Backwater Tide

by Steven Becker

  Just as I had undressed, I heard a knock on the door—a very unusual occurrence out here. Hoping it wasn’t a boater looking for help, I pulled my shorts back on and went to answer it.

  Zero barged in ahead of Ray. With his nails slipping and scraping on the tile floor, he did a thorough search of the house for Justine and Allie. When he turned up neither, he collapsed onto the floor by the couch, panting heavily. I left him to his loneliness and turned to Ray.

  “What’s up?” I asked, wondering why he was here, though I had my suspicions. It was after nine; not late by many standards, but he was a crack-of-dawn kind of guy. This was past his bedtime. Several loud snores from Zero indicated that he felt the same way.

  “Any luck with the Gross case?” he asked.

  “Hold on.” I usually set the thermostat in the eighties, but after being outside in the humid air the air-conditioning was sending a chill through me. I went back to the bedroom and grabbed my shirt and my beer. Without having to ask if he wanted one, I went to the refrigerator and took out another, opened it, and handed it to Ray.

  “Found one of his backers dead this morning.” Everything I was about to tell him had probably been on the evening news. There was no harm, and I thought stating the facts out loud might sort things out for me. I went through the events that had taken place since the other night, when I had seen him aboard the Reale. The only thing I left out was the revelation about Gross’s finances.

  “Those state bureaucrats are as bad as the feds.”

  I agreed and we drank and commiserated for a few minutes, knowing first-hand how bad it could get after working for Martinez. As we talked, I loosened up a little. Having Ray as an ally was important. Aside from being my only neighbor, he was a good guy and trustworthy, though I had to include “generally” to that assessment after seeing him skulking around the boat the other night.

  “What do you have going on tomorrow?” I asked. Unlike myself, as long as the out islands were running right and there were no complaints from the rangers that ran the campgrounds on Boca Chita and Elliot Keys, Ray was free to do what he wanted. I thought it would be a no-brainer that he would want to go with Mac and I.

  “Got a small list, but nothing urgent.”

  “Mac Travis, a salvage guy from down in the Keys, is coming up in the morning. We were planning on trying to recreate Gross’s last day—interested?”

  His eyes lit up. Even his love for fishing was diminished by any mention of treasure. “You bet. I remember you talking about that guy.”

  “Solid as they come. Doesn’t say much, though.”

  “That’ll make for a quiet day with the three of us. How’re you planning on figuring out where he was at?”

  “Okay, before we go any further, I have to tell you when I saw you aboard Gross’s boat the other night I thought you were checking out his GPS.” It felt good to get it out in the open.

  He shrugged. It was an off-hand admission of guilt. He knew that I knew, and that was good enough.

  “I could show you a few tricks with the GPS, but someone took it off the boat.”

  I went back to my bedroom to retrieve it. “I couldn’t find anything on it near the location I found the boat.”

  “You good if we go down and hook it back up? There’s an interface with the depth finder that might tell us something.”

  Marine electronics were still new to me. I knew enough to know that my Park Service bay boat was minimally equipped. The chart plotter with its built-in depth finder was all I needed to navigate the bay. The VHF radio became easy once I learned the correct stations for different types of communication. Though what I had was satisfactory, I remembered getting boat envy when I’d seen the cluttered dashboard of Johnny Wells’s forty-foot Interceptor with its radar and other equipment.

  I grabbed two fresh beers and with the GPS under my arm, we went downstairs. Zero cracked an eyelid when he heard the door, but decided to stay in the air-conditioned house. At the dock, we boarded Gross’s boat, reattached the unit to its mount, and reconnected the transducer and power cable. Unlike the chart plotter on my boat, Gross had separate instruments for each function.

  While the unit started up, Ray went to the depth finder and turned the power on. It had a much larger screen than any that I had seen before and as he scrolled through the settings, I saw several different views. He continued to work through the unit until he found what he wanted.

