A commercial diver cleaning a freighter discovered a mysterious rocket-shaped object clamped to the hull.

But when they hauled it up and torched it open, the shock and contents made even the respondent officers turned pale.

The taste of the port of Miami is a specific aggressive cocktail of diesel fuel, salt, decaying seaggrass, and the metallic tang of industrial runoff.

A flavor that hangs in the heavy humid air long before you even touch the water.

For Jake Sullivan, that taste was simply the flavor of a Tuesday.

At 45, Jake was a man shaped by the sea, broadshouldered, weatherbeaten, with lines around his eyes that came from squinting against the sun in the sting of saltwater.

He stood on the concrete pier of Terminal J, staring up at the steel leviathan that loomed above him.

The ship was the MV Ora, a 900 ft cargo freighter that had just limped in from a transatlantic run originating in South America.

From the dock, she looked like a rusted mountain, her hull, a patchwork of red antifouling paint and streaks of oxidation.

To a tourist, she was just a boat.

To Jake, she was a paycheck, and a necessary one at that.

He adjusted the straps of his heavy diving rig.

The twin yellow tanks on his back clanking softly against the back plate.

Those tanks were his signature.

Bright cautionary yellow, easy to spot in the Merc, a habit he’d picked up after a near miss in the murky waters of the Mississippi Delta a decade ago.

She’s dragon.

The dockmaster, a man named Frank, who looked like a walking leather handbag, shouted over the roar of a nearby crane.

Captain says she’s burning fuel like a leaking stove.

Wants the hall scraped, specifically the rudder assembly and the intake grates.

Fast turnaround, Jake.

They want to leave with the morning tide.

Jake nodded, checking his regulator.

Fast.

usually means sloppy.

Frank, you know I don’t do sloppy.

I know you need the tuition money.

Frank shot back, his voice dropping an octave, losing its professional edge.

Maya’s semester bill is due, right? The captain’s offering a speed bonus.

Clean the running gear, check the intakes, get out.

Double rate if he’s happy.

The mention of his daughter Maya tightened a screw in Jake’s chest.

She was in her sophomore year at Florida State studying marine biology.

An irony that wasn’t lost on him.

He spent his life scraping the slime off the bottom of the industry so she could study the pristine ecosystems at the top.

But the contracting business had been lean this year.

The whole cleaning contracts were going to larger automated firms.

An independent operator like Jake, even with his twin tank heavy rig and 20 years of experience, was becoming a dinosaur.

Double rate, Jake repeated, looking at the dirty water swirling around the Ostravas waterline.

All right, tell him I’m going under.

He bit down on his mouthpiece.

the rubber familiar and comforting.

He pulled his mask down, the world narrowing to a rectangle of tempered glass.

With a heavy splash that barely registered against the massive steel hull, Jake Sullivan dropped into the water, leaving the noise of the city behind for the muffled, claustrophobic silence of the deep.

The transition was instant.

The port of Miami wasn’t the Caribbean.

There were no tropical fish or crystal blue vistas here.

The water was a thick suspended soup of silt and algae.

Visibility reduced to perhaps 5 ft on a good day.

Today it was closer to three.

Jake switched on his shoulder-mounted lights, the beams cutting through the particulate matter like headlights in a blizzard.

The hull of the Ostrava appeared before him as a wall of red darkness coated in a thick layer of barnacles and slime that explained the ship’s fuel inefficiency.

He began his work, a rhythmic, grueling process.

He wasn’t using a high-pressure cava blaster today.

The port had restrictions on noise due to a nearby manatee migration zone.

So, he was doing it the hard way.

pneumatic scrapers and raw muscle.

He worked his way aft toward the stern, his breath hissing in his ears, the sh clack sh clack of the scraper becoming a hypnotic rhythm.

This was the reality of commercial diving.

It was an adventure.

It was underwater construction and janitorial work combined, performed in an environment that constantly tried to kill you.

He checked his depth gauge.

35 ft.

Shallow enough to stay down for a while, deep enough that a mistake with the ship’s active systems could be fatal.

He approached the massive rudder, a piece of steel the size of a barn door, and the towering bronze propeller blades that sat silent and still.

Lockout, tag out procedures were in place, meaning the engine room couldn’t turn the screw.

