CHAPTER 1
Snow Pass, near Wrangell, Alaska
What struck Reggie Santos was the silence. He had followed Mack’s instructions and released the boat anchor. It splashed, and the first few feet of anchor chain rattled off the boat to be followed by the anchor rope humming as it whipped across the deck and over the bow. The rope went taunt causing Mack’s 37-foot fishing boat to swing in the fast current of the channel. Mack cut the engine. That was when Reggie noticed it—the silence. He took a moment to look around. The location where they had just dropped anchor, a place Mack referred to as Snow Pass, was beautiful. The Kashevarofs, a picturesque group of tiny islands, occupied the western border of the channel. On the far side was a larger landmass, covered in timber, called Zarembo Island.
But to Reggie, the place where they had anchored was eerie, perhaps foreboding. There were sounds all right. There were the despairing cries of a pair of hungry seagulls perched on the rocky shoreline, the distant shrill call of a bald eagle somewhere in the sky above him, and the occasional lonely blow of a feeding humpback whale nearby. But Reggie Santos was a city person. He should have felt elated and free, but he felt just the opposite. The silence and isolation enveloped him like a heavy blanket.
And then there was the swift-flowing water in the channel, with its treacherous whirlpools. They swirled like a myriad of sea nymphs, wanting to pull him off the deck and into their underwater world.
Breaking Reggie’s trance, Mack came out of the cabin carrying a coffee mug and stood next to him.
“Quite a view, wouldn’t you say?” commented Mack.
“It’s some place all right,” replied Reggie. “But it makes me nervous.” His knuckles were white from a tight grip on the railing as he stared at the whirlpools in the channel.
“This place can be a widow-maker for wives of sea captains,” said Mack as he too stared at the channel.
“What? Are you serious?” asked the startled Reggie.
Mack pointed. “Those whirlpools and exposed rocks all along the channel, they’re like graves and tombstones. This location has all the characteristics of a graveyard for ships. You would be surprised how many places like this there are in Alaska. If you don’t take them seriously, they’ll kill you.” He scanned the entire length of the channel. There were more channel markers visible than could be counted on two hands. “See those buoys and markers out there?”
“Yeah, I see them,” replied Reggie. “A good thing I guess.” Reggie realized too late he had revealed his inexperience to Mack, who had hired him to fill in for Mack’s partner.
Mack’s glance at him showed he had noticed, but the man continued like an instructor intending for him to learn something important. “The charts identify this place as Snow Passage, but the local fishermen refer to it as Snow Pass. Those channel markers are to keep you away from the rocks and shallow areas. Early Alaskan explorers knew the signs, men like Cook and Vancouver, and the steamboat captains during the Klondike Gold Rush era. Snow Pass was a definite navigational hazard. There weren’t any markers to guide them. All they had was their experience or their wits. Today, we’ve got these channel markers and GPS software to navigate by.”
“With all those aids you still call it a graveyard for ships?” said Reggie.
“Because it already is. If you look closely at the navigation chart, there’s a symbol for a derelict ship where we are anchored. There has to be a reason why the mapmakers added it. Did you know there have been over 3,000 shipwrecks in Alaskan waters?”
“No. That many, huh?” Reggie thought about what his boss said for a moment. Mack’s mention of steamships carrying Klondike gold seekers took his attention away from the whirlpools.
“I wonder if any of them were carrying gold.”
“Some were. One of the most famous was the steamship Islander in 1901. The Islander was bound for Seattle from Skagway with millions of dollars in Klondike gold. It sank after hitting a rock, or possibly an iceberg, in Stephens Passage near Juneau. Forty people lost their lives, a few of them being mighty rich gold miners.”
“Wow, we should be looking for the Islander,” exclaimed Reggie. His attention was now fully on Mack and his story.
“Already been found. My partner and I were two of the divers hired to bring her up. We made money on that job. But the expedition’s backers barely broke even from what they could salvage. The rusted steel hull split apart like a raw egg shell, and its cargo got scattered on the bottom of Stephens Passage. The rest of the gold is still down there.”
Reggie tapped a cigarette out of a pack and shook his head. “Damn, I’d love to be a treasure hunter.” He lit his cigarette and stared at Mack, who had donned his scuba diving suit several minutes before. “Why are you waiting? Are you going to dive? Maybe you can find us a shipwreck.”
“We got here early,” Mack replied. “I have to wait for the ebb tide to cease. I can only dive this spot during slack tide periods. Otherwise, the current is too strong.”
