The Wreck

The competing sensations were delicious and soon Viv felt herself tensing. Her orgasm was smooth, seemingly timed to match the rhythm of her hips. It was far less intense than last night's and Viv was just enjoying it when Calizza suddenly rolled over, carrying Viv with her. Viv laughed at the surprise, but groaned when Calizza's hips drove the dildo deeply into her. The blonde wrapped her legs around her lover's hips and tried to relax as the athletic girl began to really drive into her with long, even strokes.

Viv was used to men who generally lasted a very short time when they were using the power and tempo Calizza established. She associated that kind of force and speed with the final moments of having sex, but Calizza didn't appear to be nearing orgasm.

Viv came again after a few minutes of such vigorous fucking. This one was intense, blotting out the world for a few exquisite moments. Pleasure rolled in on her, like the sea, when a rising tide creeps ever further up a sandy beach. Muscles she didn't even know she had began to spasm and for a brief moment, it felt as if something inside her had torn loose. This feeling inspired a momentary panic, which dissolved into euphoria.

After that, orgasms seemed to roll in on her with dizzying speed. Some were very intense, leaving her panting and moaning, others were not much stronger than after shocks, but they just kept coming. Soon they began to overlap one another, melding, blending, and rippling away.

Viv found herself crying out, holding Calizza's tight ass and pulling her down, thrusting up to meet her. For the first time in her life, she was really feeling what sex could be like. It was an epiphany that arrived on one shattering orgasm and departed on the next as conscious thought became impossible.

Later, as they lay together still joined by the faux cock, she wondered if anything would ever be the same for her again.

It was a glorious morning and Viv was filled with a sense of impending adventure and anticipation. The stakes were down, the site located and charted on the GPS system, and the equipment ready. After three days on site they could finally begin to search. She was gloriously sore from last night's fucking and she knew part of her ebullient good cheer was a result of being totally satisfied sexually for the first time in her life.

She was diving straight air today, saving the Nitrox for excavation and extraction operations, should they become necessary. The water was pristine today, the sediment stirred by the squall having settled out during the calm night. She had barely touched down on the bottom and started to clear debris from her sector when she saw a flash of metal. Viv felt her excitement rise, when the flash turned out to be three links of gold, she wanted to shout.

She caught the links and gently tugged, but they held fast. Removing her brush and trowel, she began to slowly remove the loose sand. As she worked, more and more of the chain was revealed to the light. She realized this chain probably hadn't seen the light of day in over three hundred years. She was always filled with a sense of awe and respect when she was excavating, but today it was even more profound. Despite her best efforts, she really believed the Gulphin had finally been found.

Deeper down, the chain coiled around an obstruction and she had to clear more sand and widen her opening. She wasn't particularly surprised to uncover a human illium and several vertebrae. Money chains were like wallets back in the early days of the Caribbean exploration. A person would wear the chain coiled around his or her waist, breaking off links to pay for goods and services. It was rare to find human remains, but not so uncommon as people would believe. The sand quite often made a good insulator, protecting things from the action of waves and marine life.

Viv took several pictures and made some notations on her black board before she finally uncoiled the chain and placed it in her ditty bag. It was a spectacular find, but it could have come from any wreck. What she was hoping for was something more definitive and she found it within inches of the human remains. It was nothing spectacular, as far as treasure went, just some beads in a small pile, but she recognized them for a rosary. Skeletal metacarpals were so close she could well imagine a priest, holding onto them tightly as the water closed over his head. Or perhaps as the knife slit his throat, she thought.

Viv shivered at the thought. She turned to see how close to the edge of the drop off she was and to her dismay, she saw the outline of a ship. Not a wooden ship, but it looked like a medium sized merchantman. She was dumbfounded and wanted to investigate, but her dive computer was beeping insistently. Her gauges were reading less than 100 PSI, so she tapped on her cylinder with her dive tool and both she and Andy ascended.

"Any luck?" Burt asked as he pulled her from the water.

"Gold," she said with a grin as his face broke into a smile.

"How bout you red?"

