And we’re going to take their stuff because they’re in no shape to protect it anymore.
The logic was ridiculous. All the gold in the world wouldn’t help those poor sailors, three centuries dead, their descendants scattered across dozens of generations.
Besides, if we don’t get that treasure, Cutter will.
His reverie was interrupted by Vanover’s call from the bridge. “Show time, folks!”
If Scoutmaster’s deck was busy and frenetic, the cabin of the submersible was an incredibly lonely place. When the hatch was sealed, the five-inch-thick acrylic bubble blotted out all sound. It was like being shut inside a glass tomb. They were immersed in Deep Scout’s titanium hull up to chest level. Above that, the sphere created a greenhouse effect. Brilliant sunlight baked the cramped interior.
“It cools off when you dive,” the captain promised. He was flipping toggle switches and adjusting dials on a control panel that wrapped around the pilot’s chair.
That was the only official seat. The four interns pressed into the rest of the cabin, an area of deck space about four feet wide and six feet long. It reminded Kaz of the famous college prank to see how many students would fit into a Volkswagen.
At last, all was in readiness. “Topside, this is Scout,” Vanover said into the microphone. “Ready to rock.”
It was an eerie feeling — motion, but no sound — as the huge A-frame crane hoisted the vehicle over the side and placed it almost gently in the water. The interns felt rather than heard the waves smacking against the hull. There was a grating sensation as the drop-lock disengaged. And then Deep Scout sank into the deep of the Caribbean.
Clear water changed from pale turquoise to blue, and finally to blue-black. Vanover activated the outside floodlights, and the dark sea around them came alive. Curious fish circled this strange titanium wanderer, drawn by the rhythmic pings and pops of the submersible’s acoustic tracking system. Others, bioluminescent jellyfish and octopuses, gave the newcomer a wide berth.
“Awesome,” breathed Star, bathed in the reddish glow of the control panels.
“You never get used to it,” the captain told her, his eyes darting back and forth from the undersea panorama to the data screen over his shoulder.
Deep Scout was designed to operate miles below the surface, so it reached the slope at the edge of the Hidden Shoals very quickly. Captain Vanover manipulated the thrusters, and they began to track back and forth across the incline, searching for the debris field they had only glimpsed through Dr. Ocasek’s cameras.
An hour later, they had still found nothing.
Star was growing edgy. “I don’t get it. We have to be in the right place. GPS coordinates don’t lie.”
“We’re going by the coordinates of the Cortés,” the captain reminded her. “Remember, the camera array was at the end of a four-hundred-foot tether, blowing around in a storm. We can’t know exactly where it was when it detected the debris.” He was trying to sound confident, but the strain was evident in his voice. He had gone out on a limb to book Deep Scout. If they came up empty-handed, it could cost him his career.
All at once, Dante lurched forward, bonking his head on the thick acrylic of the sphere. “There!”
“Where?” cried the other four in unison.
“Down there!”
Vanover dumped air from the ballast tanks, and the submersible descended. The Fathometer gave their depth as 344 feet. And suddenly, there it was in the lights — the long bronze cannon.
“Look!” Adriana pointed. “The ballast stones!”
They were scattered along the slanting seafloor below the corroded barrel, disappearing into the inky depths.
“Wow,” Kaz said, nearly overwhelmed. “How far do they go?”
“Only one way to find out.” The captain operated the thrusters. Deep Scout’s nose dipped, and the submersible followed the slope down.
The ballast stones were still there at four hundred feet. And at five hundred. In fact, the spread of debris seemed to be thickening. As they passed through six hundred, they could make out other signs of the shipwreck — plates, bottles, muskets, helmets. Intermingled with these items was something the interns had not seen before.
“Are those timbers?” Dante asked incredulously, his face pressed up against the acrylic of the sphere.
Vanover nodded. “Wood can’t survive up on the reef, where the worms eat it. But the deeper you go, the sea life is less dense, and the old ships last longer — especially the parts that are buried in sand.”
“That’s an awful lot of stuff for one ship,” observed Star. “Remember, half of it’s up on the reef. This debris has to stop somewhere.”
