“But you’re not smiling,” Star pointed out.
“It’s Spanish.” She pointed. “Crucifixes, Catholic religious medallions. See that helmet? Only Spain used that design — there were soldiers on the galleons, separate from the crew. The seamen couldn’t fight, and the soldiers couldn’t sail.”
“Then it’s definite!” cried Dante. “That’s a real treasure ship! I just hope Cutter hasn’t already boosted all the money.”
“But the JB hilt is from England,” Adriana reminded him. “My uncle identified it, and he’s an antiquities expert. What was it doing on a Spanish galleon?”
Kaz shrugged. “Some Spanish guy bought an English walking stick. Or a whip, or whatever that handle is from.”
“Or he could have stolen it,” added Star.
“Maybe,” Adriana admitted grudgingly. “But in those days you couldn’t just go on the Internet and order stuff from around the world. And Spanish colonials were barred from buying foreign goods. An English artifact on a Spanish ship — I don’t know. It sounds kind of fishy to me. There’s something here we’re not seeing….”
30 August 1665
The settlement of Portobelo was ablaze. The bodies of its soldiers and citizens lay strewn about its ruined streets.
Samuel wandered through the bloody chaos, the blade of his sword striking sparks as he dragged it across the cobblestones. He did not have the strength to heft it, and certainly not the will. Samuel Higgins had been kidnapped from his family at the age of six, and had lived a life of privation and torment. Yet this was the lowest he had ever sunk in misery. He had not known the true mission of the Griffin when he had signed on. Even upon learning the truth, he could never have imagined this frenzied rampage of torture and murder.
Sick at heart, he walked away from the mayhem and started back to the beach. He had no definite plan. Perhaps he would sit on the sand and wait for this nightmare to be over. But he had not ruled out walking straight into the sea until the blue water swallowed him forever.
And then his back exploded with pain, and he fell to the street, waiting for death. Surely, this was a musket ball that had struck him down. He turned, expecting to see a Spanish soldier reloading his weapon. Instead, it was the tall figure of Captain James Blade, furling the leather of his whip. Set in the handle, an emerald the size of a robin’s egg gleamed cruelly in the sun.
“Going somewhere, boy?”
The true extent of his predicament brought Samuel out of his daze. Walking away in the middle of a battle was desertion — a hanging offense.
“Captain,” he said beseechingly, “what use have you for me in this fight — a boy who cannot even lift his sword?”
“I’ll kill you myself if you turn your back on your duty again!” Blade threatened. He reached down, grabbed a handful of Samuel’s unruly brown hair, and drew the boy to his feet. “These foul maggots call you Lucky. Be they right or be they wrong, they take heart when they see you. And you will be seen!”
So Samuel dragged himself and his sword back to the battle.
Musket fire was heard in the alleyway behind the merchants’ houses. A lead ball ripped into the stone wall of the church, missing Samuel by inches. Terrified, he ran around the corner of the building and stopped short. There in front of him stood a captain of the Spanish garrison.
The officer reared back a double-edged broad-sword, preparing to deliver a blow that would slice the cabin boy in half. Samuel raised his own sword in a feeble attempt to ward off the attack. He closed his eyes, waiting for it all to end.
Suddenly, distant drums resounded through the burning town, beating out the cease-fire. It was the garrison at Santiago, signaling the Spanish surrender.
Portobelo was won.
And young Samuel Higgins was still lucky.
Breakfast the next day was powdered milk and peanut butter on toast. After passing a serving through the airlock to Dr. Ocasek in the chamber, the interns suited up and headed back to the wreck site.
This time, they were careful to maintain a safe distance. As soon as the water turned murky and they could hear the airlift’s roar, they retreated to a hiding place behind a coral ridge. There they waited, observing nothing but swirling clouds of silt until their air ran low.
Back at PUSH, the four found Dr. Ocasek out of decompression and all packed up for his return to the surface. “I just talked to topside,” he told them. “Jennifer Delal will be coming down in a couple of hours. She’s collecting algae samples from the reef.”
