AJ gave herself a minute to gather her thoughts and she checked her dive computer to verify she was fine on air and had twenty minutes usable bottom time remaining. She shook her head and slumped against the upside-down pilot’s seat. How on earth do I do this to myself? she thought. Along with the attention and praise she’d received for discovering the wreck of the World War Two U-boat a few years back she’d also taken a lot of grief and criticism from parts of the diving community. There was no doubt she’d taken a lot of risk then and apparently she hadn’t learnt her lesson as she was now sealed inside a seaplane wreck, fifty feet down in the midst of a violent storm.
More thuds from the outside brought her back to reality and she noticed they came from a different direction. Thomas was now above her and knocking on the window of the opposite door. The plane continued to strain and moan as the surge kept shoving it harder against the coral head, reminding her the ocean wasn’t done dismantling the wreck. She twisted to look up at Thomas through the window and could hear him yanking on the door handle from the outside to no avail. She searched for some kind of lock on the inside, finally finding the handle and releasing it. The door started opening and Thomas heaved it against the water until it ground to a stop. The high wing of the Cessna had folded on the other side but had also twisted its roof mount so the other side pointing towards the surface had bent over a bit and now the door was stuck partially open against it.
Thomas reached in and patted AJ on the arm. The contact made them both feel a little relief and helped them stay calm. AJ estimated the opening was just enough for her to fit through so she turned her attention back to the cases. Again she shone her torch around and looked for options. Everything had shifted yet again with the roll so it was all stacked against the left side and roof of the fuselage. She could reach the small case and with a good pull it came free this time. Until it hit the seat. It wouldn’t fit through the gap between the top of the seats and the roof and she sat back, confused. Shining her torch she confirmed there was no back door of any kind. She was wondering how they loaded all this stuff when it occurred to her. Fumbling beside the seat she found the handle she was looking for and once she had squeezed herself out of the way, the seat back folded forward, opening access to the back of the cabin.
She wriggled around to grab the case, shook it free of the others and stuffed it through the narrow door opening. It didn’t want to fit but Thomas pulled mightily from the outside and managed to flex the door enough to get it through. The plane creaked and complained some more, persuading AJ it was a good time to get out while she could. Using a trick she’d employed before, she quickly unbuckled her BCD and shoved it, with her tank attached, through the opening to Thomas who held it just outside so her regulator hose still hung inside for her to breath. She squeezed into the opening and pushed on anything she could find inside to shove herself through, her teeth clenched on her regulator as it was trying to tug free with Thomas and her rig thrown around in the surge still rampant outside the plane. Once clear she slid back into her BCD and Thomas squeezed a hand on each shoulder, his eyes wide with concern inside his mask. She patted his arm and winked back, grateful to have him with her. She took the small case while Thomas held the unwieldy tube and the two started back towards the surface. She hoped with all her heart they had the right cases. Her pulse was still racing and she certainly had no intention of going back down today.
Chapter 16
Topside was no fun for Reg, Carlos and Sydney. The wind and rain had not let up and riding around with the choppy ocean swells hammering in left them hanging on for dear life while still trying to keep the wreck located. Reg had put Sydney to work on deck preparing lines for when the guys surfaced and Carlos was invaluable helping with GPS and sonar to help Reg navigate back to the right spot.
Carlos had begged AJ to let him dive with her but she’d insisted she and Thomas be the ones. Her reasoning had been that the two dived together almost every day and knew each other and the terrain so well they made a safer team. Carlos argued that he knew the plane and what they were looking for which would be invaluable, but he had to admit once they were out here he was secretly glad he didn’t have to dive in this mess. Now, with time moving like molasses and every passing minute multiplying their concern, he wished it was him in the water. They frantically scanned the surface thinking they’d missed them come up somewhere and been swept to the shallow reef guarding the sound, but there was no sign of them.
Then Sydney screamed as loud as she could from the deck, “There, over there!”
Reg and Carlos saw where she was pointing and picked up one of the divers waving from the surface, twenty yards off their starboard side and slightly behind them. Reg let the next wave roll under the boat before swinging the Newton hard around to port and chasing the back of the wave as fast as he could to get south of the divers. Once there he veered around again to run straight into the oncoming waves.
Yelling to Sydney, “Throw out the starboard line,” he rode the next wave and steered as close to the first diver as possible, shutting the throttles down just past them. Thomas grabbed the trailing line and as soon as Reg saw he had the line he opened up the throttle again so he maintained control and could stay bow first into the swells. Carlos leapt down the ladder to help Sydney and they hauled on the line to drag Thomas to the boat, which took incredible effort as the boat was still moving. Reg shut the drive down in each trough to let them haul him closer and then had to gas it up again over the waves. Finally they had him at the back and timing it between dips of the stern and swim platform Thomas handed up the big plastic tube. He wrestled his fins off and threw them onto the boat while still clinging to the line but now came the hardest manoeuvre. The steps were connected to the swim platform and hinged to be lifted out of the water while the boat was moving. In the rough seas they were like a large metal hand slapping up and down in the surf as the platform rose and fell. Thomas waited for the next downswing which dragged the ladder under water with the platform but swung it outward as the water resisted it, hinging it backwards. He quickly pulled himself across to the ladder and hung on as the stern rose swiftly back up, bringing the ladder and Thomas with it. At the top of its rise Thomas scrambled up the few steps and lurched into the back of the boat, landing sprawled across the starboard bench.
