adventure, danger, passion. A heady mix that only a select few can breathe—and live.
Standing by while his lover tempted fate deep under the Atlantic drove Lee Preston into the bottle. The pain of watching his captain drown in a sea of booze sent elite wreck diver Bobby MacArthur running.
Lee chases whiskey the way Bobby chases adrenaline. The farther apart they stay, the better off they’ll both be. And if Bobby repeats those words often enough, he might start believing them. Now his former partner is calling to his diver soul with the promise of the find of a lifetime. Every crazy chance he takes underwater is safe compared to coming back, but if Lee’s turning his life around, Bobby will haul his gear back aboard the Bottom Hunter.
But not as lovers—yet—and no booze, no wild gambles two hundred feet below. Not even to identify a missing piece of history sunk to the bottom of the Atlantic. Fate has given them a chance to redeem what was lost, if they survive.
But the sea is jealous of her secrets, and the price of her treasures is high.
Table of Contents
Blurb
In Memoriam
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Epilogue
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About the Author
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Copyright
In Memoriam
Bill Nagle
1952–1993
You showed us the way.
Acknowledgments
THANK YOU Eden Winters, Feliz Faber, Lloyd Meeker, Lynda Benn, Kate Pavelle, and Angela Benedetti for support, advice, encouragement, and the occasional butt kicking.
This book would not have been possible without the Deutsches U-Boot Museum, the lifework of Hans Bredow, a submariner, gentleman, and scholar.
Chapter 1
THE SCENT of the sea wafted into the bar on the jackets and boots of the drinkers. Sawdust, bourbon, and a hint of a forbidden cigarette mixed with the brine to drift through My Brother’s Place. The smell of life. The smell of oblivion. Lee Preston tipped the glass again. Maybe the bourbon would drown out the rest.
“Heya, Lee.” A bulky figure in a weatherproof jacket sat down next to him and beckoned to the barman. Lee’s first mate was a good man, and he never pulled the “I got kids older than you” routine, even when Lee could tell he was itching to give his captain a piece of his mind. “You got started without me.”
He’d started years ago, long before Tip Gresham or his other crewmen sauntered into his life or onto his boat. He’d started before Bobby MacArthur hauled a gear bag aboard the Bottom Hunter for the first time. He’d pursued the alcohol a lot more vigorously after Bobby became a feature on deck and in his bed. The man… pushed.
And now that Bobby’s gear no longer graced the Bottom Hunter’s cargo bins, the bourbon was his best friend. Knowing Bobby was doing some dumbass stunt underwater and seeing him emerge from the ocean with a full booty bag and a huge smile wasn’t nearly as bad as knowing he was climbing up some other dive ladder—or not.
“One for each of us, Alford.” Lee set the squat glass precisely on the wet ring beading against the scratched wood. If he could hit the ring, he was okay.
Tip lifted his glass in salute, whether to the generosity, the camaraderie, or the sheer joy of wetting his whistle after a week out in the squalls. “Go us. That pipeline wasn’t going to fix itself.”
“Go us.” Lee rationed the sips. He’d had three men underwater in shifts for days, welding, and two topsides, working their asses off to keep the boat from drifting away. He’d never lost a diver. Not on his commercial gigs, and not on his private charter trips. Not even on last year’s Andrea Doria dive, which he’d been an idiot to agree to. Might have been the booze talking to the money, making a green haze where a sport diver with enough bucks to pay for the entire charter suddenly had enough experience to dive a deep, dangerous wreck. The jerk nearly paid for a haul bag half-full of relics with his life. Would have, except Bobby got him back.
And then Bobby walked out.
“Not enough money in the world to do that again, Lee.” Bobby’s lips narrowed into a thin, tight line. “You think I take unnecessary risks? The stunts I pull send you deep into the bottle, but then you set me up with some clown who doesn’t respect the wreck or the current?”
“You read his dive log, Bobby, same as me.”
