Wood's Reef (2 page)

Chapter Two

It had taken three days for the storm to pass, but they were finally back out on the water. Mac nodded at Trufante to drop the first trap. The sun dappled the surface of the calm water, slowly undulating with the tide. Mac watched, a rare smile crossed his face, as concentric rings marked the traps’s point of entry.

Trufante baited the trap and slid it into the water with a practiced movement that belied the weight of the trap. Mac engaged the engine and moved toward the next spot, 200 feet away, where they repeated the procedure. It often took years to learn the shallow Gulf waters, a desert of sand, turtle grass waving with the current. Knowing the bottom features was the key and Mac had put in his time to learn the locations of the rock piles, potholes and ledges that attracted life in the otherwise-barren bottom. This was different water than the more popular Atlantic side, where the famous reef ran. Dropping five feet from the adjacent bottom, the broken rocky ledge ran almost a quarter mile. Two hundred yards of green and blue buoys marked Mac’s traps. The buoys bobbed in a single line parallel with the trench, dark spots against the sparkle of the late-morning sun on the water. It was a few more miles than most boats liked to run to set their traps, and past the comfort zone of the tourist boats he tried to avoid. Mac didn’t care about the time and fuel. He loathed the congestion of buoys and tourists closer in. Besides, there were more lobster here. 

An hour later, with all the traps soaking, he ran his hand through his receding hair and yelled out to Trufante, “Hey Tru, drop the anchor here. I want to dive and see if there’s any grouper.” There was a good chance there would be game fish here. They sought bait, which congregated around good bottom like this. 

He went back to the transom and donned mask, fins, and a weight belt. As he went over the side, Trufante handed him the speargun. He bobbed on the surface, taking larger and deeper breaths, then pivoted at the waist and kicked through the surface. A half-dozen effortless kicks later he was at eye level with the ledge. Nothing in sight, and his lungs feeling the lack of air, he finned back up and repeated the process. 

Just as he was about to dive he saw a quick glimmer of sun on glass, just east of their position.
Strange
, he thought,
you don’t see many boats out here
. The boat was moving close enough that he could just make out the orange hat of the driver. “Hey Tru. Keep an eye out there.” He pointed at the boat. 

Mac dove again. Visibility was good, and he saw a line moving slowly over the sand as he descended. The black grouper finned in the current, waiting for prey, its checkered pattern camouflaging it from the side, though it was easily visible from above. He held his breath, holding level and just above the fish. Frozen in the water, he became a part of the landscape. The fish never knew he was there until he released the trigger. The four foot spear shot from the gun and embedded itself behind the grouper’s head. The fish tried to make a run, but Mac held the line connecting the gun and spear, looping in around his hand for leverage. He kicked to the surface and handed the line to Trufante on the transom to retrieve the fish. 

“There’s a couple more down there.” He took back the empty shaft, slid it into the gun, and pulled back the rubber tubing. “I’ll be back.” 

 As he dropped closer to the bottom, he began to notice a dull sheen in the sand. He wasn’t sure what he was looking at, but he knew it didn’t belong here. He surfaced and repeated his breathing sequence, then dove back down toward the metal object. He dusted the sand away from it, then raced for the surface, breaking through the water and yelling for Trufante to hand him a weighted buoy. 

“Hit the Man Overboard button on the GPS,” he yelled as he swam towards the dive platform. He grabbed the buoy from Trufante’s outstretched hand and submerged again. He located the object, removed the small marker buoy clipped to his weight belt and released it. The line unwound as the small foam float ascended, the small fishing weight rested on the bottom marking the spot. He finned to the surface and climbed back to the dive platform. 

 Back on the boat, he adjusted the GPS to make sure the coordinates marked the buoys spot. Right over the buoy. He navigated through the GPS menus, saving the spot. He grabbed his phone and hit the INavX GPS app. He awkwardly navigated the program, tapping harder on the screen until the program finally submitted and saved the spot. Not a fan of technology, he did appreciate redundant systems. GPS numbers were irreplaceable, marking underwater features that were invisible to the naked eye. He had started the process of putting his numbers into the iNav program which would automatically sync with his computer at home. 

He knew what he’d found, and wanted to ensure he could find it again. Trufante snagged the buoy line with the gaff and wound the line around it as Mac increased speed, heading for his next trap line.

Chapter 3

The pearly dew on the ice-cold Corona bottle shimmered in the heat. It was the hottest part of the day, late October, and it still got Africa hot. 

They’d spent the last two hours checking their other traps, and Mac would have been heading in by now to offload his catch, but that piece of metal intrigued him. He wiped the bottle on his brow and tossed one to Trufante, then pulled the GPS coordinate up and hit the
Go To
button. The course and distance came up as he throttled up, and he followed the course indicated on the display. 

Ten minutes later he pulled up on the site. Trufante shot him a questioning look as Mac yelled to toss the anchor. 

“What up, boss? Why are we back here?”

“Something down there I need to check on,” Mac said as he tossed him another beer to keep him distracted. 

***

Mac was suited up with scuba diving gear this time. His back to the water he rolled over the side into the water. He quickly found the metal object and released the buoy. The GPS was good to about thirty feet, but he needed to be right over the top of it for what he had planned.

“Pull the anchor and set the stern on top of that buoy.” He pointed to the red ball bobbing off the starboard side. “Right on top. No slack in the anchor line.”

