Ghost River

  “A gritty, emotionally immersive and addictive journey forcing the reader to confront the best and the worst of the human experience. Ghost River plunges us across the membrane separating the natural and supernatural psychic consciousness. This is Jon Coon’s best work—a provocative and disruptive journey shrouded in mystery, heroism, and suspense from the start and on the level of the best works from the likes of Clancy, Christie, Fleming, and Daniel Woodrell.”

  —Dr. Drew Richardson, CEO and president,

  Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI),

  the world’s largest dive training agency with

  more than 25 million divers certified

  “Jon has captured the essence of a public safety diver while weaving a gripping story. The way he builds a tapestry of characters and gives Gabe an ability all public safety divers wished they had keeps you wanting more, page after page. If you are a diver or someone who would like a book you can’t put down, Ghost River is the book for you.”

  —Sean Harrison,

  senior vice president, Scuba Diving International (SDI),

  Technical Diving International (TDI),

  Emergency Response Diving International (ERDI)

  “Jon has a way of taking underwater criminal investigations with all the dangers, challenges, as well as the glory to a level that takes the reader on a suspenseful, heart-pounding adventure . . . You’re about to get a glimpse of the life of a true diving professional, an underwater criminal investigator. Enjoy the ride!”

  —Michael Berry, first sergeant/

  dive team coordinator, Virginia State Police

  “Ghost River is an intense, fast-paced thriller, taking the reader into the dark and dangerous world of the underwater criminal investigator. But this investigator has an extraordinary, if terrifying, gift—the drowned corpses he finds tell him their grisly stories and they lead him to a trail of corruption and murder. Jon Coon’s intimate knowledge of this specialist world makes every page ring true and lends a compelling authenticity to an extraordinary and gripping tale.”

  —Mark Caney,

  industry relations and training executive,

  PADI Worldwide, and author of

  Dolphin Way: Rise of the Guardians

  “Ghost River is a thought-provoking thriller, balancing heart-pounding action with the personal and spiritual journey of police diver Gabe Jones. Gabe is a flawed yet devout man whose gift of speaking to the dead gives him a professional edge at the expense of his relationships with the living. A former commercial oil field diver and dive safety officer for NASA, author Jon Coon uses his diving expertise to immerse the reader in a complex tale as dark and dangerous as the river that gives the book its name.”

  —Jaden Terrell,

  internationally published author

  of the Jared McKean private detective series

  and past president of the Southeast chapter of

  Mystery Writers of America

  Praise for Thief of the Deep:

  “With Thief of the Deep, Jon Coon has established himself as one of America’s top writers of modern sea adventure. A great tale with suspense and romance at every turn.”

  —Clive Cussler

  “The best diving fiction I’ve read in years . . . Hopefully there’s more to come . . . I’m waiting.”

  —AquaCORPS journal

  “A complex plot involving underwater raiders . . . and a state of the art submarine . . . the drama is tense.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Jon Coon knows his diving. He tells a rattling good yarn . . . a thoroughly good read.”

  —Sport Diver magazine

  Other books by Jon Coon

  Thief of the Deep

  Blackwolf

  Iron Herring

  An imprint of Iron Stream Media

  100 Missionary Ridge

  Birmingham, AL 35242

  IronStreamMedia.com

  © 2019 by Jon Coon

  All rights reserved. First printing 2019.

  Printed in the United States of America

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Characters, institutions, organizations, ghosts, and bridges in this work are either the product of the author’s worst nightmare, or, if real, used fictitiously without any intent to describe their actual conduct, essence, or lack thereof. Iron Stream Media serves its authors as they express their views, which may not express the views of the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been filed.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-56309-325-8

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-56309-326-5

  1 2 3 4 5—24 23 22 21 20

  Until quite recently the kinds of diving described in this book—bridge inspections, evidence searches and preservation, body recovery, and rescue diving—had the highest fatality rate of any specialized group of divers. Exceeding even that of cave diving and exploration.

  This work is dedicated to the exclusive group of instructors who have dedicated their lives to providing sane and safe training to that community, thereby saving many lives.

  Also, to my wonderful wife Rachel, who with her patience, kindness, and love has saved my life or at least my sanity more times than I can count.

  A Diver’s Prayer

  Eternal Father, strong to save,

  Have mercy on me,

  A wretched sinner.

  In the name of Your Son,

  Who bound the wave and calmed the sea,

  Please don’t add my name

  To the list of those many brave divers who lie asleep

  In the deep.

  At least not today.

  Amen

  CHAPTER 1

  0900

  Chattahoochee River Interstate Bridge, Florida Panhandle February, cold and windy

  The first things Gabe Jones felt as he submerged were the lower body squeeze of the Viking dry suit and the chill. He added air from the suit’s chest valve until he was comfortable. Then he paused for his pre-dive prayer, a lifetime habit, and pulled his way down the buoy line. He adjusted the airflow to the Aga full-face dive mask as he descended.

  The first few feet of tannic brown river water were full of debris and trash, reducing visibility to mere inches. Gabe took two slow, deep breaths, forcing himself to relax, cleared his ears by putting his tongue on the roof of his mouth and swallowing hard, and thought, Charlie, why?

