Mark of the Devil (3 page)

Friday, 12 October 2001
Offshore, Jacksonville Beach, Florida

When he’d first stepped off the dive platform at the stern of the 36-foot
Native Diver,
the sky had been a clear, autumnal blue, the seas running no more than one to two feet, and the water unusually clear for so short a distance off the northeast Florida coast. Within what seemed only minutes, however, clouds had rolled in and the scarred white bottom of the
Native Diver
was now a barely visible outline which Matt had to strain to see.

As he moved over the sand and limestone bottom in an ever-widening circle, he allowed the quarter-inch, yellow nylon search line to play out from a handheld reel until he reached the red tag signifying 50 feet. With bottom visibility rapidly decreasing, he pushed the
transmit
button and spoke into the tiny microphone nestled at the side of his full facemask. “Steve, I’m at fifty feet on the line and already completed a half circle in my search pattern. Nothing. Current’s hitting a good two to three knots and whipping up a sandstorm down here.”

“Yeah,” came the reply from the surface. “Wind’s picked up to maybe fifteen to twenty knots up here. I’m bobbing up and down like a cork. Hear the wind?”

Matt automatically nodded as the rushing sound of wind reached his ears. “Visibility’s dropped to less than half of what it was when I first came down,” he said. “Next time, get your goddamn sonar fixed so I don’t have to crawl around the bottom looking for a needle in a haystack. Sure you got the coordinates right?” His knees in the sand, his body bent into the current, Matt checked his depth gauge. Just over 50 feet.

Suddenly, sensing the presence of potential danger, Matt swept the now murky horizon, doing a double take as his peripheral vision picked up a dozen or so dark scaled barracuda hanging not more than ten feet away. Their long, slender bodies hovered only feet above the yellow search line, their eyes fixed in a curious stare that made him shiver. “Steve, you there? Got some barra-scooters down here, looking at me like I’m next on the menu. Appreciate if you’d hurry it up. What’ve you got?”

“I’m here,” came the response through the receiver mounted over Matt’s left ear. “Close as we can make it. Tugboat captain was pretty vague on the location. Just inside three miles and between the fishing pier and the Jax Beach water tower. Using his coordinates, I’ve got the end of the pier at two-niner-two degrees and the tower at two-four zero. Where the bearings cross, X marks the spot, and that’s where we are.”

Without warning, the line tugged at Matt’s hand and jerked him forward across the sand. It stopped, then another jerk. “Not any more, you’re not,” he growled. At the same time, he realized he was on a collision course with the formation of barracuda. “Shit!” The barracuda stared at his approach, impassive except for the hungry gleam in their eyes and the anticipatory grin on their teeth-filled snouts as dinner approached.

Unable to dig the heels of his swim fins into the bottom to stop the drag, Matt yelled into the microphone, “My search line’s tied to the ring at the top of the anchor, and the damn thing’s dragging me with it.” Releasing the
transmit
button on the side of his mask, he muttered to himself, “Right into a bunch of bad-ass barracuda.”

As he was pulled closer, he growled, “All right, fish heads, take this!” Matt punched the purge valve at the front of his regulator mouthpiece and held it down for a moment. An explosion of compressed air shot forward in the direction of the barracuda. As though executing an abrupt about-face, the barracuda turned and, leaving only the faintest slipstream of tail fins propelling them forward, disappeared beyond Matt’s visual horizon. “That’ll teach you to screw around with Berkeley-san, uh-huh.”

“Hey, you’re right,” Steve shouted through the communication system. “Bearings are changing. See what the hell’s happening.”

Already pulling hand-over-hand along the length of taut, nylon line and unable to hit the
push-to-talk
button, Matt mouthed into his facemask, “On my way, as if I had a choice.” At the thirty-foot marker, the line suddenly went slack and Matt tumbled forward. Quickly righting himself, he finned his way through the thickening swirl of sand just above the length of yellow line lying on the bottom until he reached the anchor. One fluke was firmly hung up on…“What the hell is this?” he asked himself. Looking up, he was surprised to see what remained of the sunken barge, its bow leering at him through the gloom. “Son of a bitch! There it is.”

