The Girl Beneath the Sea (Underwater Investigation Unit)

by Andrew Mayne

  I roll over and check the satellite phone. There’s a message from George:

  Lost sight of the Vader. I don’t know where it is.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  WHIRLPOOL

  I’m toweling off my hair while Dad uses George’s night-vision goggles to scan the horizon for the Vader. We’re both still in our dive suits, and the Zodiac is tied behind Fortune’s Fool.

  I didn’t want to leave the dive site, but I knew it was stupid to stay out there with the Vader roaming around. I also didn’t exactly love our chances of finding the Kraken in the next dive. What we really need is the Fool’s sonar.

  “The Vader vanished about an hour ago,” says George. “Not too long after you guys went in the water. That made me a little nervous.”

  “We didn’t see them on the way back. Maybe they returned to port?” Dad says.

  “Or maybe they have a better idea where to look than we do. I think we need to take the Fool back there and do a sweep,” I say.

  “Then we run the risk of the Vader seeing where we are. It could even be a trick, if they think we went too far out for the Kraken. Otherwise they might’ve pulled back to see where we go next,” Dad theorizes.

  “I agree with your father. These people aren’t dumb. And to be honest, they probably have more experience with this kind of thing than us.”

  “Maybe,” Dad allows. “But I agree with your larger point.”

  “So, we take the raft back,” I say. “If the Vader’s waiting to see what the Fortune’s Fool does, then we keep it anchored here and go back in the Zodiac.”

  “I think we’re missing something,” says George. “If two of the smartest treasure hunters around can’t find the Kraken, what chance did Raul have? Much less doing it by himself?”

  “He wasn’t,” I reply. “He had Stacey, remember? They probably were going to use their own boat to go out there, and he’d do the dive.” Something dawns on me. “Hold on . . . wait . . .” I get a sinking feeling in my stomach.

  “What is it?” asks Dad.

  I sit on the bench. “What if Stacey wasn’t trying to get hold of me because I was a cop?”

  “What if she wanted to recruit you to salvage the Kraken?” asks George. “She and Raul decided they needed help, but didn’t know who to trust?”

  “Yeah. Maybe. Either way, they had their own salvage operation planned.”

  “And their own boat, I agree,” says George. “If it’s traceable, I’m sure K-Group already did that. But the question of how they planned to find the Kraken still isn’t answered.” He turns to Dad. “If you could set it up from the start, how would you do it?”

  Dad doesn’t hesitate. “Transmitter. I’d hide it on the Kraken and have it set to beep every minute or so. It wouldn’t transmit more than a mile underwater, but that would be enough if I knew the area.”

  George produces the electronic component we found on Winston. “Like this? Can we plug this into something?”

  Dad shakes his head. “That’s probably for just surface communications. We’re looking for something else. A whole device tuned to a specific frequency. You could modify a standard radio if you knew what frequency you were looking for.”

  A buzzing rises in the back of my mind.

  Wait . . . What did I miss?

  “Shit!” I leap up from the bench and run for the cabin where I stowed my gear.

  George and Dad chase after me, crowd into the passage, and watch as I open my duffel bag and dump the contents onto the floor.

  “The day I found Stacey, someone had been in my truck.”

  “They took your driver’s license,” says Dad.

  “Yes. Her killer. He probably didn’t know my connection to her and was just being cautious. But I forgot about this.” I reach into the pile of gear on the floor and pull out a police radio. “I found this in my bag the day after, on a different dive. I assumed someone loaned it to me at some point and I forgot to return it. Some police departments issue you their own communication gear to use. Sometimes I’m too focused on the dive to pay attention to what goes in my bag. Now I’m wondering, did Stacey put this in here?”

  Dad takes the radio from me and inspects it. “Interesting.” He shows us the bottom of the radio, on which a number has been handwritten in permanent ink. “Want to make a bet as to what that frequency’s for?”

