Twelve mile bank, p.7
Twelve Mile Bank, page 7
part #1 of AJ Bailey Adventure Series
We got alongside and we’ve got no idea who this lot are so a couple of the guys are covering them with rifles and we get a rope ladder over the side to the dinghy and Cap sent one of the lads down to tie on the dinghy. There’s definitely three of them and they haven’t stirred a bit, bloody eerie I tell you, just us out here in the middle of nowhere stumbling across this dinghy full of what looks like dead sailors.
Well, then one of them moves a bit and the lads about jump over the rails ready to shoot the poor bugger and Cap’s yelling at them to hold fire! Our lad in the dinghy leaps about halfway back up the ladder he was so scared out of his wits!
He gets back down there and sure enough the one is still alive, barely mind you, but the other two are both dead as doornails. We get a rope tied around the live one and haul him up the side like a sack of potatoes, he’s groaning and mumbling stuff we can’t understand all the way. We get him laid out on the deck and he’s in a bad way, he’s wearing a dirty white vest, grey pants and no shoes, every bit of exposed skin is sun burnt so bad it’s blistering. His lips are all cracked and bloody so we try and get some water down him but he gurgles and chokes most of it back up. We get some rags wetted down and try and cool him off but it’s eighty something degrees out so there’s no escaping the heat.
We spent the whole war hating these blokes, the Germans, but now we’ve got one laid in front of us, he’s terrified and just a young lad like the rest of us. He’s damn near dead and all we want to do is try and save him, hour earlier we would have done everything we could to try and kill the bugger! Strange ole world innit?
Couple of the lads didn’t quite feel the same way, one of them said kick him back overboard and let the sharks have him, but Cap says he might have information and we need to keep him alive. He can’t say much this Jerry but he’s trying to talk, all in German of course and none of us speak a word of it. Cap asks him over and over.
‘U-Boat? Are you from a U-Boat?’ Finally in his delirious state he mumbles. ‘Yes, U-Boat, das unterseeboot’.
That was the Jerry word for submarine, we did know that much. We hauled the other poor fellas up and wrapped them in some old sheets and tied the dinghy on the deck. Cap gets everyone back on station and heading for Goat as fast as we can and we take the live one down below. It’s tight quarters down there but he’s more comfortable on a bunk than lying on deck in the sun.
We don’t have a medic onboard so he tells me to stay with him and do what I can to keep him alive. Well, I’ve had some basic field medic training, your regular patch ‘em up type stuff but they didn’t cover anything about treating dehydrated, starving, near dead Germans!
Pretty soon he stops mumbling so much and I get little bits of water down him. I keep talking to him, telling him he’s alright now and we’ll take care of him. Of course I’m doubting he understands a word but hopefully I sound friendly enough and it’s some comfort. At one point he takes hold of my arm when I was switching the wet rags on his forehead, so weak he can barely grip hold of me. I have to lean close to even hear what he’s trying to say but I can just catch it.
‘Ich heiße Andreas… my name…. Andreas’.”
Chapter 12
Grand Cayman, 2017
Reg took a careful sip of his coffee from his travel mug as the thirty six foot Newton dive boat bounced across the gently rolling waves. Built in Louisiana, Newton’s are the most popular dive boats and the thirty six was the perfect size for most dive operations. Custom built for the industry and delivered kitted out with forty dive tank racks, rinse tanks, preparation tables and benches down each side. The deck space in the back was wide and open to cater to a large group and the swim step ran the width of the boat with two swing down ladders to move the people in and out of the water quickly.
Forty tank capacity meant two dive tanks for sixteen customers, two or three divemasters and a few spares. Today Reg carried only a few tanks that would stay unused and three customers.
Renfro joined Reg on the bridge, leaving his two goons down on the deck smoking and telling crude stories about their unsavoury adventures the night before. Reg tensed as he heard Renfro climb the ladder to the bridge.