Trufante gave him a questioning look, no doubt thinking his day should have been over. 

“Just do it.” Mac pulled himself onto the dive platform and waited for Trufante to find the mark and reset the anchor.

The current had picked up since this morning, the tide moving out swiftly, and Trufante had a hard time getting on top of the buoy. Mac’s patience didn’t last long. He dumped his gear, went to the bow and released the anchor line from the cleat. The line slipped through his hands as he signaled Trufante to back down on the buoy. Line tied off again, he watched as the boat settled right over the buoy.

He grabbed the pressure washer sprayer and hooked the end to a quick disconnect on the transom. The pressure washer was a recent addition to the custom boat — great for a quick cleanup, though he was going to use it for something else today. He had fifty feet of hose and the bottom was thirty feet down. That gave him twenty feet for maneuvering. He geared up and was back in the water. 

When he ducked back under the surface, visibility was down to ten feet, the water full of silt picked up by the tide and his movements. A couple of hours and a tide change made all the difference in visibility. He hit the trigger on the sprayer and started washing sand away from the metal, pausing several times to allow the silt to settle. As more metal was revealed, it became evident exactly what this was. Unexploded naval ordnance was not uncommon here. But this didn’t look like any ordinary bomb. He wanted to get it out of here and see what it was all about. He knew he had to get it mostly exposed to break the suction with the sand. He worked his way around the object, becoming more concerned as the sand revealed an intact bomb. It was old. Rust was visible on the screw heads and the dings caused by the fall.

This was far more dangerous than he’d realized. Fifty years in a saltwater environment could have eroded the skin of the bomb enough that the water pressure could puncture it causing an explosion. There was also the possibility if could have a nuclear core. Puncturing the fifty year old case could allow radioactive material into the water. He calculated the odds and realized the only choice was to get the bomb out of the water. Leaving it to decay further was not an option.

Twenty minutes of blasting water against the sand revealed the full shape of the weapon — a foot and a half in diameter, and over seven feet long. The bomb looked top heavy, fatter at the front, and tapering toward the end. It appeared retro — space aged, like something from a Buck Rogers movie. 

After removing enough material to be sure the suction of the sand would break, he jetted two holes all the way underneath it. Confident he could pull it with the winch, he surfaced.

Mac took off his gear and climbed back onboard, where Trufante was asleep in the captain’s chair. He sidestepped his crewman and headed to the crane mounted on the port side. Steel cable flew off the reel as he released the gears. One hundred feet of cable slowly sank in the green water. Next he rigged a harness from some trap line. 

Now he geared up again and popped back into the water, and descended with the harness and winch cable trailing behind. Once at the bomb, he worked lines through the holes and tied them off in a cradle. He checked for slack, made a slight adjustment, and clipped the ends into the hook at the end of the wench line. He finished the rig with a rope line, which he took to the surface to be used as a tag line to control the ascent.

Back on board, he stood over Trufante, wondering if he should wake him or not. Deciding he needed the help, he leaned over and kicked him in the side. 

Trufante woke with a start. Mac left him to orient himself and went to the winch. 

“You good now?” Mac asked as he tossed a bottle of water Trufante’s way. This was going to be tricky as it was, and he would need all the faculties his crewman could muster. 

“Damn near 4 o’clock, we should have been back an hour ago,” Trufante whined. 

Mac ignored him as he moved forward to the winch. There were more important things to worry about than the time. He turned the winch on. Cable began to feed onto the roller as the slack came out of the line.

“Hold this line and stay toward the stern.” Mac handed Trufante the lighter tag line.

The motor gained an octave as it felt the resistance of the weight below. The boat started to list toward port until the suction released allowing the bomb to rise in the water. It righted as cable began to wind around the winch. The motor struggled with the weight. Once confident the winch could handle the bomb Mac switched positions with Trufante, taking the tag line from him. It was more important for him to guide the bomb to the boat now.

“Bring her up easy until I tell you to stop,” Mac yelled over the motor as he peered over the side of the boat, looking for the bomb to break the surface.

The tricky part would be keeping the bomb from banging the boat. He had no idea whether the bomb was still armed and, if it were, what would set it off. It was risky enough just bringing it up, let alone slamming it against the steel hull of the trawler. 

The bomb rose slowly, looking like a large shark in the water, the shape becoming more defined as the bomb ascended. Mac now had the tag line in one hand, controlling the bomb, and the boat hook in the other. He called to Trufante to work the winch as if it was picking a trap out of the water. He intended to lift the bomb and swing it onto the stainless steel slides used to move the traps along the boat. 

“What in the bejesus is that thing?” Trufante yelled as he saw the bomb lift from the water. 

“Never mind right now!” Mac yelled back as he guided the 1200-pound cylinder onto the stainless track. “Let some slack in the cable and hold this thing while I get something to set it on.”

He handed Trufante the tag line, and ran back into the cabin to grab two cushions from the bench seat. Back on deck, he set them on the tracks and signaled for Trufante to lower the bomb. Once this was accomplished, he freed the winch hook and tied the bomb to the deck.

“What you got us into?” Trufante asked.

Mac rewarded him with a beer, and ignored the question. Checking the tie downs again , he started the engine and motioned the crewman to haul the anchor. As he turned toward home, he saw a small boat sitting motionless on the other side of the channel. It was too far to see much detail, but he laughed at the bright orange color of an old Tampa Bay Buccaneers cap.