Deep Shadow

surface was so different that I might have traveled the distance between the earth and the moon. My vision narrowed, and isolation stripped away the filters from my senses. Hearing became a survival tool.

Because of that, I froze momentarily when I heard what by now was a familiar sound: the distant thump and slap of something big breaching the water’s surface. I had been arranging my gear next to the lake bottom’s most recognizable feature—the prehistoric tusk, near where the buoy was tied. My head swiveled as I searched for the source.

It was King again, I decided. He had probably found something else to push into the lake. Another one of his adolescent jokes, and I thought, It will be his last.

But what had he used? There weren’t any more handy truck wheels, so maybe he’d rolled a chunk of limestone into the lake. If the rock was big enough and if it hit me, it could mean the end of my search—possibly the end of me.

I spun toward shore. Through the green lens of the monocular, I focused on the jagged incline where the wheel had appeared but saw nothing. Next, I checked the surface fifteen feet above. I could see the silhouette of the inner tube, Perry’s legs dangling over the side, the contour of his fins gray against the emerald, star-speckled sky. I could picture the man shivering with fear and cold as he waited to play out the hose when I signaled him by giving a tug.

Perry wasn’t much of a swimmer, so he had seated himself in the big rubber doughnut like a kid at a water park and paddled out using the spare fins. For the last several minutes, he had been floating above me motionless, too scared to move.

Perry hadn’t caused the noise I’d heard, that was for sure. It was something else.

I considered using the underwater spotlight to check the area. The monocular was effective for a radius of about fifteen feet, but it would take the light’s thousand lumens of white LED to pierce the darkness of the lake basin.

Using the spotlight, though, was a bad idea, I decided. I could see nothing tumbling down the incline toward me, and a flashlight would only screw up my night vision—yet I still felt uneasy.

I told myself to ignore the lingering paranoia I’d experienced earlier. Even so, my nagging inner voice repeated the same ancient questions: Was something out there, watching? Maybe a predator had sensed my vibrations, my body heat. Was something swimming my way?

I remembered the fear in King’s voice when he’d said, I just saw something go in the water. It was fucking huge, man!

His fear was real. He had seen something—but it was also true that King and Perry were easily frightened by the sounds of a Florida swamp at night. To King, a five-foot alligator would appear huge—or a monitor lizard.

I clipped the light to my BC and turned my attention to the jury-rigged jet dredge. The brass nozzle was gone, as well as the trigger, so I could no longer control the flow of water.

That was Perry’s job.

After taking a last look around, I signaled the man by tugging three times on the hose. Above me, I watched the inner tube rock as Perry stirred—and then I saw something that convinced me that King was still taunting us with his absurd tricks. I saw a spinning bright light appear in the sky—a meteorite, I thought at first. But the light tumbled downward, then slapped the water next to the inner tube, creating a shower of sparks.

King had pulled a chunk of burning wood from the fire, I realized, and thrown it at Perry.

Idiot.

The man reminded me of a spoiled child who got nastier and nastier if he wasn’t the center of attention. I imagined the two cons shouting at each other, exchanging threats—wasting time again—so I repeated my signal to Perry by jerking on the hose.

A moment later, Perry recovered enough to provide me a descending coil of slack. Soon, he opened the flow valve, and the hose jolted in my hand, writhing like a snake. I waited until I had the thing under control, then swam to the mound of sand that now covered the mouth of the karst vent.

King. I had never met anyone I had disliked so intensely, so quickly. For now, the best way to deal with the man was to ignore him.

I focused on my work.

The dredge had lost a lot of its pressure, but the jet was still powerful enough to peel away layers of soft bottom as I searched for the tunnel. Around me, as I probed with the hose, sand and silt exploded, forming a cloud as dense as smoke. Visibility dropped from excellent to zero. Soon, I had to work by feel.

With my left hand, I found what I hoped was the upper lip of the tunnel. I used my weight to burrow downward, the hiss of water meshing with the bell-sound exhaust of my own regulator as I excavated.

Because I was operating blindly, my fingers became adept at identifying chunks of limestone or fossilized shell. I removed the debris mechanically, tossing it aside. Five times, though, my fingers also found the slick, dense weight of coins. They were unexpected, but finding them provided me no pleasure. I slipped them one by one into the pocket of my BC. Before I surfaced, I would hide them with the others that were still in the mesh pocket inside my wet suit.

I kept an eye on the time—not an easy thing to do, but I could see the orange numerals if I held my watch against the faceplate of my mask. I had clicked the trigger of the Chronofighter just before submerging, so I knew exactly how many minutes had passed.

It took me five minutes of digging to confirm that I had indeed found the karst opening. Ten minutes later, the opening was only slightly wider than my shoulders, but that was good enough. I tugged on the hose again, a series of two sharp pulls, which was Perry’s signal to close the valve.

He didn’t respond immediately, and I thought, Now what?

After several more attempts, though, I felt a couple of tentative tugs in reply. Moments later, the hose went limp. I pushed the coils aside. Because visibility was so bad, I kept my left arm anchored to the tunnel’s entrance and waited for the siphoning current to clear the water.

It was strange to kneel there, underwater, anchored to a rock, my visual world reduced to a random swirl of sand granules that banged against my faceplate. Above me, below me and on every side, there was a void of sensory data that caused a dizzying interchange between my eyes and brain as they struggled to extract form from the murk.

I had switched off the monocular soon after starting the jet dredge—there was nothing to see, so why waste the battery? Now, though, I clicked the switch downward, which powered the monocular but not the built-in infrared light. The darkness that encircled me was transformed into a boiling green cauldron of silt.

My arm still anchored in the tunnel, I did a slow three-sixty. Soon, I could see my watch if I held it a foot from my face, which told me visibility was improving. A minute later, I could see the vague outline of my own fins.

I looked toward the surface and told myself to relax until the water had cleared. As it did, I expected to see the familiar silhouette of the inner tube and Perry’s dangling fins. Instead, I saw something that startled me. It was an animated darkness, the size of a small plane, off to my right. The thing was fast moving—and its shape and its behavior impossible to assess.

I pulled my body close to the tunnel opening and watched as the thing drew nearer. It was an animal, I realized, an elongated crocodilian shadow snaking toward me and gaining speed. I decided it was an alligator— maybe the gator that King had seen entering the water earlier. It could be nothing else.

I was fumbling for the oversized spotlight to use as a shield when suddenly the animal slowed and turned. I couldn’t make out details. I could see only its massive silhouette. The shape was visible for a few seconds, but then it melted into the gloom.

I was so surprised that I had stopped breathing. I drew three fast breaths as my brain replayed what had just happened. The animal had been descending, moving from my right to my left like a shark banking downward for an attack. Then it had disappeared. Why—and where?

I stood, with my fins on the bottom, and gave it a few seconds, then I leaned over the tunnel’s opening, straining to see.

Nothing.

I did another careful three-sixty, silt swirling before my eyes, and I soon began to wonder if I had imagined the damn thing. I’ve seen monster alligators in my life, but none the size of the thing that had just buzzed me. And