“Nice boat you have here Moore, got yourself quite the cushy number running fat tourists around oohing and aahing at the fishies,” The man liked to put people on edge and lived for confrontation. “Don’t you miss working for a living, doing some real diving? Can’t beat gas axing steel at three hundred feet in frigid water with zero vis man, that’s real diving.”
As in the first time they’d crossed paths fifteen years earlier, Renfro immediately got Reg’s hackles up. He’d taken over Dale Carter’s operation about a year before that first meeting and Reg was working for a treasure hunting outfit called Davis Historical Salvage, or DHS for short. Reg’s group were working off the coast of the Florida Keys down near Big Pine Key. DHS specialized in researching missing ships from the sixteen and seventeen hundreds and trying to locate where they may have gone down. Those old wooden ships rotted away long before SCUBA was invented so all that was left was anything metal which usually meant cannons, braces and hardware from the ship itself and coins and precious metals. Much of the wealth being shipped back from the New World was lost in those dangerous days of sailing from continent to continent and reports of the wrecks were often sketchy, unclear and inaccurate.
DHS would study all the information they could dig up about a wreck, take their best estimate at where it might be and then spend months, sometimes years scouring the sea floor using modern search technology. They only had to hit pay dirt once every five or six years to make it worthwhile with the treasure they’d haul in.
DHS did it by the book. When they found a wreck they’d immediately report the find, claim the wreck and wait out the process with the local government before they’d go any further. This presented quite a security problem at the wreck site. Although they tried to operate stealthily and not advertise what they were looking for and definitely not where, others in the industry all watched each other like hawks. It had been known for one group to give up a search for a lost ship having exhausted their investor’s money for the project and another bunch to swoop in and keep looking where the former had left off. Several treasures had been recovered this way so it was a competitive business and poaching key people from someone else’s operation was rife.
The wreck they were hunting was the San Felippo, a Spanish galleon on its way from Honduras back to the homeland loaded with gold. The historical records had it foundering on the reef in a storm further north near Marathon but DHS had found a personal account from one of the few survivors that described the coastline and it didn’t match.
They were using state-of-the-art magnetometers to pick up anything metallic in eighty feet of water outside of the shallow reef. Their theory was the ship struck the reef but got clear before sinking in the deeper water. After five weeks of systematic searching they found it.
Reg was one of the divers in the water and they brought up a cannon for carbon dating and a couple of handfuls of coins that were encrusted together. They quickly registered the find and claimed the wreck and began the wait for the bureaucrats to clear them to begin bringing what was left of the ship and its contents topside.
Renfro Salvage Services were working further north on recovering some cargo that had dislodged off the deck of a freighter and lay in deeper water, but had been spotted snooping around the lower keys. Some of Renfro’s crew got friendly with one of the DHS guys in a bar in Big Pine and they had a big old time getting drunk and telling stories. They all left the bar and next minute they weren’t so friendly anymore and started beating the hell out of him in the corner of the car park. With a knife to his throat he told them everything they wanted to know about the San Felippo.
Embarrassed and scared the man didn’t say a word to his employers who were still waiting for the all clear to work the wreck. They had someone on watch from shore twenty four seven and they were diving the site every day as they laid out a grid map of markers and lines in preparation for excavating the site.
One day they splashed in to discover the site had been worked over in one section and a lot of the treasure had been hauled. DHS brought in the authorities but of course there was no evidence left at eighty feet and no one had seen a boat come or go.
They suspected Renfro so Reg and some of his men drove north along highway one to Marathon Key marina to speak with him at the dock when they came in. Reg had never met Renfro but knew his reputation so he was careful to confront him in a public area with witnesses around to hopefully avoid any violence.
Naturally Renfro denied any knowledge and told Reg in his smug way that he was flattered they thought he could pull off such a daring and stealthy raid. With zero proof there was nothing Reg or DHS could do but at least he felt he’d served notice that they knew who was behind it. All they could do was watch the market and warn all their buyers and dealers that any precious coins and gold antiquities hitting the market were potentially from the stolen cache.
