Wood's Reef Read Free

with his computer at home. 
    He knew what he’d found, and wanted to ensure he could find it again. Trufante snagged the buoy line with the gaff and wound the line around it as Mac increased speed, heading for his next trap line.

Chapter 3
     
    The pearly dew on the ice-cold Corona bottle shimmered in the heat. It was the hottest part of the day, late October, and it still got Africa hot. 
    They’d spent the last two hours checking their other traps, and Mac would have been heading in by now to offload his catch, but that piece of metal intrigued him. He wiped the bottle on his brow and tossed one to Trufante, then pulled the GPS coordinate up and hit the Go To button. The course and distance came up as he throttled up, and he followed the course indicated on the display. 
    Ten minutes later he pulled up on the site. Trufante shot him a questioning look as Mac yelled to toss the anchor. 
    “What up, boss? Why are we back here?”
    “Something down there I need to check on,” Mac said as he tossed him another beer to keep him distracted. 
     
    ***
     
    Mac was suited up with scuba diving gear this time. His back to the water he rolled over the side into the water. He quickly found the metal object and released the buoy. The GPS was good to about thirty feet, but he needed to be right over the top of it for what he had planned.
    “Pull the anchor and set the stern on top of that buoy.” He pointed to the red ball bobbing off the starboard side. “Right on top. No slack in the anchor line.”
    Trufante gave him a questioning look, no doubt thinking his day should have been over. 
    “Just do it.” Mac pulled himself onto the dive platform and waited for Trufante to find the mark and reset the anchor.
    The current had picked up since this morning, the tide moving out swiftly, and Trufante had a hard time getting on top of the buoy. Mac’s patience didn’t last long. He dumped his gear, went to the bow and released the anchor line from the cleat. The line slipped through his hands as he signaled Trufante to back down on the buoy. Line tied off again, he watched as the boat settled right over the buoy.
    He grabbed the pressure washer sprayer and hooked the end to a quick disconnect on the transom. The pressure washer was a recent addition to the custom boat — great for a quick cleanup, though he was going to use it for something else today. He had fifty feet of hose and the bottom was thirty feet down. That gave him twenty feet for maneuvering. He geared up and was back in the water. 
    When he ducked back under the surface, visibility was down to ten feet, the water full of silt picked up by the tide and his movements. A couple of hours and a tide change made all the difference in visibility. He hit the trigger on the sprayer and started washing sand away from the metal, pausing several times to allow the silt to settle. As more metal was revealed, it became evident exactly what this was. Unexploded naval ordnance was not uncommon here. But this didn’t look like any ordinary bomb. He wanted to get it out of here and see what it was all about. He knew he had to get it mostly exposed to break the suction with the sand. He worked his way around the object, becoming more concerned as the sand revealed an intact bomb. It was old. Rust was visible on the screw heads and the dings caused by the fall.
    This was far more dangerous than he’d realized. Fifty years in a saltwater environment could have eroded the skin of the bomb enough that the water pressure could puncture it causing an explosion. There was also the possibility if could have a nuclear core. Puncturing the fifty year old case could allow radioactive material into the water. He calculated the odds and realized the only choice was to get the bomb out of the water. Leaving it to decay further was not an option.
    Twenty minutes of blasting water against the sand revealed the full shape of the weapon — a foot and a half in diameter, and over seven feet