This is a work of fiction. All events described are imaginary; all characters are entirely fictitious and are not intended to represent actual living persons.
Copyright © 2018 by Nick Sullivan
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without express written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Cover design by Shayne Rutherford of Wicked Good Book Covers
Copy editing/proofreading by Donna Rich
Original maps by Rainer Lesniewski/Shutterstock.com
Interior Design & Typesetting by Colleen Sheehan of Ampersand Book Interiors
Published by Wild Yonder Press
www.WildYonderPress.com
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Map: Bonaire
Map: Eastern Caribbean Sea
Map: Leeward Islands
Map: Saba
Dedication
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
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Afterword
About the Author
For Mom and Dad. While other kids went to Disneyworld and Dollywood, you took me to the islands again and again… and I thank you for it.
Perfect.
The young man smiled as he looked out at the ocean, taking it all in. The air held only the hint of a breeze and the waters were glassy, devoid of chop. The sky above was a cloudless, brilliant blue, rivaling the turquoise hue of the Caribbean Sea beneath it. Further out, beyond the fringing reef, the waters deepened in hue to an ultramarine as the ocean bottom dropped off sharply.
Here, at the southernmost point of Bonaire, the currents could be quite treacherous, and divers had to use great care entering as waves crashed against the jagged limestone shore. The man looked down at his dive boots as a gentle wave lapped over their toes. Boone Fischer had been divemastering on Bonaire for nearly three years and had never seen this shore dive site so calm.
His eyes slid from his boots to the long shadow extending from his tall, rangy frame. It stretched to his left, to the east. Turning over his shoulder, he looked back along the barren, coral strewn landscape behind the shore. The yellow and red Willemstoren Lighthouse’s seventy-five-foot height cast a long, afternoon shadow beyond his own.
His gaze swept back across the surface of the ocean to the south—Venezuela lay just over the horizon. Bonaire was the easternmost of the ABC islands, the trio of Dutch islands consisting of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao. Here, in the southernmost reaches of the Caribbean Basin, the climate was arid and the diving spectacular.
The man a took slow, deep breath, relishing the salt tang in the air. He closed his eyes and listened to the surf… and to the youthful voice that suddenly rang out.
“Boone!” Emily called out from fifty yards down the rough shoreline. “You daydreaming again? Let’s try over here!” Boone opened his eyes and looked to his right, finding Emily Durand pointing to a spot in the surf. She was a petite South London girl with a turned-up nose and a smile that rarely left her face. With her out-sized sunglasses and sporting a lime green and black shorty wetsuit, she looked like an adorable cartoon bug.
Boone Fischer joined her and looked where she was pointing.
“There’s a nice cut in the ironshore. We can gear up in that sandy spot, yeah?” Emily turned to look at him. She had picked a perfect entry point but was waiting for his go-ahead. She was new to the island and looked up to him, he thought. Maybe it was the age difference; Boone was twenty-nine and Emily had just finished grad school… or whatever they called it over in the UK. Even though she had never dived this particular spot, Emily was a fantastic divemaster, at least as good as Boone; with her playful demeanor and infectious goofiness, she was fast becoming one of the most popular members of the Rock Beauty Divers staff. “So, boss? We goin’ in or what?” She was looking at him with her head cocked to the side… or he thought she was looking at him. Hard to tell with those ginormous sunglasses.
Boone saw his reflection in her shades and realized he was staring at her with a stupid grin on his face. “Oh, sorry. Yeah. It’s perfect. I know how much you love ironshore entries.” He gestured at her right knee where a scar was still healing. Much of the rough limestone shoreline on Bonaire was razor sharp, honed by whetstone waves; it didn’t help that it was slippery as hell, either.
“Took a spill, didn’t I? It’s a beauty, yeah?” she said, posing like a supermodel on a photoshoot and showing off her scar. “If they’d let us wear gloves just for the entry…”
“Marine Park regulations,” Boone said, heading back to the gear they’d set on the beach. “First rule of Bonaire diving: look but don’t touch.”
“Ooooh… regulations!” Emily dropped her thick South London accent, affecting a faux posh delivery while she secured her blond braids under a green bandana. “Are you giving me an orientation briefing, Divemaster Fischer? I have done this before, you know.”
“Sorry, force of habit. Here, gimme your shades. Assuming you can live without them,” he teased.
She took them off and mimed going blind for a moment before tossing them toward him.
He caught them and waggled them in his fingers. “Do you sleep in these? You’re almost always wearing them.”
“I like to remain a mystery. And here, keep these for me.” She tossed him the keys to the jeep, then knelt and turned on her tank’s air, glancing at the pressure gauge before briefly triggering the inflator on the Buoyancy Control Device, ensuring there was airflow into the BCD vest. Fish were blessed with swim bladders, but humans had to bring their own—by adding or purging air from the vest, a diver could make subtle changes to their buoyancy when needed.