"Some iron fragments, maybe nails or connectors of some sort. Some wood fragments around them, but it's hard to say really."

"All right, show us the find," he said, turning towards Viv.

Calizza had come out on deck and joined them in gazing in wonder at the chain as it emerged from Viv's bag. It was delicate, but about three feet long, indicating someone of means. Some of the links had turned a dull color, but some still sparkled in the bright sun.

"Wow, you don't see one like that everyday," Andy said at last.

"I never have in thirty years of doing this," Burt said.

"I found one that was eighteen inches long off Key West when I was thirteen," Viv said.

"I remember that, showed up your dad. He found a doubloon or two if I remember correctly," Burt said with a smile at the happy memory.

Viv smiled and nodded, but her mind was already back to that modern ship.

"Burt, set me up on Nitrox this time around. Andy too."

"Find something?"

"I saw a ship down there, at about one hundred and eighty or ninety feet."

"Our ship?"

"No, it's a modern freighter. Maybe eight or nine thousand tons, sitting upright."

"That makes no sense. There isn't a wreck showing within miles of here on the charts."

"I know."

"It's a steel bottomed merchantman. Looks like three or more are sunk in the deeper water. I just don't understand it," Viv said.

They were all sitting in Burt's cabin around a table. Both men had beers in front of them, Calizza was sipping on a bottled water and Viv had a tumbler of Quervo before her.

"That money chain is certainly not from a steel merchantman," Andy said.

"No, and it doesn't explain why this place is a graveyard of ships and no one knows about it."

"How long do they look like they have been down?" Calizza asked.

"I'd guess twenty or thirty years by the coral growth on the deepest, but the one just off the point, it looks like less than a year. And they are all sitting upright, with no structural damage at all. Almost like they were intentionally sunk, but I've never heard of an attempt this far out to create an artificial reef." Viv replied.

"I wonder," Burt said, rubbing his chin.

"What?"

"Well, back about thirty years ago there were actual pirates operating in the Caribbean still. The coast guard found several ships that had disappeared, sunk in a bay not too long ago. All of them stripped bare."

"That was off Haiti though wasn't it?" Andy asked.

"I believe so, but..."

"As I recall, there were pirates operating here too. My uncle was very wary of them. To my knowledge they still are," Calizza interjected.

"What are you getting at Burt?" Viv asked.

"Uncharted shoal, with a deep drop off. Several steel bottomed merchantmen. It could be."

"What?"

"Well, let's say you're a pirate and you grab a big ship, do away with the crew and take over, what do you do with it? You can't just pull into a port, the authorities would grab you as soon as they got the paperwork. That little bay in Haiti, they figured the pirates anchored there, transferred the cargo to smaller ships, then scuttled the big ones. So why not here? It's damned near perfect. Shallow place off the main trade routes, you could anchor the big ship and the smaller ones, conduct the offloading, scuttle the big ship, then head to any of three dozen small ports to off load and sell the cargo."

"So we are sitting on top of evidence of pirate activity?"

"Could be."

"Fuck a duck," Viv blurted out.

All of her companions smiled at her use of the expletive.

"And it could still be going on," Burt added.

They all looked at one another apprehensively.

"What does this do to us?" Calizza asked practically.

"I don't know. If we report it, the maritime authorities will investigate. They'll send down divers, even if we removed all evidence of our work, they would demand to know what we were doing this far out."

"It's worse. If they follow procedure, they'll restrict all access. If any one of those diver's finds gold by accident, we'll be facing a lengthy court battle before we pull up enough to really stake a claim," Burt added.

"We could just not report it," Calizza suggested.

"There's no way we could claim we had done a serious archeological dive and hadn't noticed them. When we did make the claim and they were discovered, the authorities would be all over our asses. We've got to report it," Viv said glumly.

They all sat around for a while, when Burt perked up.

"Viv, how deep were the wrecks?"

"I guess one hundred and eighty to two hundred and fifty feet or so on the deep ones."

"Technical dives then?"

"Yeah, I guess. Definitely beyond the recreational limit, why?"

"What if we claim the wrecks?"

"I don't follow," she replied.

