In Too Deep (8 page)

T
he water was warmer even than I’d been expecting, and for that I was grateful. I kept an eye on my backlit equipment gauge—black numbers over a deep green light—and I equalized the pressure in my ears every few feet. The salty taste of the ocean seeped in through the corner of my mouth.

The descent was when I liked to get my head right, to remind myself that I’d trained more than anybody I knew, and that as long as I kept calm, I could handle almost any situation. My body was like a vampire in a coffin: legs together, fingers laced in front of me with the gauge in my hands. Our depth increased, foot by foot. Wayo shined his headlamp on his hand, giving me the okay sign. I nodded and did the same.

The beam of my lamp was useless in the open water, smothered by the ocean’s black. Except for the dim radiance of the glow stick he’d stashed earlier, we were swallowed in absolute darkness. I could feel the current taking us gently north, I guessed at about three knots.

The ocean floor finally rose to meet me: mostly sandy, with the occasional mound of coral appearing from the dark like a shadow. Wayo pointed and gave a signal for me to follow. Tiny puffs of phosphorescence—bioluminescent plankton—sprayed out from behind his fins as he kicked, each one a little swirling galaxy of lime green.

Only inches from the bottom, we kicked gently with the current, past the glow stick, until the coral became more plentiful and created a kind of ravine, first a few feet high and then growing to a canyon that towered above us.

There was no reason to freak out; this was just diving. Yes, it was at night, but I could handle it. I angled my head forward, and my headlamp caught a massive clawless Caribbean lobster scurrying backward into the safety of a reef cavern.

Wayo veered to the left and stopped, and suddenly there it was: the entrance to the Devil’s Throat. The opening couldn’t have been more than six feet across. Fan coral lined the sides and roof, waving innocently in the current. He turned to me, and I gave him one last okay.

And then we were inside.

Sediment had built up along the bottom, and if we stirred it with our fins, clouds of silt would put our visibility at zero, our flashlights reflecting off the blizzard of tiny white flakes. The slope was gentle for three or four kick cycles before Wayo disappeared over a lip. I slowed and poked my head over the edge; the shaft went straight down for at least ten feet.

This was it.

My depth gauge read 115 feet. Air 2,400 psi. We had seven minutes more bottom time before we had to turn for the surface. I angled my body and kicked straight down with only my ankles, careful not to catch my hoses on any of the sponge coral that groped at me from the walls. Wayo’s expended air bubbles played across my face as I swam through them.

He hovered at a spot where the shaft became wider, and pointed his lamp at a small fissure in the coral. I thought he was joking; the crack couldn’t have been more than ten inches at the widest.

He covered his headlamp with his hand so I could see his face. The plastic of his mask magnified the urgency in his eyes. He pointed again, and I nodded. I took a slow breath, and the Golden Jaguar roared at the insides of my eyelids.

Nothing like the possibility of long-lost treasure to get the blood flowing.

There was no way I was getting through the crack with my BC on, though, so I kept the regulator in my mouth and unclasped the BC’s belt, pulling the vest and tank slowly around in front of me. I gathered all the hoses against the canvas of the shoulder straps and pushed the vest, tank-first, through the opening with one hand. I winced as the aluminum scratched against the coral, but the reef would have to forgive me. Then I kicked and squeezed myself through sideways.

My leg instantly flared in pain. I panicked, wondering if Cortés might have booby-trapped the room, and I cursed myself for not wondering that
before
I’d wedged myself inside. But there was no Spanish arrow piercing my heart, no spikes shooting from the coral, no falling boulder. I was going to be okay. My shorty wetsuit had left my calves exposed, and I’d rubbed against a patch of fire coral. I bit down on the regulator’s rubber mouthpiece until the first wave of pain passed, and with one last effort, I was inside.

I quickly put my arms back through the straps of the BC and took stock of the small cave. It was no bigger than my dad’s Ford Taurus. In contrast to the main shaft, where decades of careless divers had bounced into the walls, the coral here was pristine—untouched for nearly five hundred years. I was apparently the only one stupid enough to take my gear off at 120 feet in the middle of an elevator shaft.

