Bermuda Triangle Part 2
“No, Spade! She’s gone? So, 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 has got to be a terrible prank, Spade.”
“Sorry.”
“Put Ivory on the fucking phone. What did she negotiate along with the Mountain Gorillas?”
“No. The Gray Wolf.”
Silverback threw up the pomegranate juice and Caesar salad 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 if she wasn’t allowed to go with Bill. 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 on the other end of the call. Spade took a few deep breaths as he put a drink on the wood end table and walked over to the condiments of drugs brought in his backpack at the corner of the desert cabin.
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, keep her safe, Spade.”
“Yes, watch her, but I can’t control her. Her status among the Mountain Gorillas is more upgraded than mine. With Mouse gone, I am on generator power. Understand my language? I lost Ivory, I am sorry.”
“Hey, I didn’t know cola was hazardous.” Nelson entered the hotel, passed Silverback, and returned with a hand towel from the bar. Clean up quickly. Ivory needs help immediately. Silverback, she must listen. Bill operates in a peculiar zone; he’s the Finisher. You got just a taste of it in the Utah desert.”
“You’re a stand-up comic now. Deep-sea diving will make you serious enough to give that dream up.”
Nelson stared directly at Silverback’s angry face. Bill was coming for him. Silverback was, Nelson thought, too casual about that fact. That was the other sign he wore on his face.
Silverback replied smoothly to Nelson: “Ivory has run from the Canyons and Spade with Bill; well, she is capable.” Silverbook glanced at Spade, “Ivory doesn’t trust Spade. She thinks he’s somehow involved in Mouse’s death.”
Nelson put the newspaper on his chest and turned to the lifestyle section’s living page. Silverback and Spade read the announcement that Ivory and Bill were getting married in Las Vegas.
“Spade, you let Bill drive her from the canyons, was it in the Jeep Wrangler? Spade didn’t answer. “I believe you that you had no part in Mouse’s death”. 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 torn 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, the Surreal Red forces. They were responsible for taking his leg.
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 leather briefcase was entirely of unwrinkled 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 and gave him an elbow.
Raindrops hit the plane’s rounded windows with enough persistence and force to block any takeoff or approach from being seen hovering over Florida’s seaside. It wouldn’t be, at all, a pleasant trip; the plane ride was an ominous warning that they couldn’t ignore.
Four and a half hours later, 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 sales training seminar.
“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 from seawater 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 side of the large, well-maintained boat.
“Well, no drugs. Sober crew 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 magnetic pull to see a Great White is too strong in mortals.” That was the story that Silverback told the Captain. Nelson thought, It is impossible, even to consider, turning us down when we’re viewed as 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.”
“I thought it was the Surreal Red Forces?” Nelson raised his brows.
“Yeah, they speared me off my own damn boat where it was ready for me. Great White is ready for you, too.”
They would break into the Great White’s den and secure a treasure: The home and the power behind the Scarlet Owl Ring. That was the plan, 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 clearly out there in the Utah desert. There was no boundary that Bill feared trespassing upon, and he would kill his ex-wife just to bother him. He was a freelance hitman now.
Silverback was calm as he turned toward Nelson, but Nelson was suspicious. Nelson whispered: “What secret attack had you planned to spoil the contract between Ivory and Bill?”
No answer.
The Captain waved his worn, damp hat. “Here it is, the mouth of the Bermuda Triangle, a wickedly dark creature. I don’t think any part of it is natural.” The Captain’s eyes closed momentarily. “You understand or will understand soon why everybody except greedy shippers and ambitious marine biologists avoids it entirely, eh?”
He tapped at the boats white ash plank acknowledging his lost leg solemnly. The Captain turned around 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 string of 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 up for it?” 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 Scarlet 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 hull. 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 no way going around.
“You are a damn coward. Your word is nothing but bloody piss,” The Captain said. Before Nelson responded, a brutal wave knocked him off the large boat and into the water. There was nothing else to hear but the hissing of the seas that stabbed his whole body, and he nearly had a seizure from the shocking cold.
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 technical helpers had giant helmet lights stripping the abyss into second and third layers. The quantity of fish was astonishing; the rainbow colors and strange shapes were beautiful and bizarre at the same time 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 certain of their peril lost beyond the roaring cramps and tides of the ocean.
What were the sea turtles doing there? Why were they so irregularly grouped? It was terrifying and the excitement 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 but not enough to be full 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 technical 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. The work was slow, and no trace of the Scarlet Owl or Surreal Forces.
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. The Captain tried to warn them with the tap of the plank and his leg that wasn’t there.
Silverback and the foolish technical team struggled in an incredible battle. With their spears, they hit at the seaweed, until they broke through, methodically avoiding the bouncing legs of the spiders. The men loosen themselves and finally cut a way out of the trap.
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 more aggressive than the other.
This Great White swam faster, and faster, and caught a turtle, and another, and yet another, spitting out the shells and reloading its artillery of crushing white teeth.
The shells spun and floated softly like the waking of the sun over the still horizon. 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 Scarlet 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 his eyes remained on the red diamond.
Silverback swam for the Scarlet Owl Ring. Nelson swam for the helium tanks. One of the technical team members panicked and drowned. Nelson and Silverback were in clear sight of the Great White, who was bored with the taste of sea turtles and still hungry. It would take over four hours to return to the Captain and check his condition.
Celia Garza 