If you need to catch up, here is a compilation of the book to date: https://read.bookfunnel.com/read/arg7vlfwtp
Chapter 4
“What about the inspection?” Mac asked.
“We’ve got bigger fish to fry.” Wood looked around suspiciously. Clusters of fishermen were on the bridge above and several boats were on the ocean side of the span. None of this was out of the ordinary. People spent hundreds of dollars to get offshore though the most consistent fishing was often around the forty-odd bridges connecting the island chain.
Offshore offered dolphin, which the restaurants had started calling mahi-mahi, a more exotic name for the same fish. Sailfish, wahoo, tuna, and infrequently marlin could be caught in and around the Gulf Stream waters. Every other species common to the Keys could be found around the bridges. Attracted by the structure, depth, tides, and even shade from the spans above, they are essentially reef systems.
Wood eyed a group nearby. People were always interested in the work they did. He only hoped it was the construction work and not the exposed sea floor that held their attention. Finally, he dismissed them as just curious.
“A little paranoid?” Mac asked.
“Got something in the truck to show you.” Wood was superstitious enough to not even say the word “silver” so close to where they found it.
“Whatever. I’ve gone about as far as I can until you call the inspector.”
Wood moved from the gunwale, where he had been watching the activity around them, to the two half-circles Mac had assembled. He checked a few welds and nodded, the best praise he usually gave. “I’ll make the call. See if we can get him out here tomorrow.”
“You want me in the morning, then?”
They would be lucky if the inspector gave them a window of time. Wood would have to be on hand to shuttle him back and forth to the ramp, but Mac would be superfluous.
“Got another little project. Might want to be here at first light.”
“This have something to do with what you have in the truck?”
Wood nodded again, checking around as he did so.
“Alright.” Mac started to clean up the tools and materials. “Give me a minute and we’ll see what this secret of yours is.”
Wood snorted and grabbed a beer from the cooler. He glanced over at Mac, who shook his head. “You need to relax more. Maybe get a girlfriend or something.” Wood sat on the cooler and opened the can.
“I could say the same for you.”
Wood held up the can. “This is all the company I need.” He took a long sip and watched Mac put the tools in the ten-foot container secured to the deck. He closed and locked the door, then stacked the steel cutoffs. “You want to take these back now?”
Rebar was mostly made from recycled metal. Wood would accumulate a load and take it to the transfer station along with his empty beer cans. “It’ll keep.”
“Good to go, then.” Mac wiped his hands on his coveralls.
Wood gave the barge a once-over to make sure everything was locked and secured then pulled the painter to bring the skiff closer. The two men boarded the skiff and were soon at the ramp, where Wood tied off the boat and grabbed the keys.
They stood at the truck a minute later. Wood glanced around as he opened the passenger door. “Come over here. Don’t want the world to see.”
Mac shuffled forward and watched over Wood’s shoulder as he unwrapped the bar. “See that?” He pointed to the exposed silver.
“You me to go down and have a look?” Mac asked.
“Gotta do it during the day. Sunrise suit you?” Night diving was also a possibility. Technically the conditions were better for finding things. With only a beam of light to focus the diver’s attention, it was often less distracting than during the day. The problem was that with the clear water, they could be easily observed by a curious fisherman or even a passerby.
“Okay. Bring the hookah rig.”
“Good idea.” Comprised of a long air hose fed by a gas-powered engine that sat in an inner tube, the rig allowed divers to work shallow waters without the burden or limitations of a tank.
Mac closed the door and Wood watched as he walked back to his truck. Travis left the lot, turning left to head to Marathon. Wood turned right. His trip was considerably shorter, and he reached his house about ten minutes later.
The house was quiet and had been since Mel had left for college about five years ago. That didn’t bother Wood. He had been done with his fellow man for years. Travis and Ned were the only people he could tolerate for any kind of time and even then, they could get on his nerves. He liked to joke that he only had one, but it was pretty much the truth.
