LC 04 - Skeleton Crew Read online

  Maps of the ocean floor made from the various magnetometer surveys decorated the walls. Different colored points of ink marked the spots for anomalies on the ocean floor. On one map, the cofferdam site was outlined with a black marker with small x's pinpointing places where other artifacts presumably belonging to the Estrella de Espana had been found. She looked at the labels to see what some of the finds were. Two cannons had been discovered ten and fifteen miles away, an anchor a mile from the site.

  On the far side of the room, stretching across the width of the trailer, a closet with no doors was filled neatly with well-used diving gear. It contrasted with the shiny new tanks that Lindsay had brought with her. For the better part of a year she had taken diving lessons in preparation for this dig, after Trey had invited her to be a member of the archaeology crew. Her lips turned up in a smile as she thought about his excitement in telling her about the find, and his further elation at discovering that the new division head, Francisco Lewis, was willing to raise the money to build a cofferdam, rather than having divers dig blindly in the murky waters. Lindsay turned and left, reminding herself as she stepped outside and heard the waves breaking on the bulkheads that this was a grand adventure.

  From the ocean side of the dam came the deep bass sounds of a marine engine, and she turned to see a white boat displaying the emblem of the U.S. Coast Guard pulling up to the dock. Trey met a Coast Guard officer at the ladder and led him to Sarah and Bobbie, who were sitting restlessly at the table. Lindsay was about to climb back down to the excavation with the rest of the crew when Trey stopped her.

  "I'd like you to stay. You've had some experience dealing with authorities, and I understand a lot of them know you."

  "Sure," said Lindsay. Angel of Death, at your service, she thought. She followed him to the table and pulled up one of the chairs. Trey introduced her to the officer in charge, a Lieutenant Damon.

  "We were about twenty-five miles out from shore-near an artificial reef," Sarah was telling him. "Nate and I were surveying some of the magnetometer anomalies, looking for artifacts. It's hard to survey around the artificial reefs because of the many recently sunk ships and tanks that make up those reefs. We were working slowly and carefully because we knew that the newer objects on top could be masking older artifacts underneath. Archaeologists have been known to pass over ancient wrecks for years by thinking the anomalies they knew about were from a more recent ship known to be there."

  "Exactly what happened next?" Lieutenant Damon clearly wasn't interested in their methodology.

  Sarah frowned, took a sip of water and ran her fingers through the tangles of her half-dry curly red hair. "The water's not real clear," she said. "You can't see far. They just appeared. Two of them. We thought they were fishing at first, but-" She hesitated. "I don't know. There was something about them. Some kind of purpose or aggressiveness as they came toward us. We motioned to them, and they motioned back, warning us away. When we didn't move, one of them shot at us. God, I was terrified. I've never been shot at before."

  "Why did they do it?" asked Lieutenant Damon.

  "Why? I don't know why. Ask them." Sarah still had a smudge of blood on her freckled arm. She started to cry when she looked down and saw it.

  "Did they think they were being threatened?" Lieutenant Damon handed her a handkerchief.

  "With what? Our Marshalltowns? We're archaeologists."

  The lieutenant looked up at Trey, a question on his face.

  "Trowels," Trey explained. "The trowels that we use for excavation are made by a company called Marshalltown."

  "You don't carry weapons for sharks?" Damon asked.

  "No. It was a short dive. They aren't usually a problem. They aren't as aggressive as people think."

  Lieutenant Damon raised his eyebrows. "But you carry a diving knife, don't you?"

  "Yes, a small one, for diving. We didn't threaten anyone. We were doing our survey, and these guys came at us. Nate was hurt."

  "I'm just trying to get a clear picture. Who do you think shot at you?"

  "Nate thinks it was the pirates."

  "The pirates?"

  "Pothunters ... looters. You know," said Bobbie, "those vultures out there looking for treasure."

  "But you don't know for sure? Did you recognize either one of them?" Sarah shook her head. "Did Nate?"

  "I don't know, really. He thought they were the treasure hunters. Their boat was out there."

