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.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
It was almost noon before Adriana awoke, the powerful Caribbean sun threading through the gap in the curtains and all but searing a hole in the center of her forehead. She looked to the other bed. Star was still asleep, snoring softly into her pillow. Divers always snored. It was a side effect of time spent at depth and pressure. Even Adriana had woken herself a few times with a loud snort.
She sat up, yawning and stretching, then caught a glimpse of her hands, and gasped aloud. Thick brown mud was caked under all ten fingernails. Her immaculate, stylish mother would faint dead away!
Ballantyne ladies see to their grooming. Adriana had been hearing that since birth. Mother, obviously, had never had to handle a hundred-pound camera array that had scoured the seafloor. To her, the purpose of the ocean was for cruising, and to supply sushi.
She padded barefoot into the small bathroom, and switched on the light. Digging through her toiletry bag, she came up with her manicure set and began to clean her nails.
Yuck! This job is disgusting. You could plant potatoes in the blob I just excavated from under my thumbnail!
And then the blob twinkled.
Huh? Adriana blinked.
It was a tiny particle in the dirt, about half the size of a grain of sand. It was bright yellow, and when it caught the light, it gleamed.
She looked closer. Not yellow, exactly. More like — gold.
Intrigued now, she spread a tissue on the counter, popped the dirt onto it, and used an eyebrow tweezers to separate the shiny fleck from the rest of the material.
It was very shiny — and soft, too. The sharp tweezers could not cut the particle. Strong pressure just left an indentation.
Her breath caught. This didn’t just look like gold; it was gold!
She finished cleaning her nails onto the tissue, and examined the results. Only dirt. Head spinning, she sat down on the edge of the tub, trying to sort out her thoughts. The dirt under her nails came from carrying Iggy’s camera array. That was mud dredged up from the sloping ocean floor near the second debris field from Nuestra Señora. How could it be a coincidence — a tiny piece of gold from the very spot where they suspected a vast treasure lay hidden?