Jarod tapped a button on the glowing instrument strapped to his wrist. Almost there. The holographic GPS display surrounded him, mirroring his slow progress with miniscule changes in the projected map that represented his location. If his calculations were correct, in a minute more, he’d be upon the object of his desire.
The holographic display wavered and created bright sparks all around. Even the brave fish swam to safety. He had been experiencing interference issues with the equipment all day. Hence, the silence in his earpiece. He’d only had spotty contact with his ship, Rogues’ Gamble, anchored above for the past half hour. But Jarod didn’t mind. The holographic finally fritzed out altogether, and he was left in the timelessness of the underwater topography. He may have tons of cutting-edge gadgets, but right now, it might as well be the fifteen hundreds. Just how Jarod liked it.
As if to challenge his thoughts, the blunt face of a hammerhead shark entered the periphery of his vision, its progress effortless through the suddenly fishless waters. Jarod’s heartbeat increased, albeit marginally. Sharks were just part of the landscape. Even hammerheads usually did not attack unless aggravated. This big guy was probably just trolling the neighborhood and checking out the new kid on the block, attracted by the agitation of the bubbles from Jarod’s scuba gear.
Once they saw that Jarod wasn’t a tasty seal or other morsel, sharks usually went on their way.
Which was exactly what this one looked like it was going to do. That is, until its skin glistened in the rippled light as it veered from its path, cutting straight for Jarod.
Its jaws gaped open, revealing row upon row of broken-glass teeth poised to rip Jarod’s flesh asunder. With a skill only born of experience, Jarod brought his shark prod up to bear. Its design was patented by the Rogues’ own marine biologist. The electric discharge caused pain, and was specifically calibrated to enter the fish’s brain, activating the area governing the flight response.
Jarod hit the button on the handle, but only a faint shower of sparks came out. He hit it again. Damn it! Where were the fireworks? The hammerhead surged forward powered by that enormous tail.
Hauling back, Jarod brought the prod forward, slamming the metal smack-dab into the center of the hammerhead’s elongated snout. Maybe the blow didn’t have all the bells and whistles it was supposed to, but the shark still slashed left, fleeing the confrontation.
Like Jarod said, he didn’t mind going medieval on their ass.
But it was time to get back to business. Jarod crested another rise in the ocean floor, coming abruptly across a half-buried beam of rotting wood, marine plant life surrounding it like some kind of bizarre forest. This was it! Jarod’s adrenaline spiked in a way a shark attack never could.
He turned to his left. “Hey, Ch…” The terrain’s emptiness choked the words in his throat. The brother who should have been right there—as he had always been—was not.
The speakers in his ears crackled to life. A clipped, British voice spoke inside his head, “Is everything all right, Jarod?”
“Yeah. Of course.”
“It sounded like you called out.”
Jarod forced a chuckle. “Uh-huh. I think I found something.”
“Good. Your gauges are reading below the red line for oxygen.”
Tell him something that he didn’t already know. Jarod should have gone topside fifteen minutes ago, but he couldn’t stop. Not yet. This might be their last chance at this site after today. Their permits ran out, and getting another set from the Bahamian government was about as likely as Jarod driving under sixty-five.
With renewed conviction, Jarod pushed farther over the ridge of sand and stumbled to a stop. There it was—laid out before him. The skeletal form of the shipwreck stretched out a hundred yards from his perch, as if waiting all these centuries just for him. Its beauty eclipsed Venus herself, at least for Jarod.
A pristine Spanish galleon. She was like a lover he’d dreamt of his entire life, elusive and unattainable until he met her on a street corner. Or, in Jarod’s case, a shark- infested, seismically active ocean valley.
Just beyond the site, the seascape suddenly ended, and a black stretch of ocean appeared immediately beyond. The ravine. The Tongue of the Ocean.
A tremor ran up Jarod’s boots, resonating in his knees, his chest, and his head. Sand shifted crazily below his feet. The crevasse yawned—its black mouth was open, ready to engulf Jarod’s prize, but he breathed through it, keeping his breaths slow and steady. They’d felt aftershocks all day. He couldn’t get this close to his life’s work and then hyperventilate himself into unconsciousness.