A jolt of excitement shot straight to my stomach. I floated, weightless, my buoyancy neutral, as I passed my headlamp over every inch of the coral walls. A small octopus flashed in front of me, stopping for a moment in my beam, its chameleon body changing colors to match a deep-blue sea sponge, and then he was gone. This was no leisure dive, I reminded myself. Time to get to work.

In this compartment the key was concealed,
the journal said
, its location revealed by the Southern Cross.

I saw brain coral, sponges, fans, wire coral, but nothing that could be interpreted as a cross. I looked up. My air bubbles pooled at the top and formed an odd mirrorlike shape, constantly changing as the air searched for a way out. But there was still no cross. What if somebody had beaten us to it? What if there’d never been a cross at all? What if Wayo had left me? What if I couldn’t squeeze back into the main passage and ran out of air down here and died? My breathing came faster and faster. This was nitrogen narcosis working on me, I forced myself to remember, otherwise known as “rapture of the deep.” Most people get euphoric when they narc, but the main symptom for me was paranoia.

I had to slow down, relax. It was okay, I knew. Even if there was no treasure, at least I wasn’t going to die. I’d made it through the first time; there was no reason I couldn’t fit through on the way out. I checked my air (2,100 psi), my depth (123 feet). I smiled against the regulator when I saw the claw of a massive crab reach out like Popeye’s forearm from—

There it was.

I
’d drifted backward in my forced relaxation, and now my headlamp played across a wider section of the wall in front of me, and there was clearly—so clearly I wondered how I hadn’t seen it right away—the shape of an enormous wooden cross emerging from the coral as if it had been embossed. The crab’s goofy-looking claw reached out from a small hole in the center, where the two arms of the cross came together.

I squealed, and bubbles escaped out the side of my mouth and bounced up past my ears.

I unsheathed my dive knife and tapped the tip of the six-inch blade against the claw, and the crab disappeared even farther into the hole. A short breath out, and I sank so that my head was level with the hole. Coral had grown in what might once have been a compartment, and I could only pray that I’d be able to get at whatever was hidden inside.

I brought the dive knife against the cross. Hundreds of years’ worth of coral growth had formed a shell, but it was softer underneath once I chipped through, and when I pried down on the knife’s handle, a large splinter of wood snapped off and floated out to the side.

The claw shot out at me. I flinched, nearly dropping the knife, and a cloud of bubbles blinded me. This was ridiculous, and I didn’t have time for it, so I ignored for a moment the fact that I love all ocean creatures, and stabbed the claw with the knife. I didn’t hear the crunch, but I felt it, and the crab freaked out as I pulled back, its legs flailing a protest, its other claw snapping at the blade. It came free of the hole—the body was at least the size of a dinner plate—and I jiggled my arm until it slid off my knife and fell away.

“Sorry!” I yelled through the regulator.

With the guardian crab out of the way, I set to work probing the opening. I stabbed every inch or so, the knife making a muffled thud as it struck the cross.
Thud, thud,
thud
, and then I felt the vibrations in my hand, a jolt of pain as the knife hit something hard.
Breathe
, I reminded myself.
Just breathe.
But I couldn’t help it: I hacked at the area like the killer in a horror movie.

A rectangular shape became visible as I chipped away at the edges—begging Mother Nature for forgiveness as shards of coral snapped off, dull and gray underneath my headlamp—until finally, unbelievably and unmistakably, I was looking at a box the size of a ham sandwich. I wedged the knife underneath and lifted up, and the box broke free of its centuries-old resting place. It was heavy and rusted and covered with chunks of coral, and it was mine!

Only 1,300 psi left in my tank. I’d been down too long, but I had to know what was inside.

The ancient padlock was no match for the knife’s tempered steel. It snapped off and tumbled into the darkness. I jiggled the knife under the lid and pried, bracing myself for the possibility that there could be nothing inside. The hinges protested, and the cover opened so slowly that I imagined a creaking noise. I cradled the box with my left forearm and pointed the headlamp inside.

