Wood's Reach (27 page)

Mac and TJ sat side by side on the swim platform, with Alicia behind them, waiting to hand off the scooter and a backboard they had rigged with inflatable floats. The first rays of sunlight were visible now, and Mac gave the thumbs-up sign. Together they slid into the water and looked back to Alicia. She handed TJ the scooter and Mac the backboard.

It was awkward navigating the dark canal, but after several near misses with the bottom, they finally got the hang of the setup. With the backboard tied to a short line directly behind the scooter, they each grabbed a handle. Without being able to communicate, Mac navigated with the compass, steering the unit with his handle, and TJ held the other, working the throttle. The buzz of several motors passed overhead as they crossed the main channel, probably fishermen out to get the morning bite. But they were plenty deep to avoid the propellers. Finally the sun gained sufficient altitude to cast enough light on the water for them to see, and they entered the side canals. Mac worked through the canals by memory, finally making the last right turn and entering the canal where he had seen Hawk stash the treasure.

The scooter pulled them down the dark canal, until the bridge pilings were just visible in front of them. They had passed the spot where he remembered seeing Ironhead dive, but the bridge was the only landmark. They would backtrack from there. The visibility was bad, his hand barely visible at arm’s length, but that was to be expected—the benefit being they would be invisible. Even if someone saw their bubble trail, it could easily be explained as an underwater spring or manatee.

Reversing course, he tapped TJ on the shoulder and motioned to the bottom. He set the scooter down, and together, remaining only an arm’s length apart, they started combing the rocky floor. The first pass yielded nothing, but the sun was higher now and, along with the incoming tide, improved the visibility. His air gauge read two thousand pounds, enough to recover whatever was here and make it back to the boat—if they found it quickly.

Able to work farther apart now, they went back over the same ground. Mac noticed something off to the side and, at first thinking it was a shark, saw TJ signaling to him. His heart sank when he saw it was only an old lower unit from a discarded engine. Faced with the reality that there was nothing here, he checked his gauges and signaled TJ that the dive was over. The silence of the water was overwhelming as he tried to figure out what had happened to the packages he had seen Hawk place just the other night and how to tell the crew they were not there. They reached the main channel, and he navigated across until they turned left. With the poor visibility, they had to surface before reaching the boat.

Alicia, Trufante, and Mel were all standing on the swim platform, eagerly waiting for them, and he saw the disappointed look on their faces when he handed up the empty backboard.

“It’s not there,” he said, stripping off his gear.

“What could have happened to it?” Mel asked.

“I got a good mind it was his ex. She’s in everyone’s business,” Trufante said.

They all turned to look at him. “Makes sense. She could have seen him put it down there the other night.”

“I know her,” Mel said. “Maybe we should pay her a visit.”

***

Mac and Mel walked to the front door. TJ was waiting with the boat at the dock of a vacant house, in the canal across the street. The house had all its windows covered with hurricane shutters, a sure sign it was vacant. They had decided against taking the boat, preferring to walk, thinking it was the better, less alarming option.

Mel knocked on the door, and together they waited. A few minutes later, a woman whose hair was died a vibrant orange opened the door, a glass of wine in her hand. Her bloodshot eyes indicated it wasn’t her first.

“Mrs. Hawk?” Mel asked.

“Yes?”

“It’s Melanie Woodson. You were my English teacher in middle school,” Mel said.

“Oh dear—Mel?”

“It’s me. This is Mac,” she introduced him.

“What can I do for you, dear? It’s been a long time.”

“I was wondering if we could come in and talk to you,” Mel said.

“I suppose,” she said, opening the door wider and moving inside. “If it’s about my ex-husband, I’m afraid I can’t help you, though.”

If this was not going to yield any information, Mac wanted out fast. The house looked like his grandparents’: dimly lit, with plastic covering the aged furniture, and the place smelled of cats. “Come on, Mel. This is a dead end.”

“Wasn’t that you here the other night?” the woman asked Mac.

She must have been watching. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, sensing there was no love lost when it came to her ex. “He has something of mine,” he probed. If she had seen him, she might have seen them place the cache in the canal.

