Legend in the Keys

by Matthew Rief

  TEN

  Jack stayed up in the flybridge to have a better view, but the rest of us migrated down to the main deck. I grabbed the hard case from where it rested against the starboard gunwale, then unclasped its hinges and lifted it open. The cigar-shaped yellow device looked more like a futuristic torpedo than a piece of salvage equipment.

  Walt let out an impressive whistle as he laid eyes upon the advanced piece of equipment.

  “Man, Pete,” he said, “you weren’t kidding about them being the right people for the job.” He patted me on the back and added, “She’s a Proton, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Their newest model.”

  Ange helped me lift it out, and we ran a few quick diagnostics before hooking it up to my laptop.

  When looking for a wreck, it’s usually good practice to begin your search by creating a digital replication of the seafloor using sonar. Then, once you have a good idea of what the bottom looks like, you can go back over with a magnetometer and place metallic hot spots on your survey. But since we were only looking for one relatively small metallic object, it made sense to jump right into using the mag.

  Once the mag was ready, I carried it over the transom.

  “Gonna drop it in the water, Jack,” I said, raising my voice so he could hear me over the low hum of the idling engines.

  “Alright,” he replied. “Bringing her up to three knots.”

  He slowly accelerated us, then turned around to face the bridge.

  While waiting for Jack to finish the turn, I looked up at the cars passing on US-1, then closed my eyes and tried to imagine a train forcing its way across the old bridge as the most powerful storm in United States history roared into it. My eyes gravitated from the bridge down to the water below.

  Could it be possible that a gold compass, and the only clue to the lost Florentine Diamond’s whereabouts, has been sitting here all this time?

  “All clear for now,” he said. “Let her go!”

  “Aye-aye!” I yelled. I stepped my bare feet to the edge of the swim platform, then bent down and splashed the forty-pound device into the water. I paid out about twenty feet of cable and watched for a few seconds to make sure that it was cutting through the water properly. Since the water was so shallow, I kept her gliding along just a few feet beneath the surface.

  Once in place and swimming properly, I gave a thumbs-up to Jack.

  “All set,” I said, then stepped back over the transom.

  Ange sat on the padded stern bench seat with the computer in her lap while Pete and Walt sat on either side of her and peered at the monitor. Ange quickly adjusted the settings for the size of the object we were looking for. Again, Walt was impressed.

  “Guess I can just sit back and relax for this one,” he said with a smile. “You kids got it covered.”

  I stepped inside with Atticus right on my heels. After filling his food and water bowls, I moved back out into the warm tropical air. Having spent a good portion of his young life on the water, Atticus was comfortable on a boat and could spend the entire day sprawled out in the shade without showing any signs of unhappiness.

  I moved to the stern and looked back and forth between the towfish and the laptop monitor. It appeared to be working perfectly, having already located a small handful of objects. The Proton has a total swath detection range of three thousand feet. That range is also unaffected by the medium between the mag and the metal target. Performance isn’t affected whether detecting through air, water, silt, sand, or even solid coral. With those things in mind, there was no way we could pass over a compass without it being detected.

  Once past the bridge, Jack idled us for a few minutes as we waited for a pleasure boat to motor out, then turned us around beside a small trolling fishing boat. Within five minutes, we were back where we’d started, and Jack brought us along an uninhabited part of the channel’s eastern shoreline.

  “This might be a little trickier than we thought,” Ange said as I leaned over to look at the screen again.

  Even with the narrow detection range that she’d implemented to filter out objects that were either too big or too small, we still had over thirty hits already.

  “Not surprised,” Pete said. “This waterway’s been used extensively for a hundred years. That’s a lot of accumulated garbage, tools, and everything else that somehow finds its way into the ocean.”

  “Well, I think it’s time we hook up the mailbox and take a proper look around,” I said.

  “That’s the spirit,” Walt said, patting me on the back.

