Chapter 14

Part 3

As the nascent moon rose, Jaden’s speedboat coughed through the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. His wet suit already itched, and he wished he had waited until he arrived before putting it on and embedding the contraband in the liner. He just didn’t want to spend any more time hovering outside the U.Z. force field than he had to.

The homing medallion Squeeze gave him blinked its directions at him, and he piloted the boat accordingly. He wore the device on a cord around his neck like a stopwatch, correcting his course each time the medallion blinked a change. About an hour after he had taken off, the medallion glowed solid red. He dropped anchor.

The wake cleaved the surface of the Gulf, rippling back at him as it hit the invisible force field. No fence way out in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, just the wall. The hole he sought would be at the bottom of the ocean. Squeeze had paid some disgruntled force field monitor a fortune to create it. With his wet suit and breathing equipment, he’d be able to swim through the hole with his contraband, but nobody on the other side would be able to dive deep enough to get through. Even if they could, they’d need the homing device to find the hole. You couldn’t just swim around and feel your way through. Just like the force field on land, even the most casual brush could fry you.

Jaden tested his breathing equipment. The pacifier-shaped device fit comfortably in his mouth, and the compressed air in the quarter-sized pockets on either side tasted a bit stale, but it would do. Jaden slipped on his fins over his sneakers and sat on the edge of the boat, shining his waterproof headlamp into the dark water. Would there be sharks? Alligators? He’d even heard rumors of crocodiles. In the waters around the Ten Thousand Islands, the freshwater rivers and streams poured into the salt water of the Gulf of Mexico creating a marshy estuary. Sharks and crocs preferred salt water and alligators preferred fresh, but bottom line was that he could find one or all of them beneath him.

Well, there was no point in overthinking it now. He’d find out whatever was waiting for him soon enough. Jaden secured his motorized personal propulsion gauntlets on his wrists. Combined with the flippers he wore, his P.P.G.s would not only help him navigate quickly through the hole in the U.Z., but they’d also serve as his transportation on the other side. All he had to do was extend his hands in front of him like a superhero soaring off to save the girl, and his P.P.G.s would do the rest.

Jaden plunged into the warm waters and aimed his personal propulsion gauntlets toward the ocean floor. The bulging pockets of contraband made him overly buoyant, and it was tough to swim at first, but he adjusted. His roaming headlamp beam lit mostly on nondescript muddy-colored fish with long, lateral stripes, maybe snook? Once in a while he’d catch a long flash of silver when a tarpon checked him out, but none of the more worrisome predators.

He switched the homing medallion from the long-range setting to short-range and the glow turned from solid red to pulsing neon green. The distance indicators assured him he was on course, but he swam as straight as possible. He couldn’t afford to even graze the force field. When the homing medallion glowed a solid green, he crossed his fingers and dove through the force field into the uncharted lands of the Unemployed Zone.