Spirit Deep

By Thomas J. Waite

During a pleasure dive on a rare vacation off the coast of Florida, a renowned treasure hunter and his wife stumble upon the wreck of a sunken Spanish galleon. Though her sinking took place over four hundred years ago, she looks as if she'd just hit bottom after her fateful trip from the surface.

Vast treasures await, but a formidable guardian lurks the depths around his greatest discovery...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thomas J. Waite
• Release date: Apr 2, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452334370

Book preview

Chapter 1

Hunter’s Curiosity

A flicker of light in the shallow depths of the sea danced in Sam Johnson’s vision. Through a wavering curtain of dark blue waters, the glimmering object seemed to struggle to maintain its illumination, like a firefly in a windstorm. A feeling of anticipation warmed the blood in Sam’s veins, battling the gripping chill caused by the cold waters of the Atlantic Ocean. In his profession, an odd visual reflection like this was not uncommon for a diver to see, so his initial reaction was mild curiosity. But like his father before him, he was born with an explorer’s instinct for anomalies. With every faint flicker, his optimism grew.

He had to get closer.

When striking a specific point in the dreary distance, the reaching beam of his flashlight picked up this obscure reflection, seen through the sharp focus of his Bluefin video system, a powerful underwater camcorder protected by a Bluefin video camera housing. As he floated in the tranquil water, suspended just below the surface, a collage of blues and whites shimmered overhead like cirrus clouds fashioned of glass. The ocean surface filtered the penetrating sunlight, flooding the area with the calmness of twilight in this quiet corner of sea, but visibility quickly decreased with depth as the dense water steadily stole colors from the spectrum of light. The area around him seemed to be under a kind of suspended animation, very unusual for an environment so dynamic as the ocean. Sam could not quite put his finger on the cause of the strange calm.

Only an hour earlier at a spot just a mile away, Sam and his wife, Taylor, had anchored their yacht to get in some fishing. There the water had abounded with lively creatures, the nibbles on their fishing lines frequent. They’d spotted several dolphin and a few small sharks. Myriad schools of colorful fish had painted a beautiful mosaic against the visible layer beneath the surface, zigzagging back and forth with the currents.

Here, a mere mile away, the lonely feeling caused by the absence of sea life was intense, awkward. Sam wondered what made this dive spot so different from the surrounding areas, so visually silent. He was growing uneasy, sensing nonexistent movements out of the corner of his eye.

The faint light still flickered eerily not far below, the beam of his flashlight trained to its unmoving position. With his buoyancy control vest partly inflated, he remained stationary for some time, undecided on whether or not to descend.

Then the tantalizing light, the only thing preventing his departure, ceased to flicker. Shimmering through the brine, it now returned a solid reflection of his unmoving flashlight beam. Strong curiosity took hold of Sam with this new event. He stared at it for a few seconds and…

…then he flinched.

Something blotted out the reflection, causing a cold shiver to surge down Sam’s spine. His sudden reflex caused his flashlight beam to jerk away, losing connection with the unidentified object below. He took his eye from the camcorder viewer and looked downward through squinting eyes. Darkness ruled the depths. Only one thought registered in his mind: don’t lose it or it might be gone forever. His vision struggled to penetrate the brine, his hand urgently maneuvering his flashlight in search of the reflective target. Then, like the sun peeking out from behind the moon after a solar eclipse, the band of luminance emanating from his flashlight seemed to grow brighter when it again fell upon the lucky spot. He brought the camcorder viewer back to his eye, staring intensely at the image of the reflection. His mask caused a separation between the camcorder’s eyepiece and his eye, but the illumination below was unmistakable.

The fact that something had passed over the object made him more nervous. He wondered if whatever it was might be intimidating enough to cause the absence of life in this area of ocean. He tried to recall how long the reflection had been blocked by the intruder — two, three seconds. The fearful thought caused him to look up to the surface with a flash of longing, but the urge to go down and investigate returned after he realized that it likely had just been a small creature that had stopped above the object for two or three seconds and then raced away. When he looked back down into the depths, he hesitated, his mind flooding with thoughts of his loving wife above.

The Johnsons were on vacation, a long overdue departure from Sam’s strenuous career of marine archaeology and salvaging. Pleasure diving off the east coast of Florida had seemed to be the best bet for a guy like Sam Johnson. He lived and worked by the sea, and now he was playing at sea. Taylor had been expressing her concern for a long time about his spending too much time working at his research, always missing out on well-deserved downtime that should have come from his many successes.