  Some of the objects detected were indicated at over five feet beneath the seabed, so unless we wanted to dive down and shovel our way through endless silt and rocks, the mailbox was our best option to see if one of the thirty-some-odd pieces of metal were our winner, winner, chicken dinner.

  “Not that I’m a sucker for the rules or anything,” I said. “But just out of curiosity, aren’t we supposed to have a permit to do something like this?”

  I was just playing devil’s advocate, knowing that setting up the mailbox and turning the seafloor into a dirty storm was going to draw more than one set of suspicious eyes.

  “Sometimes it’s easier to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission,” Pete said.

  “Spoken like someone who’s never served hard time before,” Walt said. We all eyed him skeptically, which caused him to smile and add, “Not that I have, of course.”

  Since Pete knew most of the police officers and Coast Guardsman in the Keys, we figured we could get ourselves out of trouble if need be.

  Jack brought us back around, then idled once we were over our first set of targets. We quickly installed the mailbox. Seeing that there was a break in the boat traffic, we looked up and gave Jack a thumbs-up.

  “Here we go,” he said excitedly.

  He punched the throttles, causing the props to spin violently and send a surge of bubbling water straight toward the seafloor below. The water turned dark in an instant as a swirl of sediment quickly spread outward like a thick dust storm. Jack kept the engines running at nearly full throttle for thirty seconds before easing them back.

  We watched as the clouds of dirt settled and were slowly carried off by the shifting tide.

  Reaching into my gear bag, I grabbed my mask, snorkel, and fins. I slid off my tee shirt and tightened a weight belt with three pounds around my waist. The plan was to scuba, but I wanted to get into the water and see what kind of current and visibility we were dealing with before I donned my gear. I was also sweating from all the time out under the sun and was anxious to get cooled off.

  Before diving in, I grabbed a waterproof handheld metal detector and an aluminum prospector scoop to dig up anything I found. I took one more look at the laptop screen, and Ange pointed out a few clustered targets below us.

  “We’ll get the gear ready while you’re down,” Jack said from up in the flybridge.

  I nodded to him, then stepped down to the swim platform. After a quick rinse of my mask, I spit in both lenses, swooshed the saliva around with my finger, then gave it a quick dip in the seawater. Tightening it around my neck, I slid into my fins and dove headfirst into the water.

  The water felt amazing and gave me newfound energy. The lead weight allowed me to sink to the bottom easily. The seafloor looked like a crater from being cleared away by the prop wash, and just as my stomach hit the remaining hard sediment, I powered on the metal detector and began my search.

  The LED on the detector’s controls was out and would illuminate when the device detected anything metal. It lit up either red, green, or white, depending on how close the metal object was. White meant it was within an inch of the device, green meant you’d have to do a little bit of digging, and red meant it was over six inches down. Jack had a more sophisticated detector aboard, but I preferred to use the wand when freediving.

  After just a few seconds of scanning, the light illuminated. It was white.

  I dug the scoop a few inches into the botto
m and scooped out a small pile of sand and rocks. Reaching into the little basket, I grabbed our first catch of the day: a rusted old dock cleat.

  I shrugged and dropped the worthless remnant into my mesh bag. At least we knew the mag was working.

  I finned and watched as the green light came on. Another scoop, another grab. No dice again. This time it was a rusty broken fork.

  I came up empty two more times, then surfaced.

  “Anything?” Ange said as I caught my breath and looked over at the Calypso.

  “Oh for four on that dive,” I replied.

  I kicked over to the stern and set the mesh bag on the swim platform. Ange had brought over a plastic bucket, and I emptied the contents so that we wouldn’t waste our time with the same hits over and over again.

  “You part fish or something?” Walt asked, raising his sunglasses to his forehead. He’d removed his shirt and had one foot up on the transom. “You were down there forever.”

  I laughed, then glanced at my dive watch.

  “Just three minutes,” I said, reading the LCD screen.

