Long Way Down (22 page)

The plane rocked and jerked in the turbulence, its old joints groaning with every move. Rain pounded its metal skin like a bass drum. Lightning flashed through the windscreen and thunder exploded.

Randy bounced in his seat like a bronco rider, hanging onto the yoke with one hand and flipping switches with the other. Sam glanced at J.T. He looked as if he might have just awakened, too: eyes wide, hands gripping the armrests, knuckles white.

“We’ll probably fly out of this in a little while.” Sam hoped his voice sounded more confident than he felt.

“Yeah, I hope so,” J.T. said. “This crate is too old to be flying in a storm like this.”

The turbulence quieted to a tremor a few minutes later and the smell of alcohol bit into Sam’s nostrils. He looked into the cockpit as Randy raised a pint bottle of rum to his mouth and chugged a third of it before stopping. Randy coughed and wiped his lips with the back of his hand, then turned around in his seat. His eyes shone in the glow of the instruments and seemed more assured than before. He held up the open bottle. “Would any of our first class passengers care for a complimentary beverage?”

Chapter 22

“
H
EY, LAY off the sauce until this is over,” Sam said.

Randy gave him a dirty look and chugged the rest of the bottle. He didn’t open another, and his flying didn’t seem to suffer, but Sam decided to stay awake the rest of the trip.

They flew through a seemingly endless wall of wind and water for a couple more hours, and the old plane’s engines groaned all the way.

Randy turned around and said, “We’re getting close to the site.” He cut back on the throttle and Sam felt the plane drop. The wind whipsawed them as they glided several hundred yards before touching down on the water.

The plane bounced and rocked, and when they slowed, Randy circled and taxied to their spot. Sam checked his watch: 3:05 AM. Even with the weather, they had made it on time. Randy turned off the engines, came back through the cabin and popped the hatch, and Sam saw black swells rolling outside.

Randy punched a button on the odd-looking anchor and turned on a light, a sealed unit about half the size of an automobile headlamp.

“This’ll burn at the bottom for a couple of hours before it kills the battery.”

He threw it into the water, and the coils of rope disappeared over the side. In a few seconds the rope jerked the float in and it sank below the surface.

“We’re directly over the site. Look for the light when you start back up and you can’t go wrong.”

“How deep is it?” Sam said.

“About ninety feet. The air tanks contain a special mixture to allow you to stay down longer, enough for about an hour.”

They got out of their seats and unstrapped the diving gear from the deck.

Sam eyed Randy. “What are you going to do while we’re gone?”

“I’ll have to leave so we don’t draw any attention to this place.”

J.T. shot Sam a look that said,
Are we going to let him do that?

“Where are you going?” Sam said.

“Grand Cayman. I know a marina where I can gas up.”

Sam didn’t care much for the idea of Randy leaving, but he had already considered the possibility and he would have to live with it. Besides, it wouldn’t be in Randy’s best interest to leave them in the middle of the Caribbean and return empty-handed.

“How long will you be gone?”

“Exactly an hour. And when I get back I’ll wait fifteen minutes.” Randy shook his head. “You’re not back by then I’ll have to fly.”

Sam nodded, but something in Randy’s eyes bothered him.

They suited up, checked out their lights and breathing equipment, and Sam synchronized his watch with Randy’s. Randy turned away for a second and Sam took the spear gun from its hook on the bulkhead and held it behind him so Randy wouldn’t notice. They climbed into the water and swam toward the light.

It took several minutes to reach the bottom where a half-dozen curious fish swam around the lighted anchor. A few feet away lay several conch shells among tall tendrils of seaweed in the still water.

Sam turned on his light and scanned the area. He could see for twenty or thirty feet, the water clear. The glint of metal to the south reflected on the light. Sam laid the spear gun next to the anchor and motioned for J.T. to follow him.

After about fifty feet, the source of the reflection became clear. A wreck lay in the sand, not a Spanish galleon from the sixteenth century, but a twin engine jet airplane. It rested on its belly and faced Sam’s left, tilted up on the closest side. The wing on the far side was jammed into the sand, broken in the middle, but still attached and twisted up at an odd angle. Bullet holes riddled the fuselage where the fuel tanks might be. It probably had lost fuel and went down, the wing grabbing the water first and rupturing on impact.

