I’ve finished the manuscript which means the chapters will be hitting your inbox faster now. If you need to catch up you can read the book to date here.
14
Wood left Travis with the barge to finish the cages. Once they were complete they would be placed in the formwork encased by the cofferdam. He was happy to have overcome his hurdle with the inspections and also curious to see what Ned had discovered. Even though he wanted to jump in to excavate the treasure, pouring concrete had to be the priority.
Few things required more coordination than a concrete pour. Inspections and equipment need to be coordinated and conditions often shift, depending on the weather. Though the piers were not exactly finish work and could be poured in the rain, winds usually accompanied precipitation and that would force a postponement that would restart the process.
Once the concrete was completed, the next step would be to strip the forms and then remove the cofferdam. The temporary structures were problematic, and Wood always treated their removal as a milestone. This case was different, as the cofferdam provided them with an excuse to be in the water.
Delaying the concrete to focus on the treasure was tempting but a bad idea, and Wood knew it. That didn’t mean he was happy about it. In the end, the diurnal tides and the not-so-predictable winds would dictate what he could and couldn’t do.
Wood thought about staying back and helping Travis, but he needed to quench his curiosity about what the tight-lipped archeologist had found. Ned was elusive when questioned. revealing only that he believed whatever it was to be man-made.
Wood understood Ned’s reluctance to speculate and wished he’d had a better look. Things appeared different underwater. Even in the shallows, colors changed and shapes were distorted by the water. Size also had to be considered. As any spearfisherman knew, the water magnified everything by 25 percent.
Wood secured the skiff to one of the pilings by the dock and headed to the truck. “We’ll go to the one-hour place in Walgreens.” He half expected Ned to protest that the quality of the images would suffer.
“I know there’s no asking you to wait, and I’m curious as well.”
“You thinking it’s historic?”
Ned shook his head. “No telling if it’s anything.”
“Alright.” Wood dropped the transmission into drive and headed out of the small parking area. Big Pine had a one-hour place in its Walgreens, but staffing was always an issue, and the promised one hour could easily turn into overnight. Instead, he turned left and headed toward Marathon.
Both men were quiet on the way up-island. Ned didn’t want to open the door to another round of questioning, and Wood was working out a schedule in his head. Two high and low tides meant four periods when the water was slack. The simple answer was to get the concrete poured during the slack tides during the day and dive for the treasure at night. That would require either a lot of back and forth or camping on the barge.
As he pulled into the Walgreens parking lot, he was satisfied that was the best course.
“Go on. I got a few calls to make.” He grabbed a handful of quarters from the ashtray and headed for the pay phone outside the store.
With the welding inspection signed off, Wood was free to confirm the concrete pour. He sniffed the air while he waited for the dispatcher to come on the line, trying to anticipate the weather. The Keys had two distinct seasons, which he called summer and hell. Summer, from November to April, was what the tourist brochures featured. Temperatures moderated and the storms shifted from the daily threat of thunderstorms to either a cold front crashing through from the north or a stalled front creeping up from the south. In either case, they were generally infrequent.
A pattern often developed where a front would leave cooler, dryer air that often hung around for a day or two. Temperatures were generally still warm, but the wind brought cooler air. Seventies were the norm, but once in a while, a strong front would drop the mercury into the fifties. Wood called those days “Keys cold.” With an accompanying north wind, it often felt as cold as winter in the northlands.
The winds would die off after a few days and the southeasterly flow would return, bringing warmer air and humidity. This would eventually either weaken or a stronger cold front would cause an atmospheric battle, leaving the Keys a hot and humid mess for a day or two.
Hell, which coincided with hurricane season, brought more consistent weather. Thunderstorms were an ever-present factor to be considered in any activity.
The shoulder seasons were harder to predict. NOAA weather radio, which broadcast on the lower VHF channels, was the go-to for predictions. Wood recalled seeing a decent window before the next round of storms and scheduled the concrete for three days out. Two of those days would be consumed by setting up the steel cages and finishing the formwork, then Wigner would need to sign off on the project.
With the concrete scheduled, Wood called the pump truck. Placing the concrete required a special boom truck, which would pump the material up to a long hose that could be manipulated from below. The concrete specifications were different for this kind of work, and Wigner would be there to test the mix.