Reg didn’t miss a beat; he swung around in the next trough and went after AJ. She had disappeared in the squall. They’d dragged Thomas north while she was being taken south by the seas so now the race was on to find her before she was taken to the shallow reef where the boat would founder. Carlos climbed back up to the fly bridge to help Reg spot as Thomas shed his gear and readied to help AJ aboard. Reg slowed as they got closer to where he guessed she’d been carried to, concerned he’d miss her, or worse still run her over. Visibility had not improved and trying to spot someone bobbing between all the crests and valleys of the churning surf was a challenging task.
Reg kept an eye on their depth; they were already at twenty-five feet and with the way the swells rose and fell along with the coral heads he knew extended towards the surface, he couldn’t risk going shallower than fifteen. Carlos grabbed Reg’s arm and pointed excitedly but Reg couldn’t see anyone. Carlos yelled, “I saw her, right there, twenty metres ahead to the left!”
But there was nothing there in the water. The boat rose up as the next wave rolled in from behind them and sure enough there was AJ in next trough ahead, getting precariously close to the North Sound reef. Reg thrust the throttle lever and the Newton chased the wave toward shallower water where the swell was rising rapidly and crashing violently over the reef that was just in view now. AJ was kicking against the seas as hard as she could but had nothing against the power of the ocean and was being drawn to the reef at an alarming rate. Reg stopped looking at the depth; he was making a run for her whether it said sixty or six. He came up level with her as another wave swept under them from behind and carried them both shallower still. As soon as it passed under he
cut hard to port and throttled up to put the boat within ten feet of AJ as Thomas threw the line to her. He pulled back the throttle while she wrapped her free arm around the line, her other hand grimly hanging on to the black case. The next swell approached and the water drew down under them as the wave loomed large. The bottom of the boat crashed against the reef just as Reg pushed the lever forward and asked everything from the diesel motor. The awful scraping sound made him cringe and pray the prop wasn’t being ripped off but they surged forward so it must be still attached to his relief.
Once they reached deeper water they repeated the boarding exercise with AJ taking the ladder ride onto the boat and being unceremoniously dumped upon the deck. Once all the gear was safely stowed they began the uncomfortable ride back to the yacht club with the boat noticeably shuddering under power. AJ peeled out of her wetsuit and threw on a sweatshirt and rain jacket before joining Reg on the fly bridge.
“Thanks Reg,” she said, leaning on his shoulder, “I think that went quite well all considering.”
Reg chuckled. “Girl, you owe me a bloody prop.”
Chapter 17
Julio lay in his bunk and absentmindedly flicked through the pages of an American motorcycle magazine. A friend who worked on one of the dive boats had snapped up the colourful magazine left behind by a client and Julio was about the fourth person to borrow the rare glimpse into the ostentatious life outside Cuba. Silvio was on his own in the wheelhouse where Julio had learnt he liked to be left alone. One of the Russians was on deck puking and the other two were in the galley drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes.
He was surprised more of them weren’t seasick as the swells had picked up and the weather deteriorated considerably as they closed in on Cayman. The boat was rocking and rolling as it trudged along at the best pace the old diesel could muster. Julio was born and raised in Jucaro which, as a coastal fishing village, meant career opportunities were thin and what there was almost all involved the water. Julio wasn’t bothered by the rough seas; he’d been out in a skiff with his father in worse conditions than this. Of course his father was a drunk and repeatedly made poor decisions about many things beyond weather predictions. It was clearly a bad choice to drive himself home from the bar a year ago in the state he’d been in. His rusted-out 1989 Russian-built Moskvitch-2141 four-door hatchback was no match for the bus whose lane he had wandered into. The bus would have attempted to avoid him but as his father neglected to turn his lights on the driver never saw him coming. They told Julio and his mother that they’d extracted the body so he could be buried but he was pretty sure they just shoved some parts into the coffin and called it good. The Moskvitch had flattened like a pancake.
Once rid of her deadbeat husband his mother took Julio’s younger sister and moved back in with her family in the larger town of Ciego De Avila, further inland. Julio was happy to be rid of his father, who’d been prone to beating his son in his intoxicated rages, and Ciego De Avila wasn’t too far away to see his mother every so often. He’d been lucky to pick up the job with the geology studies people when they set up in town. It started with some basic repairs and upkeep on their boat but eventually grew to full time for maintenance on anything they needed worked on. He kept himself to himself. Silvio and Carlos treated him okay; he hated the Russian, but apart from talking to him like he was an idiot, generally the man left him alone. Julio was used to being talked to like an idiot, his father had done plenty of that. At least he wasn’t being beaten with a broom handle now.