Sam turned and looked at J.T. who held his hand out, palm up. Turning back, Sam shook his head and made a mental note of the numbers painted beneath the cockpit. The emergency hatch over the wing had fallen away. He shone the light under the plane where the hatch cover had wedged between the sand and the fuselage.

La Salle and Danilov had robbed someone’s collection of artifacts and flown away in a shower of bullets. When all the fuel leaked out, they made a belly landing on the water, kicked out the hatch, and got into an inflatable raft before the plane sank. They left the gold, thinking they would retrieve it later.

Sam motioned toward the open hatch. They swam over the wing and inside, and shone the lights up and down the cabin. The luggage compartments stood open above about fifty empty seats. One seat toward the front appeared to be occupied and they swam forward to get a better look. A man sat there buckled in. He had only one arm and it floated above the armrest, as if waiting for the seat belt warning light to go off so he could pop the belt and run for a connecting flight. Sam wondered if the man had figured out yet that he would wait at this stopover for a
long
time. The Grand Slam of all journeys. He probably had helped steal the gold and La Salle or Danilov killed him for his part of the take.

Sam shone the light on the man’s decomposed face. Black hair swirled above a translucent scalp. Sea scavengers had been at work for several months and his eyes had been eaten away. Bloodless gouges covered his face, and a grin pinched at one corner of his mouth. Sam unbuckled the seat belt and checked the man’s pocket for a wallet. Finding nothing, he re-buckled the belt and left the one-armed man where he found him.

Pieces of thick pasteboard mush floated throughout the cabin. Probably remnants of boxes used to load the gold onto the plane. Clumps of the soggy material also lay on the deck. Danilov probably had cursed at the sight of the rotting boxes when they came back for the gold, wishing they’d had more foresight in their theft.

Sam looked at his watch and saw that they’d been gone about twenty-five minutes. Time ticked away, and they hadn’t begun their search. From the looks of things it would take awhile. He motioned for J.T. to follow him forward in the cabin and pushed his way through the muck of wet pasteboard toward the cockpit.

They searched every compartment and in and under every seat, working their way aft from the cockpit to the lavatory, and even checked the pockets on the back of each seat. J.T. found a gold mask in one of the seat pockets that probably had been worn by an Aztec warrior in his death. No statue. While J.T. bagged the mask, Sam looked at his watch: Randy would return in about twenty minutes. He checked his air level and still had enough for at least that long.

The second emergency hatch on the other side of the plane also had fallen away. That could mean they tried it first upon landing and saw the damage to the wing, then went out the other one, worried that the sharp, broken metal might cut the raft. Sam made his way to the hatch, leaned out and shone his light down below. A school of fish swam by, and pieces of trash lay on the sandy bottom. He couldn’t see underneath the wing. Checking his watch again, he decided he had enough time to go down and take a look, and motioned for J.T. to follow him.

They swam to the bottom and Sam shone his light into the dark space underneath the wing. Something exploded from the crevice, moving so fast that Sam saw only teeth flashing toward his face. He dug his heels into the sand and pushed back, but not fast enough. The creature hit him in the stomach and the air from his lungs blew the breathing apparatus from his mouth. Sam tumbled in the sand and grit scrubbed the side of his face. He pushed up and the creature swam away. It looked like a tiger shark, about eight feet long.

Sam’s stomach felt like it had been ripped out and his lungs ached for air. A second later J.T. swam around him, shone the beam toward his face and handed him the lost mouthpiece. Sam filled his lungs with air and waited a few seconds for his heart to slow down. The fish had knocked the light out of his hands, too, and he saw it glowing in the cloudy spot where he’d churned up the sand. After retrieving it, he went back to the place under the wing and hoped another shark didn’t wait there. He found only the dead man’s other arm.

Sam started around the plane, ready to call it quits, when he thought about something. Why had Danilov been unable to find the statue? They had to know its value and would put it somewhere they could easily remember. And yet, they hadn’t found it. Had someone else discovered the plane and taken only the statue? Unlikely. All the other pieces had to be worth millions, too. What if something happened after the plane sank that La Salle couldn’t have known about? Something like the plane hitting bottom on one side and some of the gold spilling out the hatch?

