Mark of the Devil Read Online Free Page A

the
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button on the side of his mask, he muttered to himself, “Right into a bunch of bad-ass barracuda.”
    As he was pulled closer, he growled, “All right, fish heads, take this!” Matt punched the purge valve at the front of his regulator mouthpiece and held it down for a moment. An explosion of compressed air shot forward in the direction of the barracuda. As though executing an abrupt about-face, the barracuda turned and, leaving only the faintest slipstream of tail fins propelling them forward, disappeared beyond Matt’s visual horizon. “That’ll teach you to screw around with Berkeley-san, uh-huh.”
    “Hey, you’re right,” Steve shouted through the communication system. “Bearings are changing. See what the hell’s happening.”
    Already pulling hand-over-hand along the length of taut, nylon line and unable to hit the
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button, Matt mouthed into his facemask, “On my way, as if I had a choice.” At the thirty-foot marker, the line suddenly went slack and Matt tumbled forward. Quickly righting himself, he finned his way through the thickening swirl of sand just above the length of yellow line lying on the bottom until he reached the anchor. One fluke was firmly hung up on…“What the hell is this?” he asked himself. Looking up, he was surprised to see what remained of the sunken barge, its bow leering at him through the gloom. “Son of a bitch! There it is.”
    Grabbing hold of the anchor’s shank with one hand to keep from being pushed along by the increasingly strong current, Matt punched the
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button on the side of his mask and said, “Hey, good buddy, guess what I found? The barge. The anchor’s right fluke just dug smack dab in the middle of something, but it doesn’t look like it’s part of the barge. Whatever it is, it’s a good fifteen to twenty feet in front of the barge.”
    “What is it?”
    “Hell if I know. It’s sticking about three to four feet out of the sand. Round at the top, then like the apex of a triangle on one side, rounded off on the other. Got some kinda gizwiz sticking out before it goes back into the sand.” Still holding onto the anchor’s shaft, Matt ran a bare hand across the surface of the object. “Grid-like surface. Like a waffle iron. Covered with a hard, black, rubber kind of material. No marine growth. Can’t have been down here long. Otherwise, it’s been buried and not exposed to the water.”
    “Maybe the hurricane uncovered it,” Steve said.
    Matt yanked on one side of the object, trying to loosen it from the bottom’s grip. “Whatever it is, it’s not going anyplace.”
    From topside, Steve asked, “Can you free the anchor?”
    “Think so.” Quickly surveying the outline of the barge, Matt added, “Drop those buoy lines. I’ll tie ‘em off on the bow and stern of the barge, while you take some new bearings on the pier and water tower. And keep a copy of the bearings for us in case the buoys break loose in heavy weather. We might want to come back and check this thing out.”
    Matt heard a chuckle in his receiver unit, followed by, “Is that the former Navy guy talking, or the archeologist?”
    Matt laughed as he watched the weighted buoy lines drop through the water. With one last look at the strange contraption sticking out of the sand, he said, “Maybe a little of both, but mainly curiosity. There’s something about this thing…I don’t know. We might just want to make another visit; that’s all.”
    Once the lines were secured to the barge and Matt could look up and see the rounded bottoms of the inflatable buoys, their distant orange rising and falling with the movement of the waves, he called to the surface, “When I give you the word, move the boat forward and give me some slack on the anchor line. And don’t be too slow doing it. I’m down to less than three-hundred pounds of air, and breathing through gills is not my specialty.”

CHAPTER 3
    Mayport, Florida
    Later that afternoon as
Native