Here are a couple more chapters for your reading enjoyment. If you need to catch up, you can read the entire manuscript to date here: https://read.bookfunnel.com/read/arg7vlfwtp.
Chapter 12
Wood cut the throttle, allowing the skiff to drift toward the ramp, and quickly saw the incongruent moment for what it was. When either man smiled, it was cause for concern. When both did it was earth-shattering. He quickly changed his tone.
“You owe me.”
Mac waded out to the stiff and climbed aboard without replying.
“Looks like you had a good time.” Wood was not going to let him off easily.
“Yeah, she’s okay. You want me to thank you now?”
Wood examined Travis more out of curiosity than concern. The younger man could go without sleep. Wood had seen it firsthand. He didn’t care about Mac’s love life. What Mac wanted to know was if he’d made any progress on the work front.
“What’s the plan?” Mac asked.
Wood held his cards close until they were both aboard the barge. “We’ll have to move her back to the pier. Your girlfriend should be here soon to watch you weld.”
“You’re giving in?”
Wood didn’t take the comment as an insult. Travis’ tone was more surprised than judgmental. “She gonna pass you?”
Mac shook his head and started to pick up the gear scattered around the deck. “Both tanks are empty.”
Again a statement of fact. “Got some news.”
“That why you were smiling?”
“Seems we got a hoard of concreted coins down there. I got a bunch chipped away.” Wood told him he’d talked to Wigner, leaving out the part about being caught in the water the previous night.
“So, we get the inspection, pour the concrete, and get them out of our hair.”
“Now you’ve got it.”
Mac had piled the dive gear near the freshwater washdown. He sprayed it off and brought it to the shed, where he hung up the BC and wetsuit and stored the rest of the gear.
All that remained were the tanks. “You mount a compressor on here and we won’t have to go through all this.”
“If this all pans out I’ll buy you a brand new one.”
“That good?”
“I’ve got Ned coming down around lunchtime. If you can finish up with your girlfriend, maybe we can have a look.”
“What about the tanks?”
“You don’t need both of us watching you. Toss ’em in the skiff and I’ll fill them.”
Mac grabbed the tanks by the valve and carried them to the boat. Just as he set them down Wood’s phone rang. Neither man was used to the sound on the water and it took a second for them to see Kristen waiting by the ramp. Wood answered and told her he’d be right over.
“I’ll drop her and take off. Don’t screw it up.” Wood dropped down to the skiff. Mac released the line from the cleat and tossed it down. A few seconds later Wood had steered a wide turn and headed to the ramp.
“Hello, young lady. How was your date?”
“Can we keep business, business?”
She didn’t have the same smile that Travis had been sporting, making Wood wonder what had happened. “Yeah, sure,” he muttered under his breath and eased the bow up onto the ramp so she wouldn’t get her feet wet.
Kristen climbed aboard. She remained quiet for the short trip to the barge, where she disembarked and went directly to the area where Mac had disassembled the rebar cages. Wood watched, frustrated that he wasn’t able to read their lips or body language as they exchanged a few words. The one thing he could determine was that his attempt to de-ice the inspector had failed.
The torch sparked as Mac went to work reassembling the cages. Both Travis and the inspector wore welding masks, making any interpretation of their conversation impossible. The only clue he had was that the spark stayed alive, meaning she had accepted the welds to that point. If the grinder came out he was in trouble.
The process would last all morning. Travis knew the cost associated with the inspector’s time and would work hard with few breaks. That left Wood free. He thought about diving again, but Kristen was sure to notice, and he didn’t want to distract her from the inspection.
Pouring another cup of coffee from the thermos, Wood pulled the list he’d written from his pockets. He sat down on a bollard and started making calls. The first ones were to the concrete company and pumper to set up the pour. The next was to Ned.
Wood glanced at the fishermen on the bridge and the boats nearby, wondering if one had an antenna that allowed them to listen in to his call. The technology was new to him and wary of any change, he didn’t trust it. “Tried and tested” was his motto and as far as he was concerned the new phones weren’t. The distrust came from his years as a contractor. New products were constantly being introduced, but he shied away from them until they had withstood the only test that mattered—time.
Ned agreed to make the drive up and check out the site firsthand. That left Wood with an hour to kill. He glanced over at Travis and Kristen and saw the work was progressing. It still angered him that an inspector had to watch over the shoulder of an expert welder, but at least she wasn’t causing trouble.
Wood finished the last of his calls and grabbed the pair of empty tanks. He loaded them on the skiff, took one more look at the work area and determined he would be back well before the welding was complete, and took off for the ramp.
