In Too Deep (7 page)

“
D
o you know La Garganta del Diablo?” Wayo said.

“The Devil’s Throat? As in the dive site off Punta Sur?” I nodded, feeling the warmth of excitement begin to build deep inside me but not quite ready to embrace it. Basically a narrow coral shaft starting at 100 feet deep and going all the way down to 130, the Devil’s Throat is one of the most famous dives in the world, ranking up there with the Blue Hole in Belize and Bloody Bay Wall in the Caymans. It’s deep, technical, and dangerous.

Alvarez came around to my side of the table, suddenly more animated than I’d ever seen him. His fingers were shaking like he’d overdosed on caffeine. He shuffled through the photocopied pages until he came up with the right one.

“Here’s what de la Torre wrote: ‘The
Vida Preciosa
, under full sail ten days due north, approached the land of swallows during a storm. Looking for shelter, she dropped anchor on the leeward side, where—’”

“Where the waters were calm,” Katy said. “We know that already.”

I glared at her. “But that’s as far as we got. Unfortunately.”

Alvarez continued, “‘Three days later,
VP
set sail for the mainland, her holds lighter of cargo the captain is sure to retrieve under more agreeable conditions.’”

“But they never came back to get it, did they?” I felt giddy. “Whatever it was. De la Torre never left Spain again.”

“I know what you’re thinking. The Devil’s Throat doesn’t even start until a hundred feet. There’s no way they could have gotten the cargo down that far. To say nothing of gear, fins, masks—”

“Not necessarily,” I said. “Leonardo da Vinci had a design for scuba gear in 1500. It was supposed to be something like a leather bag over the diver’s head, connected to a cane tube to replenish the air.”

Silence. I swear I could hear the waves lapping at the shore two blocks away.

“I’m a dork, I know.” More silence. “Anyway, he never did anything with it because he decided to concentrate on the diving bell.”

“What’s a diving bell?” Josh said, and I felt a little better. If he wanted to know, maybe I wasn’t such a dork after all.

Mr. Alvarez jumped in. “Like an upside-down jar that traps the air so divers can breathe. If you build a big-enough one, you can fit a couple of people inside—”

“Alexander the Great got down to about eighty feet in one,” I said. “And that was around 300
BC
.”

Alvarez instantly morphed back into a high school teacher again. “Even Aristotle wrote about divers going a hundred feet deep to collect sea sponges.”

Nate laughed. “Looks like dork is contagious.”

“Okay, so it was possible to go down that deep,” I said.

“Right.” Alvarez went back to the journal. “This comes much later, after a reference to that other entry: ‘A narrow shaft leading to a fissure accessible by only the slightest of men reveals a hidden compartment. In this compartment the key was concealed, its location revealed by the Southern Cross.’”

“The constellation?” I said. “Can you even see the Southern Cross from Mexico?”

Alvarez shook his head impatiently. He searched the pile for another paper and pointed to a crude drawing of what looked to be a cross attached to an uneven rock wall. “Here’s a sketch, from the same diary.”

I could feel my pulse in my temples.

He continued, “The
Vida Preciosa
never traveled remotely close to a latitude where the Southern Cross constellation would have been visible. This cross has got to be in that compartment, off Punta Sur.”

“Punta Sur,” I said. “Southern Point. You’re saying—”

“At that point, Cortés was losing power, facing upheaval in Mexico City, under investigation for not paying his fair share back to the Spanish crown. Not to mention he’d been accused of murdering his wife. He had a lot going on. He needed to fund the expansion of his army, and the Jaguar was worth enough, but there were too many people who knew about it. He had to hide it somewhere for safekeeping.”

“So why not come back to familiar territory, right?” I said. “The first place he landed in Mexico.”

“But there was too much scrutiny for him to ever retrieve the Jaguar. Mexico was in a state of near anarchy, and Cortés returned to Spain in 1541 to restore his reputation. To his great shock, the king refused to see him, and Cortés died before ever setting foot in Mexico again.”

“Many people search in vain for El Jaguar Dorado,” Wayo said. “For hundreds of years.”

“The Golden Jaguar is at the bottom of the Devil’s Throat?” I said.

“Probably not the Jaguar itself, no,” Alvarez admitted. “But a clue. Maybe
the
clue.”