But Jake still felt a primal shiver of respect whenever he drifted near the meat grinder.

He was working on the starboard side of the rudder housing, clearing a patch of stubborn tube worms when his scraper hit something that didn’t feel like the ship.

Usually, when metal hits the hull, it’s a dull, solid thud.

steel absorbing the blow.

This sound was different.

It was a hollowower, sharper clank, followed by a metallic vibration that traveled up his arm.

Jake stopped.

He floated in the suspension of the water, his fins kicking gently to hold position.

He brought his light closer to the hull.

The bofallin was thick here, a carpet of green and brown fuzz, but there was a shape protruding from the steel that didn’t match the architectural drawings of a standard freighter rudder assembly.

He scraped away a handful of algae.

Under the green slime, a patch of bright orange paint revealed itself.

It wasn’t the red antifouling of the ship.

It was industrial orange, the kind used on high visibility safety gear.

Jake frowned, his heart rate picking up a few beats per minute.

He switched his scraper to his left hand and used his gloved right hand to wipe away more of the grime.

The object wasn’t a patch.

It was a cylinder.

He drifted back a foot to get a wider view.

Attached to the hull, tucked neatly into the hydrodnamic shadow of the rudder, where the water flow would be least turbulent, was a 6 foot long metal tube.

It looked like a torpedo, or perhaps an old depth charge bolted directly to the ship’s skin.

“What in the hell?” Jake thought, the words echoing in his skull.

He moved closer, inspecting the attachment points.

These weren’t welded.

They were massive C-shaped industrial clamps, the kind that required pneumatic tools to tighten.

They were hooked onto the flange of the rudder housing biting deep into the steel.

The cylinder itself was streamlined with a conicle nose and a flat rear, clearly designed to endure the friction of a trans oceanic crossing.

Jake’s blood ran cold.

In the post 911 world, commercial divers were trained to look for anomalies, but usually that meant checking for drugs in the sea chests or hearing about smugglers welding boxes to the keel.

This was different.

This looked like a weapon, a mine.

The thought seized him.

If this was in limpet mine, intended to blow a hole in the rudder and disable the ship in the channel, his scraping might have already disturbed a trembler switch.

He looked at the clamps again.

They were heavy, corroded, but solid.

The device was painted orange, which was odd for a weapon.

Mines were usually gray or black to blend in.

Orange meant it was meant to be found or meant to be retrieved.

He checked his air.

He had plenty, but his breathing had accelerated.

He needed to surface.

He needed to clear the area.

But first, he needed to be sure of what he was seeing.

He took one more pass with the light, noting a small rusted padlock securing a hatch on the side of the cylinder.

It wasn’t a mine, at least not a conventional one, but it was definitely not ship’s equipment.

Jake kicked his fins, ascending slowly, adhering to his training, even as every instinct screamed at him to bolt for the surface.

He watched his ascent rate, the bubbles expanding around him, the murky green turning to a lighter, frothy jade as he broke the surface.

He spat out his regulator and ripped his mask off, gasping the humid, oily air.

He swam to the dive ladder and hauled himself up.

the 80 lb of gear feeling suddenly twice as heavy.

“Frank was at the edge of the pier, looking at his clipboard.

“You can’t be done, Jake.

You’ve been down 20 minutes.

” “Get the captain,” Jake said, his voice ragged.

He unclipped his chest strap, letting the heavy yellow tanks rest on the concrete.

“And get the poor police now.

” Frank froze, the color draining from his face.

What? Why? There’s a device on the hall, Jake said, wiping slime from his face.

Starboard side, rudder housing.

6 ft long, bolted on.

It looks like a torpedo, Frank.

The next hour was a blur of escalating chaos.

The kind of controlled panic that happens when the routine machinery of global commerce grinds to a sudden, terrified halt.

The port of Miami does not like delays.

Delays cost millions.

But the word bomb stops everything.

By the time Jake had stripped out of his dry suit and into his coveralls, the pier was swarming.

The Miami Dade Police Department’s specialized port unit had arrived, followed closely by a black tactical truck from the bomb squad.

A perimeter was established, pushing the angry Steve doors and crane operators back 300 yards.