  "Did you see the attackers?" the lieutenant asked Bobbie.

  "I was topside with the boat. I didn't know anything was wrong until Nate and Sarah surfaced."

  "How close was the other boat you mentioned?"

  "The Painted Lady was less than a quarter of a mile away, I guess," Bobbie answered.

  "But you don't know if they came from the Painted Lady? Was that the only boat near you?" - -- - - - - - - - - -- - -- -

  Bobbie shook her head and several strands of her long black hair came loose from her casual French twist. She pushed the strands behind her ear. "No, there were some fishing boats farther away. But who else would do this? Not the fishermen, for heaven's sake. For what reason?"

  "Does Nate have any enemies?" he asked Sarah. "Or do you?"

  Sarah scowled at him. "You mean who would come gunning for us in the ocean? No."

  "Can you give me a description of what they looked like?"

  I think one had blond hair. The other one a darker color. Both were about as big as Nate and muscular. They wore black vests and trunks. I didn't see the brand of diving equipment."

  "You are sure they weren't people you met someplace else?"

  "No. I told you. I don't know who they were."

  The lieutenant turned his attention to Trey. "Have you had any other trouble?"

  Trey shook his head. "Not at this site. West Construction, who built and maintains the cofferdam, has a twenty-four-hour security team guarding the place. They have their own divers."

  "Could it have been one of them, thinking you were looters?" Damon asked.

  "No-" answered Sarah. "No. This was miles away from the dam. West isn't guarding the whole ocean. Besides, the West divers wear distinctive yellow vests."

  Lindsay could see Sarah was having trouble keeping her temper. The questions Lieutenant Damon asked could not be called hostile, but they did seem to Lindsay to be unnecessarily suspicious. She was accustomed to local authorities being suspicious of archaeology crews, but she would have thought that with a project of this size and cost, they would be more solicitous.

  "We have a very professional security team," Trey added. "They wouldn't shoot at anyone in that way."

  "We'd like to talk to them," said Lieutenant Damon, "... and Nate when he gets back."

  "Sure," said Trey. He took his phone from his pocket, called West Construction, and left word for the members of the security team to join them.

  "You said 'Not at this site.' You've had trouble elsewhere?" the lieutenant asked Trey.

  "We're not sure. Carolyn Taylor, our conservation supervisor, believes that someone has come in the lab on the island at night on more than one occasion. We don't know for sure. Nothing is missing, and we hired a security guard from the mainland just for the lab."

  Lieutenant Damon wrote in his notebook.

  "Have there been any other incidents or complaints from fishermen or divers?" Lindsay asked the lieutenant.

  "Nothing unusual."

  "What's usual?" she asked.

  "People who go sailing and don't know how, complaints about unruly boaters. That kind of thing. The waters are usually safe. But complaints have gone up. The smell of gold brings out the worst in people."

  That explains it, thought Lindsay. She smiled sympathetically at Lieutenant Damon. This dig had made more work for the Coast Guard. They were probably having to deal with drunken weekenders with gold fever. That's what she told Trey when the lieutenant left after he had interviewed John West.

  "A lot of jerks come out of the woodwork at the m
ention of the word treasure," Lindsay told Trey. "I think that's probably what this was-guys just acting inappropriately territorial. And you may have to face the possibility that the rumor is out about the silver galleon."

  "You think so? I hope not. We don't need that complication." Trey ran his hand over his short-cropped hair. "That rumor can't be allowed to get out. This would become a madhouse."

  Lindsay lowered her voice. "About how much treasure are we talking about?"

  Trey looked around them before he answered. "Several hundred million dollars, perhaps as much as a billion. This was a 1,600-ton, overloaded galleon."

  Lindsay was speechless. The old saying that two can keep a secret if one is dead popped into her head. "How many people know about this?"

  "Me, and now you, Francisco Lewis, and Frank Carter, of course. That's all."

  That was six people, thought Lindsay. "Who discovered the information?"

  "It was in the Spanish archives. Nate and I came across it when we were researching the Estrella."

