The Deep

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

By the light of the moon, the Hernando Cortés chugged quietly out of Côte Saint-Luc harbor, just before eleven o’clock. There were no witnesses. But even if the departure had been observed, it was unlikely that anyone would have been able to identify the apparatus lashed to the foredeck.

The thing looked like the window display of a camera store that had been struck by lightning, fusing cameras and floodlights into a tightly packed mass.

“Does it work?” asked Adriana timidly.

Dr. Ocasek seemed vaguely surprised at the question. “It worked perfectly in my bathtub.”

At the wheel, Vanover brayed a laugh. “Don’t worry. If Iggy built it, it’ll fly.” He frowned as the vessel bounced through the oncoming waves. “Choppy tonight. We could be in for a rough ride.”

When they reached the coordinates of the wreck site, Vanover cut their speed. They proceeded slowly until the sonar told them that they were passing over the point where the Hid-den Shoals sloped down to deeper ocean. Dr. Ocasek’s camera array was then winched up and over the side. As it disappeared beneath the surface, the floodlights came on. Everyone gasped. The illumination was so powerful that the sea lit up like an aquarium. The light dimmed as the contraption descended. But even at the search depth of 250 feet, the watchers could still make out a faint glow coming from beneath the waves.

The four interns rushed below to the closed-circuit monitor Dr. Ocasek had set up in the salon. The screen was split in four, one quadrant for each camera.

Dante frowned. “There’s nothing.”

The screen showed swirling water and an occasional sea creature staring in surprise at this bizarre mechanical intruder.

“We’re off the reef,” Dr. Ocasek reminded him. “That’s where the densely packed marine life is.”

“But where’s the bottom?” asked Star.

“I’m not sure,” said Dr. Ocasek.

“Picture a mountain,” came Captain Vanover’s voice through the two-way radio from the wheelhouse. “Our cameras are sort of floating in space beside it. This slope might not bottom out flat for two or three thousand feet.”

Kaz felt his eyelids beginning to droop. Fifteen minutes of staring at nothing was taking its toll on all the interns as the clock ticked on past midnight. This was turning into a big bust. How could anyone find something on the slope if they couldn’t even find the slope itself?

It came up so fast that they barely had a chance to scream. First a large luminescent jellyfish flashed through the top right quadrant. Then a diagonal wall of sand and seaweed was hurtling toward the camera.

Dante reacted first. “Hit the brakes!” he bellowed at the walkie-talkie.

“Slow down!” cried Adriana.

“Veer off!” shouted Star.

When the camera struck the mud, Kaz flinched, expecting an impact. But of course the boat hadn’t struck anything. Only the camera array, 250 feet below the surface, had suffered a collision.

Following Dr. Ocasek’s instructions, Vanover reversed course, and the contraption came free of the muddy incline. Two lenses were sand-encrusted, but soon washed clean.

From that point on, no one felt remotely sleepy or bored. The Cortés traced slow track lines across the water, allowing the cameras a chance to scan the gradient for five hundred yards in each horizontal direction. Then the winch would lower the array another twenty-five feet, Captain Vanover would adjust course, and the thousand-foot trace would begin again.

Around 2 A.M., while they were lowering the array to 325 feet, a gusty wind blew up in their faces, and rain began to pelt down on them.

“How much longer is this going to take?” yelled Vanover from the cockpit. “We’ve got weather coming!”

With the rough wave action tossing its umbilical line, the camera array bounced and spun far below them. The pictures were chaotic. Kaz’s head pounded as he stared at the screen, fearful that something might go by undetected. The motion of the boat was making him queasy, and he swallowed determinedly, his eyes glued to the monitor. Beside him, Dante, never a good sailor, was hugging his knees and moaning.

Dr. Ocasek was the picture of total focus. “If it’s down there, we’ll find it,” he said calmly.

When the time came to lower the winch to 350 feet, it was obvious that conditions outside had deteriorated even further. The tossing of the deck knocked Adriana flat on her back. Even Kaz, who had superb balance from hockey, had to hold on to cabin tops and bulwarks as the sea manhandled the Cortés.

“Get back below!” shouted Vanover from behind the wheel. “I’m turning us around!”

“Not yet!” begged Dante, screaming to be heard over the wind. “I know I saw something!”

“No!” boomed the captain. “In these seas, if you go overboard, you’re done!”

A wave broke over the bow, drenching the winch and the interns who struggled to man it.

“Just one more track line!” howled Star, shaking herself like a wet dog. “If we give up now, we’ll never finish this!”

Vanover hesitated, the driving rain stinging his face. “One more!” he agreed finally. “But then I don’t care if you find the lost continent of Atlantis — we’re going home!”

Star and Dante sloshed down the companionway, and joined the others in front of the monitor for the last pass.

