Exhausted, and sucking far too much air, he sat on the bottom in a remarkably dry-land pose, elbows on his knees, chin resting on his knuckles.
The picture came into focus gradually, as silt resettled itself, and the murky water began to clear around him. He blinked in surprise.
He’d always imagined the shoal as a broad plain, but really it was more of a mountainside here. Not far beyond the wreck site, the seafloor sloped sharply downward, falling off so quickly that Dante could not make out the bottom.
This is where the Hidden Shoals end. It must drop to deep ocean from here.
He increased buoyancy and lifted off the sand, peering into the abyss. As he floated free of the silt, the downward slope came into perfect focus. That was when he saw it.
It was far below on the incline, right at the point where the exhausted rays of sunlight succumbed to the permanent darkness of the deep. He could just make out the shadows of —
Of what?
He couldn’t be sure. But it was definitely something. Half-buried objects, scattered along the distant slant as if they had bounced off the back of a runaway truck.
Could this be the treasure?
If I could only get a closer look…
Dante finned to the edge of the plateau, and angled his direction down, paralleling the slope of the bottom. Valving air out of his B.C. made descent easier, and he focused all his concentration on the faint hints of debris far below.
When he felt the tug on his leg, he yelped into his regulator, fearing the jaws of some prehistoric sea monster. No, it was another diver, waving a scolding finger.
Star?
He peered into the newcomer’s mask and recoiled in shock. Oh, no! It was English, clinging to a DPV! The guide must have followed them. They were caught.
Dante held up a finger — one minute.
English shook his head vehemently. He pulled out his slate and scribbled: TOO DEEP.
PUSH aquanauts were supposed to maintain depth between forty and eighty feet. Dante checked his Fathometer. Almost ninety.
But I just need to see it!
Dante wheeled and continued to kick down the incline. English sprang into action. Dropping the scooter, he lunged forward, latching onto the boy’s slim torso. Dante took evasive action, rolling out of his grasp. As English struggled to hold on, he accidentally yanked the boy’s weight belt clean off.
Now suddenly buoyant, Dante shot upward. Desperately, he fumbled to deflate his B.C. to slow the ascent, but couldn’t find the valve.
If I surface now, without decompression, the bends will kill me!
English’s glove snapped out of nowhere and put an iron grip on his ankle. At last, Dante emptied his vest. Neutral again, he clamped himself onto the guide’s arm and did not let go.
The weight belt floated to the sandy slope.
Clang.
The unmistakable sound reverberated under water, carrying even more clearly than it would have through the air.
Wait a minute. Lead weights hitting wet sand don’t clang.
English heard it too. Both divers descended to the spot where the belt lay. The guide removed a flipper and shoveled through the mud and silt.
Dante spotted the dark object immediately. It was just below the sand, barely buried. The two wrested it free of the shoal, and English hefted it in his arms. It was about the size of a lampshade, dark with rust, and eaten through in about half a dozen places. But it was unmistakable — a brass bell.
The thoughts sparked instantly in Dante’s brain: Adriana! She had to see this! Old ships had bells, didn’t they? Adriana would know if this was from a Spanish galleon.
A white-toothed grin penetrated English’s perpetual scowl. He reached down and handed Dante his discarded weight belt. Dante reattached it, and the two kicked away in tandem, holding the bell between them like a trophy.
The dive guide’s smile disappeared as they crested the slope. He took in the sight of the other three interns, busily harvesting artifacts from the ruined reef. They looked up at his approach, as though receiving his white-hot anger by telepathy.
Seething, English passed off the bell to Dante and swooped over the reef, examining the destruction. The strokes of the underwater pencil against his dive slate reverberated like gunshots.
YOU DO THIS?
Kaz blustered his denial, and wound up choking on salt water.
They were a hundred percent innocent, but how could they ever explain the whole story down here, where more than a syllable or two was impossible?
Star drew out her slate and wrote a single word: CUTTER.
English’s stark expression plainly said he did not believe her.
At that moment, all explanation became unnecessary. Sixty-five feet overhead on the surface, a dark shape moved into position. Minutes later, an anchor dropped, settling on the reef ten yards away from them.
The Ponce de León.
The four interns retrieved their scooters and purred off to the ridge of coral that had served as their hiding place before. English followed, but his eyes never left the shadow of the research vessel above them.
They watched from the cover of the ridge as two dark figures descended through the filtered sunlight — divers wearing weighted boots instead of flippers. Chris Reardon and Tad Cutter. Instead of the long serpentlike tube of the airlift, each man carried what looked like a futuristic weapon, connected to the surface by a hose.
Kaz stared. What were those things? Dynamite charges? Spear guns? He did not have long to wait. The moment Reardon’s boots thudded to the bottom, he positioned the six-inch blade against the unbroken reef at the edge of the excavation. With a monstrous roar, the device began pounding at the coral, smashing it to pieces.
Kaz gasped. A jackhammer! They were widening the search area!
Cutter’s machine blasted to life, working on the other side of the gash. Within seconds, the two treasure hunters disappeared inside an enormous cloud of silt and powdered coral.
Soon the interns couldn’t see anything. But there was no question that the operation was proceeding. The vibration of the jackhammers seemed to rip at the very fabric of the ocean. At that, it was nothing compared to the vibrations of outrage emanating from Menasce Gérard. To a native islander, this wanton destruction of the living reef was nothing less than a crime against nature. It took every ounce of self-control he had, learned from a lifetime of diving, to hold himself back from physically attacking them.
Star understood his agitation. She scribbled on her slate and held it up for him to read:
TREASURE HUNTERS.
His expression thunderous behind his mask, English indicated Dante, who was close by, still hugging the bell. Their mesh bags bulged guiltily. The irony almost cut Kaz in two: If Cutter’s the treasure hunter, how come we have all the treasure?
Mastering his anger at last, English turned his DPV back in the direction of PUSH and beckoned the others to follow.
They did not break free of the cloud kicked up by the jackhammers until they were a third of the way home.
The wet porch rang with anxious voices.
“We didn’t do anything to that coral!” Star pleaded their case. “Cutter broke it up with dynamite! We were just nosing around.”
“This never was a real internship,” Kaz continued. “The whole thing was a sham — a smokescreen to hide the fact that they were looking for a shipwreck.”
“And they found it,” Dante added. “Actually, I found it. But they stole it. And now they’re digging up half the ocean looking for the treasure.”