Kaz was beginning to panic, his gas supply dwindling. Dante, who was already out of air, was buddy-breathing what little Star had left. Adriana watched their rescuer distribute the wing tanks.
The truth was so awful it made her nauseous. But it was undeniable: If Igor Ocasek’s replacement really had stayed topside until morning, they would all be dead.
It was a chastened and bone-weary team of interns that followed their rescuer back to PUSH. When the terror subsided, it left nothing but exhaustion in its wake. Adriana barely had the strength to haul her scooter, her burgeoning dive bag, and herself up the ladder to the wet porch.
She collapsed onto the plastic grating, fighting an impulse to weep with sheer relief. “Dr. Delal,” she managed, too weak to pull off her gear, “I don’t know what to say.”
There was a familiar grunt that definitely couldn’t have come from anyone named Jennifer. Up popped the mask to reveal the face of their savior.
It was English.
Menasce Gérard’s dark, burning eyes scorched them with fury and contempt. “You!” the six-foot-five dive guide exclaimed. “They tell me only Jennifer is sick, I must go to PUSH in her place. If I know it is for you, I say no.”
“Well, we’re really glad you decided to come,” Kaz said, his voice shaky. “We couldn’t find the nav ropes. I don’t know what happened.”
“We messed up, pure and simple,” Star confessed. “We could have died.” She swallowed hard. “We would have died.”
English was not sympathetic. “If you stop doing these idiot things, you do not have this problem! Night diving is not for the kindergarten. Careful — you have maybe heard this word before?”
“Sorry,” mumbled Kaz.
“I am not Superman, me. I cannot always be there when you play dice with your lives. And for what?” He tossed a disgusted glance at Adriana’s mesh bag, seeing the lumps of coral but not the artifacts they concealed. “Rocks. Fou!” He peeled off his dive gear and stormed through the pressure lock.
Dante set his tanks on the EMPTY rack by the compressor. “Is it just me, or is that guy always there every time we look like morons?”
“Thank God for that,” Kaz said feelingly. “How many times has he saved our necks?”
Adriana stepped out of her flippers. “Do you think he’s right? Are the night dives too risky?”
Star shook her head vehemently. “We just got cocky, that’s all. We made it okay a couple of times, and we let our guard down.”
“Down here, you only get one mistake,” Dante pointed out.
Star nodded gravely. “You’re right. It was my bad, and it won’t happen again. English is right. He won’t be there for us every time.”
“I don’t want him any time,” Dante said plaintively. “Don’t get me wrong — I’m grateful. But he hates us.”
“He doesn’t hate us,” argued Star.
“Ask him!” Dante insisted. “He doesn’t even try to hide it.”
“We’ll stay out of his way,” soothed Adriana.
“Down here?” Dante shrilled. “The guy takes up half the station! We couldn’t stay out of his way if we shrank to the size of Barbie dolls! Face it — we’re locked in an underwater sardine can with an unfriendly giant.”
CHAPTER TEN
Menasce Gérard peered through the viewing port as the four interns set out from the station, gliding easily on their DPVs. He took careful note of the direction of their bubble trails, just in case he had to rescue them again.
He snorted. English was the most talented diver on an island of talented divers. His work on the oil rigs was difficult and dangerous, calling for great strength and skill at staggering depth and pressure. Why was a man like him playing nursemaid to a group of spoiled American teenagers?
He turned away from the viewing port. With a pop, his head shattered the bare bulb on the low ceiling. Mon dieu, this habitat was not built for a man his size! It was the interns who had brought him to this underwater dungeon, merci beaucoup.
As he brushed the glass fragments from his short hair, he noticed the crimson on his fingers. He began rummaging through the stainless steel cabinets in search of an adhesive bandage. An open cut was the last thing a diver needed. Even the slightest smell of blood in the water could attract sharks.
A lump of coral toppled from a cabinet and fell at his feet. Ah, yes — last night’s souvenirs. Then he noticed the ancient piece of cutlery protruding from the small block. He examined the other contents of the locker, marveling at the artifacts inside. Those teenagers had found something! Was there no end to their mischief?
Within minutes, he was pulling on his wet suit. He selected a scooter from the rack, stepped down to the top rung of the ladder, and disappeared into the waiting water.
The interns cut power to their DPVs, gliding to a halt at the crater of shattered coral that was the wreck site.
Where was the boiling silt storm? More to the point, where were Reardon and the controlled devastation of the airlift?
Where was the Ponce de León?
Valving air into her B.C., Star ascended to forty feet — as high as she dared to go without risking decompression sickness. Sharp knives of sunlight cut the turquoise water, and she could clearly make out individual swells on the surface. Cutter’s boat was nowhere to be seen.
After fumbling around in the pitch-black, skulking by headlamp, this felt almost like a promotion. Soon they were harvesting artifacts at greater speed than ever before, enjoying the excellent visibility and natural light.
Dante’s sharp eyes made out a rounded edge. The photographer deftly plucked a pewter serving dish out of the debris and stuffed it in his bag. It was a nice find — the best of the day so far. But Dante wasn’t satisfied.
Where’s the money?
A Spanish galleon — the richest kind of shipwreck in the world. And what had the interns managed to salvage so far? Plates. Cups. Spoons. What were they supposed to do, have a tea party?
Of course he understood the archaeological value of these items. The stuff was a window back in time, three hundred years, maybe more.
Archaeology. That was Adriana’s gig. Dante snorted into his mask — easy for her not to care about getting rich. She was rich already, or at least her family was. Dante might need that money someday. Photography probably didn’t pay very well — black-and-white photography, anyway. And he was doomed to that specialty.
But with this treasure, or a share of it, he wouldn’t have to care about that.
He finned away from the excavation, scanning the area. Maybe they were looking in the wrong place. Galleons were big, weren’t they? What if they were working on the opposite end of the wreck from where the treasure had been stored? They could be salvaging some kind of seventeenth-century cafeteria while millions in silver, gold, and jewels lay a few yards off.
But where? And if the treasure lay buried under coral, how would they ever get at it? Cutter was the one with the airlift and the dynamite. Cutter had a boat that could winch anchors and cannon barrels up to the surface.
He stared at the reef’s rocky rind, poring over every bump and contour. Surely, there had to be some sign, some hint of a man-made shape encased in the living limestone.
He found nothing.
He kicked through the murky haze stirred up by the efforts of the others, swimming to the far side of the wreck site. Here, coral gave way to sand and mud bottom.
Now that’s searchable.
Expelling air from his vest, he dropped to the seafloor on his hands and knees and began to dig. Almost immediately, he was lost in his own silt cloud. As he labored, it occurred to him that if he’d thought to look here, so had Cutter.