Once the ground stabilized, Jarod headed out. Taking measured steps, he made his way to the wreckage. As the last tremors died down, Jarod pushed aside the sand covering the ancient wood. The rotten beams crumbled under his fingers. Just as well. He didn’t want the planking. He wanted what was inside the planking. With more and more urgency, his air gauge dipping far into the red, Jarod shoved the silt aside until he felt his glove bump up against something solid. The sand moved in concert with the buried object. A golden flash gleamed in the rippling water.
Jarod’s smile could have eclipsed the sun.
* * *
Cleo scanned the water for the fiftieth time since they’d lost contact with Jarod. The surface showed the only changes it had for the past twenty minutes, the unceasing break and flow of the waves lapping against their ship, the Rogues’ Gamble. The vista beyond the railing was fit for a postcard.
But her mind slipped below the surface of the water, the true source of her joy. Years of education and experience filled in the gaps her eyes couldn’t. Beneath the cleansing ocean spray and glitter of the sun on the water lurked a more fascinating, yet sinister, world below.
The ocean was a hostile place, akin to the heights of the Himalayas in terms of danger…and the foreign atmosphere. Down there, humans were not at the top of the food chain. Hell, we don’t even make the second slot, Cleo thought.
Teams of hammerhead sharks, swarms of deadly sea snakes, and a host of other, not-much-lesser evils lurked in her mind’s eye. And with the quakes stirring up debris, causing their instruments to fritz, even their technology wasn’t a sure protection against what was down there. Granted, Jarod was a skilled diver. Still, her hands, browned by the sun and her own partial African heritage, gripped the railing tightly. Jarod had been an equally skilled diver last year, and look what had happened.
A voice interrupted her vigil. “The GPS tether is only functioning at 24.7 percent.” Buton, their resident computer expert, said as he lurched across the deck of the Rogues’ Gamble. He had been working with them for over a year; yet somehow, he never quite managed to find his sea legs. His tweed suit with leather patches on the elbows, as well as the laser-precision of his British accent overlaying his Mumbai heritage, spoke of his many years at Oxford. “But at last sweep, it appears that Jarod is surfacing.”
“Thanks for the update,” Cleo answered, reaching out a hand to steady him. Buton latched onto the proffered arm before transferring the steely grip onto the railing. “You didn’t have to come down to tell me, though.”
“I knew you were…concerned. The history here—”
“I’m just up here to be ready when Jarod finds a way to complicate things.”
“That is not necessarily the predetermined outcome of this…” Buton must have noticed her eyebrow arching, for he stopped, and then nodded. “Agreed.”
He was right to agree, wasn’t he? They’d been here for over a week without a single mishap. History didn’t need to necessarily repeat itself, did it?
“Well then, I will be getting back to the bridge,” Buton responded, his face as academically impassive and inscrutable as always.
Perhaps she had been too harsh and too eager to shut down any discussion of the dive. Cleo went to say something to the retreating figure, but instead stifled a laugh. Buton’s arms extended as far out as he could possibly get them, swaying from side to side
as he made his way back to the bridge.
“Hey!” A voice called out from the water. “Can I get some help down here?”
Buton spun around, lost his footing, and would have fallen overboard if it hadn’t been for Cleo’s intervention.
“Hang on. Don’t let go,” she instructed Buton, pressing his palms against the railing before turning to survey the water. Jarod’s tanned face bobbed above the surface as his sun-bleached hair spread out around him. His grin was incandescent, lighting up the water. Or maybe that was the sunlight reflecting off the bright gold goblet clutched in Jarod’s fist. A ray glinted off a jewel and embedded itself in the back of Cleo’s brain.
Jarod crowed his excitement as he hauled himself up on the side of the ship. “Tell me this isn’t fifteenth-century Spanish!”
He hopped over the railing, sending salt water spraying over Cleo and Buton, as well as Jarod’s rapidly approaching nephew, Rob. Once the teen saw the jewel-encrusted bauble in his uncle’s hands, he let out a huge whoop.
“Yes!”