Wood made himself a sandwich and grabbed a glass of water. Though some thought so, drinking beer wasn’t an all-day affair for him. A couple during the day helped take the edge off. He’d learned a long time ago that there was no future in getting drunk, especially drinking at night.
After eating, he loaded the hookah rig and several boxes of supplies they would need for tomorrow and headed to bed.
Mornings usually hurt. Even without drinking, the first few hours of the day were often painful. Between what the doctors said was arthritis and some kind of stomach ailment, it was usually a solid hour before he settled and that was on a good day.
His mood wasn’t any better. Optimism wasn’t his thing. Wood had learned a long time ago that disappointment was the norm. Despite the feeling, he was enthused when he pulled up to the boat ramp. Travis arrived less than a minute later. Wood hauled the hookah to the edge of the ramp and went back for the supplies. Mac met him at the truck and together they loaded the skiff.
They brought the supplies out to the barge and Mac grabbed his diving gear. He took his wet suit, mask, fins, booties, and a weight belt, leaving the cumbersome BC and tanks behind.
“You have a plan?”
“Start at the beginning. We’ve got no idea if the bar you found is the only one or if there’s a wreck down there.”
“We would have seen anything when we checked out the pilings.”
“Only one way to find out.” Wood started the engine on the hookah and set it over the side, attaching the inflated inner tube with a line. He set the required dive flags mounted to a stick of PVC in the rod holder.
Mac geared up and slipped over the side. Wood glanced around. A few fishermen were wrapping up their night trips. They didn’t appear to be interested in the activity on the water. Otherwise, there was little traffic on the roads or water. He sat back and watched the dive light, which showed Mac’s location. As the sun climbed in the sky the beam became less visible, leaving the hookah rig as the only indicator of where Mac was working. With the bridge blocking the sun, this was the perfect time for a clandestine search.
The bubbles told Wood whether Mac was working or looking. He’d taken a steel flat-bar down with him. After a hundred years on the bottom, the silver bars—or anything else—would have become embedded in the sea floor. A good eye and a prying device were required to yield results.
A flurry of bubbles broke the surface, telling Wood that Mac had found something. He peered over the side, but with the angle of the sun was unable to see anything. The bubbles continued for a long minute. A few seconds after that, Mac’s head broke the surface. He tossed a large lobster onto the deck. Wood was about to call out that it wasn’t worth getting up that early in the morning for a lobster—when Mac’s other hand emerged with another rectangular block.
There was no celebration as Wood took the bar and placed it on the deck under a seat. He glanced around to see if anyone had seen, then at the water. A stream of bubbles greeted him, telling him Travis had gone down to look for more.
Gold fever is defined as the contagious excitement at a gold rush. Wood often thought it was more the irrational way that men acted when enticed by a mix of excitement and greed. Even though he knew the causes and symptoms, there was no stopping the feeling coursing through him. He would have sat here all day staring at the bubble trail and hoping for more.
The sound of his phone ringing brought him back to the present. The device was still new to him, and he fumbled as he removed it from the clip on his belt.
“Woodson.”
“This is Richard Wigner, your engineer. I was told to call you when I got to the ramp.”
Wood glanced over at the mainland, squinting into the rising sun. He saw a lone figure on the seawall adjacent to the ramp.
“Give me a minute and I’ll be over.” He disconnected and yanked on the line connected to the hookah rig. The air line pulled tight as Wood gently brought the air supply to the side of the boat. A minute later Mac surfaced.
He pulled off his mask with a surprised look, showing that he had treasure fever as well. “I’m pretty sure there’s more. What’s up?”
“Damned inspector’s here. We’ll have to do some real work.”
The definition of work was different for miners. When they were successful, it was more like play. When they weren’t, there was still a strange optimism that drove them.
Mac ditched the air hose, allowing Wood to retrieve it. Launching himself with his fins, he slithered over the side of the skiff.
