The Deep Six

by Striker, Randy

  Thank God I wasn’t really going to be looking for treasure.

  I took the coordinates of my destination and, just for the hell of it, pushed the memory-lock buttons and punched in the figures, and the red digital glow of the Loran C flashed an estimated time of arrival at me and, by the way, you’re .3 degree off course, buddy! You get hooked on electronics and, snakelike, they end up taking control of you.

  “Screw you,” I said out loud, grinning foolishly. “I want to be point-three degrees off course.”

  We lose a little something with every advancement, you know. We spend so much time crapping into flush toilets that we’ve forgotten that it’s possible to live without plumbing. We spend so much time in cars that we’ve lost the joy of walking. But the little losses can turn deadly at sea. What happens when the electronics go out, and you’ve forgotten—or never learned—to read the stars, or the smell of the wind?

  Odd, rambling thoughts at sea. In a boat. Alone. In a surge of independence, I poured myself a big mug of coffee, added a teaspoon of honey, then switched off all the electronics and climbed back up to the flybridge to take control.

  Sitting in the rolling darkness and the sweet sync of muffled engines, I checked the green glow of Rolex. Thirty more minutes? It didn’t matter.

  I would anchor near the same reef where Lee Johnson and I had encountered the huge mako. There were plenty of fish there. And lobster. In the morning I would treat myself to espresso. Then I’d slip over and spear a nice fish for breakfast.

  Grouper?

  Naw, a nice snapper. Mutton snapper and fry it in thin strips with lime.

  Wait a minute, MacMorgan! I caught myself. This was no vacation. This was going to be no two weeks of sun and fun, cold beer and fishing.

  You’ve had your rest, dammit!

  One strange little man is dead, and if it hadn’t been for the woman you’d be faceup in the city morgue right now. You’ve got a score to settle with one big ugly bastard named Ronstadz, and you’ve got to keep tabs on that boat from Castro’s commie nest just ninety miles to the south. And they’ve been having a tough time of it down there lately. Little bugs got to most of the sugarcane. And the fungus killed their precious tobacco crop. They’ve had whole neighborhoods fighting over windfall mangos. They’re poor and they’re godless and they’re desperate.

  And desperate people can be very, very deadly . . .

  The little chain of Marquesas Keys finally came into dim view. First the distant, pulsing haze of the far corona of channel markers north of Crawfish Key. Then the shadowed flats of Man Key and Ballast Key.

  Then the currented chop of Boca Grande Channel. More open water. Then a hint of gray outlines; the foggy grace of Gull Key and Mooney Harbor Key—and the encircling darkness of the Marquesas.

  I ran along West Channel until I picked up the red flash of Cosgrove Shoal light, then powered north, 350 degrees. It was a still night. Lightning flared somewhere over the Tortugas. Silence and steady pulse of engines. Distant awk-wawk of a roosting bird from the low mangrove islands.

  I studied the darkness around me for anchor lights and saw just one: faint, singular glow on the open sea. The sweeping green bleep-bleep of radar told me there were three others: one about four miles to the west-southwest; another to the west by northwest; another six miles out where the ocean had no bottom—the Cubans. I nosed Sniper safely wide of the three-foot shoal area, dropped the hook in about eleven feet of water near the reef, then shoved her astern, playing out plenty of scope. When I had eighty feet of line out, I stopped my sternway with a forward thrust, then trotted forward to snub her off.

  The engines ticked-ticked with heat from the long trip.

  The storm over the Tortugas had brought a coolness to the tropical autumn night, and swung the wind to the west. I went to the aft deck and checked the little Whaler I had tethered along behind. She was fine. It was still early: nine P.M. And there was work to do. With dividers, I transferred the grid of the radar screen to my chart. Then, as closely as I could, I made little penciled crosses where my four neighbors were anchored. It was exacting work, and my eyes hurt by the time I was finished.

  It was beer time.

  Time to relax.

