The Danger

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Dawn was breaking through the overcast as the storm moved off to Martinique and points east. Captain Bourassa and the skeleton crew aboard the Adventurer set about repairing the ship’s fried electrical systems.

Star paced the deck like a caged tiger, her limp barely noticeable because of her speed and grim tension. It had been four hours since they had last been able to speak to the bell. And then the divers had been involved in a life-and-death struggle against an adversary in a half-ton suit.

“How soon till we get comms. back up?” she asked for the fifth time that hour.

Henri had the console open and was soldering burned wire. “No sooner for the asking so much,” he replied, and added kindly, “English, he is the best. If anyone can bring home your friends—”

That was the problem, Star thought. English was a great diver, but he wasn’t all-powerful.

If anything’s happened to them, I’ll never forgive myself for surviving!

What a weird twist — that getting bent might have saved her life.

She bit back her impatience, and frowned as the Ponce de Léon approached out of the morning mist, and began to draw alongside. Through the haze, she could make out both Cutter and Reardon on deck.

A deep resentment welled up inside Star. Cutter had been the enemy from the beginning. Why trust him now? True, he had warned them about Marina. But what if that was a trick? A lift basket stuffed with a fortune hung dead in the water, somewhere below the Adventurer, waiting for power to be restored to the winch. Any piece of that load could be used as evidence in court for a treasure hunter to claim the wreck as his own.

At that moment, Star didn’t know what ordeal her friends might have been through, or even if they were alive or dead. But she could be certain of this: They would never forgive her if she allowed their find to fall into the greedy hands of Tad Cutter.

She squinted at the winch, trying to size up the amount of cable wound around the wheel. Surely the basket wasn’t too far beneath the surface now.

As she climbed the metal ladder down to the dive platform, the words of her doctor resounded in her ears: “You must never dive again. Another case of the bends, and you will surely be in a wheelchair for life.”

Sorry, Doc, but this one’s a must.

And she jumped into the sea.

Her fears disappeared the instant the water closed over her. How could anything that felt so right do her harm? She held her breath, descending effortlessly along the winch cable. She kept her eyes open, almost enjoying the stinging salt. The ocean was clear and quite bright despite the fact that the sun had not yet burned off the morning mist.

At last, the basket came into view, hanging at about forty feet. Her heart nearly stopped at the sight of it.

Oh, my God! I knew they found treasure, but this is the mother lode!

Silver turned black; pearls and gems faded. But gold was always gold. It was spectacular — something out of a fairy tale.

She grabbed a solid-gold candlestick and reached for a rope of pearls to wrap around her neck.

Her hand froze. No. Just proof. Nothing more. She kicked for the surface.

When she climbed back aboard, her exhilaration was total. No pain, no stiffness. Star Ling was a diver again.

She was sitting on the platform, catching her breath, when the lift bag broke the waves right where she had been swimming seconds earlier. Shouting for Henri, she took a boat hook from the rack and fished the bobbing float out of the water.

She gawked. Fastened by waterproof tape was a simple sandwich bag. Inside the clear plastic was a torn piece of paper bearing the message: TEAM OK. RAISE BELL.

Her heart soared. They were alive! Only —

How are we supposed to raise the pot without electricity?

And then Cutter appeared out of the haze, piloting a Zodiac inflatable over to the Adventurer.

He called, “What can we do to help?”

When the diving bell finally broke the surface, English and the three interns were astonished to find themselves deposited not onto their own ship, but to the deck of the Ponce de Léon.

What was going on here? They had narrowly escaped Marina only to be delivered right into the hands of Cutter and Reardon.

Luckily, Star was there to explain the situation through the intercom. “I think Cutter’s our friend now, believe it or not. He’s a treasure hunter and a reef wrecker, but he didn’t know what Marina was doing. And when he found out, he warned us right away.”

“Marina didn’t make it,” Kaz said soberly. He offered no details. It would be a while before he would be ready to discuss this particular adventure.

“Anyway, Cutter’s giving us a ride over to the oil rig,” Star concluded. “Captain Bourassa will meet us there. He’s got to go slow over the reef because there’s about a zillion dollars hanging under the Adventurer.”

English glared at her through the small view port. “I hope you know this by inference only, mademoiselle with the wet hair, and not because you are foolish enough to dive there.”

They were about halfway to the Antilles platform when the helicopters began to arrive, filling the sky with their machine-gun rhythms.

Dante peered out at them. “Big doings at the oil rig.”

English laughed mirthlessly. “One billion dollars. Many zeroes attract many friends.”

Adriana gaped at the aircraft that filled the skies over Saint-Luc like circling hawks. “You mean all this is for us?”

“I believe you Americans have a saying about — hitting the fan?”

The decompression from seven hundred feet took four long days. By the time the divers stepped out of the chamber, the contents of the lift basket and even Star’s gold candlestick sat in the hold of a French warship that patrolled the waters over the wreck site at the edge of the Hidden Shoals.

Court claims on the treasure of Nuestra Señora de la Luz had been filed by Poseidon Oceanographic Institute, Antilles Oil, and three countries — France, England, and Spain.

Centuries after the days of the great treasure fleets, the same three governments were still bickering over Caribbean gold.

The claim filed on behalf of the four teenage interns, who had discovered not one but two seventeenth-century shipwrecks, was rejected by the International Maritime Commission.

Tad Cutter and Chris Reardon made no claim at all.