The ship lurched, and a moment later, the camera array swung away from the slope below. And when the pendulum effect brought the apparatus back into position, there it was in the bottom left quadrant:

The long bronze barrel of a cannon.

All four interns began screaming at the same time. Not one word was intelligible.

Even Dr. Ocasek was excited. “Back up, Braden! Back up!”

“Are you crazy?” crackled the sharp voice through the two-way radio. “It’s all I can do to keep us afloat!”

The array bobbed in the current, and for an instant, one of the cameras dipped down to reveal a scattering of ballast stones and other debris half buried on the sandy slope.

Dante was out of his seat, crying, “Did you see that?” until a sudden pitch of the boat sent him sprawling into Dr. Ocasek’s arms.

“It’s more debris from Nuestra Señora!” exclaimed Adriana in amazement. “I wonder how it got all the way over here.”

Star had an idea. “Maybe the galleon broke in two when it sank. And the force of the hurricane blew half of it off the shoal.”

“The half with the money in it!” Dante added breathlessly.

Kaz warmed to the argument. “It would explain why Cutter hasn’t found any treasure.”

“Hey!” came an angry shout from the radio. Then, “If you guys are finished theorizing, do I have your permission to get us out of here?”

“Go!” urged Dr. Ocasek. “We’ll bring up the camera array so it doesn’t get smashed to pieces when we cross the reef.”

“Okay, but be careful! We’re taking ten-foot waves over the bow.”

By the time they got topside, the deck of the Cortés was awash with foam and reeling from the motion of the sea. A stack of safety harnesses came sailing down from the wheelhouse and splashed at their feet.

“Get in them!” boomed Vanover. “And lash yourselves to something permanent!”

The thirty-foot walk to the winch was as tough an obstacle course as Kaz could remember. He clipped himself to the rail and hung on for dear life as Dr. Ocasek started the winch. The cable began to wind up.

Kaz put out a hand as Star stumbled. A second later, his own legs slipped out from under him, and he dangled from his harness, knowing he would have been swept away without it. Star, on the other hand, had kept her feet and was sneering triumphantly down at him.

The winch continued to shudder and groan. Two hundred feet… a hundred and fifty… The underwater lights grew nearer and brighter as they rose. The violent ocean began to glow beneath them. One hundred feet… fifty… twenty-five…

And then the array, still lashed to its weighted platform, broke the surface. Brilliant as a supernova, it turned night into day, showing the occupants of the Hernando Cortés just how much trouble they were in. The heeling of the boat in the troughs and crests of the oncoming seas had turned the dangling array into a hundred-pound projectile. It swung from the tip of the winch’s crane arm like a lethal tetherball, smacking into the side of the wheelhouse and shattering a porthole. Then the craft righted itself, sending the contraption across the full beam of the ship, missing Adriana’s head by inches.

Kaz grabbed a boathook and snagged the umbilical. But the next movement of the ship ripped the pole out of his hands.

“Heads up!” boomed Vanover as the array sailed back over them.

Wham! It connected with the railing, denting it. They watched as one of the cameras, jarred loose by the impact, pitched into the sea.

Kaz picked up the boat hook and swung it at the twisting umbilical. He missed the cable, but the end caught the neck of one of the floodlights and clamped on. The whole array came crashing to the deck.

With a cry like a springing tiger, Dr. Igor Ocasek flung himself on top of his runaway creation, preventing it from sailing off again.

It was 4:30 A.M. by the time the Hernando Cortés limped back to Côte Saint-Luc harbor.

Waterlogged and weary, the four interns helped Dr. Ocasek carry what was left of the array back to the scientist’s cabin. One camera was missing, one was smashed, several floodlights were shattered, and the whole arrangement was covered in mud from numerous collisions with the sloped seabed.

“Sorry about this, Iggy,” Star said sheepishly. “I didn’t think we were going to wreck it.”

Dr. Ocasek was upbeat. “We found what we were looking for. That’s all that matters. The rest was the weather’s fault.”

“You’re not going to get into any trouble for this, are you?” asked Dante nervously.

“Are you kidding?” The scientist grinned. “If I showed up one day and everything wasn’t broken, Geoffrey would have a heart attack!”

They said good night and trudged off to their own quarters. Kaz and Dante let themselves into their cabin and switched on the light.

Dante went straight to the bathroom and began peeling off his wet clothes. “I’ve never been so tired in my life! I’m going to sleep for a hundred years!”

“Join the club,” yawned Kaz. “The minute I hit that pillow — ” He froze.

There in the corner sat the bell of Nuestra Señora de la Luz, cushioned by a bath mat. It was partly off the piece of cloth, which meant it had been moved. And, on the terrazzo floor in front of it, facing it, were two sandy footprints.

Maybe their activities weren’t such a secret from Cutter after all.