Gold in the Keys

by Matthew Rief

  She shook her head. “No, that’s why I’m here. He wanted me to tell you that we’ll leave you alone so long as you do the same.”

  “Who is he, Ange? Anyone I know?”

  “I’m sure you’ve heard of him,” she said, “but I doubt that you’ve ever seen him in person. His name’s Arian Nazari.”

  My mind instantly shot back to my conversation with Scott as we were driving to Sierra Gorda. Scott told me he’d gotten my coin back through a wager of some kind. I guessed Nazari must have learned of its importance and, being the avid collector he was, wanted the rest of the treasure for himself.

  “That explains the mega yacht,” I said as Angelina drove back onto Eaton Street, heading towards the marina.

  A few minutes later, she pulled up alongside the curb. Opening the door, I stepped out onto the sidewalk.

  “Good seeing you, Ange.”

  “You too,” she said, “and I’m serious about watching your back.”

  I nodded. “I’ll message you if I learn anything.”

  She smiled and said she’d do the same, then I shut the door and she cruised down the street, disappearing around the corner.

  CHAPTER

  EIGHT

  I made my way back to the marina and, seeing Gus in the office, stopped in to see how he was doing.

  “Just living the island dream,” Gus said as I walked in. He sat on an old bean bag chair behind the counter with his feet propped up on a nearby chair and his face glued to a flat-screen TV mounted on the wall. He was watching the local news, which showed a reporter walking downtown, admiring the different shops and talking to the tourists as they passed by. Gus’s parents had owned the marina, and their parents before them. For three generations the Hendersons had lived in Key West and were as much a part of the town as Key lime pie.

  “Everything alright with your slip?” he asked, leaning up from his chair. “Sure is a beauty you got there.”

  “Yeah, I love the place. Gus, do you think you could do me a favor and let me know if you see anything suspicious going on here at the marina?”

  He muted the television and gave me his full attention.

  “What kind of suspicious activity are you expecting, Logan?”

  He looked worried, so I did my best to ease him down.

  “I’ve been followed a few times lately,” I said, “and I got word that there may be some guys who’d recently arrived in the Keys looking for trouble?”

  “Have you talked to Sheriff Wilkes? I’m sure he would be much more informative than me.”

  I nodded, though I had no desire to go to the authorities. I always liked to handle things on my own and in my own way. I knew that if I went to the police, things would only get more difficult.

  “Thanks, Gus. I’ll do that.”

  I turned to the door and before I left, Gus said, “But I’ll let you know if I see anything.”

  I thanked him, shut the door behind me and walked down the main dock, then turned to head towards the Baia.

  On my way to my boat, I was surprised to catch a glimpse of the Calypso a few docks over, still moored to its slip. I looked at my watch and saw that it was nine forty-five. It had been over thirty minutes since I’d left. Hoping that nothing serious had happened, I rushed over to the Calypso, but upon seeing Claire lounging in the shade with Tony sitting beside her, I relaxed a little. Claire was staring at her phone and Tony was tinkering with a piece of equipment they’d brought for the dive. When I reached the boat, he pointed at the deck. I looked over the transom and saw Jack wedged between one of the engines and the hull. Sam was hovering over him with one foot on the deck and the other bent against one of the steps leading down to the engines.

  “Everything alright?” I asked, looking down at Jack.

  Jack looked up when he heard my voice. He shook his head before wiping the sweat from his brow with a dirty rag.

  “She was working fine yesterday,” he said. He sighed, then looked over at Sam. “I’m sorry, Miss Flores.”

  “It’s Sam,” she said.

  “My apologies, Sam. But it looks like we’re gonna have to reschedule.”

  “Did you try checking the crankshaft?” Sam asked. “It tends to wear over time.”

  “It’s not that. Must be something internal. It would take me a few hours to take her apart to figure out what’s wrong.”

  Jack climbed up to the deck and reached for his phone. “Is there another day that would work for you this week?”