His last call was to the engineer to inform him of the schedule. Fortunately, Kristin answered the phone, alleviating any need to speak to Wigner about the treasure. With the inspections scheduled, Wood stepped away from the phone to wait for Ned, wondering if whatever the archeologist had found would alter his aggressive schedule.
Unless the weather dictated a change, he would hold his course. Wigner would be unable to pressure him about the treasure as long as the work was moving along, which gave him a three-day window to work at night.
The hour had expired and Wood was getting antsy. Ned appeared to be avoiding him, though he could have easily gone inside the store and waited with him. Every time the door opened, Wood was disappointed it wasn’t Ned. He’d become immune to it and was surprised when the archeologist did turn up beside him.
“Well?” Wood’s patience was running thin, but he could tell from the smile on Ned’s face that he’d found something.
“A chest. Intact. We need to get it up.”
Wood ran through the implications before answering. He reached for the pictures and studied them. The object had several straight lines. Other than that, it was covered in barnacles. It wasn’t unusual for something like a chest to lay undiscovered, though plenty of people had probably laid eyes on it over the years. Spearfishermen and lobster divers were regulars at the bridge, but they were focused on their prey, which could generally be found around the pilings, not an unusual coral formation.
“Next tide change is in a couple of hours. Might want to wait for the one tonight, though. Don’t want any looky-loos seeing it come up.” From the pictures, the chest appeared to be about the size of a stone-crab trap. At two-foot square, bringing it up would attract attention.
Wood continued to debate how to play the discovery as they drove back to the boat ramp. If the chest itself, or its contents, was historically significant, he would have to play by the rules and inform the state. A single chest wasn’t a problem. What he was worried about was if there were more. In the end, the only way to find out was to recover it.
“You tell the age by looking at it?” Now that he had made up his mind, Wood wanted to know what he was dealing with.
“I’m staying with the time period around the Civil War. Nothing on the object itself suggests anything, but to remain intact for any length of time, it's got to be built out of more than wood. That suggests it was clad in copper or bronze. The straps you can see in the picture are clearly metal. The level of growth is also indicative of that period.”
Wood rolled the word “indicative” around in his mouth, repeating it several times. It was not something he would ever say and found it amusing. He was still entertained and in a good mood when they reached the ramp.
“You going to stick around?” he asked Ned.
“Wouldn’t miss it. Might be more careful with the tide, though.”
“I’ll send Travis down this time. Young blood and all. We can drop him from the skiff and have him float it to the bridge to raise it.” Bringing the object up in open water would surely attract the attention of at least the nearby fishermen and, if he had one, definitely Wigner’s spy. The bridge structure would conceal them from anyone watching from above.
“We’ll go explain what we found to Travis, then come back and get supplies.” Wood was already making a list in his head.
Wood waded out, grabbed the line tied to the piling, and reeled the skiff toward him. He continued to pull it in until the bottom of the hull scraped the ramp. With both men aboard, they headed to the barge.
Travis was sitting with his leg over the side eating his lunch when they arrived. “I’m ready to set these whenever you are.”
Wood was focused on the chest and had to rethink his priorities. The water flowing against the bridge pilings made the decision for him. “Right. We’ll reposition the barge, set you down in the cofferdam, and I’ll swing them in place.”
“You need some help from me?” Ned asked.
“Relaying the signals would be helpful.” Communication was the weak point when working with just the two of them. With Travis a dozen feet down surrounded by the steel enclosure and Wood sitting in the cab of the excavator, talking or even yelling was impossible. Aside from the basic hand signals for lifting and lowering, they had a set of their own. Keeping visual contact with each other was a problem. Travis was free to move inside the cofferdam. Wood was in a fixed position above and to the side. There were blind spots.
“Sure thing.”
Wood climbed into the cab of the excavator. The machine started, releasing a burst of black smoke before evening out. Travis stood by the four sections he’d welded together, hooking up the first with a long sling. He yelled over to Wood, “Wouldn’t hurt to rig a tag line and let Ned help.”
Wood nodded. Each man was ultimately responsible for his own safety, though they watched each other's backs. A tag line would prevent the steel cage from swinging and help Travis position it.
