Wood's Reef

by Steven Becker

  When he ducked back under the surface, visibility was down to ten feet, the water full of silt picked up by the tide and his movements. A couple of hours and a tide change made all the difference in visibility. He hit the trigger on the sprayer and started washing sand away from the metal, pausing several times to allow the silt to settle. As more metal was revealed, it became evident exactly what this was. Unexploded naval ordnance was not uncommon here. But this didn’t look like any ordinary bomb. He wanted to get it out of here and see what it was all about. He knew he had to get it mostly exposed to break the suction with the sand. He worked his way around the object, becoming more concerned as the sand revealed an intact bomb. It was old. Rust was visible on the screw heads and the dings caused by the fall.

  This was far more dangerous than he’d realized. Fifty years in a saltwater environment could have eroded the skin of the bomb enough that the water pressure could puncture it causing an explosion. There was also the possibility if could have a nuclear core. Puncturing the fifty year old case could allow radioactive material into the water. He calculated the odds and realized the only choice was to get the bomb out of the water. Leaving it to decay further was not an option.

  Twenty minutes of blasting water against the sand revealed the full shape of the weapon — a foot and a half in diameter, and over seven feet long. The bomb looked top heavy, fatter at the front, and tapering toward the end. It appeared retro — space aged, like something from a Buck Rogers movie.

  After removing enough material to be sure the suction of the sand would break, he jetted two holes all the way underneath it. Confident he could pull it with the winch, he surfaced.

  Mac took off his gear and climbed back onboard, where Trufante was asleep in the captain’s chair. He sidestepped his crewman and headed to the crane mounted on the port side. Steel cable flew off the reel as he released the gears. One hundred feet of cable slowly sank in the green water. Next he rigged a harness from some trap line.

  Now he geared up again and popped back into the water, and descended with the harness and winch cable trailing behind. Once at the bomb, he worked lines through the holes and tied them off in a cradle. He checked for slack, made a slight adjustment, and clipped the ends into the hook at the end of the wench line. He finished the rig with a rope line, which he took to the surface to be used as a tag line to control the ascent.

  Back on board, he stood over Trufante, wondering if he should wake him or not. Deciding he needed the help, he leaned over and kicked him in the side.

  Trufante woke with a start. Mac left him to orient himself and went to the winch.

  “You good now?” Mac asked as he tossed a bottle of water Trufante’s way. This was going to be tricky as it was, and he would need all the faculties his crewman could muster.

  “Damn near 4 o’clock, we should have been back an hour ago,” Trufante whined.

  Mac ignored him as he moved forward to the winch. There were more important things to worry about than the time. He turned the winch on. Cable began to feed onto the roller as the slack came out of the line.

  “Hold this line and stay toward the stern.” Mac handed Trufante the lighter tag line.

  The motor gained an octave as it felt the resistance of the weight below. The boat started to list toward port until the suction released allowing the bomb to rise in the water. It righted as cable began to wind around the winch. The motor struggled with the weight. Once confident the winch could handle the bomb Mac switched positions with Trufante, taking the tag line from him. It was more important for him to guide the bomb to the boat now.

  “Bring her up easy until I tell you to stop,” Mac yelled over the motor as he peered over the side of the boat, looking for the bomb to break the surface.

  The tricky part would be keeping the bomb from banging the boat. He had no idea whether the bomb was still armed and, if it were, what would set it off. It was risky enough just bringing it up, let alone slamming it against the steel hull of the trawler.

  The bomb rose slowly, looking like a large shark in the water, the shape becoming more defined as the bomb ascended. Mac now had the tag line in one hand, controlling the bomb, and the boat hook in the other. He called to Trufante to work the winch as if it was picking a trap out of the water. He intended to lift the bomb and swing it onto the stainless steel slides used to move the traps along the boat.

  “What in the bejesus is that thing?” Trufante yelled as he saw the bomb lift from the water.