At an age when most treasure hunters were still working on their first find, Sam had under his belt five sixteenth-century wrecks of great importance to archaeology and history. As a result of salvaging, he had obtained riches beyond belief. He did not need to continue searching for shipwrecks, but he wasn’t just a treasure hunter, he was a history enthusiast, fascinated by the past. While most kids had been rolling their slinkies down stairways, he’d spent most of his childhood in libraries, devouring every history book he could get his hands on. For him, it had grown into an obsession that ran deeper than the most sophisticated dive suit could ever take him.

Sam pointed his flashlight once more at the reflective object below, still drawing the same flash. He turned, inflated his buoyancy control vest, and kicked for the surface. He would go up and report this to Taylor. He knew that if he let his curiosity lure him to descend, she would vehemently accuse him of working while he was supposed to be enjoying his vacation.

Hearing the splash astern, Taylor Johnson walked down the starboard flight of steps that lead to the swim platform of the Ultimatum, a giant yawn escaping her lovely mouth. A petite woman of thirty-six years, the curves of her body flowed toward her toes without fault, her green bikini so skimpy as to be a mere afterthought. The unique combination of her long jet-black hair and emerald-green eyes had always brought forth a spark in her husband’s gaze. Her eyes burned so brightly, sometimes Sam thought he could see them just as well in the dark. To him, she truly was a magnificent woman to behold, but it was more than something physical that had initially attracted him to her. Taylor was a worldly human being, sophisticated in nature. She saved her serious side for her devotion to the arts, oil painting in particular. Her casual sense of humor and sensitivity were rolled into a winning personality. Sam loved her simply because she loved life.

Sam made his way to the yacht’s swim platform, removing his mask and mouthpiece. His hands kept a strong grip on the edge of the platform, his arms working like shock absorbers amidst the swells, avoiding a blow to the face certain to cause a bloody nose.

That’s got to be the world’s record for shortest dive, Sammy, said a quizzical Taylor. She couldn’t suppress another yawn. The sun had been sapping her energy all day, and the salty air seemed too dense for her small lungs to operate at full capacity. You forget something?

Sam pulled himself up to sit on the fold-down platform, lapping thick sea water across its hardwood surface. He could not make sense of Taylor’s words, for it seemed like he had been under water for hours, not minutes. A sinewy man for his age, with salt and pepper hair flowing down to the nape of his neck in a thick ponytail, his eyes glowed orange-brown under the shadow of his thick eyebrows. His deep mustache hid his upper lip, and his eyebrows emphasized his now-serious expression. Years of exploring the sea had blessed him with a tanned complexion, and the saline dew had toughened his leathery skin. At the round year of forty, his child’s curiosity was what kept him going in a career dependent on the frequent overexertion of mind and body.

I saw something down there, Taylor. Something reflected my light not even a football field away. His voice had a confident tone. Deep with a lazy rhythm that could hypnotize any woman, he seemed to push the words out of the side of his mouth with little effort. His narrative voice always drew his listeners close to him. I only went down a few meters, so the bottom must be really shallow here.

Well, let me scan the sea floor, Cousteau, quipped Taylor, releasing a frustrated sigh. There’s probably a simple explanation. She walked up the port staircase that lead to the main deck, about six feet above the swim platform. Next to the stern rail stood a small table, where a fitted blue cover concealed its contents. I knew Homer would find a way to ruin this vacation.

Come on, Tay, coaxed Sam. It’s a routine scan, probably take thirty seconds. Sam knew he had his work cut out for him, but his urge to dive grew with every passing swell.

The computer cover was Taylor’s idea. Though she used the damaging salty air on the computer’s hardware as the reason, it was really meant to prevent Sam from fiddling with one of his favorite toys when he was supposed to be busy focusing on her romantic needs on this outing.

Yeah, right, she responded sarcastically. And then we’ll need a bigger boat, a few divers, a scientist...and before you know it, a goddamn public-relations specialist to deal with the press.

Sam was beginning to think that he might lose this battle.

When Taylor reached the table, she reluctantly removed the cover to reveal an elaborate computer Sam had named Homer. Homer’s quad-core three-gigahertz central processing units were the fastest on the market at the time, delivering serious processing horsepower for the primary purpose of rendering visually rich displays. Wired to Homer was a bathometer and two side-scan sonar units, but Sam thought of the computer and three devices as a single unit. The computer, usually kept in the cabin, allowed him to examine the saturated data from the device readings in many useful ways, sometimes depriving his team of any element of surprise.

