by Andrew Mayne
“We’ll be careful,” I reply.
“You don’t understand, Sloan. This guy’s brother’s been working privately for several years doing security for some shady people. He’s a killer.” Karl glares at George. “I’ll say it again: I’m holding you accountable for what happens to her. I know you don’t think that’s much of a threat from a guy stuck in here, but she’s the only thing that matters to me in this world. The only thing.”
“I understand. She’s pretty special.”
“And if I find out you two have been screwing,” he growls, “I’m gonna throw up, then hang myself.”
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
TANKER
The seas are choppy as Tropical Storm Baker begins to churn off the coast of South America, sending currents in our direction. Rain slicks the deck, and winds buffet the Fortune’s Fool as Dad keeps the boat steadily slicing through the waves. I stare at the ocean behind us through binoculars. A small black dot is visible near the horizon.
“Still back there?” asks George.
“Affirmative.”
Six hours ago, after we left Fort Lauderdale, an eighty-foot black cruiser with a massive radar array started following us from a distance.
At first we thought it was an unmarked DEA boat, but George couldn’t find any reference to it, and nobody we know had seen it docked in South Florida.
That’s the thing about this state—while it’s huge, people recognize boats, because there are only so many marinas and places to dock. A boat like this should have attracted attention. At least if it were familiar.
We’ve come to the conclusion that it’s probably K-Group’s. George has long suspected that one of the services they provide is countersurveillance. A boat like this would be ideal for keeping track of coast guard cutters and customs ships, as well as for spotting aircraft.
Right now, it seems fixated on us. There’s no way the Fortune’s Fool could outrun it, and chances are the other ship—the Vader, as we’ve been calling it—is armed.
“Coming up on the basin,” says Dad. “Do we have a decision?”
If we stop in the spot where we think the Kraken sank, then we’re basically telling the Vader where to look. Chances are, even with as much effort as Dad has put into the Fortune’s Fool, the Vader will have even better sonar and god knows what else to find the sub. Not to mention the fact that Karl’s renegade SEALs may be aboard.
“If I dive right here, they’ll probably hold back for a while.”
“And then swoop in when they think we found something. God knows what they’ll do then,” replies George.
“Do we just keep going and then loop back?” asks Dad.
“What would you do if you were them?” George asks.
Dad thinks this over for a moment. “I’d keep my position farther back. They probably have as much fuel as we do. Maybe more. If they’re patient, all they have to do is wait us out.”
“And we run the risk of them finding the Kraken in the meantime,” I reply.
Dad points to the sonar. The bottom of the ocean is unusually elevated for this far out. The sea bottom mostly runs three hundred to four hundred feet deep in this zone.
The sonar scan shows a number of irregular-shaped objects from the size of microwaves to ones bigger than the boat. Some of them are rocks and coral, and others are probably man-made—parts of hulls, shipping containers, and other debris that ended up in the basin.
The Kraken could be anywhere in this mess. The only way to know is to go down and look.
“What if we bring the boat about broadside to them and I go over the other side?” I suggest.
“And leave you out here?” asks Dad. “No goddamn way.”
“I’ll have my vest and radio. You can take a GPS of my position.”
He points to the choppy seas. “No way.” He turns to George. “Don’t even let her think about something like that.”
“Do we just turn back?” I reply. “Is that it?”
“Better than losing you.”
George takes off his hat and squeezes water out of it. “I agree. If that’s the only plan, then it’s a dumb one. We can’t leave you without a boat.”
“Okay . . . what if I have one? There’s a Zodiac raft in the locker along with a motor. I could use that.”
“What? Just set you adrift out here with them watching?” says Dad. “How suspicious would that look?”
“We do it later. Right now you stay on course, go a few more miles, preferably north, and then I take the raft back here. With the current the way it is, I can make good time. I can use a light anchor to keep it in position. That way I have a raft and everything I need.”
“You mean a night dive?” asks Dad.
“Yeah. That’s the point. You keep heading north. I drop off with the raft and wait awhile until you’re out of sight, then start up the motor and double back here. If they stop you, you have nothing to hide.”
“That’s a horrible idea,” replies Dad.
“You have a better one that doesn’t involve surrendering?”
“I’m not leaving you alone out there.”
“What if I go with her?” asks George.
“When was the last time you went diving? What happens if she gets in trouble? No way.”
“Dad, we’ve done more dangerous dives.”
“Just because I was careless doesn’t mean I should repeat that. Solar can’t actually watch you, and I’m not letting you out there alone.” He takes a long pause. “I’ll go with you if Solar promises not to wreck my house.”
George nods. “I’ll treat it like my own.”
“Treat it better. This is everything I own.” Dad sighs. “All right, Sloan, let’s get my gear out of storage. Solar, you’re the pilot now.”
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
RUNABOUT
Solar peers back through his night-vision goggles as the Fortune’s Fool steams ahead in a straight line. “They’re directly west of us. About three miles.”