Jake sat on the bumper of his truck, drinking lukewarm water from a plastic bottle.

He watched the activity with a detached professional eye.

He had been debriefed three times, first by Frank, then by the ship’s furious Captain Vargo, who seemed to blame Jake personally for finding the object.

and finally by a seriousl looking police sergeant.

But it was the arrival of the black sedan that put the hook of true fear into Jake’s gut.

It parked far back near the stacks of shipping containers.

It wasn’t a government car.

No plates that Jake recognized as federal.

Two men in suits got out watching the scene from a distance behind sunglasses.

They didn’t approach the police line.

They just watched the ship.

“You the diver?” Jake looked up.

A man in a heavy kevlar vest holding a helmet stood over him.

The patch on his chest read, “Eodeed Miami Dade.

” He was older with the calm demeanor of someone who dismantled nightmares for a living.

“Yeah, Jake Sullivan.

” “Lieutenant Miller,” the man said, offering a hand.

Good eyes down there.

Most guys would have just scraped around it and invoiced the hours.

It was hard to miss once I hit it, Jake said.

Is it a mine? We don’t know yet, Miller said, looking at the water.

We put a drone down, but the current is whipping up the silt.

Can’t see a damn thing on the camera.

We need to get hands on it.

I told you guys exactly where it is, Jake said.

I know, Miller nodded.

But my divers aren’t hole scrubbers.

They don’t know the geometry of a rudder housing on a ship this size.

They’re trying to find perches to rig lift bags, but they’re flying blind in that soup.

I need a guide.

Jake looked at the water.

The tide was turning.

The current would be ripping through the pilings now, making the dive dangerous even without a potential explosive involved.

I’m a civilian, Lieutenant.

I did my job.

I reported it.

Miller looked at him.

I know, and I can’t order you back in, but if that thing is timed or if it’s unstable, every minute we waste fumbling around in the dark is a minute closer to it going off.

If it blows, it takes the rudder off.

The ship sinks at the pier.

The channel is blocked for months.

And that’s if it’s just conventional explosives.

Jake looked past Miller to the distant black sedan.

The men were still there.

If that was a bomb and the cartel or whoever was watching, they might detonate it if they thought they were losing it.

Or maybe they were just waiting to see if their cargo survived.

“I have a daughter,” Jake said quietly.

I have two sons,” Miller replied.

“My lead diver has a baby on the way.

We want to go home, too, Jake.

Help us get this thing off safely.

” Jake looked at his yellow tanks sitting in the back of his truck.

He thought about the tuition bill.

He thought about the pride he took in his work, the way he knew every bolt and weld of a ship’s underbelly.

I need a fresh tank, Jake said, standing up.

And I want that speed bonus the captain promised in writing.

Going back into the water felt different this time.

The first dive had been work.

This dive felt like walking into a loaded chamber.

Jake descended along the shot line the police had established, followed closely by two police divers carrying heavy canvas lift bags and rigging equipment.

The current had indeed picked up.

It tugged at Jake’s hoses, trying to spin him around.

He had to fight to keep his orientation.

The water was darker now, the afternoon sun obscured by the angle of the ship and the disturbed silt.

He reached the rudder housing.

He grabbed a familiar weld seam, anchoring himself.

He signaled to the police divers behind him, “Stay close.

Watch my hands.

He guided them to the object.

Even in the gloom, the orange cylinder seemed to glow with a malevolent energy.

Jake placed the hand of the lid police diver onto the top clamp.

He felt the diver stiffen, then relax as he understood the mechanism.

The plan was simple.

Attach inflatable lift bags to the cylinder, secure them, and then unbolt the clamps.

Once free, they would inflate the bags and let the object drift gently to the surface away from the ship.

Simple on paper.

Hell in practice.

The first clamp came loose easily.

The police diver used a pneumatic impact wrench.

The were thud thud thud vibrating through the water, but the rear clamp, the one closest to the propeller shaft, was seized.

Jake watched as the diver struggled with the wrench.

The nut wouldn’t budge.

The diver looked at Jake, shrugging.

They were burning bottom time.

Jake motioned for the wrench.

He braced his legs against the rudder, wedging his shoulder under the cylinder to support it.