Mack took a sip of his coffee and glanced around him once more. He checked his watch as he and Reggie made their way to the aft deck. A row of air tanks was neatly secured along one side. Two live boxes, with a seawater recirculation system, were stowed at the stern ready for holding their possible harvest.
“The ebb tide should reach its slack in the next few minutes. I guess it’s time to start down. Give me a hand and zip up the back of my dry suit, Reggie.”
As Reggie complied, Mack pulled on his hood, put on flippers and an air tank. He checked the weights on his equipment belt, and clipped a line to it, which had several net collection bags attached. He intended to fill the bags with his harvest.
“You never told me exactly what you’re after,” said Reggie. “You said it might be risky. Isn’t it dangerous diving alone? Someone told me you had a partner.”
“You sure ask a lot of questions. You told me you have been around boats and have plenty of commercial fishing experience.”
“I’ve been in Alaska almost a year,” the man replied. “Spent the first summer working on a seiner. But full-time, year-round jobs are hard to find for someone like me who is considered an outsider by the locals. I’m near broke. Mack. So when you started asking around for a temporary deckhand, I jumped.”
“Well, my partner got a call to do a special job. I’ve been out of work myself for awhile and I’ve got bills to pay. So, I’m going after sea cucumbers. Harvesting sea cucumbers isn’t easy but it can be profitable.”
“Why sea cucumbers? Somebody eats those things? They’re like slugs.”
“Sea cucumbers are a high-value export—mostly to southeast Asia. I can make two thousand dollars from a single dive.”
Two thousand dollars for a day’s work sounded good to Reggie. He nodded agreeably.
“Okay Reggie, now listen carefully. I’m going to harvest as much as I can in 30-40 minutes and try to fill these bags. Your job is to keep a sharp eye on the collection bag line as well as the anchor. I don’t think there is much chance of dragging anchor. If it drags, let out more line. I will be following it down and using it to come back up.”
Reggie nodded again. “Okay, I think I got it.”
“The line will stretch out in the current, just as our anchor rope is. When you see a couple of jerks, and the buoy attached to the line bobs, pull like hell. It will be heavy, and you’ll be fighting the current. Don’t stop. Some of our catch could spill out, or worse, it could hang up on the rudder.”
“Just fill the bags with gold.” Reggie said laughingly.
“Don’t laugh,” replied Mack. “Sea cucumbers are almost as valuable as gold, and I only get one shot at them before the current gets too strong.”
Being cautious, Mack scanned the narrows one last time. There were no boats anywhere near them to notice what he was doing.
He clicked on his dive light and checked his dive computer, finally ready to descend his depth-marked anchor line. Turning on his air regulator and testing his breather, he stepped off the swim deck at the boat’s stern.
CHAPTER 2
Mack Davis and his partner ran a small business engaging in commercial diving, but they had a side gig harvesting specialty seafood—species with high demand as Asian delicacies. They focused on three species—sea cucumbers, sea urchins, and scallops. Where they harvested was in closely guarded secret locations, harvesting without a permit and selling their catch to black market buyers. Mack knew other guys who had their own secret locations around Southeast Alaska and the coast of British Columbia. He marked his spots on a chart using a code. This spot was new and an unproven place. It had been researched months ago using only navigation charts. He expected a dive at this location would be tricky, which was one reason he felt it could be highly productive.
Mack’s objective was an underwater bench along the westerly side of the channel at a depth of 60 feet but dropping to over 350 feet. The water was murky, a result of glacier meltwater mixing with the outflowing tidal waters, an inconvenience limiting his field of vision to less than ten feet.
Reaching his dive depth, he was pleased to spot dozens of his quarry in the intense beam of his light. He worked quickly, plucking the sticky creatures off rocks and stuffing them into his net bags as the current swept him along the bottom until the current slammed him against something hard. Mack’s right shoulder felt cold. Whatever his body had struck, it was sharp, and had poked a small hole in his dive suit. Ignoring the cold water seeping into his suit, his first thought was what the hard surface was he had struck. He realized he was looking at the steel hull of an old shipwreck. Mack began breathing rapidly, trying to make sense of it. “The derelict marked on the chart?”
He pushed himself away from the surface. As he swept the beam of his lamp back and forth, the barnacle-covered, rusted hull appeared as pale as the carcass of a dead whale. But it was definitely the hull of a ship. Higher up was the dark shadow of something else. A wooden-hulled vessel lay atop the steel hull. “A second vessel? This is interesting,” thought Mack.