Dante saw it first, but a moment later, Deep Scout’s lights illuminated it for the others. About thirty feet below them, the slope suddenly flattened out before dropping off again. This tilted plateau, seven hundred feet beneath the waves, was the final resting place of the old ship.
Kaz stared. It was uncanny how sure of it he felt. Naturally, there was no abandoned galleon listing there on the shelf. Yet the mound of debris half buried in the ancient sand was shaped exactly like an old boat, bloated by slow collapse over the centuries. As the vehicle drew closer, they could make out anchors and cannons — even some of the wooden spine of a once-proud sailing vessel.
There was only one thing that didn’t make sense. “That’s a whole ship,” Kaz mused with a frown. “Or most of it, anyway. How did a piece end up all the way over on the reef where Cutter’s digging?”
“There’s no way this is the same boat,” the captain decided. “Crazy as it seems, you kids found two shipwrecks, not just one.”
Adriana’s eyes shone with excitement. “Two shipwrecks!”
“No!” Dante was alarmed. “Nuestra Señora was the ship with the money! That’s what we need, not some old garbage scow that happened to sink next door!”
“Besides,” put in Star, “what about the gold dust test? That said the treasure was here, not up on the reef.”
The acoustic tracker pinged as the five thought it over.
Captain Vanover spoke at last. “Let’s give these manipulators a workout. If we come up with a gold ingot, it won’t make any difference what ship we’re pulling it out of.” Skillfully, he dumped air and worked the thrusters until Deep Scout hovered directly over the remains of the old ship. Then he reached for the controls that operated the submersible’s mechanical arms.
The shape that exploded out of the darkness was longer than the submersible itself, a living missile of pure speed and energy. Kaz saw the eye first, blank and staring, a shiny black button the size of a clenched fist. He recognized the creature instantly, even before the enormous mouth gaped open, revealing row upon lethal row of crushing, ripping teeth.
Although he was safe behind five inches of solid acrylic, Kaz felt the terror course through his body. For such an array of weaponry could only belong to one fish in these waters.
It was Clarence, the monster tiger shark that had nearly taken his life three weeks earlier.
And before Kaz had time to scream, the two-ton body hurtled into the side of Deep Scout.
The vehicle lurched from the collision, tossing its occupants like socks in a dryer.
“It’s —” Before Kaz could make the identification, he smacked heads with Adriana and went down hard.
“Clarence!” Dante rasped, picking himself up off the deck. “He’s trying to eat the sub!”
“Hang on, people!” ordered Vanover, clinging to the controls. “He can’t hurt us in here!”
At that moment, the enormous shark struck the hull again, knocking Deep Scout over on its side. Kaz was pressed against the glass, his face contorted with fear.
“Yeah, well, he’s doing a pretty good job of it!” Dante cried, steadying himself on the pilot’s seat.
The captain fired thrusters in an attempt to stabilize the vehicle. “He can kick us around a bit. He’s as big as the boat. But a shark can’t bite through ti
tanium. Or bulletproof plastic,” he added as the blunt snout the size of a cocktail table pummeled the acrylic sphere.
“I — ” Kaz struggled to think rationally despite his terror. “I don’t think he’s trying to eat us. It’s more like he’s fighting us, pushing us away.”
“Protecting his territory, almost,” Adriana added.
“That’s impossible,” challenged Star. “Sharks don’t live at seven hundred feet, do they?”
“They shouldn’t,” replied Vanover. “No food for them this deep. But old Clarence, he’s never been your average hunk of seafood. I’m going to set us down on the bottom. Play dead. See if he’ll leave us alone.”
He worked the joystick, and the submersible banked away from Clarence’s next assault. As the ballast tanks expelled air, the vehicle fell abruptly, stabilized, and dropped again, catching the edge of the shelf a few hundred yards past the shipwreck. It bounced once and then plowed to a lurching halt in the wet mud and sand.
Inside the cabin, the shaken crew of five waited breathlessly. What would Clarence do now?