“Gotta move. Clock’s ticking.” He accelerated quickly, almost unseating Mac, who was struggling to remove his wetsuit. He steered a beeline for the boat ramp counting the minutes and how much each one was costing him in his head.
Wood had a grudging respect for some engineers. Most he dismissed, and that included the man standing at the ramp. There are standards in any building trade that experienced contractors don’t need plans or engineers to determine. In residential construction, for example, footer sizes, steel placement, and header dimensions are well known. Underwater construction was more of a specialty, but that was in execution, not knowledge. Wood had replaced enough piers that he knew exactly what size and spacing of the steel reinforcements were needed. It burned him that he had to pay someone to tell him what he already knew.
There were guys who worked outside of the box, exploring new and better ways to get a job done or handle an unusual circumstances. Those engineers Wood respected. The guys like Dick Wigner, as Wood called him, took money for regurgitating work that their betters had done for them.
Wigner went a step beyond and required that his firm do periodic inspections, not in lieu of the county or state inspectors, but in addition to them. Wood added money for the additional inspections, but since the engineer billed by the hour, he never recouped the total expense, or for the lack of work while the inspector was there.
Wood pulled up to the ramp, bringing the bow of the boat as far forward as it would go. Wigner looked at the small gap. They both knew he would have to get his feet wet, and Wood was angry at the delay while he removed his dress shoes and socks—inappropriate attire in the best of circumstances. When the engineer was finally aboard, Wood accelerated hard, more to unsettle the man than to save time.
The thrill of finding another silver bar had already worn off.
Chapter 5
5
Wood was thinking mostly about silver bars and little about ignoring Wigner, probably a mistake considering the inspector’s attitude toward him.
“You know better than to have welded the cages without someone from my firm present.”
The “my firm” part rattled Wood and brought him his attention back to the job at hand. From drawing the plans, through the bid submittal process, Wigner’s firm regularly milked the Florida Department of Transportation. Once a bid was accepted, they turned their attention from the state to the contractor and continued to funnel money from the project. Wigner and his company profited at every step.
“You can see them now. Travis is one of the better welders down here.”
“All the same, I’ll send someone out to observe the rest of the work. Don’t go racing ahead on the concrete, either. We’ll need to perform slump tests and take core samples before you pour.”
Wood shook his head. None of this was new to him, —it just made his job more difficult. Working on land was hard enough. On the water, at the mercy of the seas, it was extremely difficult to coordinate with an inspector on top of everything else.
When his wife had been alive and he had been more social, being around people had mellowed him. Their unfounded opinions and his weariness to fight them had worn him out. He had been better at following the rules of society then. Now, he didn’t care.
Losing his wife at an early age had been a blow that had turned him inward. In the process, he had become more rebellious.
He knew the inspections and bureaucratic nonsense were all part of the job. The problem was, Wood had been around the Keys since the early 1960s. He knew how it construction had once been done and seen witnessed how the bureaucratic creep turned even simple jobs into complex ones. Time and money were both sacrificed for some kind of elusive public safety goals that had never been quantified.
His job was to repair a bridge, not satisfy stupid and often redundant requirements. Most of the original bridges built in the early 1900s still stood, and they hadn’t had to deal with any of these burdens.
In response, he nodded. “You ready for me to run you back?”
“Yeah.” He Wigner moved toward the skiff. “I’m not giving you a pass on the welding. You’ll have to deal with the state on that.”
The state subcontracted the inspection process to qualified private firms like Wigner’s. That meant they had the money to become certified, not that they were good at what they did. Wood was free to choose a certified inspector. The problem was that Wigner had a monopoly on the Keys. Wood would be forced to bring someone down from Miami if he fired the local firm.
“We’ll work something out.” Wood climbed into the skiff.
The sound of the engine , roaring louder than usual, as Wood sped back to the ramp made conversation impossible. Wood amused himself by swerving back and forth several times to avoid a few trap buoys, oversteering to unseat Wigner. He watched the man’s white-knuckle grip on the low gunwales and smiled.
