He felt swallowed by the darkness.
Another roar of bubbles swept past his ears - too much air, way too fast. His mask felt askew, or maybe his mind was just playing tricks in the darkness. He adjusted it anyway, cleared it with another quick burst of air. He felt a burning sensation, then cold, as if the sudden and total darkness had thrown off his body's thermostat. His breathing was becoming erratic. He knew it wasn't possible, but his head felt as though it had swelled to twice its normal size. He was a split second away from the breaking point when, suddenly, he spotted a faint grayish glow from beyond. It was barely noticeable at first, but as his eyes adjusted to the blackness, the ball of light in the distance grew brighter. A light switched on, then another. Danfield and the other S&R diver finned quickly ahead. Crenshaw turned his light back on and followed.
Fear was replaced by adrenaline, and Crenshaw was swimming with a determination equal to that of his teammates. They passed a jagged cluster of blackened rocks, then turned a tight corner. Even with their own lights on, the light ahead was visible. They were closing in, and Crenshaw was like a new man, spurred on by the excitement of the chase. He swam past the second diver and was about to overtake Danfield, but they both stopped short. The light from beyond was moving away from them, but they could go no farther.
They had reached the iron bars.
Suddenly, Crenshaw recalled the video feed from the recovery of Ashley Thornton. Her body had been chained to iron safety bars that the park had installed years earlier to prevent divers from exploring the most dangerous reaches of the Devil's Ear. Crenshaw grasped the bars and shook them like a man falsely imprisoned. They didn't budge. The light on the other side was fading. He and Danfield exchanged looks of exasperation, unable to speak, but they were clearly sharing the same thought. Mia's kidnapper had found another way into the Devil's Ear. He knew these caves better than they did.
And he was getting away.
Chapter
65
The footpath proved to be the long route, taking Jack past several cottages and campsites before he finally reached the Santa Fe River. His own sense of direction could have gotten him there much faster, but according to Agent Henning, it was more important for him to make the kidnapper think that he was following the kidnapper's plan. It was a tough job to swallow, since he had been set on negotiating a simultaneous exchange. The FBI had taken over and sent in its divers before Jack could actualize the second half of his plan. Jack wasn't happy about that, but it hardly seemed in Mia's interest to fight the FBI now.
The trip took almost twenty minutes, around patches of ground too swampy for passage, over sand dunes, and through hardwood hammocks. Finally, the map led him to the aluminum fishing boat described in the kidnapper's note.
The river was about seventy-five feet wide in these parts, with willow-swept banks that sloped to depths of ten to fifteen feet. The current was gentle, moving just fast enough to indicate that he had been walking upriver, away from the great Suwanee. Theo's rendition of Old Folks at Home suddenly popped into Jack's mind, carrying him back to a carefree day when he'd lost that hearing over the statue of David and then introduced his best friend to Mia. That all seemed like years, not weeks, earlier. Jack could only imagine how long ago it must seem to Mia.
The fishing boat was tied to a piling, no lock. Jack gave it a quick sweep with the flashlight. There were a few dead crickets on the bow seat, presumably bait left behind by a panfish angler. A pair of oars stretched almost the entire length of the boat, but fortunately Jack would not be rowing. The boat had a small outboard engine and, if the kidnapper was true to his promise, a full tank of gas. Jack untied the boat, then climbed inside as he shoved off from the bank. He stuffed the backpack with Theo's cash securely beneath the seat at the bow. The current was stronger once he got away from the shoreline, and he felt himself drifting downriver. He pulled once, then again, on the engine's starter cord. On the third attempt the outboard whined, gurgled, and spit river water before it finally hummed with confidence at idle speed. Jack's directions were to head upriver at no-wake pace.
He turned the boat around and began the journey, wondering if the winding river was carrying him closer to, or farther from, Mia.
The FBI's on-site command center was stone silent, but the tension was high. Andie Henning and her team of technical and field specialists were in the main cottage at the Ginnie Springs campground, a small wood-frame building that was situated perfectly for on-site coordination of law enforcement activities. The only drawback was the heat. The air conditioner was broken, and the windows had to remain shut with shades drawn, lest an outsider detect the FBI's presence.
A tech team in the kitchen was ready to intercept cellular telephone communications. Another tech agent in the bedroom stood ready to track any signal from the GPS transmitter that Jack had placed in the capsule filled with ransom money. In the living room, Andie studied a detailed map on the wall. It was the most up-to-date charting of the spring systems of the Suwannee River basin. Standing at her side was Agent Crenshaw, his wet suit still dripping river water onto the hardwood floor. Behind him was Bruce Gelhorn, director of the Suwannee River Water Management District. He was a lean man with the classic raccoon suntan - a sunbaked face with white ovals around his eyes that matched the shape of his sunglasses. Gelhorn wasn't just the cartographer; he'd personally dived most of the many springs below the confluence of the Santa Fe and Suwannee rivers.
Andie heard a bit of radio squeal in her headset, followed by an update from the leader of the field team that was posted at July Spring, across the river from the Devil's Ear. Swyteck is headed upriver at about three knots per hour, the field agent reported.
Copy, said Andie.
She turned her attention back to her map. Why would he send Swyteck upriver?
Gelhorn went to the map, pointing as he spoke. I suppose the only way to answer that is to look at what you've got up there. It's basically a series of springs with a sprawling underground network of caves. Some of it is mapped, some is unmapped.
Crenshaw said, But my dive team saw the light in the Devil's Ear. I saw it, too, with my own eyes. That means he has to be in this area.
It's a limestone honeycomb down there, said Gelhorn. You could spend your whole life looking for someone and come up empty-handed.
He can't get too far away before he has to come up for air, said Andie.