Grabbing hold of the anchor’s shank with one hand to keep from being pushed along by the increasingly strong current, Matt punched the
transmit
button on the side of his mask and said, “Hey, good buddy, guess what I found? The barge. The anchor’s right fluke just dug smack dab in the middle of something, but it doesn’t look like it’s part of the barge. Whatever it is, it’s a good fifteen to twenty feet in front of the barge.”

“What is it?”

“Hell if I know. It’s sticking about three to four feet out of the sand. Round at the top, then like the apex of a triangle on one side, rounded off on the other. Got some kinda gizwiz sticking out before it goes back into the sand.” Still holding onto the anchor’s shaft, Matt ran a bare hand across the surface of the object. “Grid-like surface. Like a waffle iron. Covered with a hard, black, rubber kind of material. No marine growth. Can’t have been down here long. Otherwise, it’s been buried and not exposed to the water.”

“Maybe the hurricane uncovered it,” Steve said.

Matt yanked on one side of the object, trying to loosen it from the bottom’s grip. “Whatever it is, it’s not going anyplace.”

From topside, Steve asked, “Can you free the anchor?”

“Think so.” Quickly surveying the outline of the barge, Matt added, “Drop those buoy lines. I’ll tie ‘em off on the bow and stern of the barge, while you take some new bearings on the pier and water tower. And keep a copy of the bearings for us in case the buoys break loose in heavy weather. We might want to come back and check this thing out.”

Matt heard a chuckle in his receiver unit, followed by, “Is that the former Navy guy talking, or the archeologist?”

Matt laughed as he watched the weighted buoy lines drop through the water. With one last look at the strange contraption sticking out of the sand, he said, “Maybe a little of both, but mainly curiosity. There’s something about this thing…I don’t know. We might just want to make another visit; that’s all.”

Once the lines were secured to the barge and Matt could look up and see the rounded bottoms of the inflatable buoys, their distant orange rising and falling with the movement of the waves, he called to the surface, “When I give you the word, move the boat forward and give me some slack on the anchor line. And don’t be too slow doing it. I’m down to less than three-hundred pounds of air, and breathing through gills is not my specialty.”

Mayport, Florida

Later that afternoon as
Native Diver
pulled alongside its assigned berth at the marina, Matt sat with his feet propped against the topside console dash. Punching in several numbers on his cell phone, he explained to Park, “Calling an old friend. She heads up the state’s archeological division over in Tallahassee. Maybe she knows something about that thingamajig we found.”

Switching off the ignition, Park griped, “You couldn’t do it after helping me tie up, could you?” A quick jab to Matt’s right shoulder emphasized his feigned irritation before he clambered down the ladder to the main deck and jumped to the pier with a nylon line in hand.

“C’mon, Steve,” Matt yelled down. “This is important and, besides, who’s already promised to buy the beer?” Just then, Matt heard over the phone, “Florida Division of Historical Resources, Bureau of Archeological Research.”

Dropping his feet to the deck, Matt leaned forward and cupped his hands over the mouthpiece to shield it from the surrounding marina noise. “Dr. Brandy Mason.”

“Who’s calling, please?”

“Matt Berkeley, North American Archeological Research and Preservation Association. NAARPA.”

“Oh, Mr. Berkeley, yes sir. It’s been awhile. If you’ll hold a moment, I’ll get Dr. Mason.”

Matt watched the activity along the several slips as boats pulled in from their day’s run for overnight stays or for refueling before continuing up the St. Johns River towards Jacksonville and other marinas along the riverfront. “Be with you in a minute,” he called to Park, who was securing the lines on cleats bolted into the pier.

“Yeah, I do all the hard work,” Park shouted back, “and whatta you do?”

“Mr. Berkeley,” Matt heard over the cell phone, “Dr. Mason’s on the line.”

Waving Park off, Matt asked, “Brandy?”

“Where in the world are you this time, Matt?”

“In your backyard, sweetheart. Mayport, Florida. How’s Tallahassee treating you?”

Dr. Brandy Mason’s satiny brown skin and athletic good looks hid a forty-year span of fighting to get off the bottom of society’s unforgiving pile. She might have been the wrong color and the wrong sex, but those things had never stood in the way of her commanding a place at the “archaeological table.” Her sheer determination and high level of innate intelligence had left most of her contemporaries in the dust.