Another string of five buoys lay between the skiff and the boat ramp. Wood steered straight toward the first, as if he hadn’t seen it, and cut hard to port to avoid the propeller slicing through the line. Wigner was ready this time and braced himself, using his feet as well as his hands.
When the boat settled Wood noticed the silver bar had become dislodged from its hiding place under the seat.
The building tradesFollowing the rules weren’t wasn’t the only adversarial part of Wood and Wigner’s relationship. The engineer was a known treasure hunter. He knew what he was looking at.
Wood watched as Wigner reached out his leg and eased the block out of view. The passive- aggressive move meant that Wood had more to worry about than if he Wigner had asked him about it. With that knowledge, a delay in the building process might be to Wood’s advantage.
The only card that Wood held over the engineer was that he Wigner wouldn’t be on the job site unless he was called. That meant if he was there, he was up to no good.
Wood was sure he could get another engineer to approve the welding, which would allow them to install the cages and pour concrete. That would still take a couple of days to arrange. As far as a business move, it was questionable and would cost more money. The chance it gave him to recover more treasure might be worth it.
The bottom of the aluminum hull ground against the rough concrete of the ramp. Wood and Wigner exchanged a look that would have revealed nothing to an outsider. The two men had always been at war. The look confirmed it had escalated.
A large part of the conflict between the two men was personal. They didn’t like each other. Never had, never would. Engineers and contractors fought all the time. In most cases, the spats were professional and not personal. The situation between these two men went far beyond that. A smaller factor, but one which had an overriding effect on the current situation, was the nature of the treasure- hunting business.
Money was at the root of the problem, but larger than -than-life personalities , and their egos played a part as well. Wood considered himself a salvor, not a treasure hunter. The former was practical, the latter speculative. He put up his own money and used his own equipment and knowledge, —although Ned was a part of that, —to locate and recover things of value lost to the seas. His scope wasn’t limited to the 1733 fleet or particular Spanish wrecks—or taking investors’ money.
Wigner operated as a treasure hunter. His setup was legitimate, but his modus operandi, was geared toward bilking investors. In the dozen or so years Wood had known him, he had failed to recover anything of value.
The time wasn’t that unusual. Mel Fisher had taken fifteen years to discover the Nuestra Senora de Atocha. He’d gone broke in the process but persevered. That He was a man with a dream and the determination to see it through. His money, hard work, and a little luck eventually yielded millions in gold and silver. Fisher and his operation were outliers, but his success had defined the business.
The Atocha had been discovered ten years ago , and still yielded treasure. That publicity had propagated a host of copycats and their followers.
Wigner had set up a legitimate company to raise funds for his projects. On the surface, it looked fine, with regular newsletters being mailed to investors giving them hope, when Wood knew there was almost zero chance of them making a profit, let alone recovering their investments.
Wigner had no boats or equipment. His deal was to subcontract local captains to perform sonar scans of the ocean floor. For modern modern-day wrecks, which were defined as steel rather than wooden ships, that method worked. To find a four- hundred year -year-old wooden ship, it was impossible. Wood had dove dived on several old sites and seen first hand what little remained. A ballast pile was usually the biggest clue. A diver would be able to tell, mostly if the stones were harvested from a river and smooth, that it was a gravestone for a lost ship. A surface scan would show a rock pile, with no detail. Cannons and anchors were the other identifiable features, but neither would show up on the scans.
The scans could then be sold to third parties. It was a scam that yielded nothing to the investors, who were paid a share of the recovery. The word on the street was that Wigner badly needed something to show investors. Even if it only ate into the expenses, proof of a find would go a long ways in a world where Mel Fisher’s optimistic “today is the day” phrase is spoken too often.
The moment Wigner’s feet were on solid ground, Wood backed away from the ramp. He turned and accelerated, hoping the rooster tail shot up by the engine would land on Wigner. A few minutes later he was back alongside the barge.
“That didn’t go well,” Mac said as he secured the lines.