The work went smoothly and within an hour the four sections were joined with couplers. Travis grabbed the hanging loop and had Wood raise him to the deck. He freed himself and went to the water jug.
Wood shut down the excavator and walked over to Travis. “You up for a little recovery mission?”
Wood followed Travis’ gaze as he watched the water flow against the piling. It had clearly slowed in the last hour. Wood didn’t need to check the tide charts. From what he was looking at, in another hour it would be safe to dive.
Tides ran regularly, but not exactly like clockwork. There were other influences like wind, fronts, and the phase of the moon that altered the predicted times. Observation was the best method to determine their state.
“About an hour. We going after the coins?”
Wood shook his head. “Not this time. Ned, bring those pictures over.”
Ned grabbed the oversized envelope from his bag and headed toward the two men.
“Have a look.” Wood was curious if Travis would recognize the chest. If the picture had been on a larger scale, he doubted if he could have himself.
“I can see what look like straps. A chest maybe?” He handed the pictures back.
“Exactly,” Ned said.
Wood wasn’t sure if he was bothered by Travis recognizing the chest. He put his ego aside, knowing it was one more reason they should be partners.
15
Just as the sun was setting, Travis rolled backward off the skiff and into the water. Wood had positioned the boat up-current of the location of the chest. Travis’ first task would be to mark the location with a buoy. He carried the five-pound weight in his hand, allowing the ball and line to float on the surface.
Wood had done his best to recall the location of the chest. He’d used the bridge pilings to create boundaries on the left and right sides of the search area. There was no better place to start than the middle. If that failed, they would work the edges. Wood had used the bubble line from the current to estimate the position. With the wind holding steady, the conditions should be similar.
That was all theory. The water was clear enough to see the bottom ten feet below. The shallow water and visibility only made the search more frustrating. He felt like he should be able to reach over and snatch the chest from the ocean floor. That wasn’t the case, though. Wood could see Travis and knew when he had gone past the expected location. When he reached the shadow of the bridge, Travis knew it as well. The first attempt had failed.
He picked up Travis on the other side of the bridge, at their prearranged meeting point in the eddy on the back of the pier, and started back toward open water. Twice more they repeated the process without locating the chest.
The negative result didn’t faze Wood. They were back to looking for a needle in a haystack. Working an area the size of half a football field didn’t seem that large, but underwater it was huge.
Time passed, and slack tide ensued. This gave Travis a short window to search as he pleased. About fifteen minutes into what was his fourth attempt, Wood saw a flurry of bubbles break the surface.
“Think he’s on it.”
“Hope so. We should have marked it,” Ned said.
“Should have, would have, could have.”
Their conversation ended when Travis surfaced and gave a thumbs-up. Wood idled toward him, dropping the engine into neutral before he reached him. “Got it?”
Travis pulled the regulator from his mouth. “Yeah.”
Wood glanced at the water, trying to estimate how much time they had before the current made the job impossible. They had timed the dive to bring the chest up when the current went slack, not search for it. That had wasted valuable time.
Wood handed a long-handled pry bar over the side. Travis took it and disappeared below the surface. Now came the hard part. As evidenced by the concreted coins, the chest could have become part of the coral. It could also just be sitting in a sand pocket. Wood hoped that was the case.
Travis reappeared a few minutes later. “Toss over the gear.”
Wood smiled. Travis wouldn’t have asked for the float bags if he wasn’t ready for them. He glanced again at the water, which had reversed its flow and was now moving out to the ocean, and handed the gear overboard. There was no time for questions.
A quarter of an hour passed, and Wood became fidgety, snapping at Ned every time the archaeologist asked a question. The current was streaming now, and if Travis failed, they would be stuck working the midnight shift. That wouldn’t be the end of the world but now was better.
Finally, when he had just about resigned himself to coming back later, Travis surfaced again. He finned over to the skiff and handed the end of the line to Wood. They’d discussed the procedure before the dive, so there was no reason to waste time rehashing it now.
“Not sure what shape it’s in.”
