Sloan had moved to the gunwale adjacent to his boat to stay out of the way while waiting for the motor of the pressure washer to kick in. This would tell him that they had found something, and the silt would camouflage his own dive. Though he had pretended to pout, being excluded from the dive had been no surprise. Patiently he waited, checking his watch every minute or so to gauge the elapsed time. Twenty minutes passed and he started to worry that there was nothing there. It wasn’t until Mac and Ned were thirty minutes into the dive that he heard the hum of the motor. It was time to move.
Glancing at Mel and Trufante, he saw they were watching the water and the hose—both looking away from him. Spinning his body across the gunwales, he landed on the deck of the Surfari and, staying low, moved to the locker that held the dive gear. Checking one more time, he saw Trufante and Mel were still fixated on the water.
He had to move quickly and get into the water before they spotted him. If he was seen gearing up they would surely try and stop him from diving. On the boat, encumbered by the heavy tank and equipment, he would be like a stunned fish outside a bait ball—defenseless. An experienced diver, he quickly slid the BC onto the tank, and within a minute had the first stage and low-pressure hose connected. He loaded the weight pockets and, hoping the noise from the pressure-washer motor would cover the sound of air rushing into the BC, squeezed the button and partially inflated the BC. Slipping the tank and gear over the side, he attached the valve to a waiting line, grabbed his mask and fins and followed the gear into the water.
So far there had been no indication that he had been spotted. He slid into the BC, strapped it in place, and put on his fins. Just as he was about to put his mask on, the pressure-washer motor stopped and a dead quiet settled over the scene. Before he was spotted, he put the mask on and, with the inflator hose over his head, released the air and dropped below the surface.
It was immediately evident why the pressure washer had stopped when he saw the silt cloud. Using it to his advantage, he quickly finned to a coral head on the western side of the channel. Finding a formation to hide behind, he decided to wait out the two men, then investigate what they had found. Concealed by the large coral head, except for the telltale air bubbles there was little risk of being discovered. In training, divers are instructed to never hold their breath underwater, but he quickly discarded the safety measure and did so, checking on Travis and the old man to make sure they weren’t looking his way before exhaling the bubbles into the water.
A few minutes later, when the silt settled, Sloan could tell that they had found something. The pressure washer started running again, and he slid behind the coral head, breathing freely now as the bubbles would be invisible to the two men in the silt cloud. Checking the computer built into his console, he saw that almost fifteen minutes had elapsed. That put Travis and Ned at forty-five minutes under. Settling back to wait, he hoped in a few minutes he would have the answer to his problems.
Finally, Travis and Ned started their ascent. Checking his own air, Sloan saw that even though he had barely moved, he had only 500 PSI remaining, but it really wasn’t a factor. The silt had settled and the water was once again gin clear. That created another problem for him. With what he estimated was around sixty feet of visibility, there was a very good possibility that his bubbles would be seen if he used his scuba gear to check out the find. It was a risk to freedive over, but he needed to know what was there without being discovered.
Sloan unbuckled the straps, pulled the velcro band free and, with the regulator still in his mouth, slipped out of the BC. He lay the tank against a large brain coral, took several deep breaths, and released the mouthpiece. Finning forward, he started floating higher in the water column and just about lost control when he realized his mistake.
It took every ounce of air in his lungs to make it back to his BC, where he grabbed the regulator, stuffed it in his mouth, and replenished his lungs. When he felt he had recovered, he pulled one of the weight pockets out of the BC and, with it in hand, breathed up again, and released the mouthpiece. This time he was able to stay neutral and quickly finned toward the site.
A fine layer of silt had settled on what looked like the barrel of an old cannon. That was discouraging, at least from his perspective. Some might be excited to find an artifact of historical value, but he needed something he could quickly turn into cash.
His lungs were burning and he was just about to return to his gear when he saw it—the reflection of light off a gold bar. Reaching down, he tried to remove it, but found it embedded in the coral. A convulsion quickly took hold and he was forced to abandon the find and return to his air source.