Boone jogged back to Emily’s jeep convertible, parked in the crushed coral just off the narrow strip of beach. Ditching his own sunglasses, he placed the two pairs on top of the tire nearest him before grabbing a small waterproof case and closing the jeep’s door, not bothering to put the top up. Most divers didn’t lock their cars at Bonaire shore dive sites, allowing would-be thieves to see for themselves there was nothing of value inside. Still, if someone took Emily’s shades, he’d never hear the end of it, hence the wheel well hiding place. His sports wallet was already inside the waterproof case and he added Emily’s keys, snapping it closed. Tucking the case down into his wetsuit, he checked his dive watch—a quarter past three.
Returning to Emily, he quickly checked his equipment before slipping on his weight belt. Boone was an extremely lean young man, all ropy muscle and no fat, and he often used only six pounds of lead weights. “We should get going. Light is still good for your photography.”
Emily was
already striding toward the water, mask around her neck, fins and underwater camera dangling from one hand and her tank and rig in the other. “I agree, slow poke,” she called back over her shoulder.
Boone scooped up his gear and followed after, once again noting the conditions. Notorious for strong currents and rough surf, this site was seldom dived. At lunch, he and Emily had overheard a group of divers raving about the calm conditions they’d enjoyed earlier in the day. From the looks of it, Neptune was still smiling on them—no wind and the surf was minimal. They wouldn’t be able to fully judge the current until they entered but it looked promising. Now, if only that pod of dolphins those divers saw was still around. It wasn’t likely, but Boone had hopes they might spot a straggler or two. He’d seen plenty of dolphins frolicking in the bow wave of a speeding dive boat but in all his countless hours underwater, Boone had never seen one on a dive.
“Bugger!” Emily swore as she nearly took a spill, quickly using her scuba tank to prop herself up on the slippery limestone ironshore. Regaining her balance, she stepped down into a small sandy area beyond the sharp rocks and began gearing up, crouching to slip into her BCD vest. Standing back up, she cinched the Velcro straps tight. She was just under five feet tall and the water was up to her chest. Boone was more than a foot taller and when he stepped down to join her, the water just topped his waist.
Each helped the other as they finished donning their tanks and fins before surface swimming twenty yards out. Sticking his head under, Boone looked toward the edge of the reef in the distance. He could see numerous gorgonians, gently bending to their right. The feathery structures looked quite plantlike, but were a form of soft corals that many divers used to spot-check the current. By looking at which direction the gorgonian leaned and how far it was bent over, you could determine the direction of the current and guess its strength. He popped his head back up. “Conditions are looking good,” Boone said. “Fantastic viz. Current’s running west, only about half a knot.”
“Sweet as! That’s rare. Let’s get to it before it picks up.” Emily checked her pressure gauge. “I’m topped off, thirty-three. You?”
Boone glanced down—his gauge showed 3200 psi. “Thirty-two. Let’s angle left to the reef and then head against the current until we hit two thousand. Then we can head back west, nice and chill. We’ll angle back into the sand at a thousand.”
“Aye aye, Cap’n!” Emily said, snapping off a mock salute.
Boone checked the bottom of his vest; his stainless-steel carabiner was there. He and Emily each carried one for signaling—many divers used tank-bangers or shakers but Boone liked the simplicity of his carabiner. If either needed to grab the other’s attention, they’d simply unclip it, reach back, and rap it against their tank. The sharp sound could be heard at a great distance. “If you feel the current pick up, gimme a bang.”
“Only if you bang me back…” Emily said, a mischievous smile on her face. Before Boone could reply, she popped her regulator in her mouth, gave him a wink from inside her mask, and slipped below the surface in a pool of bubbles.
Boone smiled, shaking his head as a blush took hold. Emily could be quite playful and flirtatious, but she was that way with others at the dive shop. Besides, on the dive boat, he’d distinctly heard her mention a boyfriend back in the UK. She’d just returned from two weeks in her home country, and Boone suspected she’d spent much of that time with her mystery man. He returned his mind to the task at hand and took one last look back toward the lighthouse and the old ruins of the keeper’s house. Their jeep was the only vehicle in sight. They had the location all to themselves, just the way he liked it. He followed Emily down and as they neared the end of the sand they were treated to an encounter with one of Boone’s favorite underwater sights, a spotted eagle ray. It was scanning the bottom and must have detected a mollusk or crab, because it turned sharply and began nosing up a cloud of sand, digging down after its prey.
Emily finned effortlessly toward the big ray, raising her small underwater camera. She had a much larger camera back at the shop, festooned with underwater strobes, but preferred a smaller one for shore dives. She came to within a few feet of the ray and halted, taking several shots. Boone had noticed she had a keen sense of when to stop her approach and avoid spooking a camera-shy subject. Satisfied with her shots, she looked back at Boone and smiled around her regulator, making the OK sign with her thumb and forefinger and emphatically pumping her arm. A hearty indication of approval for their first sighting of the dive. Turning toward the reef edge, Emily gave a couple gentle kicks and floated into the blue.