Dad and I each take an end of the Zodiac raft and set it in the water on the far side of the boat. It bounces around and knocks into the hull, but the inflatable raft doesn’t hurt it. We took the extra precaution of strapping everything down.
“Think they can see us?” asks Dad.
“I’m sure they can. The question is whether they’re paying attention at this moment. I imagine they’re watching us on thermal. Hopefully your little trick helps with that.”
Dad added some extra oil to the gas mixture so we’d be leaving a warmer exhaust trail behind the Fortune’s Fool. The goal was to allow us to drift away in the heat cloud and only start our motor after we were far enough away.
I sit on the edge of the boat and prepare to jump into the raft, praying that I don’t get bounced straight into the ocean.
“Time to go.”
Dad stands next to me while Solar grabs the release to the raft. “All set?”
I hop into the Zodiac, and Dad jumps after. George doesn’t even wait for the thumbs-up; he just yanks the rope, and we’re set free.
The raft slides down a large wave, then gets bumped into the air. I lie flat next to Dad with our tanks wedged in on either side.
“Just like the Vikings did it,” says Dad as we’re rocked around.
We stay put, riding the waves for a half hour as Solar chugs away on the Fortune’s Fool. Finally, Dad says, “I hope you trust that guy.”
“I don’t trust anyone,” I reply.
“Fair enough.”
I peer over the edge. The Fortune’s Fool is now only a tiny light on the sea. I can’t see the Vader.
The satellite phone tucked into a plastic pouch chirps, and a message appears on the display.
Still following me.
This is George’s signal to us. We know better than to use the terrestrial radios. The Vader will almost surely be listening in on radio traffic. Even an innocuous one-way message from George might sound suspicious—especially if it’s his voice. We might be a li
ttle paranoid, but the men on the other boat have guns and bad intentions.
“Start her up?” I ask.
“I think so,” says Dad. He takes out the GPS unit and checks our location. “About forty-five minutes south-southwest.”
I press the ignition, and the engine roars to life, drowned out almost completely by the crashing of the heavy seas.
“What’s the weather report?” I shout over the noise.
Dad refers to a small computer that gets updates. “Baker is kind of lingering, but another depression may change that. We’re good for a few hours, I think.”
I steer the boat up and over the rising waves and make gradual progress. It’s like driving over hills that sometimes go forward and other times backward.
This is seriously not good weather to be out in a raft, let alone scuba diving. Fortunately, Dad and I have plenty of experience with rough seas. Some intentional. Some accidental.
Sitting midboat, Dad watches the horizon and refers to the GPS often. He glances back at me, pats me on the knee, and grins.
He’s loving this. Whatever disagreements we had a day ago about my career choice, he’s in his element now. This is high adventure, and not the first he’s taken part in.
When Dad was a kid, Granddad took him on rough-and-tumble expeditions to places where piracy was still rampant and sharks followed boats in the hopes of someone falling overboard. He regaled us kids for hours with stories that seemed better fit for a novel.
“We’re about over it, Sloan,” he shouts over the roar of the sea.
I give him the okay sign, then cut the motor. We’re bounced around as the waves play catch with our tiny craft.
Dad, unperturbed, unfastens the anchor from its strap and heaves it into the water. The narrow cord slides through his gloved hands as the anchor plummets toward the seafloor.
In weather like this, we’ll have to try to hook it on something—a rock, a wreck, anything to keep the raft from drifting away.
The cord stops sliding, and Dad gives it a tug. We probably drifted twenty feet since he let it loose. The anchor appears to have caught on to something.
Dad gives it a few more tugs to make sure it doesn’t slide free. We’ll use the line as a guide on our way to the bottom so we don’t accidentally lose the boat.
“Ready to gear up?”
I nod and help him slide into his vest, double-check everything, then pat him on the shoulder. He does the same for me. We turn on the flashlights attached to our vests, and I give my pockets a final pat.
“Ladies first,” he says.
I roll into the water and give him the okay sign before descending below the waves.
As soon as he plunges in, I swim to the anchor line and attach a glow stick.
Dad, the designated divemaster, points down, and we begin to descend into the blackness below.
Strangely, despite the approaching storm, the death squad nearby, and whatever’s down here, I feel calm for the first time in days.
CHAPTER FIFTY
THE DEEP
I once chaperoned Jackie and her class on a field trip to the Miami Space Transit Planetarium and had my mind blown. We watched a presentation about exploring our solar system, including images of one of the moons of Jupiter, Europa.
At first, I was like, okay, a big rock. That’s nice. Then they explained that it was actually ice, and under that ice was an ocean twice as large as the one on Earth.
We watched as computer-generated alien squids and other life-forms swam around while scientists speculated about what could be down there. Jackie whispered to me that she wanted to be a “space aquanaut.” I decided that sounded like a pretty cool idea too.
When you dive at night in water this deep, you feel a lot like an astronaut drifting through the cosmos—only it’s a cosmos without stars. When you’re on the seafloor, it’s like landing on an alien planet, but above, in deep water, you have little sense of up or down. Divers get killed swimming the wrong direction when they lose their way.
