That’s how you know when it’s time to leave PUSH, she thought to herself. When your tongue is permanently stuck to the roof of your mouth.
At last, all was ready, and the four yanked the trigger handles of their DPVs. The propellers whirred, pulling them forward. As Adriana glided silkily through the water, her awkwardness fell away. It wasn’t the speed that astonished her. In fact, she was only traveling a few miles per hour. No, what amazed Adriana was the total ease with which she moved over the coral and sponge formations of the reef. Diving had never been second nature for her, like it was for Star.
Hanging on to the handles of the scooter, she fell into line behind Star, who navigated by the compass on her dive watch. A pair of eagle rays raced her for a while before veering off, wings undulating. Even her breathing was easier — slow, natural breaths instead of her usual gasping sucks on the regulator. Kaz flashed her thumbs- up. Even Dante was grinning. This was the only way to travel.
She felt like a tourist, taking in the scenery and enjoying the ride. Freed from the mechanics of scuba, she vibrated with nervous anticipation. A seventeenth-century shipwreck!
Her brow clouded a little. After two straight summers working with her uncle at the British Museum, the job had fallen through this year. Alfred Ballantyne could only bring one assistant to Syria on his archaeological dig. He had chosen Adriana’s brother, Payton. The Poseidon internship had been almost a consolation prize.
But a three-hundred-year-old wreck! That beat a Middle Eastern dig any day — or at least it would have if it hadn’t been for Cutter and the team of treasure hunters.
By the time she noticed the roar, she realized she’d been hearing it for a while already. She peered past Star, trying to identify the source of the noise. But up ahead the water had become murky, almost opaque.
They had seen this effect before. Something was kicking up tons of mud and silt, churning the clear blue Caribbean into a turbulent blind tunnel of swirling brown.
An explosion? Cutter had done this before — dynamiting the reef to get at what was underneath the coral.
But no. The sound was steady, not a sudden blast. And it was increasing in volume. Whatever the source of the roar, it was getting closer.
And then, directly ahead, an unseen power grabbed hold of Star and flung her contemptuously aside.
Adriana froze as she tried to wrap her mind around what had happened. By the time she could react, the irresistible force had pounced on her.
The ocean itself was moving, a deep-water riptide. With overwhelming strength, it hurled her — up, down, sideways? It was impossible to tell. Rocks and chunks of flotsam battered her, caught up in the whirlpool. The mask was torn from her face as she whipped violently around. All sensation ceased to be. There was only pure motion, pure speed.
When she struck the coral, the collision sucked the wind out of her and knocked the regulator from her mouth. She lost her grip on the DPV. The scooter fell away, its auto-shutoff cutting power. Everything went dark.
Am I dead?
Her next gasping breath drew in a lungful of water. The choking was violent, desperate.
No — alive — The thoughts were fragments, half formed, rattling around the darkness of her mind. Alive — and drowning —
With effort, she forced her eyes open against the sting of salt water. She flailed for her mouthpiece, finding it at last and biting down hard. The rush of air brought her back to herself. Her body ached and her eyes hurt like crazy.
Can’t close them! Have to see!
Dante was taking the brunt of it now. Fins windmilling wildly, he spun out of control, striking a mound of brain coral. Was he okay? Where was Kaz? And what had happened to Star?
All at once, the roar ceased. As the silt storm began to resolve itself, Adriana could just make out a silhouette standing near the source of the disturbance.
Too big to be Star… Kaz?
She reached up to wave, but an iron grip held her arm in place. Strong hands pulled her behind the stout base of a coral head. There crouched Kaz and Star.
Then who is the silhouette?
Star scribbled the answer on her dive slate: REARDON.
Adriana squinted. She could make out the stocky diver’s beard below his mask. Chris Reardon, Cutter’s other partner. The third treasure hunter wielded what looked like an enormous hose, a foot thick or more. Was that what had tossed the interns around like wisps of algae?
Her eyes were killing her. She had to find her mask! Wincing with pain, she searched the bottom. Where had it fallen? And then she spotted it, nestled in a growth of pink anemones.
Reardon hit a switch, and the roar returned. In less than a second, the mask disappeared in the blizzard of silt. Adriana squeezed her eyes shut in an attempt to protect them from the swirling particles that were everywhere in the water.
She was stuck. They were all stuck.
CHAPTER SIX
Aboard the R/V Ponce de León, the noise was earsplitting, far louder than it was underwater.
The device was known as an airlift, but Cutter and his team called it Diplodocus. The long, thick hose stretching over the gunwale of their boat into the water resembled a sauropod dinosaur, its long neck drooping in a lazy arc as it drank from some Jurassic lagoon.
The contraption was basically a souped-up vacuum cleaner, strong enough to suck chunks of coral all the way from the ocean bottom. It was definitely not a toy. It had the power to break up limestone, or to rip a person’s arm clean off. Handling the airlift’s nozzle was no easy task. Reardon had to dive with weighted boots and a sixty-pound lead belt to avoid being tossed about at the end of the massive hose.
Their work was as exhausting as it was boring, but this was the only way to excavate a shipwreck long buried in a living reef: First, use Diplodocus as a blower in order to blast the weakened coral to bits, kicking up all the mud and artifacts trapped underneath. Then, vacuum up the debris and search for something of value.
That was what Cutter and Marina were doing. The backwash from the airlift was deposited into a huge wire-mesh basket that floated off the Ponce de León’s stern. Load by load, the two treasure hunters winched the tons of broken coral on deck, combing painstakingly through it, breaking up larger chunks with hammers.
So far, they had recovered a great deal of items in this way — ceramic cups, bowls, and plates, glass bottles, brass buttons and medallions, rusted metal nails, hinges, pulleys, buckles, musket shot, and cannonballs. Old ballast stones littered the deck of the research vessel. An anchor and the coral-encrusted barrels of two cannons lay out of sight in the ship’s hold. They had found every sort of artifact — with one exception.
“Where’s the treasure?” roared Cutter, tapping at a lump of coral with half a saucer encased in it. “We didn’t go through all this for a boatload of broken dishes!”
“The kids found a piece of eight,” Marina pointed out, tossing a ball of grapeshot on top of a pile of the stuff.
“Yeah, one coin out of a king’s ransom,” Cutter said disgustedly. “Nuestra Señora de la Luz was packed with silver and gold. That fleet carried the wealth of Asia and South America for an entire year! Where is it?”
Marina frowned. “Can we be sure this is Nuestra Señora de la Luz?”
“It has to be. Every knickknack we pull up is Spanish in origin. There was only one galleon lost off Saint-Luc in the mid-seventeenth century. Most of the treasure fleets took the northern route, via Havana and the Florida Straits.” He sighed. “I guess we’ll just have to dig harder.”