Taylor depressed three of Homer’s keys; one of many key sequences she’d learned in earning the position of Underwater Terrain Research Engineer in Sam’s salvaging operations. She’d come up with the title herself, at first as an excuse to be with Sam out at sea, in the end to prove that her intelligence matched her artistic talent and good looks. Sam’s colleagues often referred to Homer, the pile of microchips under the blue cloth, as Taylor’s second husband.

Two sharp beeps emitted from Homer’s speakers, triggering wonderment in Taylor’s expression. Sam? You’d better come take a look at this.

Sam climbed the port staircase, quickly joining Taylor at the table. He knew something strange resided down there, within a couple hundred feet of his boat, but he could not guess what. Setting the camcorder down on its side next to the computer, he looked at the readings with a lowered brow. He looked angry, but Taylor knew that it was only frustration mixed with confusion. He slapped the monitor with an open hand and the image of the sea floor disappeared in a clutter of electronic pixels.

Damn machine, he growled.

Sam! Taylor slapped Sam’s hand away and reset Homer, repeating the same key sequence as before. The screen read, Refreshing..., then the overhead view of the ocean floor reappeared. She smiled at Sam with delight. Homer never lies.

Same reading, said Sam, now calmly pinching his chin in thought. Damn. We must be at the edge of the shelf. That cliff is really shallow, but look how far down it drops. He was a little more at ease now, though he wished he’d studied the software manual to be on better terms with Homer. He was one of those guys who didn’t think he needed a manual. And though some might find that to be a fault, for most of the equipment on the market he could write the manual himself after using it for a short period of time. He paused, thinking about possibilities. The flash must have come from the edge of the cliff.

And we’re directly above it, Taylor added. That looks like a huge ravine at the edge of the shelf. She pulled up a chair, flipped her hair over her shoulder, and initiated a different key sequence.

Sam’s heart beat a little faster after seeing exactly what he wanted to see: Taylor showing a glimmer of interest in the anomaly. He could be back in the water in a matter of minutes, descending toward a potential trophy.

Homer began to manipulate the graphical information on the screen, changing the visual perspective. The sea floor was smoothly rendered on the screen as if the cliff virtually rose before them underwater. The three-dimensional side view, constructed from a fifty-meter grid composed of points of elevation, proved more interesting than the overhead view. Taylor put her finger on the screen, pointing out a depression at the edge of the steep cliff. That definitely looks like a large ravine, but I can’t really tell with that protuberance in its center. She thought for a moment, and then her fingers began to peck excitedly at the keyboard.

Oh no! rushed in Sam. Please tell me you didn’t just say the word protuberance.

That word will haunt you for the rest of your life, treasure hunter, teased Taylor, her eyes never leaving the screen. This looks like a job for Homer.

Sam knew the flurry of key taps would follow the use of the word protuberance. It was Taylor’s new favorite word, and used to be his, until he’d grown sick of hearing it. It represented a point of interest, an underwater signature that cried wolf more often than it revealed something of substance. But any bathometer-toting treasure hunter knew that a protuberance on the ocean floor had to represent something. And when one came along, it could be anything, so it couldn’t be passed up. But almost always it turned out to be only a large rock or clump of rocks.

Taylor’s wish was Homer’s command. The image on the monitor began to grow as the bathometer calculated the same number of points but in a smaller grid area, zooming in on the ravine. Sam gaped at Homer’s ability to enhance in such detail what could not be seen. The girth of the crevice filled the whole screen. Different hues of green suggested the different depressions of the surface, making the shape of the ravine more distinct. Taylor took her right hand from the keyboard and placed it on the mouse. When the prompt on the screen read, Object isolation..., she used the mouse to highlight the outer defines of the ravine. After she released the mouse, she leaned back in the chair. Depth measurements, measurement calculations, and Homer’s intuitive results appeared in the upper right corner of the screen:

AI Classification:Crevice

Origination:Plate convergence

Highest point:72.13 ft.

Lowest point:142.31 ft.

Depression height:70.18 ft.

Feet across at widest:66.01 ft.