My head was spinning so fast I could hardly see the documents in front of me. Only moments before, I was about to get busted for drinking on my community service spring break trip. A community service trip that was a farce, engineered so my teacher could go fishing with an old friend. But now it turned out that there was more to the trip after all. Much more. And Alvarez needed me to make it happen. Whatever Plan A had been, I was Plan B.

“Want to go for a dive?” Alvarez patted the table and leaned back.

“Yes, please.”

I felt the strangest sense of calm wash over me, a feeling as invigorating as it was unexpected. It didn’t matter what had happened up to this point. I was here. With treasure nearby. Not some rumor I’d read in a book, but real treasure. And I was here because of who I was,
really
. Everything in my life had been leading me toward this moment, and Mr. Alvarez had recognized it and had chosen me, and I felt—I hate to say—special.

“You like a small wetsuit or medium?” Wayo said, and it was only then that I noticed the two piles of gear he was assembling by the door.

“What, now? At
night
?”

Alvarez said, “If we do it during the day, we may run into someone else—other divers, like those idiots at the airport who just
have
to hit the Devil’s Throat before downing a six-pack of Coronas underneath the beachside
palapa
.”

“You can no touch the coral,” Wayo explained, holding up a bright yellow wristband. “The Parque Nacional is protected by the government.”

“We can’t risk being seen and reported,” Alvarez said.

“Tonight, though?” I would have preferred a practice dive first, during the day, so I could get a sense of the current, or the feel of the cavern itself, especially if I was going to be using unfamiliar equipment.

“There’s no moon, the seas are calm. Conditions will never be better,” Alvarez said. And then a little more forcefully, “It has to be tonight.”

“How do you know it’s still there,” I said, “whatever it is?”

“I don’t. Not for sure, at least. But the only people who know about it”—Alvarez pointed to the research—“are in this room.”

I shook my head. “Unless someone else came to the same conclusion as you did.”

“My god,” Katy said. “Little Miss Rain Cloud over here. How about some optimism?”

I tried to ignore her. “Isn’t that dive spot hard enough to find in the daytime?”

Wayo shook his head. “Right after the fishing tournament today, I attach a…how do you say…glow stick? A glow stick at the bottom, fifty meters south of the entrance to La Garganta.”

I took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “The Devil’s Throat at night,” I said, this time to myself. “I don’t know.”

“Just think what you and your family could do with the money,” Alvarez said.

“Don’t bring my parents into this.” I had to defend our honor, and I think I actually pulled off the indignation pretty well, but the truth was that I’d already begun to think about the money.

“The way your dad talks about you in the teacher’s lounge, I would have thought you’d go crazy for this chance.” Mr. Alvarez crossed his arms, disappointed. “I guess I was wrong.”

“It’s not safe,” I said, choosing to ignore for the moment the fact that my dad talked about me in the teacher’s lounge. “It sounds hurried and poorly planned, and—”

“I’ll do it,” Katy said.

Alvarez whipped his head around. “What?”

“I’ll do it. You need another diver, someone who can fit through the opening—who better than a circus freak?”

“She
can
touch her toes to the back of her neck,” Nate said.

Alvarez squinted at her. “You really think you can handle the dive?”

“I’m certified,” Katy said. “We did that resort course in the Bahamas. Nate, remember? On the cruise?”

Things were getting out of hand. Never mind that a resort course doesn’t actually give an open-water certification, I wouldn’t trust a resort course graduate on a routine daylight dive, and this was hardly a routine dive, no matter how you sliced it. Even if she were sober, she’d have to conserve her air while controlling her buoyancy with pinpoint accuracy; otherwise she’d bounce off the walls or get her hoses caught on the coral.

Josh stared at me. Everyone else was looking at Katy, even Alvarez, who seemed to nod slightly as though trying to talk himself into it. But Josh had his eyes—those ridiculous green eyes—on me.

“Katy,” I said.

“I can do it,” she said. “Besides, Wayo will be right there in case anything goes wrong.”

“She can’t dive,” I pleaded. “She’s—”

Katy narrowed her eyes and shook her head almost imperceptibly. The message was clear.

I was trapped. Alcohol puts even an expert diver at a higher risk for nitrogen narcosis, decompression sickness, or just plain doing something stupid. But I couldn’t spill the beans about the margarita adventure, or Katy would kill me with her bare hands.

