What Lurks Beneath (7 page)

A
few miles south of Oceanus, the taxi turned off the paved two-lane road and onto a long, rutted drive raised on a bed of dirt and rock. They crossed a low, marshy area choked with stunted mangroves, most about the height of a man. Val was going to be the first to arrive at the place, since her uncle had called and said he'd been delayed. Something about airport security, and his prosthetic leg. Mack himself had recommended the lodgings, from many dive trips years ago, and had already set everything up. He knew the owners. She smiled. Having him here would be like having a free local guide. But she was still anxious about seeing him.

The taxi crossed a short bridge over the mangrove flat, interspersed by a patchwork of brackish water and one shallow channel of water where a culvert ran under the drive, and rounded a gentle bend in the dirt road before pulling up to the place. Val hadn't really known what to expect, but this wasn't any sort of hotel at all. More of a long, low, one-level house, which looked like it might have once been painted a bright yellow color higher on the pine walls. Hunks of coral were mortared together to form the lower half of the outer walls. Past the house she could glimpse the ocean.

“You sure this is the right place?” Val asked.

“Yeah, dis it. Twin Palms. Where de udda divers was staying.”

“The other divers? The ones who died? They stayed here?”

“Lotsa divers stay here. When dey plan to be longer dan a week or two.”

Val stepped out of the van and looked over the property. The house was shaded by a stand of tall, scraggly, Australian pines—non-native trees that could be seen growing everywhere in the overstory near the island's beaches. The wispy pines didn't actually look like pines at all, with clumps of limp, faded-green needles dangling from splayed branches. A small metal shed stood off to one side, and the front yard was composed of patchy, coarse-looking grass surrounded by sand. On the main building, a hand-painted sign suspended above the porch read T
WIN
P
ALMS
G
UESTHOUSE.
Val hadn't see any palm trees, besides a stunted clump of palmettos closer to the main road.

Val helped Mars unload her baggage at the edge of the drive.

He said, “You need anyting why you here, call me. I know everybody.” He handed Val a card from his shirt pocket, then stepped into the van and slowly made his way out of the drive.

She stepped up onto the porch and tried the front door. It was locked. She sighed.

She rapped on it loudly, but nobody answered. She really wanted to change out of her jeans into some shorts. She glanced at her pile of luggage, and figured nobody could easily steal the heavier boxes. Besides, there didn't seem to be anyone around here anyway. She walked around the side of the house, toward the ocean, following a broad, sandy path lined with white hunks of coral, behind which grew native vegetation under sea grapes and other low trees.

She stepped up and over a waist-high wall composed of the same hunks of dead, white coral delineating the edge of the property and start of the beach. On a rocky outcrop behind the house, just before the beach itself, were two large coconut palms growing in a large V, both heavy with green fruit. The Twin Palms.

She smiled. Her home for the next month. A warm breeze touched her face, and she watched gentle waves lapping the white, sandy shore. She felt something in her awakening. Something she hadn't felt in a long time.

She looked back at the two trees, and her smile faded as she remembered Mars's words:

M
ack stepped off the blue-and-yellow mail boat and started down the dock. To Val he looked just as he always had, if a little older. The old Marine strode toward her, an air of self-assurance apparent in his posture, a heavy-looking duffle in each hand. If not for the narrow metal rod visible beneath the hem of his shorts, it would have been impossible to tell he had a handicap. But it was still odd to see him this way. Nearly all her memories of him were from when he had two good legs.

It was late in the afternoon in Fresh Creek, the sun hot on Val's back as she stood on shore, facing the water. Her uncle had just arrived with the mail coming over from Nassau. He had called her cell that morning, and had apparently reached New Providence last night, finding passage on some boat out of Florida.

Eric was already here with his ROV, DORA, and was back at the Twin Palms now. It wouldn't be long before they could actually get to work.

Mack smiled when he saw her waiting, and she waved. Alistair “Mack” McCaffery had once been her favorite uncle. He was the youngest of all her parents' siblings, always full of adventure and life. A wisecracking man, a blunt man, a soldier. To her, a hero.

But all that—the fun memories, the adventures he told her of, the cave diving, even his spirit itself, she thought—had been back before losing his leg in Iraq, more than a decade ago. Before losing a wife he'd been briefly married to. Before he'd become so bitter.

He'd taught Val to scuba dive when she was just a teen. He'd been an accomplished deep diver and cave diver, one of the rare few who even dared to explore many of the abundant springs and sinkholes in northern Florida. But he'd never taken his niece to any of them. Later, when she was in college, he had a few times mailed her pictures taken inside of caverns somewhere under the Bahamas. He'd be in the shots sometimes, with stalactites and stalagmites framed in the darkness behind him. Or he'd be diving off a colorful coral reef. Usually, the pictures were accompanied by a short letter, and Val had always been thrilled to receive them. She had saved every one.

