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Devil's Triangle

It was called the Devil’s Triangle by all that lived within it influential reach. Next to the actual constructing of the pyramids of Egypt, the Bermuda Triangle is one of Earth’s biggest mysteries. From Spanish treasure fleets in the fourteen and fifteen hundreds to entire squadrons of modern fighter planes, the Triangle has swallowed countless victims throughout time, most without a trace. For some mysterious reason, this region has confused and misdirected many aerial and naval navigators for the simple reason that this is one of only two places in the world where true magnetic north lines up with physical north. Many a navigator has plotted wrong courses due to this rare phenomenon, missing their destination by hundreds of miles.

While there are no true borders here, the imaginary lines from Bermuda to Miami, Florida to San Juan, Puerto Rica and back to the island or Bermuda mark the illusionary boundaries of this region. Though this is considered the Devil’s Triangle, the mystery here is by no means confined to this region. The enigmatic fear of this place stretches well beyond these false barriers and covers much of the East Coast of the United States and the eastern reaches of the Gulf of Mexico.

For Michael Tucker, treasure hunter extraordinaire, the Bermuda Triangle was just another stop on his long list of possible “X’s” on his global treasure map.

Tucker funded most of his earlier expeditions himself, but he soon found ways to manipulate others into funding the major expenses of his trips.

Take this trip for instance. Most of the Atlantic basin has never been systematically mapped and Michael used this fact as leverage to get the United States government to float most of the bill. He provided his own ship as long as the government provided the scientist and the materials needed for the expedition. He provided the crew, fuel, and transportation. The government provided the seismographic equipment, the software, and paid the wages of everyone involved. Even Michael was being paid a consultant’s wages for the job.

The expedition started in Miami, Florida and progressed steadily east and slightly south to Puerto Rico. They made several discoveries of modern ships and aircraft along the way, but so far, there was nothing that Michael would consider treasure.

Christopher Columbus is said to have discovered America in 1492, but Michael knew, as most scholars did, that Portuguese, English, and French vessels had been making the journey to Puerto Rico and many of the other surrounding islands for hundreds of years before Columbus’s time. These traders had brought everything from leather to silk to gold back and forth from these islands. There were many reports (of course, none of them were documented) that several of these convoys, which consisted of as many as three to five ships, were lost in the rough seas of the Atlantic. These ships, the ones that predated Columbus, were the objects of Michael Tucker’s search. He had an itch for gold, and he knew that there was plenty of it scattered around the depths of this vast ocean.

After stopping in Puerto Rico for a couple of days rest, the vessel steamed north by north-west to Bermuda. They were about to pass over the heart of the Atlantic, a deep canyon called the Puerto Rico Trench. Michael hoped against hope that they wouldn’t find anything here because the trench was estimated at about 30,000 feet. He didn’t have the equipment to make such a deep dive and doubted that there was anything that could withstand the pressures of those depths.

Though Michael was somewhat disappointed so far, the government mapping team was getting everything they had hoped for on this mission. The sonar images were coming back crystal clear, the weather was holding, and so far, Michael Tucker hadn’t been a major thorn in their side. But all that changed as they approached the Trench.

“Mr. Tucker, would you please come to the bridge? Mr. Tucker, would you please come to the bridge?”

Michael jolted awake and looked at the clock. It’s red numbers blared into his eyes in the dark cabin and proclaimed a time of morning that he didn’t care to know.

“Two A.M.? Even God sleeps through two A.M.” He rose and dressed in the dark. The Discovery was rolling from side to side beneath him, and he had to shift his weight from one foot to the other to keep from falling over. “This had better be important.”

He escaped from his room and stumbled to the front of the ship. Captain Ward greeted him at the door to the bridge and led him to the sonar display.

“I think we’ve found something, Michael. We’re receiving a sonar contact directly ahead of us at about 10,000 feet. By the looks of it on sonar, there’s either one giant mass or smaller vessels clumped together. If these are anything you’re looking for, then you’re very lucky.”

“Why is that?”

“Because they came to rest about forty yards shy of the Trench. Just a little bit further and they would have been lost another four miles down the trench wall.”

“Great! Get everybody up, Captain. Let’s get those submersibles untethered and ready for the drop.”

“Michael, there’s more. Come here, I’ve got something to show you.” Ward led him to a computer console and pulled up a weather map for their area. “This is the current weather for the last hour and a half.” On the monitor, Michael saw a blip in the center of the screen that was representing the ship. The Captain pressed the enter key on the keyboard to start the animation. “This is the satellite imaging of current rainfall within a hundred miles of us in each direction.”

Michael sat down in the chair. “Is this correct?”

“Yes, it is. I’ve called everybody I know to confirm what we’re seeing here and they are all just as stumped as I am. In all my years as Captain, I’ve never seen this.” He gestured at the screen where, at the outer most boundary of the radar, a circle of green surrounded the Discovery. The band of rain was an almost perfect circle and was slowly closing in on the ship.

“Did you see it coming?”