“We got you a going-away present,” said Star. From her mesh bag, she pulled an enormous conch shell nearly two feet long.
“Something to make popcorn in,” Kaz supplied. “Just in case you get hungry topside.”
The scientist was impressed. “Wow, that’s a beauty! I’m going to miss you guys.”
They watched through the viewing port as he exited the wet porch. The shell under his arm was larger than the waterproof bag that held all his belongings from a two-week stay. He tossed one final piece of sandwich to his “pet” moray, and disappeared up the tether line. A boat waited at the PUSH life-support buoy to whisk him off to deal with the wreckage of his workspace and his exploded experiments.
On the station, the time dragged. Sick of peanut butter, they tried to make a freeze-dried beef Stroganoff dinner from the pantry. But Kaz forgot to add water before heating. Gray smoke billowed from the microwave, setting off the topside monitoring sensors.
“Don’t worry,” came the amused voice of the technician over the emergency wall speaker. “The habitat has air scrubbers that’ll take out the smoke automatically. Just don’t cook any more duck à l’orange, okay?”
“It was beef Stroganoff,” Kaz admitted.
“Listen, nobody comes to PUSH for the fine cuisine,” the man assured them. “Just sit tight until Dr. Delal gets there, got it?” He severed the connection.
“What about fish?” asked Dante. “That’s food, right? We’re choking on peanut butter, and right outside our window is the ultimate seafood buffet.”
Star laughed in his face. “Like you could cut open a fish without fainting.”
“I did once,” Adriana informed them. “Actually, it was at a resort, so the staff did all the gutting and cleaning. But I watched.”
They settled in for a long wait on the cramped station. The water outside the viewing ports darkened from blue to black as night fell. There was still no sign of Dr. Delal.
Adriana sprang to her feet. “I’ll call topside.”
Star grabbed her arm. “They’ll just order us to stay put again.”
“Which is exactly what we’re doing,” agreed Kaz. “So what’s the problem?”
“She probably just decided to hold off until morning, and they forgot to tell us,” said Star. “Which means we’ll sit here all night and lose our only chance to check out the wreck site when Cutter isn’t there.”
Dante stared at her. “You mean a night dive? Now? When we’re all alone?”
“You think some scientist could help us if we ran into Clarence out there?” Kaz said.
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Dante demanded.
Star paced the narrow aisle, her limp exaggerated by the cramped quarters. “We’ll give it till midnight,” she decided. “Then we dive — Dr. Delal or no Dr. Delal.”
At eleven-fifty-five, with no sign of the scientist, they dressed out and shrugged into the awkward double-tank setups.
The fifteen-minute half-mile ride to the wreck site was becoming familiar, Adriana reflected as she clung to the handles of the DPV. There was the coral head that reminded her of the Eiffel Tower, and the colony of tentacled anemones that resembled a field of powder-blue flowers. A little farther along, her headlamp illuminated the “lobster sponge,” a titanic red sponge that was used as a hiding place by several clawless Caribbean lobsters.
I’m starting to recognize the fish too. The thought seemed crazy. But no — there was the barracuda that was missing th
e top half of its crescent tail. It was exciting, almost like running into an old friend.
I wonder if he knows us too — “Hey, it’s those losers on the dive scooters. Who taught them how to swim?”
She became all business when they reached the wreck site. She worked tirelessly, stuffing her bag until it was bursting with coral-encrusted artifacts. The passion of her own efforts didn’t surprise her. She loved this stuff. But she was amazed at the enthusiasm the others put into the job. It was backbreaking work, even underwater, where the blocks of limestone weighed much less than on dry land. At such a level of exertion, a diver sucked air at double speed, and soon Star was tapping her on the shoulder. Their backup tanks were down to half full. It was time to return to PUSH.
The trip home was a pleasantly exhausted one. Their DPVs worked a little slower from the weight of bags jam-packed with artifacts.
