Under Pressure

By J. Dana Stahl

Aidan Mack is a dive instructor enjoying a refreshingly uncomplicated life…until he finds himself intentionally anchored to a ghostly wreck on the ocean floor. He must use every ounce of dive training he has ever had—and every last bit of air in his tank—to get to safety.

Under Pressure takes place between Miami and the deceptively tranquil Bahamian islands that lay mere miles from the U.S. Aidan runs a small dive shop in Miami, and his days are filled with sun, sand, and saltwater. His laid-back lifestyle takes a dramatic turn when he inadvertently discovers the illegal activities that have been occupying his friend and business partner's time. Drawn into a trail of intrigue, drug running, and deceit, Aidan is determined to track down his former friend and get some answers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: J. Dana Stahl
• Release date: May 5, 2011
• ISBN: 9781461085874

J. Dana Stahl

J. Dana Stahl is a wife, mother of five, and an avid scuba diver. Harboring a long-time love of reading and writing, she holds degrees in English, Spanish, and Education and earned a Master of Arts degree in Romance Languages. A love of adventure and exploring the globe inspires her first fictional foray into the deep. She has a particular interest in wreck diving and discovering the history that sunken ships take with them to the bottom of the sea.

Book preview

Chapter 1

The bubbles rushed past his face in a frenzied dance toward the surface. He would have yelled for help, but here, seventy-five feet beneath the surface of the water, his screams would be trapped in the thick, silencing blanket of water. Oddly enough, instead of panicking, his thoughts took on a strange calmness, belying the fact that he probably had mere minutes of air left. As he prepared to die, he thought of an entire list of things he wished he had done during his life, and right now, tops on that list was retiring to a deserted beach somewhere after turning his scheming partner over to the authorities. A body could only go so long without air, and with his tank getting dangerously close to empty, he felt fairly safe in assuming he would soon be taking a giant gulp of salt water.

At first, instinct won out over logic, and he had screamed—not one of those shrill, panicked screams, but rather a very pissed off sort of yell. He had screamed loud enough to shake the encrusted coral off of the heap of metal he was attached to, but no matter how loud it sounded to his own ears, it would do him no good. He had a primordial need to call out for help, but the sound would only fade as soon as it left his mouth. And he thought to himself, his sense of humor miraculously still intact, that it was fairly unrealistic to hope that someone might just happen to be swimming by this very spot in the few minutes before he sucked the last of the air out of his tank. He knew for certain theirs had been the only boat in the area when they went in the water, and he was equally certain a guardian angel with scuba gear would not suddenly appear and haul him out of this mess.

He could hear his own voice, the sound reverberating so strongly that it threatened to shatter his eardrums as it ricocheted through his head. The thick water swallowed every sound he made, making it nothing more than a vibration traveling from his furious body. The whooshing sound of bubbles escaping his regulator sounded like rush hour to him, and he shook his head to clear it. He knew the roaring in his ears could not actually be detected by anyone else, even if there were, by some miracle, someone in the vicinity. Within a few minutes, he would grow weaker, his voice would be nothing more than an irritation to the current that carried it away.

Dammit, he should have known this would happen. He had weighed the odds, and he had counted on his friend to do the right thing. That was his problem—he was too damned trusting, even when it came to someone who’d been caught red-handed stealing from him. He didn’t count luck into this scenario, and it was a good thing, because he’d never been lucky. Instead, he blamed his own stupid instincts that had led him to trust just one more time in a person who should not have been trusted, and now the thing that pissed him off the most was that he was probably going to pay with his life. True, doing the right thing meant that his former best friend would probably end up in prison, but he could no sooner control that situation than he could grow gills and swim out of this mess.

He felt the ebb and flow of the surge, and somewhere in the back of his mind, he registered the fact that, just like the other ghosts that had gone down with this ship, he too would find this his final resting spot unless he did something, and soon. Unaffected by his furious breathing, beautiful reef fish that made this skeleton of a ship their home continued their lazy circles and swam past him for curious inspection.

He looked down at his air gauge and saw that it was in the red, leaving him with just under 500 psi in his tank. This meant that at his current depth of 75 feet, he probably only had 5 minutes or so of air left, maybe 7 or 8 if he was lucky. Most divers would have less, but with his level of experience, he could usually conserve more air. However, that was without taking into consideration the fact that he was forcing himself to breathe slowly and regularly when what he felt like doing was gasping like a prizefighter. Slamming panic firmly toward the back of his mind, he focused on slowing his breathing even more. Breathing faster only meant that his air would be gone sooner. He suddenly found humor in the fact that when a diver most wants to panic is the time that he most needs to stay calm. Any thrashing about or gasping would cost him precious air that he could scarcely afford to lose at the moment.

