Bermuda Triangle Part 2
“No, Spade. She’s gone; Bill came and picked her up. Silverback drank his cola and swallowed a few ice pieces.
“When?”
“Before daybreak. She agreed to go with him. She made a deal.”
“This is a terrible prank, Spade.”
“Sorry.”
“Put Ivory on the fucking phone. What did she negotiate with the Mountain Gorillas?”
“No, the Gray Wolf.”
Silverback threw up on his green-striped polo shirt.
“She’s suffered the worst with her brother, Mouse’s passing. Silverback, I’m sorry, but she hasn’t been the same since,” Spade said. “She threatened to kill herself. All the hope was squeezed out of her when Mouse was slaughtered and left bleeding out on the road like an animal.”
He waited for Silverback’s answer. Spade took a few deep breaths as he put a drink on the table and walked over to the condiments of drugs brought in his backpack.
Silverback walked over to the napkin dispensers and emptied them when he saw Nelson returning with a newspaper and new reading glasses. “You were supposed to watch her.”
“Yes, watch her, but I can’t control her. Her status is upgraded to mine. With Mouse gone, I am on generator power and understand my language. I lost Ivory, I am sorry.”
“I didn’t know cola was hazardous.”
“You’re a comic now. Deep-sea diving will make you serious enough to give that goal up.”
Nelson stared directly at Silverback’s angry face. Bill was coming for him. That was the sign he wore. Silverback had told him about Ivory running from the Canyons and Spade with Bill.
“Ivory doesn’t trust Spade. She thinks he has been involved in Mouse’s death.”
Nelson put the newspaper on his chest and turned to the lifestyle section’s living page. It announced that Ivory and Bill were getting married in Las Vegas.
“Spade, you let Bill drive her from the canyons in the Jeep Wrangler?”
Silverback ended the call.
Silverback took out his black wallet, looking for a secret phone number folded and written in blue ink. In the last empty credit card slot was a tiny piece of ripped paper, which he gave Nelson. “Call it. Ask for Vincent.”
Nelson and Silverback landed at the Lonely Palms airport at 2:00 AM. The boat was charted straight through the Bermuda Triangle, a 500-square-mile area. And they hired a one-legged retired Navy serviceman, The Captain, who knew the mutual enemy the best.
Nelson was distracted between the pretty host with curly red hair and a tight cashmere sweater over a low-cut, stretched tank top. The green case was entirely of smooth Grants, and a laptop bag was tucked in the overhead compartment above him.
“Thirsty?” She placed his hand on her thigh.
“No, neither of us,” Silverback answered for Nelson.
Raindrops hit the rounded windows with enough persistence to block their approach from being seen over Florida. It wouldn’t be a pleasant trip; the plane ride was an ominous warning that they couldn’t ignore.
Nelson called an Uber as they rode the escalator to the ground floor, and it came precisely on time. Silverback kept quiet throughout the rest of the journey until they abandoned the Uber after giving a shallow tip.
They wanted to avoid being noticed by anyone wandering the hotel or outside in uniform, as that would entice questions. They kept cautious about identifying themselves as businessmen for a medical device event.
“Are you guys afraid of Great Whites? There are plenty out there,” the one-legged Captain said, pecking his large beard as if growing feathers.
The Captain was seated on a wicker chair, his damp hat on his lap.
“No, or piranhas. Silverback grinned. “Box jellyfish, I fear. But, Nelson vomited if he saw a Great White,” Silverback laughed.
“Eh, Piranhas?”
Nelson lowered his head and nervously read, “The Sinful Rocket,” hand-painted in charcoal gray on the boat.
“Well, no drugs. Sober and continual breathing are the rules.”
Nelson raised his eyebrows and itched his rash above his wrists—the withdrawals from the magic insulin of the Utah desert were hitting like a freezing, sinister wind.
“The call to see a Great White is strong in mortals.” That was the story that Silverback told the Captain. Nelson thought, How would he consider turning down another reckless adventurer like himself?
Nelson stared at his missing leg for too long. The Captain at once disapproved.
“I fought for my life with a Great White, yet it took my leg clean off. Suppose I survived is a win, eh? Apex predators haunt this square-fenced hell called The Bermuda Triangle.”
They would break into the Great White’s den and secure a treasure: The home and the power behind the Owl Ring. Nelson wondered if the Desert Goddess was worth being swallowed whole by Jaw’s family members and forgotten.
Nelson thought there was no other way. Bill was getting worse, and he saw it in the desert. There was no boundary that Bill feared trespassing upon, and he would kill his ex-wife to bother him. He was a free hitman now.
Silverback was calm as he turned toward Nelson, but Nelson was suspicious. Nelson whispered: What attack had you planned to spoil the contract between Ivory and Bill?
No answer.