  “No way.” I feel so stupid for ignoring the radio all this time. “I can’t believe I didn’t even notice that. Some cop I am.”

  “Well, it’s useless anywhere but right over the site, but I’m glad you brought it with you.”

  “Assuming that’s where the radio came from,” says George. “My gut says it is.”

  “So, let’s take the Fool back there and have a look,” says Dad.

  “We can’t,” I say. “Not with the Vader out there. They could be just beyond our line of sight, waiting for us to do exactly that.”

  “And I can’t have you two diving while the Vader’s stalking you,” George says. “They might be waiting for that too.”

  “I go down,” I reply. “Dad stays in the Zodiac and keeps an eye out for the Vader and watches the satellite radio in case you see it first.”

  “I’m not letting you dive alone,” says Dad.

  “I won’t be. We’ll still be on our radios. They’ll reach far enough for us to be in touch. I’ll keep you updated, and you’ll do the same if George sees the other ship.”

  “And if something happens?”

  “I surface.”

  “If you can’t? Then what?” He sees that we’re about to get into a McPherson stubborn match. “We’ll take turns.”

  “Agreed,” I say. “George, you still good keeping an eye on the Fool?”

  “I’d rather be here than in your little dinghy. I’ll be ready to come to you if there’s a problem. Which right now may be more weather related than K-Group. Baker’s getting nastier. Could be a coastal evacuation. I’m not sure how much longer we can stay out here.”

  “That depends on who’s at the helm,” says Dad.

  “Tell that to the White Dolphin,” I murmur. That was a ship that sank on Dad before I was born.

  “The Dolphin was already a wreck before she went down.” He eyes the interior of the Fool as we ride over a wave. “But be careful, George. The moment the storm starts hitting hard, let us know. We may need you.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  MONSOON

  The last thing I remember is Dad telling me to slow down. As soon as we were out of sight of the Fortune’s Fool, I gunned the outboard motor, the raft jumped across waves, and we were airborne as much as we were touching water.

  There’s an optimum speed for crossing waves. That wasn’t it.

  Right before Dad’s slow-down warning, a black wave twice as tall as the others crashed into the front of the boat and flipped us over. My head hit a tank, and everything went black.

  “Sloan!” A hand slaps me across the cheek.

  The cold air snaps me to attention. “Ouch!” I try to sit up in the rough seas, and my own dizziness knocks me back down.

  The Zodiac is upright. Dad must have managed to flip it while I was out. No small feat, but he’s had plenty of experience.

  His hands touch the back of my skull. “Ouch!” I shout as he hits a sore spot.

  “Shut up. Hold on. Nothing fractured.” He studies his fingers for blood. “Not even a cut. I’m not surprised, with that thick head of yours.”

  “Sorry?” I grab a strap to keep from getting rolled to the side in the crashing waves.

  “We need to turn back,” he says.

  “Back? I’m fine.”

  He gives me a dumb look. “You probably have a concussion. You can’t dive.”

  “I’m fine,” I insist.

  “You’re an idiot. We’re going back to the Fool.”

  “I’m fine, Dad. I mean, yeah, I got a knock, but I’m okay.” I force myself upright, fighting gravity and nausea. “Just give me a minute.
”

  I’m so busy arguing with him that I don’t understand why he’s staring at the dive pouch in the raft.

  For a moment I think he’s the one with the concussion, and then I hear a beep.

  Dad takes the receiver from the pouch and holds it to his ear. Twenty seconds later, there’s another beep.

  “That’s it!” I shout. “We can’t go back now. The Vader could be anywhere out there.”

  “That’s why we should go back,” Dad replies.

  “No. I swear, if you turn this boat around, I’ll jump overboard.”

  Dad taps the tanks strapped by his feet. “Without air?”

  “I’ll free dive it,” I reply.

  “A hundred feet?”

  “I did it before.”

  “Once, and you nearly drowned.”

  “Then let me use the gear,” I insist.

