The Sea Hawk (3 page)

The swells of the sea around her gradually strengthened and snapped Julia from her thoughts. The wind caused the buoy to sway violently from side to side as it began to dance around in the water, occasionally driving her under water unexpectedly before she could take a breath. Her arms ached and she was certain her body would be covered with bruises from being slammed into the metal marker repeatedly. When she couldn't stand another minute of the pounding, she pressed the mouthpiece into her mouth and reached beneath the buoy to grab its anchor line. As she went beneath the churning water it was calmer, but she was forced to hold the line with both hands to keep from losing her grip as the buoy was tossed around. Surrounded by the blackness, she shivered. As night fell the surface winds were cooling the water rapidly and forcing colder water from farther east toward shore. She shivered, wishing she had worn her full diving suit. After a few minutes of catching her breath, she pulled herself back to the surface. She wasn't sure how much air remained in her tank and was afraid to go deeper seeking calmer water. She hoped the storm was nothing more than a squall line and would pass over quickly, but as the minutes ticked by it seemed to be intensifying. She was exhausted from her fight with the buoy and readjusted her hold on it several times. She called upon her anger at Amy to take her mind off the numbing cold.

"Goddamn you Amy!" she shouted against the increasing wind. "This is all your fucking fault!" Amy never understood that Julia's work was more than merely a paycheck. If they hadn't argued she wouldn't be bouncing around in the churning waters of the Atlantic Ocean like a fucking cork, fighting not to be killed by the one thing she loved.

As she hung on, wondering if help would arrive, she felt her body lifted out of the water and slammed against the buoy. She was dazed as her head struck the strut she was clinging to. Plan B, she thought. I can either give up the fight and drown or let myself be beaten to death by this goddamn buoy. The thought that her death was only a matter of time seized control of her mind and her eyes stung from the salt of her own tears. She loved the ocean and respected its awesome power, but held no desire to become fish food. Maybe she could use the last of her air to go down to the
Peach
, tying her body to it so it would be found--eventually. In the midst of her thinking, she felt the buoy pull her up and tried to adjust her grip to make it stronger. Before she could interlock her fingers the bottom fell from beneath her as the buoy slid down a wall of water. When it rose beneath her again, she was jolted by slamming into the wave and lost her hold on the strut. Biting down on the mouthpiece, she dove and tried to locate the anchor line. Her breathing came in panicky gasps rather than slow smooth breaths, using up her air supply too quickly, but she couldn't stop the terror growing inside. She slung her arms around, praying she would find her lifeline again. She kicked her legs and popped to the surface. She removed the mouthpiece, gulping in water from the sea and rain from the sky.

In what seemed like a miracle, the wind began to taper off and the swells she bobbed in became less violent. She treaded water, using her dwindling air supply as little as possible. There was nothing she could do other than wait for the sun to come up and hope she hadn't been carried out of sight of the buoy.

Chapter Two

AS THE SUN began to make its spectacular appearance Monday morning, Julia couldn't believe she was still alive. Most of her air supply was depleted during the long night and she was exhausted. It would be hard enough to stay afloat without dragging along extra useless weight. She connected the hose from her air tank to her buoyancy vest, using the last of her air to inflate its air cells before removing the tank from her body. The sea around her had returned to its pre-storm calm, but the buoy was nowhere in sight. She had no idea how far the current of the Gulf Stream might have carried her. Trying to find one person in the thousands of square miles of the Atlantic Ocean made looking for a needle in a haystack seem like child's play. In the calm water, she flipped onto her back and took a deep breath as she pushed her dive mask onto the top of her head. She had been a world champion floater as a kid, even known to occasionally fall asleep in her parent's pool while floating on her back. The buoyancy vest would help her stay afloat, at least for a while. If she happened to hear a plane or see a ship in the distance, she could use the glass-like surface of her mask to reflect the sunlight as a signal.