  I got the 4/0 Penn reel on its stubby boat rod, baited it with a catfish tail, and secured it in the holder. It was all of five minutes before I got my first strike: a sizzling run of fifty yards capped by a spectacular jump. There was phosphorescence in the water, and the fish splashed back down in a spray of green fire.

  Tarpon. A late school of big ones.

  They would help me wait . . .

  13

  I spent a long morning playing treasure hunter. It’s work: hard, boring, and hot. But I knew that mine wasn’t the only boat out there with radar, and someone could very easily be monitoring my activities.

  I was supposed to be hunting for treasure.

  So I played the game.

  The “magnetometer” D. Harold Westervelt had requisitioned for me was cone-shaped, had a bright new coat of yellow paint over the original drab military green, and weighed a compact fifty pounds. It was built to home in on any underwater electronic devices within a hundred-yard radius. With it was a hand-sized beeper that would signal me of a find. Easy enough. The other treasure hunters would be towing real magnetometers—underwater metal detectors on which all the hopes and dreams of their owners were pegged. They were hunting gold and silver.

  I was hunting one or more of them.

  Hand over hand, I played out about fifty yards of woven nylon line as the Sniper idled north across the sand flats. The Marquesas were cool green shapes to starboard, and the magnetometer dipped and dove astern on its line, then finally stayed down, running about three feet beneath the water, throwing its own wake. I watched closely to make sure it would not foul on the little Whaler, then went forward and gunned the engines up to 800 rpm. I had no theodolite operator on a tower to keep me on perfect course, so used the only thing I had—-the Loran C in sync with the Benmar autopilot. If you run even a few points off course for more than a minute you can miss a chunk of sea bottom big enough to hold the base of the Empire State Building. And that’s why I had never been interested in treasure hunting. Sure, it sounds romantic. But the chances of finding the minuscule bit of bottom which holds treasure even in a relatively small area—not to mention the whole damn sea—is so unlikely as to be ridiculous. Still, a few had done it. One or two by sheer luck. The rest by dedicating their lives.

  I grabbed my aviator polaroids and the Bushnell zoom scope, put a bottle of beer in a cooler cup, then went up to the flybridge.

  Run north three miles. Square it off. Run back three miles. Square it off and reset course. Up three miles, back three miles.

  Boring, boring, boring . . .

  Through the scope, I could see the Cuban shrimp boat plainly. Tiny black script on the stern, but I couldn’t decipher the words.

  They had come into the relative shallows off Marquesas Rock to anchor for the day. It was a great white vessel, outriggers folded like pterodactyl wings, with an upswept bow. It sat on the flat shimmer of sea caught in its own stillness.

  Nothing stirred aboard.

  Not unusual for a shrimp boat, really. Shrimpers work at night and sleep during the day. But they sure as hell weren’t dragging in three-hundred feet of water. So what were they doing?

  I’d give it a day, maybe, then work my way closer to them. Nothing obvious. Just a gold-hungry treasure hunter a little off course.

  I sat on the flybridge amid the steady hum of engines, thinking. I thought about Gifford Remus and the conversation I’d had with him.

  Strange little guy with his tale of ghosts and spirits. What had he said?

  Hurricane. September 1622. The Gaspar foundered this way and struck the reef, then broke apart. “Ain’t no real secret what reef they hit, Dusky, and folks has been lookin’ for that treasure for 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! It’s all right out—”

  I swore at myself for not allowing him to finish.

  It’s all right out where, Gifford?

  Where?

  If I knew where, I might know who had been responsible for his disappearance. Because if they had made him talk, they sure as hell would be working the area in which he had found the gold chain and the coins with the strange pine-tar coating.

  Jason Boone wasn’t looking for the Gaspar. But he was looking for the two fleet tenders which had gone down in the hurricane with it. He said they would be archaeologically significant. But because he had researched the fleet tenders, he also knew a great deal about the Gaspar.