Alvarez stood and paced in front of her, scratching the nape of his neck and frowning. “You’re small enough to fit.”

“I’m going,” I said.

Katy started to protest. “But—”

“Just stop. You got certified on a cruise ship.”

“You don’t have to do it, Annie.” The concern in Josh’s eyes was genuine, and surprising, and I wanted to kiss him for it, even though those same eyes were part of the reason I found myself in that position.

“Katy’s going to kill herself if I don’t.”

“You’re sure?”

Katy took a step forward and threw a hand on her hip. “I’m not a
complete
jackass, you know.”

I ignored her. “I’m sure, Josh.”

I was surprisingly sure, actually, in the midst of it all. And once I’d said it out loud, I realized that my sudden conviction had nothing to do with saving Katy from certain doom. One thought overpowered all others. It was crazy—I
knew
it was crazy—but it still made sense: this was exactly what I’d been put on this earth to do.

T
he small boat skipped across the glassy midnight sea. I felt triumphant and light-headed at the same time, as though I’d just shoplifted a balloon and sucked the helium out. There was no way this was actually happening to
me
! I looked up at the bright ivory sash of the Milky Way and couldn’t help but think of the poster in Mr. Alvarez’s room.

“What’s funny?” Alvarez said.

“Shoot for the stars.”

“You’re going to do great. Wayo’s the best diver on the island.”

The boat was a fourteen-foot fiberglass runabout with bench seats lining the sides and a canopy frame without the canopy. A single outboard motor whined against the water. “It’s a cute boat,” Wayo had said when we sneaked out onto the dock in San Miguel.

I sat on the bench next to Alvarez and Nate, while Josh and Katy sat across from us. There was just enough starlight to see the tension on everybody’s face; it looked like the impending adventure had sobered them right up.

I was wearing a shorty wetsuit, only 2mm because even at night the water was in the low eighties. I was used to the fifties water of the Pacific, so I probably didn’t need a wetsuit at all. But since I hadn’t packed a swimsuit of my own, I had to wear one of Wayo’s store samples, which fit me even more ridiculously than my sensible one-piece.

Josh nodded to Alvarez. “You arranged this whole trip just for this?”

“You heard Annie’s presentation. There’s over a hundred million dollars at stake here. I’m a known treasure hunter; I couldn’t just come down here by myself. People might have noticed, might have become suspicious. But a teacher? On a humanitarian mission? It’s the ultimate misdirection.”

Katy said, “Josh is a movie star’s kid.”

“Maybe,” Alvarez said. “But let’s call that hiding in plain sight.”

“Why did you really assign me the Golden Jaguar?” I said. “It’s not like you didn’t already know everything.”

“As I said before, if you’re going to treasure hunt on the cheap, you have to use all the tricks in your toolbox. I was hoping you might come up with something I’d missed.”

“You said people might have noticed?” Nate said. “What people?”

Alvarez shrugged. “I’ve been looking for the Golden Jaguar, on and off, for a while now. You meet people. Sometimes they want the same thing you do.”

The only way I could deal with the flicker of dread about to engulf my courage was to stick to my predive routine. Wayo didn’t seem to have any antifogging drops on board, so I spit into my mask and spread the saliva around so the lens wouldn’t fog up.

Alvarez craned his neck over the side of the boat to scan the now-charcoal water but said nothing. The motor’s whir became lower, and we slowed. Waves lapped at the boat as the engine puffed at a near idle. Wayo also leaned over the edge, steering the wheel with one hand. The upper body of his wetsuit dangled from his waist like a half-peeled banana.

Nate tried again. “So are you going to tell us what people, or are you going to let that hang out there, all ominous?”

“Ominous is way more interesting, don’t you think?” Alvarez chuckled and slapped his palm against the old neoprene of my wetsuit. Then he winked at me.
Winked
at me!

“You’re having too much fun with this,” I said.

“Thrill of the hunt, Annie!”

“We are close,” Wayo called out.

I pulled the mask over my head, now confident that the lens wouldn’t fog. I situated a waterproof headlamp just above the mask and turned it on.

“Careful of the light,” Wayo said without looking at me, so I cupped my hand over the front and opened my fingers just a sliver.