“I know, right?” Jarod’s cat-eating-the-canary grin grew to even greater proportions. “Let’s get outfitted, guys! This find ain’t gonna wait.”
“What about sharks, Jarod?” Cleo hoped her caution could cut across the guys’ enthusiasm.
“No sharks. We’re good.” Jarod’s smile didn’t even flicker. But she knew…she could feel…that at least thirty-five hundred hammerheads were within a fifty-league radius. And he hadn’t run into a single one? Yeah, right. Just because she lacked proof from the radar didn’t make her a complete moron.
The boat lurched, knocking everyone but Jarod to the deck. The prow of the Rogues’ Gamble listed toward starboard, churned by the suddenly restless waters. Everyone grabbed whatever he or she could to ride it out.
Jarod recovered, calling out, “No worries, people! Just an aftershock!”
Rising, Cleo looked out at the surging waters and cocked an eyebrow. Earthquakes were known to agitate the hammerheads into feeding frenzies. And without radar down there, they had to rely on eyewitness accounts.
“You’re certain there weren’t any sharks down there?”
“I told you, no!” Jarod held up the goblet. “Now, who wants to celebrate?”
The second cheer nearly deafened her as Buton, Jarod, and Rob headed for the bridge. Cleo looked back into the slowly subsiding waters, a flash of movement catching her eye.
“Cleo, we’re breaking out the rum!” Rob’s face peered out from the bridge. “Well, Uncle Jare says rum cake for me, but you’re missing it!”
Cleo beamed at the boy, watching him retreat inside. She glanced once more at the still-seething waters, the smile slipping from her face.
* * *
The farmstead showed signs of not just wear, but decay. The rolling hills were verdant, but distinctly overgrown. The equipment dotting the property looked like something out of a postapocalyptic film.
The old house appeared ready to fall down—if not for the abundant ivy covering the walls. A doorway-shaped patch had been cut out of the intruding vines. Within that slight hollow, two men in black suits labored to post a notice onto the peeled-paint surface of what must have been, in more prosperous times, a proper door.
Inside, the atmosphere was cozier, if no less run-down. The kitchen was small, colored in the yellow-orange, avocado, and tan shades of the late fifties. Knickknacks and framed photos of family covered every inch of every wall and shelf. Plaster-of-Paris red roosters, old milk bottles filled with fake flowers, and salt and pepper shakers of all kinds dotted the meager counter space.
The farmer let his hand fall away from the threadbare curtain covering the window above the sink. From where he stood, he had a perfect view of the two black vultures with their vile eviction papers.
“They can’t…We’re the last family-owned farm in the county.”
“I know it, John Henry. You know it. But the bank just don’t care about it.” His wife glanced up from her knitting, the soft click, click of her needles never slowing for a moment. “Those bastards wouldn’t know kindness if it slapped them across their ugly faces.” She squinted at the framed painting of Jesus on the wall and waved a halfhearted apology at him.
“Maybe I should get out my shotgun.”
“Maybe you should.”
John Henry stared out at the men, undecided. Before he could take action, the suits were done and headed down the long, dirt driveway. That was it. After centuries of working this land, the family name would leave the county for good.
A bright spot of light seared across his vision, landing less than twenty yards from the farmhouse, right in front of the chicken coop. The birds clamored, their raucous clucking filling up the late evening air.
“Doggone-it! Something done scared the chickens, Martha.” He shook his head to clear out the bright stripe across his vision with no success. “I’m gonna head out and see what’s got them so stirred up.”
“Mmm hmm,” she agreed. Martha’s knitting continued, implacable.
John Henry grabbed his flashlight and ran, or rather trotted, out to the henhouse. His knees weren’t what they once had been. About fifteen feet in front and to the east side of the decrepit structure, a small pit glowed with a ruddy light.
“What the…? Martha! Come see this!”
Martha strolled across the yard, needles still tracing circles in the low light. Her ball of yarn was stuffed in her pocket. He felt her move beside him.
“It’s just a rock,” Martha said, purling a row.
John Henry smiled, though, flashing the light across the fragment’s surface. A riot of colors lit up the night, illuminating everything around it. The sharp intake of breath from his wife confirmed that she concluded what he had.
