Got the Look

Got The Look

Chapter
1

The sun never shines beneath the Devil's Ear.

FBI Special Agent Andie Henning must have heard that warning a dozen times on her way to Ginnie Springs, Florida. The Devil's Ear was one of the more spectacular openings to the watery underworld of the north Florida aquifer, a dark and dangerous limestone labyrinth of interconnecting caves and caverns that discharged 7.7 billion gallons of crystal clear drinking water every day.

How much farther? Andie shouted over the roar of the single outboard engine. The boat was at full throttle, throwing a V-shaped wake against the inky black riverbanks. The Santa Fe was a relatively shallow river, better suited to canoes and kayaks than to large motorboats. Only an experienced driver could head downstream at this speed, especially in the dead of night. Somewhere in the darkness were egrets and alligators, but at midnight the forest slept. The tall cypress trees were mere silhouettes, their moss-clad limbs barely visible against the starlit sky. A thin blanket of fog stretched across the river, waist deep to those onboard. The speedboat cut through it like a laser on cotton candy. Andie zipped up her FBI jacket, staving off the wind chill.

About two more minutes, shouted the boat driver.

Andie checked her watch. She hoped they had two minutes.

The kidnapper's late-night call had confirmed the family's payment of a ransom, contrary to FBI advice. One million dollars in cash seemed like a lot of money to the average person, but it was hardly a hit to Drew Thornton, one of Ocala's richest horse breeders. The clipped phone message advised that Mrs. Thornton could be found beneath the Devil's Ear. It took only a minute to decipher what that meant. The sheriff's office deployed emergency/rescue divers immediately. Andie and two agents from the Jacksonville field office went with them. They were part of the FBI team assigned to the Thornton case, and Andie was the only negotiator staying on-site in Ocala throughout the three-week ordeal.

The engine went quiet, the anchor dropped overboard, and the boat came to a stop. Immediately, the team moved into position.

Bottoms up! shouted the rescue team leader.

Three scuba divers splashed into the river. With the flip of a switch, handheld dive lights turned the black water into a clear, glistening pool. The driver of the boat was Sheriff Buddy McClean, a bulky man in his fifties. He and a deputy remained onboard with Andie and the two FBI tech agents. The deputy controlled the lifeline, a long synthetic rope that tethered each diver to the boat. It was their road map back from the cave network. One of the techies helped feed a transmission wire as the divers descended with an underwater video camera. The other agent fiddled with the monitor, trying to bring up an image.

Hundreds of air bubbles boiled to the surface. The lights grew dim beneath the boat, and suddenly the river returned to black. It was as if someone had pulled the geologic plug, but the monitor screen glowing brightly in the darkness told a different story.

There it is, said Sheriff McClean. Devil's Ear.

Andie checked the monitor. The lights and underwater camera allowed her to see exactly what the divers saw. The team was inside the cavern, somewhere below the riverbed. Andie asked, How well do your divers know these caves, Sheriff?

All too well, said McClean. Since I first swam here as a teenager, there's been over three hundred scuba divers gone down in Florida's caves and never come up. Devil's Ear has claimed its fair share of unwilling souls. Pulled two out myself in my younger days.

What's the chances Mrs. Thornton's actually alive? asked the deputy.

Andie didn't answer right away. We've had cases where kidnap victims were buried alive and came out okay.

Yeah, but underwater?

Can't say that I've heard of it, she said. But there's a first time for everything.

There was silence onboard, as if they all feared that this was more likely to be the recovery of a body than the rescue of a victim. But that didn't mean they'd given up hope.

What if she is alive? thought Andie. Did that poor woman have any idea where she was? Somewhere beneath this black riverbed, beneath God only knew how many feet of sand and solid limestone, lay a living, breathing wife and mother. Perhaps she was trapped in some pressurized tank or capsule, a dark and silent cocoon, enough air for an hour or two. Or worse, maybe her kidnapper had turned her loose down there with nothing but a mask, tank, and regulator. Either way, she'd be in total darkness, unable to find - no, feel - her way out of this aquatic honeycomb. Perhaps she could hear or possibly even feel the strong currents rushing past her, cool springwater flowing as fast as a hundred cubic feet per second. She might decide to go with the flow, or try to fight it, no way of knowing which way was up. Jagged rocks could cut like knives. A sudden change in ceiling height could damage her breathing equipment or knock her unconscious. But not even in her most harrowing moment of panic could she even begin to imagine that some of these cave systems stretched as long as seventeen miles, that she could be carried hundreds or thousands of feet below the surface, that the average liter of drinking water drawn from Florida's aquifer percolated and circulated around and around for twenty years before reaching the surface.

Unconscious, thought Andie. Alive but unconscious. That was by far the best-case scenario.

Where are they now? asked Andie.

Sheriff McClean took a closer look at the screen. The divers had long since passed the point where it mattered if it was night or day. I'd say about two hundred feet into the cave.

How can you tell?

See that rock formation there, just ahead of them? he said as he pointed to the monitor. That thing that looks like a big, open whale's mouth is called the lips restriction. It's the first real narrowing you reach in the Devil System.

They're going through that? asked the tech agent.

Sure. Right now they're in the gallery, which is basically a big passageway that takes you from the entrance to the first breakdown. There's plenty to explore beyond those lips.

How deep are they? asked Andie.

Maybe fifty feet. Doesn't get much deeper than that in this part of the system. Which gives me a little hope that, you know

That Mrs. Thornton could be alive. He didn't have to say it.

