The Deep Six

by Striker, Randy

  It was nearly dusk now. Giff sat dreamily beside me, holding the chain in his lap, stroking it as if it were alive.

  He said, “It was in 1622, Dusky. September. A whole fleet of Spanish ships—the Flota de Tierra Firme, they called it—sailed from Havana, bound for Spain. Those old wooden ships was loaded down heavy, Dusky—dyes and spices and rich noblemen. But mostly the cargo was gold, and silver from the Potosí mine in the Andes. Freshly minted, in coin and huge bars. The vice-flagship was the Gaspar. And she was some ship for those times. But no wooden boat was ever made to carry the durn load she was carryin’—almost two million dollars’ worth of treasure. Worth probably six hundred million now. Can you imagine the weight of that? Six hundred million dollars in gold and silver!”

  No, I couldn’t. But I knew that Gifford Remus could. His eyes seemed to sparkle with the thought of it. He had imagined the weight and the color and the sight of it a thousand times over.

  “So what happened, Giff?”

  He snorted and picked at his nose. “Hurricane.” He pointed toward the horizon off the stern of the Sniper. “Them ships got separated in the hurricane of 1622 right out there. Lord, I can almost see ’em. Overloaded, crashing into that blowin’ sea. It was nighttime. An’ the only sounding equipment they had was an ol’ lead line, loaded with soap. The Gaspar foundered this way and struck the reef, then broke apart. Two more galleons went down that night and a couple more fleet tenders. Ain’t no real secret what reef they hit, and folks has been lookin’ for that treasure a long time. But I’m the only one to figure out why nobody’s found the main lode. Even with all their fancy gear, I’m the only one to figure it out!” He motioned vaguely toward the huge expanse of water between the Marquesas where we were anchored and Fullmoon Cay. “It’s all right out—”

  “Hold it, Giff.” I didn’t like what he was leading up to. “Before you go any farther, I want you to tell me something. If you’ve worked all this time alone trying to find the Gaspar, why are you telling me about it? Why are you showing me the chain?”

  He looked surprised. “ ’Cause we’re friends, Dusky!”

  “Giff, that’s true. But I still don’t see—”

  “You was the only one in Key West I could count on, Dusky! You was the only one who didn’t laugh at me! Them other folks was wrong—I ain’t crazy. I ain’t no fool. Papa always knew. He knew what I was lookin’ for an’ he always give me money. And he give money to my ol’ daddy when he was alive an’ looking for the Gaspar. I thought you knew, too, Dusky. I thought we was sorta partners.”

  Partners.

  I eyed the odd old man beside me. He swung back and forth in the fighting chair like a little kid on a drugstore stool. The wind was warm off the sea, and it carried with it the musky odor of the nearby islands, and the petroleum smell of Gifford’s old boat, which he had tied and bumpered along the starboard side of the Sniper. What strange worlds exist in the narrow cranium space of the human mind. Because I had occasionally given him a few bucks and hadn’t jeered at him, he considered me his partner.

  “Giff, I appreciate that. I really do,” I said. “But I want you to do yourself a favor. Don’t tell me or anyone else where you found that chain. People have always gone a little crazy when they hear about someone finding gold—but especially now, when it’s headed toward a thousand dollars an ounce. You tell the wrong person, Giff, and you could end up with a knife in your back.”

  He didn’t even seem to hear me. With tiny hands, he pulled off his fishing cap and brushed back his thin hair. “You know what I’m gonna do with all my money, Dusky? I thought about this a lot. First, I’m gonna get me a new bicycle. A nice shiny one, and it’s gonna be blue. A pretty blue. I’m gonna buy all sorts of horns and bells for it, and you know what else? A radio that clamps right onto the handlebars. Can you imagine?”

  “If you sell that chain by weight alone, you could buy yourself a thousand bicycles, Giff.”

  He nodded quickly. “I know, I know. And there’s a lot more than this chain down there, Dusky. I ain’t found the rest of it yet, but it’s there. It’s the Gaspar. Big bars o’ silver that weigh as much as eighty pounds, and piles an’ piles of gold and silver coins. Pieces of eight, Dusky—just imagine!” The little man sat staring off to sea, caught up in and shocked by the new reality of his long-loved fantasy.

