Then there was a terrible, jarring crash, and the entire bridge heeled over more than forty-five degrees. The ship was no longer being lifted and dropped by the storm—it had run onto the reef.
“It’ll knock us to pieces!” shouted the captain. “Abandon ship!”
But it was hopeless. Sara’s viewpoint shifted as the sailors tried to escape. Disembodied, immune to wind and rain, she followed them out onto the sloping deck where men struggled in vain to swing out lifeboats onto derricks. Instead, the boats were smashed against the hull or superstructure, wood splintered to kindling on sheets of gray, riveted metal.
Time jumped forward, or so it seemed, because now she was underwater, and the great steel ship was breaking up. A vast rectangular structure slid past her, metal tubes protruding from it, and she realized it was a gun turret. She watched it crash into the coral, smashing its way to the sand below. Drawn down by the vortex, men sank around her, struggling to breathe, then falling still and drifting up again toward the roiling waters.
The storm ended, and time sped forward. The coral healed its wounds and covered the broken ship. Sara’s viewpoint moved down until she could see a single, square object—the ship’s safe. Inside, lay the gold that had given the fateful voyage its purpose, now surrounded by coral that enlaced the bones of hundreds of young men who had left their homes never to return.
And their ghosts were not at rest. None had passed on to whatever reward or punishment or oblivion the dead can expect. Around her, their spirits rose, tormented by the terror of their final moments, trapped in some kind of ethereal net that denied them the freedom of eternity. Sara saw faces, pleading with her, distorted with fear and pain, eyes eaten away, fish nibbling at the remaining flesh. Hands reached out, green and rotten, to clutch at her.
“All mine, Catherine.”
The familiar voice was close, at her shoulder. Now she was a diver once more, no longer a disembodied spectator, the wreck and its ghosts vanished. Lemaitre’s skull-face was inches from hers, the lipless mouth moving as a skeletal hand traced the outline of her breast.
“This is my domain.”
She saw the face of an anxious Keri a few inches away, staring into her mask. The girl’s hands were on Sara’s shoulders, then Keri gestured, asking the obvious question. Sara nodded emphatically and made the Okay sign. Around her lay the vibrant hues of the reef. If the wrecked ship were nearby, there was no sign of it. But that made sense—the experts on the Deep Star had failed to locate it for months.
More gestures, and they agreed to make their way back to the surface. This time, there was no panic, no costly mistakes. By the time they had surfaced, Sara had remembered the name of the ship that Theresa Mountjoy had told her about.
“It was that ship, the HMS Sunderland!” she spluttered. “I mean, it’s down there. I saw the shipwreck, the sailors. Oh my God, it really is a war grave. And there is gold. I saw it.”
She looked at Keri, waiting for the girl’s response. Ryan looked at Keri, too.
“So, did you see any of this?”
Keri shrugged helplessly and shook her head
“I didn’t. I just saw you kind of drifting, sinking toward the reef,” she said to Sara. “I grabbed you, and your eyes were kind of zoned out. Like you didn’t recognize me. Then you seemed to panic, so I decided we should come back up.”
“There’s gold down there? You saw gold?”
Ryan looked disappointed. Sara could see he was skeptical, while Keri believed her. Then she had to decide what to tell Joe. She was conflicted, knowing that talk of the supernatural irritated him because it was outside his experience and therefore outside his control. She was still hesitating when she saw Joe on the jetty, waiting for them. He waved, and she waved back.
“Tell the truth and shame the devil,” she said under her breath as Keri brought the boat alongside the jetty and Ryan flung the mooring line to Joe.
But before she could say anything, Joe had news for them all. He had received a message from the Deep Star consortium.
“They’re willing to play ball,” he said, holding up his phone. “And look! Jackpot! They finally did it!”
The others gathered around the screen as Joe shaded it from the sun with his free hand. The image was a short video clip, rather poor quality, that showed an underwater scene. There was a timestamp in one corner and other numbers that Sara thought might be depth in meters. There were also some initials—ROV.