If anyone could remain calm in this situation, it was Aidan Mack. He had been in more tight spots than the eels that lived in the darkest crevices of the sea. However, no matter the scrape, he had never found himself intentionally looped in filament wire and anchored to a sunken ship. A guy had to seriously piss someone off to find himself in this situation, and too late, Aidan was realizing he had most assuredly pissed off the wrong person. He knew his partner had a temper, but he really never expected him to react by offering him as a sacrifice to the deep.

At that moment, the goliath grouper that inhabited the wreck and that most locals knew by the name of Jack, circled him slowly, lazily eyeing his predicament. He was a hulking mass of a fish and looked like he would move with the grace of a dump truck, but as he circled, Aidan admired his fluidity and the way he maneuvered his massive body. Jack was every bit of 800 pounds, if not more, and he was known by just about everyone who dove this wreck. He was a source of pride to the locals, who took every opportunity to point him out and introduce him to visiting divers. At the moment, Jack seemed to be trying to figure out why he was now sharing his peaceful underwater home with this writhing, bubbling human.

Shit, I know, Aidan growled into his regulator as his wrist computer once more beeped its persistent warning at him, as if he needed to be reminded that his tank was nearing empty. He was never one to give up on a challenge, and this was definitely the biggest challenge he had faced yet. He had been in scrapes over the years, many of which had left him beaten and bruised, but so far he had made it through them all. This one involved saving his own life, which meant there was quite a bit more on the line than a black eye or some bruised ribs, so he once more forced himself to focus on the situation at hand to try to find a way out of this mess. He could tell from the way the filament pulled tighter against his tank whenever he moved that he would not be able to simply untangle himself. He needed a tool, something to cut through the line that ensnared him and held him fast against a rusting metal hull. Just like a cheap gold chain, the more you tried to work a knot like this loose, the more tangled it became.

Ok, I need to cut and I need to cut fast. He mumbled this into his regulator like a mantra, as if saying the words would magically make a tool or sharp object appear in his hand. He could reach behind himself and feel the wire that wound its invisible tentacles through his equipment, so if he could reach it, he could cut it. But with what? His dive knife was long gone, as he had loaned that to the bastard that had put him in this predicament in the first place, so that was out of the question. He had always laughed at the divers who seemed to overdo everything by carrying two or three spares of each piece of equipment. Now, he found himself wishing he had followed their lead. Hell, even fingernail clippers would make him feel more useful than he felt right now.

Jack, the goliath grouper, chose that moment to make another swooping pass by Aidan, this time coming so close that the water displaced by his huge body shoved Aidan backward hard into the hull. He thudded against the old ship and felt a searing pain as jagged metal tore into his skin, and once more he yelled into his regulator, this time with a string of words that would make a sailor proud.

His leg throbbed, and he could tell from the pulsing that it was bleeding. A glance downward confirmed this as he watched his own blood, which appeared green at this depth, begin to swirl around him. He reached back to assess the damage and felt the piece of metal that had torn through layers of neoprene and his skin, and he immediately began to think of any number of infections that would likely be raging before the day was out. But that wouldn’t really matter if he couldn’t free himself from this underwater grave, so forcing his mind to remain sharp and focused on the task at hand, he felt around and finally grasped the shard that now remained only partially attached to the wreck. With a final burst of hope and energy, Aidan wrapped his gloved hand firmly around the jagged strip that had gouged him and bent and tugged, back and forth, weakening the already flimsy metal until it broke free.

He immediately turned the metal in his hand so that the roughest edge lay against the tangle of line. He sawed like a madman, never once hesitating or even feeling pain as the rusted metal cut through his neoprene glove and into his hand. He allowed himself a small surge of excitement as he felt a chunk of the tangled line give way. Ok, he thought as he glanced at his air gauge, now that’s what I’m talking about. He glanced up, hoping that a glimpse of blue sky might give him the rush of adrenalin he needed to saw through the rest of the line and make it to the surface. With half a dozen more vicious strokes of his makeshift blade and a reserve of adrenalin he didn’t even know he had left, he yanked himself free of the mess.

Carefully turning to face the wreck so that his equipment would not re-entangle itself in the floating line, he looked up once more. Damn, it was a long way to the surface—well, not really a long way, but he couldn’t exactly just make a run for it either. Relatively speaking he wasn’t that deep, but for the amount of time he had been at this depth, a decompression stop wasn’t optional. The last thing he wanted after getting out of this mess was to end up with the bends and suffer any number of its painful side effects. He could even die, so he knew he had to take it slow. Everything in his body screamed at him to swim hard for the surface, but the part of him that remained rational knew that it could kill him if he did. Instead he began a slow ascent, glancing at the wrist computer that still screeched at him, warning him of how little air he had left in his tank.