I imagined Gracia on the boat, smoothing down the shoulders of my wetsuit and looking at me the way my mom checked my outfits on Friday nights. “Darlin’,” I pictured her saying, the twang at full blast, “you go down there and you find yourself some treasure. ’Cause it’s the only way you can justify wearing that baggy-ass wetsuit.”

I turned the knob at the top of my tank, and my air hoses tensed like a bodybuilder flexing his muscles. “So much at stake,” I said. I took a pull off the regulator and breathed out. “And now it’s in the hands of a fifteen-year-old girl.”

Alvarez nodded. “There’s a reason Plan B isn’t called Plan A.”

“Is time.” Wayo cut the engine.

We were in position. I breathed again from the regulator and sprayed a burst of air from the octopus to check the pressure. I pushed a button on my BC, and a hiss confirmed that the vest was inflating.

Wayo motioned for Alvarez to take over at the steering wheel, and then he came over and slid his BC onto a tank and tightened the strap.

“What’s the profile?” I said.

“Straight down to one hundred, then a little swim to the coral. La Garganta will take us at a diagonal down to the exit at a hundred and thirty feet—”

“The fissure will be at around a hundred twenty,” Alvarez said over his shoulder.

Wayo continued, “We go down, maybe ten minutes bottom time, then start to surface again, with five-minute safety stops at forty and fifteen feet, and then back to the boat.”

I checked my gauge. Greater compression at greater depth meant that I’d use more air the deeper I went, but the 3,000 psi of air in my tank was more than enough for me to complete the dive and the safety stops required to avoid the bends.

“Is that a light?” Josh said. “Over there?”

Alvarez turned toward where Josh was pointing. A small light bobbed gently, coming not from the route we took but from the opposite direction, as though it had rounded toward Punta Sur from the other side of the island.

“Did you tell anyone else?” Wayo said, the first traces of worry creeping into his voice.

Alvarez shook his head. “It’s probably nobody.”

“We go down now. Just in case.”

“What does that mean, ‘just in case’?” Josh said.

Nobody answered as a nervous energy engulfed the boat. Alvarez stood at the helm, one hand on the wheel. Wayo bounced around, grabbing pieces of his equipment from one side of the boat and the other. Weight belt here, fins there. A mask from a bucket near the motor. Even though we were suddenly in a hurry, the man moved as deliberately as if he were on a Sunday stroll.

I wrapped a six-pound weight belt around my waist and reached for my BC, but Josh sprang from his seat and beat me to it. “I know, I know. Nobody touches your gear but you.”

“I’ll make an exception.”

He put one hand under the tank and the other on the valve and hefted, and I stuck my arms underneath the shoulder straps.

“See, I learned something before you tried to kill me.”

“Come on, guys, let’s go,” Alvarez said. “Whoever it is, they’re getting closer.”

I scooted onto the edge of the boat, with the tank hanging out over the water, and Josh helped me put on my fins. I did one last quick check of my equipment—the mask was secure, the headlamp on, my secondary light hung from a D-ring on one shoulder strap, and an emergency whistle dangled from the other. My dive knife was strapped around my left calf. I said, “Ready,” stuck my regulator in my mouth, and took a deep breath of compressed air.

Alvarez left the wheel and put his hand on my shoulder. “Don’t think I don’t know how dangerous this is,” he said quietly. “So be careful.”

Wayo grabbed his mask and headlamp and strapped on his fins. Then he tossed his tank and BC into the water behind the boat.

“I guess he’s ready,” Katy said.

Josh leaned in, and I could see the anxiety on his face. “You can do this.”

Alvarez was back at the helm. He turned and nodded to me. “We’ll see you in about a half hour.”

With the heel of my right hand against the regulator and my fingers over my mask, I leaned back and let gravity take over.

First there was a resistance from the water, a splash out and away, and then the ocean came back around to hug me. I was always struck by how awkward it felt to be geared up on land, but in the water everything worked perfectly. There was a grace to the equipment under the surface.

I bobbed up and got myself vertical and touched the top of my head—the universal signal for
diver okay in the
water
. Josh, Nate, and Katy were all staring at me, but Alvarez had his attention fixed on the other boat. The light was getting closer. I exhaled, slowly purging the air from my lungs, and began to sink into the darkness.