She hadn't known until they talked last week that John Breck, one of the missing divers, had actually taken some of those shots. That he had been Mack's friend. When she got around to why she was calling, the already awkward call had become even more so, even though others in the dive community had already told Mack about the loss of the legendary Breck. But he hadn't hesitated when she'd asked for help. Just told her that he wouldn't be of much use.

Mack disappeared as he passed through a small building at the end of the dock, and then stepped out into the sunlight, squinting at her. Up close, she saw the familiar squashed nose. One of the toothpicks he liked to chew jutted from the corner of his mouth. His hair was no longer shaved short, and now bore a fair amount of gray. He smiled, and she saw some of the old spark in his eyes.

“How's my favorite niece?”

“It's good to see you, Uncle Mack.” She hugged him tight.

He was only an inch or so taller than her, but at fifty was still built like a wrestler. He dropped his bags and embraced her, lifting her off the ground, as he used to. She felt a wave of emotion.

When he set her down again, she tried to take one of his bags, but he refused. “I'm not that old yet.”

“Why did we wait so long for this?” she asked. “What's it been? Seven years?”

“Sounds about right.” He grimaced, and looked down for a moment. “Listen, kid. I'm sorry about that. It's my fault—”

“Nonsense.”

“No, hear me out. It is my fault. I'm your uncle. But you've always just been so busy. I figured you didn't need an old cripple around, bothering you.”

“Don't say that.”

“Well, hell . . . I don't know. I'm here now. It's good to see you, Valerie.”

“Our cab's over here,” she said, and started slowly toward Mars, Mack beside her. The snaggletoothed cab driver had become her go-to on the island.

She said, “Didn't you use to live here in the Bahamas?”

“Yeah,” Mack said. “For a year or so, in the Abacos. The Out Islands.”

“It must have been wonderful. Here on Andros anyway, the people are so friendly.”

“Yeah. Wish I coulda stayed. It's one of the few places left you don't have to pay high taxes and the government doesn't screw with you. But by the time I actually moved here, I couldn't cave dive anymore.” He tapped his leg. “My medical bullshit brought me back to the States. Enough about me. Any more word on Breck?”

“No.”

“They've given up the search, haven't they?”

She nodded. “If this gets too hard for you to help me out, I'll completely understand.”

“I wouldn't be here if I couldn't handle it. Breck was a good man. He and I dived in Florida together a couple times, maybe twenty years ago, and in some cenotes in the Yucatán. Also did a buncha blue holes in the Bahamas. In the Abacos, and here on Andros. He loved to dive. It was how he would've wanted to go.”

Val had always thought her uncle would go in a similar way. She felt selfish for thinking it, but was sometimes relieved he'd lost his leg—because maybe it would keep him around longer.

“So how did you get held up in Miami?” she said.

“TSA wanted to take my leg off. Assholes could've just scanned it while it was still on me.”

“I'm sure they were just doing their jobs—”

“It's not like I was wearing a fuckin' turban. Hell, they'd already swabbed me.”

From what she remembered, his primary artificial limb was of a simple design, just a fake foot attached to a narrow titanium pylon and a molded socket that surrounded his knee-stump. She recalled that years ago he'd been asked to remove an earlier model so they could run it through the X-ray machine. He hadn't responded well then either. But that wasn't long after the war.

She said, “So, what happened this time?”

He scowled.

She shook her head and laughed. “Never mind. I won't even ask.”

“Good. Let's just get to work, kid. Because we're gonna find out what happened if it's the last thing I do.”

“I
t's not gonna work,” Mack said. “You're gonna get that fancy ROV stuck.”

Eric tried to ignore the latest negative comment from Val's shirtless uncle. He'd only been there a day, but Eric could already tell that for some reason the guy didn't like him.

Alistair McCaffery was an angry-looking man who'd clearly broken his nose at some point in his life. He was older than Eric, and shorter, but thicker. He looked like a caricature of Popeye or Long John Silver, with his squinty face and missing leg, but he wore a white T-shirt and clamped a toothpick instead of a pipe in the corner of his mouth.

“ROVs don't work worth a damn in caves,” Mack said. “Never have, never will.”

Eric wanted to say something, but he couldn't find the right words. Instead, he took his glasses off and rubbed the lenses with the hem of his shirt.

“That's not true, Mack,” Val said.