Maybe not the same: Lee had noted the difference between “dived to” and “penetrated” in the guy’s previous wreck-diving experience. Funny how an extra twenty grand for an experienced guide blurred the distinction. Bobby was that guide, and he’d signed off on going.
“I trust you to vet the divers before you try to kill me with them, Captain.” Both syllables spat Bobby’s anger—always before, Lee had been “Cap” or “Cap’n,” in laughter or in gasps. Never Cap-tain. “I trust you to start with the right kind of client.”
“I got the port engine’s overhaul done with that money.” Bobby knew the engine wasn’t healthy and how hard Lee had been scraping for the funds. After replacing the entire navigation system, what had been a profitable year had gone to shreds with one bad cylinder.
“Hope you saved enough of the fee for the wake we nearly needed.” Bobby yanked drawers open, flinging socks and jeans into the center of the master cabin’s bed. “We’ll settle up when we hit shore, Lee, and then we’re done. I can’t live like this.”
“You got him back, Bobby. You got the diver, you got the china, and nobody got hurt.” Near miss didn’t make up for what could have been. Lee didn’t dare say anything foolish like “But I love you” when his lover was still gulping air like he’d never expected to meet the stuff again. And maybe he wouldn’t have, not if Lee hadn’t put on the dry suit and gone in with additional tanks.
Lee had no business in a dry suit, not when the fumes still drifted off him from the night before. But ten minutes overdue and no signal—he had to. And they’d gotten Mr. More Money Than Brains or Skill back to the surface without bending him.
“It’s not the dive. It’s not even the bad decisions. It’s the bad decisions you make because you drink yourself into a fog every night. I can’t keep you from killing yourself with the booze, but I can keep you from taking me along.” He dug through another drawer.
“Every epic dive you make scares me, Bobby. Every time something only had to go a little more wrong to be a total disaster. Drink takes the edge off the fear.” If he could, he’d pour a shot right now.
Lord but Lee’d never wanted to see the contempt in Bobby’s eyes. “What was your excuse before you met me?”
Bobby spent the night on the way back to harbor in the crew quarters, and Lee finished off the bottle. And a lot of bottles in the year since.
“What else do you have lined up for us, Cap’n?” Tip’s voice brought Lee back to the here and now. “A couple days on shore first? A chance to spend some of the big bucktaters you paid us?”
Always a scramble for the next job when a dozen hungry dive-boat captains got up earlier than he did. The list of clients who called on the Bottom Hunter first had
shrunk from the glory days when Lee and Bobby both dropped into the water to find or fix whatever needed finding or fixing, or when Lee stayed dry to wrestle with the boat while Bobby dealt with whatever lurked below the surface. Dive charters still paid plenty. Maybe he should take out another ad.
“Got a bridge footing needs some attention,” Lee allowed. “Monday morning we’re going out with a barge full of rocks. Someone’s gotta make sure the riprap goes in the right place.”
“So the riffraff’s gonna place the riprap?” The laughter from Lee’s other side swiveled his head around, and the hearty clap on his shoulder about knocked him off the barstool.
“What’s got you in such a rare mood?” Lee licked the slop off his fingers. Couldn’t waste the booze. “You found a mermaid?”
The newcomer’s lecherous grin went with a wave to the barkeep, who came over with a bottle from the top shelf, a foot or two higher than he’d reached for Lee’s drinks.
“You might say that. You might even say I found where to slip it to her.”
If Johnny Ray Slidell left his imagery at that, Lee’d count himself grateful. He hadn’t had near enough liquid fortification to endure another of Johnny Ray’s recounts of amorous adventures. If they hadn’t gone back twenty-five years to an elementary school confrontation, he’d have been out the door already. “Spare me the juicier details.”
“Heh, heh, like I don’t know you ain’t interested?” Johnny Ray poked a finger at Lee and Tip’s glasses. The barman set out fresh glasses, the better to avoid contaminating the good stuff.