Back at his gear, Sloan sat on the bottom, slowly inhaling through the mouthpiece until his breathing normalized. Though he would have liked to have another look, he knew he had to return to the boat, hopefully before he was missed. With the hull visible directly over his head, he replaced the weight pocket and added air to the BC, allowing it to lift him.
At least there were no guns pointed at him when his head broke the surface of the water on the starboard side of the boat, away from the trawler. Not wanting Travis or his crew to know he had dived, he hadn’t used the drop-down transom and, with the line he had set earlier, tied off the BC and climbed over the gunwale.
Grabbing a towel, he dried off and moved toward the trawler. The conversation stopped abruptly when they saw him, but it appeared his ruse had been successful. Dropping back into the salon of the Surfari, he reflected on his position.
There was something down there and it was better than cash. He’d have no trouble just handing over the gold bar—or bars—to his suppliers. Now he needed to figure out how to get Travis before he did.
Thirty-Six
It was a tense afternoon for Sloan. He was excluded from the private conversations after the two additional dives Travis had done. Nothing had been recovered, though, and he was dying to know what was going on down there, but he knew it was too dangerous to make another dive and risk being seen. Even if he could slip overboard at night, his light would be like a beacon to anyone sitting in a boat above.
So, Sloan waited, eavesdropping on whatever bits of conversations he could. He quickly found the best source was the loose-lipped Cajun, who talked incessantly when Mac was below. Mac had made two more dives with Mel, leaving Ned topside with the Trufante. The current dive had confirmed the discovery of the gold bars, and also the difficulty in extracting them from two centuries of coral. From what he overheard, they expected to retrieve the bars first thing tomorrow.
That timing didn’t work for Sloan’s time frame or escape plan. He needed the gold tonight. When he heard Travis and Mel surface from the third dive, he eased over to the gunwale, moving closer because of the sound of the air compressor filling the tanks.
“We got one more shot today. I’m thinking we can get them loose, but we won’t have enough air to bring them up,” Mac said.
“That’ll be your fourth dive. I know it’s only twenty-odd feet, but I’m worried about your head,” Mel said.
“Hard as ever,” Mac said.
“Yeah, we’ll see about that. I’m not so sure about the honor system when you’re involved.”
Sloan had to do something. He was too close to success. If his timing was right, he would dive right before sunset, concealing his movements on the surface, and enough visibility below to recover the bars without a light. By the time he was ready to make his escape, twilight would drop a cloak of darkness on the operation.
But Mel pulling the plug on Mac diving for the day would seriously hamper his plans.
Staying out of sight, he slipped back into the Surfari’s salon, then re-emerged onto the deck making enough noise that he was noticed. Without asking permission, he crossed the gunwales and set foot on the trawler.
“How’s it going down there?” he asked as he approached the group.
The silence was expected. “Heard the compressor running and thought you might need a hand.”
He had, of course, offered before, but in light of Mel’s worries, hoped they might either accept his offer, or commit to the dive. He got his wish when Travis shook his head.
“Ned and I’ll go. No offense, just don’t like working with new people.”
“None taken.” Sloan tried not to smile. This was the best-case scenario. “If y’all don’t need me, I might head out shortly.”
“Your choice,” Mac said, moving to the compressor. He shut it off and started to disconnect the tanks.
After growing up as the odd man out, for the first time not being wanted was paying off. Now, all he had to do was get into the water unobserved and recover the gold bars. “Okay then, I’ve got some things to do before I go. See y’all later.”
“Right. Appreciate your help,” Mac said, turning his back on Sloan. He purged and disconnected the last valve, stowed the fill hoses in the compartment, and closed the lid on the compressor. Sloan took the dismissal as an easy chance to leave and start getting ready. He wasn’t lying when he said he had some things to do, but they weren’t what Travis and his crew thought. What he needed was something to bring the gold to the surface.
