Just Needs Killin (14 page)

Jan was somewhat correct when she said I never learn, but it's my personal choice not to pay much attention to others' "life lessons." I mean, it's my life, so why should I let someone else have all the fun? However, once in awhile I do learn something from my own adventures. I prefer using the word, "adventure" versus, say, "freakin' catastrophes."

For instance, I've finally fallen for a nice guy, so I must have learned something from those bad boys along the line. Not that they don't still hold some attraction, Nacho being a prime example. My great grandmother lived to ninety-eight, and she still never learned to toe the line. Can I help it if my basic disrespect for what others consider normal is genetic?

I fired up my PC and went online in search of a refresher course in the use of a self-contained underwater breathing apparatus: scuba for short. It had been ten years since I (barely) qualified, but it took only a couple of serious dives to learn—I
can
learn!—it wasn't my cup of salt water.

But that was before I actually had something to dive
for
.

Complaining of eyestrain, I announced at breakfast the next day that my monitor monitoring was over and someone else would have to fill in. Chino promptly assigned Jan to the job, earning me a murderous squint from the ship's mistress.

"But," I added, "I'd like to join the shallow water dive team."

Continuing to work me over with those eyes Jan said, "Hetta, you don't dive. You hate scuba gear. Remember Aruba?"

"I'm willing to give it another shot. Especially now that we have those fancy rebreather thingamajigs, and I don't have to lug around heavy tanks and stuff. One of the things I hated most about diving was running out of air."

With conventional scuba gear, the type I learned on, you have to carry a couple of heavy tanks from which one gets an air supply. The exhaled carbon dioxide goes up in bubbles. These hi-tech rebreather do-dahs allow you to breathe your own air, over and over, with no bubbles. Ruins the hell out of those movie plots where the bad guys follow your bubbles so they can depth charge you, though.

I bought a bunch of these units for the expedition, so I'd snag one of the spares for my very own. If nothing else, Jan could suit up and we'd futz around shallow reefs looking at fish and stuff.

"How shallow?"

"Huh?"

"How shallow do you wish to dive?" This came from Moto and I almost dropped my coffee cup. He'd hardly spoken to me the whole time he'd been on board, preferring to address all questions to Chino. I was annoyed enough by what I considered his male chauvinist attitude to go out of my way in order to force a greeting from him on occasion. I'd cut him off in a hallway, make him look at me to pass, and let loose with a hearty, "
Ohayou
,"—pronounced Ohio—and he'd reluctantly respond with a slight bow and the more formal, "
Ohayou gozaimasu
,
Cohe-san.
"

I answered him. "Uh, twenty-feet or so is within my comfort zone."

We all looked at Chino, as he was the one who assigned the jobs. He shrugged. "I could use a break from diving, so I'll take over Hetta's monitor watch until we have to make the deeper dives. That way I'll be fresh. But first we'll have to check you out on the equipment, Hetta. I can even re-certify you. Where did you get your certification?"

"Aruba."

"Deepest dive?"

"Eighty feet."
Right before I panicked, almost clobbered a couple of instructors in a frantic attempt to shoot to the surface,
and was asked to never darken Aruban waters again
.

Jan, who knew that story, pursed her lips, but remained silent.

"Okay, then," Chino said, "let's go to work. Yesterday's find was pretty exciting, but let's go get the big stuff."

I headed for my cabin, with Po Thang and Jan hot on my heels. Po Thang because I had a piece of bacon in my hand, and Jan because she knows me all too well.

"Okay, just what are you up to?" she demanded.

"
Moi
?"

"Yes,
Tu
."

"I'm just so done with watching the bottom crawl by. Besides, you know I love to snorkel, and figured since you do, too, we'd have fun with those expensive rebreathers and fancy dry suits I bought.  We might go explore a reef or something. And, I'll be weightless."

"You could sure use some of that."

"Hey!"

"I can see us taking a reef dive, but Hetta Coffey, Chickeness of the Sea,
working
underwater?"

"How hard can it be?"