A single disk about the size of my palm was situated underneath a thin film of dust. I nudged it with the tip of my knife, and the disk flipped over and settled back down in slow motion, little tufts of sediment shooting out into the water like puffs of smoke. A flash caught the headlamp and danced against the lens of my mask.

Gold. The disk was gold.

With my knife resheathed, I picked it up and held it closer to the light. Even underwater I could tell how heavy it was. Some sort of design was etched into the gold—a rock formation, it looked like. The other side had another etching but a different design. Heads and tails, but what did they mean?

I ran my thumb over the ridges and I couldn’t help but think of every other Pinedale student on spring break. They were sunbathing in Tahiti or skiing in Aspen, sure. They had everything in the world—the money, the famous parents, the designer whatever. But I was the one in this tiny little cavern over a hundred feet below the surface. I was the one holding the disk. Anyone who’d ever made fun of me could just go ahead and eat it.

A high-pitched clanging sound brought me back—Wayo’s dive knife against his tank, no doubt. A signal for me to get my crazy little
gringa
ass in gear. I went to put the disk back inside the box, but somehow the lid had fallen closed and become stuck. Because I had neither the hands nor the time to pry it back open with my knife, I slid the disk into the side pocket of my BC and zipped it closed.

One last glance at the cross, which had served its purpose better than de la Torre could possibly have imagined, and I repeated the maneuver I’d used when squeezing in. BC off, hoses in one hand, tank pushed through, and me behind it. I held the box tight with my other hand, so it was a little more difficult this time, but I managed.

Wayo pointed to his wrist, and I nodded. I handed him the empty box and put my equipment back on. It was time to get shallow.

The mandatory safety stops were going to be the longest of my life. All I wanted was to kick triumphantly to the surface, but that would have been disastrous. If we didn’t take our safety stops, all the nitrogen that had built up in our blood at this depth would expand like carbonation in an open soda can, and we’d be left with the joys of severe joint pain, paralysis, or even death.

We exited the Devil’s Throat, passing across the edge of a wall that dropped into sheer emptiness. I noticed a flash—something—up near the surface. Lights, more than one. There were other divers in the water! I turned to motion to Wayo, but he was no longer next to me, and then my next breath came with difficulty, as though I’d sucked the tank dry. That was impossible. I looked down at the gauge for clarification—

Suddenly something scratched down against my mask. A claw? A shark tail? Water flooded into my eyes. The mask knocked against my regulator. I still had no air. I whirled around to protect myself from whatever had attacked me, to ward off another blow, but none came. What was going on? I opened my eyes to the stinging blackness, in time to see my headlamp tumbling down into the dark void. Wayo’s light disappeared up, in the opposite direction. Where was he going? Had he been hit, too?

I managed to put the mask back over my eyes, but it was still flooded, and my lungs were about to burst and my arms started tingling and I didn’t have the air to clear the mask. I reached for the manual inflation tube on my BC and took a breath. There wasn’t much in there. I tilted my head back and blew out through my nose, and the air pushed the water from my mask, so at least I could see again.

I looked around for Wayo’s light, but I only saw the two lights from the divers above. No, there were three. There were
three
?

They were
together
?

Wayo was with them. That’s why my hoses were limp. My dive buddy had turned off my air.
My dive buddy
turned off my air!
Worst dive buddy ever!

Oh, hell no. There was no way I was going to die down here, not after seeing what I’d just seen, and not while holding a possible clue to the location of the Golden Jaguar. No way.

I took what little breath was left from the BC, but I could feel myself sinking now that I’d breathed the air that was supposed to keep me buoyant. I unclipped my weight belt and let it fall. It was only a matter of time before I would black out.

I removed the BC vest and pulled the straps around, and my hands felt their way up the tank to the valve, and when I turned it, my hoses flexed up again. I breathed deeply, once, then twice, then a third time, sucking air like a noob diver. I clutched the BC in front of me with both hands.
Relax!
I screamed at myself. Now that I actually had something to be paranoid about, the nitrogen narcosis was working overtime.