After years of diving, the rule many instructors taught their students came back to him, and he repeated it like a mantra. No faster than my bubbles. He laughed to himself at the simplicity of it—after all, here he was wreck diving and saving his own life, and he was repeating a phrase he had learned as a teenage newbie diver. In order to assure a safe ascent, he had to come up behind his bubbles—this would ensure he was ascending no faster than one foot per second. At fifteen feet, if he had the air for such a luxury, he would do as much of a decompression stop as he could manage.

A luxury is exactly what it was. At about 20 feet, he began to feel almost giddy realizing that safety was just within reach. He would give just about anything right now for a big gulp of air that didn’t come from a tank. Thinking of blue sky and fresh air, he gave a cursory glance to his computer. Barely over 100 psi. Not much at all, but it was enough, and that’s what mattered right now. It definitely wouldn’t give him any sort of leisurely hang time, no time to dangle on a line and marvel and the pretty fish swimming by, no time to daydream about buying his own little island, but at this point any sort of a safety stop at all was better than nothing. He wanted to get as much nitrogen out of his system as possible to avoid the debilitating and sometimes fatal effects of the bends.

And now especially, he didn’t have time to relax in some recompression chamber—now, he had to focus on getting to the surface and catching up with his former dive buddy, business partner, and best friend. Just a few minutes ago, Aidan had almost convinced himself that Trevor had gotten away with murder, but now with daylight only a few feet above his head, his thoughts turned to what he would do when he caught up with him. The man had been his partner for years and his friend for even longer than that, and Aidan would never have dreamed that Trevor could find it within himself to harm anyone, let alone a friend. And that is where I made my mistake, thought Aidan. I assumed—I assumed that he would be rational enough to simply talk to me or even fess up to what he’s done. Aidan had never considered the scenario where his friend might toss him into the nearest ocean as fish bait.

Like magic, the drifting thoughts of daylight and fresh air seemed to evaporate the air in his tank, his wrist computer gave a plaintive wail, and the breath he pulled from his regulator was thick, like sucking a shake through a straw. Well, that’s it, he thought as he pulled the last remnant of air from his tank. Time to swim. And with that, he slowly began to exhale as he did a controlled and steady swim for the surface, hoping against hope that he’d managed to get enough nitrogen out of his system.

chapter 2

He wasn’t exactly prepared for what he found when he reached the surface, which was exactly nothing. No boat, no divers, no nothing. Not even a floating scrap of fruit that was usually tossed from the boat for whatever lucky fish might come upon it. No, he took that back, there was something. There was an island, and lucky him, he thought sarcastically, it would probably only take him a day or so to swim there.

"Shit! He yelled to the empty air around him as he punched the surface of the water in his frustration. At that moment, he vowed to catch up with Trevor and remind him of exactly why it is a bad idea to leave someone for dead and not actually finish the job.

"You’ve got to be kidding me," he mumbled again, this time raising his head and looking skyward as if confronting anyone who might be listening. He manually inflated his BCD, a top-of-the-line buoyancy device used by many professional divers. By inflating the jacket, enough air would fill the built-in bladders on the side to keep him afloat even if he needed to take a rest. On the surface, it functioned much like a common life preserver, and it kept him from having to struggle against the water.

He had long since tossed the lead weights from his pockets—they served to help him get under the water and stay there—and that was exactly what he did not want to do right now. By dropping his weights and inflating his buoyancy jacket, he found himself comfortably floating in the middle of nowhere. After assuring that his equipment was taken care of, he took a deep breath and began the slow and arduous swim to the closest land mass, all the while thinking of ways he might like to torture Trevor once he got hold of him.

After about an hour of swimming, Aidan started to invent new words for what he would like to call his former friend. He was imagining ways he could get even for this stunt he had pulled, and he was also reveling in the probable surprise that would show on Trevor Wallace’s face when he caught sight of the not-nearly-dead-enough Aidan Mack.

Aidan was a survivor at heart, and he came from a long line of family survivors. There was no way he intended to give up now. He had too many plans for his life, and he damned sure wasn’t going to give Trevor Wallace the satisfaction of thinking he had succeeded in killing him. He paddled at an almost lazy pace, not because he had nothing better to do, but because he wanted to pace himself and conserve his strength. If he wore himself out within the first hour or so of swimming, he had no chance of making it to land anytime soon. And while he swam, he had plenty of time to think.