  “Six hundred million dollars’ worth of gold and silver has brought a lot of very serious treasure hunters to the Marquesas,” he had told me the morning before. “Add to that a few hundred million more from some of the other Spanish ships that went down there, and you can understand why people have been combing the area for treasure for more than three hundred years.

  “The Spaniards were the first, Dusky. They didn’t just write off the Gaspar as a complete loss. They sent a salvage team up from Cuba almost immediately. They had rustic diving bells, but even with those they couldn’t retrieve much of it. Then the English came, the French, too—but no luck. After World War II, when scuba was finally perfected, the search continued. Divers found other wrecks, some treasure—even some of the brass cannon from the Gaspar. But no one could find the main lode. It’s one of the great treasure-hunting mysteries of all time.”

  “Why a mystery?”

  “Well, it’s not, really. The reason no one has found it is pretty obvious. As you probably know, that area off the Marquesas is called the Quicksands for good reason. It’s like an underwater desert: the currents are strong and the sand is continually shifting. By now the Gaspar and its treasure are buried in between twenty to thirty feet of sand. But someday, as the magnetometers improve and the dredging equipment gets better, someone will find it. And that person will immediately become one of the richest men on earth.”

  “But you’re not interested?”

  He had smiled wryly. “Hey, I’m only human. I’m the founder of an organization called Christ’s Children of America, and with that much money we could . . . well, do some very good work. But I’m not a treasure hunter at heart. I’m an archaeologist.”

  I was jolted from my daydreaming by a hysterical whine from the magnetometer’s beeper. I looked up, surprised—only about two miles off the low mangrove islands. I had my doubts about finding any underwater electronic devices—but this far from the Cuban shrimp boat?

  I backed down both throttles immediately and scampered down the ladder to the deck. I threw over one bright-orange marker immediately, then, at dead slow, I circled back over the area, listening as the beeper got progressively louder. When it seemed as if my ears would burst, I tossed out another marker, switched the beeper off, and dropped anchor.

  I was in about thirteen feet of water. Visibility didn’t look good. It was milky turquoise in color, roiled by the tide. I thought about giving Stormin’ Norman a call via the Key West marine operator, then realized just how silly that would be. VHF is the biggest party line on earth. Everybody listens.

  I got my mask, fins, and snorkel out of the locker, then slipped over the side. There were a few sea fans on the bottom. A spider crab. A barracuda—about a three-footer—came in close to get a look at me.

  Nothing else.

  I surfaced, grabbed another bite of air, then swam underwater around the perimeter of the boat, along the bottom. And noticed something. Odd shapes beneath the sand. Too orderly. I climbed back up into the boat and got some equipment ready.

  I carried a fresh bottle of air from the cabin—one of the big yellow Dacors—and slid enough lead onto my weight belt to hold me solidly on the bottom. And then I got the little folding shovel—ridiculously slow, but it was all I had.

  Just as I was about to pull the back harness on, my VHF radio started squawking at me. “This is the motor vessel Superior calling the motor vessel Sniper . . . Superior calling the motor vessel Sniper . . .”

  It was Wayne Peters calling me from Jason Boone’s chartered boat.

  “Hey, Dusky, I’ve been trying to get ahold of you all day.”

  “Been busy, Wayne. What’s up?”

  “Jason wants me to invite you to dinner tonight. Having a little beach party over on Fullmoon Cay.” He laughed through a crackle of static. “And would you mind bringing a couple of extra beers for me? Kind of a dry trip with this group, if you know what I mean.”

  “No problem. Relief will be there around . . . sunset?”

  “Perfect. Hope you’re hungry. This is the Superior, clear.”

  I gave my call letters and signed off.

  So, no beer on the Boone expedition. Taut ship. I smiled. I put a couple on ice for the blond wrestler from Iowa.

  After checking my regulator, I pulled on tank, mask, fins, and weight belt and rolled off into the water. If you’ve ever tried to dig a hole underwater you know how tough it is. I sat on the sand bottom, legs spread wide, digging around one of the many oblong shapes. It took a while. A long while. But finally I hit something. Metal. Rust-colored, corroded. What kind of electronic device was this? It certainly wasn’t new to the neighborhood. I cleared more of the sand away with my hands.