  My Suunto dive computer allowed me to track both scuba and freediving.

  Ange had the laptop in her hands. She sat on the transom and turned the screen around to face me.

  “Got another group of hits right here,” she said.

  I pulled myself up to get a better view, and she pointed to a spot on the channel floor. I nodded, then performed a few more fruitless free dives before Ange and I decided to don our scuba gear.

  We slid into our 3mm wetsuits, then tightened our nitrogen-enriched tanks to our BCDs and strapped them on. Using nitrogen-enriched air, commonly referred to as nitrox, would allow us to stay down longer. Once geared up and ready to go, we stepped off the swim platform and splashed into the water.

  We got into a routine of wash away the sediment, dive and dig up the hits, repeat. Since there were a decent amount of shallow rocky areas at the edge of the channel under the bridge, Walt slipped into a pair of knee-high boots, and we dropped him off. Using the other metal detector, he walked back and forth along the mud and barnacle-encrusted rocks, scanning and digging as he went.

  After an hour and a half of diving, Ange and I switched places with Jack and Pete. By 1300 we were just about finished digging up the first sweep of hits. So far we’d found a D battery, a flip phone, an old pair of glasses, a railroad spike, and a handful of various other random pieces of discarded metal. We’d manage to fill and remove three buckets worth of junk, but no compass.

  I glanced over at Atticus, who was lounging just inside the sliding glass door. He was looking a little bored and antsy, so I grabbed a tennis ball from inside and tossed it far out over the water. Without a moment’s hesitation, he sprang to his feet and dove with reckless abandon over the port gunwale. When it comes to dogs, Labs are about as good of swimmers as they come, and Atticus never turned down an opportunity to go for a dip, especially on a hot day.

  After twenty minutes of playtime and with just a few hits left until Pete and Jack would surface, I stepped into the galley and came back out fifteen minutes later.

  “Lunch’s ready,” I said.

  I whipped up some lobster rolls to fuel an afternoon of searching. Just as I told Ange, I looked toward the opening of the channel as the sound of heavy metal music filled the air. It was the fishing boat we’d seen earlier, motoring back into the channel after a half day’s charter.

  “Anything?” I added, motioning toward the water and the rising bubbles.

  Ange shook her head.

  She directed her gaze to the eastern shoreline and said, “Looks like we might have trouble, though.”

  I looked over and saw Walt standing in knee-deep water. He had his back to us and was talking to a group of three guys about fifty feet away from him on a grassy bank. From where Ange and I stood at the stern of the Calypso, it was impossible to hear what they were saying, but judging by their body language, it didn’t look friendly. That was putting it mildly. The truth was, the three guys looked beyond pissed off. They were young, well built, and sure as hell didn’t look like locals.

  It appeared as though their little chat was growing more and more heated by the second. I couldn’t tell for sure what he had, but the guy in the middle was hovering his right hand at an unusual position near the back of his waistband. It didn’t take a psychic to predict what he was likely reaching for.

  “Ange,” I said as I stepped to the port gunwale.

  “I see it,” she said, reaching for her holstered Glock.

  We were far off for an accurate pistol shot, but I wanted to at least have Walt’s back in case something bad was about to go down.

  “Walt!” I called out.

  He didn’t turn around, but the three guys tilted their heads up in unison to look my way. They each wore dark sunglasses, button-up dress shirts, and tight slacks.

  The music I’d heard earlier grew louder and louder as the fishing boat motored toward us in the narrow channel. I kept my eyes glued to the situation on the shore, however.

  Who the hell are these guys, and what do they want?

  I thought back to what Walt had said earlier—how once people catch a whiff of treasure, they tend to go mad.

  How could anyone possibly know about it already? Unless… unless we weren’t the first ones Walt told.

  “Logan!” Ange called out.

