Gardens of the Queen

by Nicholas Harvey

  AJ put the last few slices in the toaster. “Why wouldn’t they just report you to the authorities here? That way the Caymanian police, port authority and Department of Environment would be looking for you and the plane; they could just fly in and pick you up from their custody.”

  Carlos shook his head. “No way, they’ll want this to go away quietly, no story about a Cuban trying to escape or anything about oil. They’ll try and cover the whole thing up like it didn’t happen.”

  AJ thought a moment. “Okay, if we wait one day the storm will have passed and the north will still be rough but a ton better than today. Why don’t we try early tomorrow morning? It would still be before any flights arrive here.”

  “I know it’s crazy,” Carlos countered, “but we must go today. I tell you these men are very resourceful, if there’s any way to get here sooner they will do it.”

  “Well then,” AJ relented, “we need sonar if we’re going to find this plane of yours and especially if we’re going to be crazy and dive in this storm. To have sonar we need a boat that has it so I have to involve someone else, but don’t worry, he’s a great friend and you can trust him completely.”

  Sydney agreed, “If you trust him then we must also.”

  Carlos nervously nodded.

  AJ dialled a number on her mobile and waited for the person to pick up. “Hey, morning. Feel like diving north today?” She paused and chuckled – the response was clearly not positive. “Well Reg, you don’t have to dive. It’s not you I want, it’s your fancy sonar.”

  Chapter 14

  The wind and rain was indeed as intense as it had been the night before as AJ led the rain-jacketed group down the dock at the yacht club. It had taken forty-five minutes on the phone for AJ to convince Reg Moore, that although it wasn’t a good idea to dive the wreck of a recently deceased seaplane in the middle of a storm, it was indeed a necessity. She’d given him the whole back story on the Russians and the oil discovery but what finally convinced him was telling him she was going with or without him, and he knew she wasn’t kidding.

  AJ guided them aboard a thirty-six-foot Newton dive boat and a large man in a yellow rain slicker greeted them under the open cabin. AJ introduced him. “This is my good friend Reg.” He extended a meaty hand. “Reg, meet Carlos, and this is Thomas’s sister Sydney.”

  They exchanged greetings as AJ and Thomas set their dive gear bags under the bench along the side of the stern section. The wind was still loud enough that they had to raise their voices to converse.

  “Are you guys sure you have to do this now?” Reg queried in his heavy London accent. “It’s gonna be mean outside the reef. If there’s any option to wait for calmer seas I’d suggest we take it.”

  Carlos stepped closer to the big Englishman. “I wish there was, sir, we appreciate you doing this; unfortunately time is not on our side, we need to retrieve some items from the plane as soon as possible.”

  Reg nodded. “There’s life vests in the cabin, put them on.” And without further discussion he waved to Thomas to release the lines to the dock.

  AJ and Thomas set their gear up on tanks and donned their wetsuits as Reg manoeuvred them out of the marina. They knew once they hit the sound things would get too lumpy to move about the boat. They could barely see fifty feet around them, the downpour obscuring anything farther away, so Reg navigated from GPS as AJ had the night before.

  They idled slowly up Governors Creek and the swell picked up noticeably as they approached North Sound.

  Reg yelled down from the fly bridge, “Hang on to something, it’s gonna get lively.”

  He wasn’t kidding. Sydney was the only one who hadn’t experienced rough seas before; the night before she’d been in a daze and they’d headed with the swell instead of into it. She was wide eyed and white knuckled as the Newton rode the four foot swells rolling at them across the sound from the north. They were coming from the Yacht club on the west side of the sound so they crossed the waves at a forty-five degree angle, making the boat yaw and roll madly as it slid down the back of the waves, occasionally crashing down in the troughs. As she wondered what it would be like outside the protection of the reef she reminded herself she’d already been out there… without a boat! Somehow it didn’t feel reassuring.