Wood pursed his lips. The original thought was to bring the chest up like a lobster trap. Ned had vetoed that idea, saying that the chest could crumble and be lost. Wood knew he was right. The float bags would be considerably easier on the old chest. Wood didn’t like relying on someone else to do the work, but Travis was the better diver. “Ready.”
The moment of truth came when Travis dropped under. The water had become silted with the tide change, and Wood could no longer see Travis working below. Instead, he watched his bubble stream. Every time they stopped, he knew Travis had removed his regulator and was using it to fill a float bag. After the fourth time, he found he was subconsciously holding his breath. The bags had quite a bit of lifting power, but there was no guarantee they would break the chest free.
Suddenly the water erupted as the bags and then the chest broke the surface. It happened faster than Wood expected, surprising and disappointing him. Light meant no treasure. He had no time to dwell on that now.
“Get the line,” he called to Ned.
The float bags moved toward the ocean with the current, but the boat, with its larger profile, was more affected by the wind pushing backward against it. The result was that he needed the engine to reach the bags.
Wood scanned the water and found Travis clinging to the line where it was attached by two slings to the chest. With no risk of injuring him with the propeller, he pushed the throttle down and raced ahead of the float bags, then stopped. Slowly Travis, the bags, and the chest floated toward the skiff. He made several adjustments and waited until the chest was within a few feet of the gunwale before reaching over and grabbing hold of it.
It was lighter than he expected, which might mean it was watertight. Wood knew better to speculate. Any distraction and they could lose the chest. “I need a hand.”
Ned joined Wood at the side. Between both men leaning over the gunwale and the weight of the chest, the light boat listed until it was only inches from swamping. Just before water came pouring over the side, they hauled the chest aboard.
Wood reached out to give Travis a hand but stopped when he heard the sound of an engine coming toward them. He’d eschewed the use of a dive flag so as not to attract attention. Now that tactic played against him. Another look at the approaching boat told him that it would be on them before he could haul Travis aboard.
Photographers called the hour before sunset the golden hour. In this case, it played against Wood. He’d come into the channel at this time of day before and knew the low angle of the sun would create enough glare to make the small skiff invisible. They were also dead center of the channel, where no boater would expect a drifting vessel. With Travis dragging behind, Wood was forced to stand and wave at the boat.
A long second later, it didn’t appear to see him. It didn’t help that the oncoming boat was badly trimmed, the raised bow blocking the driver’s vision.
“Go! I’ll find you later,” Travis yelled.
Wood turned to the stern and watched as Travis dropped under the surface, a decision that could be deadly because of the strong tide. The tug on the line brought his attention back to the chest.
The boat veered off at the last moment, leaving a huge wake that unsettled the small skiff as it passed. Wood turned the wheel, steering into the swells. The skiff bucked over each crest and landed hard in the trough several times before the waves moved past.
“You okay?” Wood asked Ned as he changed course again and scanned the water ahead. The glare from the setting sun had faded as the orb dropped below the horizon. Twilight would settle over them in a few minutes with full dark close behind. They had a very short window to find Travis.
Wood looked back at Ned, who was studying the chest. “We gotta find the boy. That can wait.”
Ned moved forward, and the two stood together at the small helm. In an unspoken agreement, they split the 180 degrees of open water in front of them. Wood took the starboard side and Ned the port.
Wood had an older LORAN C receiver aboard and had marked the location of the chest. The system used low-frequency radio waves to determine the position of the receiver. The result was a pair of four- or five-digit numbers that could be plotted on a chart with the radio lines overlayed. The system was capable of marking a spot and returning to it but with varying degrees of accuracy.
The peak current was still several hours away, but it was still strong. Wood expected Travis to hug the bottom of the channel and surface when the engine noise was gone. He tried to extrapolate the effect of the current on a diver and picked a spot just past where the channel surrendered to open water.
Well ahead of Travis’ expected position, Wood stopped the boat and let the wind move it beam-on to the waves. The nearly equal forces held the skiff in position while Wood and Ned continued to search the water. Looking north instead of south, the different vantage point allowed them to see without the glare.
“That’s him,” Ned called out, pointing to a spot on the water.
Wood squinted but didn’t see anything. “You sure?”
“Goddamned right I am. You want to borrow my glasses?”