Shifting a pile of papers to one side of her desk and pulling out a pad and pencil to take notes, Brandy spoke into a speakerphone. “The bureaucracy in this place is something else. Sometimes wish I was back at Florida State teaching the young and uninformed, but Tallahassee’s a challenge and otherwise downright exhilarating.”

“And how’s my godson, that football-playing brother of yours?” Matt asked. “Since he got traded to the Rams, the only thing I see of him is the back of his jersey on Sunday afternoon TV.”

“Jeff’s knees are gonna be the death of him, but he refuses to retire until he’s got a Super Bowl ring.”

“The way the Rams are playing this year, I’d say he might just do it.”

“What about you, Mr. Matthew W. Berkeley? Staying out of trouble, or should I ask?”

Matt braced himself against the nudge of a 40-foot fishing craft as it worked its way in beside
Native Diver,
angling toward the adjoining pier. “Me, trouble? No way. I’m working hard and loving every minute of it. Reason I’m calling, I’ve found something and not real sure under Florida law what I can do with it.”

“What’ve you got?”

“Dunno. To make a long story short, Coast Guard asked a friend of mine to check out a barge that sank off Jacksonville Beach during the recent hurricane. I went with him. We found it just inside the three-mile limit, buoyed it as a hazard to navigation, but found something else in the process.”

“What do you mean?” Brandy asked, nodding to a nattily dressed man entering the room. “Just lying there? Partially buried? What?” She pointed to an in-box on the side of her desk as the place for the man to leave an armload of files. Instead of leaving, the man lowered his body into one of the chairs facing Brandy’s desk, lit a cigarette, and half-whispered, “What’s buried?”

Wrinkling her nose at the cigarette smoke, Brandy put an index finger to her lips as Matt’s voice responded, “Let’s say partially buried. Depth, fifty feet. The top was box-shaped with a waffle-like covering. A hard rubbery material. It was sticking out of the sand, three to four feet high, and I couldn’t budge it. No marine growth, so it’s fairly recent or buried and uncovered by the storm.”

“Although pretty far out, part of an old pier structure from a century or so ago?” she asked thinking out loud. “Over the years, coast lines shift, you know.”

Using his hand to fan away the smell of gasoline fumes rising from a nearby boat taking on fuel, Matt answered, “Doubt it. I know there are quite a few barges, tugs, and other things sunk several miles out from the mouth of the St. Johns and to the north as artificial reefs, but do you know of anything off Jacksonville Beach? Especially on state land inside the three-mile limit? Steve Park has been working and diving these waters for years, and he doesn’t.”

“Offhand, I don’t either. Some stuff off St. Augustine, but Jacksonville Beach? Uh-uh. From past times working together, however, I’d bet a bundle you want to see what it is, right?”

“Let’s just say I’m curious,” Matt admitted. “No problem for me to get my NAARPA people and equipment down from Charleston to check this thing out.”

The man sitting in front of Brandy’s desk shook his head and jabbed a finger in his own direction. “Inside three miles,” he whispered as loudly as he could. “Ours.” Again shaking his head, he added, “NAARPA, no!”

“Little too soon for NAARPA to get involved,” Brandy said to Matt. “Especially if the state has to subsidize some kind of operation with no idea what we’re looking for. As you well know, if your people can’t get the money from Congress, you don’t do anything for free. Anyway, at this point, it’s really our responsibility. What is it you want to do?”

“Take a look. Nose around a bit. What’ve I gotta do to get your okay besides tell you you’re the second most beautiful woman in the world, second only to my wife?”

“First,” Brandy enumerated, a chuckle in her voice, “even if you
were
born white—a fact not your fault—divorce the first most beautiful woman in the world and get on over here. And second, if you can’t do that, give me a fax number and I’ll have Sally, my secretary, fax you the proper forms. I do, however, want you to promise me one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Absolutely no prop wash chutes or dredging around whatever you found. You do that and I’ll be all over your ass, and not the way you’d prefer. Get my drift?”

Matt laughed. “I love the way you talk. If only you’d said those things before I married Ashley. Anyway, I get your drift. No dredge, no prop wash, and I’ll give you a written report whether I determine what it is or not.”