  After fifteen minutes of running, using the GPS, Reg lined the boat up to run through the cut in the reef to leave the sound. The cut was marked on either side by two buoys on approach and lights on marker poles at the cut itself, none of which they could see through the weather. AJ hung onto the roof frame next to Reg and tried to spot for him in case they got close to the markers.

  He looked at her. “Of all the hare-brained crazy ideas you have, this has to make it pretty close to the top, my girl.”

  She grinned and Reg pushed the throttle lever forward and the powerful diesel engine surged the boat forward to face the first eight-foot roller ploughing through the deep cut ahead.

  The Newton rose up the front of the wave like it was climbing a building before nosing over and plummeting down the backside as Reg accelerated harder to regain speed ready for the next wave. The rise and fall over these waves that could swamp the thirty-six-foot boat was terrifying and a miscue that turned them sideways would be instantly catastrophic. As they crested the fourth wave AJ shouted as loud as she could over the thundering crash of the waves on the reef and the storm raging around them, “Green light! I see the light on our right! Need to go left, Reg!”

  He knew he couldn’t cut much to the left without the next wave turning them sideways but he veered as much as he dared and kept the prop driving them as hard as he could. They rose up the front of the next wave at a slight angle and he tried to square them up over the crest. They dropped off the back in a weird twisting motion and crashed into the trough, knocking all the forward speed from the boat. The motor strained and groaned as it tried mightily to turn the prop faster and pick their speed back up; they were sitting ducks without forward motion. The three on the deck below had the shelter of the fly bridge overhead but were being thrown around like rag dolls. Hanging on to the overhead hand rails they tried their best to anticipate the rises and falls but the last hit left them on the floor and they scrambled to get a hand-hold before the next wave.

  Reg had the throttle pegged and painfully slowly the Newton picked up speed as the biggest wave yet was bearing down on them. He glanced at the GPS and then at AJ who yelled, “The light’s off our stern, this should get us through!”

  He made sure she was running straight up the face and kept the motor singing but they’d lost a lot of momentum and the boat struggled up the bigger wave. Just as he thought they might stall out the Newton crested the peak and rode down the backside picking up speed as she went; they were clear of the cut. Into the open ocean.

  Chapter 15

  From the main channel through the reef they needed to head several miles east toward Rum Point. The cut had concentrated the swell through a narrow, relatively shallow section which forced the water into a taller wave so once they cleared the cut, the waves were back to five or six feet. They ran along the incoming rollers so although the heavy winds made the surf choppy and rough, Reg charged down the troughs, easing over each crest to the next trough to keep them heading east.

  As they made progress they starting discussing the best plan of attack. AJ began, “Based on where we picked them out of the water and how we heard the plane from the pier at Rum Point my best guess is it’s outside the reef where it arcs out off the point. That’s the closest the reef gets to the north wall, which helps lessen our search area a bit.”

  Reg turned on his fish-finder CHIRP sonar and the bright screen lit up their faces in the grey, stormy day. He dimmed the screen setting a little and pointed to the screen that was attempting to map the sea floor below them. “The sonar is having a hard time in these swells as the boat is rolling and moving up and down so much, we keep moving relative to the bottom. We’re not going to see a perfect image of a plane down
there like we would on a calm day – we’ll have to really pay attention to catch a glimpse.”

  AJ hung on to the railing and leaned over the back, shouting down, “Carlos, come up here please.”

  Carlos gingerly climbed the ladder as the boat swayed and rolled and the rain continued to pelt them. He huddled next to AJ as he adjusted to the bigger swings from being higher above the sea on the fly bridge.

  AJ tried to narrow down their location. “How deep do you think it is, Carlos? How long was the swim to the surface? The wall drops off around a hundred feet and the shallows before the reef are about fifteen feet so it must have been something in between?”

  Carlos thought carefully. “I have done some free diving so I think I have a reasonable idea but everything was kind of crazy in the dark and we didn’t have good air to start. For sure it was more than ten metres but it was not more than twenty.” They both did the quick conversion and agreed they should look between thirty and sixty feet.