  I snapped my head back to look at her and, to my surprise, she was no longer eyeing the suspicious activity on the shore. Instead, she was pointing over the starboard side of the Calypso at the passing fishing boat. Their music was loud, so loud I could barely think. But I realized that she was pointing at one of the large fishing poles that were secured in a holder at the stern, its line still out.

  My eyes followed the line, and I realized that the lure at the end was heading straight for Jack. In an instant, the shiny hook stabbed into his body and dragged him through the water.

  The line went taut, the pole bowed dramatically, and the bail zipped.

  ELEVEN

  As if a switch had gone off in my mind, my adrenaline surged, and everything around me was instantly in slow motion.

  Ange calls it SEAL mode, and it’s a trait I’ve had since I was a kid. It’s like in that movie For Love of the Game, when Kevin Costner’s on the mound and he says, “Clear the mechanism.” Or when Spider-Man’s Spidey sense tingles. Everything around me goes quiet. Everything slows.

  “Hey!” I yelled out at the top of my lungs, trying desperately to get the attention of anyone on the fishing boat.

  It was useless. The wild group couldn’t hear me over the roar of their speakers, blaring out “Highway to Hell.”

  With time running out and my friend in serious trouble, I lunged up to the starboard gunwale and dove as far as I could out into the water. I cut cleanly through the surface and kept my body streamlined as I transitioned in the most intense freestyle stroke of my life.

  My pulse skyrocketed as I forced my way through the water, trying desperately to reach Jack before he was dragged past. I forced my eyes to stay open under the salty water, pushing through the burn and focusing my blurry gaze on Jack as he was pulled backward.

  He struggled to get free of the hook and yelled out bubbles from the pain, leaving a trail of red in the water as he moved.

  If he’d been tangled in something less dangerous, I could have grabbed hold of him and held on for the ride as I cut him free. But the cloud of blood indicated that the hook was secured to his body and not the BCD. If I grabbed him, my extra weight would cause the sharp tip to dig in even deeper, or it could rip off a chunk of his flesh.

  No, I need to cut him loose. I need to go straight for the line.

  I took in a deep breath, then kicked with everything I had and took one final stroke, pulling the water back and propelling my body forward and down. When my hand reached the end of the stroke, I snatched my dive knife from its sheath at the back of my waistband.

  Extending it
forward, I reached as far as I could. I continued to kick and slashed the sharpened titanium blade against the taut line just inches above Jack’s struggling body. In a heart-pounding instant, the line snapped, and Jack’s body quickly slowed to a stop.

  I grabbed hold of his BCD and turned him around to face me. Somehow, he’d managed to keep his second stage in his mouth. He was squinting through the dive mask and yelling out bubbles as he placed a hand over his left shoulder.

  Maintaining composure as best I could, I held the power inflator button on the end of the inflator hose, causing air to be transferred from his dive tank into his BCD. A moment later, we broke the surface. Keeping my body behind his, I wrapped an arm around his chest, and we both kicked for the stern of the Calypso.

  Pete surfaced just as we reached the swim platform. He removed Jack’s fins while I unclipped and slid off his BCD.

  “Shit, this hurts, bro,” he said, wincing as he looked at the five-inch-long hook that was burrowed deep under the left side of his collarbone.

  Blood continued to drip out. A dangerous amount of blood.

  Once free of his equipment, I climbed up onto the swim platform and grabbed him under his armpits. Ange stepped over and helped me lift him up out of the water, over the transom, and onto the deck. Drops of deep red splattered against the white deck as we quickly examined the wound.

  “Ange, first aid kit,” I said, but before the words were off my lips, she was already grabbing the large red hard case Jack kept bungee-strapped under the flybridge stairs.

  She popped it open, and I snatched a pair of scissors to cut part of his wetsuit off.

  “Wait!” Jack said, raising a hand to stop me before using the neoprene for arts and crafts. He winced as he rolled over and struggled to unzip the back of it. “This is my favorite wetsuit, bro.”

  I shook my head and helped him loosen it.

  “You crazy conch.”