Wood shook his head and turned toward the spot the archaeologist continued to point at. Still not seeing anything, he nudged the throttle forward and headed in the direction Ned indicated.
Wood was conservative in his approach. If Ned was mistaken, he could possibly run Travis over, but as the gap halved, he made out something on the surface. They reached Travis a few minutes later and helped him out of the water. The skiff was crowded and heavy with the three men, the diving gear, and the barnacle-encrusted chest. A feeling of accomplishment set over the boat once Travis was aboard and stripped off his gear.
The three men stared at the chest. It had turned out to be slightly larger and more rectangular than Ned had guessed, more the size of a lobster trap rather than a crab trap. The bands were heavily covered in growth [CD1] but visible. The rest of the chest held its shape but was covered with growth where it had been exposed to the water.
“You still thinkin’ Civil War era?” Wood asked.
“Yeah. We’ll need to see if there’s anything else in the area.”
“We’re gonna open it, right.” It wasn’t a question. Wood would do it with or without Ned’s permission. Worst case, what lay inside was half his, with the other half going to the state. Best case, it would all be his.
“No stopping you, is there? Can we at least get it aboard the barge and clean it up? I’d like to take some pictures and measurements before you tear it up.”
Wood looked at the old padlock. After years in the water, it was probably more secure than when it had been built. That was a good sign. A locked chest meant it had been used for something valuable.
Before he could examine it further, the sound of an engine broke the quiet evening. Wood turned to the Gulf side, where the boat that had upset them earlier had disappeared. The bridge concealed most of the water beyond it and altered the sound. Wood checked the open water ahead and saw nothing.
The volume increased. The boat was approaching, and from the pitch of the engines, Wood guessed it was the same one.
“We gotta go. That guy’s back.” He stepped over to the helm and pushed down on the throttle. Unsure whether the boater was after them in particular or just some inebriated asshole, he looked for the closest cover.
The boat was sluggish with the extra weight. The nameplate riveted to the helm listed the capacity at four people. They were only three, but the weight of the chest and dive gear was close to a person each. The boat was overweight and showed it.
Under better circumstances, Wood would have headed toward open water, forcing the other boater to show his intentions. If the boat was after them, he would go for it; if not, he wouldn’t.
“Get forward. We have to get the bow down.” Wood called out as he increased pressure on the throttle, needing the weight forward to help the boat plane out.
The boat was slow to react. Wood was running wide-open throttle and in a dangerous position until the bow dropped. Focused solely on trimming the boat and escaping, he didn’t notice the other boat had passed under the bridge and was bearing down on them.
16
“What do you make of it?” Wood asked, squinting into the setting sun.
“Proline. Looks like the same one,” Travis said.
Wood pictured the long-bow pulpit and swept-back foredeck of the model and compared his memory of what he’d seen the other day to this approaching boat. “Same as yesterday. We gotta do something.”
Overloaded, they had no chance to outrun the much larger boat. “Get that chest in the bow,” Wood called out as he accelerated.
The task was easier said than done. There was barely enough room between the gunwale and the console for a man to pass. In order to get on plane, they needed to redistribute the weight aboard to help drop the bow. Normally, the hull was engineered to do this itself, but they were overloaded. The engine was as far down as it could go, which should have driven the bow lower[CD2] . Getting weight forward was the only thing they could do to increase speed.
Travis and Ned struggled with the chest. With both men and the weight of the artifact on the starboard side, the boat listed badly. Ned moved to the port side to prevent the boat from swamping, leaving Travis to do the work alone. Mac rolled it end-over-end while Wood and Ned held their breath, hoping it would hold together. Once the chest was forward of the console, the bow dropped quickly.
Their speed picked up instantly, but a glance back showed the Proline continuing to close the gap. Wood cut the wheel to port and headed directly at the pier they had been working on. A plan formed in his mind, and he accelerated. His timing needed to be right-on, but there was a chance they could at least hide the chest.
The Proline appeared to be equidistant to the bridge but on the other side. They were traveling at roughly the same speed, which meant they would reach the structure at the same time. In order for Wood’s plan to work, they needed to pass under different spans, so he oversteered slightly in the direction of the next pier, making his course clear to the Proline. Both boats could fit side by side under a single span, but it would be a close thing. Running at speed, one of the boats would very possibly be thrown into the pier and damaged.