From then on DHS, with permission from the Looe Key National Marine Sanctuary, put a mooring in at the site and had a guard there overnight. Two nights later the night watch heard a boat approaching but never saw it, the boat was running blacked out with no lights on, an illegal practice in itself. The guard called it in but once again there was nothing to be done, the offending boat was long gone.
DHS got their permission and excavated the site over the following few months without further trouble but Reg ran into Renfro a few more times in Big Pine. He’d be snooping around the marina when they came in for the day, clearly trying to see what loot they were hauling in. Reg asked him if he could help him in some way and Renfro just smirked and told him he was simply wandering around a public marina seeing what loot was left on the San Felippo. The man had balls that’s for sure.
About a year later the man they’d beaten left DHS after a dispute with other crew members who’d become fed up with his drinking habits. One of them told Reg the man had confessed to him one night about the confrontation with Renfro’s men, the crew had kept it quiet to save the man’s job at the time.
Reg ignored Renfro’s baiting as they motored on towards the Bank. “So what is it your clients are looking for down here Renfro?”
“You know these waters, what’s down here worth looking for?”
Reg knew he was getting that arrogant smirk although he couldn’t see the man’s face as he stood at the top of the ladder behind him. “Everything I know about has been dived already and picked clean, at diveable depths at least, guess you might find something new in the deeper stuff.”
Reg was fishing but really didn’t expect this cagey thief to give up anything.
“It doesn’t matter, shallow, deep, we’ve got the gear to find it. Of course if you know something and point us in the right direction it would save a shit load of time and I can make it worth your while.”
Reg glanced over his shoulder and indeed the man had the conceited look he’d pictured. “Tough to guide you to something when I don’t know what you’re looking for Renfro.”
Renfro laughed. “My client prefers to keep it quiet, just in case someone tries to poach it from them, you know how that goes, don’t you Reg?”
It took everything Reg had not to wheel around and throw the guy off the bridge but he kept his cool with a few deep breaths. “So how come you’re working for someone else anyway? Who is this guy?” He hoped redirecting the conversation might stop this arsehole jabbing at him and he was getting more curious the more Renfro avoided giving him straight answers.
“The rest of my crew are working a job in Mexico off the Yucatan Peninsula, this guy insisted I help him and by insisted I mean he’s paying me a shitload of money. He’s a wealthy guy from Argentina, owns a winery. Nice set-up, latest side scan sonar, magnetometer, all the latest gear. He’s staying on the boat out here, there it is.” Renfro pointed at the horizon where they could just make out the silhouette of a large boat, Reg reckoned it had to be at least a hundred and twenty feet long.
“So why do you need me?” He queried.
Renfro laughed again. “I enjoy your company Reg, because we’re old friends, besides I didn’t want to stay out here with this lot, me and the boys prefer the action in town.”
Reg believed the part about them wanting to live it up on the island but they both knew they were not friends and never would be. There was another reason Renfro had chartered Reg’s boat and not one of the thirty others, between fishing charters and dive operators, he could have picked. He just wasn’t sure yet what that reason was.
Thomas was at the helm of the RIB boat while AJ checked over and prepared their clients gear. She often traded with him to keep his boat skills fresh and to let him know they worked together and she considered him more than just an employee. AJ admired Thomas’ work ethic and the fact he was not only keen to make something of himself, but he chose to do it on island. So many of the young Caymanians were eager to seek out the exciting world of shopping malls, frenetic night life and bustling cities. Ironically, many of that world were just as enthusiastic to live on a beautiful Caribbean island with the tranquility away from the chaos of a modern metropolis. Contentment is an elusive state of mind.
The couple from San Diego were back on the boat along with a family of four, the Campbells, who were starting their week of morning dives with AJ. Reg had taught the parents to dive around ten years back and AJ had certified the son and daughter as each had become old enough. As with many of AJ’s customers they returned each year and dived with her exclusively.