"Holy crap, Jan. What just happened out there?"

"Chino tried to kill us, that's what."

Jan told Chino she, too, wanted to learn how the rebreather works. He'd been after her to get certified in Scuba, but she'd dragged her heels, fearing she'd be forced to jump into the water with purportedly friendly whales the size of eighteen wheelers. However, when I volunteered to join the dive team, her competitive juices rose, so she signed on as well. At the end of the first training day, we wondered if the light at the end of this torture tunnel was indeed an oncoming train.

For the certification process, Chino made us hit the books, studying manuals, familiarizing ourselves with the equipment, and taking all kinds of written tests. After two days, we were actually ready to suit up. Since my less than illustrious scuba career years before, dry suits had come a long way in their comfort level. We headed for the beach in a panga, waded into the shallow water, and the hard part started. 

"He says we'll get used to it, but we haven't even actually done anything yet but learn the drills and I feel like I'm training for the Olympics."

Jan nodded. "I guess the good thing is that now we can carbo-load with the other divers."

"Can we call for take out? If I drag myself back to my cabin, I'll probably never leave it again."

"The hell you won't. Our dive master's got us scheduled for two more days of this torment, and I'm not going through it alone."

"Might I remind you, Miz Jan, no one asked you to suit up?"

"You know danged well I can't let you do something like this alone. Besides, I have a feeling you're up to no good, and I want in."

"That's my girl." 

A week later, Jan and I were getting the hang of this shallow dive thing, and secretly boning up on what it would take to go down sixty feet, all by our lonelies, with zero backup.

I say no backup, because it was our intent to snag that vase.

"Ya know, if Chino even suspects what we're up to, he'll have a conniption fit."

"You're the ship's mistress, so book him outta here. Think up something only he can do, and send him away to do it. All we need is one night."

"Lemme think on it. Say I do get rid of him, how are we gonna slip off, with our gear and all?"

"I haven't thought that through yet. One thing for sure, though, we have to get Kazoo and Moto to take us with them on one of their nighttime lobster snagging dives."

"Bless their little lobster-lovin' hearts. Problem is they also grab those icky sea cucumbers." Jan gave a visible shiver. Then we both laughed while recalling the hissy Rosa threw when the two men brought several sea cucumbers on board, put them in white plastic buckets, and asked her to change their seawater every twelve hours until they could harvest their gonads. Dried sea cucumber gonad soup is a delicacy where they come from.

"Lobster, she okay.
Pepino del mar, no
!" I said, mimicking Rosa when she dramatically put her foot down. "No in
mi cocina
!"

"I guess we won't see sea pickle tacos on her menu any time soon?"

"I think not. Last I heard, Granny Yee had talked some guy in town into letting them process those slimy critters at his ranch, but you can bet your sweet arse there will be no sea cucumber soup cooked on this ship."

I grinned and nodded. "I kinda feel sorry for those two. The rest of us have so much more in common, even if the language thing gets a little complicated. It's no wonder they put all their energy into their work."

"They haven't taken a single day off since we boarded. Even when the rest of us go somewhere on Sunday, and we do invite them, they stay on board. They gotta be getting a little lonely by now."

"Maybe I'll check into getting some Japanese movies for them. Got to butter them up so they'll take us lobster diving, anyhow." I stretched and yawned. "I am so done for. I'm headed for dreamland."

"Me too."

"Think about how we're gonna send Chino on a wild goose chase. Like I said, all we need is one night."

She stood and headed for the door, then turned. "Okay, say if, by some miracle we get our hands on that vase. Then what?"

"We find the highest bidder. Those Chinese millionaires are buying this stuff up for their private collections."

"Hetta, you ever heard the term, plunder? How the hell do we even sell something like this vase? You have lots of friends in low places, but not the right low places for this kind of thing."

"Never you mind. You help me grab it, and I'll find a fence."

"Fence? Jesus, we're going to jail."

"No we aren't. We look crappy in orange."

"I liked it better when we were only plotting to kill someone."