As she glided through the black water in her cone of light, her mind toyed lazily with the puzzle of the shipwreck. A Spanish vessel, almost certainly. Maybe even one of the fabled treasure galleons — the time period seemed about right. But where was the treasure? Surely Cutter couldn’t have it all. That much silver and gold would sink the Ponce de León. And how did the bone handle fit in?
Maybe I’m making a mountain out of a molehill. She knew, for example, that English cannons were common on foreign ships. Was it really so weird that a Spaniard had acquired an item that had once belonged to an Englishman with the initials JB?
Something was wrong. Up ahead, she could see Star turning around. That was when Adriana realized that she had noticed none of the usual landmarks on the return trip. She checked her dive watch. They had been on the move for twenty minutes, maybe more. They should have reached the habitat by now.
With a feeling approaching fright, she realized they were lost.
Frantically, Adriana ransacked her mind for any clue as to where they had veered off course. Somehow, they must have skirted the circle of navigation lines that stretched out from PUSH like the spokes of a wheel. But how far back? And in what direction?
Star tried to quell the panic that was swelling in the group. She gestured emphatically at her headlamp. The message was clear. Search for the habitat, but stay in sight of the others’ lights.
Okay, Adriana told herself, you’ve got air left. That was if she didn’t squander it by breathing too fast. They retraced their steps a few hundred feet and fanned outward, scouring the bottom for the white ropes. The beam of Adriana’s torch cast a ghostly oval over the reef, but she saw nothing but coral, sponges, and the occasional fish.
Come on! Where is it?
She took a quick inventory of her dive mates, now distant glows in the darkness. How would she even signal the others if she found something? Would a short, sharp shout into her regulator reach them?
It won’t make any difference if we can’t find something to shout about.
She could feel her gas running low now. There was still plenty to breathe, but it took more effort to suck it out of the tank. A check of the gauge drew a wheezing of shock from her. It was under 100 psi — at this depth, three minutes, tops! And she was gasping, devouring what little supply she had left.
Control yourself!
It was easier said than done. The full impact of their situation pressed down on her like the immense weight of the ocean. She couldn’t shoot for the surface even if her tank ran bone dry. None of them could. The interns had been living at sixty-five feet for three days. Their bodies were saturated with dissolved nitrogen. A quick ascent would bring out millions of tiny gas bubbles, turning the blood into a lethal froth — a case of the bends so severe no one could survive it. Above lay only death.
But I’ll suffocate!
Her face distorted by horror, she spun around to warn the others. Her panorama of black ocean revealed two sets of lights.
Two?!
Off to her left bobbed the interns’ headlamps. And there, approaching fast from the right, were five more.
A rescue team?
But how did they know we were in trouble?
Right then, she didn’t care. She pointed her DPV in the direction of the newcomers and took off.
As she closed the gap, she realized that she was advancing toward not a group of rescuers, but a single diver.
Dr. Delal! She came after all! And when she saw we weren’t at the station, she went looking for us!
The newest aquanaut wore a headlamp and had strapped hand lights to both ankles and wrists to catch their attention in the dark sea. She looked bigger than Adriana remembered her — probably from the magnifying effect of the water.
Adriana drew a shallow, painful suck from her mouthpiece. Her gauge showed zero. She inhaled again —
Nothing! Terror twisted her insides. The tank was bone dry!
With two powerful kicks, the aquanaut was upon her. The newcomer wore smaller wing tanks affixed to arms and legs. Confident hands snapped one of the wings onto Adriana’s regulator.
Air! The metallic tang of that first compressed lungful was the most delicious taste she could remember.
“Thank you!” she panted into her mouthpiece.
Her savior was already steaming for the other three interns. Adriana followed. Even on her scooter, she had trouble keeping up with Dr. Delal’s powerful kicks.
Kaz was beginning to panic, his gas supply dwindling. Dante, who was already out of air, was buddy-breathing what little Star had left. Adriana watched their rescuer distribute the wing tanks.
