Caleb worked the throttles back and forth to maintain their station above the mystery structure at eighty-eight feet. Secretly, he was glad he wasn't going down again today... after what had happened yesterday. The enormous responsibility of a safety diver had been driven home as he came to grips with the fact that his father had almost died on his watch. His reaction had been emotional and outside the rescue protocol.
Driving the boat was certain to be safer and far less eventful.
Glancing out the window aft, he could see Uncle Stu wrestling with dive tanks and equipment, as Joshua and his dad got ready. Out of a wealth of precaution, Uncle Stu had determined early on that the boys would only dive every other day to ensure a good clean surface interval. Teddy and Uncle Stu were using dive computers to monitor their nitrogen uptake and outgassing. They were also much more experienced divers.
"We are in position. Drop the dive line." Caleb yelled. He watched his uncle throw the line overboard. Joshua took a giant step forward and splashed in right after his dad. Caleb scanned the horizon and the instrument panel. It was going to be another bright, beautiful blue Caribbean day!
Caleb decided to use Van Halen's Diver Down album to check coms: "Who cares about the clouds when we're together…" Happy Trails piped into everyone's headphones and out of the ancient speaker on the bridge just as Bones flopped into the nav chair, placing the iPad so Caleb could see everything the rover could see.
"Descending—fifty feet. Are you okay, Joshua?" Teddy's voice registered clear, but preoccupied as he went through his equipment checks.
"Happy Trails to you!" Joshua sang out. "Right behind you, Dad. Everything A-Okay. I don't see any leaks on you. How do I look?"
"Descending—seventy feet. You look good. Small leak at your buoyancy compensator connection, maybe release and re-engage?" If anything, Teddy was being hyper-cautious.
"Got it. Worked." Joshua was all business. Nobody wanted a repeat of yesterday.
"Descending—eighty feet. Do you see it, Joshua?" Teddy couldn't keep the awe out of his voice. These structures were thousands of years old, not to mention submerged hundreds of feet, and they radiated a sublime beauty that was so often missing in modern architecture. The possibility that they might have been built by an antediluvian race of giants was mind blowing. Teddy always found these surreal connections to the foundations of Old Testament history to be incredibly faith building.
"I see it, Dad. It's so much more vivid than on the video—sorry guys!" Joshua didn't mean to slight his brother and uncle up above.
"Wrong. I just sit up here coiling the lines and fixing your equipment while you guys have all the fun. I paid good money for a dive tour, when is it my turn to dive?" Bones was cracking himself up.
"I'm sorry, Sir, but your check bounced. You'll have to earn your keep until you can come up with the balance. And for a skinny guy, you sure eat a lot!" Teddy was encouraged by the relaxed banter. Part of it was that everything was going ship shape so far, but it was also that they were diving to a much shallower depth where less could go wrong. If something did go wrong, surface help was that much closer. It was going to be a good day today.
Thank you, Lord—your mercies are new every morning.
"Descending—ninety feet. The structure is about twenty feet east of us. I am going to try to attach the dive line to the structure." Teddy and Joshua had been either touching or staying within a few feet of a nylon line that was dropped from the surface craft with flags clearly marking every ten foot decrease in depth—the line provided a visual reference as divers descended, preventing any potential disorientation. The line could also be used to mark an underwater object to support repeat dives and rescues.
"I've got the line, Dad. I am moving toward the object." Joshua was eager to maximize their bottom time. At ninety feet, they would have twenty-five minutes of bottom time with no decompression stops.
"Right behind you. If there is nothing on the building to secure it to, maybe we can find a stone on the seabed and wrap it around that?"
"I plan on tying it through one of the altar rings." It was impossible to know for sure given the drowning metallic sound of the com system in their face masks, but Teddy thought he heard a smile.
"Don't get your hopes up. I doubt we are dealing with another temple." Teddy lost the light mood as he recalled the darkness he had felt while trapped in the cloud of sediment yesterday. It was strange how hard it was for him to dredge that feeling out of his memory.
"What your father means, Joshua, is that it is highly unlikely that you will find a comely lass waiting for you in that room!" Bones and Caleb bumped fists. Caleb had egged his uncle on to make the sacrificial virgin reference again.
"Wait! I see her!" Joshua laughed as they approached another very large doorway, pitch black like the first one. Although the doorways were similar in size, this one was much less ornate, as was the entire structure. It almost gave the impression that a modern warehouse might—utilitarian.
"Bones, follow us as we circle the structure and secure this line." Teddy motioned to Joshua to follow him as he slowly swam around the building looking for something to tie off the line.
