Boom!
Teddy was dead asleep dreaming of a naval bombardment.
Boom!
Teddy nearly jumped out of his skin. Sitting straight up in his bunk he banged his head on the upper berth. It hurt something fierce, but he ignored the pain as his mind searched for the cause of the explosion.
Boom!
Struggling to get his pants on, Teddy hopped around the small cabin knocking knuckles and knees
Boom! Boom!
"Bones? Bones? Boys?" Teddy shouted but nobody responded. Initially, he had assumed something in the engine had exploded, but the sound was too rhythmic and repetitive. Were they being fired upon? Pirates weren't unheard of in the Caribbean.
Up on deck, Uncle Stu gave a double fist pump to Joshua. His last shot had sunk the barrel for good. Caleb had done quite a bit of damage with his first three shots.
"Caleb, you get points for style! Did you see that thing spin around as your first round nicked it?" Uncle Stu showed all his teeth in a goofy grin.
"I didn't think it was going to stop! It was like a top!" Joshua sat atop the 30mm canon looking like an old WWII navy man—except for the obvious flush of excitement that ran up his bright red cheeks.
"I hit it three times!" Caleb gushed.
"I sunk that baby!" Joshua shouted to let loose some of the remaining adrenaline.
The boys had been up with the sun after a long night scrubbing the head and they were looking for a little adventure. Remembering the big gun Caleb saw in the rope locker, they snuck out of their bunks and went exploring.
Dropping into the rope locker, they could make out the dim outlines of a very long barrel, about three to four feet. At the back of the gun, in the dim light, they could see what looked like a seat. It was very dark below decks, but dappled light from the bright Caribbean sun streamed in through cracks overhead.
"Any gun that needs a seat is a big gun!" Joshua enthused, double thumbs up.
"A really, really big gun." Caleb agreed. "I think I can squeeze past it. Maybe we can get a better look from the other side?" Caleb said as he was pushing past the barrel toward the folded seat.
The designers of the converted smuggling ship had remodeled the rope locker to stow the 30mm canon below decks out of sight until it was needed. They had sized the compartment the boys were crawling through to fit the gun exactly, with no room left for curious teenagers.
As Caleb passed the seat, his shirt caught on something. He tugged and heard Joshua say: Uh, oh! Turning, he could see a bright red laser painting a dot on the forward bulkhead directly above Joshua's head.
"Get out of here!" Joshua yelled as he scrambled back toward the hatch.
"I have to shut it off first." Caleb blurted as he wriggled backward trying without any luck to find the switch again. "I can't figure out what I pulled."
"You know what this means?" Joshua's shoulders were hunched as he pulled Caleb out of the rope locker. "We've got to tell dad and that means more scrubbing."
"Maybe not!" Caleb had an impish grin that caught his brother off guard.
"Uncle Stu!" They both intoned at the same time.
"You were cleaning out the rope locker when you accidentally triggered the laser on the gun?" Uncle Stu was remembering his own boyhood whoppers. He had been staring at a sonar mapping scope for the better part of two hours when the boys tumbled breathless onto the bridge.
The old trawler was running on autopilot through a GPS coordinated grid pattern that they had gotten from the files of Advanced Digital Communications, the Canadian company that had made the original discovery of the sunken city in 2001.
Teddy had discovered the sunken city during one of his endless Google searches looking for information about arcane Bible passages. He was hooked and began to follow the story. After a short media flurry claiming the fabled lost city of Atlantis had been found, the media went uncharacteristically silent.
The Cuban government, Smithsonian and National Geographic, among others, had publicly vowed to explore the site, right before the entire story went into a black hole. That fact alone was enough for the conspiracy theorists—lack of evidence combined with silence was often the very proof they needed. Teddy wasn't satisfied with conspiracy—he wanted the truth.
"I guess the only way to turn that laser site off would be to get that big gun out and give her a test fire." Joshua and Caleb shared a high five as Uncle Stu took one last glance at the GPS guided autopilot and walked off the bridge. "I lashed an old fifty five gallon drum to the stern if you boys want to toss it overboard."
"Dad here. Fun over." Uncle Stu was looking beyond Joshua perched high up in the gun chair at the grizzled old bear approaching in a bathrobe, hair all askew.
"What the…" Teddy was at a loss for words as he looked at the boys and Uncle Stu wearing headphones for ear protection.
"Good morning, Sir!" Uncle Stu snapped a salute, shouting because he couldn't hear.
"Hi, Dad!" Both boys shouted in unison, waving at their dad with hopeful expressions.
Teddy couldn't wrap his mind around the fact that there had actually been a giant gun under the forward decks the entire time they had been on the boat. He hadn't been managing the lines and even if he had, there was no way he'd have looked into the rope locker more than would be necessary to throw the ropes in before slamming the door shut.
Now there was a cannon right out of Star Wars protruding four feet above the forward deck. The entire contraption was about six feet long, including the barrel, and it had what appeared to be armored plates shielding the gunner.
Joshua was mounted astride the cannon on a small seat, excitedly swiveling the gun back and forth while moving the barrel up and down using thumb toggles. Caleb stood a few feet to the side next to Uncle Stu. All three wore the expressions of men who know they are about to be disappointed but remain hopeful despite the odds.
"Guess we all better get out our toothbrushes." Uncle Stu tried to lighten the mood as the boys resigned themselves to a long list of chores.
"Wait a minute!" Teddy used his stern voice on purpose. "Not until I get a shot! Show me how this thing works!"