Fallen Palm (Jesse McDermitt Series) by Wayne Stinnett Read Free Book Online

they’d dived together in three weeks. Probably nothing, but he had to check. Lester could only come along on Friday’s, but they did squeeze a couple of night dives in, on places nearer the shore. When they weren’t checking out hot spots from the depth finder, Russ was busy pouring over charts and internet websites. “Look, kid, the Lynx was a blockade runner and was reported to be carrying $140,000 in gold bars.”
    “You been looking for this boat for years, you said?” Lester asked. “Seems like a lot of work for only $140,000 worth of gold.”
    Russ grinned at him, “Yeah, ain’t inflation great. Look, during the Civil War, gold was about $170 an ounce. Know what it is today?” Lester shook his head. “Today, that same gold would be worth nearly ten times that amount. The Lynx was carrying twelve gold bars, each weighing ten pounds, that’s almost 2000 ounces. At today’s rate of $1400 an ounce, it’d be worth over a two million bucks. Even more than that for its historic value.” Not that Russ was interested in the history. His man in Fort Lauderdale would pay him seventy cents on the dollar for the melt weight of anything he found. He’d melt down anything from gold coins to bronze cannons. Just one of those gold bars would give him a payday over $157,000. He and Lester had agreed on splitting anything they found 80/20.
    “You ready, kid?” Russ asked, as he put on his mask. Lester replied with a nod and they both fell backwards off the skiff, on opposite sides. Each of them had a spear gun and goodie bag, to make it look like they were just a couple of spear fishermen. The bags were over sized and each held a small, underwater metal detector capable of finding metals buried up to two feet deep.
    Once they reached the bottom, they found the ridge which the depth finder had pointed out on the boat. Swimming along the bottom of the ridge, it looked like it was going to be yet another false hit. Lester was about ten feet out from the ledge, as they’d agreed on earlier, and Russ was just a few feet out. They swung their detectors back and forth as they followed the ridge and Russ was also studying the ridge itself. After about fifty feet Russ saw a nice sized grouper hiding out in a hole and speared it. Putting it in his bag, he looked over at Lester, who suddenly stopped and waved his detector back and forth over an area in the sand. He then started digging with a small gardeners shovel they each carried. While he was doing that, Russ noticed that the ridge seemed to have a symmetry which he hadn't noticed earlier. He moved closer to the face of the wall. As he was studying it, he heard a banging noise and turned to see that Lester had found something and was tapping his tank with the shovel. He swam over to take a look at what the kid had found. In a hole that Lester had dug out, he looked down at the unmistakable shape of several large chain links. They uncovered more and more of it and soon they could see five feet of large anchor chain, heavily encrusted and rusted. Each link was about six inches long and three inches wide with the rings being at least three quarters of an inch thick. Russ pulled out his writing slate and penciled the words, “anchor chain”. Lester nodded and took the slate and wrote, “From the ship?” Russ only shrugged, and then motioned Lester to follow him. They swam back to the ledge and Russ pointed out the straight lines in the rock. Russ checked his gauges and motioned that it was time to surface. They’d only been down thirty five minutes, but had burned up more than the usual amount of air digging up the anchor chain. Russ swam back over to the chain, tied the lanyard from his dive flag to it and they started toward the surface.
    Once they reached the surface, they saw that they were about one hundred yards from the boat. They started toward it, swimming on their backs, using only their fins.
    “Ya think that might be the ship we’re looking for, Boss?” Lester