A Star Diamond had fallen onto their land.
“I don’t think we’re gonna have to move,” John Henry whispered.
For the first time that night, Martha’s needles stopped moving.
* * *
Jarod stalked back and forth in front of the huge array of sophisticated computers comprising the bridge of the Rogues’ Gamble. Enormous amounts of data flowed across holographic screens. Topographic maps cycled endlessly, revealing the shape of the ocean floor beneath. A huge scar cut across the detailed relief, an ending of the terrain just a quarter league from their current location.
The central screens, the ones hooked to the unmanned probe they sent down to the galleon, remained stubbornly static. Turns out that even the most expensive holographic screens needed data to project.
Jarod growled his frustration. “Come on. Come on! You’re killing me.”
“You are positive that there weren’t any sharks down there?” Cleo asked, as if she already knew the answer.
Jarod groaned. “None. Nada.” He faced down Cleo’s infamous I-can-see-into-your-head glare without flinching. Much. Man, she could’ve given his mom a run for her money. “So can we come on now?”
Buton lifted his head from the keyboard. “Patience, my dear man.”
The scholar’s steady tone made Jarod want to throttle him a little bit. “We launched the vid-cam over an hour ago.”
Rob chuckled with the dismissive mirth that only a teenager could manage. “Lighten up, dude. We’ve been working this site for seventeen months.”
“Seventeen months and an hour,” Jarod countered.
Frustrated with the monitors telling him nothing new, his eyes drifted to the bridge’s forward window, where the entire deck lay open. Lounging on the battered folding chair was the very attractive reporter, Brandi Broadhope, here to capture a “Rags to Riches” sub-segment of the regular feature, “Striking It Rich” for the nationally syndicated Wake Up, America. She was a natural redhead with the frosty beauty that told most men to back off. All it said to Jarod was, “I’m a challenge.”
Challenge…accepted, baby, challenge accepted.
Aloud, he mimicked the scientist’s clipped speech. “Buton, my dear man, there�
��s more at stake than gold…” Jarod pointed toward the deck as he talked with the curvy redhead.
The East Indian frowned. “Seldom does the process of historical discovery trouble itself outside the realm of bounty.”
Rob snorted. “Or booty!”
“Well, it should,” Jarod agreed, winking broadly at Rob. A sharp elbow in Jarod’s side interrupted their male bonding moment.
Cleo tugged on his arm, drawing him away from the cluster of monitors, a frown creasing her smooth, cocoa skin.
“Jarod, what happened to our ‘no more pajama parties’ rule? Remember? Creating a more ‘wholesome’ atmosphere?”
“Um, I can hear you,” Rob intoned. “And I’m fourteen, Cleo, not four.”
“Exactly!” Jarod turned away from Cleo so she wouldn’t see the eye roll he directed at Rob. “And if you’re upset about a booty call, blame it on Buton.”
Buton’s head swiveled around. “Excuse me?”
“Hey, you’re the one who invited Brandi onboard,” Jarod said with a shrug.
“For…to…to help synergize our marketing paradigm…” the computer expert stammered on. “To create demand from collectors by—”
Jarod saved Buton from flailing anymore by redirecting his energies to Cleo. “The deal was that I’m not allowed to bring chicks onboard.” Jarod pointed to the top-heavy reporter. “This one was served up on a big, fat digital platter.” Cleo’s scowl intensified, but Jarod just smiled. “Darlin’, don’t hate the playa, hate the loophole.” To make his point, he low-fived Rob behind his back.
Before Cleo could scold him any further, a monitor crackled to life with a news report.
“Shut it, guys!” Rob yelled. “It’s our segment.”
The display whirled in 3D as the sidebar streamed enough information about the location, likes, and length of the transmission for all the geeks out there watching.
A male reporter sported blond hair so perfectly coiffed that it looked plastic— especially given the run-down farm in the background. The Ken doll was ready to interview a scientist, complete with an out-of-place starched white coat. It appeared that the proverbial stick up the guy’s backside, at least in this case, was maybe not so proverbial.
Got Thrills? A Boxed Set (A McCray Collection) Page 23