  Reg moved the boat slightly deeper until the depth, which was varying by six to eight feet at times, averaged around fifty five. Checking the GPS map they were now straight north from Rum Point. “Okay, this is our north-east corner and we’ll work back and forth parallel to the reef and make our way shallower each time.” AJ and Carlos nodded and Reg continued, “I’ll concentrate on keeping us on course, you two watch the sonar. You’re looking for anything that appears unnatural. That means straight lines usually – nature doesn’t do things in straight lines but planes have straight lines, wings, fuselage and what have you.”

  AJ smiled. “Wish we had this a few years back, Reg!”

  He nodded. “Yup, that’s why I bought it! Told Pearl it was for fishing but she knew better.”

  The search began, tediously trolling back and forth in the broiling seas, staring at a fifteen-inch screen looking for the proverbial needle. A plane is a large object until you drop it in an ocean where it becomes a speck in the vastness. Carlos and AJ kept thinking they saw something and would optimistically point at the screen until the screen refreshed and whatever it was would blend with the coral heads and growth below them.

  After three painfully slow runs they were now at about fifty feet depth when they both pointed and yelled at the sonar. A distinct square profile appeared and went away again as they continued forward. “Turn around, Reg!” AJ shouted excitedly. “That was a wing tip!”

  Reg carefully turned the boat, timing it as the swells rolled in so he didn’t get caught sideways. It was treacherous trying to manoeuvre at low speeds as the seas tossed them around and made it almost impossible to find the same spot again. It took four more attempts to stumble back over the same piece of water and this time the image of the plane was clear to see, even with the sonar giving a confused image as the boat rose and fell on the surface.

  AJ raced to the ladder and Reg yelled after her, “There’s no way an anchor will hold and I don’t want to drag the reef. I have to stay live so I’ll keep crossing the wreck and I’ll throw you a line when you come up!”

  She gave him the okay sign and hurried down to don her dive gear; Thomas was already putting his on. The wind and rain continued to pummel them and she leaned in close to his ear to be heard.

  “Thomas, we’re in fifty feet so bottom time won’t be an issue but Reg is going to get beaten to hell up here trying to stay around this spot so we’ll be as quick as we can. Carlos said there’s a bunch of hard cases in the back but the one we need is smaller than the rest and there’s also a tube we need to find, the kind you’d put maps or building plans in. The plane is upside down and access is through one front door that’s missing.”

  Thomas grinned. “If it’s where and how they left it.”

  AJ shrugged and grinned back. “Yeah, let’s be ready for anything down there.”

  With the heavy tanks strapped in their buoyancy compensator devices – the jacket-like piece of equipment that held the tank, ballast weight and air pockets, known simply as a BCD – they were even more unstable. The boat kicked and bucked around as they carefully made their way to the stern and the swim step where they wriggled their fins on. Carlos tried his best to hold them stable but they were all in danger of being thrown over at any time. The swim step was disappearing under the water as the stern dipped down and then rising violently back up four feet clear the next moment.

  AJ shouted final instructions, “When Reg tells us to go, be ready for the next down swell. When the swim step starts going down take one step on it and keep going into the water, striding well clear of it. If you don’t it’ll wipe you out on the way back up! Go straight down, don’t wait on the surface.”

  Thomas looked nervous. He’d logged a lot of dives in the past few years since he became a divemaster and handled some rough conditions, but this was by far the most extreme.

  Reg bellowed from the fly bridge, “Go!”

  AJ pulled her mask in place and stood watching the platform rise. She stepped on it as soon as it started down and used it as a stepping stone to launch into the water beyond. With a violent splash she went straight under and with her BCD fully deflated she stayed under, inverting quickly to head down, kicking until she was sure she was well below the boat. Once clear she turned to locate her dive buddy. Thomas timed it almost as well but he’d ridden the platform down a moment too far so his fin dragged the step as he tried to stride into the water. Instead of taking a giant stride he took a stumbling trip and fell into the surf. Fortunately the swim step only hooked his finned feet on its way back up and flipped him head down so he kicked a few times and found himself next to AJ before he really knew what had happened.