  As he descended the current increased. Gabe wrapped a leg around the line to steady himself and continued his drop. Soon he was fighting to hang onto the buoy line with both hands. The current grabbed his umbilical—the air hose, communications wire, and safety line bundle that was his lifeline to the surface. The umbilical’s drag was nearly enough to pull him off the buoy line. This is insane.

  And after years as an oilfield diver and then underwater criminal investigator, Gabe understood insanity more than most. He focused and pulled himself down the line.

  Trooper Charlie Evans, Gabe’s partner, had gone missing yesterday. He had been searching for a teenage girl reported to have jumped off or been thrown from the Chattahoochee River bridge. Her parents had begged—no, demanded—the team to find out what had happened to their daughter Mickey. Charlie should have waited. The team’s SOPs, standard operating procedures, specifically stated he should not have gone into the water without the rest of the dive team. But the grief-stricken parents didn’t want him to wait. Gabe could only assume Charlie had asked himself the same question Gave often asks, what he would do if the missing girl were one of his own kids? No question. Charlie had called
Captain Brady, got permission to dive, and unpacked his dive gear.

  Charlie made the dive alone, in scuba, with no safety lines or umbilical, in the hope of finding the answer: was the girl really there, or had something else happened to her? No answers. And now Charlie was lost along with the girl.

  February was the absolute worst time to dive the river. Snowmelt from the Blue Ridge Mountains in northeast Georgia dropped the water temperature into the forties. Days of hard rains in Atlanta raised the water level ten feet, and the current ripped. Trash and trees roared downstream, ready to crush or snag anything they touched. Only for your best friend would you risk this kind of dive. Gabe had been Charlie’s instructor and mentor, best man at his wedding, godfather to both kids. It was like losing a younger brother. But Gabe had learned from and respected Charlie as well. Always a loner, Gabe admired Charlie for his outgoing nature and willingness to grab life by the horns. Thoroughly committed to family and faith, Charlie was always Marine-Corps positive: Go for it and kick butt.

  Except this time. Too much time had passed, and there was only one possible outcome. Find Charlie’s body. Give Carol and the kids closure. Help them through the pain.

  Almost on bottom, Gabe brought his arm around the buoy line and held his wrist computer up against the dive mask faceplate. The white luminescent display showed the depth of sixty-two feet. Even in his dry suit and fleece underwear, he was so cold he felt numb. His fins found bottom, and he dropped to his knees. The current pushed him downstream and slammed him into a twisted mass of steel beams, rebar, and concrete. He winced, grunted, and struggled to move, but he was pinned.

  He caught his breath, and shouted into the face mask com, “Jim, the current’s got me. Pick up the slack and hold it so I can pull myself out.”

  On the surface Jim Phillips, his dive tender for the past five years, replied, “Roger that. Picking up slack. Tell me when to stop.”

  Gabe felt the umbilical go taut and used it to pull himself forward. He crawled upstream into the shelter of a mountain of bridge debris, grabbed on, and caught his breath. “That’s good; I’m clear. Keep it tight.”

  “Roger that. All stop. You okay?” Jim asked.

  Before Gabe could answer, he heard, through the full-face mask com, the drone of the air compressor stop, leaving a deathly silence.

  “Compressor’s down, switch to reserve while I check it,” Jim said.

  “Switching to reserve,” Gabe said. He opened the valve of the reserve tank and took a deep breath. “I’m good, but no lunch breaks, man. This tank is only good for ten minutes, and I’m freezing down here.” Gabe decided to use those precious minutes to learn as much as he could about the site. He attached the line from a small cave-diving reel to the buoy line. Then he flattened himself to the bottom, to keep a low profile in the current, and moved in an arc against the taut hose package, working to his right until he’d gone as far as he could. He began to explore and visualize his surroundings. There were beams, with webs and flanges, and cross braces held together with large rivets.

  He followed a beam edge until he felt two small-diameter wires, which led to a two-inch diameter tube with a “V” pressed upward on the bottom side, resting in torch-cut notches across the widest part of the beam. Gabe recognized the package immediately. He’d set hundreds on salvage dives. He ran his fingers gently over it again, confirming what he was afraid he’d found. What is this doing here?

  It was an electric blasting cap and a shaped charge made from an extrusion of copper and filled with an explosive called RDX. It could blast through inches of steel like a hot knife through butter. NASA used shaped charges to separate the stages of the huge rockets that lifted astronauts into space. The technology was adapted for underwater salvage to cut huge bridges and twenty-story oil platforms into sections small enough for cranes to lift. When intended for use underwater the explosives would be sealed in pressure-tight aluminum housings. But this one wasn’t.

  It was intended for land use only, and the network of trunk lines and branches should have all fired and cut the bridge into pieces before any of it hit the water. He checked the gauge on the reserve tank. Half-full, five minutes. What was Jim doing with that compressor?

  Gabe stretched forward and found a spider web of wire and several more shaped charges. Could Charlie somehow have set some of them off? But how? Setting off the electric blasting caps required electric current. In theory it would be impossible to detonate them without it. But then what happened to Charlie?