Homer’s correct classification of the crevice through artificial intelligence amazed Sam, but the protuberance remained a mystery. It seemed the machine had ignored its presence completely. So Homer wasn’t lying — it just wasn’t telling the whole truth.

Taylor looked distracted, but Sam knew he could be mistaking her expression for fascination. Being a painter, Taylor had the justifiable habit of letting her imagination get the best of her when she saw potential for interesting scenery. Sam knew she was painting a beautiful seascape in her mind using what scant information the bathometer supplied.

Weird, Sam, she added in a pensive tone. Homer totally ignored the protuberance on the zoom. It’s like he sees it but doesn’t want to talk about it. Plate convergence. That means potential underwater tremors.

Yeah, said Sam, like on the submarine ride at Disneyland. Why don’t you gear up, hon’, and we’ll go have a look?

Taylor locked a commanding gaze on Sam’s eyes, easily deciphering his thoughts. "I don’t think so, babe. It’s getting dark out, and Brett will be moody for days if we’re late getting back to your parents’. And this is not Disneyland!"

But, babe.

I know, dear, started Taylor, folding her splendid arms.

Sam could taste the sarcasm in her voice, and he showed it with a roll of his eyes. Like the cock of a firearm before the bang, she always folded her arms that way when she intended to get her point across.

We agreed that this would be the last dive, she continued, "but it’s turned out to be the most interesting spot. But, but, but..."

But you’re afraid of a little night dive? taunted Sam, rubbing his hands together. He grinned and drilled her with a passionate stare, forcing her thoughts to turn to nothing but the enthusiasm in his eyes. But it would be a tougher battle than that, he knew. It wasn’t easy for him — for anyone — to look into Taylor’s eyes without feeling weak under that green radiance. But he had looked into them many times, and knew the loving person behind those emerald shields; his inspiration came from its power. Water too cold for ya?

Fine, Sammy! she exclaimed, her hands moving to her hips. But remember, this is not a treasure hunt! You’re on vacation, and this is a pleasure dive. If we find something, we log coordinates and come back later with GPS. Got it?

Yes, ma’am, said Sam, grinning from ear to ear.

Taylor carelessly threw the computer cover over the table. She was very much the perfectionist, and had always expected the same from Sam. Homer’s cover was always perfectly placed, but not this time. Frustrated, she was giving him one chance to investigate.

And by the way, said Taylor, they closed the submarine ride at Disneyland a long time ago.

That’s a shame. Sam laughed softly, giving her his best innocent look. Irresistible mysteries like this always brought out the explorer in him. This unstoppable urge to investigate a mysterious object was the reason he had entered his field in the first place. He was a hungry scientist in search of discovery. Taylor knew this, but looking out for Sam was a concern to her. A lot of people had tried to take advantage of him after he’d become a success, after he’d become famous for his impressive string of archaeological feats.

* * * * *

Chapter 2

A Fateful Dive

Sam was sitting on the swim platform, which folded down between two short flights of stairs at the stern of the Ultimatum. The eighty-eight foot Ferretti 880 yacht had a displacement of seventy-one tons unladen, but she floated high in the water, her hull deflecting swells like they were ripples on a pond. The Italian engineers behind the grand vessel spared no expense when it came to design, employing computer-aided drafting and testing techniques that allowed for impressive aerodynamics.

Taylor emerged from the engine room through the rear door, which was conveniently hidden when the swim platform was in its closed position.

Slap! Slap! The sound of her fins hitting the floor, one after the other, interrupted the sound of the ocean. She stepped into them and headed for the platform, pulling at her black and yellow wet suit in strategic places to adjust the fit to her curvy body.

Snug in their wet suits, they took turns handing each other their equipment, Sam sneaking in a grateful kiss now and then. He used to worry about Taylor diving in the ocean, such a dangerous place for the inexperienced, but she’d picked up on the methods of SCUBA diving quicker than most professionals with whom Sam had worked.

Another thing that concerned him was the obvious fact that Taylor was his wife, a person whose company he could not do without. He knew the many dangers to which a diver might succumb. In sudden alarming situations underwater, a human had fewer tactics to choose from than when on the surface. And the risks increased when time limits were considered. The difference in resistance between air and water is greater than people care to assume, almost always until it is too late.

I feel like I’m forgetting something, said Sam, thinking.

Too late to bring in a submersible, babe, said Taylor, a little sardonic. Lets feed the fish!

Sam laughed. That’s SCUBA slang for throwing up in the water.