"Those ships are salvageable. I mean, we know the cargos are probably long gone, but the metal and fittings would make a salvage operation feasible profitwise wouldn't it?"

"I guess. I'm not a salvor, but at least one could probably be refloated. Why?"

"Don't you see?" Burt said, getting excited.

"Snap!" Calizza said with a huge smile.

"What?" Viv questioned, throwing her hands out.

"Look Viv, we claim the wrecks. Cover up our work on the Gulphin and let the maritime authorities investigate. The insurance companies have probably already paid off the claims for ship and cargo lost. They might fight you in a prize court, but I'm betting they won't. We bring out a barge, hire some technical divers and set them to work. Meanwhile, we quietly get back to work on the real wreck. It's the perfect cover. No one is going to be overly interested in a salvage operation. By the time they actually get ready to bring them up, we should have a lot of our wreck exposed and mapped. So we can go in and make the claim on the Gulphin. We will already have the salvage rights and we can arrest the area without raising any suspicion!"

"Holy cow!" Viv exclaimed.

Viv rose quietly, careful not to disturb her lover. She threw on a robe and exited the cabin, moving down to the rear deck. She needed some time alone to think. While her affair with the dark skinned beauty was progressing like a house-a-fire, her natural caution, and fear of close personal connections, were beginning to cause her problems. Tonight hadn't helped, with Calizza taking her from behind until she nearly passed out from the pleasure.

Viv noticed her tanks were prepped and ready for tomorrow. She hesitated, but decided she could afford the air for a night dive. She had found through time, that she thought more clearly underwater. Something about diving was cathartic and allowed her to relax in a way she never managed on the surface. From the equipment locker she grabbed two pony bottles, a light and some extra gear. The small, self contained cylinder and respirator combinations would allow her to surface safely, in the event her first or second stage regulators failed.

Solo diving was more dangerous than diving with a buddy, so she took extra gear, like a dive knife, the pony bottles, floats and an air whistle. She would stay in the shallows, she didn't need to be down deep and besides, the most interesting fish would be around the small reefhead. She slipped into the water, gave herself a final check and let the air out of her BCD.

The water was dark and warm and she soon lost herself in the natural beauty. The light gave added color to the marine life she usually missed because the water filtered out the sun's rays. She was watching a large lobster when she heard the engine. It was just a muffled throb, probably not even audible on the surface, but sound carried so much better in the water. It ceased suddenly and Viv soon forgot about it as she watched a couple of parrot fish playing.

It was only several minutes later that she remembered where she was and that muffled engine suddenly took on an ominous quality. Viv swam back to the anchor chain and slowly surfaced. What she saw sent a chill down her spine. A small cabin cruiser was tied up next to the Keyliner. The lights on the small ship were out, but those on the dive ship were ablaze. Two men stood on the dive deck with machine guns cradled in their arms while one smoked.

Pirates! It had to be. Now her friends were in mortal danger, but she couldn't think of anything to do. She just bobbed there in the shadow of the big ship. Eventually, several more men came out and got in a motor launch. They went across to the cruiser. One of the men on the deck tossed his cigarette overboard and they both disappeared.

She had to save her friends, but first, she had to do something about that other ship. It would be able to run them down easily. Viv placed her respirator in her mouth and submerged, kicking out strongly she was soon under the sleek ship. She was disappointed to see it was a waterjet drive. That meant she couldn't disable the props.

She was running through the list of things she had to work with when she remembered the equipment boxes on the wreck site. Viv dove, deeper into the darkness, afraid to use her light until she eventually touched bottom. She had no idea how far she was from the site, but was able to follow the drop off back to it. In the boxes she found just what she wanted. It was a large, battery operated drill.

The bit was exceptionally long. It consisted of a hollow tube, two inches in diameter, with cutting teeth along the outer edge. Viv used it to take core samples of wood, from beams too large to move. She could send the cores to the lab, where chemists and dendroarcheologists could give her a date and sometimes even a particular forest where it came from.