This kind of crap at this late date? Lee narrowed his eyes. Johnny Ray’d always been a friend.
“The guy who never caught a fish in his commercial life?”
Guess he still was. Fish were a hell of a lot safer topic than the hypothetical mermaid. Lee had nothing but respect for the men who took their boats halfway across the Atlantic in search of cod and swordfish—and never wanted to be one of them. Johnny Ray could have all the fins and females. “Had a good haul?”
“Gawd, yes. Brought my sweet Tracy Bolden back with full holds.” Johnny Ray smoothed his bushy mustache away from his lips, contemplating the amber fluid in his glass. “Here’s a toast to the best unmarked fishing spot I ever did find.” The lift of his drink was enough invitation for Lee to sip a salute.
“That good?” Lee didn’t care about the fish, except….
“Oh yeah.” Johnny Ray did the world’s worst conspiratorial check for eavesdroppers. If people weren’t paying attention to what he was saying before that side-to-side glance, they would be after. “I gotta tell somebody before I explode.”
“Or before you get tempted to whisper it into some sweet thang’s ear later tonight.” Tip snickered, but that didn’t keep him from swapping to the glass with the better liquor.
“Well, yeah.” Johnny Ray grinned. “Though by then I hope not to be thinking about business.” He took a sip and then a swig. He dropped his voice so far Lee could barely hear him above the rumble of voices and the radio whining about country lanes and moonlight. “But damn, I found the biggest cod in years. I’m gonna be a wealthy man.”
“Sounds like a fine, fine thing. Got it marked?” Lee didn’t give a rat’s ass about the fish, but there were other things in such an area that a dive-boat captain with a dwindling charter list would want to know about.
“Are you kidding me?” Johnny Ray snorted. “Wouldn’t dream of writing that on a chart. I got crew that would sell me out to another boat for next month’s truck payment.”
“They would.” Lee found himself calculating a truck payment versus the contents of the checking account. He knew most of Johnny Ray’s crew… “You can get back, though?”
“Oh yeah. I just gotta triangulate off of the Hatteras Battery, the Green’s Channel buoy, and Bermuda.” Whooping with his own wit, Johnny Ray tossed back the rest of his drink and slammed the glass down.
“That narrows it right down,” Lee agreed. To about a thousand square miles of ocean. “And your crew never looks at the GPS?”
“Think I show ’em the navigation?” That wasn’t a mermaid in the booth across the way, but Johnny Ray was as captivated by her legs as if she’d had a tail. “Besides, think they can remember….” He whispered a string of coordinates into Lee’s ear. “I don’t. You can’t either, so telling you is safer than houses. Plus you never slung a net in your life.”
“And don’t plan to start,” Lee agreed. The numbers cut a path into the pleasant haze he’d been cultivating. “Glad you hit it big.”
“I hella did. Don’t know what’s on the bottom bringing the fish. Nothing on the charts there, but it’s not that deep. Maybe a hundred twenty feet, not more than a hundred fifty. Too bad Bobby’s not around to help you take a look.” Johnny Ray rumbled some good-bye deep in his throat and headed over to the mermaid lass.
Damned fisherman put his fingers right in Lee’s pain. If he had this news with Bobby at his side, they’d be counting tanks and calculating breathing mixes. Planning dives.
Damn it. The past year had been too long. The coordinates burned his brain with promises and taunts. What if you had something so big and so marvelous Bobby had to come see? What if…? What if?
Damn it. Lee snagged a pen out of the bar gutter and opened the napkin the barman had put under the drink Johnny Ray bought, but not under the first round. A string of digits with marks and dashes, a point on a map to remake his heart.
Chapter 2
THE WATER’S chill fell away as Bobby MacArthur climbed the Tech Tach’s dive ladder. His dry suit made the difference between survival and death in the cold Atlantic waters, but he still wished he’d pulled on a second set of fleece long johns before going in. Maybe the chill had something to do with the last time he’d dived the Andrea Doria. The wreck was one year more deteriorated, and the welcome up top wasn’t nearly as warm.