Oh, said Nicole, smiling innocently. Well, lets get wet!

That’s my dive babe, said Sam, coining another dive term. That’s all divers want to do!

Sam stole one last look at the beauty of the Ultimatum, eighty-eight feet of saintly-white fiberglass. Setting him back a little more than six million dollars, she’d been his first item of indulgence after his first big find. He closed his eyes, taking in the colorful horizon when he opened them again.

With green bags made of net attached to their belts, they plunged into the cold water and descended toward the depths. Sam knew the object could not have been very far down or his flashlight beam would have fallen short of hitting it.

Sam had become very inventive when he’d entered the treasure-hunting profession. He created these impressive flashlights himself. They did not have the look of ordinary, round flashlights, and they weren’t in the shape of guns, like most underwater flashlights, although they did have fold-down handles. They utilized state-of-the-art technology, and their concave undersides allowed the diver to attach them to the forearm with the help of thick Velcro lining. He had sewn the opposite strip of Velcro onto the sleeves of their wet suits himself. An episode of Star Trek — one of only three episodes he’d seen in his whole life — gave him the idea. They could now point their arms to any location they desired to be illuminated, with their hands free to examine and hold things. Of course, the flashlights were detachable, so they could be held in the hands as well. The technology inside the cases was similar to how car headlights used two different beam intensities to penetrate fog. When the density of the water in the flashlight’s range increased, the flashlight’s beam decreased its intensity. This eliminated the problem of bright light over-illuminating the wall of dust particles in the foreground, a visual barrier to what lay beyond.

At the moment, Sam and Taylor held the flashlights in their hands, using the fold-down handles. Their tiger-striped wet suits made them look as if they flowed through the water, the pattern resembling many slithering black and yellow snakes. Hundreds of tiny chromatic bubbles trailed behind them, floating to the surface in a swaying dance.

At the previous dive stop earlier that day, where Taylor had accompanied Sam, the water had not been nearly as cold. Sam could see her discomfort with these waters by her slow pace.

After a few minutes of determined probing and growing levels of worry, Sam’s beam of light found the mysterious object, a constant twinkle below, like that of the North Star guiding their path. As they closed in, the object seemed to grow wider and brighter. Sam’s mind began to wander, his light straying from the object. Never had he come across a wreck where a metallic object lay out in the open, free from coral and debris. And with its reflective properties, this clearly had to be metallic. It must be some modern thing, he thought, thrown out of a naval or cruise ship.

Taylor had kept her light steady on the distant object when Sam’s had left it. His concentration returning, Sam turned his beam back on target. With both of their lights hitting it, the object again became a bright star.

As they departed the sunlit waters above, the surrounding darkness of the twilight waters enabled them to see the outline of a cliff below. A strange shape it seemed, its wrinkled edges folding back into a large ravine, as expected from Homer’s electronic readings. Sam squinted, slowly running his light over the rough edges of the rocky canyon. He felt small against the giant seascape looming up before him. The cliffs grew ominous and dark, giving the area a spooky aspect for which neither of them cared.

Sam’s light swept across from one side of the ravine to the other. A rather large mass rose up from the edge of the cliff, overshadowed previously by the sides of the huge ravine.

The protuberance.

Sam’s heartbeat quickened as he beheld three tall posts, which he assumed had to be some kind of extraordinary rock columns. Because of the small area his flashlight revealed, he could not be sure. Another long object projected outward from the ravine at the edge of the cliff, like a giant finger pointing east. Strange webbing of some kind surrounded the posts.

A ship, a very well preserved ship.

Sam grabbed Taylor’s hand and pulled up in a standing position, gaping at the large Spanish galleon. Balanced at the edge of the shelf, its sharp bow exceeded the cliff, protruding out over the abyss. Right away Sam knew it had to be late sixteenth or early seventeenth century make. But regardless of the century in which it had been constructed, he knew the vessel should not have been there. It should have disintegrated to nothing by this time. The masts should have been pushed over by the underwater turbulence from the many storms that had passed this area. The first strong hurricane that had passed should have lifted the ship out of the ravine and pushed it down to the bottom of the abyss. And if that failed, then the relentless Gulf Stream should have taken care of the job. But the galleon looked like she had just landed after her fateful trip down from the surface.

Sam felt a tap on his shoulder, slowly came out of his daze. He thought he was dreaming. Never had he imagined seeing a real Spanish galleon