  “No . . .” Dad is thinking this over. Another beep cuts through the roaring wind. “I’ll go.”

  I’m not exactly in a position to argue with him right now. He’s clearly in better condition to dive than I am. “Fine.”

  “First we need to triangulate.” He hands me the radio. “I’ll drive, and you listen.”

  I don’t protest. Clearly, I’m on driving probation for the foreseeable future.

  Dad takes the raft on a due-south heading. Figuring out exactly where the Kraken went down is tricky. We could be a half mile away and search in the wrong direction if we don’t try to pinpoint the signal.

  After a minute, the beep fades. “Losing it,” I call to Dad, who aims us due west.

  The beep grows louder, and Dad steers the boat toward the point where we first heard it. I get the loudest ping yet. Dad cuts the motor and drops anchor.

  By triangulating the point of origin, we’ve narrowed the area from a square mile to a football field.

  I help Dad strap on his tank and check his equipment. It’s a little past midnight, and the moon has already set. Clouds are thickening overhead, and the light drizzle is beginning to come down heavier.

  “Watch for lightning,” he says as he slides into the water.

  “Watch for Kraken,” I tell him over the radio.

  “Always do.”

  A few minutes go by as he descends, following the anchor line.

  “Here,” he says over the radio.

  “Kraken?” I reply excitedly.

  “No. I’m at the bottom.”

  I don’t radio my disappointment.

  “Heading south for three minutes,” he says.

  This is so I can keep track of him underwater if we lose contact. By giving me a time and a direction, he’s enabling me to retrace his path.

  While I wait, I write down the GPS location of the signal and text it to George on the sat phone.

  A minute later he responds:

  No sign of our friends. Be careful.

  “Nothing this way. Saw our tugboat. Starting due west for three minutes,” radios Dad. His voice is breaking up, and I have trouble making his words out.

  “Affirmative,” I reply.

  A rogue wave splashes over the Zodiac, and I turn on the little electric pump to bail out the water. I check the weather computer to see how Baker is doing.

  Not good. The storm is starting to head up the Florida coast. In a few hours, we’ll have to bring the Fool into port or else sail somewhere safe and try to ride it out.

  We’ve outrun storms before, going up the coast. Sometimes that backfires when the storm keeps going and you realize that there’s no place left to go except Nova Scotia.

  “Going due north,” says Dad.

  “Affirmative.”

  This will put him three minutes west of the Zodiac. I’d use starboard or port, but I’m being flung around so much my only point of reference is the distant glow of the coastal cities to the west.

  The satellite phone starts to ring.

  “Hello?”

  “It may be nothing, but I thought I saw the Vader again,” says George.

  “Damn it.”

  “That’s not all. I have your dad’s scanner set to search, looking for anyone talking out here. I picked up a half second of chatter.”

  “You mean like another boat?” I reply.

  “Yeah. I think the Vader was talking to someone.”

  I look around the Zodiac, straining to see over the waves.

  “Where does your dad keep the weapons?”

  I tell him where to find the shotgun. George already had his pistol on board, but an extra gun isn’t a bad idea. I look around the raft and wish I’d brought one as well. I didn’t even pack a speargun.

  I get ready to call down to Dad to tell him we need to go, only to be interrupted by him calling to me.

  “Found it.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  BULKHEAD

  “It’s bigger than the blueprints. Longer. More hydrodynamic,” Dad says over the underwater radio, his voice barely audible.

  “We have a problem. George says he may have seen the Vader, and he thinks there’s another boat out here. And the storm is getting worse,” I explain.

  “Of course. Stand by. Let me check this out.”

  Several tense minutes go by as I wait for Dad to check back in. I hear a couple of bursts of static and respond to him to repeat that. All I hear are the same unintelligible words.

  As long as Dad’s saying something, I assume he’s okay.

  It’s a dangerous assumption, but I have little choice. I’m ready to dive in and get him if the need arises. My tank is already set up and by my feet.