She squinted into the sun, trying to find identifiable shapes in the scattered clouds and wondered if anyone was looking for her. She was still fairly certain she would die at sea, but then she hadn't thought she'd make it through the night. She figured she could survive a week without food, but would probably die of thirst even though she was surrounded by millions of gallons of water.
Where is Aquaman's sister when I need her?
She laughed out loud.
Hell, at this point I'd fuck his mother for a drink of fresh water!

"You can have a drink after Mass," her father told her every Sunday. Then, sure enough, Talbot Blanchard stopped on the way home and bought his little girl a milk shake or a fountain drink at the A & W near their home in Richmond. Those were good days. Church would just last a little longer this time was all. She smiled.
I can wait, Daddy. I can. You'll be proud of me.
The sun made her sleepy and she sank into the embrace of the world's largest water bed.

"WHAT DO YOU mean you can't find her?" Frankie snapped. "It's Tuesday for Christsake! We gave you her last known location!"

"There wasn't a trace of her anywhere near the site, Miss Alford. We've done low level flights over the entire area," the Coast Guard officer stated. "I'm sorry, but it's extremely unlikely she could have survived Sunday's storm. Her body could have been carried miles outside the search area."

The officer's use of the word "body" struck Frankie like a slap in the face. "You can't call off the search," she said, tears pooling in her eyes.

"I'm sorry, ma'am."

"What about the GPS on the
Discovery
?" Damian asked, his arm encircling Frankie's slumping shoulders.

"We picked up a weak signal briefly, but it was far outside the search area."

"Well, perhaps she tried to get away from the storm by taking a heading away from it," Frankie sneered. "Did ya happen to think of that one and plug it into your computer algorithm?"

"The signal came from just north of St. Augustine. If she made it safely to the coast, wouldn't she have called? She could have made it back to Tybee faster. In all honesty we believe someone hijacked her cruiser. Dr. Blanchard may have been killed in the process"

Frankie rubbed her face helplessly. "So that's it then?" she finally asked. She hadn't slept much since Saturday night and was well beyond her exhaustion level.

"I'm sor--"

"I know. You're sorry, Commander. You will notify us if wreckage or anything...else is found?"

"Immediately."

"What are we gonna do now, Frankie?" Damian asked as soon as the officer left the Institute's offices.

"The same thing Julia would have done. Continue the excavation of the
Peach
," Frankie said, striding out of the office.

SHE COULDN'T REMEMBER how many sunrises had come and gone, but knew enough had passed for her to be in serious trouble. Small cracks were beginning to open on her lips and burned continuously from contact with salt water. Surrounded by billions of gallons of water, she was dehydrating from the lack of fresh water. Even swirling sea water around in her mouth to moisten it led to dry heaves. She couldn't remember the last time she had been so hungry, but lack of water would kill her long before starvation had a chance.

She tried to guess where she might be. Since the storm swept her away from the
Peach
site she had seen no landmarks to give her a clue to her location. If she had been caught by the Gulf Stream she was floating north. If the storm surge had sucked her farther away from shore, she was aimlessly floating somewhere in the Atlantic, a dot surrounded by endless miles of water. If she had lost her grip on the marker buoy sooner, the storm might have carried her closer to shore. If, if, if! None of those thoughts would save her now. She was exhausted. Her muscles ached and only her knowledge of survival skills if lost at sea was keeping her alive.

She leaned her head back and squeezed her eyes shut. Every logical thought running through her mind told her she would never survive this ordeal, and yet she couldn't make herself give up. What had it all been for? Had her hard work and dedication been worth the loss of everything, perhaps even her life? Hazy memories of her proudest moment as a marine archaeologist bobbed through her memory. Was it all worth it?

Slowly her mind drifted back to a few days earlier when she stepped onto the deck of the
Discovery
, gently rolling on the waves making their way toward the Georgia coastline near Savannah, ten miles to the west. Watching the crew of the recovery ship prepare to bring their precious cargo into the sunlight for the first time in over a hundred and fifty years filled her with anticipation. Eighteen months earlier the Georgia Marine Archaeology Institute was contacted with news of a possible new shipwreck site. Images made while Coast Guard cutters tested their sonar booms revealed an outline indicating where a ship had gone down.