She wasn't too sure how well it would work on fiberglass, but she felt sure it would serve for what she had in mind. She rose slowly, breaking the surface some thirty feet from the smaller ship. Viv was almost there when a light came on, trapping her in its beam.

She dove quickly as bullets splashed around her. Viv was scared, but she continued on toward the ship. Once under it, she placed the cutting teeth of the bit on the boat and depressed the trigger. The drill was almost silent, but the teeth made an unmistakable sound as they shredded the fiberglass and bored into the boat's hull.

Sound traveled well under water and she could hear the confused shouts and the feet as men ran from point to point looking for her. She finished a second hole and a third and was almost through the hull again when the engine roared to life. Viv didn't think twice as she pulled her dump valve and the weights dragged her down. She was three feet below the surface by the time the driver got the boat into gear and she was close to the bottom before the first explosion.

A second followed and a third. Hand grenades probably. Whatever the source, the boat was far enough away from her that the concussion didn't reach her. She wasn't sure what she should do next. The holes in the bottom would eventually swamp the cruiser, but if the pumps were running and it wasn't moving it could take days. She still had over an hour of Nitrox in her tanks, but eventually she would have to surface.

Viv was used to making decisions quickly and she reasoned that her best course of action now would be to slip back aboard the Keyliner. The pirates would all be watching the water and it just might allow her to get on board unseen if she used the boom cable rather than the back deck.

She would need a distraction though and she had a glimmering of an idea on how to affect it. She returned to the equipment boxes and exchanged the drill for the spear gun. This one was armed with a barbed shaft and line and kept in the box incase of shark attack. While seeing a shark was rare and the possibility of an attack was very remote, Viv tried to cover all the bases when it came to safety. This particular model could also be used to take food fish. Andy was an expert spearfisherman and they had often supplemented their diets with game fish he had taken when supplies ran low.

She attached the gun to her auxiliary line and then flipped on her lamp and tossed it away from her. Swimming quickly in the opposite direction, she added air to her BCD carefully. Her head broke the surface at about the same time someone on the cruiser saw her light. The trim ship roared over and several men tossed small objects into the water.

The two on the Keyliner were leaning over the edge, watching and Viv saw that their legs were overlapping. Without hesitation she raised the spear gun and fired. The metal shaft shot out and pierced one's leg, going through the other's as well. Viv yanked hard on the small steel filament. Both men toppled into the water with shouts of surprise and pain. Viv was already moving. She uncoupled the gun and left it as she swam like mad for the ship. She reached the back deck and kicked off her fins, while wiggling out of her BCD.

Viv hauled herself onto the deck and kicked the red button that drew the dive platform up. She ran into the ship's interior as bullets ricocheted around her. Alone and unarmed, she knew she was in trouble if there were more pirates on the ship. She had to get the Keyliner moving, but she also had to make sure Andy, Calizza and Burt were still aboard. She would never be able to live with herself if she got away while leaving one of them in the pirate's clutches.

Dive knife in hand, she made her way up the inner stair, along the second deck to the outside stair that would take her to the equipment deck. The cruiser was idling, while men hauled their two compatriots out of the water. She made it up the stairs and onto the equipment deck and from there around the side, away from the pirates.

Viv steeled herself and then burst into Burt's quarters. Andy and Burt were tied to chairs; both had been beaten. Calizza was tied spread-eagled to a table and she was nude. Viv tossed the dive knife into Burt's lap and ran up to the bridge.

Viv keyed the motor to haul up the anchor. The cacophonous clanking of the anchor chian alerted the pirates and they began to shoot at the ship again. The pinging of small-arms fire was eclipsed by the roar of the diesels as she fired them up. Still dragging the anchor over the side, Viv jammed the throttle to full.

The Keyliner started to move with the smaller ship giving chase. Burt staggered onto the bridge and began turning on the instrumentation. As soon as the radios came on he started calling an SOS. The shooting had stopped and as the minutes ticked by, the little cruiser began to lag behind.

Burt grabbed his binoculars and took a look. Viv couldn't move, her knuckles were white on the wheel. She was worried about Calizza and her adrenalin surge was wearing off now, leaving her feeling very tired.