Repairman Jack [09]-Infernal (23 page)

But it was more than hanging out. It was becoming one with them. To sink beneath the surface and be able to stay there, to float weightless, still, silent, watching. The peace, the serenity, the solitude… like nothing he’d ever experienced.

He loved it.

Then they’d boarded the
Sahbon
and Tom steered them out of the sound and toward the reefs, using his GPS doodad to guide them to the spot that supposedly contained the remains of the
Sombra
. They’d anchored over a sand hole and suited up.

“Ready?” Tom said.

With his skinny arms and legs arrayed around a big gut stretching the neoprene of his hooded wet suit to its tensile limits, he looked ridiculous. All he needed were a couple of Ping-Pong eyeballs and he’d be ready to play one of the aliens in
Killers from Space
.

“What if I said no?”

Sinking beneath the surface off the dock and jumping off a boat eight miles from shore were not quite the same. Not even close. He looked back at the roofs on the islands gleaming in the midday sun.

“Jack…”

“Okay, I’m ready,” he said, then added, “You sure this is the place?”

Tom nodded. “
Sombra
waits below.”

“If you say so. What if we see a shark?”

Tom gave a dismissive wave. “If you do, it’ll be a harmless variety. Now, here’s how it’s going to work. See the way we’re pulling on the anchor line? That’s the way the current is running. We’re situated over the upstream end of the sand hole. That’s the way we’ll work: Start upstream and slowly move downstream. Got it?”

“Sure. Instead of kicking sand in our own faces, it’ll all float downstream.”

“Exactly. One of us handles the hose while the other stays low and watches for artifacts—preferably of the gold and silver variety.”

“And that’s going to uncover the wreck?”

“I know it sounds simplistic, but that’s the way it’s done. The intake hose brings seawater to the pump; the pump then shoots it through the outflow hose; the stream of water from the nozzle sweeps away the bottom sand a layer at a time. It’s simple but ingenious.”

Jack looked around. The
Sahbon
sat alone on the glittering water. The coast of St. George’s lay seven or eight miles to the south. To the north, past the outer rim of the reef, the bottom dropped off to six hundred feet, and then a couple of miles down to the base of the Bermuda rise.

He felt exposed out here.

And uncomfortable.

Clear sky, clear air, clear water, gentle breeze, glittering waves… where did this vague unease come from?

“Tom, what are we really doing here?”

His brother’s face was a study of innocent perplexity. “I don’t know how to answer that, Jack. We’re starting an impromptu archaeological excavation in search of long-lost treasure in an attempt to save my ass. What other reason could there be?”

Jack couldn’t think of one. But he sensed one.

“All right. Let me ask you once again: If the Bermuda coast guard or navy or whatever they use to patrol these waters stops by and asks who we are and what we’re doing, what are we going to say?”

He’d posed this to Tom a number of times since this morning but had yet to receive a satisfactory answer.

“They won’t. No reason they should. We’re anchored well outside the reef preserve, we’re nowhere near any of the protected wrecks. We’re just a couple of divers.”

“But just say they do a random check. We are, in a very true sense, illegal aliens. I don’t want to end up in that prison.”

“Will you stop worrying? You sound like a nervous old biddy.”

Attention to details, anticipating potential problems before they became real… it had kept Jack alive and on the right side of jail bars. So far.

Tom stepped over to the pump. They’d placed the heavy, steamer-trunk-sized contraption near the transom. The hoses were in the water and ready to go. The short feeder had a weighted end that hung over the port side and drifted a couple of feet below the surface; the coils of the longer one, a fifty footer, floated on the starboard side.

A touch of the starter button brought the pump’s diesel engine to sputtering life. The end of the longer hose began bubbling and snaking about as it filled with water drawn through its shorter brother.

Tom fitted his mask over his face. “See you downstairs,” he said in a nasal voice.

He stuck the mouthpiece between his lips, waved, then fell backward into the water. He hit with a splash, righted himself, then grabbed the end of the hose. He motioned Jack to follow him, then kicked away toward the bottom.

Jack adjusted his own mask, then took a test breath through the mouthpiece. Everything seemed to be working, but he hesitated. He was about to jump into a hole and couldn’t help but remember another hole, the one in the Everglades, the one that had no bottom…

Shaking it off, he seated himself on the gunwale, tank over the water and—here goes—toppled backward.

He hit the water and let himself sink. Immediately the tank and the weight belt became weightless, the clumsy, unwieldy, uncomfortable gear became lithe and supremely functional. He held his nose and popped his ears, then kicked toward the bottom, following the hose down to where Tom hovered and waited forty feet below.

This sand hole was a forty-foot-deep oblong depression in the reef, about half as wide as it was long. They’d anchored near the upstream edge, so as Jack dropped through the crystalline water, popping his ears whenever the pressure became uncomfortable, he checked out the nearby coral wall.

Something strange here.

He drifted over for a closer look. The coral looked bleached and barren—no sea grasses, no algae, no vegetation at all. No sponges or anemones, no starfish or sea urchins. A closer look showed not a single living coral polyp.

The reef was dead.

Jack had heard of coral blights that wiped out entire reefs. Maybe that was the story here. He looked around and could not find a single fish. Even in the shallow water by the dock he’d been accompanied by a wide variety of brightly colored fish. He’d been able to identify a parrotfish and an angelfish, but the rest were strangers.

Here, on this reef, however… no movement, no color.

In a way that made sense. The coral polyps were the bedrock of the reef ecosystem. When they died, the hangers-on went off in search of greener pastures.

But you’d think you’d see at least one fish.

