The Danger

CHAPTER TWELVE

English stood in the bow of the Antilles Adventurer, appraising the gathering overcast.

Bad weather was coming. That wouldn’t affect the divers. At seven hundred feet, the topside conditions might as well have been happening in Paris. But it would certainly be a factor for this sixty-year-old ship. Flat and bargelike, the Adventurer wallowed like a garbage scow even in glassy calm. Who knew how she would perform in a storm?

But the boat had two things going for her: She could handle a diving bell and she wasn’t on Antilles Oil’s work schedule. For an “unofficial” job like this one, English needed a craft that wouldn’t be missed.

The six-foot-five figure shuddered slightly in the headwind. Nervousness was not a familiar feeling for Menasce Gérard. He was used to a masterful confidence in his ability to deal with any situation. But treasure hunting did not sit well with him. Nor did the idea of involving his Antilles colleagues in this scheme that could cost them their jobs. But mostly, taking two inexperienced teenagers to seven hundred feet seemed like madness. And yet, this was the only way. So strange, this life!

He could see them now in the late dusk, waiting on the uneven planks of the abandoned marina. Outremont harbor, on Saint-Luc’s south coast, had not been used for many years. But it was the perfect place to make the pickup, far from the prying eyes of Cutter or Gallagher or anybody at Antilles Oil.

Since the harbor had not been maintained, English came for them in a dinghy.

Dante stared at the Adventurer. “That’s the boat?”

“You were expecting the Queen Mary, monsieur?” English inquired sarcastically.

The young photographer couldn’t take his eyes off the World War II–era ship. “Will it float?”

“Maybe you should dive with us,” suggested Kaz. “Then, if it sinks, you’ll have time to get out of the way.”

Dante bit his lip. “I’ll take my chances with the rust bucket.”

Once on deck, English introduced the interns to Captain Bourassa and two other oil company seamen. A crew of three was bare minimum to run the Adventurer, but English didn’t want to risk letting too large a group in on their plan. An oil rig was a gossip mill. People talked. News spread.

English’s friend Henri Roux was also there, not to dive, but to handle diving operations from topside.

“Is that everybody?” asked Adriana.

“There is one more—” English began.

“Hi, guys.”

From the main companionway, limping only slightly more than usual, emerged Star.

The three stared at her.

“You went home this morning!” exclaimed Dante.

Star grinned. “I am home. Wherever the action is — that’s home.”

“But you can’t dive.” Kaz turned to English. “You’re not going to let her dive.”

“Cool your jets, rink rat,” Star soothed. “I’m not that nuts. But someone has to look after you guys from topside — make sure Henri doesn’t blow the bell full of laughing gas by mistake.”

“But what about your dad?” asked Adriana. “Didn’t he need to get back to work?”

She shrugged. “I talked him into letting me stay. I’m all checked out of the hospital. The doctor says I’m ninety percent. The rest will come gradually.”

“You’re doing awesome,” Kaz observed.

“But you’re still limping,” Dante added dubiously.

Star looked exasperated. “Bonehead, I’m still me! The bends doesn’t cure cerebral palsy.”

English addressed Kaz and Adriana. “It is time to press down to our work depth. This will take more than two hours, so we must begin at once.”

The Adventurer was equipped with a decompression chamber. English, Kaz, and Adriana were locked inside, and Henri Roux manipulated the controls, gradually increasing the pressure. By the time the bell reached the wreck site at 703 feet, the three divers had to be used to the crushing weight of twenty-two atmospheres.

There was an insistent hiss as gas flooded the chamber. Adriana’s ears hurt almost immediately. She squeezed her nose and blew out. There was a squeal as the pressure equalized. She would be doing this for the next two and a half hours.

The things I put up with for archaeology!

Star’s face appeared at the chamber’s window. “Ears pop yet?” she asked over the intercom.

“It feels like somebody set off a cherry bomb in my skull,” Adriana replied in a squeaky tone. Saturation divers breathed a mixture of helium and oxygen called heliox. It made you sound like a Munchkin.

Kaz adapted his high-pitched voice into a perfect Bart Simpson impression that had Adriana howling with laughter. Outside the chamber, Star and Dante were practically rolling on the deck.

Even English’s baritone was shrill and distorted. “Monsieur Simpson, he is a diver?”

Dante was nearly hysterical. “He’s a cartoon on TV!”

“Ah, yes. Your American television.” English displayed no hint of a smile. “Amuse yourselves now. On the bottom, there is no laughing, only danger.”

“We’ll stick to you like glue,” Kaz promised.

