Ryan Lockwood - Below

“Get a GPS, Mike.” They would need a waypoint of the location where they had recovered the object.

“Good eye spotting that thing. What the hell is it?”

Sturman lifted the orange and white object out of the net. It appeared to be made of heavy-duty PVC, with a metal cap. It seemed hollow. “Not sure. There’s writing on it, though. ‘Property of P-L-A-R-G. Reward if found.’ There’s a phone number, and some writing in Spanish that I think says the same thing.”

“PLARG. The Point Lobos Aquarium Research Group. That’s a research institute up in Monterey Bay,” Mike said. He pronounced it “plarge.”

“A research institute. Well, this probably isn’t going to help us much.”

Sturman headed to his radio to call in what he’d found. Part of the search protocol. Unless the uncle or his brother had brought this thing onto their fishing boat, it probably was unrelated to their search. He picked up the mouthpiece of his marine radio.

“Three-four-one, Sturman, over.”

The radio crackled back. “Sturman, this is three forty-one. Go ahead.”

“Hey, Montoya. Phan and I have found something.”

It was dark at the wreck of the HMCS Redemption , as it always was a hundred feet down. But it was peaceful. This ship had always made Sturman think of a church cathedral, and in a way it was.

When he had been a kid growing up in the mountains of Colorado, he had felt the most connected to God when out in the woods. Hunting alone on quiet mornings in the snowy pines and watching the sun rise over distant purple peaks, or sitting atop a bluff near his father’s ranch and watching the sun set over red rocks to the west in the summertime, he had somehow felt connected to it all. When he dove down to the silent, otherworldly stage set by the Redemption , he sometimes had the same feeling.

Now, as he approached the deck of the huge vessel, he felt a strong urge to enter the hull and explore. He had time, and he wasn’t worried about the divers he had brought down with him. Had he even brought down other divers? He couldn’t remember, but it didn’t seem to matter.

He felt no fear as he swam through the black recesses of the hull. Only a strange calm, despite being alone deep underwater. As he passed through a hatchway, he glimpsed another diver.

Dark hair flowed around her head, but even with help from the bright beam of his dive light he couldn’t make out her face in the blackness. Yet there was something familiar about her petite figure, the way she moved gracefully even under the bulk of her scuba gear. He drew closer, trying to see who was behind the dive mask. Just as he was drawing close enough to see her face, he caught a playful look in her eyes, and she spun effortlessly in the water and disappeared through an opening in the ship.

Maria?

Sturman’s heart leapt at the thought, although he knew it was impossible. He kicked powerfully and hurtled after her. As he entered the next chamber, he saw that she was waiting on the far side, looking back at him. When he approached, she again darted away, deeper into the ship. He smiled and continued after her.

He followed her for several minutes, her teasing him by staying a short distance in front of him and enticing him to follow. He entered a larger room, perhaps a galley, to find that she was not there. He hovered weightless in the darkness, scanning three openings set into the walls of the room. Which way had she gone? There. He saw a thin stream of bubbles rising through an opening to his left.

He entered the next room. She was there, but something was wrong.

She looked at him differently now. She was not floating in a relaxed manner as she prepared to lead the chase. Instead, he noticed that for some reason she was turned toward him with her body positioned over a smaller exit. Her arms were outstretched to either side, hands gripping the sides of the hatchway. As though she was trying to hold on. Suddenly she was pulled violently backward, and a burst of bubbles escaped her mouth as she strained to maintain her grasp.

Heart pounding, he thrust himself into the room and kicked toward her. He could now see her eyes in the dive light. They were wide with horror, pleading. Help me. He hurried forward, desperate to reach her, but the thing in the blackness behind her tugged violently at her waist again. This time, she lost her grip and was wrenched backward through the opening, disappearing into darkness.

Sturman fought his way forward, but realized he was hardly moving anymore. A current was pushing seawater into the opening through which she had vanished, driving him away. The water flowing out was very cold, and somehow even darker than the water around him. He struggled against the powerful surge and managed to reach the hatch. As he grasped the rough steel of the ship and strained to pull himself forward, he came face-to-face with the woman. Maria.

Her dark eyes bore an expression of terror inside the dive mask, and her brown hair swirled around her head in the icy current. Her hands were outstretched toward him.

As he extended his free hand to save her from the invisible thing drawing her away, her regulator erupted from her mouth, and even in the heavy press of the water he was able to hear her muffled scream. Her body was torn away from him, wrenched into the blackness and out of the glow of his light.

Sturman cried out in fear and pulled himself forward, but then his fingers slipped off the edge of the opening and the powerful current sent him tumbling backward, away from her. His dive light went out and he began to spin in the blackness, helpless in the grip of the merciless black water.

In the darkness, something fleshy began to touch the side of his face, sliding along his cheek and into his lips. He cried out as the thing ran over his skin, swinging his fists toward the unseen evil.

Sturman bolted upright in his bed, causing Bud to leap backward. The dog wagged his tail warily and looked at his master with a confused expression. Sturman was covered in sweat and breathing hard. Only another dream.

He rubbed his face and felt dog slobber on his cheek. Maybe he had accidentally struck Bud while gripped by the nightmare. “Come here, buddy. I’m sorry.”

After a moment of coaxing, the dog padded back over to him and let him scratch his ears.

“That’s what I get for staying sober, pal. More damn nightmares.”

After a cold swim to wash away the dream, Sturman toweled off and fixed himself a pot of black coffee in the boat’s cramped galley. He threw on some clothes and sat in the stern, soaking up the morning sun as the warmth returned to his body.

As he sipped the steaming coffee, he studied the orange-and-white object in his hands. There was something alluring about it, as though it represented more than a simple fish marker. Sturman realized that despite having what many would consider a very exciting job, he lived a very routine life. Eat. Dive. Drink. Sleep. Something as small as finding this unique object provided a much-needed distraction.

It was a typical July morning in San Diego. There was a thin marine layer obscuring the sun, but it would burn off in a few hours. Sturman was comfortable in just shorts and a T-shirt even this early in the morning, and the country music playing over the radio was helping him relax.

Yesterday had been a long day. Sturman hadn’t pulled Maria into her slip until dark. Not surprisingly, they hadn’t found any evidence of the missing father and daughter. Sturman had fixed himself a steak before sunset, and then fallen onto his bed and into a heavy slumber.

As the county SAR official in charge of the operation, Sergeant Joe Montoya had let Sturman keep the orange device after a member of the Coast Guard on another vessel identified it as a pop-off tag marine biologists used to study large fish and marine mammals. Apparently, the tag had detached from a tuna or sea lion or some other larger animal, then floated to the surface. It had only been in the search area by coincidence. Finding unrelated detritus on the ocean surface when conducting searches was nothing new. All kinds of junk could be seen floating off Southern California: fast-food packaging, water bottles, plastic bags by the thousands. If they kept every piece of trash they found on SAR missions, the investigators wouldn’t know where to start on a case, so the search teams acted as a filter and didn’t mention all the miscellaneous man-made debris they found.