  “We’re on a tight schedule,” Sam replied, agitated. “We’ve had this planned for months, and you aren’t even ready for us. Do you have any idea what we’re trying to do? Any idea how important this research trip is?”

  I looked over at Claire, who was playing a game on her phone, and almost laughed. I wondered what it was they were researching and why her crew didn’t share her enthusiasm for it.

  “You can take them out on the Baia,” I said. Sam looked over at me for the first time since I’d walked up. Her hazelnut eyes looked onto mine, then glanced back at Jack.

  “I can’t ask you to do that, Logan,” Jack said.

  “You don’t have to.”

  “What kind of boat do you have?” Sam asked. I noticed that her attitude had simmered down a little bit.

  “It’s a forty-eight-foot Baia Flash,” I said. “Plenty of deck space to accommodate, along with a lounge. It’s just down the dock a short ways if you want to take a look at it. Using the carts Gus has at the office, we could have all of this gear moved over and be out on the water in no time.”

  Sam thought it over for a moment, then grabbed one of her bags from the deck. Motioning to Claire and Tony, she said, “Alright, let’s move all the gear. Looks like Captain Dodge will be taking us out today.”

  I grinned. “Just Logan,” I said. But I had to admit, I liked the way Captain Dodge sounded, especially coming from her.

  Isaac ran over to the marina office and came back with a big metal cart on rubber tires. We loaded it up with the tanks, BCDs, regulators and all the other necessary gear, including the research gear the three had brought with them.

  When Sam first saw the boat, she was taken aback. Moving towards it and stepping aboard, she said, “This boat is beautiful, Logan.”

  We stowed all of the gear, utilizing the outside lockers and hatches as well as the lounge and strapping the tanks onto the port and starboard bulkheads. When all the gear was aboard and Jack was carrying the cooler over the transom, he spoke quietly to me.

  “You know, you’re supposed to have a license to charter, bro,” he said. “You’re looking at a pretty hefty fine if someone checks us.”

  I shrugged. “Well, you have a license,” I said. “And if they give us any kind of trouble, we could bring up the fact that we handed them three Caribbean thugs on a silver plate.”

  “You did what?” Sam asked. I looked up at the Baia and saw her leaning over the transom, listening in on our conversation.

  “It’s a long story,” I said. I loosened up the lines holding the boat to the dock. “Not sure about the rest of you, but the Caribbean’s clear tropical waters are calling my name.”

  I leapt over the transom, grabbed my keys from my front pocket and started up the engines. Isaac handled the lines on the dock and pushed us out as I eased the throttles, bringing us away from the dock. As I took us out of the marina through the no-wake zone, Jack and Sam stood on either side of me. Sam unfolded a sheet of paper and held it in front of me.

  “There are three sites,” she said. “I have the coordinates for each, along with a map showing their locations. The three sites form a triangle, so I figured we could start at this one”—she pointed at the map—“then work our way around.”

  “You’re the boss,” I said with a grin, “though I won’t be needing the map.”

  I typed the coordinates she had printed out on the paper into my top-of-the-line Garmin GPS, and a few seconds later, the screen displayed the destination on a digital map, also
showing various potential routes along with depths along the way.

  “That’s one sweet gadget you got there,” Jack said. “I might have to get one myself one of these days. That’s just northwest of Little Mullet Key.” He pointed to the screen. “The reef’s beautiful over that way. There are some unique rock formations as well. We’re looking at about half an hour, depending on how much Logan wants to show off.”

  “You know me,” I said with a grin.

  “Make it twenty-five.”

  I looked back and saw Claire sprawled out over the sunbed. Tony sat on the bench, leaning over the table, while Isaac sat beside him with his feet propped up on the cooler.

  “Isaac, toss me over a drink, would you?”