“If it’s what they put in the canal, he took it before they pulled out of here a few days ago,” she said. “Would you like some tea?”

Mac looked at Mel, telling her with his eyes to decline.

“No, thanks, but I’ll take a rain check,” Mel said.

They said goodbye and left the house.

“It’s on the boat,” Mac said.

***

The weather could have been better, but it could have been worse. With the wind from the northeast, the sportfisher battled the chop that quickly grew into five-foot swells as they moved away from land. Mac was playing the odds, not wanting to wait in case someone had seen them scuttle the boat. He also had another problem: he didn’t know the exact location.

“Once we hit the three-hundred-foot line, we’ll start watching the depth finder,” he said to TJ, who was at the wheel.

“Coming up on it. This is the ballpark, but it might take a while,” TJ said. “You sure this dive plan is going to work?”

“Let’s find it first,” Mac said. Turning to the deck below, he called to Trufante, “Throw some baits out there. Make it look like we’re trolling.”

“Right on,” Trufante said and disappeared into the cabin.

Several hours later, Mac looked up from the depth finder, his eyes tired from staring at the screen. Fortunately, at this depth, the bottom was sandy, with very little in the way of features, making a wreck the size of Hawk’s trawler easy to spot. They had loaded a half dozen dolphin into the fish box, and every so often, he heard Trufante call “Fish on” and help Mel and Pamela, who manned the rods. Cheqea must have been in the cabin. It was a good thing they had a diversion, because although treasure hunting was glamorized in movies, in real life it required hours and hours of drudgery.

“Is that it?” TJ asked.

Mac looked back at the screen. There was definitely something there. “Throw the buoy,” he called down to Trufante.

“Got to pull this fish in.”

“Now! The fish can wait,” Mac yelled back. Trufante tossed the yellow float they had rigged with a twenty-pound weight and four hundred feet of line. Mac turned to TJ. “Let’s circle back and get a better look.”

Mac zoomed in on the bottom, carefully watching the screen as they passed over the wreck again. There was no scale for the length, but the numbers on the side showed it rising forty feet from the ocean floor—just about right.

“I’m going down to rig everything,” he said to TJ.

He would circle the site while Mac prepared for the dive. The plan was problematic before it started, the first issue being that they had nowhere close to enough anchor line. It would take close to six hundred feet of rode to safely anchor in this depth. The second problem was the depth. Three hundred feet usually required mixed gasses that they did not have. Instead, Mac would use the rebreather and limit his bottom time to ten minutes. Even with that short of a dive, he would have over two hours of decompression stops. To facilitate entering the wreck, they had rigged tanks to several lines. Dropping one at a hundred feet and the other at sixty would eliminate the need for him to carry them. In addition, TJ would hang at the hundred-foot depth, and Alicia would relieve him when he ascended for his sixty-foot stop. The plan was sound, except it would leave Trufante at the helm.

“Ready,” he called up to Trufante. He turned the mask around on his head, checked his gauges, and did a giant stride into the water. Dropping ten feet to avoid the surface chop, he waited for TJ, who met him a minute later. Together they slowly descended to the bottom of the hundred-foot line, where they gave each other the okay sign.

Mac dropped further into the dark water, running the dive profile through his head again. At two hundred feet, he shivered when he hit a thermocline, but soon the top of the trawler came into view. Swimming toward the buoy line that lay alongside it, he unclipped the weight and took the free end of the line with him. In just the few hours it had been in the water, the ship had already attracted fish, but he ignored them and moved to the cabin door. Switching on his dive light, he checked his gauges and started counting in his head. He had five minutes to find the coins.

After securing the line to the door handle, he entered the dark cabin. He moved to the stairs and started to descend, but thought twice about it. If he knew Hawk, the treasure would be in his cabin. Thankful that he knew the deck layout already, he spun around, following the companionway to the door at the far end.

The contents of the room were spread over the floor, and some of the artifacts Hawk had kept were visible, but Mac was looking for something bigger. Moving to the locker, he struggled against the weight of the water to pull the door open, then was pulled inside by the force of the water entering the cavity. Slowly he regained his equilibrium and checked his watch. Two minutes remained, but when he looked up he saw four canvas bags.