  “This shows the bottom track from his last day, starting at six a.m.”

  “How’s that going to help?”

  He explained to me how the scrolling display was time-stamped. As we moved quickly through the readings, the bottom appeared generally flat for several minutes before I saw a series of single spikes and a bulge.

  “Doesn’t look like a wreck.” I stared at the lines.

  “Anything out of the normal is something.” Ray stopped the display and pressed his finger on the screen at the mid-point of the anomaly. “There you go,” he said, pointing to the top right corner of the display, where the coordinates of the spot were displayed.

  Twenty

  Ray was in full Martinez-avoidance mode when I met him at the dock the next morning. It was probably better that I went alone to pick up Mac anyway. He had texted a half hour before, when he’d left Marathon and, wanting to avoid the cameras at headquarters, we agreed to meet at the fuel dock across the way. I timed my trip to meet him and left the dock at Adams Key about an hour later.

  It looked as if it would be another stellar day on the bay. Once the season turned at the end of September, it knocked a few degrees off the day-time highs and the mornings were noticeably cooler. Unless something was brewing in the tropics, the wind was generally less than during the more turbulent spring.

  With the sun at my back, I cruised over the small ripples on the surface, which the deep V on the hull easily parted, rearranged, and spread into the long wake streaming behind the boat. It was too early to see the shades of the water, or rather the bottom through the clear water, but I had a smile on my face and was over my melancholy from last night.

  Cases tended to hit dry patches, and the last few days had been Sahara dry. I didn’t have much, but at least finding the trail from Gross’s depth finder gave us a new direction.

  Justine and I had talked before I went to bed last night. I’d told her about the anomaly on the depth finder and my plan to check it out with Mac this morning. I knew she wanted to go, too, but changed the subject to the fundraiser this afternoon. She was frustrated by the evidence collected from Gross’s garage and office and thought the event might be a good opportunity to snag some DNA or fingerprints. It would have to be cleared through her supervisor, but collecting prints and samples was case-related and she didn’t expect any problems.

  I pulled up to the gas dock at Bayfront Park a few minutes before seven. Not sure how far we were going to run today, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to top off the tank. Mac and I had also decided it was better to meet here. The ten-dollar parking fee was well worth being able to stay clear of Martinez’s surveillance cameras.

  Looking down the seawall, I watched the flow of traffic going in and out of the ramp. There were about half as many boats coming in after catching bait or spending the night fishing the reef as those heading out. The boats and trailers moved in and out of the water like clockwork. This wouldn’t be the case in a few hours, when the amateurs descended on the park.

  I heard the sound of a supercharged diesel before I saw the light blue vehicle pull up. The heavyweight predecessor to what we call an SUV looked to be rebuilt. The newer clear-coat embellished the old rust-streaked surface and when he pulled around I saw the barn-style back door in place of a tailgate.

  A minute after finding a parking space, Mac climbed down from the lifted chassis set up on 35-inch mud tires. The boat was still taking fuel, so I waved my free hand in his direction. He went to the back of the truck and pulled out a large duffle and came toward me.

  “Hey, nic
e ride.”

  “Belongs to a buddy of mine, Jesse McDermitt. He calls it the Beast.”

  That about fit. The overflow from the gas tank started to gurgle and I carefully released the handle, tapping the nozzle on the lip of the inlet and handing it up to the waiting attendant. While he totaled up the charge, I took Mac’s bag and set it in the bow, just forward of the cooler in front of the console.

  He climbed down and we shook hands without the fashionable man-hug. After seeing Martinez trying to pull that off at a press conference, I thought a handshake alone would suffice. The attendant handed me a clipboard. After signing the receipt, I handed it back and started the engine. Mac dropped the lines, tossed them back onto the dock, and pushed us off the seawall.

  I have never been to war, but I’ve been in some bad situations. One of those had been with Mac down in the Keys. Going through a life-or-death experience with someone creates a unique bond. We hadn’t said two complete sentences, but I felt totally at ease with him as we coasted over the waves on the way back to Adams Key.