  He flipped open the massive Yeti, pulled out a can of coconut water and threw it over to me. I caught it with one hand and told the others to help themselves. When I cleared the no-wake zone, I slowly brought us up on plane, then up to about thirty knots, which I’d found out was a good cruising speed for her. I looked around the horizon with a pair of binoculars and, seeing that there were no boats that would interfere with our path, pushed the throttles forward as far as they would go. I yelled for everyone to hold on as the Baia smoothly accelerated up to just over forty knots, then forty-five, soon maxing out just over fifty.

  I turned back and grinned as Claire, no longer looking at her phone, stared forward almost in disbelief of how fast we were going. Tony was no longer working on his equipment. Instead, he was holding on to the table along with Isaac beside him. Sam stood beside me, her hands bracing against the supports overhead. Jack began to yell, I joined in, and soon all six of us were yelling out at the top of our lungs as we rocketed through the water towards the first site. Within twenty minutes I’d maneuvered the Baia around a few shallow reefs before slowly easing my way to the location of the coordinates. I was pleased to see that we were the only boat nearby, so we would have that part of the reef all to ourselves.

  I stopped the Baia directly over the coordinates, then dropped anchor. Looking at the screen, I saw that it was just over forty feet deep, meaning we each would be able to stay down for about an hour on a normal tank of air before having to resurface. The three of them quickly got to work opening their bags and setting up all of their gear, with Sam taking charge. When Jack and I had all six tanks set up to their respective BCDs, we checked over the first- and second-stage regulators, verifying they were functioning properly. When we finished staging the dive gear, I stepped closer to Sam and the others.

  “Anything I can help you with?” I asked, looking down at her gear.

  Sam nodded. “Do me a favor and throw a dive flag in the water.” She grabbed her wet suit from the storage space, then strode down towards the lounge. After taking a few steps, she turned her head back to me. “Is it okay if I use your head to change?”

  I told her it was fine with me, then reached for another wet suit and handed it to Claire. She grabbed it and followed Sam down into the lounge, and a moment later they appeared, ready for the dive. Somehow Sam managed to look good even in a wet suit, which I hadn’t thought was possible. Her athletic, lean figure probably looked good in anything. She removed her Seminoles cap and her sunglasses and set them both on the dash above the wheel.

  Jack, Isaac, and Tony slid their wet suits over their swim trunks, then Jack helped the others into their BCDs.

  “You’re not coming, Logan?” Sam asked.

  I grabbed Jack’s dive flag, which was connected to a white buoy, and threw it over the side. “I’m gonna stay up here and keep an eye on the boat. Maybe I’ll go down for the next dive.”

  Jack, Isaac and I helped the three of them get ready and checked to make sure their gear was donned properly. Sam and Tony had been diving hundreds of times and looked like they could have put on their gear blindfolded. Claire, though not as experienced, had her open water diver certification and knew the basics well. I helped them carry their gear into the water, which included an expensive-looking digital camera in a waterproof housing, an underwater metal detector of sorts and a large handheld sonar scanner. Sam had another large plastic case as well, and she told me she had a top-of-the-line underwater drone inside of it.

  “An underwater drone?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” she replied, stepping down the ladder attached to the swim platform. “I’ll show it to you later. We use it to explore caves too small for us to enter.”

  The three members of the team had gone over the dive while getting ready including roles and key things Sam wanted them to document and study. Within a few minutes, they were all in the water getting properly weighted and making final adjustments.

  “Sixty minutes,” Jack said as he gave the okay for the others to submerge. After the other four were underwater, he added, “If you see anyone approach, pull up the buoy and I’ll ascend.”

  I nodded and gave Jack a thumbs-up, and he submerged below the tropical water. After watching them all for a few minutes to make sure they were making it down without any hiccups, I grabbed another coconut water from the cooler, climbed around the cockpit and strode up to the bow.

