Treasure of the Dead

Chapter 30

“Check the sonar image, here.” Willis pointed to a display where a field of hazy gray was plainly visible in a jagged black rip. Maddock and Bones crowded around to get a look.

Maddock shook his head. “That can’t be metal.”

Bones ran a fingertip along the shape of the intrusive outline. “It’s not metal, it’s a geological feature. Part of the bottom.”

Willis nodded. “Some kind of trench, or crevasse. But look: I think there’s something down there, some open space near the bottom. See this?” He stabbed a pointer finger on the lower left end of the unusual feature, where a subtle splotch of discoloration could be seen.

Bones appeared concerned. “How deep is that?”

Willis shook his head slowly. “Hard to say. It’s a narrow gorge type deal, and we’re not positioned exactly over it, so it’s reading the bottom around it. But if I had to guess, I’d say at least one hundred feet.” A doubtful look took over his features before adding, “Currents are going to be a bear down there, too. Looks dicey, from a diver standpoint.”

Bones looked away from the screen, making eye contact with Maddock and Willis. “How could a Spanish treasure ship, which was over a hundred feet long, have ended up down in that narrow crevasse?”

Willis wagged a finger back and forth over the gray hazy part of the display that surrounded the more distinct feature of the gorge. “I’m no geologist, but after looking at a lot of these readings in the service, I’d say it looks like there's been a shifting of rock sometime in the past.” He paused, shrugged, and then went on. “It could be that seismic activity caused it, but it’s a pretty safe bet that it was probably a much larger space in the past. Whatever it was that caused it, the whole place looks like it could collapse at pretty much any time, and I’m not looking forward to going down there if that’s part of the plan.”

Maddock clapped Willis on the back. “Don’t worry. It’s like playing Jenga. Keep a steady hand and you’ll be fine. Let’s get suited up.”

Willis took a last look at the sonar display and then reluctantly left the console. Bones sat there, however, a worried look on his face. Maddock addressed him. “What, you’re scared, too?”

Bones shook his head. “Scared I’m partnered with such a geek. Jenga? Really? Who are you, Maddock?”

With that, Bones headed for the dive platform.

Willis let Maddock and Bones take the first dive, citing the need for someone to keep an eye on the boat and the sonar readings. Maddock wondered if the unstable passageway gave his friend pause, but he didn’t give Willis any hassle about it. Deep diving was serious business, and if someone felt like they shouldn’t do a dive, then they probably shouldn’t.

Maddock pulled on a fin and looked up at Willis. “Not a bad idea. By the looks of it, three might be a crowd down there in that tight space, anyway.”

“Be safe down there. We’re a long way from help.” Willis looked around, the desolate island of Alto Velo their only landscape. Then he added, “While you’re down there, I’ll put together a couple of extra scuba rigs and leave them hanging down at twenty feet so you have extra air for your decompression stop if you need it.”

Maddock and Bones splashed into the water and swam to the boat’s anchor line. They waved to Willis and submerged, gripping the rope with one hand as they followed its length down to the bottom. When they were within sight of the boat’s anchor, they could see right away that there was indeed a large opening in the seafloor.

The duo swam over the flat portion of seafloor, which looked much like that of their previous dive site, until the bottom began to slope sharply downward. They paused, kneeling on the bottom before the incline became too steep, staring down into a dark abyss. Across the chasm, perhaps forty feet away, the seafloor resumed its flat pattern. At this point, as they scrambled for their dive lights in order to see into the trench, neither of them could blame Willis for wanting to mind the boat.

Maddock bumped into Bones by accident, swayed by a powerful current that ripped across the opening of the chasm. Bones gave him a rude gesture and Maddock pointed down. Let’s go before we get swept away from the site.

They let more air out of their buoyancy compensator vests in order to sink into the crevasse, dropping straight down into it and avoiding contact with the sides, which could cloud the water and make it difficult to see. Playing their light beams around the walls of the chasm as they descended, Maddock and Bones could see colorful sponges and sea anemones. A large crab scuttled out of the cone of light that had invaded its dim home, and a school of small, pink fish darted this way and that.

Maddock and Bones stayed close together as they dropped, not knowing what to expect, if the chasm would branch off at some point, or how deep it would get. If they needed to communicate, they wanted to be able to do so immediately without having to swim to their dive buddy. Maddock was pointing to his depth gauge, expressing concern that it might get too deep before they could safely reach bottom, when suddenly the rocky slope grew less steep as it branched off to their right.

They followed it, swimming with careful fin strokes into the gloom. As they passed through a tunnel, Maddock shone his light ahead, noticing with excitement that the passage branched out into a labyrinth of small caves and various tunnels. That was when the rock passageway in which they swam started to move. Maddock was alerted to it at first by the sound of rock grating on rock. Then he saw Bones’ head on a swivel, looking all around for the source of the sound.

Bones pointed up, high on the tunnel wall, and Maddock saw the rock that made up the tunnel shift. As he watched, it stopped, but the small cloud of rock dust now floating in the water over their heads told him that this was not a stable place, and not a safe one, either. Maddock made hand signals for Bones that asked him if he wanted to call the dive and head back to the boat.