  Ray was waiting for us and helped with the lines. Mac and I climbed onto the dock and I introduced him to Zero first, who pushed his fifty-pound bowling ball-shaped body between us, and then to Ray.

  “What d’ya got?” Mac asked.

  He said that the same way that John Wayne had once said We’re burning daylight. He walked down the dock to Gross’s boat and hopped aboard without waiting for an answer. A minute later, a cloud of black smoke drifted above the stern when the engines started.

  He stayed at the helm for a few minutes then leaned outboard from the open window. “Any reason we can’t take this?”

  I hadn’t thought about using Gross’s boat. It was a crime scene, but Justine had already processed it. Sitting here at the dock, it was subject to the same weather conditions as it would be out on the water, and it was certainly the better craft for what we had planned. Finally, I decided there was no harm, though Martinez might have a problem when he got in the office and checked the camera mounted on the pole above the security light. I was in all-out passive-aggressive mode anyway after he hadn’t helped track DeWitt, so I pulled my bag out of the console and carried it over to the larger boat.

  We loaded our gear. While Ray checked and secured the tanks, I showed Mac what we had found on the depth finder last night. He played with the GPS for a minute and confirmed there was no track recorded from Gross’s last trip. The couple of waypoints from Morehead’s computer and the anomaly on the depth finder were all we had. I wondered if there was a match, but that would be too easy. I pulled my phone out and opened the picture I had taken of Morehead’s spreadsheet. They were three separate spots.

  Once we were underway, I was glad we had taken the larger boat. Three men on the twenty-two footer, with all our tanks and diving gear, would have been a tight fit. I let Ray run the boat while Mac and I moved two folding deck chairs out back and caught up on our lives. Once we were clear of the shallow bank to the north of Caesar Creek, Ray accelerated and it turned into mostly nodding and not a lot of talking; not that I would expect more than that from the two of us anyway.

  At twenty knots, the boat seemed to find her sea legs. The engine noise went down and the ride leveled out. Elliot Key, then Sands and Boca Chita passed by on the port side. We were soon in open water, and Ray turned seaward of Stiltsville, setting a course for the coordinates. Avoiding the ramshackle water-bound neighborhood was always a good thing. The fate of Stiltsville was one of the few things that Martinez and I agreed on, both hoping a storm or legislative act would eventually erase it from the water. For him it was a maintenance nightmare; for me the seven remaining buildings were only trouble.

  After listening to the engines run for another few minutes, I could feel the rpms drop and the hull settle in the water. Mac and I rose and went to the helm. It was crowded with three heads around the electronics and I backed away, letting the two more experienced men handle things.

  “I’ll go forward and take care of the anchor,” I said, stepping up to the raised deck that covered the interior cabin. Using the rail to guide myself, I reached the bow and unclipped the safety lanyard with the replacement rode and anchor that Ray had installed. Unlike my boat, where manpower was required to set and retrieve the anchor, the Reale had a windlass that did the work for you.

  I could feel the boat turn into the wind and then start to circle, slowly closing the diameter with each turn. Finally, the engines reversed and Ray called out to drop anchor. I stepped back and watched as the chain slid through the guide. He seemed to sense when the free fall stopped and the anchor hit bottom, then backed down, further allowing the movement of the boat to pull out another hundred feet of line. When he stopped the boat started to swing and with the waves now coming directly toward the bow, I knew we were hooked and tied off the line.

  Ray cut the engines and we stood around the electronics, staring at the clutter on the screen. It looked identical to what we had seen last night.

  “Let’s go see what we’ve got,” Mac said, making a move for the deck.

  Within minutes we were geared up. One at a time we took a giant stride off the dive platform and entered the water. Mac and Ray were much more experienced than I. They quickly spun and with their heads to the depths started toward the anchor line. I followed, clearing my ears every few feet. The current was strong and I soon saw both men adjust their trajectory a few degrees and head directly to the bottom. Once we cleared thirty feet, the current lessened and I could see several dark shapes starting to form below me.

