5. Caleb
FIVE
Caleb
As soon as Gabe and I were underwater, we began to check the boat for any signs of distress. Had she hit something? Was there something wedged against her that had thrown the passengers? An impact like that would at least let us know the potential direction they had been thrown.
I began at the stern, and Gabe took the bow. The boat was intact. Not a scratch on her.
We broke through the surface. “I don’t see anything,” I reported, removing the snorkel tube from my mouth.
“Neither do I,” he answered. “And I didn’t see anything onboard either.”
We were equally confused and stunned. How would someone have made a distress call from the boat and then disappeared?
“Did you check the depth radar when you anchored?” he asked.
“Yeah, we’re about thirty feet. What are you thinking? Get our gear?”
He nodded. “I don’t know if they could be on the bottom, but maybe drifting that way first.”
Fuck. I didn’t want to think our rescue was going to be a recovery mission, but we had to exhaust all possibilities and our resources to find out what happened to the people on this boat.
“All right. Let’s get our gear.”
I reached for the rung on our swim ladder. We climbed aboard the cutter and started to unload the oxygen tanks. It took a few minutes to hook up the gear and strap in. Diving for bodies wasn’t the same as a surface dive for survivors. Our moods had changed. Our motions were solemn. Our faces, grim. I wanted to keep a sliver of hope that maybe we would find a clue and no bodies. Or maybe a fisherman had picked up the passengers, and no one had bothered to call it in yet.
“Let me report in,” I informed Gabe. I explained to base the next phase of our mission. They hadn’t heard from any other vessels.
For a beautiful day, it was eerily quiet on the water. We hadn’t seen another boat since we arrived.
Gabe and I perched on the side of the cutter, ready to flip back into the water.
I adjusted my mouthpiece and watched as he fiddled with one of the hoses.
Maybe I was too focused on the grim task ahead of us. Maybe I was trying to think of other options for the people on the boat. Or maybe I was in my head about the accident at the beginning of the summer. Whatever distracted me, I didn’t hear the hum of the engine approaching us, at least not in time.
They grabbed Gabe first. Before I could swing backward and reach for him, a giant hook had circled my waist, and I was pulled onto another boat in a rapid three seconds of movement.
“What the fuck!” I spat the regulator from my mouth.
We hit the deck with a solid thud. I rolled one way and Gabe the other.
“Don’t say anything. Don’t try anything,” a deep voice barked at us.
I tried to make out a face, but the sun was directly behind his head, and the only thing I saw was the silhouette of his face and a gun pointed at us. I couldn’t make out the gun either.
“Grab the tanks first.” The other crew members on the boat listened to the instructions. They circled us and stripped the tanks off our backs with rough tugs.
“What are you doing?” I asked again. “We are officers in the U.S. Coast Guard, you jackasses. We are on a rescue mission. There’s someone missing.”
He laughed. “Or you found the someone missing.”
Gabe and I sat back on our heels. I watched as our tanks were loaded onto the abandoned boat. Holy shit. Another guy, dressed in fishing coveralls, boarded our cutter.
“Where are the other tanks?” he shouted.
Gabe hit his shoulder against mine. “Are they stealing our gear? That’s what’s happening?”
I sighed. “Yeah. Fucking pirates for diving equipment.” I’d heard about this becoming increasingly more prevalent in the states south of us, but it seemed North Carolina could no longer be spared.
The guy with the gun kicked my knee. “Where are the rest of the tanks? He needs them.”
“Tell him to look in the cabin. They are labeled.” I didn’t want to tell him he was a fucking moron for needing to read the signs. “But they’re going to need the key.”
The cutter was outfitted with military grade diving equipment. Each set was worth a minimum of five thousand dollars, and we had six full dive sets on board.
“Where’s the key?” He waved the gun closer to my nose.
I pressed my lips together. It wasn’t worth getting my head blown off over tanks and scuba gear, but my stubbornness made it hard to just give in to this fucking petty robbery. They knew we were unarmed and had locked our guns in the holding case in order to make the first surface swim. I was pissed.
“The key!” The side of the gun smacked across my cheekbone. Shit. That hurt.
“It’s in the key box,” I mumbled. “Which is also locked.”
“The main key is in the console,” Gabe answered for me. “The key box is below deck.”
“At least someone is cooperative,” he snarled. “Did you hear that? Key box below deck!” he yelled across the boats.
“Got ‘em!” his friend hollered back.
It didn’t take them long to figure out the key system and to start unlocking the lockers that contained the dive equipment.
They started to transfer all the dive gear to the fishing boat that had been their decoy. The tanks, masks, regulators, wet suits, and dry suits. I didn’t want to add up the value in my head as they stole from the cutter, but it tallied anyway. They had to have nearly thirty thousand dollars in equipment and gear, probably more since they seemed to grab anything they could spot.
Gabe huddled closer. “Do we have a plan?” he whispered.
“Since they have guns and ours are locked onboard the cutter, we are kinda fucked right now,” I answered.
“So we do nothing?” he questioned my response. I didn’t like it either, but we were outnumbered and had no weapons.
I shook my head. “No, I think they’ll head out and leave us behind. They want dive gear. They’re sea rats. They aren’t murderers.” That was another hope I still held on to, but I wasn’t sure why I believed it.
The guy responsible for keeping us still shook the gun at us again to stop us from talking. I saw the outline of a hammerhead shark tattoo on his right forearm. It was the only distinguishable mark I could identify on him or any of the crew.
“Boat’s clear,” someone shouted. I knew he was talking about the cutter. They must have stripped it of anything valuable and loaded it onto the decoy boat.
“Let’s go!”
I exhaled, waiting for them to load us back on our boat, but suddenly someone hit the throttle, and Gabe and I fell backward in a pile. Shit.
“I thought they were going to let us go,” he groaned as I pushed off him.
I looked at the driver of the boat. The bandana covering his nose and lower face, along with the sunglasses he wore, concealed his identity. I turned to see the abandoned vessel was following behind us. If we jumped and dove into the water, they’d run over us or pick us up. Neither would get us out of this fucked up situation.