Chapter Thirty-Nine
Sam carried his dive gear across the shallow stream to where a group of five small boulders, resting against one another, formed a natural pond of water approximately three feet deep. He deflated the buoyancy wing, causing his dive gear to sink to the bottom. Tom passed him the backpack, containing the gas tanks and CO2 scrubber of his closed-circuit rebreather. Sam lowered it into the pond, where it, too, made its lonely voyage to the stream floor.
Stepping back for a better view, Sam studied the creek with his flashlight — the bright light reflecting clearly off the smooth, still surface of the water. He looked across at Tom who was studying the area from the path that lined the bank of the creek.
“What do you think?”
“I think it’s well hidden.”
“Good.” Sam removed his shark stick, which was fundamentally a Remington shotgun with a single .50 caliber shot. “Let’s go see where we are and where our friend got to.”
“Sounds good to me.”
Sam followed the narrow track through to the end of the grotto, where it combined with the creek to form the mouth of the cavern. At the opening, the creek was less than a foot deep and the cave allowed a spacing of another two feet above it. Both Sam and Tom needed to slide through on their bellies to pass.
Sam shimmied through the opening and stared with relief into the open night’s sky.
The creek was fed by a large lake, approximately two miles in length by half a mile in width. The silhouette of long mountain ridges lay in the distance to the west. The sky was heavy with clouds, and mist swirled in the air above the water.
He stood up and stretched his legs while Tom slipped through the small opening. Sam glanced at it and smiled. Without knowing the grotto was there, it would be easy to simply assume the creek flowed into a natural siphon, disappearing beneath the rocky shore. It’s amazing anyone knew about it.
Wet and muddy, Tom pushed to his feet.
“Tight fit?” Sam asked with a grin.
“You bet.”
They walked across the stony shore of the lake, heading toward a clearing near its edge which provided a good cover of brush, but a clear view of the water. The late afternoon was peaceful, the only sound was birds as they migrated toward their roosting positions for the end of the day.
Sam stopped walking, struck by the beauty of the place. The opposite edge of the lake was bordered with a craggy overhanging cliff of about 300 feet which gave way to conifer forested sides on the rest of the shore. The water’s glassy surface reflected all the light and clouds of the late afternoon, yet was clear enough to reveal the river-stone bottom at the same time.
“Stunning,” Sam observed.
“Very,” Tom agreed.
Sam and Tom freed themselves from their dry suits and flopped on to their backs in the thick, long grass. Tom’s face had deep red lines from his facemask, but was otherwise pale against the chill. They had been in the water for nearly two hours.
“Any guesses where we are?” Tom asked, rubbing his eyes before looking up at the sky and foliage above their position.
Sam took off his gloves and wiped the face of his digital tablet as it picked up the overlying satellites. He clicked the locate button and a map of their surroundings opened up.
He handed Tom the tablet. “According to this, we’re looking at Marie Louise Lake, Ontario, Canada.”
“That’s some aquifer!”
“Yeah, not a bad dive after all — even if it’s going to get mighty cold soon.”
Tom handed it back to him. “Looks like there’s a Ranger’s Station toward the northeastern edge of the lake. If we start walking, we should be there in an hour. Maybe we can get a message out to Virginia.”
“Good idea.”
Sam and Tom started to head into the thick pine forest, before they heard the familiar drone of a De Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver floatplane moments before they saw it crest the ridge of the eastern shore. Throttled back, intentionally losing altitude, the Beaver was making an approach to land on the glassy lake.
Instinctively, Sam and Tom took cover against the trunk of a large tree. The plane could have been any number of commercial aircraft, ferrying in tourists or seasonal Rangers for the national parks. But there was something fundamentally disconcerting about a light aircraft landing on a small lake at night time.
With visibility reduced, you could land on a log, a boat, or a sandbar. No commercial floatplane would risk that.
The plane continued its descent; soon the yellow seaplane’s floats were carving the surface as it landed. Sam hoisted himself up into the branches of the great pine tree under which they stood, climbing up about forty feet to get a better look.
On the opposite shore he watched as a small inflatable was rowed toward the airplane. The bush pilot stood on the pontoon and gave the diver a friendly wave. Once there, the man in the inflatable passed two large bags to the plane.
The pilot was keeping the De Havilland’s motor running, ready for take-off. Both men were in a hurry. There was no chit-chat, the transfer took only minutes. Moments later, the floatplane was taking to the sky and banking toward the north, even before the launch made it back to the shore.
“It’s a drop,” Sam said to Tom, as he started to climb down the tree.
“For what?”
“I'm guessing something illegal.”
“Drugs?”
“Or weapons.”
“Now what?”
Sam jumped down from the lowest branch of the pine. “Now we find that Ranger station and see if we can find something to eat. Then we wait for the diver to return through the Meskwaki Gold Spring.”
“We don’t even know when the diver’s going to return.”
“Sure we do.”
Tom smiled. “We do?”
“Yeah. He or she will need to wait until eight p.m. tomorrow. The same time the Superior Deep makes its nightly visit out to the wreck of the J.F. Johnson.”
Chapter Forty
Sam climbed the small ridge, heading northeast toward the Ranger’s station. He and Tom moved slower than they normally would. Compressed nitrogen, built up in the bloodstream from long submersion at depth, had that effect on the human body. Even young, fit people, like Sam and Tom, couldn’t forego the fatigue that followed such a prolonged, deep dive.
Tendrils of fog brushed against his skin as the temperature plummeted. Sam was thankful of the warm underlay clothing he’d worn beneath his dry suit. Generally speaking, these garments appeared quirky, but they were hardly out of place among visitors to the popular camping region.
It was nearly eleven p.m. by the time they reached the Ranger’s station. The place was one of those log huts built in the 1950s, when tourism in Thunder Bay was taking off. No lights were on, and for an instant Sam worried that the place was unmanned. A tiny wisp of smoke rising from a single chimney reassured him they were in luck.
Before he or Tom reached the log cabin, the side door opened. A man in his late seventies, with thick gray hair that continued into a long beard down to his chest, stepped out with a lively gait and a gregarious smile. Sam’s first impression was that the gentleman belonged in an old gold rush era western movie.
Sam hastily said, “I’m sorry to intrude this time of night.”
The stranger grinned. “Doesn’t bother me any. I’m always happy to see people enjoying these parts of the wood. Travelers are always welcome. Besides, I am curious to know how you ended up here at this time of night with little in the way of equipment or supplies.”
“There’s a long story about that,” Sam said. “I’m happy to tell it to you shortly, but first, is there any chance you have a working cell phone?”