“I’ll deal with the inspection problems. We’ve got bigger issues, though. I think he saw the bar.”
“So, he’ll be back.”
“We’ve probably got a few days before I can get an inspector down from Miami that’ll sign off on the welding. My vote is that we try and figure out what’s down there before Wigner can get organized.”
While the Wood’s construction business was a benevolent dictatorship, the two men were partners in the salvage operations.
“We’ll need to wait out the tide before we can dive.”
Wood followed his gaze to the large wake behind the closest piling. “Current’s smoking. Reckon you’re right.”
Piers and channel markers were good gauges for the current. The velocity of the water flowing by them would form an eddy on the backside, evident by the wake of the moving water. Wood judged it to be two knots. At that speed, even a good swimmer would be unable to make headway. One knot was the limit they would dive.
Wood reached into his pocket and removed a folded index-sized card. The tide tables showed the highs and lows for each date at the Bahia Honda Bridge, the closest tide station to their location.
Tides in the backcountry of the Lower Keys were anything but straightforward. Along the reef line and close to the bridges they were more consistent. Because of the channels, banks, shoals, and islands scattered throughout the Gulf side, it could be high tide at the mainland and low tide just a few miles away.
“Slack tide looks to be around noon. How do you want to play it?” Wood asked. He had no where near the experience Mac had underwater. Travis had the training necessary to become a certified underwater welder and had worked the oil rigs off Galveston before heading to the Keys. There were few things he Wood would defer judgment on. This was one.
“I’d prefer to use tanks instead of the Hookah. Might want to change the filters. Got a bad taste. Also don’t like that hose dragging behind me when I’m working around the pilings. That modified scooter might be some help as well.”
“Okay. We’ll head to the house. Tide looks like we can get back on it in about two hours.”
The phase and state of the moon dictated the longevity and height of a tide. During the full moon, the highs are higher, and during a new moon was the opposite. The tides during the quarter moon, which was now overhead, meant that the fluctuations would be in the middle.
They left the skiff at the ramp and used the truck to shuttle the tanks back to Wood’s place. Big Pine Key, where he lived, was just across the Big Spanish Channel, but navigation on the water wasn’t as simple as the two roads he would needed to reach his house. A boat ride to the other side of Big Pine would take the better part of an hour.
Wood owned two neighboring properties, one for the house, and the other for his stuff. Even though it was in a neighborhood, the yard yard—as he called it it—wasn’t out of place with the heavy equipment and blocked- up boats in his neighbor’s’ driveways.
Mac hopped out and opened the gate. The three-foot- high fence surrounding the property was built to keep out the Key deer rather than for security. Wood pulled in and backed up to a small shed adjacent to the detached garage. Mac walked up and pulled the tanks out and set them by the door, where he hooked them up to the tangle of lines and turned on the compressor.
“Is the scooter in here?” Mac asked, heading toward the garage door.
“Yeah, might want to check that it’s charged.”
Mac stepped into the garage, squeezing through the maze of equipment and parts until he reached the bench. The hand-held scooter was manufactured as a means to propel a diver through the water. Wood had redesigned this one to act as a blower to dislodge the sand around pilings. Mac grabbed the three cables which anchored it to the bottom. He loaded the equipment and topped off tanks into the truck and waited.
Wood was in the kitchen, staring at the bridge contract. Most of the legalese was boilerplate, which he had skimmed before signing it. That wasn’t the problem, though. The two paragraphs at the end dealing with the required inspections were.
There was no misinterpreting them and it appeared he had to make peace with Wigner. He’d entered the house guardedly optimistic that the delay would allow them to bring up more silver. He was on the other end of the spectrum when he walked out.
I forgot to tell you they both are in Chapter 5
It sounds and reads great. 2 things though. 1 The sentence beginning with: ( The only card ) go down to ( he Wagner,) I think there should be a comma before (he).
Sentence 2: The left skiff: 3rd line (he would needed ) needs to be changed to (need).