“Remotely operated vehicle,” Joe said, unnecessarily. “See? They finally found it. The bastards finally found the loot!”
Against a backdrop of coral and dead men’s bones, Sara watched as a mechanical claw reached out and jerked at the rusted door of a black iron safe. The door came off, and a beam of blue light stabbed out, past the robot’s camera, coaxing a yellow gleam from the dark interior.
Chapter 14: Devil Ship
The argument was delayed by other pressing concerns. But once the work on the site ended and the men went back to Port Louis, the argument began again. Sara went through all her objections to no effect; Joe remained obdurate that they deserved to be compensated. Keri and Ryan withdrew discreetly.
“It doesn’t matter where the cash comes from,” he argued. “You can’t be too choosy about money in this world.”
Sara stared at him, and then started talking about the curse, the dreams, her encounters with Lemaitre. She described her vision out by the reef and the way the pirate had insisted that the gold was his. She demanded that Joe explain Charity Lomax’s disappearance, the mystery of the security footage. She mentioned Randy Hobart. She reminded him of the unnerving accuracy of Mama Bondurant’s insights. She left out her conviction that Lemaitre believed she was his, too.
And none of it had any effect. In fact, he laughed at her.
“You want me to turn down eighty thousand bucks because you think you saw a ghost?”
He laughed in her face again. It was a humorless laugh, one she’d heard him emit before, but only when he was talking about colleagues or rivals or subordinates who had let him down, people he did not respect. Sara felt herself growing red with rage and wanted for one insane moment to slap her husband hard, right across the face. He seemed to sense this and flinched slightly, then looked smug, almost contemptuous.
Joe was sure that he had won.
“I already called them to say we’d go and talk. Just talk, that’s all,” he said, confident that she would come with him.
“Okay,” she said. “Okay, you go and cut your deal. Talk to the crooks about dirty money. And I’ll stand by you because I don’t have much choice, do I? We’re in this together. But this changes things between us. You know it has to, right?”
“Right,” he said. “So, you’re not coming? I’ll ask Ryan.”
“Oh yeah,” she said, “don’t forget your wingman. Is that why you keep him around, to remind yourself you’re the better man? To feel superior?”
For a second, Joe looked uncertain, but he did not say anything. Instead, he walked out of the living room into the small hallway and demanded to know if the others were with him. There was a muffled conversation, with Keri’s voice loud, and actually sounding angry. Then came the sound of the door slamming. Sara, irrationally, felt the need to go after Joe now that he had stalked off.
She ran along the sand, not knowing what else she could say, but not wanting to part from Joe in anger. She caught up with him as he was walking along the jetty. He stopped and looked at her, eyebrow raised in a question. What did she have to say now? And she realized that she had nothing to say, that they had gone beyond words.
“I… just be careful,” she said finally. “Take care.”
The launch from the Deep Star was already approaching. There were young men on board who looked totally commonplace. She silently rebuked herself for assuming modern treasure hunters would look different from anyone else. Joe had specified a meeting that night, partly so that there would be as few onlookers as possible. It would not d
o for someone to post a video online showing the virtuous Hansens cozying up to the salvors. She took a step back as Joe jumped into the launch. There was a brief discussion, with the launch’s crew looking up at her. She couldn’t hear what was being said over the motor, but she saw Joe glance at her, then shake his head. The launch reversed, turned, pulled away, and headed back toward the gap in the reef.
Sara walked slowly back along the tideline, kicking at strands of seaweed, her mind dull, blank. Perhaps she was going crazy, seeing things. Maybe half the stuff that she believed had happened were delusions. Wouldn’t that make a kind of sense? If someone was exposed to the paranormal, wouldn’t it knock their mind off balance?
She stopped, looking down at her sneaker-clad feet. There was a glow that couldn’t be coming from the bungalow, still a hundred yards or more away. Then she looked up and saw the moon rising over the jungle near the edge of the cove. Sara paused, half-expecting a small, scampering shape to appear, head lolling to one side. But if the entity was nearby, it did not want to be seen.