“No. My weather people say it just popped up out of nowhere. The strange thing is that it is converging on us. It’s not going anywhere. And it’s building in intensity.”

“How long before it swallows us?”

“It’s still about ninety miles out and moving slowly at about ten miles per hour. I expect it to continue to build in intensity and speed though. I’d give it roughly six hours.”

“That’s just enough time for me to get everything ready.” Michael stood up and started for the door.

“What? You’re still going down there? We won’t be able to recover you during the height of a storm.”

“You won’t have to. I’ll ride out the storm down there. When all is clear up here, I’ll resurface. I expect the storm to dissipate just as quickly as it appeared.”

“But there’s no way to know that for sure.”

“I know, but I’m going anyway. I’ll put a couple more oxygen tanks on the submersibles and take some extra food…If worse comes to worse, I will have enough power, oxygen, and food to last seventy-two hours.”

“What do you expect us to do up here?”

“Wait.” Michael turned and left to gather his crew.

The Captain, waiting till Michael was out of earshot, whispered to himself, “I swear, that spoiled little rich kid is going to kill himself someday, and I’m going to laugh and laugh and…”

Michael couldn’t help but think that the mysterious power of the Triangle was trying to stop him on his quest. There was something down there, below the surface, that was trying to stay hidden. As he worked to prepare the submersibles for departure, his thoughts repeatedly returned to the Triangle. Why were there so many disappearances? Did the significance of the triangle have anything to do with the mystery surrounding this area? Was there a connection with the pyramids of Egypt? The pyramids are triangles too, so is there some sort of parallel between the two enigmas?

The weather was starting to show, as clouds billowed in from every direction. Michael had been up for five hours now and was finally ready to launch the two submersibles. They were both identical to each other and looked like small, modified submarines with long, remote control arms that were attached to each side of the large bubble window at the front of the small craft. Two people could easily sit in the mini-sub, but Michael liked going alone. Two research analysts would be in the other vessel; they would be following him into those dark depths for documentation purposes.

“Luce…Johnson, are you two ready?”

“Yes, sir,” said the two research analysts in unison. They climbed into one of the mini-subs, the Rita, while Michael climbed into Jed. They put on their headset and began to run through their systems checks with the other members of the research crew. Ten minutes later, they were ready to launch.

A short, heavy crane lifted each craft out over the churning waters of the Atlantic. When Michael was below the bottom of the Discovery, and there was no danger of crashing into the larger vessel, he released the safety line. The crew quickly attached the same line to the next craft and began to lower it down to the dark, swirling water.

Lightning crackled the sky as Captain Ward watched the second sub disappear below the water. When the line that lowered them off the boat and into the water returned empty, somehow he knew, deep down inside of himself, that he would never see Michael Tucker again.

Darkness enfolded them like a black, membranous gel. “Discovery, this is Jed, we’re starting our descent.” Michael worked the pilot controls and slowly, the sub began to fall through the water.

“We read you, Michael.”

It would take them more that an hour to reach the wreckage below, so Michael talked with Luce and Johnson over in the other craft. He didn’t know them that well but as time went on, he grew to like the two men that had volunteered to follow him into the unknown.

They were approaching 10,000 feet when Luce asked, “Michael, we have a rather personal question to ask. We’ve got a bet going between us and we need your answer to decide the winner.”

“Does this have anything to do with money?” Michael asked, grinning at his distorted image in the forward window. He could just imagine the other two exchanging glances and mouthing the words, ‘how did he know?”

“Well, yes it does actually.”

Michael could hear the hesitation in their voices. “So what was the bet?”

“Well, Luce bet me that your net worth was in the millions, but I told him that it was in the billions. We don’t need actual figures, mind you, just confirmation on which one of us is right.”

“How much was the bet for?” Michael asked, trying not to laugh.

“Ten dollars.”

Michael did laugh then. “Do you want to know my cash worth, or my total worth with real estate and everything?”

Luce stuttered as he spoke and Michael couldn’t help but laugh some more. “We were kind of hoping for the grand total.”

“1.5 billion, guys. By the way, how are you two paying for school, since we’re talking about money and all.”

“We both have government grants. Why do you ask.”

“I’m needing a couple more tax write-offs and was looking for a couple ace students to send through college. Do you know anybody that might be interested?”

“Our sister is really needing some financial help with school.”

“Your sister? You two are brothers?”

“Yeah, we’ve got different father’s but the same mother.”

“Oh. Well, what’s her name?” Michael asked, jotting it down on the dry erase board clipped to the wall.

“We’re there,” Michael said. The rocky sea floor rose toward them and both subs slowed the speed of their descent. He couldn’t see the objects that showed up on the radar, but a long black cylinder caught his eye and his heart skipped a beat. ‘A cannon,’ he thought, knowing now that he was on the right track.

“Hey, Michael, do you see that?”

“I see it guys, I see it. I think it’s time we call top-side.”

Michael had turned the radio down and when he turned it back up, all he heard was silence. He tried to hail the Discovery repeatedly, but there was no one there. “Luce, Johnson, are you getting anything through your radio?”