  The compressor was still deathly silent. He checked his tank pressure again. Time to go.

  “Jim, forget the compressor. Pull me up. I’m almost out of air, and we’ve got live explosives.”

  Parked on the approach to the interstate bridge, Florida State Police Sergeant Wes Rogers put down his binoculars and picked up his chiming cell phone. “Yeah, he’s out of the water. Hard to dive without air,” he lit a cigarette, took a deep drag, exhaled, and then laughed. “They really should have checked that compressor.”

  0945

  Zack Greenly sat across from Detective Bob Spencer and Lieutenant Liz Johnson. Wonder when’s the last time anyone took out the trash? Zack looked beyond the cops at the tight interrogation room. Full trash cans, cement floor, and gray metal folding chairs around a cigarette-burned steel table with uncomfortably bright florescent lighting made the room feel like a prison cell or an interrogation room from another decade.

  “Aren’t we done? I’ve answered your questions at least three times,” Zack said, coming back to the detective. “I’ve told you everything I know.”

  “Try to see this from our perspective,” Bob said while drumming his fingers on the table impatiently. “You say you drove out to the bridge in the middle of the night to see the stars. Beautiful girl, you want to be alone. I get that. You were just talking, but then, for no reason, she got out of the car and jumped off the bridge? You didn’t try to stop her. Everything was perfectly cool one minute, and the next minute, with no possible explanation, she’s gone. Sorry, I want to believe you, but so far, son, that owl don’t hoot.”

  Zack exhaled deeply and leaned forward, making solid eye contact. “As I told you, we were listening to the radio and talking. Nothing was wrong. She got out of the car and walked down to the bridge. We liked to look at the sky from the bridge. It was a beautiful night, tons of stars. I thought that’s where she was going. No big deal.

  “I should have gone with her right away, but one of my favorite songs was on the radio. I stayed to hear the end of it. As soon as it was over, I went to join her. When I got about halfway to the bridge, I thought I saw her, or something, fall from the walkway into the water.

  “But it was dark, really dark, and I’m not sure what I saw. I ran to where she’d been and looked everywhere. Then, when I couldn’t find her, I called you. That’s all I know. There’s not much traffic that late; that’s why we go. But there might have been a car. I don’t remember.”

  Thirty-five-year-old Lieutenant Liz Johnson looked up from her notes and picked up the questioning, “Zack, how long have you two been going out?”

  “Two years.”

  “Two years?” she sounded skeptical. “Two years of holding hands and looking at the stars? And you were all right with that? I doubt your school friends would believe it. A good-looking guy like you? You probably could have any girl at that school, isn’t that true?”

  He shifted in his chair, looking away. “We have boundaries. That’s all. I love her, and we have boundaries.”

  “But you wanted more.” Not a question.

  “Of course I wanted more. I’m a guy. But that wasn’t our deal. We agreed to wait.” He was surprised when she leaned toward him a little to break the distance between them. Her voice was softer, intimately encouraging his agreement.

  “Is that what you were talking about? Did you want to change the rules? Look at me; tell me I’m wrong.”

  Zack thought of the many nights he and Mickey had gone to the
river’s edge and how badly he’d wanted to change those rules. But she was firm. They would wait. It would be worth it. He looked down at his hands, at the white line around his ring finger, where his class ring had been. The ring he’d given Mickey that night. You’re wasting your time. I’m not telling you anything.

  “The fuel tank air vent was closed,” Jim said as he helped Gabe out of his gear. “But that’s impossible. It’s on the list. I opened the valve before I checked it off. I swear it was open when you started the dive.”

  “Everything all right here?” Portly and gray-headed, state police Captain Brady was doing the asking. He was on scene along with several other of the state police commanders. Bringing home the body of a fallen brother was a high-priority mission.

  “Yes, sir,” Gabe answered. “Compressor went down. But I had my bailout tank. No problem.”

  “The current pinned him, Captain. I could barely bring him up. We could have lost him too,” Jim said, frowning at Gabe.

  Gabe gave him a dirty look, and Jim went back to coiling the umbilical.

  “We need to shut this down, Gabe. Jim’s right. The current’s too strong; it’s too dangerous. We’ve lost other men here before Charlie. Shut it down. Do it now.”

  “Wait, Captain, it’s not that bad. With more weight to handle the current, we can do it. We need to bring Charlie home.”

  Jim looked up and said, “He found explosives, Captain. Live explosives.”

  “Explosives? You sure?” Brady glared at Gabe.

  “Yes, sir, shaped charges. But with electric blasting caps. They can’t be fired without an electric current.” Thanks a lot, partner. Gabe gave Jim an I’m-going-to-kill-you-trooper stare. Whose side are you on, Jim? We have to find Charlie.

  Brady’s jaw tightened. “Trooper, I just gave you an order. Shut this down now. No one dives here, and no one else dies here. Pack it up. I’ll tell the commander.”

  “Yes, sir,” Gabe replied and rubbed the stubble on his chin. More deaths? What’s going on?