Sam swam back to the damaged wing and shone his light down its length to the point of the break. No gold glittered there, but sand covered part of the damaged area. He glided down and brushed away sand with his fingers. His fingers touched something slick and he laid the light down, reached in with both hands and pulled out an urn about the size of a sugar bowl.

The urn must have fallen out of the hatch when the plane sank, slid down the wing, and gotten covered up when the broken wing penetrated the sea bottom. Sam turned and handed it to J.T., who searched the sand a few feet behind him, then went back to work and uncovered a slightly taller gold piece, a bird of prey. After removing several more handfuls of sand, the face of the statue smiled up at him, as if happy to be rescued. Sam pulled it out of the sand and held it up. It stood about a foot tall. J.T. gave him a thumbs-up. Sam moved aside and J.T. combed through the sand and found a gold bar and a couple more items before Sam punched him on the arm and pointed at his watch.

They stuffed the smaller items into net bags clipped to their suits and started back to the lighted anchor. Sam carried the statue in his hand and should have been glad for their discovery, but had a feeling of dread that nothing good might come of it. He just wanted to get Candi back to safety...and then get as far away from this mess as he could.

Reaching the lighted anchor, Sam handed the statue to J.T. and picked up the spear gun. They swam up the rope, and when they neared the float at the top, Sam lagged behind. He saw the glow of the seaplane’s cabin through the last foot or so of water and watched as J.T. broke the surface with the statue in his hand. Then he saw a man move to the edge of the hatch. The seaplane rocked up and down with the swells, distorting the view, but the man didn’t look like Randy, unless Randy had bleached his hair almost white and lost one leg. Sam surfaced momentarily and went back under, but he had seen Grimes standing with a crutch, holding a gun in his outstretched hand pointed at J.T.’s head.

Chapter 23

J
.T. PUSHED away from the plane and submerged. Grimes’ gun exploded and Sam saw bubbly lines in the water that traced the trajectory of the rounds. Surely Grimes knew that if he hit J.T., the statue would be lost.

Sam held onto the spear gun, shed his diving gear and swam to the surface. Grimes saw him and jerked around with the gun. Sam squeezed the trigger and the spear sailed through the air and hit Grimes in the shoulder. His arm went slack and the gun slipped from his fingers and fell into the water.

Sam tossed the spear gun aside, climbed the ladder and stepped aboard the plane. Grimes seemed disoriented, eyes wide, face twitching, and he turned his head to look at the blood soaking the front of his shirt. He grasped the spear with his fingers and pulled, screaming as the barb ripped through the flesh. The crutch fell away as he dropped to the floor of the plane and passed out.

Sam looked into the cockpit and saw Randy slumped in the pilot’s seat. An empty liquor bottle lay on the deck a few inches from his fingers.

J.T. climbed up the ladder and stepped aboard, his gear dripping water on the deck. Dropping his face mask, he said, “That idiot tried to kill me.” He laid the statue on one of the seats. “I don’t think he cared whether he got this baby or not.”

“I think you’re right.”

Sam checked Grimes’ pulse and the wound in his shoulder and decided he’d live, then tied his hands across his stomach and left him lying on his back.

“You’ll have to fly,” Sam said as he closed the hatch.

J.T. looked at Randy and said, “Yeah, I guess so.”

They dragged Randy out of the cockpit and strapped him into a seat in the cabin. After they changed into dry clothes, J.T. went back into the cockpit.

Sam followed and sat in a jump seat behind him. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Okay, give me a minute. I’ve never flown anything this old.”

He flipped switches and pressed buttons and Sam heard the starter turn over. Within a couple of minutes he had the engines running and the old airplane rocked and vibrated as it struggled across the swells and gained speed. After what seemed like an eternity, they finally lifted off and J.T. turned and grinned.

“Piece of cake. By the way, where are we going?”

“How much fuel do we have?” Sam said.

“It’s full. Randy must have filled it up in Grand Cayman like he said he would.”