  I’m at the end of my patience when he speaks again.

  “Coming up.”

  A few minutes later, Dad bubbles up from the churning sea. It’s a struggle to get him over the edge of the Zodiac, and we almost flip in the process.

  After he’s caught his breath, he stows his mask in a pouch and shakes his head. “Unbelievable.”

  “What? Was the cargo in there? What did you find?”

  “How’s George?”

  “I’m still waiting for an update. What about the Kraken?” I demand.

  “Winston was a damn genius. It’s sleek and camouflaged. I almost missed it. It’s more gray than black and has smooth lines, not that angular crap he and I had planned. Of course, we weren’t trying to build a stealth boat. The skin is something interesting too. I think it’s designed to reflect back a smaller target, maybe look like a fish. We’d have to see what the Fool’s sonar says.”

  “What about the cargo? Could you see inside?” I ask.

  “Barely. Raul was smart. He blew a small hole in the starboard saddle tank. That sent it to the bottom. The damn thing’s nose is buried under several feet of sediment. It hit it like a missile, but it’s otherwise undamaged.”

  “Maybe he was planning to repair it and drive it out of here?”

  “Maybe. I couldn’t get inside. The thing is sealed shut with hex bolts. But I was able to get a look through a porthole on the front—about as big as a sand dollar. There are rows of Pelican cases on either side and a small corridor down the middle. Big enough for a person.”

  I start searching the gear bags in the Zodiac for tools. We brought a basic kit with a hacksaw, bolt cutters, and a torch.

  “What are you doing?” asks Dad.

  “We have to get that cargo out. We need to find his files.”

  “Sloan, there’re fifty cases in there. The files could be in any one of those.” He gestures to the storm. “We can’t exactly open them up out here. What if it’s a hard drive or something that’ll corrode? Not to mention the money.”

  “We can’t leave them,” I reply.

  “I know. But we need the Fool to get them. There’s also the fact that I can’t get in there without a hex set. Unless you want to cut it open. Even then, that leaves the problem of what to do about the cases,” Dad explains.

  “Damn it.” I stare back toward where we left the Fool.

  “Call George. Tell him to bring th
e Fool to us. We’ll work quick.”

  I pick up the sat phone and dial George. The phone makes a connecting tone but doesn’t ring. “I think the storm is interfering with the phone.”

  “Let me see that.” Dad takes the phone from my hands and tries to dial. After a moment of frustration, he starts clicking through menus. “I can’t even get a satellite lock.”

  I stare up at the sky. “Can a storm do that?”

  “No.” He gives the phone back and grabs the GPS unit. “Look.” He turns the screen toward me.

  The display says it can’t acquire a signal.

  “What the hell?”

  “We’re being jammed,” Dad says.

  “How do you jam a satellite phone or a GPS?” I ask.

  “They’re not directional. Just blast a more powerful signal.” He reaches over the edge of the raft and yanks at the anchor cord, releasing us from the bottom.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Changing our position.” Dad starts the motor up and begins to steer us toward the last location of the Fool. “Check your watch. I’ve got it at half throttle.”

  I call out every ten seconds. Dad stops us after we’re eighty seconds distant from the Kraken and lowers anchor again.

  “What was that about?” I ask.

  “If they find us before George does, we don’t want to make it easy for them. If they look down and see the Kraken, they’re not going to need us around.”

  Damn. He’s right. These people play for keeps. If they catch up with us and have the submarine, they’ll kill us. They already have their own divers.

  Dad grabs the transceiver we used to find the Kraken and smashes it with the bolt cutters, then chucks it overboard. “Can’t let them have that either.”

  “Okay. So, what’s our plan?” I ask.

  “Besides prayer? Hope George finds us fast and we can get the Fool loaded before they get to us.”

  “We’re not going to be able to outrun them.”

  Our raft rolls to the side, and I almost lose my balance. The winds are picking up, and the waves are getting more violent.

  “No. But we might be able to lose them.”