***
“Okay, you want to go up first?”
A smiling young man gestured to Joe, who grasped the ladder hanging from the side of the ship and clambered up. He was greeted at the top by a man called Nielsen, who assured Joe he was authorized to act for the consortium.
“Let’s go up to the bridge,” Nielsen suggested. “We’ve been working steadily all day. We’ll be bringing up the first ingots soon. Best done at night, just in case of snoopers with long lenses.”
Seen close up, the Deep Star was impressive. Joe guessed most of the high-tech stuff was concentrated below the waterline, but there was still enough in the way of aerials and satellite dishes to make the vessel look like something out of a spy movie. As they reached the bridge, he looked back at the shore and could just make out a small light that must have been the bungalow. But it was dwarfed by the vast, Caribbean moon that was rising over the island like a battered bronze shield.
“I’ve worked in less pleasant places,” Nielsen said. “But try getting locals to work full moon nights.
Joe gave a noncommittal grunt and followed him onto the bridge, which had a distinct mission control vibe. A group of men was concentrating on screens that showed sand and other debris swirling in blue-green waters. A mechanical arm was grappling a gold ingot and placing it into a kind of net.
“How many can you bring up at a time?” Joe asked, trying to ignore the war dead.
“Four bars to be on the safe side,” Nielsen replied. “Those things weigh twenty-five pounds each. But I’m forgetting my manners, Mr. Hansen—how about a drink before we talk turkey?”
***
“How about a drink?” Ryan suggested. “Take the edge off.”
Sara said nothing. They were sitting around the kitchen table, bottles of Jamaican beer standing between them. Keri had been unusually subdued since Sara’s return. Ryan had been talking too much to try to fill the silence. But after Sara’s silent refusal, he leaned back and started chugging Red Stripe from the bottle.
“I guess this is just one of those bumps in the road people talk about,” Sara said bleakly. “It could be worse. Hell, maybe we’ll get no money at all; it could be just BS designed to keep us quiet while they grab their treasure and run.”
Keri was silent, an untouched bottle of mineral water on the table in front of her. She kept looking out of the window at the jungle, as if trying to recall something. Without her contribution, making conversation was doubly difficult.
“Sara,” she said finally, “there’s something—I mean, it’s a full moon. Aren’t you worried about Joe being out there, by the reef?”
Sara stared at the girl.
“Why should I be?” she asked. “Joe’s basically a good guy. If I’m not going crazy and Lemaitre does take someone, it’ll probably be the captain of that ship. Or whoever’s in charge of taking gold from the guy’s territory. Not to mention the whole desecration thing.”
Keri nodded but was still unhappy.
“I guess,” she said. “It’s just… Joe never told you about—”
Ryan interrupted his girlfriend.
“We agreed never to talk about that!”
Keri stared at Ryan, but he couldn’t hold her gaze and stared at his beer bottle instead. He mumbled something Sara couldn’t make out.
“Yeah, we agreed, but this is too important,” Keri said, leaning forward, reaching out to take Sara’s hand. “I’m sorry, but if you don’t know about Joe, you need to hear it now.”
Sara jerked her hand away, suddenly impatient with this new, over-serious Keri. Why couldn’t the girl be the upbeat airhead when Sara needed cheering up?
“You know that Ryan did jail time,” said Keri. “That he was convicted of dealing in drugs.”
“Yeah, he gave a girl at a party some drugs and she died,” Sara said flatly, then turned to face Ryan. “I don’t judge you. You were young and…”
She faltered, looking from Ryan to Keri and back. The silence expanded so that the distant sound of the surf and the hum of the refrigerator seemed inordinately loud. Then Keri spoke.
“That’s not what happened, Sara. I wanted to tell you before, but Ryan wouldn’t let me. Now… You need to know this. Just in case. For God’s sake, Ryan, tell her!”
“It was Joe,” Ryan blurted out. “I took the fall for him. I knew his life would be ruined. My dad had the best lawyers; he had stuff on important people, so he could make it easy for me.”