The truth was so awful it made her nauseous. But it was undeniable: If Igor Ocasek’s replacement really had stayed topside until morning, they would all be dead.
It was a chastened and bone-weary team of interns that followed their rescuer back to PUSH. When the terror subsided, it left nothing but exhaustion in its wake. Adriana barely had the strength to haul her scooter, her burgeoning dive bag, and herself up the ladder to the wet porch.
She collapsed onto the plastic grating, fighting an impulse to weep with sheer relief. “Dr. Delal,” she managed, too weak to pull off her gear, “I don’t know what to say.”
There was a familiar grunt that definitely couldn’t have come from anyone named Jennifer. Up popped the mask to reveal the face of their savior.
It was English.
Menasce Gérard’s dark, burning eyes scorched them with fury and contempt. “You!” the six-foot-five dive guide exclaimed. “They tell me only Jennifer is sick, I must go to PUSH in her place. If I know it is for you, I say no.”
“Well, we’re really glad you decided to come,” Kaz said, his voice shaky. “We couldn’t find the nav ropes. I don’t know what happened.”
“We messed up, pure and simple,” Star confessed. “We could have died.” She swallowed hard. “We would have died.”
English was not sympathetic. “If you stop doing these idiot things, you do not have this problem! Night diving is not for the kindergarten. Careful — you have maybe heard this word before?”
“Sorry,” mumbled Kaz.
“I am not Superman, me. I cannot always be there when you play dice with your lives. And for what?” He tossed a disgusted glance at Adriana’s mesh bag, seeing the lumps of coral but not the artifacts they concealed. “Rocks. Fou!” He peeled off his dive gear and stormed through the pressure lock.
Dante set his tanks on the EMPTY rack by the compressor. “Is it just me, or is that guy always there every time we look like morons?”
“Thank God for that,” Kaz said feelingly. “How many times has he saved our necks?”
Adriana stepped out of her flippers. “Do you think he’s right? Are the night dives too risky?”
Star shook her head vehemently. “We just got cocky, that’s all. We made it okay a couple of times, and we let our guard down.”
“Down here, you only get one mistake,” Dante pointed out.
Star nodded gravely. “You’re right. It was my bad, and it won’t happen again. English is right. He won’t be th
ere for us every time.”
“I don’t want him any time,” Dante said plaintively. “Don’t get me wrong — I’m grateful. But he hates us.”
“He doesn’t hate us,” argued Star.
“Ask him!” Dante insisted. “He doesn’t even try to hide it.”
“We’ll stay out of his way,” soothed Adriana.
“Down here?” Dante shrilled. “The guy takes up half the station! We couldn’t stay out of his way if we shrank to the size of Barbie dolls! Face it — we’re locked in an underwater sardine can with an unfriendly giant.”
Menasce Gérard peered through the viewing port as the four interns set out from the station, gliding easily on their DPVs. He took careful note of the direction of their bubble trails, just in case he had to rescue them again.
He snorted. English was the most talented diver on an island of talented divers. His work on the oil rigs was difficult and dangerous, calling for great strength and skill at staggering depth and pressure. Why was a man like him playing nursemaid to a group of spoiled American teenagers?
He turned away from the viewing port. With a pop, his head shattered the bare bulb on the low ceiling. Mon dieu, this habitat was not built for a man his size! It was the interns who had brought him to this underwater dungeon, merci beaucoup.
As he brushed the glass fragments from his short hair, he noticed the crimson on his fingers. He began rummaging through the stainless steel cabinets in search of an adhesive bandage. An open cut was the last thing a diver needed. Even the slightest smell of blood in the water could attract sharks.
A lump of coral toppled from a cabinet and fell at his feet. Ah, yes — last night’s souvenirs. Then he noticed the ancient piece of cutlery protruding from the small block. He examined the other contents of the locker, marveling at the artifacts inside. Those teenagers had found something! Was there no end to their mischief?
Within minutes, he was pulling on his wet suit. He selected a scooter from the rack, stepped down to the top rung of the ladder, and disappeared into the waiting water.