  “Giff, I don’t want to spoil anything for you, but have you considered that that chain might not have come from the Gaspar? You said yourself other ships went down in that hurricane. And over the years probably a dozen ships hit that reef and sunk. This is a treacherous area, Giff.”

  “Cabeza de los Mártires—that’s what the Spaniards called it. Martyrs’ Head. You’re right, Dusky. A lot of ships went down here. They hated it. They were afraid of it.” He made a sweeping motion with his arm. “Thousands o’ people drowned right here. And they died screamin’; terrified. Next thing to hell, for them. Deepwater shoaling into reefs and then a big point of shallow sand. It was an evil place in the minds o’ them Spaniards. Evil an’ haunted with all the dead. Fullmoon Cay over there is supposed to be alive with ghosts—get it? Alive with ghosts?” Gifford chuckled wildly at his own joke. “Still some folks won’t go on it.” He turned toward me, his eyes round and filled with strange emotion. “But you know somethin’ else, Dusky? It’s true. This place is haunted. That’s how I found out where the treasure lode of the Gaspar ended up. I was camped out there on the beach on the Marquesas. And a ghost came to me one night. He was dressed in armor an’ had a beard. Sounds crazy, I know—but it was the ghost of an old Spanish man. It weren’t th’ first time I talked to a ghost, Dusky. Spirits are thick all over Key West. Old pirates and sailin’ men—they still roam the streets there, an’ it’s only me—old Gifford Remus, yes sir—they choose to talk to. It’s because I got the vision, Dusky. It’s because I got second sight—always have had it. Born with a veil over my face, I was. So I was layin’ there asleep in my camp and I wasn’t surprised a bit to wake up an’ see that Spaniard standin’ over me. He told me all about the Gaspar, Dusky. He was on it.” Gifford held up the gold chain momentarily. “This necklace was his. Only part of the Gaspar sank when it hit the reef. That’s why no one has ever found the treasure. In fact, those big rich treasure hunters wouldn’t believe where it was if I tried to tell ’em. But the Spaniard knew, Dusky. And only you can help me get the rest of it. The Spaniard tol’ me that, too. He said find you. Listen to this, Dusky—the treasure can be found right over . . .”

  Gifford Remus turned to point, but at that moment Lee came out of the cabin.

  “I hope you two men are hungry!”

  I smiled at her. She was dressed in jeans and a blue denim shirt that was buttoned only halfway up. Her blond hair was tied into a thick ponytail with a bow, and she smelled pleasantly of the coconut oil I had rubbed her with earlier. The way Gifford suddenly clammed up told her that she had interrupted, and she was momentarily embarrassed. I reached over, took her leg and pulled her close, and made introductions. But Gifford wasn’t interested in talking or staying for Lee’s surprise supper. He stood up nervously, stammered out his thanks and climbed down into his boat. But before he left, he took me aside and forced the gold chain into my hand.

  “Dusky, you got to keep this for me,” he said. He spoke with a strange desperation that made me feel more than a little uneasy. “You got to hide it someplace. I’ll be back in Key West in jus’ a few days—give it back to me then.”

  “Giff,” I said, “this is crazy. You shouldn’t trust anyone—”

  “The ghost tol’ me, Dusky. They’re followin’ me, and—”

  I shook him gently by his frail shoulders. “Come on, Gifford—who are ‘they’?”

  “You got to keep it for me until I get back, Dusky. I’ll tell you everything then. We’re both gonna be rich. We’re partners, right? You an’ me, Dusky—we’re gonna salvage the Gaspar together. An’ then no one will ever laugh at ol’ Gifford Remus again!”

 
; He climbed nervously down into his old wreck of a boat, looking this way and that, filled with his strange visions and fears. And then puttered away into the darkness, back toward his camp on the nearby island.

  3

  It was a restless autumn night. The Sniper lifted and rolled easily on her ground tackle, and a gentle wind drifted our way out of the tropics. A half mile off the island, we rolled with the sea. A good night for loving. A good night for sleeping. When it’s not too hot, and there are no bugs, there is no place nicer than a boat at night. Above the massive vee-berth forward, there is a screened hatch that is wide enough for even someone my size to crawl through. But after Lee and I had finished our loving, I wanted to do nothing but lie there and look up through the hatch at the star mist which began to rise and roll as if it were a sea in the sky.