“That is no help at seven hundred feet. With the backup tank, you breathe maybe three minutes. Ascent, this means only death from the bends. Alors, you have one choice — the perfection.”

“Aw, lighten up, Mr. English,” Dante wheedled. “We’re all going to be rich. What are you going to do with your share of the money?”

“I will do nothing,” English replied readily.

“Come on,” chided Kaz. “You could buy a nice car.”

“I do not drive.”

“A big house?” prompted Dante. “On the water, maybe?”

“Everything I need, I have.”

“What about travel?” suggested Adriana. “Wouldn’t it be great to see the world?”

English gave them a disinterested shrug. “Where do people go for vacation? The islands. Me, I am already here. But,” he added, “the first money from any treasure will repay Antilles Oil for use their equipment. Another share should go to Braden’s family, no?”

Star nodded. “And Iggy Ocasek. He helped us find the deeper wreck.”

“I’m going to give some of my share to this guy back home,” said Kaz. “A hockey player. He’s got — medical bills.”

“I haven’t thought about what I’m going to do with my share,” Adriana told them. “Donate it to charity, I guess.”

Dante rolled his eyes. “Yeah, me, too. I’m donating mine to the Dante Foundation.”

“For now, there is no money, only talk,” English said sharply. “Remember this — gold is valuable because it is hard to get, not easy. And harder still to keep.”

It took two hours for the slow-moving ship to reach the coordinates of the wreck site at the edge of the Hidden Shoals. By this time, the three divers were sweltering in their watertight “dry” suits, waiting to transfer to the bell. The bell was pressurized and docked with the chamber by means of an airtight tunnel. The three crawled through into the cramped space that would be their home for the operation to come. They carried their Ratcliff diving helmets — Rat Hats.

The bell was dark and damp, and smelled like a locker room after the big game — the odor of physical labor, bodies, perspiration. The walls were curved, with view ports barely the size of CDs. There was no floor that Adriana could see. They settled themselves uncomfortably on endless piles of coiled umbilical lines. English pulled the hatch shut with a muffled thud.

According to the gauge, the pressure was already equivalent to a depth of 660 feet. It’s happening, Adriana thought to herself. We’re really going to do this.

Henri’s voice came through the interphone box. “Can you read me in the pot?”

They could hear Dante in the background. “Hey, what does this switch do?”

A quick, sharp slap was clearly broadcast over the hookup, followed by Star’s voice: “Cut it out, Dante!”

“Topside, we read you,” English reported with a sigh. He added, “Please do not let that annoying child touch anything.”

The Adventurer’s powerful spotlights came on suddenly, capturing the bell like a stage performer. Inside, tubes of light leaped from the round ports. There were a few minutes of equipment checks, followed by the roar of the winch. The bell lifted shakily off the deck.

“Stand by in the pot.” There was a jolt, and they were in the water, sinking through deepening shades of blue.

Adriana was amazed at how quickly the sweaty heat deserted them. She hugged her bulky dry suit. “Is anybody else freezing?”

English nodded. “This is normal. The helium — it makes you lose warmth faster than air.”

As they descended quickly, English checked the umbilicals, which were really several different lines, taped together like bundles of spaghetti strands — breathing supply, phone cable, safety rope. There was also an extra hose so that hot water could be pumped through a system of tubing that crisscrossed the fabric of their dry suits. This would provide warmth against the icy chill of the deep sea.

All at once, English announced, “We are arrived.”

“So fast?” blurted Adriana.

Seven hundred feet may be an alien world, she reminded herself. But the actual distance to the surface is a little more than an eighth of a mile.

English pushed aside cables, welding torches, and a few plastic sandwich bags of high-energy snacks to clear the bell’s work-lock beneath their feet. He opened the double hatch to reveal water the color of intergalactic space. The blackness washed upward at first, as if it were about to flood the bell. But then the pressure equalized, halting the ocean’s advance.

English helped Kaz and Adriana seal the big fiberglass helmets to their suits before donning his own. Suddenly top-heavy, Adriana overbalanced and conked her Rat Hat into the wall of the bell. “I’m okay,” she muttered, recovering. The heliox tasted metallic in the close quarters of the headgear.

“Topside,” English reported. “Hats on.”

Adriana heard Henri’s voice coming from a small speaker by her ear. “Comm. check. Everybody reads me, yes?”

“Loud and clear,” she replied into the helmet’s built-in microphone.

“Me, too,” said Kaz. “Man, this sure beats scuba!”

The three divers stepped into flippers. “Locking out,” reported English.

And they dropped into the molasses-dark.