The Captain waved his damp hat. “Here it is, the mouth of the Bermuda Triangle, a wicked dark creature. I don’t think any part of it is natural.” The Captain’s eyes closed momentarily. “You understand why everybody except greedy shippers and ambitious marine biologists avoids it entirely, eh?”
He tapped his lost leg solemnly.
The Captain turned and said: “The US military lost a plane, amongst many civilians. Wreckages were never recovered. USS Cyclops cargo ship, March 1918. 300 men turned to ashes.” The Captain lost his thought for a second and then stuttered the rest: “Well, Mission 19. Five planes vanished after running out of fuel. The rescue crew of 13, too, fell victim to the Bermuda Triangle.”
Everybody’s gut went quiet on the boat, burning hot with the image.
“So, are you two men ready?” The Captain coughed into a Canadian sewn handkerchief.
Silverback zipped his navy wet suit and pulled down his scuba mask. He dove in first with two deep-dive technical helpers.
Nelson had changed his choice like scared Ivory. Was Silverback losing some rationality? The Surreal Forces likely had the Owl Ring and used its power on Ivory; otherwise, she’d never be lured to Bill’s awkward challenge.
Nelson’s anxiety rose higher than the waves hitting the large boat’s sides. He was sweating and pale; it was 60 degrees, and there was no sky to curse at. The world had closed, and he was isolated but not alone—the Captain stood close before him.
“You are a damn coward. Your word is nothing but bloody piss.” The Captain said. Before Nelson responded, a brutal wave knocked him into the water, and there was nothing else but the hissing of the seas that stabbed his body, and he nearly had a seizure.
Nelson floated like a skinny seaworm until he dived into the waves. The ocean cracked open, and there was no escape. Into the hellish ball of cold liquid, he slid down to 175 feet inside the Bermuda serpent’s tongue. Neslon was put off-center from the fishing vessel.
The two helpers had giant helmet lights stripping the abyss’s second and third layers. The quantity of fish was astonishing; the rainbow colors and strange shapes were beautiful and bizarre to Nelson.
Sea Turtles appeared the size of three men, and a Tiger Shark had no chance to hunt these massive turtles. But a Great White or an Orca Whale was an exception. Nelson suddenly was clear of their peril beyond the roaring cramps of the ocean.
What were the sea turtles doing there? Why were they so irregularly grouped? It was terrifying and startled them all. They were hypnotized yet held their primary aim: to find the elite treasure somewhere below. Time became feared as the freakish turtles were fine cuisine for one terrifying shark species, and it was about lunch.
Nelson was breathing heavily and quickly, using up the helium in his tank. Silverback would have to relieve him, but he couldn’t afford to lose a team member to guide him to the decompression stops up to the surface. Silverback held onto a powerful underwater flashlight and searched desperately through the unending giant kelp braids rising somewhere from beneath, and the team’s helpers soon followed.
They searched and searched for 60 minutes. Their nerves were constantly shocked by the sight of the orange, iridescent, tubelike legs of giant sea spiders and slime covering the abnormally tall seaweed.
It was a trap.
There was an ice-cold zap of awareness. The giant sea spiders attracted the attention of gluttonous sea turtles, which fed on them in large numbers because they were highly sought after. The Great Whites had been waiting for the Kelp to move.
Silverback and the foolish team struggled in an incredible battle. With their spears, they hit through the seaweed and avoided the bouncing legs of the spiders. The men loosen themselves and finally cut a way out.
In a bomb of sea spider snow, pure dark, and the realm of seaweed and wild fish, the Great Whites sawed the Bermuda Triangle in half. They each estimated one Great White at 26 feet and almost three tons; their intense fear made them question it. They couldn’t be sure, and each shark they saw through their goggles was more extensive and aggressive than the other.
This Great White swam faster and faster and caught a turtle, and another and another, spitting out the shells and reloading its artillery of crushing white teeth.
The shells spun and floated like the rise of the sun. Then they crumbled into pieces and sucked down into the black drain of the Brumeda Triangle.
Silverback noticed the area behind the black drain swirled violently as these unbelievable sea turtle shells gathered. Suddenly, there was a human skeleton spinning like a wind turbine, A red diamond that sparkled like the tip of a laser light. The thing wore a pink pearl necklace with the Owl Ring as its pendant, clasped around its neck.
“The Owl Ring!” Nelson’s helium tank emptied as a Great White chopped down on the skeleton thing and played with its spine. The undamaged tanks loosened, and he fixed them snugly on his back and shoulders.
Silverback swam for the Scarlet Owl Ring, and Nelson swam for the helium tanks. The other team member panicked and drowned. Nelson and Silverback were in clear sight of the Great White, who was bored with the taste of sea turtles. It would take over four hours to return to the Captain and check his state.
Celia Garza 