  "And who did the translations?" asked Lindsay.

  "Frank Carter. He went with us. He's pretty good at ancient Spanish and archival research. Harper will do the final translations for the reports," he added.

  Frank Carter, current chairman of the Archaeology Department at UGA, was a good friend of Lindsay's. She trusted him. "Frank can keep a secret. Does anyone else know?"

  "Possibly one of the archivists we were working with."

  "And you swore this person to secrecy?"

  "He understood the need for secrecy."

  Lindsay shook her head.

  "What?" Trey asked.

  "It's not a secret, you can forget that."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Okay. Lewis knows. He raised the money for the site. You can bet he told selected people."

  "I think you're being a little unfair to him. I know you don't like-"

  "That's not it. He's a political animal. They trade in secrets. You can bet the president of UGA knows, and the governor. If the governor knows, then probably one of his aides knows also. If an aide knows, then the person the aide sleeps with will know."

  "I think you are being a little paranoid, don't you agree?"

  "I'm just telling you how hard it is to keep a secret. And those are just the possibilities from Lewis."

  "Okay, you're right." He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. "Do you think those were treasure hunters who shot Nate?"

  "Could have been anything. Maybe Nate and Sarah got too near someone's drug stash. I imagine that's what Lieutenant Damon really thinks. Even though he didn't mention it, stopping drug smuggling is a big part of what the Coast Guard does. They'll probably have divers looking around the artificial reefs now. Besides, I think a professional looter like Evangeline Jones would be more subtle."

  "You're probably right again," sighed Trey. "Nate wants me to hire some more security guards for the island. Maybe I should. John protects the dam, but the island has only one guard." Trey wrinkled his brow, scanning the horizon as if trying to tell which of the myriad boats out there contained individuals who knew about the silver galleon.

  Chapter 4

  LINDSAY GRIPPED THE handrail of the creaking scaffold stairway on her return to the ocean floor. The others were already back at their tasks, working silently, their usual patter quelled by the sight of blood, no doubt. Two guys were hooking lines to one of the Estrella's timbers to be lifted to the top of the dam. She stopped to store her field notebook in the desk at the bottom of the stairway. She opened the bottom drawer and saw that it contained a couple of spray bottles of asthma medication, a pair of gloves, and some papers. She found an empty drawer, stored away her things, and made her way among muted sounds of digging and scraping along the planks to her excavation unit, where the unfortunate sixteenth-century sailor grinned up at her.

  She gently teased the mud away from the side of the skull. The sail, or whatever cloth covered part of his face, had rotted away. The long face and prominent browridge and jawline were characteristic of a male skull. She traced her finger along his teeth as she would the keys of a piano. They were all there, including his wisdom teeth. She wondered what he did on the ship. Would his job show in his bones? Would he be mentioned in the journal?

  "I heard you found the first human skeleton." Lindsay looked up to see denim cutoffs over a black bathing suit. It was Bobbie Lacayo, smiling down at her, trowel in hand. "Can I help?"

  "Sure. See the sustentaculum tali sticking up through the mud? Start there."

  "Dr. Chamberlain, I haven't had your osteology class."

  Lindsay smiled. "You can call me Lindsay if you like." She reached over with her trowel and pointed to a portion of bone protruding through the mud. "That's part of the calcaneus-the heel bone, which is the largest bone of the tarsus-the bones of the foot. There's fabric covering this guy, so take care. Have you ever excavated fabric?"

  "In the first unit we uncovered some sailcloth and a coil of rope."

  "Great."

  "Have you heard from Nate and Steven?" Gina asked, rising from her prone position and stretching.

  Bobbie shook her head.

  "The cut wasn't too bad," Lindsay replied. "I imagine he'll only need a tetanus and a few stitches."

  "Makes me scared to go diving," Gina continued.

  "I imagine the Coast Guard presence will scare off whoever it was."

  "You dive, Lindsay?" asked Gina.

  "I don't have much experience, but I've been looking forward to going on a survey with the divers."