If it were a test of hulls, the aluminum skiff could take the beating—the fiberglass Proline would crumble. This was a case where bigger wasn’t better.
They were a hundred feet away when Wood made his move. The Proline tried to follow, but the boat was too close to the bridge to maneuver quickly, meaning the driver would have to run underneath and turn. What the Proline did was out of Wood’s control, so he turned away and focused on the pilings, cutting the wheel hard to starboard and dropping speed. Once he was behind the cofferdam, Wood reversed hard. The skiff stopped next to it.
“Dump it.”
Travis moved toward the chest, but Ned was frozen in place. Instead of fighting with him, Wood left the helm and stood on one side of the chest.
“Now.”
Wood and Travis lifted the chest over the gunwale and dropped it into the hole. Wood immediately returned to the helm and accelerated.
“That was reckless,” Ned said as they idled toward the barge.
Without the chest aboard, Wood had no worries about the Proline. He assumed it was Wigner himself or one of the engineer’s men spying on them. Worst case, Wood suspected they were here to spy and harass.
Wood’s theory went out the window when a loud crack rose above the noise of their idling engine and the steady stream of traffic on the bridge.
“Get down!” Wood yelled. A bullet ricocheted off the steel barge about ten feet in front of them.
Apparently, harassment was not the driver’s limit. Wood had thought any harm done to him would hurt Wigner in kind. The construction project would be stalled until another contractor could replace him—and there were few of those in the Keys who would qualify.
As another bullet whizzed overhead, he realized that in the big picture, the treasure was worth more than Wigner’s remaining stake in the construction contract. The engineer had already been paid by the state for his design work, and Wood had paid for the inspections to date. Wigner had more to gain from the treasure. Removing Wood and shutting down the job would allow him access to it.
“Son of a bitch!” Wood called out as another shot fired. This one seemed to miss entirely. There was little to fear from a handgun fired from a boat, and only slightly more from a rifle. Still, the shots were unnerving, and there was always a possibility the man would get lucky.
Travis leaned in and yelled in Wood’s ear. “Drop me on the barge. I’ll grab the shotgun from the container and see if I can scare him off.”
The larger barge, anchored by its two large spuds, was a much more stable platform than a boat, and though the shotgun didn’t have the range of a rifle, it was the right weapon for short distances.
Wood eased the boat forward, staying low as he steered around to the backside of the barge. He nudged the bow against the cold steel. Travis hopped off. Staying low, he ran to the container and disappeared.
“Might be best if you joined him,” Wood said to Ned. “I’ll create a distraction. You guys get ready to pull the chest. We can lock it in the container.”
“Hold her steady, then.” Ned was less agile than Travis, but he looked twenty years younger than he was as he crossed to the barge. Wood idled away, wanting to take the driver’s focus from Travis.
The moment the bow of the skiff became visible, another shot fired, this time hitting the skiff. Wood glanced over the helm and saw the Proline just behind the closest bridge piling. He wasn’t sure if whoever was aboard had seen them ditch the chest in the cofferdam or not.
Wood accelerated, hoping the move would be unexpected and change the man’s focus from the cofferdam to him. Once he was clear of the barge, he cut the wheel to starboard and headed toward the backcountry, where the skiff had a distinct advantage. The difference in size and speed of the boats would be negated by the small keys, sandbars, and flats.
He glanced back to see the excavator buck, swing around, and drop into the cofferdam. If he could distract Wigner’s man for ten or fifteen minutes, Ned and Travis would have the chest aboard and secured in the container. The shotgun should be enough of a deterrent to protect it.
Wood pushed the throttle to its stop, relishing the chase. For almost thirty years, he’d been running these waters. No one knew them better, especially the channel between Big Pine and No Name Key. The bridge, about three and a half miles away, was a natural choke point. If he could get the Proline to follow, the driver would lose sight of the cofferdam and the barge.