  And then I stopped. Frozen. How could I have been so damn stupid?

  Torpedo.

  A whole line of them. And still live, apparently. I lifted the shovel carefully away. The bastards could go off at any time. Probably leftovers from some World War II practice session. They just took off and left them. Back in the forties, the Marquesas was the middle of nowhere. Who could they hurt?

  Me, that’s who. And any other fisherman, sport diver, or boater who just happened by at the wrong time.

  Carefully, I pulled the quick-release buckle of my weight belt, inflated my lungs, and let the tide carry me slowly away to what I hoped would be safety. But it didn’t.

  The water deepened into the quick current of a tidal trough, like an underwater riverbed. More strange shapes beneath the sand, and exposed metal. Twisted hulk of a target vessel. Crater of a recent explosion. Rusted globes of metal half covered by sand. Not ornaments, these. I recognized them from my UDT training in Coronado. Old magnetic explosives.

  I had stumbled onto a whole damn minefield.

  And I had too much steel strapped to me to let myself get any closer. With smooth thrusts of fins, I nosed back into the tide, surfacing slowly. I came up by the first orange marker I had dropped and swam back to Sniper.

  I’d leave the markers and report what I had found when I got back.

  It was about time the Navy did something about it.

  Fullmoon Cay is a sweep of white beach back-dropped by coconut palms and black mangroves with a circular saltwater marsh in the middle. It’s a small island thick with prickly pear and bayonet plants and, in the summer, bugs.

  But now, in late October, it was the little coral-water paradise you see in the picture postcards. A good place to use your charge card and escape to. A good place for lovers to walk hand in hand on the beach and dance in moonlight.

  Only there were no hotels on Fullmoon Cay. Or airports. Or roads. No place to use the charge card. It was small and deserted, not even shown on most charts. And I could see why Jason Boone had selected it as base camp. For his fresh-faced kids from Iowa, it had to seem like paradise.

  Their tents lined the beach in a bright multicolor row of nylon; umbrella and geometric shapes in reds and greens and yellows against the white of the sand. There was a huge campfire throwing flames toward the steel-blue sunset sky, and a dozen or so young men and women waved at me as I nosed Sniper through the shallows off the beach and dropped anchor. They wore swimsuits. And smiles. They were playing touch football in the sand.

  Wayne came up and shook my hand as I
waded in. With his shirt off, you could see what kind of wrestler he must have been. His stomach was plated with muscle, his forearms looked like small thighs, and his shoulders were almost as wide as mine—and he was an inch or two shorter than I.

  “They must raise kids right back in Davenport,” I said.

  He winked at me—that big, funny wink. “It’s all that corn they feed us. Hey, Jason’s up by the fire. Wait till you see what we’re having for supper.”

  I followed him past the others. They’d gone back to their laughing-splashing game. About half of them were girls. It was hard not to notice. Four blonds and two redheads, all dressed in flower-colored nylon swimsuits. They looked like alternate Miss Americas on vacation. I watched one of the redheads do a quick down-and-out pattern, her breasts bouncing hypnotically. The pass was wide and low. She made an amazing diving catch, jumped up, and spiked the ball, grinning triumphantly. The others applauded, pounding her on the back.

  Wayne noticed me watching. “Nice scenery, huh?”

  “I think I’m becoming a football fan.”

  “And there are five more just as pretty back in Key West. Not enough room.”

  “Wayne, I’m not one of those snobs about physical appearance, but I just can’t help noticing that there’s not an unattractive person here—male or female. Where’d Jason come up with this group?”

  He shrugged. “Lot of the Born Agains seem to come from upper-class families. Things too easy for ’em, I guess. They get restless and turn to God. Have you ever noticed that there aren’t very many ugly rich kids?”

  “Never thought about it, but I guess you’re right.”