  I was soon asleep. A light restless sleep filled with wispy dreams. Gifford Remus introduced me to his ghost. The ghost wore the golden chain which, earlier, I had stashed within the forward bilge, far off to one side.

  “How do you do, Captain MacMorgan?”

  “Very well, sir. I’ve heard so much about you, sir.”

  Sir?

  “Captain, I want you to know why you have been the one chosen to salvage the treasure from my long-lost Gaspar . . . Gaspar . . . Gaspar . . .”

  Restless dreams on a restless night; dreams that soon became nightmares . . .

  Explosions in rain forests, and the pleas of friends. Midnight-colored rivers and the shock of being taken from behind. Broken cars and broken loved ones, and then I was being pulled down, down, down. . . .

  I sat bolt upright in the vee-berth. Something was wrong. I rubbed my face and realized that I was sweating. Lee was gone. That I knew. Earlier, after we had made love until we could love no more, I had heard her tiptoe from the bed and had watched her pull a T-shirt over her lithe nakedness. Sometimes you just want to be alone.

  And then I knew. Sniper wasn’t riding right at anchor. When you know a boat well, you can feel the slightest change in trim and motion, and every change can be a danger signal. We seemed to be sliding sideways. As if we were being pulled. And just as I realized it, that’s when I heard the scream and the splash.

  I jumped naked from the bed and ran aft in the darkness. I miscalculated the steps and gave my left shin a painful crack on some invisible corner.

  “Shit!”

  I could still hear splashing, and I heard Lee calling my name in desperation. She seemed to be getting farther and farther away. I hit the toggle switch and the deck lights flashed on. The deck was empty. The girl was gone; she was somewhere on or in the dark sea.

  “Lee!”

  I heard her voice again. Off the stern. And more thrashing. And just as I crouched to dive in after her, I heard, “No, Dusky—don’t! There’s something in here! Don’t!”

  My mind, still gauzy with sleep, struggled to figure out just what in the hell was going on. And then I knew. Every evening of the trip, I had baited a grouper hook, stripped off line, and then anchored the big Penn International reel in a stern rod holder. The big boat rod was bending now, playing out line as if we had hooked a submarine. That’s what had altered the motion of the Sniper; that’s what was pulling us sideways. Some huge fish. And somehow, Lee had gotten tangled in the line and been pulled overboard.

  I forced myself to be calm; to think.

  “Dusky . . . awwww . . .”

  In one swift motion, I grabbed the assault rifle which I kept in spring clips over the main controls and headed up the ladder to the flybridge. My hands trembled as I jerked the chrome 500,000-candlepower searchlight around. The white shaft of light tunneled through the darkness, exposing a light mist that oozed off the glassy water. I scanned back and forth, back and forth—and then I saw her. About fifty yards out, but still moving, being pulled by something. She looked pathetically small in that harsh light. Her blond hair was matted over her face as she struggled to free herself.

  And then, suddenly, she was free. She submerged for a moment as the woven eighty-poundtest line went slack, then came back up calling to me, “It’s okay, Dusky! I’m loose now! Hey, Dusky! I made it!”

  She was loose, all right. But she hadn’t made it. Not yet. With the searchlight, I scanned the water behind her. And finally I saw what I had prayed would not be there—the huge mako shark I had encountered earlier that day. It was about a hundred yards off, just a few degrees port of stern, and it was closing in on Lee.

  The shark was right at the edge of visibility, its triangular dorsal fin looking a ghostly gray in the shaft of light. It was now circling Lee, getting closer and closer.

  “Lee! Stop swimming . . . Lee!”

  But still she splashed on with strong, choppy strokes. She was headed for the Whaler, which was anchored off the stern. But she wasn’t going to make it. Suddenly, the huge mako began to angle toward her. This was his sea, his feeding time. To the shark, this new woman in my life was just a big fish struggling in the darkness, something to swallow so that he might continue his life of instinct and death.

  I switched the assault rifle from semiautomatic to automatic. It was some weapon—a Russian AK-47. I had smuggled it back from Nam in the tripod case some of the journalists over there carried. It had a sighting range of eight-hundred meters, and was capable of firing ninety rounds a minute. But I had only a thirty-round clip, and I had to make sure I got at least fifteen or twenty of those rounds into the head of that shark.