The RPMs showed he was running close to wide-open throttle. The lever was all the way forward, but there was another way to coax a little more speed from the engine. Wood had trimmed the engine down when he was trying to get on plane. Without the chest and the weight of the two men, he hit the button on the side of the handle and raised the engine until the propeller started to cavitate. Lowering it slightly, he was able to get another couple of thousand RPMS out of the engine, which resulted in just enough speed to get him to the bridge first.
Wood had a choice. From his position to the No Name Bridge the channel was the shortest route. It was a straight shot and easy to follow. The Proline had an advantage in the deep channel and might be able to overtake him if he was wrong. Wood cut the wheel to starboard, planning to use the terrain to his advantage. He headed for the dark shoreline of No Name Key. Before he reached the mangroves, he turned back to port and steered toward the bridge.
He looked back to see the Proline follow.
The darkness hid the tangled roots of the mangroves so he couldn’t check the tide, but Wood knew it had been running out for over an hour.
Unless the driver was familiar with the waters here, Wood had him. He grinned and raised the engine a few more inches. The pitch increased to an intolerable whine, and the propeller, partially in the air, kicked up a rooster tail behind the boat. The skiff slowed slightly.
The man at the helm of the Proline was sure to notice the change. Before he could react, Wood made a hard turn to the Big Pine side of the channel. He gritted his teeth, hoping he had calculated the tide properly because if he hadn’t, the skiff would be high and dry, and he would be in a vulnerable position and not the other way around as he had planned.
Wood couldn’t help glancing over the side into the ink-black water as the skiff crossed the shoal. During daylight hours, the shoal would be brown and an obvious hazard. At night, the warning signs were invisible. Wood passed over the obstruction and lowered the engine. Turning, a smile returned to his face when he saw the Proline following his course.
A boat running hard aground at speed makes a unique sound—a thump followed by a straining engine—then nothing. Damage would depend on the nature of the obstruction. A mud flat will cause little, an oyster bar, catastrophic. The sandy shoal the Proline had become embedded in was somewhere in the middle.
Wood spun the skiff and started back to the barge. He kept a wary distance from the grounded Proline, knowing the man had a gun—and was willing to use it. That didn’t stop him from going close enough to see who was behind the wheel—and the gun.
They’d had no luck finding the owner or operator after chasing the boat into the canals off Sister Creek in Marathon. Wood was certain he was looking at the same boat. If he could get close enough to confirm who was at the wheel, the registration numbers, or even a name, he would have a chance to track down his adversary.
He expected it had something to do with Wigner, though he was sure the engineer hadn’t been behind the wheel during the earlier daylight recognizance.
Wood slowed and idled closer. He knew he was flirting with disaster but had to know who he was dealing with. The boat’s navigation lights remained off, leaving the hull a silhouette against the dark backdrop. What was visible was the faint red glow cast from the backlit analog gauges. It wasn’t much light, but Wood could see the outline of a man with his head down, working the throttle back and forth in an attempt to free the boat.
That allowed him to move closer. Wood would have preferred to see the bow and get the registration numbers, but that would put him too close and in danger of grounding himself. Running at speed as he’d done earlier, the boat was planing, which meant less of the hull was in the water. Now, another foot of skiff was below the water line. Instead, he stayed in the channel, sliding gently to the west, hoping to glimpse the boat's name.
Not every boat was named. His own boats were nameless, referred to as the skiff, or the barge, or the center console. He had thought about memorializing his wife but had never gotten around to it. Otherwise, the puns people used, generally about drinking and fishing, didn’t appeal to him. Every time he saw a name with Reel as the prefix, he gagged.
When a boat was named, the lettering was generally on the transom in the case of an inboard engine, or on the stern gunwales when outboards were present. With the Proline’s twin Mercuries, Wood expected the latter.
The sound of the engine straining to free the Proline was his canary in the coal mine. If it stopped, it meant he had been spotted. As long as the sound continued, it meant the operator was fixated on freeing the boat—and not hunting Wood.
Wood moved closer, wishing he had a light. He had extinguished his running lights as well, hoping to avoid detection. The sickening sound of the Proline’s engines being ruined continued, allowing him to move even closer.
When he was only a hundred feet away, in range of a clean shot, the moon broke out from the clouds that had shielded it. The dark letters against the white hull popped out like a neon sign.
Widget.
Steven, this is a great read excitement all the way. Great job.