  “Never mind right now!” Mac yelled back as he guided the 1200-pound cylinder onto the stainless track. “Let some slack in the cable and hold this thing while I get something to set it on.”

  He handed Trufante the tag line, and ran back into the cabin to grab two cushions from the bench seat. Back on deck, he set them on the tracks and signaled for Trufante to lower the bomb. Once this was accomplished, he freed the winch hook and tied the bomb to the deck.

  “What you got us into?” Trufante asked.

  Mac rewarded him with a beer, and ignored the question. Checking the tie downs again , he started the engine and motioned the crewman to haul the anchor. As he turned toward home, he saw a small boat sitting motionless on the other side of the channel. It was too far to see much detail, but he laughed at the bright orange color of an old Tampa Bay Buccaneers cap.

  Chapter 4

  Jerry Doans watched the entire operation through his binoculars. He was out on a scouting mission aboard his rented 22-foot center console. He needed to keep an eye on his “fleet” — the handful of lobster boats that he shadowed. These were the successful lobster and crab boats, that set their traps in more secluded areas. Seclusion was important for what Jerry did.

  He kept tabs on the boats to check on the location and frequency with which they pulled their traps. This knowledge was critical to his profession; he liked to dive on the traps the day before they were scheduled to be pulled, as it gave him the best chance of scoring some tails without anyone noticing the two or three he took from each trap. If all the stars lined up, he could dive on Fridays, hit the road to Miami and sell them Saturday. This conveniently had him in the city for party night, with a fist full of spiny lobster dollars. A good day could net him $1000.

  Today, he wanted to get a closer look but was wary of being spotted. Whatever they were doing over there, it was not lobstering, that was for sure. He finished the last of his “Big Gulp” - sized rum drink and looked again, trying to make out what they had pulled up. The rental boat gave him some cover as he slowly motored closer for a better look. No one would recognize it as anything other than a rental. There were rental boats all over this area, and the commercial fisherman and locals treated them like pesky mosquitos. Using a rental gave Doans the ability to go wherever he wanted, automatically labelled an idiot tourist by the locals. He got as close as he dared to the boat hauling from the bottom and sat back to watch.

  It had to be worth something, he thought. Mac Travis wouldn’t waste time pulling garbage off the bottom. He continued to watch the larger boat, wondering how he could capitalize on this new-found knowledge.

  The object now out of view and Travis underway, he refilled his drink and started figuring out how close he could follow. He wanted to know what Travis was up to.

  ***

  Mac shielded his eyes from the glare coming off the water as he navigated the forty two foot steel-hulled trawler through the maze of small keys and shoals scattered in his path. This was one of those places where GPS was useless. The straight line the computer and satellites would calculate always ended up grounding you in these waters, as evidenced by the propeller slashes, white in the dark turtle grass.

  The trawler was making about six knots through the choppy waters, the beefed-up 760-hp diesels not needed here. This wasn’t an area you could run full out. They were cruising through one of the less-travelled areas, known by the locals for good permit fishing on the right tide, but not much more. Tourists stayed away, as there were no markers exc
ept a stick with a plastic bottle or buoy stuck on it here and there. And to the uneducated eye, there was no rhyme or reason to those, either. You never knew who set a marker there or what they were marking. The red and green navigation markers liberally sprinkled through the Keys to mark the main channels were not in evidence here.

  He guided the boat through mostly invisible channels, some indicated by subtle color changes, others not at all. The sun was descending toward the horizon, the air cooling slightly, as he slid up to a lone piling twenty feet from a small beach. There he found a camouflaged john boat, some traps and nets hidden by the mangroves growing above the water line.

  “What brings you to these parts?” came a voice from the scrub.

  “Need your help with something,” Mac called back.

  A grizzled old man walked into view. He waved his walking stick toward Mac, and Mac nodded in a greeting to his old friend.