This time he hadn’t needed a second set of tanks to go chasing after some dumbass newb who had no business on one of the most technical diving sites on the Eastern Seaboard. Everyone who’d gone down this time came back up in the correct time and on the correct route. A few he knew personally, a couple by reputation, and the one guy he’d never met before came vouched for by the others. Which didn’t keep Bobby from reading his dive log with all the attention he’d give the latest set of dive tables from the US Navy before ever agreeing to get on the boat.
Fool me once, shame on you….
The only warmth to his welcome topside came in a mug, the only sweetness from the honey added to the tea. No hug, no kiss, no congratulations more privately once the gear had been stowed and the salvaged relics admired.
How many cups and saucers from a sunken luxury liner did one man need anyway?
“Damn it, MacArthur!”
Bobby snapped around to face Bert Guldbrandsen, the captain of the dive boat. “Damn which it?” he asked wearily. Close to two hours in the cold water had sucked a lot of life out of him. Eight millimeters of neoprene plus fleece and microfiber layers only kept the ocean’s icy fingers from touching him directly: they didn’t keep the water from stealing his warmth. More tea, some hot soup, a good long nap, a hot shower that would last maybe thirty-seven seconds, and he’d have the energy to take on a conversation that started with “Damn it.”
“Plan the dive, dive the plan, damn it!” the captain barked. “Three more minutes of bottom time means thirty more minutes deco. Did you look at your gauges at all?”
Well, yes, he had. Frequently, and with a little more concern each time. He’d been on the verge of switching to the pony bottle at his side, the bottle of shame that meant you’d screwed the pooch one way or another. The bottle that kept you breathing when the main tanks sucked dry. “Of course I did.”
“And you like looking at zeroes?” Bert grabbed at the gauge attached to Bobby’s regulator. “I knew you were a loose cannon, but this….” He shook the gauge like it was to blame.
“The term you’re loo
king for is ‘boundary-pushing hotshot.’” Bobby handed back the mug and started to unzip his dry suit.
The captain didn’t appreciate the linguistics lesson. He scowled. “Did you want to be one of the Andrea Doria’s statistics? Or maybe bent?”
“No and no, and neither happened. Chill.” If he could get out of his gear, get it all sluiced, and make the notations in his dive log, he’d be glad to turn his back on this wreck. Now that he’d brought back the prize he’d sought. “Besides, I needed that three more minutes to grab this.”
“This” was an artifact to make a diver’s reputation: if it wasn’t the coveted ship’s bell, it was still booty to bring admiration. Prying the plaque marked “649” out of the bulkhead in the crew’s quarters meant he’d penetrated the wreck farther than anyone before him, but the damned thing was still too fricking well attached to the bulkhead for an easy collection. He’d spent precious minutes fighting the corroded brass screws, and ended up using his screwdriver as a pry bar. The bulge in the metal plate spoke to his efforts. Bobby handed the plaque to one of his fellow divers. “Tell him, Rafe.”
“Jesus Christ.” Rafe Chatham’s collection of the Andrea Doria’s china was nearly enough to stock a luxury liner of his own: the man owned the wreck like no other diver. Until now. “You went back… oh man… that was….” He handed the metal plate to the captain. “I’ve never been that far back, not in twenty trips.”
Three other divers craned to see, and a wolf whistle split the air.
“See?” Bobby retrieved his rebreather and dunked it into the fresh water tank. All those hours of visualizing what the twisted hallways and deformed doorways had looked like when the ship was upright and whole had paid off. He could probably draw blueprints from memory, he’d planned his route so hard. What he hadn’t planned was how short one more minute could be when he’d picked the farthest feasible door to rob of its marker. So one became three, and three needed more, and he’d nearly needed to admit he’d fucked up by surfacing with the pony bottle’s pretend regulator between his teeth.