“You do that, but I’m tied up with some things for the governor this week and next,” Brandy responded, reaching for the stack of files in her in-box and nodding toward the young man seated in front of her. “Work with my right-hand man, Eric Bruder. He’s our chief underwater archeologist. Area code four-eight-seven, twenty-five twenty-five.”

“Got it,” Matt answered as he quickly scribbled the name and number on the white of the console dash. “I’ll call your secretary as soon as I get a fax number from Steve. If I get Ashley to come down, maybe you can come over for a weekend and we can do something together.”

“Maybe, if I can get away. Want to meet that wife of yours. She must be something special.”

“Better believe it. Top-of-the-line model and about three days ahead of me in everything she does. But for the love of God, don’t tell her I said that. She’ll never let me live it down.”

The mug of beer in Park’s hand moved with slow deliberateness to his mouth as he looked through a wide expanse of windows at boats passing on the muddy Intracoastal Waterway. With his chair kicked back against the wall, he asked, “After you spoke with Ashley, you said she might come down. When?”

“First of next week, I hope,” Matt answered, a smile spreading across his face at the thought of his wife. “Soon as one of her people finishes a case up in Greenville and can get back to Charleston to mind the store. Her first vacation since we got married, if I can get her down here.”

“Gotta be something else, having a private detective for a wife,” Park quipped, lowering the front legs of his chair to the floor. “Maybe she can figure out what the hell it is we found out there.”

Matt held up his empty mug to the waitress, who nodded. She pointed at Park, her eyebrows knitted in a question mark. Seeing Park’s glass almost empty, Matt gave a thumbs-up in reply. At the same time, he said to Park, “You didn’t hear me. First vacation in four years. Fact, if we don’t put a label on whatever it is sticking up in front of that barge before she gets here, you’ll probably be doing it yourself if it’s done at all.”

“You’d leave me for a woman? Your wife, no less. Damn it, man, where are your priorities?” Park joked.

The waitress stopped at the side of the table. Across her formfitting T-shirt stamped in bold letters was “EDDIE’S FISH CAMP, PALM VALLEY, FLORIDA.”

“Killian’s Red…” she said, clunking a mug of reddish, froth-covered beer in front of Matt, “…and Bud Light,” as she placed a similar mug in front of Park. The waitress hesitated a moment, hands on her hips, eyeing Matt, then Park, then back to Matt, before she asked, “You two brothers or somethin’?”

“No,” Matt answered, a chuckle in his voice. “Just old friends. Why do you ask?”

“’Cause you look alike. Same size, almost.” She surveyed them appreciatively. “Both got blond hair, good lookin’ in a…well, you know. Neither one of you look like Tom Cruise, or, you know, somebody like that, but better than the average guys we get in here for Friday afternoon happy hour.”

“Well, thanks,” Matt said, a wide grin on his face. “And probably a helluva lot older than the average too.”

“Yeah,” Park tossed in. “And with our magnetic personalities, you can—”

“That’s it, Steve!”

“What’s it?”

“Magnetic,” Matt answered. “A magnetometer. Do a survey without disturbing the bottom or damaging anything, and we can do it without having to get Brandy’s or anybody else’s authorization.” Looking up at the waitress, he said, “If you hadn’t said all those kind words, deserved or not…”

“Wha’d I say?” the waitress asked, a puzzled look on her face.

“Just enough to make the old gray matter start working,” Matt said. “And while you’re at it, how about bringing us both a double order of fried shrimp, hushpuppies, and grits? We’ve got a lot of talking to do, and we can’t do it on empty stomachs.”

As the waitress walked away, Park asked, “Magnetometer, huh?” He shrugged his shoulders and set his jaw in an I-should’ve-thought-of-that grimace.

“Know where to get one without having to pay an arm and a leg?” Matt asked.

“Maybe. Aqua Explorers, a salvage and raising company up in Fernandina Beach.”

“Call ‘em. If we can get it tomorrow, I’ll run up and pick it up. Who do I charge it to?”

“Not me,” Park answered. “And the Coast Guard’s not gonna pay for a magnetometer, not since we already found the barge.”

“Then I’ll put it on my own account.” Gesturing over his shoulder toward the Atlantic some two miles to the east, Matt added, “And who knows? This could be the biggest find of the century, or the biggest waste of time you ever saw. Whatever, a magnetometer oughta tell us just what the hell we’ve got out there.”