Jack did a full three-sixty. Nope. Not one. Nothing alive in this sand hole except Tom and him.

He shook off the creeps crawling up his back and kicked down toward where Tom was impatiently motioning him to
come on
!

When Jack reached him, Tom signaled him to sink closer to the bottom. When Jack was down, almost prone, Tom aimed the hose at the floor. The invisible stream of water stirred up the sand, billowing it up to then drift downstream, leaving a smooth depression in the floor.

Although Tom had explained it to him, he’d needed to see it in action to appreciate the simplicity of using a stream of seawater to move undersea sand.

Holding the hose at a low angle, Tom swept it back and forth in slow arcs, removing a thin layer, then stepping forward to repeat the process along the center of the sand hole’s long axis. Sort of like power washing a patio or walk, except that it exposed no clean surface, just more sand.

Wondering how far down to the bottom of the sand, Jack hovered behind, checking the newly exposed layer for anything that might be man-made. It was slow going, and on their first pass they found nothing.

So it was back to the upstream end for another try. This time, midway along the course, Jack felt a tap on his wet suit hood. He looked up to see Tom excitedly pointing at the sand.

Just ahead lay the edge of a piece of wood, rotted and crumbling but still bearing unmistakable signs that it had been milled. This was no remnant of a sunken log. This had once been a plank.

4

“We’ve found her!” Tom said as soon as they broke the surface.

Their air tanks had been running low so they’d ascended to a depth of fifteen feet and hovered there, clinging to the anchor rope, for a brief decompression stop to clear excess nitrogen from their bloodstreams. They hadn’t been deep enough to worry much about the bends, but why take the chance?

Well, Jack thought, we found something. Surprise, surprise. Too soon to tell if it was the
Sombra
. But he kept mum. No point in raining on Tom’s parade.

They removed their fins and climbed the transom ladder to the deck. They decided on a beer break before strapping on fresh tanks.

Tom seemed to be a different person. His eyes danced, his movements were full of energy, he couldn’t stop grinning.

“Got to be the
Sombra.
” The mask had left a red ring across his forehead and around his cheeks. “Now we know where to concentrate.”

Jack gave a noncommittal nod. His thoughts kept returning below, to the sand hole.

“What’s up with the coral down there?”

“Yeah, I noticed that. Looks dead. Could be a pollutant, could be a disease.”

“But even then, wouldn’t you expect some algae or
something
to be growing there?”

Tom shrugged. “Could be a lot of things. It’s a problem all over the world. They’ve got this starfish in the Pacific called the crown of thorns. A bunch of them can wipe out reef after reef.”

“Okay, but no fish either. I didn’t see a single fish.”

Another shrug, plus a grin. “Neither did I, but that should make you happy: No fish means no sharks.”

Tom just didn’t get it.

“Maybe I’m being oversensitive and paranoid, but consider this: For the whole time we were down, you and I were the only living things in that sand hole. Don’t you think that’s just a little strange?”

Jack hoped nothing more than a blight or pollution was at work here.

“Whatever,” Tom said, rising and starting to strap new tanks to the vests. He appeared to be vibrating with anticipation. Or was it greed? “Let’s get back down there before the sun gets too low.”

5

Concentrating the water stream around the plank they’d found, they turned up more wood, all equally rotted, crumbling at the lightest touch. But no treasure chest, no coins or jewels. Just sand, sand, sand.

With their tanks getting low and the light fading, Tom pointed to the surface. They were done for the day. Jack couldn’t say he was sorry. He was tired and he was bored. He realized what he liked most about diving was the sea life. None of that here. He couldn’t wait to get back to the surface.

But before he did…

Instead of hanging on the line with Tom for a decompression stop, he propelled himself to the rim of the sand hole and glided over the crest to see how far beyond the blight had spread.

He stopped and floated, gaping. Color… movement…
life
. He felt like Dorothy opening the door to Oz:

The area all around the sand hole teemed with darting, vibrant-hued fish, waving vegetation, and pastels of living coral. The die-off appeared to be confined to their sand hole. Whatever had killed all the sea life there hadn’t advanced beyond it. Since coral predators and pollutants wouldn’t have stopped at the lip of the hole, that removed them from the equation.

Something confined to the hole had killed off—and was continuing to kill off—all the sea life in its immediate vicinity.

And the only thing in the hole that wasn’t anywhere else on the reef was probably the
Sombra
.

THURSDAY

1

Jack was driving Tom crazy.

He’d started yesterday as soon as they hit the surface after the second dive, yammering about how the coral die-off was limited to their sand hole, how every place else down there was teeming with life, going on and on and on about something being wrong, wrong, wrong.

He’d persisted in his inchoate ramblings during the trip back to Hamilton and all through dinner. Tom didn’t think he’d ever been so happy to close a hotel room door behind him and collapse on a bed. Shutting off Jack’s voice had been part of it; the vodka had contributed too. But mostly it had been the crushing fatigue. He led a sedentary life and the day’s exertions had exacted their toll.

Were
still
exacting a toll. He had muscle aches in places where he hadn’t known he had muscles.

Jack didn’t seem to be bothered at all. They’d traded their empty air tanks for fresh this morning and he’d hefted them in and out of the truck bay as if yesterday had been just another day.

No doubt about it, little brother was strong.

And fast. Tom’s belly still hurt from that punch the other night. He hadn’t seen it coming, hadn’t seen it happen. Once second he was standing there, the next he was doubled over in pain. Even though it had hurt like hell, the scary part was that he sensed Jack had pulled the punch, hitting him just hard enough to make his point. If he’d put everything into it…