The big shark circled them at a distance, its streamlined eighteen-foot body blinking in and out of the reach of Deep Scout’s floodlights.
Go away, thought Kaz, trying to will his message through the pressurized bubble. Once was a fluke, but now you’re stalking me!
The speaker crackled to life, and they all jumped. “Scout, this is topside. Braden, I’m reading you at a dead stop at seven-oh-three. Just checking to make sure that’s where you want to be.”
Clarence was closer now, still orbiting them, crescent tail sculling lazily. “It’s a long story, topside,” the captain replied. “But we’re okay here. Out.”
“Are we okay?” Dante asked nervously.
The shark approached from the left, sizing up the submersible with glassy, dispassionate eyes. The mouth was slightly open now, and they could see past the ranks of razor-sharp knives clear into the beast’s gullet. And then, without warning, the great predator turned on a dime and disappeared into the blackness.
No one spoke. No one dared. It was almost as if saying the words aloud — he’s gone — might bring the monster back upon them. For several minutes, there was no sound but the hiss of oxygen, punctuated by the pinging of Deep Scout’s beacon.
Vanover picked himself up off the deck. “Now, let’s see if we can snag ourselves a piece of treasure.”
“Yeah!” cheered Dante. “We’re still right on schedule! Come on, baby, give us some gold.”
The others ignored him. They had noticed what Dante had not — that while the captain vigorously worked the controls, nothing was happening.
Vanover continued to fill the ballast tanks with air, but the submersible did not lift off the ledge. “Uh-oh.”
“Uh-oh?” echoed Adriana. “What do you mean, uh-oh?”
The captain spoke into the microphone. “Topside, this is Scout. I’ve got two full ballast tanks, but she won’t budge off the bottom. Can you see any problems from your end?”
The small speaker crackled with the reply. “Negative, Braden. All your readings are normal. Are your thrusters functioning?”
“That’s a yes, topside. Request permission to abort mission and drop weights for a quick ascent.”
“Abort the mission?” repeated Dante. “But we need a piece of the treasure to take to court!”
“Forget the treasure,” Kaz said sharply. “It won’t do us much good if we’re stuck under seven hundred feet of ocean.”
The submersible shuddered as the heavy lead weights dropped to the mud of the shelf. The interns held their breath. Deep Scout didn’t budge.
It was the first moment that Star felt real fear. The incident with Clarence had been unnerving, but she had known all along that no shark, not even an eighteen-footer, could penetrate the submersible’s husk. But to be trapped on the seafloor in a titanium coffin — that was far more terrifying. Oh, sure, a heavy salvage ship could reach them with a crane eventually. But such vessels were slow and ungainly. It would take hours, even days, to get one in place above them.
She posed the question, although she dreaded the answer almost as much as the awful fate it would surely foretell. “Captain, how much air do we have left?”
“Just under eleven hours,” he replied. “That’s if you believe the instruments. And according to them, we should be on the surface by now.”
“You mean we’re stuck here?” cried Adriana. “For how long?”
“Anything more than eleven hours may as well be forever,” Star pointed out.
“What about these?” asked Dante, indicating a rack of six miniature compressed-air tanks. “We’re not stuck. We can swim out!”
Star shook her head. “Not from seven hundred feet. The pressure’s more than twenty atmospheres at this depth. Popping that hatch would be suicide. The water would come in hard enough to crush us.”
“So there’s nothing we can do?” Adriana couldn’t believe it. “We just wait around to suffocate?”
“Nobody’s suffocating,” said Vanover through clenched teeth. He fired the rear thrusters, struggling to point the vehicle’s snub nose upward. There was a loud grinding sound; the sub shuddered. And then Deep Scout lurched clumsily off the muddy shelf, beginning a slow, angled climb.
The cheering in the tiny cabin was deafening.
“Quiet!” barked the captain. Into the microphone, he said, “Topside, this is Scout. We’re going to need divers in the water. Repeat: divers — as many as you can spare. This is not a drill.”
“What’s wrong, Captain?” asked Star. “You fixed the problem. We’re on our way up.”