There was another long pause.
“So, what really happened?” demanded Sara.
“He sold it,” Ryan said, not looking at her. “He was dealing, in a small way, just dumb stuff like weed and a few pills. He was always out to make money, always resented the fact that he was surrounded by trustafarian jerks like me. Guys who didn’t have to struggle the way he did.”
“No, no, no…” Sara repeated, as if the mantra of denial could silence Ryan.
“I know you don’t want to believe me,” Ryan said, finally looking her in the eye. “But it’s true. That night he told me he had some new stuff—better, stronger, real party poppers. He never sampled his own product, but he was high on the thought that he’d make hundreds from this new batch.”
“Why would he deal drugs?” Sara demanded, almost screaming now, jumping up so that her chair fell backward with a clatter. “Tell me why a guy on a scholarship with straight As and a work ethic like Joe’s would do something shitty like that?”
“He always hated being poor!” Ryan yelled back. “I told you, he wanted to prove he was as good as the rest of us, the cool kids. You didn’t know him back then before he got successful. He hated wearing cheap clothes and not having a car and having to work as a barman to get by. I think it was in the bar he met the dealer… That’s not important; what matters is that Joe… the girl died. Postmortem said the crap he gave her made her heart go so fast it pretty near burst.”
Sara felt a pulsing in her ears. A small, cynical voice in her head asked her if her heart might be about to burst as well. Then she was moving in a blind panic, colliding with the door in her desperation to simply get out and run down the beach to the jetty and get in the boat and go. Part of her did not believe the story. She heard her friends calling her as she pounded along the sand, snatching glances to her left, out at the lights of the salvage vessel, assuring herself it was still there, and that it was alone on the dark water.
To her right, she caught subliminal glimpses of something running alongside her, something small and agile, something dark and deformed.
***
“Rum okay?” Nielsen asked. “We’ve all developed a taste for it since we’ve been out here.”
“Rum’s fine,” said Joe, looking around the well-equipped office.
Nielsen had explained that he was in charge of the operation, but he was not the captain of the Deep Star. Nielsen’s tone when talking about the crew showed what he thought of mere employees, no matter what th
eir expertise might be. Joe had encountered men like him before. They were hard, practical, goal-focused, and not especially imaginative. They were Joe’s kind of guy, in fact. He was sure they could cut a deal.
“Cheers,” he said, downing a shot of rum. “Keeps the cold out, right?”
Nielsen frowned slightly.
“It is a little cooler than usual,” he said and fiddled with the aircon for a few moments before shrugging in irritation.
“Minor details,” Nielsen said, sitting down at a desk, gesturing Joe to take the other chair. “Let’s deal with the big picture. We’re recovering the gold, we have ways to sell it for the market price, or very nearly, no questions asked. International law is a tangled mess on certain issues, and that’s to our advantage. Will you accept—let’s call it a token of our appreciation?”
Joe smiled, put his half-empty glass down on the glass-topped desk.
“Where do I sign? Or is this one of those deals that they used to call a gentleman’s agreement?”
Nielsen looked superior, enjoying the verbal chess game.
“The money will be transferred to a numbered account in the Cayman Islands the moment you call off the dogs back in the States. A rather greedy senator needs to be squared—we’ll handle that. Likewise, the troublemakers in the press, US and Caribbean. But Martin Gale, he’s the real problem. The people I work for do not want any more heat from that quarter. Your buddy Ryan needs to have a word with his old man.”
Joe made a dismissive gesture, enjoying the sensation of power.
“I can handle that. You can rest assured he’ll make the call. Seems like we’ve got a deal.”
They shook hands. Then Nielsen suggested they go into the control room and see the gold being brought up. Joe felt a thrill of pleasure at being part of the operation, that joy in winning that he had always relished. He needed to feed on victory, on triumphs, on being better than the other guy. He wondered if Sara would ever get that, or if they would drift apart.
Devil Ship: Supernatural Suspense with Scary & Horrifying Monsters (Devil Ship Series Book 1) Page 19