On his fourth dive, Mac headed directly to the site where they had discovered the cannon. Moving past it, he picked up the pressure-washer wand and, as soon as Ned was behind him, started clearing more material from around the gold bars. He missed not having the dredge he often used for these kinds of recoveries, but it, along with thousands of dollars of gear, had been swept away in hurricane Ruth’s storm surge. Rather than blast the loose material around the salvage area into a silt cloud, much of which settled back into the same places, the dredge displaced the material far enough away from the site that the visibility wasn’t disturbed. But, after the three previous dives, the work was becoming automatic, if not efficient, and Mac’s mind started to wander as the pressure washer did its work.
Mac had already known that two of Lafitte’s ships had been wrecked by Van Doren, as well as their approximate locations, based on his journal entries. There’d been some luck involved to find the cannon, but it was the gold that had been the big surprise. Ned had read a later part of the journal, and he told Mac the story.
Van Doren and his crew had several interesting adventures prior to their ship, The Panther, being blown up, the treasure aboard lost but then recovered by Van Doren and Crew through his subsequent deal with Lafitte. According to Ned, their previous adventure had been to the mountains of Haiti, where they had recovered over a ton of gold bars, Lafitte’s share of which lay beneath his feet. It gave Mac some satisfaction that the treasure belonged to Lafitte and not Van Doren.
Mac was fascinated by Captain Van Doren, not only for his political savvy. Those same gold bars had been used to unseat the government in Haiti. He had done the same in Great Inagua. It was his early grasp on diving equipment and procedures, as well as his intuitive reasoning on decompression sickness, that truly fascinated him. Mac promised himself that once this was over, he would find out what ultimately happened to the captain and crew. It wasn’t unusual for innovators like Van Doren to be left out of the history books. In many cases, without the simultaneous communication we now take for granted, discoveries were often made at or near the same time, and it was usually the inventor sponsored by powerful people or governments on the continent who got credit.
Mac was brought back to the task at hand when he felt a jerk on the pressure washer’s hose. Looking around to see if it had become entangled in a piece of coral, he saw the line floating freely toward the surface. Grabbing it and going back to work, he started blasting water around the outline of the bars that had become part of the reef. Ned had moved away, exploring lower down on the coral outcropping. Mac knew Ned was trying to envision how the ship had lay before the reef had encompassed it. Steel-hulled ships were hard enough to spot; wood ones nearly impossible. Coral grew slowly and wood decayed quickly. Before the new reef could support the doomed ship, it had fallen to pieces and caved in on itself. Interpreting how that looked was a whole lot harder than looking for an entire wreck.
The cannons would have been on the main deck, or the gun deck just below it. Underneath that would be the holds containing whatever riches were aboard when the ship sunk. With the gold sitting just below the cannon, Mac assumed the gun deck had disintegrated and dropped the cannon into the hold where the gold was stored. Often the treasure was scattered across a wide area. Just finding the gold bars, which they were slowly uncovering from under centuries of growth, was a gift.
Another violent tug almost pulled the wand from his hand, bringing his attention back to the present. Mac looked up again, only to feel the line sharply jerk again. It wasn’t Trufante, who, after years of working together, knew their signals. Alarmed, he looked up to see the bottom of a boat moving away. Between the noise of the pressure washer as it blasted away the centuries of sand, and the silt cloud, he had missed the boat’s arrival.
Studying the shape and length of the hull, he knew who it was.
Trufante’s gaze followed the hose into the water. He could see it for quite a ways, but the visibility slowly faded, leaving only the dark reef and lighter sand. From his position on the boat, he had a good idea what they were doing. Diving had never been his thing. Though tempted to spearfish, getting wet was not in his DNA, but he’d worked the deck for years and he could imagine what was going on below.