"Yabbut think how interesting your resume will look with Global Antiquities Thief on it."

"More like, under international experience: Learned fluent Spanish in a Mexican jail."

"They'll never take us alive."

"Gosh, that's reassuring," Jan said, then we both fell into a giggle fit as Jan left for her cabin.

I sent a quick email to Jenks, then climbed into my bunk and read a new novel on my new Kindle for a millisecond before dropping it onto the bridge of my nose.

Kindles are much harder on the old schnozzola than paperbacks.

As I drifted off, I wondered if Amazon has some nefarious plan to branch out into plastic surgery.

Jan and I made our first sixty-foot dive the day Chino got a hit on the ship's side-scan sonar fish, and then, on a second sweep, the ship's magnetometer started pinging. Something was down there, and this was our chance to get trained on a deeper dive. We'd made every-other-day twenty-footers for two weeks, were getting pretty comfortable with our equipment, and gaining confidence with the entire process by the day.

So far our dives had produced a couple of anchors, various fishing equipment, and general trash, but just being down there with all those beautiful fish, shells, and even the occasional turtle, made it worthwhile. Even better, we were burning calories like a furnace, so we got to carbo-load the night before each dive.

When I checked the underwater camera monitor before suiting up, I was pleased to find the water particularly clear, which helped assuage that old fear factor. And even better, Chino decided to go down with us. I think he really just wanted to keep an eye on her preciousness, but having him, as well as Kazoo and Moto—three expert divers—along just might keep me from doing something stupid. But then, they are only mortals.

Both Jan and I confessed to sleeplessness the night before, and when I had finally dropped off, I awoke in a cold sweat during a nightmare involving toothy great whites. Maybe I yelled, because Po Thang left his upper-berth perch and snuggled up to me, evidently picking up on my need for comfort.

I finally gave up getting any more sleep, got a cup of coffee from the galley, then sent an email to Jenks that I hoped didn't come off as my last will and testament.

Chino insisted on overseeing the refilling of our breather mixture tanks. He was adamant that we use all fresh CO2 absorbent for each dive after he caught Kazoo and Moto mixing previously used stuff with new. Turns out this is a fairly common practice—potentially a deadly one—used by many divers using rebreather equipment. If the mixture isn't scrubbing all the CO2, the diver is breathing it back in, and may not even realize they're in trouble until it is too late, especially on deep dives.

In addition to our rebreathers, we also carried an extra compressed air canister for this dive, and Jan and I had been schooled on how to switch over if need be.

Once in the water, we pulled ourselves down the anchor line, which I held onto like the lifeline it was. Even when we reached the bottom and I saw how good the visibility was, I was loathe to let go until Jan slapped my clenched hands. We trailed Chino, with Kazoo and Moto following close behind. 

My fears soon vanished once we started exploring. Schools of curious fish followed us, seemingly unafraid. Jan and I found ourselves poking each other, pointing out neat stuff, and actually having a great time.

Chino, maintaining the lead, carried a hand-held metal detector, as did the two Japanese divers. Jan and I were not confident enough to handle any more equipment, but we had underwater cameras. When Chino suddenly stopped, picked up a broken sand dollar, and started to fan the sand with it, my excitement rose, and I practically forgot I was under sixty feet of water. We all hovered over Chino, anticipation climbing. He'd fan for a few seconds, let the cloud of sand and debris settle, move the detector over the spot, fan again. I dug out my camera and zoomed in on him just as his arm shot up, thumb held high.

The next thirty minutes were magical, as we spread out along the bottom and did our own fanning after the detector picked up a signal. Jan and I worked together, and we were the ones who found what looked to be a cannon ball encrusted in hundreds of years of sea gunk.

Chino found a cannon.

Kazoo and Moto found another.

Ka-ching!

I didn't want to surface. Ever. I could have stayed down there forever, or so I thought. Chino thought otherwise, pointed to his dive watch and computers, and steered us back to the anchor chain, where we reluctantly started our ascent.

A medium sized shark swam by, and I waved!

