Shadows at Predator Reef by Franklin W. Dixon Read Free Book Online Page B

see was total blackness. This must be what being blind feels like.
    I quickly checked for any scrapes, cuts, or broken bones. Nope, just sore from the fall. I tried to keep calm and use my other senses to get my bearings. I could hear the muffled burble of the four hundred thousand gallons of water in the reef tank somewhere above me, and I caught a noseful of an old musty smell. Like ancient journey-to-the-center-of-the-earth old.
    That’s kind of what it felt like too—like I’d fallen straight through the earth into a dark underworld. At least I was alive. The dark was really starting to creep me out, though. Had I escaped from the jaws of a killer shark only to face some new horror I couldn’t even see? I fumbled around until I found the dive light that was hooked to my wet suit and clicked it on. The little beam felt like a breath of fresh air for my eyes after being surrounded by all that inky nothingness. Yes! Let there be light! But where was I?
    Turns out I was in a really old tunnel. The floors and walls were packed dirt reinforced by wood beams. Or, to be more precise, rotting wood beams. There were old tracks running along the floor. I shone the light back up at the trapdoor. Beside it there was a small hydraulic lift similar to the one next to Predator Reef.
    Everything started to click into place.
    So that was how Captain Hook had vanished—through the trapdoor hidden under the coral on the bottom of the reef exhibit, into the secret holding tank, onto the hydraulic lift, and into the underground tunnel I found myself in now. The tunnel totally explained how someone could have entered Predator Reef and abducted Captain Hook without being caught on camera. A diver could have swum up from below and never even had to poke their head out of the water.
    I examined the holding tank with my flashlight. It was a brilliant piece of engineering. It was airtight, so watercouldn’t enter or escape until one of the trapdoors was opened. When the top one was opened, the holding tank would fill with water from the exhibit so the diver could swim in with the turtle and then close the door, locking them safely inside, sealed off from the four hundred thousand gallons of water above. Opening the bottom trapdoor would then release the water contained in the holding tank, allowing the diver to lower the turtle with the hydraulic lift (so they wouldn’t go plummeting to the floor like I had) and presumably escape with the stolen reptilian booty. If they had some kind of cart or mobile turtle tank, they could then pull it, and the five-hundred-pound giant turtle, along the old tracks to freedom.
    So where was that five-hundred-pound turtle now?
    The tunnel looked like it had been there forever, but if I was right about the trapdoor and the hydraulic lift, somebody had very recently put a lot of thought and effort into transforming it into an escape route. Frank totally would have geeked out over the design of it all. I just needed to find a way out so I could tell him about it.
    I shone the light down the tunnel, which just disappeared into more darkness. I looked back up at the trapdoor. Even if I wanted to go back through the holding tank, there was still a giant angry shark up there waiting for me. Plus, I’d lost my regulator and Octo backup—and there was no way I was going to chance a free swim through shark-infested water without a breathing apparatus.
    â€œOkay, Joe,” I said to myself (the silence was really starting to get to me), “I guess we’re hoofing it.” I stuffed my heavy dive gear, including my flippers, over to the side of the tunnel, though I was still wearing my wet suit and dive boots.
    The tunnel went on for a few hundred yards before it started to branch off into a network of smaller tunnels to who knows where. Some of them were already caved in under a pile of rubble. I was sticking to the main tunnel.
    My right foot slid out from under me, and I caught