Vanover pointed to the temperature gauge on the data screen. It read 44.7 degrees Fahrenheit. “The temp should be going up as we climb into warmer water.”
Adriana regarded the readout. “It’s not changing.”
“The probe is in the belly of the sub, behind two fiberglass plates,” the captain explained. “I think those plates separated, and we scooped up a load of mud when we landed on the shelf. That’s why the temp is staying low — it’s packed in cold mud.”
“The shark!” Kaz exclaimed suddenly. “Clarence must have separated those plates when he rammed the hull!”
“However it happened,” Vanover went on, “it wouldn’t take more than half a ton of muck to throw off our whole ballasting system. Deep Scout’s a simple boat. She sinks when she’s heavy; she rises when she’s light. The thrusters are just for maneuvering.” He took a deep breath. “We’re not going to make it all the way to the surface on thruster power alone.”
Star stared at the captain in alarm. “There must be something we can do!”
“Everybody strap on an air tank,” Vanover ordered. “I’m going to bring her as high as she’ll go. When the thrusters start to fail, I’ll blow the hatch, and we’ll swim for the surface.” He turned to the microphone. “Topside, did you catch any of that?”
“Affirmative, Braden,” crackled the speaker. “My divers are dressing out right now.”
Star showed the others how to strap the small wing tanks to their arms. It’s unreal, she thought to herself. I’m so scared I want to throw up. And yet, outwardly, she seemed totally unruffled, dispensing calm, efficient advice to her companions. “When we’re about to crack the hatch, pinch your nose and blow, like you’re clearing your ears on a dive. Otherwise, the pressure jump will bust your eardrums.” She affixed the last cylinder to the captain’s burly arm.
Kaz, Adriana, and Dante nodded, mute with shock and dread.
The steady hiss of air suddenly jumped to a roar.
“I’m bleeding as much gas as I can into the cabin,” Vanover explained, “building up our pressure so the water doesn’t crush us.”
Star kept one eye on the Fathometer readout. They were passing through four hundred feet.
Still too deep. To stand a fighting chance, they’d need to reach two hundred.
One-fifty would be better.
Th
e sub was vibrating dangerously as the captain fought to pull the vehicle out of the ocean’s abyss. He’s right, she realized. The weak thrusters weren’t designed to bring Deep Scout back to the surface — and certainly not when the submersible was weighted down with a half ton of mud.
The question is: How high can we get?
Three hundred feet. “Come on, girl,” grunted Vanover, bathed in sweat. “Don’t quit on me now.”
As they passed through 250 feet, the black of the ocean subtly morphed into an ultraviolet indigo. Proof that the sun was up there somewhere, far above them.
“Divers in the water,” came the report through the tinny speaker.
“Pray we’ll have work for them,” Vanover said grimly.
Two hundred and twenty feet. The first thruster failed and Deep Scout began to veer left, unable to maintain a steady course.
“Everybody flat on the deck!” the captain ordered. “When the sea comes in, it’ll bounce us around like Ping-Pong balls!”
As the interns struggled to arrange themselves on the tiny available floor space, the submersible went into a spin, crushing them together.
Vanover clung to the joystick like it was the saddle horn of a bucking bronco. “Ready to blow the hatch!”
Star risked one last look at the Fathometer: 206 feet. Were they high enough?
She never saw the hatch actually open. It was just gone, and Niagara Falls was roaring into Deep Scout. She pinched her nostrils and blew hard, but her ears still exploded with pain as nearly seven atmospheres of pressure brought the ocean down upon them. The impact was crushing, a full body blow that plastered her against the deck. The captain was swept out of his chair and flung into the heavy acrylic of the sphere.
Then, all at once, the tempest was over. Deep Scout’s cabin was filled with icy water — at two hundred feet, even a tropical sea was cold. Shivering, Star bit down on her regulator and began pushing the others through the open hatch. The nitrogen narcosis hit her almost immediately — an instant, pleasant wooziness that eased the chill and the salt sting in her unprotected eyes. It makes sense, she reasoned. I’m breathing compressed air at incredible depth.