Don't be so sure, said Gelhorn. He's obviously an experienced cave diver. We know that much from what Agent Crenshaw and his dive team just witnessed. Not many people could find a backdoor entrance into the Devil's Ear, on the other side of those iron bars.
I agree with you, said Crenshaw. But like Agent Henning just said, unless he's got gills, he has to come up for air.
Eventually, yes. But surely he planned ahead and figured that the FBI might be covering Ginnie Springs and the Devil System like a wet blanket. In which case, I doubt he'll be popping up anywhere in this area.
What are you saying? said Andie. He's using spare tanks?
That would be my bet.
Spare tanks from where? said Crenshaw. Carrying one active and a spare is hard enough down there.
Again, I'm assuming that this guy's a planner who knows the caves in these parts extremely well. He might have figured out that the FBI would force him to stay down longer than he would like. To cover that scenario, maybe he stashed tanks throughout the system in advance. It's easy to hide stuff in crevices or behind knobs of rocks. He could swim to it, change tanks, continue on his way, change tanks again, swim some more. He could do this several times while working through the system. The aquifer is all interconnected. Now, he can't stay down forever, but he could push it for several hours this way. That's long enough for him to swim well out of the area covered by your field agents before he has to surface and make a run for it on dry land.
Andie fell silent. Gelhorn had just laid out a scenario that her team wasn't prepared to cover. So if that's the case, it's all going to come down to how quickly we can respond to the GPS tracker once he surfaces. Which brings me back to my original question. Why send Swyteck upriver?
Because the kidnapper is headed downriver? said Crenshaw.
Or because he wants us to think he's headed downriver, said Andie.
I could suggest another possibility, said Gelhorn. There is a point upriver where the Santa Fe runs underground.
The entire river?
Yeah. A three-mile stretch ending here, he said, indicating, at O'Leno State Park. The siphons between here and there can be kind of dangerous.
Siphons?
They're the opposite of a spring. Most of Florida's major siphons are on the Sante Fe, draining over three hundred thirty million gallons of water every day directly into the aquifer. We've even named some of them, like Big Awesome Suck and Little Awesome Suck. There are others, too. Sometimes it's a gentle whirlpool. Other times it's like a giant flushing toilet a good fifteen feet across. Big and powerful enough that it could easily suck down anything that floats along, like a log or even a kayak or canoe.
Or a person, said Andie.
Yeah. Or a person.
Andie picked up her phone.
Who you calling? asked Crenshaw.
Swyteck, she said. Something tells me that we just figured out why he's traveling upriver.
Chapter
66
He ditched his first pair of spent air tanks about a quarter mile northeast of the Devil's Ear. Cold numbed his lips as his groping glove reached for the fresh tank and unclipped the regulator. His teeth bit down on the mouthpiece, and his lungs were eagerly sucking air the instant he blew it clear. In all, he had six replacement tanks stashed away in the darkest reaches of the cave system, enough to get him beyond any reasonable police perimeter. The dive lights on the other side of the iron bars, however, had definitely reshaped his notion of a reasonable perimeter. He hadn't expected the FBI to put Mia's life in jeopardy by coming down to search for him. Perhaps the law enforcement coverage was broader, more aggressive than anticipated. Maybe additional divers were up ahead. He couldn't take the risk.
It was time to implement Plan B.
His dive light found the next marker. In addition to stashing air tanks, he'd spent weeks fastening metal tags to the walls of his predetermined escape route. By following his markers, he could navigate through the caves without a lifeline. He finned forward, soaring through water clear as mountain air, his body sliding just inches above a floor of rippled silt. The tunnel narrowed, then curved left. Smaller, circular tunnels branched off like capillaries from an artery. They were too narrow for human passage. They were perfect, however, for storage of the ransom money.
He grabbed a knob of rock and held himself steady, the current flowing past him. It wasn't too powerful - further confirmation that this was indeed a suitable place to hide the money. Squirreling away the capsule hadn't been part of his original plan, but it seemed necessary now that Swyteck had called in the FBI. Surely they had persuaded him to drop a GPS tracking chip into the ransom capsule, which raised an obvious question: What kind of amateur did they think they were dealing with? It was no skin off his back to hide the capsule down in the caves and return for it in a week, a month, six months. Then, even if the cops did catch him pulling the capsule full of money out of the aquifer, he could simply claim to be a lucky recreational diver who had happened upon the loot.
With one good shove, he wedged the capsule deep into a long, narrow opening. He tugged it once, then tried to jerk it from side to side. It didn't budge. This baby wasn't going anywhere until he came back to get it. He turned around - not an easy feat in such tight quarters - and finned down the narrow tunnel toward the next marker.
The current was getting stronger, not yet of the first magnitude, but close. He was making good time, but he had to slow himself down. Too much speed and he might miss his marker altogether. The marker was, in effect, his lifeline. Every move he made was in relation to the series of markers. At each junction, he could continue swimming to the next replacement tank, or he could bail out and surface.
Plan B was the bail out.
He was coasting now, just enough air in his wings (as cavers called them) to hover between the floor and ceiling and ride the current. Flashes of blue and violet glinted at the outer reaches of his dive light, nothing but darkness beyond. It was easy to see how divers became disoriented down here, the way the ceiling, walls, and floor converged into shades of gray, dark shadows, and then a black door to the abyss. He cut his speed and braced himself against a rock cluster, coming to a complete halt. He turned and shone the light back into the tunnel he'd just exited. It didn't look at all familiar - not a good thing for a cave diver. Had he been less experienced, he might have freaked. He knew better, however. Nothing ever looked familiar when viewing it from the back side. He flashed the light forward, down the tunnel ahead of him. The silver-blue cone swept across gray and black hollows of limestone until, finally, the little sparkle in the distance gave him all the reassurance he needed. He finned with confidence toward the square chrome marker that pointed the way out.