Dad and I keep our hands on the rope as we descend. Even though we’re excellent divers, it’s possible to get caught up in a current and pushed away before your dive partner realizes you’re gone.
Your only choice then is to surface and hope that you can find each other.
Dad is ten feet below me. I keep my light aimed away from his head so that when he looks up to check on me, he doesn’t get blinded. Our lights are so powerful you can’t use them out of the water for long because they’ll overheat.
At the bottom we’re going to need them. While it’s considerably calmer down here than on the surface, the ocean is still moving and churning up sediment, decreasing visibility.
We’d hoped it wouldn’t be this bad, but no such luck. This will seriously limit the area we can search.
Dad’s light bounces off the seafloor and the corral of rocks the anchor drifted into. I let go of the line and hover off to the side as Dad makes sure the boat isn’t going anywhere.
“You good?” he asks over the radio.
I give him the okay sign.
Down here, we don’t have to worry about the Vader picking up our transmissions. If they could do that, they’d have better things to do with their time than search for a puny half-billion dollars. The navy would pay ten times that for the ability to pick up transmissions that way. The current state of the art is ELF—extremely low-frequency radio—that requires antennae miles long.
I tie another glow stick to the anchor line so we can find it at the bottom. I also affix a strobe light so we can find it from even farther out if we get lost. Diving is all about redundancies.
Dad makes the signal for us to check our air supplies. We’re both good for at least forty minutes with our large tanks. That’s not going to be nearly enough to search the area. We’ll have to surface and use the other tanks after letting our bodies recover from the depth. We won’t be following the official dive-safety tables, but we won’t be cutting any dangerous corners either.
Dad grabs some sediment, drops it, and gauges the direction of the current. He points upstream. We’ll travel against the current in our outward search, then use it to swim back when we’re tired.
I take the lead and swim over a low rise of rocks and soft yellow coral that stick out of the ground like clusters of antlers. Small fish dart in and out of the rocks, going about their business, and I catch a school of silver minnows in my light as they swim away.
I keep my eyes ahead while Dad watches around us for potential threats. Tiger, bull, hammerhead, and other large sharks frequent these seas. Divers generally aren’t much concern to them, unless you happen to be spearfishing and you’re carrying a bag of recently killed fish at your side.
In some areas, sharks have learned to recognize the sound of a speargun and will actually speed toward it in hopes of reaching the kill before the diver.
Fatal human-shark interactions are extremely rare, even in those situations, but it’s always wise to be cautious. In a zone like this, with few nocturnal human visitors, you’re sure to catch the attention of nearby sharks, who have the curiosity of a five-year-old. They want to know about everything around them that makes unusual noises.
Besides sharks, there are also barracuda, sea snakes, and a hundred smaller things that can be fatal if you accidentally touch them. It’s generally not a good idea to touch anything you don’t have to while underwater.
“On your left,” Dad calls out over the radio.
The rusted pilot house of a tugboat is sticking out of the ground with part of its hull visible. Coral has formed around it, slowly claiming the boat as its own.
“Beverly M?” I ask.
“That’s closer to shore. Probably insurance fraud.”
Florida waters are littered with unmarked wrecks that went down in completely different places from where their owners claimed they sank. Sometimes this is because of bad records; other times it’s intentional because they scuttled the ship for insurance money and wanted
to make sure investigators couldn’t recover evidence of fraud.
I sweep my light back and forth for anything else unusual but only find more rocks and scattered coral formations.
Eventually we come to a steep rise that ends abruptly and drops off. If the Kraken got caught on anything before going over the edge and off the shelf, it would have been here. The problem is, this area stretches for several miles in either direction.
“Left or right?” I ask.
“Right,” he replies.
We go right another ten minutes along the rise, spotting more rocks, rusted debris, and corals trying hard to extend the Florida Barrier Reef northward.
“Time to turn back,” he calls over the radio.
I check my air gauge and don’t question him. He gave us just enough margin to be safe. There’s no point in pressing it.
We swim back toward the raft, scanning the floor for our submarine, but only manage to see more of the same.
Halfway back, Dad taps me on the leg. I follow his hand to my left and see an eight-foot bull shark swimming twenty-five feet away.
It’s not in hunting mode; it’s just investigating the racket we’re making. We keep swimming, and it drifts off and out of sight.
I don’t have to look to know that Dad has his knife drawn and is checking our vulnerable angles to ensure we don’t get sneak attacked.
I spot the blinking strobe on the anchor before the glow stick. I’m disappointed by our lack of results, but at least we have another set of tanks. After slowly ascending, taking our safety stop, and decompressing on the raft, we can try again.
Getting on the raft in rough seas is like the world’s worst amusement-park ride. Fortunately, Dad thought ahead and attached two rope ladders on either side. This allows us to climb up and enter the Zodiac at the same time, keeping the raft’s balance and making the whole process safer. It’s a tricky feat, but one we’ve had plenty of practice doing.
After removing our vests and tanks, we lie back on the soaking floor of the boat to catch our breath. It stopped raining, but the waves are every bit as high as before.
