Tom eased off the throttles and let the Annabelle May settle in her wake, nearly half a mile behind the dive-boat.
He faced Sam and smiled. “Nice night for a dive, wouldn’t you say?”
Sam visibly shuddered at the thought. “Sure. I just wished they’d picked a warmer place to shift contraband.”
They stared at the radar. The Senator hadn’t skimped on the hardware for his motor yacht and the radar was no different. It gave a detailed outline of the water ahead, leading to a detailed outline of the dive-boat. Tom watched as three men worked to maneuver something around the aft deck.
His eyelids squinted, as he studied the image. “What is that?”
“Not what,” Sam said. “But, who?”
A moment later, the diver stepped off the aft deck of the Superior Deep and into the water. Tom could just make out the diver’s covered head as he surfaced after splashing into the icy waters. The dive boat loitered for a couple minutes and then turned in a large arc, motoring straight toward them.
Tom watched as the Superior Deep motored past them. At the helm, he spotted Mark, the dive-operator they’d met earlier that day. The man waved at him, his face was fixed in a pretense of relaxed tranquility and not a care in the world, and then he opened up the throttles and raced south, toward Duluth.
Tom increased the twin throttles, heading toward the marker buoy that represented the wreck site of the J.F. Johnson. “So much for coming back to pick up his diver.”
“Do you think he’s going to return?” Sam asked.
“I don’t know. There’s a chance he’s already planning on how he’s going to get out of the country after leaving his fellow diver to freeze to death or drown.”
Tom slowed the Annabelle May, bringing her to a complete stop with her bow just above the marker buoy. Outside, Sam hooked the buoy and pulled up the mooring rope, feeding it through the bow cleat. Tom switched the engines off and stepped down to the bow.
He said, “Someone needs to go see what the diver’s doing down there.”
Sam nodded. “And someone needs to stay on board, in case our friend from the dive shop returns.”
Tom sighed. “Rock, scissors, paper to see who’s going to go down after him?”
Chapter Nine
Tom lost the game.
With the other diver already having gained nearly ten minutes head start, he quickly donned his dive gear, which had already been set up earlier in the day in preparation for the potential need to make this dive. This time he wore an additional two electrical heating garments, aiming to keep his core body temperature toward the high end of the norm, rather than risking hypothermia during what he predicted might be a more prolonged dive. In addition to the rest of the diving paraphernalia, Tom wore a sharkstick on his right thigh — a high powered weapon with a long barrel and a waterproof shotgun cartridge capable of deterring a shark.
He placed the full faced dive mask over his head and took a few deep breaths. His eyes studied the gauges displayed on the heads-up-display, confirming that his CO2 and PO2 remained within their desired parameters. He signaled to Sam that he was good to go and then stepped off the back of the Annabelle May, into the frigid waters.
Tom sunk quickly, free-falling into absolute darkness for nearly six minutes. He kept his Day-maker flashlight switched off, and his eyes focused on the small red line at the top-right hand corner of his face mask that displayed depth. When it reached 160 feet, he inflated his buoyancy wing and leveled out to a state of neutral buoyancy.
His eyes turned downward, where the fishbowl-shaped windshield of the J.F. Johnson’s wheelhouse glowed yellow, with the light of a diver. With his own flashlight turned off, Tom descended until he was level with the other diver. One of the reasons rebreather systems are popular in the Special Forces of the military is that because they’re a closed system there are no bubbles escaping to the surface, making them silent.
In the darkness, Tom was able to get close enough to clearly make out the shape of the other diver. He watched, from about thirty feet away, as the diver used an underwater paint to cover the walls and insides of the wheelhouse with a new canvas of black.
It was the final proof he needed to see that someone from the dive shop’s position was made vulnerable by the note they’d discovered that read: STANFORD STOLE THE MESKWAKI GOLD SPRING. I CAN, TOO.
As Tom watched, while the diver toiled at a depth approaching 200 feet to remove history, he wondered how this could possibly implicate a current illegal contraband smuggling operation. So, the Senator’s grandfather was a crook — that doesn’t make the Senator guilty. Did Stanford steal a bootlegging operation when the ship sunk, killing his boss? More importantly, could it still be in operation. What about the Meskwaki Gold Spring? There’s nothing illegal about finding gold. How could Stanford have stolen it? Again, how did any of this implicate the local dive operator?
The yellow glow of the diver’s light began to dwindle. Tom shifted his position another ten feet backward and descended until he was nearly flat along the seabed, reducing his profile in case the diver came out and directly shined his flashlight on him.
He waited as the light inside the J.F. Johnson shifted lower into the hull. It was no longer an easily identifiable glow, but rather a blurry haze. Tom expected the diver to exit the ship through the open hatch on the portside of the listing shipwreck at any moment. Instead, he watched as the light continued to radiate from the portholes along the hull, constantly heading farther into the lower decks and heading toward the stern of the old Tramp Steamer.
The diver didn’t notice Tom in the total darkness of Lake Superior’s seabed. Tom watched him for another minute and then saw that the guy was swimming into the main engine-house. Tom watched as the clear glow of the guy’s flashlight moved through the old steamer’s engine room.
Where the hell’s he going?
There was nothing logical about what the guy was doing. No reason anything of value could be stored deep inside the engine-house. Unless…
Tom felt his heart race with excitement. The diver had entered the second hatchway and descended into the main hull.
Suddenly it was clear to Tom what sort of operation they were running. Drugs, weapons, or whatever type of contraband was being shipped was stored inside the hull of the shipwreck and then retrieved at a later date by divers to move it between the US-Canadian border. For years, the operation had gone undetected because whoever was responsible for it, had gone to great lengths to build up a dangerous mystique about the wreck of the J.F. Johnson — even going so far as to weld the rest of the hatchways shut and keeping the four ghostly sailors to keep watch and protect their hoard.
Tom felt for his sharkstick. It was still attached to his thigh, not that he expected to need it. Close quarters fighting was almost impossible at this depth and even harder inside the narrow confines of a shipwreck. Besides, he was a big guy — nearly 250 pounds of muscle — if it came to a fight, he had no doubt he could win it. Worst case scenario, he had his sharkstick. He weighed up his options and decided this might be his best chance to ever catch the criminal operation in the act. If he could get closer, his facemask mounted camera could capture a digital recording of the event.
But it wasn’t his job. Catching criminals shipping contraband across the border was strictly Border Patrol, Homeland Security, and the FBI’s responsibility. He wasn’t being paid for it. No reason he should risk his life to stop it. Take down one operation and another one will just pop up in its place. Tom swallowed hard. Then again, this might be the only chance he and Sam might have to save the Senator’s son’s life.