The med kit was lying in plain sight on a bed of pristine white sand, a small red crab poking at it with claws. Dean chased the crustacean away. The packs were much too bulky to drag to the surface with any ease, so he simply tied on the rope, released the bladder and his father would paddle over to the bouncing buoy and haul them into the canoe.
A dark shape moved on the surface, and the med kit ascended. All right, only a single bag to go, the most important one, J.B.’s explosives.
Studying the undersea vista, Dean tried to reconstruct their hasty swim from the sinking skiffs in his mind. Now, if the lifeboat with Jones sank over there, and he had found his own backpack there, then the last bag should be somewhere near the coral breakers. The tide was going out when they arrived, and a lot of the smaller items had been swept out to sea by the strong currents. Thankfully the breakers removed any possibility of a riptide capturing the boy and hauling him miles away before releasing his drowned corpse. Otherwise, he never would have risked this dive without more equipment, as crude as it was.
Charging his lungs again, Dean headed for coral and swam along the irregular side of the submerged wall. Finally he spied the canvas bag hanging from the spar of a sunken ship lying smack in the middle of the pass. The ship was cracked in two, its broken hull draped over both sides of the reef.
Swimming close, Dean grabbed the spar to slow his passage and heard it break apart, then saw the bag plummeting into a hole in the deck, disappearing inside the vessel. Releasing the rotten piece of wood, Dean went lower and lower until locating the bag of munitions. Most of the bottom of the ship was gone, ripped away by the coral. Through the gaping chasm of the hull, the bag had fallen onto a ledge of pink coral, the straps waving in the currents.
Making a decision, Dean exhaled early and filled his lungs to the maximum, emptying a bladder. Then casting away the excess drag of the bamboo spear, he swam using both hands, going straight into the belly of the sunken vessel.
Trying not to touch anything, Dean maneuvered around the dim recess of the craft. The pink coral showed through the hull, rising from the shattered planks in spurs and sharp peaks, but the coarse material reflected the dim light from above, giving him just barely enough illumination to traverse the razor-sharp obstacles.
However, the water had distorted his estimation of the depth, and his lungs were aching by the time be reached the bag and grabbed it off the ledge. Success! Draping it over a shoulder, he realized how heavy it was when he started to sink. Quickly drawing his knife, he sawed at the leather belt of rocks around his waist to lighten the load. Busy at the task, he didn’t notice when he drifted to the stairs and collided with the railing.
Small as the contact was, the entire ship groaned loudly and began to break apart. The deck rose as the ceiling fell. Planks splintered, silt clouding the water, and the mast slowly smashed through the hatch like a falling tree. He dodged clumsily, but blackness engulfed him and something painfully glanced off his shoulder, then the bag was jerked away, dragging him along.
Savagely Dean hacked at the darkness, and the munitions bag came free. As the awesome weight of the rotten hull drove the bow into the sand, the wreckage began to pile upward. Frantically swimming for the stairs, Dean dodged a thrust from the shattering railing, went under a rushing bulkhead and darted into the cargo hold.
The destruction slowed slightly as the aft section of the keel stubbornly resisted, and Dean took the opportunity to get his bearings. Floating between decks, he saw there were still tiny pinpoints of light streaming in from above, which meant he was in the shallows of the harbor. But he had to get out fast, and without touching anything. Next time he might not be so fortunate.