After tying off the skiff, Wood lugged the cylinders to the truck, heaved them into the bed, and headed back to Big Pine. He reached the house and set them to fill, then headed to the workbench.
The original silver bar Travis had discovered sat covered with acid in a plastic bin. The solution was almost full strength and had worked its magic on the bar. Any coins would be treated the same way, but with a much milder solution so as not to damage any markings. Well-preserved antiquities were harder to sell than raw material, but were much more valuable, especially when they were in good condition. This early in the game Wood didn’t want to speculate on the windfall but knew it was enough to get excited about.
Using heavy tongs and gloves, he removed the bar from the solution and washed it in a stainless-steel sink. Once it was free of acid, he removed the safety gear and brought the bar back to the workbench. The acid had done its job and removed most of the barnacles and concretions that had adhered over the century and a half it had been in the water. Wood took a light wire brush and finished the job. After a quick polish, he was left with a bar that could have been smelted last week.
The question now was what to do with it. Without markings or provenance, it was worth only its weight. To make sure that he hadn’t missed anything, Wood pulled a lighted magnifying glass over it and studied the surface. There appeared to be some tool marks that could have been made by Travis or the smith who’d created the bar.
Assuming the other bar was identical, Wood placed it in the pan and added acid. He returned to the clean bar and wrapped it in a towel. The discovery that it was just silver was both good and bad. The bars would bring in a chunk of cash, but he had to admit he was disappointed that there wasn’t more. It was a salvor’s dilemma.
The thought was pushed from his head when his pager went off. The number was Ned’s and the single-digit suffix told Wood he was five minutes out. Wood took the silver bar with him, intending to give it to Ned to sell in Key West. He grabbed the tanks and loaded the truck. He was a few minutes behind when he reached the ramp.
He met Ned at the bottom of the ramp and they boarded the skiff. At the same time, his pager went off again. This time it was Wigner’s number. Wood assumed the inspection was over. He glanced at his watch, thinking maybe Mac’s date had paid off. The time was a full hour and a half before he expected.
A smile crossed his face, which he quickly erased. Between finding the coins and the inspection, the day was going well. He turned away from Ned and steered to the barge.
“What are you so happy about?” Ned asked.
Wood shook his head, hoping he hadn’t cursed the operation.
Kristen was waiting when he reached the barge. Wood thanked her and tried to evaluate the look exchanged between her and Travis before she switched places with Ned. She was quiet again on the way back.
Wood dropped her off and sped back to the barge, where Travis and Ned were waiting with the lines. “Can’t tell if you did any good with that one. She got out of here quick enough.”
Travis turned away before Wood could read his expression.
He hadn’t meant to put Travis in a bad position, though he did kind of enjoy it. Setting him up on the date was for his own good, even if he didn’t know it.
Wood remembered the day they’d met. Travis had been hitchhiking through Marathon. He knew it was a fortuitous meeting when he saw the old SCUBAPRO fins sticking out of his backpack. They’d been working together ever since. In only a few years, Travis had made himself valuable enough to be considered partner material.
That didn’t happen very often, as the magnetic poles seemed to release their grips on the crazies up north and let them roll like marbles down the interstate to US 1. Some reached Key West, otherwise known as the Capital of Weird—others stopped partway down the island chain. Whatever their mental state, the economy here relied on them.
“She pass you, then?”
“Yeah, no problem. We can set them this afternoon. Did you set up concrete?”
“Yeah, got it on will-call. Gonna be slack tide in a bit, though. I’d like to get Ned in the water to have a look.”
“Sure thing. I gotta eat something first.”
“Don’t rush. I’ll go in with him,” Wood said.
All three men glanced across the water at the bridge pilings to see a small eddy still visible.
“Half hour, then. After an incoming tide, it oAn incoming tide brought clean water from the Atlantic side. The outgoing brought much murkier Gulf water. Like watching a pot of water come to a boil, the three men sat on the side of the barge and stared down. The changes were imperceptible, but right on time, the eddy suddenly disappeared.
“Go time,” Wood said. He’d briefed Travis and Ned on what he’d discovered and explained his goal of identifying and recovering at least one coin. The two men didn’t need to discuss their roles.
“Alright.” Travis rose and stretched.
“Late night?” Wood asked.
Travis ignored him and pulled Wood’s gear from where he had set it to dry. He stopped short of assembling it. That was the diver’s responsibility. A few minutes later both men were ready to dive.
“Run the air out if you have to.” Wood told Ned. “The work can wait.” Wood gave his two-sentence dive briefing. With the inspection complete and the tide on time, the day was progressing nicely.