He wasn’t sure exactly what Trevor had planned to accomplish once he got rid of him. He would still have the same problems he had before, only then he could add murder to the list of his quickly accumulating crimes. Sure, Aidan had been really pissed off at him for the crap he had been involved in, but he would have tried to help him make things right. He would have helped him straighten himself out and get clean, but instead of trusting his friend, Trevor had decided to kill him.

The path of least resistance, Aidan mused. He was pretty sure that’s what Trevor was looking for. Yeah, right, he said aloud, talking to no one at all, save maybe a few fish that happened to swim by. I’ll show him resistance. Bet he’ll be nice and surprised to see me alive and well instead of lying on the bottom of the ocean.

The sun was beginning to sink in the sky as Aidan paddled, and the more tired he became, the more he ended up talking to himself. In fact, he was starting to wonder if he was really losing it, and he waited for the moment when the fish would suddenly start to talk back to him. It seemed that the land mass he had been eyeing was no closer than it had been over an hour before. In fact, he thought it might actually be moving away from him in some odd cosmic joke. He ramped up his efforts and began using more of his strength to paddle. One thing was certain—he did not want to find himself flailing out here on the surface at night, which just so happened to be when sharks wanted to settle down and have their dinner. He didn’t relish the idea of becoming a meal for a big, hungry fish with enough teeth to finish him off in mere minutes. If he did, it was almost certain that no sign of him would ever be found, and people would be left wondering what could have happened to him after he simply disappeared off the face of the planet.

He wondered if people might begin to suspect Trevor simply because he had gone missing at the same time as Aidan, and he was satisfied with the fact that someone would surely put two and two together. Maybe not right away, but eventually someone would find it a strange coincidence.

As he thought about it now, he was pretty sure he hadn’t told anyone his plans, so no one knew where he would be or when he planned to return. There was no one who could say where he was headed when it came time to search for his body, and this made him paddle even faster. I’ll be damned if Trevor gets his way on this one. I’ve bailed his ass out one too many times, and this is how he tries to repay me? He could feel his temper rising again, and he forced it back in check. He needed his energy for surviving right now. He could worry about wringing Trevor’s neck once he reached land.

chapter 3

Trevor Wallace slouched on a barstool, smoked his cigarette down to the filter, and pretended to be both shocked and saddened by the sudden loss of his friend and business partner. Well, he supposed he was shocked—shocked that his plan had gone off without a hitch. And in truth, he was a little sad also. They had been friends and partners for years, so he’d hated having to do what he did. Right now, though, relief outweighed any remorse he might be feeling. All Trevor could see was a light at the end of this long tunnel. Now that he’d gotten rid of Aidan, he could fade into the distance and hopefully give Romero time to cool off and quit looking for him. Aidan was the only one who knew what had been going on, and he only knew because he had been snooping around in Trevor’s affairs. Hell, he would still be alive right now if he’d just kept to his own business. Absorbing all the thoughts that collided in his mind, Trevor hung his head over his half-empty mug of beer and contemplated the future, a future that was now full of possibility.

He’d had time to get over the sad portion of what he was feeling—almost. He’d known what he would have to do as soon as Aidan started to snoop around and ask questions. He tried to avoid it and push it toward the back of his mind, but really, he didn’t have a choice. He was working in a line of business that was dangerous, and it became even more dangerous when more people became involved. Sure, he could have begged Aidan to keep his mouth shut or to help him out of his mess, but he knew that the Boy Scout that lived within the man would never allow him to give an inch where honesty and the law were concerned. Hell, he wouldn’t even cheat on his taxes, even when the business was floundering and they could have really used a break.

The men had been friends for years, and that friendship had solidified around their mutual love of diving. Before Trevor got himself mixed up in his current mess, they dove together several times every week. They took customers out on the water to show them the colorful reefs and blue waters around Florida, and they got together on weekends for barbeques and for chasing women. They were living the ideal bachelor life, spending their days diving and running the shop and their nights drinking beer and looking for female companionship. Everything would have continued to be perfect if Aidan hadn’t gone snooping around.

Aidan Mack and Trevor Wallace had been friends ever since Aidan saved Trevor’s ass during a deep dive about 10 years ago. They were both fascinated with the ocean and with wrecks in particular, especially the deep, dark, hard-to-get-to kind. Thinking back on it now, that was probably the first sign that they would push each other to extremes and compete to get to the elusive ship skeletons they both wanted to reach so badly.

For them and so many others who are fascinated with sunken wrecks, nothing could begin to explain the feeling of being surrounded by total silence, in the company of nothing but your own bubbles and the creatures that swam past you, staring into the darkened hull of a once-glorious ship. In the silence of the water, history screams at you, and you have no choice but to listen. It draws you in, the dark caverns beckoning, waving you inward with cold, bony fingers.