  With my Sig strapped to my side, I scanned the horizon with my binoculars. It was a calm, clear Tuesday morning, and though there were a few boats on the water, none of them looked suspicious. There were a few shrimping boats, a sailboat, and two Jet Skis far off in the distance. Opening the can, I took a long pull, then looked around one more time before dropping back down to the shade of the cockpit. I turned on my radio to Island Vibes, sat on the semicircular cushioned seat and slid my laptop out from the small storage space beneath it. The sounds of the Beach Boys’ “Kokomo” streamed through the boat’s speakers as I looked over the sonar projections of the seafloor where we had been looking for the treasure. Every five minutes or so, I’d stand up, grab my binoculars and have a look around to make sure there weren’t any boats zeroing in on our position.

  I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was trouble nearby, and it kept me slightly on edge as I sat in the cockpit, surrounded by an endless blue horizon.

  CHAPTER

  NINE

  After a little under an hour, a small cluster of bubbles rose up out of the water near the dive buoy just behind the aft end of the boat. A few minutes later, all five broke the surface. I stepped onto the swim platform in my bare feet, grabbed their equipment and hauled it up onto the boat. Jack slid his mask down to rest around his neck, revealing a big smile on his face.

  “The reef looks beautiful today, bro,” he said.

  I helped them one by one as they handed me their fins and climbed up the aft ladder.

  “Did you get what you needed?” I asked Sam as she climbed up and sat on the transom. I supported her BCD as she unclipped it, then slid it from her back and set it beside the others.

  “Won’t know the answer to that until later,” she said. “When we bring everything up on the computer and analyze it. But it looked promising.”

  They all unzipped their wet suits and pulled them off. I grabbed a few towels from a nearby storage space and handed one to each of them. Sam was wearing a bikini under her wet suit, and though it wasn’t one of those flashy, dental floss types, I couldn’t help from checking her out nonetheless. After drying off and setting all of the gear aside, we sat in the cockpit for drinks and a light snack of fresh fruit and chips Jack had packed in the cooler. After a few discussions about the dive, I asked them what it was they were trying to study down there in the Keys.

  “We’re investigating seismic abnormalities on the seafloor,” Sam said enthusiastically. She was in a much better mood than she’d been in when she’d arrived at the marina. I guessed diving in the clear Caribbean water and enjoying the sea life and reefs was a good way to turn your mood around.

  “You mean like earthquakes?” I asked. “I didn’t know there were any down here.”

  Sam nodded. “Earthquakes occur everywhere on earth. Some are just much more noticeable than others.” She motioned
to Tony, who was hunched over his laptop. “Can you bring up the GPS plots, Tony?”

  He punched in a few keys, then turned the screen of the laptop so Jack and I could see it. Sam walked over to us and pointed to various points on the screen that appeared to display a map of the Lower Keys.

  “This cluster here,” she said, pointing to a portion of the map filled with light green dots of varying sizes, “this is where we are now. Each of these green marks represents seismic activity of various magnitudes. As you can see, there are many incidents in the Keys, especially at our current location and at the other two locations we’ve chosen to study. When they group together like this in other places in the world, usually unique geological formations are the direct result.”

  I listened to her with interest as she explained in more detail how the GPS software worked and how they managed to use satellite imagery in connection with highly sensitive buoys that were able to detect even the slightest deviations in the water.

  “Using this technology,” Tony said, nodding towards the laptop and pushing his glasses up to rest at the top of his nose, “we’re able not only to discern when larger seismic activities might occur but also pinpoint these bustling seismic regions we call ‘hot spots’.”

  Jack took a piece of Goji apple he’d sliced from the core with his dive knife up to his mouth. “You guys work for the government or something?”

  “FSU,” Sam replied.

  “Dr. Flores is a professor of marine geology,” Claire added. She’d been looking at her phone, posting pictures she’d taken during the dive while lounging on the boat. “Tony’s an assistant professor, and I’m an undergraduate research intern.”

  I grabbed another drink, cracked it open and chugged a few sips.

  “What about you guys?” Sam asked, motioning to me and Jack. “You both always worked in the charter business?”