  I braced my left arm on the searchlight so I could move it on the trail of the shark as I fired. The metal butt plate was cold against my bare shoulder. I leveled it, fixed the peep sight about three feet forward of the dorsal fin, began to exhale slowly, then squeezed the trigger.

  Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop . . .

  The first burst was too high and a little to the left. The tip of the shark’s gray-black dorsal exploded off its back. But still the mako kept getting closer to Lee, vectoring in on the splashes of her weakening crawl stroke.

  My hands were shaking. This one had to be it. The shark was only twenty-five yards from her and closing fast. I took another deep breath and opened up.

  Pop-pop-pop-poppa-thud-thud-thud.

  I was on him now, and I held the trigger down, hearing the sweet sound of slugs smacking into solid flesh. The huge mako breached, then jumped. His yellow eyes caught the light and he seemed to be staring right at me.

  You should have gotten me earlier, buster. You had your chance . . .

  And then he thrashed away, belly up, in a wild and final death frenzy.

  I ran back down to the deck and climbed over onto the boarding platform. Lee pulled herself along the Whaler, and then I lifted her out. She was dripping and trembling with cold. The T-shirt was plastered against her chest, transparent in the deck lights.

  She stood up shakily. “Thanks, pal. There was either one big fish out there, or a small airplane crashed behind me.”

  “You guessed it, woman. A small plane. Shot it down just in time. Let’s get you dried off.”

  I started the gas stove while Lee toweled off. I made tea, strong, and added a healthy dollop of brandy in each mug. We sat in the little galley booth facing each other. She had pulled on a pair of jeans and my black Navy watch sweater. Her cheeks were flushed with cold and her eyes sparkled a deepwater blue. I had never seen her look prettier. That’s what a close call does to you. It’s the hallmark of a brush with death. It heightens your senses and sweeps the fog of drudgery from your eyes. And as much as I hated admitting it to myself, I loved it. In my happy, happy years of marriage, I had forgotten how much. But once you have walked the razor’s edge, once you have put everything on the line and the only thing between you and death is the squeeze of a trigger or the arch of a knife, you can never ever stop loving it. And in that moment I knew what the future held for me. I knew that I could never give it up again.

  “Feeling a little better?”

  She made a funny face. “Absolutely. Say, what’s in this
brandy, anyway?”

  “I think they call it alcohol.”

  “Hum . . . I think it might catch on. Be a big seller with ladies who almost get eaten by sharks.” She reached over with a small tanned hand and stroked my face. “Thanks, Dusky.”

  I winked at her. “Anytime, pal. But why don’t you tell me how you happened to be going for a swim at”—I checked my Rolex briefly—“three A.M.?”

  She forgot her close call and began to laugh. “Clumsiness, Captain. I hate to admit this, but you have been squiring around one of the all-time clumsy ladies. After our . . . after the last time we made love, I went out to get some air. I wanted to think, Dusky. So much has happened in the last month, I just wanted to be alone and sort it out. . . .”

  It was a subject we had been skirting for the last week or so. I knew it had been on her mind, and I suspected what her decision was. But the topic upset her. It took the color from her cheeks and averted her eyes. I didn’t want to hear it. Not now.

  “You were telling me how you happened to be in the water, woman.”

  “Oh! Well, when I was walking on the deck, I noticed that there was something on your grouper line. So I started reeling it in. It was some kind of pretty yellow-colored snapper, Dusky. A great big one. I got him to the surface, reached over, and wrapped the line in my hand—and the next thing I knew I was in the water!”

  She had had a close call, all right. The mako had come up and taken the fish at the surface. And she had gotten tangled in the line. Had the mako sounded, she would have drowned. And if I hadn’t had the assault rifle, she would have died an even nastier kind of death.

  “Do you think my scar would have been as pretty as yours, Dusky?” There was a gentleness in the way she flirted now. That almost tangible look of passion was gone, replaced by something that was even more valuable and desirable.

  “Everything about you is prettier than me, Lee. Everything.”

  She lifted my hand and kissed it gently. “Dusky, this last month has been so very, very fine. I can’t tell you how much . . .”