It was a warm summer day, the kind where the water glistens like unbroken glass, barely even broken by the gentle waves that rocked on its surface, a beautiful day for going out in the boat, and an even better day for diving. The water was teeming with boats and fish, and the men could hardly wait to jump in and explore a wreck they had been eyeing for weeks now. They had waited for the perfect weather and perfect water conditions, and their patience had finally paid off. Once they were tied up to the mooring line that was attached to the wreck, both men checked their gear quickly and were anxious to get to the dive.

Trevor was just as mesmerized by the old ship as he was new at wreck diving, and those two things don’t go hand in hand. The excitement is always there, but what he lacked was a respect and fear of the cold ship that wanted nothing more than to claim him as its own. It called to him, promising him a glimpse into the past, and he did all he knew how to do at the time. He went.

They were diving within a few feet of each other, and before Aidan knew what had happened, Trevor had slipped into one of the dark, jagged holes that gaped at them like hungry jaws. Teeth of rusted metal hid in the shadows and threatened to clamp down on anyone who dared trespass through the ghostly halls. And that was exactly where Trevor had gone. Aidan could still see the silt floating lazily around the opening, and he knew it had recently been disturbed. He cursed through his regulator—a habit he developed early and put to good practice, and he edged closer to the opening, trying not to touch anything and stir up even more silt. He shone his light into the cavern, but the darkness inside swallowed the beam of light whole, and he could see nothing past the first few feet. He flashed his light in and out of the opening for a minute, both trying to signal Trevor and trying to buy himself time to think the situation through.

He knew Trevor had gone in without a line—something all cavern and wreck divers had so that they could tie off and leave a trail to follow to find their way out. Just like Hansel and Gretel’s trail of bread crumbs, you would be lost without it to guide you back to the opening you came through. They had planned for this dive, and this was strictly supposed to be a dive to scout out the wreck and to see how easy or difficult penetration might be on the next dive, so Trevor decided to travel light, as he had put it, leaving much of his equipment onboard their boat for the next dive. They would mentally make a list of tools they would need, and they would map the wreck out in their minds so they could formulate a plan for future dives.

But damn if Trevor hadn’t gone off and gone renegade on him. He turned his back for one second, and the idiot had gone into a wreck with essentially no way of finding his way back out. Looking down at his gauge, Aidan assessed the amount of air he had. Still plenty of time, as they were near the beginning of their dive, but time could get away from you quickly down here.

He had very few choices. He could wait around for Trevor to come out—if he managed to make it out. Or he could surface and call for help, in which case, if Trevor really were lost inside the wreck, he would run out of air long before help arrived. Or he could go in and get him. Shit, I am gonna kill this kid if he’s not dead already, Aidan thought as he pulled his reel of line into his hand and got ready to go into the wreck.

chapter 4

As soon as his body cleared the small opening Trevor had gone through, the darkness inside swallowed him. Even the high beam of his light could not cut through a pitch black like this. He slowly circled, shining his light down passageways and into hidden nooks, but the beam was dimmed by the shadows that seeped into every corner. He could only see a few feet in front of himself, and what he did see was not encouraging. What had been a light shower of silt outside the ship was now ominous, a thunder cloud of rust and particles that cast its thick shadow deep inside the wreck.

It only took a few seconds to see that the cloud of silt was thickest in one area of the chamber, so Aidan carefully began to lay his line and work his way toward that side of the small room. Some divers would probably call him overly cautious for laying a line before he even knew he would leave the small room he was in, but he knew from experience that the darkness could overtake everything with such speed and efficiency that he could become lost and disoriented before crossing the room. His cautious nature paid off when he realized that what he had thought was a wall was actually a corridor that undoubtedly led to an entire labyrinth of corridors, each leading deeper into the belly of this dead ship.

What most people did not know about going into wrecks is that they are deceptively calm. What appears to be a resting ghost can come to life and swallow you whole, and you can become lost in the amount of time it takes you to turn around. Your senses are overcome in the cold and the darkness, and you are distracted by the history that lives within the preserved walls. If you reach out to touch something or accidentally scrape your knee or fin along an unseen ledge, you can stir up a storm of silt that will blind you. Many divers had lost their lives in wrecks just like this one because they had been seduced by the mystery that lay just beyond their reach, down the long and lonely corridors.

Aidan was careful to go slowly and secure his line, so that he would not be counted among the souls who rested at the bottom of the sea with this vessel. He was at the mouth of the corridor Trevor had taken now, and he squinted behind his