The determined man shook his head and motioned forward. He and Maddock swam on, eventually coming to a fork in the passage. Maddock aimed his light down the new fork but inside saw only a chaotic jumble of precariously stacked boulders. He advised Bones to avoid the fork and continue ahead toward what appeared to be a cavern.

Upon reaching the end of the passage, they were confronted with a crumbling stone archway in the end of the tunnel. Not sure whether it was a natural formation or a manmade one, Maddock hesitated to pass beneath it, concerned about causing a cave-in. He looked through the archway to see if it was worth passing through at all, but within seconds Bones shot through the opening into the new space. Maddock was forced to follow — he could not leave his partner, dive buddy and friend behind no matter what.

Maddock consulted his air pressure gauge. Low. Enough air to get back to the surface, but not a whole lot more than that. He was glad now that Willis was setting up the extra decompression tanks. He tapped Bones on the shoulder and let him know they should turn back soon. They’d explored in and out of dozens of tunnels and caves so far, but found nothing promising. Sometimes the technology plays tricks, Maddock thought. There really was no substitute for actually being somewhere in person, and right now that presence was allowing him to see that there was nothing worth—

Bones’ frantically waving hand arrested Maddock’s attention. He swam the short distance to his dive buddy and found him waist deep in a small, rocky depression in the cave floor. Maddock had just settled in to wait for Bones to hopefully pull something out of there when the Indian backed out of the hole and turned around to face Maddock, shaking his head.

Still empty handed. Maddock tapped Bones on the arm to remind him it was time to leave. He angled his body to be able to fit out through a rocky chute. As he turned to maneuver, the sleek shape of a blue shark rocketed past him, deeper into the cave. As he tracked it carefully, arcing into a turn, his gaze caught on something pale on the cave floor below him and to his right. The shark disappeared through a tunnel, leaving Maddock to ponder what he was looking at. Deciding the only object he’d seen thus far that wasn’t part of the rocks making up the tunnels was worth checking out, he dropped down to the bottom.

Bones’ shadowy form passed over him on the way out, and Maddock knew his friend was looking down, wondering what he was doing, if he had found something. And there it was: a whitish round object, partially buried in sand. Maddock closed his fist around it and pulled. He was not prepared for the fit of revulsion he felt when he realized he had grabbed hold of a skull.

A human skull.

A significant crack ran nearly the length of it from right eye socket to the back. Whether caused in some long ago battle, or not so long ago, for that matter, or if the trauma was a result of lying on the seafloor for hundreds of years, Maddock could not tell. He saw Bones’ light land on the macabre find and he turned the skull to face him briefly with its unsettling perma-grin before setting it back where he had found it.

As he did so, he let his dive light dangle by the wrist strap so that it bobbed around randomly while he handled the skull. He was just about to grip the light again when he saw a glint of golden light off in a shadowy corner.

Quickly, knowing his air supply was being dangerously depleted by every breath, Maddock pushed off the bottom, keeping his light aimed at the mysterious corner. Before he even reached the pinpoint source of the reflection, he could see that he had found something remarkable.

A section of wooden planks jutted up from a grouping of boulders. Maddock played his light around the wood and realized with a start that he was looking at the remains of a ship. He examined the area in more detail and found more wreckage, and more reflections from the sandy portion of the cave floor. Sifting a hand through the sand, his fingers came up clutching two Spanish silver reals. He tapped his knife on his tank and waved his light in Bones’ direction to alert him to the find.

Moments later the big Indian was at his side, also sifting through the sand and bagging silver, as well as gold, coins. In addition to coins, though, Bones also uncovered a palm-sized jeweled cross, laden with emeralds. He shined his light on it to show Maddock before dropping it into his bag.

Maddock carefully inspected the seafloor and bagged various finds along with Bones — mostly Spanish reals, but also the occasional artifact, such as a silver cup and a length of gold chain. Visions of newfound wealth dancing through his head, the ex-SEAL had to force himself to control his breathing, to stay calm and rational.

Thinking he had time for one last artifact before absolutely needing to leave for the boat, Maddock brushed the sand off of a gray metal object that was relatively flat. Brushing aside a little more sand, he could see that he had found the breastplate of a Spanish warrior. He was not a historian, but it seemed commensurate with the same period as that of the coins — early 1700s.

Maddock was debating whether he should leave the sizable object in place and come back for it later along with the rest of the treasure that still lay about here, when he felt a rush of water next to his left ear, and then a metal dart slammed into the breastplate with an audible tink.

Aside from the fact that this projectile had missed his head by maybe an inch, the first thing that registered in Maddock’s brain was the word, flechette. It was an odd word, but one he knew because of his SEAL training. As underwater warriors, they had been trained in the use of an assortment of deadly weapons suitable for marine use while SCUBA diving. One of these was a specialized type of gun, made for underwater use that fired a small dart called a flechette. He still recalled his arms school instructor in the SEALs introducing the weapon to him and his class. The metal darts, with a short shank and flared tip, had originally been dropped from aircraft by the hundreds on ground troops in World War I.

But these thoughts were but a flash in Maddock’s now activated brain, a mind that had been trained not to react with panic when facing danger. And right now, he and Bones were clearly in danger, for someone else had come for the treasure they had found.