There was no way to navigate back through the ship with his fins, so he removed them and slid them under one of the bags. Grabbing one bag in each hand, he walked through the ship, the extra weight helping to keep him on the deck. He reached the line and pulled in twenty feet, where he tied on the first bag. A few feet away, he tied on the next one. He had less than a minute left, but his decision was easy. There was no way he was repeating this or leaving anything behind. Without the weight of the coins, he floated back, grabbing on to anything he could to help pull him along. By the time he reached the bags, he was already almost a minute over his time limit. Hoping there was a safety factor in the decompression schedule, he grabbed the remaining two bags and trudged back through the ship. Tying them both to the line, he released it and pulled himself toward the surface.

The decompression stops had been painfully boring, especially not knowing if the bags really contained the coins. Hawk was surely capable of a ruse. Finally, he was at sixty feet and Alicia met him with a fresh tank. TJ gave the okay sign and finned towards the surface. After another hour, he looked at Alicia and gave the thumbs-up to surface.

Although he was worn out from the dive, he couldn’t wait. Dropping his gear, he yelled for Trufante to steer to the buoy and reached over the gunwale with a gaff, snagging the line when he passed. “Drop her into neutral,” he called to the bridge and waited for Trufante and TJ to help. With Mel, Pamela, and Cheqea hovering over them, the three men started to pull in the line. Mac could feel it stretch with the weight of the bags, but he willed it to stay intact. Finally, they could see the first bag in the water, and a few minutes later, they were on the deck of the boat.

“Go for it, Mel,” Mac said.

She looked at them and went to the first bag. Opening the clasp, she unrolled the watertight seal and stuck her hand deep inside. They stared at her, waiting. Then a whoop soon came from Trufante, and they saw the coins in her hand.

Chapter Thirty-Two

The group gathered in the cabin surrounding the bags of silver, no one knowing what to say, until Cheqea broke the silence.

“Mac Travis pays Cheqea for favor,” she said.

Mac looked at her. “Yes. You’ll get a cut, but there’s one more thing.” They all looked at him. “We’re going to file the papers for the salvage rights where the ballast stones are. We’ll do it right, and don’t expect much profit, but after expenses, whatever we profit will be yours. It is your heritage and legacy.”

Cheqea grinned and went to him. He wanted to push her away, but Mel caught his eye and he allowed the old woman to embrace him. “Okay. We better get out of here,” he said, turning away.

“Where to?” Mel asked.

“I’ve got a debt to pay, and then we can figure things out,” Mac said, giving directions for TJ to head back to land. They passed through the center span of the bridge, where they turned and followed it back to the entrance to the cove at Keys Fisheries.

They backed into the slip next to the center-console, and Mac left the others on the boat, but it wasn’t necessary. Celia was already coming for them, building a head of steam as she approached.

“Effin’ Travis. What now? You think you can just come and take your boat after wrecking mine, you got another effin’ thing coming,” she said, shaking her phone at him.

Mac ignored her and walked back to the sportfisher. He climbed aboard, motioning for her to follow. They went inside the cabin and he handed her two bags. “I think this covers it.”

She smiled, grabbing the bags. “Effin’ does, and the insurance company doesn’t have to know. I’m putting six on the back of the next one.”

He laughed and watched her go, swinging her hips as she walked down the dock to the shed.

***

After sharing a quick meal together, they stood on the deck. With each group holding their share, they said their goodbyes. Celia had given TJ and Alicia a slip for the night. Tomorrow they would head back to Key Largo.

“What about me, Mac Travis?” asked Cheqea, holding her bag tightly.

“I’ll drop you back on the island,” Mac said.

She shook her head. “I gotta go see somebody. You wait here.”

He nodded and they watched her haul herself to the dock and walk to the shed, where Celia was probably counting her take. There was no doubt that Cheqea would be coming back without the bag, but with enough of her medicine to last a while. That left only Trufante and Pamela.