It had rained early in the morning before sunrise but now, as they cruised west to their first dive site, it was clear blue skies and calm seas. To the south in the distance they could see George Town Harbour and lined up in deeper water were five cruise ships, the mammoth floating hotels that leapfrogged from one island to the next.
Mr. Campbell caught AJ staring at the big ships. “Do the islanders and residents really want those things here? I suppose they’re worth a ton of money to the island, but boy they cause some chaos the mornings a bunch of them dock.”
AJ shook her head and smiled. “Depends on your perspective, which mainly depends on your business interests. They bring a lot of income to some of the local shops and businesses. The ones that cater to the cruise shippers, but the average spend on island is only about a hundred dollars per passenger. Spread that amongst all the businesses fighting for those dollars and most are just scraping by while a few of the bigger concerns do very well.”
“Man, the traffic in town these mornings and all the people flooding the streets drives me crazy. George Town has such a cool little area by the water in the middle of town, we love it when it’s quieter, so relaxing, but we won’t go anywhere near it when the ships are in.”
AJ agreed. “For all of us outside the day tourist trade it means total lockdown of traffic in town and swarms of people hitting the beaches they bus them to. You just try to stay clear.”
Stepping up on her soapbox, AJ continued, getting more animated. “Here’s what I struggle with. As an island, Cayman uses diesel generators to create electricity, a desalination plant for fresh water and a land fill to dispose of rubbish. All our recycling has to be shipped off island to Florida to get processed. Think of the massive impact on the islands limited resources two million passengers a year has. To me that’s not worth the income in the long run. I have nothing against cruise ships or the people that choose to go on holiday that way, I just think there’s a sensible limit to what a small island can accommodate, one or two of the smaller ones a day, like they are in low season, seems reasonable to me.”
“Cayman government probably doesn’t share that view I’m guessing?”
AJ laughed. “No, no they don’t, they’re making out pretty well on cruise ship docking fees.”
AJ refused to take cruise shipper reservations for diving as too often they would cancel at the last minute, hungover, decided to do a Jeep tour instead, had to go to Hard Rock Café, dive operators had heard it all. She couldn’t understand why you’d travel halfway around the world to a beautiful island to spend two hours getting drunk in an overpriced chain restaurant you can find in your nearest city anywhere. But to each their own.
AJ had Thomas pull up to the buoy at a dive site called Trinity Caves and she used the gaff to hook the line and tie them in. For a nineteen year old she was pleased to see Thomas was calm and comfortable at the controls of the boat and took the passengers comfort into consideration. Most lads his age would be enjoying the power of the boat too much at the expense of throwing the paying customers around. AJ thought about how much trust she had in the young Caymanian, he had never let her down and always went out of his way to be helpful, efficient and learn the business. He was responsible.
She made a big decision at that moment, she would burden Thomas Bodden with a secret she had only ever shared with one other person. She just needed to find the right moment.
Trinity Caves was a beautiful coral face that dropped from around fifty feet over the edge to the depths. The wall was rugged and full of nooks and crannies and swim throughs big enough for divers to negotiate without touching if they were careful. AJ always made a point of only taking divers she felt were suitably skilled in controlling their buoyancy through places like this.
Part of what she enjoyed about teaching and coaching divers was seeing them learn and perfect the skills of controlling their buoyancy. It takes practice to master balancing the volume of air in their BCD and their own body against their mass trying to make them sink. This constantly has to be adjusted with depth as the surrounding pressure compresses the air and makes it less effective at keeping them buoyant. Calm and experienced divers manage this well and seem to always hang in the water regardless of their depth. Inexperienced or anxious divers struggle more with consistently controlling their buoyancy and tend to bump into things. AJ liked to call it Zen diving when you become so relaxed and at ease that most of your buoyancy control is done with subtly managing the air in your lungs and leaving the BCD alone.