Before exploring further, he used the butt of his dive knife to scrape an X on the steel hull, marking the spot in case he needed to get his bearings. The knife slipped from his hand, and as he grabbed for it, a glint of something shiny amongst the bottom debris reflected in the beam of his dive light. He swept the silt away with his gloved hand to reveal a rotten wooden crate filled with canvas bags, which fell apart when he touched them. Mack grinned. Placer gold nuggets gleamed like tiny beacons in his light. Excitedly, he picked up several and placed them in a small mesh bag on his belt.
Kicking upward, he swam past the remains of a row of windows and doors. “Doors to ghostly staterooms now crushed to rubble—an old passenger steamship?”
Farther above him was the bow of the more recent vessel. He could make out large, painted letters. Rubbing away some barnacles, he read the name. “U.S. Army P-114. Amazing, it must be a World War II military boat.”
Moving along the hull, he discovered a large, jagged opening. Shining his light into the interior, were rows of sleeping berths or bunks along each side of the space. Mack’s curiosity was now overwhelming. He hesitated for a moment and checked his dive watch. He had another twenty minutes to explore what he had discovered. He wanted to leave time to gather more of the gold nuggets.
Carefully avoiding the jagged edges of the opening, Mack pulled himself into the space. Pushing aside a curtain of seaweed, he moved farther into the dark void. A metal case on one of the bunks caught his eye and his curiosity. “This is interesting. Why would a case be left lying on a bunk?” He scraped off some of the barnacles on its surface, revealing lettering on the top of the case. The words were not in English, but in German. “Maybe some type of instrument made in Germany? I wonder what it would be.” Inspecting how to open the case, he discovered two latches. He removed one of his gloves to see if he could undo the fasteners and open it. With a little effort, they came free, and he pried the lid open with his dive knife.
The contents surprised him. Inside, packed in foam padding, were row upon row of small glass vials, the kind one would find in a chemistry laboratory. He picked up two of the vials and held them in his hands. They contained an amber-colored fluid. “Huh, it looks just like the marine motor oil I use in my boat engine.” He tipped the vials and watched the thick liquid inside slide around. It shimmered like liquid gold in the beam of his headlamp. Mack stuck one of the vials in his collection bag for closer inspection back on the boat. As he was replacing the second vial, he sensed movement in the dark recesses of the compartment. A huge lingcod with a massive head darted past him for the opening in the hull. Startled, his hand struck the edge of the case, causing the vial to slip from his grasp. The stopper broke loose and came free. Some of the contents spilled and mixed with the water. Several droplets of the thick, oily liquid adhered to his bare hand. He waved his hand to flush them off and slipped his glove back on.
His curiosity about the amber liquid was no longer, and his brain shouted an alarm. “Did I expose myself to something?”Letting go of the lid on the case, Mack hurriedly backed away. As he turned toward the opening, he felt a sudden tightening in his chest. He gasped for air, hyperventilating, and releasing a mass of air bubbles. His body trembled uncontrollably. Mack frantically kicked free of the opening and yanked on the collection bag line, signaling the deckhand on the surface to pull it up.
CHAPTER 3
On the back deck of the dive boat. Reggie Santos, the newly hired deckhand, sat casually smoking his last cigarette. Reggie had moved to Alaska with the expectation of making lots of money, only to learn well-paying Alaskan jobs were often seasonal. He was broke and out of work. His dream of getting rich had faded months ago. When Mack Davis offered him excellent pay for five days of work on his boat, albeit illegal, it was an answer to his desperate situation.
The buoy he was supposed to watch bobbed. He jumped with excitement at seeing the signal and tossed his cigarette overboard to pull up the line. Reggie grinned, feeling the weight on the line. It was heavy, possibly a bonanza harvest.
It was Mack. The fingers of one of his gloved hands were bound tightly in coils of rope. Mack’s body was shaking uncontrollably as Reggie hauled him onto the boat and tore off his dive mask. Mack’s nose and mouth were flowing with yellow saliva. His eyeballs bulged like the eyes of a sea bass yanked from the bottom of the sea. Mack gasped one last time, screamed, and uttered three words as he died. “Don’t…touch…me.”
Revolted at the sight of Mack’s contorted face, Reggie leaned over the railing and vomited. When he looked back at the body, he noticed something odd. One of Mack’s gloved hands clutched one of the collection bags. Reggie kneeled and pried the hand from the bag. A small glass vial and gold nuggets spilled onto the deck.