Kicking one leg out and pushing off with the other, in what is known as a giant-stride entry, the two men hit the water. Ned finned back to the barge, where Travis handed him a bulky camera. Wood waited about ten feet away for him to descend. As the more experienced diver, he would be in charge of the dive.
Wood peered into the murky water ahead anxiously awaiting the result of the dive. He wanted both a positive and a negative result. A negative verdict from Ned that there was anything of historical significance down there, as well as the positive result of the recovery of a coin.
Chapter 13
The brilliant light from the strobe caught Wood by surprise. A small school of fish, frightened by the unnatural light, shot off into the darkness of the pier. In the water, the brilliant light lingered a few seconds longer, allowing Wood to see Ned hovering over a coral formation.
His main purpose for the dive was to buddy up with Ned. The underwater archeologist was an accomplished diver, but Wood wasn’t going to let anything happen on his watch. He also thought seeing anything that interested Ned firsthand might be helpful. His initial plan had been to recover a coin while Ned prowled around, but the current was stronger near the bottom than it had appeared on the surface. Wood abandoned that goal, and with no other agenda than to watch Ned as he finned around the area taking pictures of anything of interest, his thoughts immediately turned to the recovery. Both he and Mac had attempted to extract the coins with brute force without effect. They would need some kind of mechanical advantage over the coral, and underwater that meant hydraulics using either water pressure or air tools.
He was working his way through the problem when he heard the distinctive metal against metal sound. Ned was twenty feet away, banging against his tank with a D-ring while he pointed at something below him. He was far enough away from the bridge that at first Wood thought it was a shark. A quick glance around showed nothing alive in the area. Ned was also too experienced a diver to make a commotion with one of the apex predators around.
Wood fought the building current and finned over to the archeologist, who continued to point at an object in front of him. The act of pointing underwater didn’t necessarily mean he had found something. The gesture was the best way to keep something in sight in a changeable environment. The same technique was taught in man overboard drills. Losing sight of a person or object in the water was surprisingly easy, even when it was close by. The same applied to the ocean floor. If Ned lost sight of whatever he was marking, he might never find it again.
Wood had kicked harder than necessary to reach Ned. A glance at his watch told him that was a good thing. They’d been in the water for almost forty-five minutes. The slack-tide window was closing, but he wanted to know what Ned had found.
Ned clung to a nearby rock with one hand while he waited for Wood. He obviously had a purpose, but Wood wasn’t able to understand the single-handed gestures. Instead of trying to interpret them, he finned beyond the area and allowed himself to drift back.
The current was becoming stronger with every passing minute, which made Wood think through his every move. Given another five minutes, if he blew past the site, he probably wouldn’t be able to get back to it. More times than he could recall, he’d found something underwater only to lose it.
Ned stretched out his empty hand for Wood, who grabbed hold and then worked himself to a position where he could help Ned. Reaching Ned had taken five minutes of hard work. Wood glanced at his air gauge, not surprised to see the needle hovering just above the red line. In theory, he had plenty of air left to drift back to the boat, but things didn’t always work out that way. As he turned his head to focus on Ned, he noticed the tug on his mask as the current tried to pull it from his face.
The Keys, like most tropical waters, had diurnal tides, meaning two highs and two lows in a twenty-four-hour period. Simplistically, the rule of twelfths would apply, and the water would rise in a steady sine wave. The moon’s effect on the tidal patterns altered the steady curve, and in this case, Wood knew the water would be coming fast and hard during the second hour. They were about five minutes away from that now.
Ned waited until Wood found a grip on the coral and motioned with his free hand, first like he was snapping a picture, and then to the camera housing floating from a D-ring clipped to his BC. Wood understood and tested his grasp on the coral against the increasing flow, then reached out and grabbed Ned by the back of his BC, giving it a slight tug to tell Ned he was secure. Tentatively, Ned released his grip on the outcropping and grasped the housing with both hands.
Wood held on like he had eight seconds on a bucking bronco while Ned adjusted his position, cursing him as the current seemed to be increasing with each second. Finally, Ned was either satisfied or had no choice, and the strobe flashed multiple times.
Wood badly wanted to see what had drawn the archeologist’s interest, but he was blinded by the flash and couldn’t risk the time for his eyes to adjust. With a quick tug, he signaled Ned that they needed to go. Maintaining his grasp on the BC, he released the coral. The current immediately dragged them backward.