She stood near them at the water's edge, beside The Staircase. This was the “blue” hole (though Eric thought it was actually the color of green tea) where the divers had gone missing, and where somewhere deep inside, the image that led to this entire expedition had been captured. Some taxi driver named Mars had dropped them off on the side of the bumpy, unpaved road an hour ago. From the rutted roadside, they had navigated a rough trail about two hundred yards through brushy pine forest to the rock-rimmed mouth of the hole. It was circular in shape, maybe ninety feet across.

Val said, “Like I told you before, Eric has successfully operated this same ROV in a cave in the Yucatán. He used an umbilical there too, since he couldn't get a good signal to transmit.”

“Two cenotes, actually,” Eric said. “Last year. They were—”

“That's great, son.” McCaffery glared at him from a sun-reddened face. “So your toy has been in a cenote before. A
cenote
. It's like a fucking underground swimming pool. Nothing like an inland Bahamian hole, full of restrictions.”

Val moved closer to Eric. “Unbelievable,” she muttered. “I come all the way down here, and I'm stuck with another Will Sturman.”

Val's boyfriend had his own reputation, as a drinker and fighter. Eric smiled. But he also felt uncomfortable. Like he was stuck in some dysfunctional family's living room, being forced to watch them argue about domestic issues. Although Val seemed to share a bond with her uncle, they sure argued a lot.

“What did you say, Valerie?” Mack shouted over her shoulder.

“Nothing, Uncle Mack. Stop bullying us, will you? Why are you in such a foul mood, anyway?”

“Why? This plan ain't gonna work. That's why. You never told me when I signed on that we'd be using ROVs to explore caves. And Christ, there's only two of us, Val. Heading into unexplored blue holes. No safety team. That's fuckin' crazy.”

Val exhaled. “That's why we have the ROV, and Eric. So we don't need to go very far in. We've been over this, Mack. As long as we make sure to pull in the slack on the umbilical, the ROV shouldn't get hung up—”

“You realize one reason Breck and that other guy are dead is because there were only two of
them
? Because your friend, that cheap motherfucker Ford, didn't assemble full teams? With safety officers?”

Val's voice softened. “Is that what this is about? Breck?”

“What? No.”

“Because he died here?” Val said.

Eric knew that her uncle and Breck had once been pretty close, and Mack had apparently even viewed the younger caving expert as a mentor of sorts. But Mack hadn't seen him in several years, since he'd given up on caving because of the awkward way he was now forced to swim. Val had said he now saw himself only as a liability to other cavers.

Mack said, “You know, that crazy son of a bitch could've remained calm standing on a rooftop, watching a tornado approach. He was the best I've ever known.” He snorted. “But forget about him. He's gone now. I'm talking about our safety.
Your
safety.”

He turned away from Val and stared at the surface of the pool his friend had entered, but never left. From above, it looked so tranquil beneath a pale blue sky. Eric suddenly felt sorry for Mack. He wondered if the guy was right. If this whole thing was a very bad idea. He walked over to Mack.

“Was he with you in Afghanistan?” Eric said.

Mack didn't turn to face him. “Iraq, not Afghanistan. And no. He wasn't even a Marine.”

“You seem too old to have seen action in Iraq.”

“Well, you seem pretty young to not be seeing action now.” Mack spat into the water. He looked down at his prosthetic and cursed. “Fuckin' IEDs.”

“I'm sorry about your leg,” Eric said. It sounded so lame after he said it. Mack didn't respond.

After a few moments, the old Marine looked at him. “Dora. That's what you call your ROV, right?”

Eric nodded.

“Tell me, son, why does your machine have a girl's name?”

“Ever heard of ‘Dora the Explorer?'”

“Huh?”

“She's a cartoon character. My niece loves her. That name just seemed to fit. But DORA actually stands for Deepwater Observation/Restricted Areas.”

“You really think you can pull this off?”

Eric thought about his ROV, and all the hours he had logged on her. “I don't know. We'll see. Just make sure that you watch her umbilical. If it ever stops heading out for more than about a minute, start pulling back the slack. I'll do the rest.”

Eric had always preferred to work alone, and tinker on mechanical devices. Growing up, his parents weren't around much. His father had travelled for business, and his mother always was heavily involved with the Church of Scientology. His siblings were all fairly older, so he was on his own. Took to reading lots of books, building models, and learning to fix things.

“There's no other way?” Mack asked.

Val said, “No. No other way. Not in the time we have.”

Val and Eric had already visited the few local dive operations, asking about whether they'd ever seen anything with tentacles in an inland blue hole. None had. Their only lead was still a single dark, blurry image.

Mack turned back toward the water. “Well, for the record, I still say she's gonna get stuck.”