Phantom Prospect - Alex Archer [21]
Annja smiled. “Oh is it?”
“Yep. I fell in love with a girl in college and flipped out of my mind over her. Spent the summer chasing her all over the Caribbean. We jumped from island to island on my dime, just having a blast. Sleeping on the beaches, making love, drinking our brains into a permanent pickled state. Youth’s a crazy thing, you know?”
“I guess.”
Hunter eyed her. “Yeah, I don’t suppose my experiences as a kid are universal or anything. I can see that.”
“So go on.”
Hunter shrugged. “I came across this boat anchored in the blue of the Caribbean one day. There were a couple of guys in the water. Real island dudes. The boat represented every dime they had in the world and they were out there diving off this patch of sand. We happened to sail up at just the right moment.”
“Right moment?”
Hunter took another sip. “You believe in serendipity?”
“Depends, I guess.”
“Well, these guys had come across a sunken Spanish galleon filled with chests of gold. I was there when one of the divers broke the surface of the water holding a single gold coin in his hand. I’ll never forget how the sun caught that gleaming yellow coin and made it look as brilliant as the brightest star in the sky. It blew me away. I wanted that joy of discovery. And I wanted all those riches.”
“So, that was it? You shelved the college life and threw your lot in with those guys?”
Hunter chuckled. “Those guys wanted nothing to do with me. Right after we came upon them, one of the guys still on the boat pulled a pistol and told us to sail away or they’d kill us. Treasure hunting’s a dangerous gambit sometimes.”
“Certainly seems to be.” Annja shivered as a cold breeze blew through the wheelhouse. “So, how’d you get started?”
“I spent a lot of my own money—hell, all of it—on a boat and top-of-the-line equipment that I had little clue how to operate. I was a fool and a cocksure one at that. I thought that my money could make everything go right when all it did was foul it up even quicker than if I’d been broke.”
“How so?”
“On my first dive I lost two people. Couldn’t be helped. The wreck we dove on shifted and crushed them. There was no way to help them. You’re not moving tons of rusted steel no matter how strong you think you are.”
“Oh, my God.”
“Yeah. And that venture cost me a lot more than I thought it would. I came back to the States and found myself facing a lawsuit from the families of the deceased. That pretty much wiped me out.”
“But you kept going.”
Hunter smiled. “You know what it’s like to want something so bad that you can’t even fathom it ever being wiped out of your soul?”
“Maybe.”
“That’s how it was. I just couldn’t give it up. As much as I tried—and I did try. I went back to school and even did a year of law before I bugged out. I just couldn’t get that image out of my head of the diver breaking the surface with the gold coin in hand. I’d wake up in a sweat and know that it could be me.”
Annja shook her head. “You’re obsessed.”
Hunter grinned. “Some guys, they obsess over women. Some over work, some over other things. For me, it was the dive. The lure of the treasure wouldn’t let me go. I was caught in the spell.”
“So you went back.”
Hunter nodded. “Yeah. I did a lot more research than I’d done before. I found some smaller wrecks, thinking that if I could get started on something more in line with my limited experiences, then maybe that would be the best way to go about it.”
“Did it work out?”
“My second dive was better. It still wasn’t great, but at least I was getting my feet under me. I had only a little bit of money but I managed to make back my investment by scavenging the bits I was able to bring up from the ship.”
“What sort of ship?”
Hunter laughed. “It was an old landing ship that the Navy had scuttled years earlier. I found someone to buy the scrap metal off me. It wasn’t much—most of the metal had rusted away—but I made back the investment. And it helped fuel my desire even more. While I was doing that salvage job, I was already planning my next outing.”
Annja