  My first instinct was to swim directly for whatever was down there, but with no one on the boat, it was prudent to check the anchor. Passing by the dark spot, we were soon grouped around the anchor and each gave the okay signal.

  The surface current had worked in our favor and the anchor was deeply embedded in the sandy bottom. Mac was the first to move away, with Ray and I following. With the amount of scope Ray had let out, we had to cross about a hundred feet of desert, but halfway there I could see something start to rise above the sea floor.

  I’d dove on several wrecks before and knew better than to have set expectations, especially when the origin was unknown. Even then, it was a surprise to see a smokestack projecting from the bottom with clusters of fish around it. I saw Ray turn and eye the large school of yellowtail, and I knew he was filing the location away in his mind for a future trip.

  From its dimensions, it looked like what we had seen on the depth finder. A vague outline of a ship lay below us—not an intact wreck, but iron and steel fittings left over from a wooden ship, and one more modern than I had expected. We approached from the stern. Following Mac, we started around the wreck. I estimated it at a little over a hundred and fifty feet long. The wooden supports and sheathing had long decayed or been eaten by worms, leaving a trail of metal components. The railing that had once circumnavigated the ship lay in sections, giving the wreck its shape.

  With Gross’s name attached, I had expected a long-lost Spanish galleon. If that had been the case we would have been looking at little more than a pile of ballast stones and maybe some artillery. In these waters the wood-seeking Teredo worm needed only a fraction of the four or five centuries since the ship had sunk to consume the hull.

  Several iron or steel masts lay askew on the seafloor. I swam over to one and studied it, then moved toward the interior of the wreck. What was left was well-entrenched in the sand and it would take some research to figure out which vessel it had been, but it was clear what it wasn’t. In hindsight, I wished we had brought a camera to help document it and determine its origin.

  After circling the wreck, we moved over the interior sections. Because it lay flat on the sandy bottom it was no wonder the depth finder had only shown the stack.

  My dive computer beeped when we fell to seventy feet, past the dive profile that I had created. It also showed we had been down for thirty minutes. With only a thousand PSI left in my tank, I ascended to fifty fe
et, hoping the shallower depth would help with my air consumption and extend the dive.

  Mac moved toward a large piece of metal that projected a few feet from the bottom. Circling overhead, I guessed from its shape that it had been the boiler. Ray finned to a large square feature that was elevated above the seafloor. It had probably been the frame for a long gone wooden hatch. He started searching around that area.

  Another look at my air gauge showed I was down to 500 PSI. I assumed, being more experienced, that Ray and Mac would have more air, and not wanting to be that guy and cut the dive short, I shot some air in my BC and rose another ten feet above the bottom. I slowly circled the wreck, trying to use as little energy as possible while committing the features to memory.

  The upper half of Ray’s body had disappeared into the frame, leaving only his legs and a bubble trail to show where he was. Mac continued to move around the wreck, stopping every so often to examine something. Despite my attempts to conserve air, the needle was pegged deep in the red and I released a brass clip from my BC. Just as I reached behind me to smack the aluminum tank and get their attention, I saw Ray pull his body back and start toward the surface. He clearly held something in his hand.

  Twenty-One

  “Looks like a munition,” Mac said.

  We were gathered around the cylindrical object that Ray had brought up. The air compressor purred quietly in the background, refilling the tanks; another perk of using Gross’s boat. After removing our gear, I had used my phone to do an image search for the kind of ship it might be. “Looks like around the Civil War.” I passed the phone to Mac, who nodded and handed it to Ray.

  “I’d agree. Iron or steel stack and boiler, same for the masts, would indicate its vintage.”

  “It’s certainly not a Spanish galleon,” Ray said. The disappointment was evident in his voice.