He considered checking the engine room again, but he’d already done that three times this morning and it was hotter than hell down there and stank really badly. He could join Silvio in the wheelhouse but Silvio would probably just think up something for him to do and put him to work. Julio was happy taking the path of least resistance. Chasing girls around Jucaro and the neighbouring towns was about the only thing that piqued his interest; not much else did. He let his mind wander to the young lady he’d been so rudely pulled away from last night, a night he thought was going to end pretty well for him. But instead, here he was bouncing around in this old tub, chasing that damn fool Carlos who didn’t know a good thing when he had it. He’d been trained to fly, sent to university and given a cushy job flying around in a beautiful part of the country and now he’d thrown it all away and would probably end up rotting in a cell somewhere.
He liked Carlos, Carlos didn’t treat him like an idiot. In fact on a couple of trips to Jardines de la Reina he’d shown him how to use his dive gear and they’d spent some time on the reef together. That was something else he liked, now he thought about it: diving. But that didn’t matter, Carlos was going to be dragged to jail and he was Julio’s only hope of diving again. You didn’t get to be a divemaster in Cuba unless they picked you from a university to study marine biology and that wasn’t happening for Julio.
He half-heartedly shrugged his shoulders and went back to thumbing through the magazine, lingering on a scantily clad young brown-haired girl sprawled across a fancy motorcycle with more chrome than a fifties Chevy. He sighed and thought, there’s two more things not happening for Julio.
Chapter 18
Carlos tipped the black plastic tube up and poured the salt water out. A clump of sodden papers followed and splattered on the ground in the backyard of Reg’s house. Carlos swore in Spanish and knelt down to gather up the pulpy mess with the rain still coming down, albeit lighter than earlier.
It had taken a while to get back to the yacht club. Reg had been nervous about surfing the incoming waves through the cut with the damaged prop, but it had gone without incident. They gathered back at Reg and Pearl’s house where everyone could dry off and warm up in a more spacious setting than AJ’s tiny apartment.
Carlos went back inside and joined everyone eagerly tucking into the spread of food Reg’s wife Pearl had conjured up.
“No good, I could feel the weight of the water and hear it sloshing inside.” He held up the remains and Pearl guided him to a rubbish bin in the kitchen. “It has ruined all the charts,” he announced despondently.
Sydney stood over the travel case they’d retrieved, with the lid open. “Well everything here is bone dry, so all is not lost!”
Carlos looked relieved and rushed over to examine the contents. Inside the case was a hard drive from the desktop computer in the Instituto de Estudios Geológicos laboratory. He held it up and examined it before handing it to Sydney.
AJ asked curiously, “Is it not password protected or secured in some way?”
“That’s where I come in,” Sydney answered. “I’m the computer hacker. Well, I’m actually a programmer, that’s what I studied in Miami, but I’m going to attempt to be a hacker and get into this.”
Carlos grabbed a sandwich and spoke between bites, “That’s why I was hoping to use just the charts, they had most of the information we needed to show on them. The hard drive was a backup plan. I was hoping it might cause some delays with the operation as well.” He chewed voraciously. “Now we have to get access into it and I don’t know the password, they kept that secret and changed it regularly. I think Mikhail is the only one who knows the latest password; we all used other computers and sent him our reports and notes to save on the server. I don’t know what’s on there exactly but it’s the main server computer so hopefully it’s got all we need.”
Sydney grinned at him, “And maybe the password is something easy like Mikhail’s favourite pet?”
Carlos laughed, waving his hands in the air, “Mikhail doesn’t have pets, he has people as his pets! Besides, how lucky have we been this far?!”
Reg walked in, fresh from a shower and a dry set of clothes. “I’d say you were bloody lucky – not often you survive a plane crash.”
Carlos mocked being offended. “We did not crash the plane Señor Moore, I landed the plane! The storm and the ocean then took the plane.”
Sydney slapped his arm. “We pretty much crashed, Carlos.”
Pearl brought out
some more sandwiches for the hungry group and joined the conversation. “Wouldn’t they have this stuff stored in backup systems somewhere, on a cloud or something?”
Carlos finished chewing another bite and eyed the new batch Pearl had set out. “Thank you so much for the food, we were really hungry! And yes, it is all backed up to a cloud-based government server so we didn’t take the information from them, we just took a copy of it stored locally. Believe me their plans will continue uninterrupted if we don’t cause enough international concern to stop it. The missing hard drive will just be an inconvenience to them.”
AJ curled up in a comfy chair with a plate of food. “How do we do that? How were you thinking of releasing this information?”
Carlos looked a little sheepish. “I probably didn’t give that part enough thought or planning… I always had it in mind we’d go to ‘The Press’… but honestly I’ve never even spoken to a reporter or a newspaper before; I’ve no idea how to do that.”
Reg glanced over at AJ as Thomas came in from the spare bathroom where he’d been cleaning up. AJ caught Reg’s look but before she could say anything Thomas blurted enthusiastically, “AJ knows lots of reporters from all the stories on U-1026, don’t you AJ?”
Gardens of the Queen Page 6