He didn’t want it to drop suddenly if the bolt sheared.

He took the tool, feeling the weight of the water pressing down on him.

He squeezed the trigger.

The torque twisted his wrist, fighting him.

“Come on,” he thought.

“Let go.

” He felt the bolt strip.

A cloud of rust exploded into the water.

The clamp popped open with a violent metallic spang that sounded like a gunshot.

The cylinder dropped.

Jake grunted, catching the weight of the aft end on his shoulder.

It was heavy, heavier than it should be for a hollow tube.

It pinned him against the rudder for a second.

Panic flared.

If this was a mine, the impact was enough to trigger it.

He held his breath, eyes squeezed shut behind his mask, waiting for the white hot flash that would vaporize him.

One second, two seconds, nothing.

He opened his eyes.

The cylinder was resting on his shoulder.

Heavy and cold, he shoved it upward, signaling frantically to the police divers, “Inflate! Inflate!” They triggered the CO2 cartridges in the lift bags.

The canvas balloons filled with a rush of bubbles expanding rapidly.

The buoyancy took the weight off Jake’s shoulder.

The cylinder groaned as it lifted away from the hull, swaying in the current like a pendulum of death.

Jake kicked back, putting distance between himself and the object.

He watched it rise, a ghost descending into the green ceiling above.

He checked his air gauge.

He had burned through half his supply in 10 minutes from the adrenaline.

He gave the okay sign to the divers.

They began their ascent.

Jake followed, but he kept looking back into the gloom, half expecting to see something else attached to the hull, something they had missed.

But there was only the silent, indifferent steel of the ship.

Breaking the surface this time didn’t bring relief.

It brought a spectacle.

The crane on the pier was already moving, its cable lowering toward the water where the lift bags bobbed.

The police boat hookers snagged the lines securing the cylinder.

Clear the deck.

Miller was shouting through a megaphone.

“Pull it up slow, easy.

” Jake climbed the ladder, ignoring the offer of help from a paramedic.

He stripped off his mask and fins, walking barefoot across the hot concrete to stand behind the blast shields the EOD team had set up.

The crane winded.

The cable went taut.

Slowly, dripping water and slime, the 6-foot orange rocket rose from the harbor.

Suspended in the air, it looked even more alien.

It wasn’t just a pipe.

It was engineered.

It had fins for stability.

It had a nose cone.

“Set it down,” Miller commanded.

“Gentle.

” The operator lowered it onto a bed of sandbags arranged on the pier.

The moment it touched down, the EOD team moved in with handheld scanners.

The silence on the pier was absolute.

Even the seagulls seemed to have gone quiet.

Jake stood next to Frank, both of them dripping sweat.

“Ger counter is negative,” an EOD tech called out.

No radiation.

“Chemical sniffer?” Miller asked.

Negative on volatiles, no nitrates.

It’s not a bomb, Lieutenant.

A collective breath was released, but the tension didn’t vanish.

It shifted.

If it wasn’t a bomb, what was it? X-ray shows organic density, the tech continued, looking at a tablet screen linked to the portable scanner.

Packed tight.

No electronics inside, just mass.

Miller walked up to the cylinder.

He ran a gloved hand over the orange paint.

He found a seam near the nose cone.

“Get the torch,” Miller said.

“Let’s crack it open.

” Jake moved closer, drawn by a magnetic curiosity.

He had risked his life for this metal tube.

He wanted to see what was worth dying for.

A technician in a heavy apron sparked an acetylene torch.

The blue flame hissed, cutting through the humid air.

He applied the flame to the steel casing of the cylinder.

The paint bubbled and blackened.

Sparks showered onto the concrete, dancing like fireflies.

The metal glowed cherry red, then white.

The tech moved the torch carefully, cutting a rectangular window into the side of the casing.

It took 10 minutes of cutting.

The smell of burning steel and melting rubber gaskets filled the air.

Finally, the tech killed the torch.

He took a pry bar and jammed it into the glowing cut.

“Stand back,” he warned.

With a heave, he peeled the steel plate back.

It fell to the concrete with a clang.

Steam hissed from the opening.

Everyone leaned in.

Inside there were no wires, no clockwork mechanisms, no biological vials.

