Barracuda by Mike Monahan

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trying to pull that hatch cover off. Didn’t you see the cobweb of
hanging wires and cables? I don’t care if you guys want to be
foolish and kill yourselves, but the whole dive operation in Bikini
will suffer if something like that happens. In addition, with that
hatch cover missing, who knows how many other divers will venture
in out of curiosity and never swim out?”
    “We’re all big boys here, Steve-o, and if we
want to do extreme diving then we will. We paid a lot of money so
that we could,” Bill returned with a sneer.
    Steve didn’t budge. “That might fly at other
resorts, but while I’m the dive master here, you will obey my dive
profile or you can ride over to the Bikini dive resort and dive
with them.”
    “Will they let us penetrate the carrier?” Bob
asked bluntly.
    “No, they will not,” Steve countered as he
walked away toward the scuba tank filling station.
    “That guy is a jerk,” Bill said to his
brother.
    “C’mon, Billy, I just think he’s being careful.
Remember, nobody has dived here in over half a century, and he’s
probably a bit nervous about some wahoos doing something stupid.
Besides, we’ll be diving with the Renegades from the Bikini Resort
Dive Center in a couple of days.”
    Bill shrugged. “Let’s get some grub, Bob. I’m
hungry.”
    But later, back in their room, Bill brought up
the subject again. “Did you see how loose that hatch was?” he asked
his brother.
    “Yeah, what about it?” Bob returned.
    “I think we can pry it off with a large crowbar.
Then we can be the first to gain access.” Bill was excited as he
paced around their hotel room. He sat down at the writing desk and
made some scribbles on hotel paper.
    Bob looked at his brother like he was nuts. “We
can’t just gut the ship and explore it without anyone knowing.”
    “Sure we can. Look, this has been the plan all
along! Since that Canadian diver won’t help us, we can hire any one
of a number of small fishing boats to take us there while the dive
resorts are scheduled to dive on other wrecks. That Canadian can’t
tell us what we can or cannot do. We can pay the fishermen to keep
quiet, and then we’ll be the first to recover artifacts.”
    “I don’t know. They might have salvage laws that
we’d be breaking,” Bob cautioned.
    “Shit, Bob! You are such a pussy! I had to put
our business together and run it while you did nothing but worry
and second guess me.”
    Bob knew that his brother was right. Bill was
the contentious one of the two. When their parents were killed in a
car accident in Sydney, the brothers used the insurance money to
open the Brothers Grimm Saloon in the Rocks section of Sydney
overlooking the harbor. Ironically, it was a drunk driver that had
taken their parents lives. Bob didn’t want to call the bar Grimm,
but Bill aggressively persisted and won; and the dark humor
surrounding the circumstances of the Grimm name made the bar an
instant hit.
    The saloon was a popular watering hole for
dockworkers and tourists alike. A local scuba club, the Renegades,
held their monthly meetings there. This club was more like a biker
gang, a squalid sort who had ventured into the world of extreme
diving. They would attack a virgin shipwreck like a school of
piranha and remove all the artifacts before other divers could view
them. This was very disturbing to other dive clubs because there
was a great dissension amongst divers in regard to stripping a
shipwreck solely for personal souvenirs. The Renegades were
considered to be a rebellious coterie, and they gave a bad name to
serious wreck divers who took joy in just taking pictures and
experiencing the thrill of exploration.
    Bob remembered that Bill had bullied him into
taking this dive trip to Shark Alley Island a week prior to the
Renegades’ arrival. Bill wanted to reconnoiter Bikini Atoll first
and then come back with the Renegades later. The Renegades already
had a scavenger hunt planned inside the Saratoga . The divers
who