“No,” Luce answered. “Not even static. It’s as if they turned their radio off.”

“Turn on your sonar and let’s get to work. Maybe they’ll remember us and decide to talk in a little while.” Michael pushed forward on the pilot’s yoke before turning on the sonar, and it was one of the most important subconscious decisions in his life. By the time he activated the sonar, he had already traveled twenty or thirty yards when the audio pinging of the under water sensor just about deafened him. “Luce,” he shouted. “What’s that?”

“IT’S ABOVE US, MICHAEL. AND CLOSING FAST!”

Michael glanced at the sonar screen. Sure enough, there was a large blip covering the center of the screen, and it was much too large to be the two mini-subs. “Oh, God. I think it’s the Discovery!” He didn’t know which man had shouted it, but he heard their screams of panic as the sound of crunching metal came over the speakers. A cloud of dust enveloped Michael and his visibility was cut down to zero. He had to stop the sub. He felt vulnerable sitting still like this.

He heard breathing and realized that it wasn’t his. “Luce? Johnson? You guys all right?”

“We’re a little banged up, but I think we’re ok. We’ve lost power though.”

“Hold on, I’m coming to you.” Michael turned the vehicle around and started back at a snails pace through the thick fog of dirt.

Something loomed ahead. Large and metallic, it appeared into view quickly and Michael had to jerk the sub sharply to the right to avoid slamming into it. His light’s played across the gray metal and a name scrolled across his view. It was written in bright, white letters. “It is the Discovery,” he announced, confirming their earlier suspicion.

The dust cleared and there was Rita, lying sideways on the rocks. The little sub had barely missed being crushed by the Discovery, but scraps of wreckage covered her back, pinning her to the rocky ocean floor. “Luce, is your hull breached?” It was the hardest question Michael could ever remember asking. If the Rita’s hull were cracked, it wouldn’t take very long for the pressure of the ocean to overcome the steel construction of the little sub, imploding it.

He held his breath, waiting for the answer that was long in coming.

Then, finally…”Yes, Michael, she’s leaking bad. We don’t have long…”

As if on cue, Michael watched the Rita succumb to the pressure around her. The air within exploded outward as the steel and glass crushed inward. Luce and Johnson died instantly.

Michael took Jed up above the wreckage of the Discovery and tried to take his mind off what he had just seen. He couldn’t afford to panic now and there would be time for mourning later.

As he drifted over the sunken ship, he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The Discovery’s deck was twisted and ripped apart. It was as if a giant hand had reached down from the storm above and crushed the ship in its grip. Michael knew that there was no way that a storm could have done that much damage to the Discovery.

The Devil’s Triangle was making its presence known to Michael and in a very bad way.

He looked away from the Discovery in horror. There were bodies strewn all over the main deck. They were twisted and broken, hanging half in-half out of where the metal had ripped apart. To Michael’s eye it looked as if the ship were eating them in super-slow motion.

Pushing the accelerator to its maximum setting, he rushed away from the dead ship as fast as he could.

It suddenly struck him that he was alone down here. The darkness pressed closer in on him and he knew…just knew…that all the air was being sucked out of the small submarine. A sense of claustrophobia wrapped its tight grip around him and before long he was panting furiously. He desperately wanted to explore the shipwrecks but so much had happened and he was feeling so faint that he reached over and pressed the button labeled ascend. There would be another day to return and search the deep waters of the Triangle. There was more treasure out there to discover, and with the events of today, he would certainly take his time about coming back here.

The close space still seemed to be pressing in against Michael, and he embraced the darkness of unconsciousness as sleep overtook his emotionally tortured mind. Now he would have to face the roaring storm that shredded the Discovery. But for now…sleep.

Michael Tucker woke several hours later to the sound of gentle waves lapping against the outer hull of the Jed. His head pounded over and over again with the sound of the Rita’s implosion and he hit his head repeatedly with the heel of his hand. He then noticed that there were no traces of the massive storm that had been converging on the Discovery only a few short hours ago.

One perk of being rich and taking the chances that Michael took through life, was the ability to wear a personal tracking system in the form of a beeper size box strapped to his belt. He pushed the green call button and a silent signal pulsed upward toward the sky and the satellite orbiting high above the surface of the Earth. Back home in Texas, his staff would intercept his distress signal and would try to reach him by phone and any other means necessary. After the first hour, rescue operations would then be planned and his rescuers would hone in on his emergency beacon.

Michael believed that he would be found within the next four or five hours. Even though he was adrift in the ocean, his tracking system would pinpoint his location within ten feet.

‘Five hours,’ he thought. ‘That’s a long time to wait.’ It never occurred to him that just a few hours earlier, he had been telling the captain of the Discovery that he was willing to spend seventy-two hours in the dark, dark ocean.

He would be back though, someday, he would return.

The Devil’s Triangle had won this round, but Michael was the type of person that wouldn’t let anything keep him down for long.

He would be back…