The bridge piers became Wood’s next concern. As the flow of water increased, so did the chance of striking one of the barnacle-encrusted pilings. Instead of facing the current and finning into it to control his speed and better steer, which would leave him blind to the location of the dangerous structure, Wood tightened his grasp on Ned’s BC and spun around to face the bridge.
The current shot the men forward like a rocket. Normally Wood could steer with his fins, but with the addition of Ned’s bulk that changed. A quick glance at his friend showed he was under control and had worked his body into a hydrodynamic position. Wood turned back to see a piling just feet from his left side.
Steering quickly, Wood moved to the eddy created by the eight-foot-wide pier. Once in the calmer water behind the obstruction, he stopped to regroup.
Wood spat out his mouthpiece, fighting for breath. “We gotta work together once we go under.” He breathed deeply. “Hope whatever you found is worth it.”
In the slack current behind the pier and with their BCs inflated, the men bobbed on the surface, trying to relax before the final onslaught. They continued to breathe through their regulators to keep the seawater out of their mouths.
Scuba gear gives the illusion that its air is purer than atmospheric air. That isn’t the case. It’s essentially the same air and sometimes worse if the filters in the equipment used to fill the tanks are dirty.
Ned nodded. Wood could tell from his eyes, magnified by the face mask, that he was excited.
“Stick together and stay on the surface so Travis can see us.”
Wood turned to evaluate the water. He could clearly see the line where the current shot past the piling. Once they crossed into the current, there would be no stopping until they reached the open Gulf almost ten miles away. Taking another breath, he placed the regulator back in his mouth. Ned followed suit and reached for Wood’s tank valve. When Wood felt the weight of the man behind him, he kicked gently toward the opening between the piers.
The current grabbed the two men. Wood kept his legs straight and locked together, using his hips to move his fins like a rudder steering a ship. Faster than he wanted, the current pulled the two men into the open channel. Now they had to reach the boat before the current pulled them past it.
The upstream side of the bridge created new challenges. Divers were taught to avoid swimming on the surface if there was current. It was generally easier on the bottom without the effect of the wind and waves. The tactic would have worked here as well, except Wood needed to see the boat to reach it. The visibility had decreased as the current stirred the water. The five-eighths-inch-thick anchor line would be like a needle in a haystack. To make matters worse, by the time it was visible they might not be able to reach it.
With the wind from the north and the incoming current from the south, the waves were kicked up. Add to that the rebound effect created when the waves were pushed backward by the piling made the surface like a washing machine.
The barge was a large target and with the excavator forward, Wood was able to use the boom as a point of focus. He steered upstream of it knowing the current would push them back. Even then he was worried as the gap appeared to remain the same.
Wood kicked furiously toward the barge as the current pulled him away. He was already tired and felt a twinge in his hamstring, the first sign of a cramp. If he had the time he would try and relax the muscle, but that wasn’t possible under the conditions. Taking even a few seconds to ease the cramp would result in them missing the barge.
Wood spat out the mouthpiece. “Kick, damn you!” He had told Ned not to earlier, but now he needed the extra two fins. He felt the power like the reserves on an engine. The gap closed.
They’d already passed the bow and were near amidships of the barge. The downstream corner of the barge was the last chance, and Wood wasn’t sure they would reach it.
Suddenly something smacked the top of his head. His first reaction was that it was a shark or ray coming out of the water. Then he felt the line and glanced at the barge. Travis held one end, which meant there was a buoy on the other. Wood turned his head and found the red ball moving beside them in the current. He reached out for the line, grasping it just as his legs froze with the shock of a cramp.
With both hands securely grasping the line, Wood let his spent legs drift with the current. Slowly the cramp released its death grip. He felt Ned behind him and called back for him to grab the line as well. The weight released from his back and he glanced to the side to see Ned beside him with the camera dangling from a cord attached to his BC. The regulator remained in his mouth as he had been taught, but Wood could see a smile in his eyes.
A tug on the rope turned his attention to the barge, where he watched as Travis hauled the line in hand over hand. A minute later, he grasped the side of the barge and waited while Travis helped Ned aboard. The camera housing was first and then Ned. Wood started to pull himself up. He kicked with both fins but the cramp returned, forcing him to wait for Travis to help him.
“Damned cramp.” He grabbed the offered hand and allowed the younger man to pull him aboard. “Good thinking on the line.”
“What were you two doing out there in that current?”
He said it like a father scolding a child. Wood knew he was right and let it pass. “Old boy found something.”
Both men turned to Ned. He had stripped his gear off and was removing the camera from the housing. Once he had it, he spooled the film backward into the container and removed it from the back of the camera.
“Might want to get this processed ASAP.”