She walked to the railing and peered into the blue-green depths beneath her. Her short-cropped sun-bleached hair fluttered in the mild breeze wafting off the water. She could see the once huge wooden ship in her mind's eye. The year and a half long excavation revealed, a little at a time, the remnants of a three-masted wooden ship. While nothing as impressive as chests full of gold and precious jewels were discovered, to Julia the cannons and other wreckage debris near the ship represented a priceless link to the past.
What happened to you? How many died along with you?
Only time and patience could unveil valuable clues to the origin and history of the mysterious ship.

JULIA'S EYES POPPED open as a small wave of sea water crested over her head. She coughed and wiped the water away from her eyes, scanning the horizon once again. Was it worth it? she thought. "You're damn right it was!" she said to the emptiness around her. She smiled as she remembered the rest of the best and worst day of her life. "I'd do it again without a second thought."

"You can see her in your sleep, can't you?" a voice from behind Julia said.

Without looking back, she answered. "I do dream about her. She calls to me like a lover in my sleep."

"Well, I don't know if I'd go quite that far." Frankie Alford said as she leaned against the rail beside Julia. "Scared?"

Julia smiled as she looked out over the water. "A little. This is the biggest project I've ever been responsible for. I don't want to fuck it up, Frankie."

"You're doing great. You've been inordinately careful, painfully slow and precise, annoyingly demanding and critical and I won't even start on your micro-managerial skills."

"Run out of negative adverbs for my work methods?"

"Pretty much," Frankie chuckled. She turned Julia to face her and added, "I've learned how it's supposed to be done from you, Dr. Blanchard. It's been worth taking it slow and today is the pay-off we've all been waiting for. Now get going so that damn cannon doesn't have to wait another century."

Laughing, Julia pulled the rubberized hood of her diving suit over her head and tucked in stray strands of hair while striding toward the diving platform at the rear of the ship. The day began as slightly overcast, but the sun finally won the battle, making the peaks of the small waves around the
Discovery
shimmer. Julia climbed down the four-step aluminum ladder from the main deck to the diving platform, joining the second member of the project dive team, Damian Lorenz. Like Frankie, he was a volunteer graduate student working on the marine excavation.

"Everything set?" she asked.

"Ready to rock and roll, Doc," Damian answered with a boyish grin. Despite his shaggy head of black hair and generally unkempt appearance, Damian proved to be a serious marine archaeologist with an ingrained belief that work should be fun or it shouldn't be done at all.

Julia slung an air tank onto her back and snapped the belt around her waist. She brought the mouthpiece to her mouth to test the flow of air. She sat on the lid of a storage compartment and slid her feet into her flippers. Julia then made her way to the rear edge of the platform where she knelt down and dipped her mask into the water and pulled it on, letting it sit on her forehead. She pivoted around with her back to the water and smiled up at Frankie who was leaning on the railing of the main deck and gave her a thumbs up. She pulled her mask down, adjusted it slightly and inserted her mouthpiece. With a nod toward Damian she flipped off the platform into the silent world below the
Discovery
.

Approximately five fathoms separated the final resting place of the ship and the ocean's surface. Even though the underwater world she loved was beautiful in many ways, Julia remained wary as she and Damian made their four-story descent. It always surprised her to read about the relatively shallow depths in which many shipwrecks were discovered. One well-preserved Spanish galleon was discovered in only twelve feet of water off the Texas coast.
The Peach
was thirty-six feet deeper. Over time, sediment flowing into the Atlantic from the Savannah River estuary and bottom soil carried into shore by Atlantic storm surges successfully entombed the large ship.

Sunlight filtered through the water, becoming dimmer as the depth increased. With each descent Julia was shocked when the now-exposed vessel unexpectedly came into view. One moment there was nothing. The next the graceful ribs of the inner hull rose from the murky waters like the ribs of an ancient mammoth. Perhaps it was a blessing that the Continental Shelf was sparsely populated by either vegetation or more than small schools of fish. Only occasionally would they spot a nurse shark or a barracuda, but the team's presence didn't seem to provoke them into more than mild curiosity.