My BC strapped back on, I checked my depth: 153 feet. Worse news: only 600 psi of air left in the tank. I cupped my hand over the backlit gauges to shield the light from Wayo and the other two divers, and kicked up gently, keeping an eye on my depth to make sure I didn’t rise too quickly. I was caught in no-man’s-land—there was no room for error. I needed to decompress or I’d get the bends, but I also had to reach the surface before I ran out of air.

The water was so dark that the mask was almost useless. But for the occasional glance at the three divers above me, I saw nothing. My spare flashlight dangled from its D-ring, but I knew there was no way I could use it, not without attracting their attention. Besides, if there was anything else in the water with me at that point, I didn’t want to see it.

The depth gauge held my focus for a while, and when I looked up again, the three lights were getting larger and brighter, no more than twenty feet above me. Of course! We were all riding the same current north, and they were at their safety stop, and I was about to rise right in among them!

I pointed my head into the current and kicked, burning precious energy and oxygen in a desperate effort to increase the space between us. I gave up after thirty seconds, praying that it would be enough.

With just over 200 psi left, I leveled out at fifteen feet. Sure enough, Wayo and his two buddies were at the same depth, probably laughing and telling one another stories in sign language about how awesome it was going to be to find the treasure now that they’d killed the
gringa
. I was only about twenty-five yards from them, motionless and alone in the dark. I wanted to turn on my secondary light and give them the universal signal of “You didn’t kill me a hundred feet underwater after all, you losers! Hope that empty box works out for you!” but I decided against it.

They ascended, and I waited.

I heard the muffled whine of a boat through the water, and then it stopped. The three lights left the water one by one. The sound again, this time growing more and more distant. They were gone.

Every minute I could hold out at that depth let the nitrogen escape from my blood and decreased my chances of getting bent, so I ignored the air pressure gauge and concentrated on staying level. Breathing slowly had the double benefit of conserving air and getting my heart rate under control—it was forced meditation.

The air took on a slightly oily taste, and I knew it was time; the tank was almost empty. One last deep breath, and I kicked up, slowly, exhaling a constant but very light stream through my mouth. I could hold my breath like this for over three minutes on a good day, but today was not one of those.

It was so dark that I didn’t see the surface until I broke through. I spit out the regulator’s mouthpiece and breathed the humid midnight air, and it was only then that I started to cry. I manually inflated the BC between sobs so I could float, and then laid back and let the tears pool at the bottom of my mask. The stars blurred as I reached for the emergency whistle and puffed, gently at first, and then more and more ferociously until I had to stop and breathe again.

I unclipped my secondary flashlight from the D-ring and turned it on and waved it in circles as I screamed. There was nobody out there. I was alone. My death would be nothing more than a footnote on a gossip-blog post about Josh’s spring break, if it made the news at all. I slapped the water with both hands and screamed for help, the terror of what had happened to me finally beginning to sink in. What if Alvarez and the others had been killed by whoever was on the other dive boat?

The waves rocked me, gentle and almost soothing, and I started to think that maybe I should just rest for a while.

I caught the vague outline of the island, impossibly far away, and I knew I didn’t want surrender to be the last decision I made. My chest surged with adrenaline, and I kicked and kicked toward the shore, but the current was too strong, and soon I had nothing left. I was exhausted.

“Annie!”

I opened my eyes and listened, but there was nothing more. Then a calm breeze played across the waves. Did I really hear it? Was my mind playing tricks on me?

“Annie!” It was Josh’s voice—I was sure of it.

I screamed, “Help!” I flailed and splashed and waved my flashlight.

“There, over there!” And then the roar of an outboard motor.

The outline of a small boat approached from the blackness, small lights swinging my way, and tears came once more and I threw my head back and laughed through them. Amazing that the fire coral would start hurting again, now that I was going to be safe. It was as though my body could only take so much, and the pain was waiting to take over as soon as I could handle it.

Eventually, I had to assume, Wayo and whoever he was working with would open the box. They’d find out I’d survived, and when they did, they would have to decide whether to come after me. I couldn’t think about that now, though; all that mattered was that I was still alive.

This wasn’t theoretical anymore, wasn’t a pipe dream. None of it was—not the treasure, and not the danger. My hand crept down to the pocket of my BC, the trembling fingertips pressing through the canvas. The disk was mine.