"Do you see it, Dad… you don't think?" Joshua was pointing at a stone loop that looked exactly like a medieval horse tether—only it was about twenty feet off the seabed. If Joshua could have seen through his father's face mask, he would have seen Teddy's eyebrows raised. Teddy secured the line and waved Joshua and Bones on the rover to follow him around.
"I don't see anything worth noting on the exterior of the structure. Do you guys see anything on the video?" Teddy wanted to penetrate. The structure was clearly related to the pyramid city over one hundred and fifty yards to the west. Outlying and forgotten structures like this often yielded the most interesting finds because over the centuries looters lost track of them.
"Are you forgetting the stone ring used to tie up twenty foot high horses ridden by giants?" Joshua wasn't about to let go of his discovery.
"Bones, bring the rover in closer. I want you going in first with full floods. Joshua and I will hang outside until you give us the all clear." Teddy motioned for Joshua to hang out as the rover whirred forward, lighting up the interior that was thankfully devoid of any kind of altar. "Sorry, Joshua!" Teddy chuckled.
"Roger. Rover entering the structure… hold it a minute. Teddy…" Bones tore his gaze away from the iPad screen as Caleb grabbed his arm.
"Uncle, look up! I count three. No, five boats approaching at speed!" Caleb did a three hundred and sixty degree search of the horizon, but found no more approaching vessels—only the five rigid hull inflatables bearing down on them from the direction of Cuba.
"Teddy, we have a situation up here. Five tactical craft approaching at speed armed with forward mounted fifty calibers. I do not believe they are friendly." Bones conferred with Caleb quickly, jumped down to the starboard deck, unleashed the rigid inflatable life raft chained to the deck, hooked up the dive line and snapped the tether to it. He was pushing the package over the side when his eye caught one of the spare anchors lashed to the forward housing.
Running forward, Bones grabbed the anchor, ran back to the life raft package and clipped the anchor to a lanyard—now the package would float under the water unseen. "Teddy, the life raft is tethered to the dive line… just in case. We will be back in contact once we deal with this."
"Roger. Remember what Jimmy said last night…" Teddy had that sinking feeling that he always wished he'd never have again. Father, please take care of my son and my friend.
"Going dark." Bones was using the military term for a communications outage, but as he said the words, both Teddy and Joshua heard a brief scravy sound in their earphones and the rover's lights went out. They were completely in the dark.
Two shafts of light speared into the murky gloom as they both unclipped and turned on their dive lights. Teddy swam over to Joshua and they exchanged okay signs—they would have to do this old school with dive signs, no comms and no rover support.
Teddy made the sign for flutter kicks—he didn't want to take any chances with a sediment cloud again. Leading the way, he turned and swam toward the yawning cavern of darkness. The beam from his flashlight fell on the palm of the glove he had used to touch the altar the day before and his whole hand sparkled gold in the bright light. Teddy thought again of the dark presence: Would it be here also?
Joshua followed his father's light through the door, flashing his beam onto the delicately fit stones in the doorposts, careful to mind his flutter kicks. His father's beam went left, so he shined his right. The room opened to either side as they entered, their dive lights tracking from floor to ceiling. Teddy's light steadied on the ceiling and Joshua brought his light to bear creating a larger circle of vision—the ceiling was completely flat.
They were inside the square box they had seen from the outside, not the sloping portion protruding from the rear of the building. Teddy traced along the ceiling toward the rear of the structure. His light outlined doorposts and a lintel in the center of the back wall—set into this doorway was a single large hewn stone that fit perfectly inside the frame—Was it a stone door blocking access to the sloping portion behind the building?
As Joshua's fins cleared the interior of the front doorway he felt a slight shudder. Joshua cast his flashlight around the interior of the room but could see nothing out of the ordinary. The slight shudder became an intense vibration increasing into a deafening roar.
Both divers moved their lights rapidly around the room to see what was happening, but other than tiny waterfalls of sand flowing out of cracks and crevices nothing seemed to explain the vibration and roaring. Shining their lights outside through the doorway, they witnessed cracks forming on the seafloor and sand being sucked down into them: underwater earthquake.
Joshua turned and motioned for his father to swim out of the structure with him. Teddy flashed the okay sign. Both divers felt in their guts more than heard a harsh grinding sound as the threshold of the doorway began to rise. Joshua turned in panic and kicked toward the rapidly dwindling exit with Teddy right behind him.
Teddy knew he would never make it, but Joshua was almost through. Teddy was straining in his own body urging his son on when Joshua hesitated, paused and half turned. In that moment, Teddy was both a proud and tortured father. Joshua's selflessness had probably cost him his life.
The stone door rammed shut with a thump of finality.