  He swung the stern to the pile and tied the boat off from a rear cleat. Once secure, he dropped the anchor to keep the boat from swinging in the current. The tide was almost done rising now, and allowed the thirty two inch draft of the trawler to swing freely inches above the sandy bottom. In a few hours it would turn, leaving the boat aground. That meant he didn’t have long to talk.

  “Brought me some tails, that was damn nice of you,” The man called Wood yelled.

  “Yeah, I can give you some, but I need your eyes on this.” He pointed to the bomb lashed to the deck.

  Suddenly Wood was in the water, wading the dozen feet to the boat, his pants wet to the mid-thigh. Trufante helped him onto the dive platform and over the transom.

  Mac caught the recognition in Wood’s face, and knew he had brought this to the right place.

  “Knew it was out there, but didn’t think it would ever see the light of day,” Wood murmured.

  “You know what it is, then?”

  “MK101-Lulu is what it is. Nuclear depth charge from back in the ‘60s. Kennedy’s fiasco with Cuba. I know exactly what it is and how it got there. Now the question is what to do with it. That son of a bitch has eleven kilotons of nuclear meanness.”

  “Is it safe?” Mac asked.

  “After being in that hole for fifty years, anything can happen, but in theory they’re set to explode at depth. Where the hell was it?”

  “Thirty-foot hole.”

  “Makes sense. I gotta think about this. That son of a bitch running for President has his fingerprints on this too. You did the right thing bringing it here. Now I gotta figure out what to do about it.”

  “I can’t take it in or leave it on the boat. Look at the thing. It’s older than you. If it hasn’t started leaking nuclear material already, it’s bound to soon. Leaving it down there’s not an option.”

  Wood ran his hands over the rusting rivets. “I’ve got some history with this, best keep it here. You can swing around to the mangroves on the west side. There’s a bar that stays above the tide. Hard to see unless you know it’s there.” He paused. “The other problem is what to do about that.” He swung his head towards Trufante. “That boy’s got a mouth on him that’ll run from here to Key West faster than you can drive.”

  “I’ll have to deal with that one,” Mac said. “I couldn’t have got it here without him.”

  ***

  Wood guided the trawler around the small island, locally known as a key — butchered vernacular of the Bahamian cay. He poled his skiff with practiced ease. Slow and strong. Mac idled behind him around the mangroves and cut the engine when Wood signaled.

  Mac looked over at Trufante trying to gauge the condition of his mate. He looked close enough to sober to be useful. The men reversed the process of bringing the bomb on board. It was soon sitting on the sandy rise. Wood pulled a machete from the skiff and handed it to the Cajun.

  “This is a young man’s game.” He signaled for Trufante to cut some mangroves to camouflage the bomb.

  Trufante snorted. “Any fool knows those are protected. You can’t just cut on them.”

  “My island, my rules. Now start cuttin’. Cover the whole clearing with the camouflage net.” Wood pointed to the ball of mesh in the bow of the john boat. “Then put the branches on it.” He motioned Mac to come closer, out of hearing range.

  “We’re going to have to make a plan about what to do here,” Wood said.

  Mac slapped at the mosquitos circling his head, wondering why they left the old man alone. “Let me get rid of that fool and come back in the morning. I’ll bring some supplies for you if you need.”

  “What the heck.” Wood shielded his weathered eyes from the setting sun, looking for the source of the barely audible engine noise.

  Mac followed his gaze. A rental boat moved out of the mangroves across the way and started to pick up speed. “Fool tourists, what are they doing out here?”

  Chapter 5

  The vice president leaned forward in his chair and glanced at the poll numbers his campaign manager had laid out on the antique coffee table. He rubbed his bearded face and glanced out the window of the Old Executive Office Building at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, across the way. If these numbers held, he may just get there. The realization of his dream started some fifty years ago was a week away from fruition. POTUS. President Ward - he liked the sound of it.

  “They look really good, Brett.”

  “Yes, sir. Take a look at the battleground states. The only one in the margin of error is Florida. We need to spend some resources down there and kick it up this week.”