"Jan, we're gonna be rich! And we don't even have to sneak back down there and steal those cannons." We were in my cabin after dinner, polishing off a bottle of wine and celebrating our success. Both of us were so stoked, it wasn't until about then we realized how tired we were.

Jan yawned. "Like we could. Might I remind you they weigh a ton, and Chino says we'll have to bring them up with that big old winch thingy on the back of the boat."

"Winch thingy? That a new technical term?"

"You know what I mean. So, does this mean we don't have to do that night dive for the vase?"

"Nope. We still gotta have it. I see no reason to let the Mexican government glom on to my find. We'll get a piece of the action on the cannons, but that Ming might bring big bucks. I'll get a bigger boat. You can buy Chino his own whale. Jenks and I can stop working and be together for a change."

"Or, we could go to jail, like, forever."

"Nah. So, when can we get rid of Chino and the gang for a night? Have you come up with any ideas yet? After today I'm sure we'll make that dive just fine all by ourselves."

"Not me. We've never done a night dive."

"I'm gonna remedy that. Moto and Kazoo take off every night for fresh sushi fixin's, and I'm gonna get us an invite. You work on getting everyone off the boat for one night and we'll be golden."

Jan yawned again. "I'll come up with something. I gotta get some sleep. Tomorrow I go back to being a bookkeeper for a day instead of my moment as Jackie Cousteau."

"Speaking of which, how are we doing, financially?"

"Not all that hot. Even with all our free labor, expenses are eating us alive. We spent a lot on equipment, even with your careful shopping. We've blown through almost half of Ishi's money, and Chino was only able to get another twenty-five grand from the Mexican government. At this rate, we'll only last another month and a half."

"I have a little I can throw in, maybe ten grand."

"How generous of you," Jan said sarcastically. "Is that before or after you steal the vase."

"You wound me. Before. I have some bucks put away. How about you? And Chino's family?"

She shook her head. "Chino and I tapped out everything we had to refit the boat into livable shape. Tanuki had gutted the entire living quarters level, evidently planning to retrofit the area into a whale canning factory."

"Just as well. Made for us having much larger cabins. So, I guess I'll have to cut Po Thang's rations?"

"Nah. Abuela Yee is providing meals two days a week so Rosa can have those days off, and Chino's family's contributing what they can, mostly fresh fruit and veggies, but we are definitely a low-budget operation when it comes to treasure hunts."

"We could use some investors, but investors in what? This ain't no
Atocha
we're looking for. Maybe we'll find more cannons, but everything of real value goes to the government. Except my vase, of course."

"And it'll probably take years to get any money out of it."

We'd done some snoopery into selling ill-gotten artifacts, and realized it wasn't quite as easy as listing the vase on eBay. We had to be very careful, or we'd find ourselves in deep ca-ca. "Did you take care of the paperwork?"

"Yep. Somehow that vase find got lost in a morass of Mexican bureaucracy. By the time it gets found, we'll have a lot of gray hair."

We gave each other a high five, then Jan lost her smile. "I feel guilty, though. Chino is so honest and trusting, and here we are...."

"
Dis
honest and
un
trustworthy? Damn right we are. In the end, it's for Chino's own good. You know damned well someone in Mexico City will end up rich on this deal, and Chino won't get squat. So why shouldn't we take out a little insurance?"

"I know you're right. But...."

"No buts. Now, get some sleep and try to come up with something to get everyone off the
Nao de Chino
for one lousy night."

Jan handed me the salt shaker at breakfast and whispered, "Mother's Day."

What is scary is that I knew exactly what she meant. Mother's Day in Mexico is huge, and all the Mexicans on our ship would want to spend time with their mothers, wives, and grandmothers. Jan and I would graciously volunteer to man the boat. All we had to do was get rid of our Japanese buddies, as well, and we'd have
Nao de Chino
all to ourselves long enough to grab the vase.

Maybe even in broad daylight, which was a good thing because no amount of hounding had gained us an invite to join Kazoo and Moto for their nightly dive.