The cylinder was packed wallto-wall with rectangular bricks wrapped in layers of black waterproof plastic and duct tape.

Miller stepped forward.

He pulled a knife from his vest and sliced the top of the nearest brick.

He dipped the tip of the knife into the white powder that spilled out, then touched it to a field test kit he pulled from his pocket.

The liquid in the kit turned a brilliant electric blue instantly.

“Cocaine,” Miller said, his voice carrying over the wind.

“High purity.

” He looked at the cylinder, doing a quick mental calculation.

“There’s got to be 300 kilos in here.

” The captain of the Ostrava standing near the police line looked like he was about to faint.

I didn’t know, he stammered.

I swear I didn’t know.

We know you didn’t, Miller said, not looking up.

This is a parasite.

They bolted on while you’re anchored in Brazil, and they dive to retrieve it before you even dock in Miami.

You were just the mule.

Jake stared at the white powder.

$50 million, maybe more.

It was sitting there wet and ugly inside a rusted tube that he had almost ignored.

“$50 million,” Frank whispered beside him.

“Jesus, Jake, you were scraping barnacles off enough money to buy the whole damn port.

” Jake didn’t look at the drugs.

He looked toward the container stacks.

The black sedan was moving.

It backed up slowly, turned and drove away, disappearing into the maze of the port’s logistical grid.

The watchers had seen the police.

They had seen the cut.

They knew the shipment was burned.

They were cutting their losses.

A federal agent, a man in a windbreaker with DHS on the back, approached Jake.

He looked like the kind of man who did paperwork with a gun on his desk.

Mr.

Sullivan.

Yeah.

Agent Castillo, Homeland Security.

We’re going to need a full statement and we’re going to need your dive logs.

Am I in trouble? Jake asked, wiping grease from his hands.

Castillo smiled.

A rare genuine expression.

Trouble? You just intercepted one of the largest single shipments of class A narcotics this port has seen in five years.

You’re not in trouble, son.

You’re the man of the hour.

The cartel, Jake started looking at the empty spot where the sedan had been.

They don’t go after the guy who found it, Castillo said, reading Jake’s mind.

Bad for business.

Draws too much heat.

They write it off as a loss and fire the guy who designed those clamps.

You’re clear.

Jake exhaled, a long, shuddering breath that released the tension he had been holding since he first heard that metallic clank.

3 hours later, the sun was setting, turning the Miami sky into a bruised purple and orange.

The Ostrava had been cleared.

The hull swept by police divers to ensure there were no other parasites.

The ship was preparing to depart.

Jake stood by his truck packing his gear.

The yellow tanks were dry now.

He loaded them into the bed, securing them with bungee cords.

His phone buzzed.

It was a notification from his bank app, a pending deposit from the shipping line, the speed bonus, plus a hazard pay adjustment that Captain Vargo had hurriedly approved to keep the company’s name out of the headlines as much as possible.

It wasn’t $50 million, but it was $12,000, exactly enough for the tuition.

He picked up his phone and dialed.

Hey, Dad.

Maya’s voice was clear, sounding like she was in a library.

Everything okay? You’re calling early? Yeah, honey, Jake said, leaning against the warm metal of his truck, looking out at the darkening water.

Everything’s fine.

Just finished a job.

Was it a hard one? Jake looked at the caution tape fluttering on the pier, the remnants of the sandbags in the empty space where the parasite had been.

It had its moments, he said, but the hull is clean.

Listen, I just transferred the tuition.

You should see it in the morning.

Dad, thank you.

I know things have been tight.

Are you sure? I’m sure, Jake said.

You just focus on your grades.

Learn everything you can about the ocean, kiddo.

I will.

Love you, Dad.

Love you, too.

He hung up.

He got into his truck, the engine turning over with a reliable rumble.

As he drove out of the security gate, passing the armed guards and the perimeter fences, he looked in his rear view mirror one last time at the water.

The ocean was a vast, dark vault of secrets.

Most men sailed over it, oblivious.

Some, like the smugglers, tried to exploit it.

But divers like Jake, they had to touch it.

They had to crawl into the dark and scrape away the filth to find the truth underneath.

He turned on the radio, letting the noise of the city wash over him, leaving the silence of the deep behind until the next dive.