  They hurried straight down before the pull of the swells could move them off the wreck site. Visibility was twenty feet, AJ surmised, which was terrible for Cayman but not bad considering the conditions. With the storm clouds darkening the skies and robbing the light, it almost felt like the beginning of a night dive, going in at dusk when the light was fading. The ferocious seas were stirring up the bottom and swirling around any loose particulate and debris. At least they were over coral; if they’d been in a sandy area it would be zero vis.

  Reaching the coral at fifty feet AJ couldn’t see the plane and the surge was dragging them back and forth an alarming amount. She headed straight north, figuring if they’d been pulled in any direction it would have been towards the sound. Thomas stuck close by and they picked up a rhythm of being pulled back in the surge and then kicking hard as it released them to shoot forward and make some ground.

  Thomas grabbed AJ’s arm and pointed to his left; at the edge of visibility was something large and whiter than any of the natural coral and growth. They finned over and surveyed the wreck of the seaplane, arriving at the tail first. It was wedged against a coral head, upside down as Carlos had said, with the right side wing tilted awkwardly up. From the tail they couldn’t quite see the nose in the poor visibility but they made their way down the fuselage to the opening from the missing door. They quickly noticed it wasn’t just the two of them moving in the surge, it was powerful enough to move the plane as well. The Cessna was being dragged back about a foot and then slammed against the coral head it was butted against. AJ could see it was the wing that was holding the plane in place and it appeared the aluminium was starting to buckle. Pretty soon, if the heavy seas kept up, the wing would fold and the steady destruction of the wreck would begin. Carlos’s urgency to get out here was probably well placed, she thought, as she could see the overwing flexing and bending under the force of the ocean.

  AJ took out her torch and signalled for Thomas to stay outside the fuselage. She shone the beam inside the cramped cockpit and for a moment imagined being trapped inside that space, in the dark, while the plane flooded as it descended to the bottom. She shivered at the thought. She shone the light beyond the front seats to the mess of cases and equipment piled up in the narrowing rear of the cabin. With everything inverted the gap between the seats and the roof was filled so there was no w
ay to get back there, not that there was room for a diver to move around back there to start with. She would have to pull everything out through the space between the seats and the roof.

  She moved her torso inside the cabin and reached back for the first case she could get to and found a handle. Pulling hard it didn’t budge at all but the whole plane eerily rocked in the surge and strange groaning sounds emanated from the complaining sheet metal. She wiggled further inside until her tank banged against something above her and halted her progress. She flicked the light around again and spotted a black tube about six inches in diameter sticking forward of the stack of cases on the far side. Reaching as far as she could she was able to grab it and to her surprise it wasn’t pinned down. With a solid tug the tube slid forward and she twisted it free and shoved it towards the door opening. It then disappeared from her view so she knew Thomas, vigilant as usual, had taken it.

  Turning back to the cases she got as close to the roof as she could and searched the back with her torch. She spotted a smaller black case wedged against the roof at the bottom of the pile. She had no idea what was in all these hard plastic waterproof cases but they seemed quite heavy and she puzzled over how to move them. The plane rocked and shifted again with a horrible creaking but seemed to wedge itself more firmly this time. She pulled her feet into the tiny cockpit space and tried turning herself around to make space by the doorway when the plane suddenly rolled with an ear-splitting crack as the wing broke in two.

  Debris, pieces of coral and sand whirled around her, reducing visibility to nothing, and her fin pushed against something firm where she thought the opening had been. Fighting back panic she knew she had to wait for the mess to settle down again before she’d be able to see what happened. She could hear an annoying thud and wondered what was banging against the fuselage until it dawned on her it was her dive buddy. She answered Thomas’s signal on the metal side with a few knocks, relieved to know he was still with her. The water settled and visibility slowly returned so she was able to assess her situation. The plane had rolled almost onto its side, the collapsed wing the only thing stopping it going all the way over. The door opening was now facing down, the metal of the wing folded flush across it blocking it completely. She was trapped inside.