On-screen, the lead diver passed through the lips, like Jonah swallowed by the whale. The videographer followed behind, his camera jerking back and forth as he made his way through the opening. The image steadied as the crew regrouped on the other side of the lips. Here, the camera didn't have to move up and down from top to bottom. One frame could cover the entire cave, sandy floor to limestone ceiling. The divers shifted their adjustable tanks from the usual position on their backs and brought them under their bellies so that the equipment wouldn't hit the rugged limestone formations overhead.

Slowly, the camera swept the cave, aided by the powerful dive lights. It reminded Andie of an ancient tomb, a flooded version of the Roman catacombs, though she tried not to dwell on that characterization. Not with a woman's life hanging in the balance.

What's that? she asked.

The camera focused on a long, smooth shaft protruding from the wall.

Looks like a bone, said the tech agent.

You think it could be -

No way, said the sheriff. That's been there for centuries, probably from a whale or maybe even a mastodon. All kinds of prehistoric relics down there. Used to be more, till all the jackass tourists came along and started hauling stuff away to make paperweights.

The camera shifted away and focused on the third diver. All lights were upon him. He was holding a glass vial in his gloved hand. He broke the vial, and a thin blue streak stretched across the screen.

That's a dye, said the sheriff. They're testing the current. It's not always easy to tell which way the water is circulating down there. Generally it flows up, like a chimney, but a lot depends on the amount of rainfall we've had lately, whether there's been any new cave-ins or sinkholes in the system. I've seen ponds drained so quickly that trees get yanked right off the banks, like the baby going out with the bathwater. It's tricky stuff down there. Even an experienced diver can get disoriented pretty easily.

Are you saying they're lost? asked Andie.

Not hardly, said the sheriff. With all those passageways, they're just trying to figure out where Mrs. Thornton might end up.

You mean if she's dead or if she's alive?

I mean if she's down there, he said, making no predictions.

On-screen, the wisp of blue dye faded away. The lead diver made a gesture, and the team did an about-face.

Are they going back? asked Andie.

Yeah, but not exactly the same way they came in. Looks like they're taking the lips bypass, which also connects to the gallery.

The divers followed a narrow corridor to a broader opening. Perhaps an expert could appreciate the different shades of Oligocene limestone, the mosaic of fossilized scallops and sea biscuits against the pale pitted stone, the variety of formations and surface textures that had developed over thirty million to sixty million years. But to Andie, watching a monitor, it was all starting to look the same. No wonder so many divers had taken their last breath while swimming around in circles, some never realizing that safety lay just a few feet around the next turn.

They're headed toward the grate, said the sheriff.

What's that? asked Andie.

There's a passage to the main tunnel that's blocked off by a steel grate. After losing a good two dozen divers down there, it seemed wise to bar it off and keep any more from going in.

So the dye is leading your dive team to the main tunnel, where all those people died?

Before the sheriff could answer, the on-screen image grabbed their attention. At first, it was little more than a blotch of color against the brownish green limestone. The form was too irregular, too twisted, to be human. Slowly, however, the camera zoomed in, and the parts became a whole.

Oh my God, said Andie, her words coming like a reflex.

It was a disturbing yet surreal sight. In these flowing crystal waters, the shoulder-length hair seemed to float so peacefully, like a sleeping mermaid's locks. The woman was unconscious, if alive, her twisted torso pressed against the steel grate by the sheer force of the aquifer's current. The right leg was caught in the bars that blocked off the entrance to the main tunnel, obviously broken, as it was bending at a severe angle below the knee. She was clothed, but the pants and shirt were torn, and the skin showed numerous scrapes and cuts. It reminded Andie of a drowning victim she'd seen pulled from the Columbia River in her native Washington State, the body having taken a beating as it flowed downstream.

That's Ashley Thornton, said McClean.

You sure? asked the tech agent.

Who else would it be? said Andie.

Below, the divers moved in quickly. The videographer continued to film while the others moved into rescue mode. The lead diver immediately began working on her leg, trying to free it from the bars, shooing away the little mustard-colored eels that swarmed around the body like underwater buzzards. The other diver removed his glove to check her pulse, then immediately applied an Air Buddy system to her mouth.

Andie said, That Air Buddy won't do much good if her lungs are full of water.

Gotta try, said McClean. Survival time can be greater in water this clear and cold.

It's still a matter of minutes, said Andie. Freshwater goes straight to the bloodstream. Her red blood cells are bursting as we speak. We're looking at hypoxia or heart attack, if we aren't already there.

More little eels arrived with each passing second, nipping at the divers now, as if testing to see if they, too, were for the taking. The second diver checked the woman's pulse once more. He looked straight at the camera and shook his head, which did not bode well. Her only hope was CPR, which meant bringing her to the surface immediately, though the divers themselves had to avoid the bends. The diver made a frantic gesture toward the lead diver, who was working feverishly to free the woman's leg from the bars. The videographer laid the camera on the cave floor and swam over to help.

The divers were off camera, but the stream of video continued. The crew onboard could see only the sandy floor and the victim's arm.

What is that? asked Andie as she pointed to the screen.

The others looked more closely. Something was wrapped around the victim's wrist. It was a bracelet, though not a piece of jewelry that a woman would wear. It looked more like the plastic identification bracelets worn by hospital patients.

Was Mrs. Thornton in the hospital before she was kidnapped? asked Andie.

Not that I know of, said the sheriff.

I think I see some lettering on it, said Andie.

The tech agent adjusted the contrast so that the bracelet was easier to examine. The writing came into focus.

Can you read that? said the sheriff.

Freeze it, said Andie.

The tech agent stilled the frame. Looks like two words, he said. I can probably make them a little bigger and clearer. He worked with it, and the first letter came into focus.