  “You’re sure Ohio and Virginia are a wrap?”

  “As long as there’s no October surprise, I feel pretty good about it. And I don’t see that coming, either. You’ve been sitting in this office almost two terms without a mistake. They ran you through the vetting process ten ways to Sunday before they put you on the ticket as VP eight years ago. ”

  Joe Ward, VP, sat back and relaxed. “Anyone that climbs the ladder from enlisted man to fighter pilot, senator and now here has some baggage. Let’s just say there may be a skeleton or two out there. They’re just still in the closet. Besides, I really have not done much from here. You know the boss is all about control. Isn’t it plain as day that I haven’t done anything?” he reminisced.

  “It’s the vice president’s job to do nothing. You’ve backed some good causes, kept the Senate in check, and gone to some funerals. That’s a job well done for a VP. Now look at this itinerary. We’ll spend a little time in the Panhandle, maybe hit a Gators game, and head for South Florida. That’s where the votes are. We need to get those little old ladies in Dade and Broward Counties lined up to vote for you. Pack your bags, sir. We’ve got less than a week, and I mean to make the most of it.”

  Ward could not hide the smile that was creeping across his face. After all these years playing second fiddle, starting as a junior senator, then moving up the ladder to head several prominent committees and finally vice president. His sixty-eight years weighed on him as he picked up the itinerary.

  “I did a big chunk of my naval service at Truman in Key West. Do you think we could get any traction with the fiftieth anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis?”

  “I’ll see what I can work up. We’ll need to do some focus groups. Weigh the Cuban vote. I don’t think there’s going to be any backlash. The focus groups will tell us that. ”

  ***

  Mac turned toward port and idled into one of the canals off the main channel of Boot Key Harbor. Marathon had canals like subdivisions had roads. The boat headed into the commercial district, behind the gas docks and bars close to the inlet. Properties here had about 100 feet of seawall. Back yards were concrete, with scattered palm trees and shade awnings. The utilitarian yards had no lawns. Lobster and crab traps were scattered as lawn ornaments, and commercial boats lined the seawall in various states of readiness. Voices came from every third or fourth property, many slurred. Dogs barked randomly.

  He coasted to a stop, turned the prop toward the dock, and put the engine in revers
e, slowly moving closer to an empty spot on the seawall.

  “Not working tomorrow,” Mac said as Trufante moved toward the wheel, not ready to disembark yet. “Maybe the day after. See what the weather does.”

  “Hook me up with some cash then.” Trufante was close enough Mac could smell the beer on his breath. “Should be a little overtime for today, too.”

  “Here’s a couple hundred.” Mac pulled two bills out of his wallet and handed them to the crewman, anxious to get the man off the boat. “I don’t want any drunk talk about what happened today. That stays between us, you hear me? I’ll sell the catch tomorrow morning, swing by and settle up with you.”

  Trufante gave him the down-on-your luck, this-isn’t-enough-money look. “Hey, you got more money than me.”

  Mac shrugged. It wasn’t the first time they’d had this conversation. Trufante was under the impression that they should split 50/50, partially because he’d run his own operation in the past. “Your boat only needs a little work, and you could do your own deal.” He scanned the property, settling his gaze on the group of people sitting in a rough circle under a roof overhang, cooled by a ceiling fan. “Get rid of your entourage up there. They’re just drinking your beer and eating your food. Not one of them is any use to you.”

  “Yeah boss,” Trufante mumbled. He grabbed the bill. “You know one or two of those girls up there’s got her eyes on you. I could hook you up if you wanted.”

  “No thanks, that’s trouble I don’t need.”

  Trufante hopped over the side and gained his footing on the dock. He yelled up at the party, and then was gone into the darkness.

  Mac sighed in relief — that had gone better than he expected — put the boat in reverse, cut the wheel in the opposite direction, and executed a perfect U turn. Minutes later, he was out of the canal.