Boone watched the graceful ray for a moment before turning to join her. The visibility was excellent, easily a hundred feet. Below him, the reef was a riot of color: parrotfish, tang, grunts, tiny fairy basslets. Because this site was dived so infrequently, the reef was pristine and quite healthy. Seconds after having that thought, he spotted a lionfish in a niche in the coral heads. Wish I had my spear. The gossamer-finned fish was beautiful but it had no business being here. Armed with venomous spines and a voracious appetite, this invasive Pacific species had been popping up everywhere in the islands. Perhaps released by aquarium owners, a single lionfish was spotted in the Atlantic in 1985. Not long after, they were spotted in the Caribbean and now it was a rare dive when you didn’t see one… or three… or seven. The Bonaire dive shops held competitive culls and some of them even offered Lionfish Hunting Certification courses so visiting divers could lend a hand. Provided you were careful removing the spines, the fish was damn good in a taco.
Emily saw what he was looking at and swam over to take a couple photos while Boone moved ahead along the reef. After a moment, he glanced out to sea to “check the blue”. It was easy to remain focused on the corals and the myriad of fish life swimming in and around the structures, but if you didn’t look out from time to time you might miss a passing pelagic: tuna, larger sharks, manta rays. Or dolphins. He hung motionless in the water column for a moment. Boone prided himself on his ability to maintain neutral buoyancy, rarely needing to use his BCD vest. Just by controlling his breathing he could float effortlessly at a sustained depth. He swept his eyes from right to left—as was the case ninety percent of the time, there was nothing to see but the beautiful blue of the open ocean.
Clang clang. Boone looked back toward Emily, who had just tapped her carabiner against her tank. Just a couple bangs usually meant she’d seen something of interest. They had a running joke that, apart from emergencies, they should only signal if they spotted something “bang worthy”. This was tricky, as what was interesting to one diver might not be for another, but the general rule was if you banged your tank for a run-of-the-mill fish, you had to buy the other divers a beer. Emily was back a ways and ten feet deeper so he dropped down and joined her with a couple kicks. Taking a photo of something in the coral, she turned back to him and gave him a hand signal, tapping her fingers to her thumb like a little Pac-Man. Eel, it meant. Emily knew he loved morays and was always on the lookout for one. There it was, a spotted moray—a big one. Of course, it didn’t hold a candle to the green moray that lived in the Hilma Hooker wreck. That eel had a head like a pit bull. Boone quickly pumped a happy OK sign and Emily held her arms wide, nodding emphatically.
The dive continued until they reached two thousand on their gauges. Well, more accurately, it continued until Boone reached two thousand. Emily must have been part mermaid; she always had more left in her tank. That was no small feat; Boone was an accomplished free diver and prided himself on his phenomenal breath control. He had never met anyone who could go longer on a tank than himself—until Emily Durand, that is. Boone tapped his tank once to signal her and raised two fingers. Emily looked at her gauge, raised two fingers and then tapped three fingers against her forearm. 2300 psi. She then gave a comic shrug. Boone took this to mean What can I say? I’m awesome. They both turned and headed back west with the gentle current.
Nearing t
he end of their dive, they swam for the top of the reef. Emily always liked to get some “top reef time” because the light was good and the colors were more vivid. Once you got below twenty or thirty feet, the blues tended to take over. She could fix all that in post but it was time consuming. Also, she tended to find one of her favorite fish at about this depth, the spotted drum. The juveniles of this black and white species were otherworldly, with a dorsal fin and tail that flowed out behind them, nearly four times the length of their body. Conveniently, they were also quite camera friendly. Sure enough, after a few minutes of searching, she turned back and waved. The underwater sign language for when you spotted a drum was a simple drumming motion with both fists, but that wasn’t good enough for Emily. She pumped her head to a distant beat and launched into an underwater drum solo that would’ve given Keith Moon a run for his money. Boone could visualize the snares and cymbals as she thrashed the water. Laughing, he applauded and then removed his regulator, holding it over his head and triggering a stream of bubbles up. He’d once told her it was closest he could get to holding a lighter aloft. She smiled and gave a deep bow before settling into the coral for what would be a lengthy macro photo session.
Boone headed back out to the edge and spied a rock beauty a few feet below him. Expelling a breath, he let himself slowly sink down to its level. The dive shop he and Emily worked for took its name from this beautiful yellow and black angelfish. It was a shy creature so he simply relaxed and floated, using only an occasional kick to keep himself stationary in the current, waiting for it to become accustomed to him. It was then that he heard a motor.
It was quite common to hear boats on dives, but this was the southernmost point of Bonaire and there wasn’t much boat traffic here. He glanced up, looking left and right. No sign of anything. Water is an excellent conductor of sound, transmitting noises at nearly five times the speed of air—but determining the direction of a sound while underwater is another matter. Up top, the human brain determines the direction of a sound traveling through the air by the tiny delay between the moments the sound hits each of our ears. Underwater, with sound traveling so much faster, the mind stands no chance of detecting where a sound is coming from.
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