  "Wouldn't it be neat," Juliana said to no one in particular, "if the walls of the dam were glass and we could see the ocean?"

  "It would if the water were clear," said Bobbie.

  "You people are crazy," Jeff complained. "That wouldn't be neat, as you put it, at all. Have you ever heard the term 'storm surge'? You get twenty-foot waves out there and this hole will fill up like a fishbowl, only we'll be the fish."

  "Jeff," said Juliana, "if this bothers you so much, why don't you work on the barge or, better yet, back at the lab with the artifacts?"

  "Yeah, you'd like that, wouldn't you, so you could get all the glory."

  Juliana looked down at her mud-covered body, ragged denim shorts, and halter top. "Glory? What glory?"

  Lindsay watched Jeff go back to work, jabbing with his trowel around a piece of timber. He stood abruptly. "That's all there is in this hole, this damn heavy timber." He threw down his trowel and made his way to the stairway, stopping at the field desk to take something out of the drawer, then climbed to the top of the dam.

  "He's really having a hard time down here," said Gina, staring after him. "I really think Trey should put him in the lab."

  "He could at least have taken some of these buckets of fill to be hoisted over to the barge," Juliana grumbled.

  "Why did he agree to work here?" Lindsay asked. Now that Jeff was gone, only Bobbie, Gina, and Juliana were near her section at the bow of the ship.

  "He's a marine archaeologist, and this is the biggest find in this whole area," said Gina.

  "But he really specializes in classical archaeology, and you know how squirrelly those guys are," Juliana added.

  "I can see how being down inside these walls could get to some people," Lindsay said. "I had some apprehension before I got here, but now I don't think it's so bad down here on the bottom of the sea. I could get used to it."

  "Did the Coast Guard say anything?" Gina was unwilling to let the diving incident go. She squatted down by Lindsay.

  "No, but like I said, they'll probably keep a closer watch in the area. I don't think we'll have any more incidents like that one." Lindsay began working on the skeleton's right shoulder, which was overlaid with fabric. This was going to be slow work.

  "Okay, Chamberlain," said Juliana. "Exactly what is this Angel of Death thing Jeff keeps muttering about?"

  Bobbie looked at Lindsay and laughed. Lindsay sat up and looked from one
face to the other, tempted to say that she sleepwalked and killed people in the dead of night. But both Gina and Juliana were grinning from ear to ear and her sudden irritation vanished. "I seem to attract dead people," she said after a moment's hesitation.

  "Damn!" said Juliana. "We have something in common. That's the kind of dates I attract."

  "Speaking of dates, is the West guy married?" Gina asked.

  "No," said Lindsay.

  "Girlfriend?"

  "I don't know that."

  "How about you, Bobbie? You from his tribe?"

  Bobbie shook her head. "Nope. Never knew him before I came here."

  "You ever date him?" Gina asked Lindsay.

  Lindsay shook her head. "No, I'm afraid I'm not his type. We met when he protested a dig I was working on. He has strong feelings about having his ancestors excavated."

  "Hmm, I guess I could tell him I work only on historical sites," said Gina. "Of course, I need to find some better duds. It's hard to attract guys when you're covered with mud."

  "How about the guys working for him?" asked Juliana.

  "I suppose I could ask and make a list," Lindsay offered, turning back to her skeleton.

  "That'd be great."

  Lindsay looked over her shoulder at Juliana, who was still grinning at her.

  They returned to their tedious work with concentration. The unusual sounds of this dig-the groaning of the dam and the splashing of the waves-drifted to the background and merged with the familiar sounds of excavation-the clicking and scraping of the trowels, the voices, the footfalls. Lindsay found it best not to think about the trillion gallons of ocean a few feet away on all sides of her.

  "I think I've found a shoe," said Gina.

  Lindsay rose to take a look over Gina's shoulder at the emerging outline. "It looks like both the upper and the sole are intact," Lindsay observed.

  "The cellular structure of the leather will be shot to hell," said Gina. "It's the water and muck that keep the shape."