Tru and Mel’s eyes were pulled to the point the hose entered the water, as if attracted by a magnetic force. It was their only connection to the men below, and they continued to stare while their ears were tuned into the sound of the motor behind them. They both jerked to attention when it stopped.
“Letting the silt settle,” Trufante said. “They must be on something.”
Mel leaned over the side, as if the extra few inches would reveal what was happening twenty feet below. When the pressure washer kicked back on, she looked up, and pointed. “Boat coming.”
Trufante squinted, following her finger. “Goddamned Rusty.” He abandoned his position along the rail and went to the cabin, where he grabbed the shotgun from the rack. Pulling it down, he checked the chamber and found it loaded and ready. Returning to the cockpit, he held the gun by his side, out of sight from the approaching boat.
“Don’t do anything stupid,” Mel warned him. “We’ve got divers down.”
“And he’s got Pamela.” Trufante felt Mel make a move and reach for the weapon, but he pulled it out of the way. “I hear ya.” He tried to reassure her.
Trufante could see Rusty at the helm, with someone next to him who he assumed was JC. Rage boiled in his veins as he waited. There was no sign of Pamela, but he knew the type of boat and expected she was locked in the cabin. A hundred yards out, Rusty dropped speed and coasted toward them.
Mel made a move for the large red ball by the transom. “Get the fenders and lines ready. Until we know what they want, we need to hold our cards close. And that includes the gun.”
Reluctantly, Trufante set the shotgun under the gunwale. The boat moved closer and, without a word exchanged, they were quickly tied off.
“Where’s Travis?” JC asked.
“Where’s Pamela?” Trufante countered. He felt Mel place a hand on his arm and relaxed slightly. Parlays weren’t always bad—just usually. He waited.
“Seeing y’all been anchored here for the better part of a day, I’m thinking you found something. Thought I’d put a clock on it and get this business finished.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. After fumbling with the screen for a minute, he handed it across to Trufante.
Trufante felt Mel move closer as he reached for the phone and looked at the screen.
“Son of a bitch!” Trufante screamed, and reached for the shotgun. Mel tried to stop him, but after seeing Pamela tied upside down to a piling, her hair brushing the water, there would be no playing lawyer games. Just as Tru raised the barrel, Rusty emerged from the wheelhouse with two pistols. Looking like an old wes
t gunslinger, he had one pointed at Trufante, and the other at Mel.
Trufante didn’t waiver. “Take me to her.”
“Heard there’s a gang of bull sharks ‘round here. Y’all can be chum, or you can be smart and stay alive. Help out your buddy Travis and end this.”
Trufante’s finger twitched, torn between taking a shot and risking it all for the satisfaction of killing JC. He forced himself to back down. Whether Rusty returned fire or not was too much of an unknown. He looked over at Mel, who was doing something with JC’s phone. He had no idea what, but he tried to stall to give her time. “Take me and let her go.”
JC grinned, ending the standoff. “Maybe in light of your attitude, you’d be better off with her.” He held his hand out for the phone. Mel paused for just a second. It was enough for Trufante to know she had just done something, and he made a guttural sound to distract JC.
Rusty kept one gun aimed at Mel, who handed the phone back, while he motioned for Trufante to come aboard his boat. JC grabbed the shotgun from Trufante’s hand. He stepped across to Rusty’s boat.
“Might want to tell Travis the tide’ll be coming in soon. He wants his friend back, he might ought’a hurry.”
Thirty-Seven
Jerking on the hose, Mac hoped to signal whoever was topside that he understood, and dropped the wand to the ground. He saw Ned’s bubble stream cruising around the bottom of the outcropping. Mac first tried the brass clip, but Ned was both hard-of-hearing and consumed in his search. Worried about what was going on above, Mac kicked hard in the direction of the bubbles, and reaching out, grabbed the tip of one of Ned’s fins to get his attention. Ned appeared startled and Mac could see his brow furrow around the mask seal as Mac signaled with the thumbs-up sign for them to surface.
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