The second hard case he pulled aboard was silver and far heavier than the first. He actually had to gaff it around to the diving door and almost threw out his back as he lugged it up over the lip. It had to be about seventy pounds or more, he thought as he brought it over and thumped it onto the deck next to the gun case.

He stood, chewing at his lower lip as he stared at it. Then he finally knelt down and opened it up.

And felt his breath exit his lungs in a mad-dash rush.

Gannon tracked the columns and rows. Right to left and up and down. And then he did it again.

The case was jammed tight with money. They were all hundreds. Packets and packets and packets of United States of America Benjamin Franklin one-hundred-dollar bills.

They were wrapped tight in red rubber bands. He edged one out. He thumbed at the cloth-like paper. He held it up to his face and smelled it and riffled its soft edge against his wrist.

“Seventy pounds,” Gannon whispered as he stared.

But that’s not all, came a TV game show host voice from somewhere in Gannon’s mind as he noticed a huge lump in the cloth webbing on the underside of the case’s lid.

Inside the flap, there was a big butter-soft black leather bag about the size of a laptop case. The word Cross was embossed along its bottom. He lifted it out and unzipped it and unfolded it on top of the pallet of money.

He was no jeweler, but inside of the leather bag was what appeared to be rough uncut diamonds. Some were grayish and some had a yellow tinge, but most of them were as colorless and clear as broken car glass.

They had been separated into clear plastic sleeves by size. A grouping of about ten of them in one sleeve section along the left side of the sheet particularly captured his attention.

He’d seen diamonds before. Just never ones the size of Jolly Rancher hard candies.

There were about enough diamonds to fill a cereal bowl, Gannon thought, shaking the bag. Hell, more. Several bowls. He bit at his lower lip some more as he began nodding idiotically. He was staring down at the damn entire box of cornflakes, wasn’t he?

Seventy pounds of worn US hundred-dollar bills plus a fat satchel of uncut diamonds, he thought as he stood. Plus a fully automatic law enforcement–only machine gun pistol.

He glanced back at the sinking tail section.

Plus six dead men in a multimillion-dollar crashed luxury Gulfstream jet.

He knew what it was now. He had thought it already, but now he knew.

It was a drug deal. Some kind of crazy high-level drug deal. Down in South America. In Colombia or Bolivia or somewhere with the cartels. But it had gone super loco apparently.

Gannon blinked at the piled treasure.

He looked up at the dark vault of the sky, the first faint silver sprinkling of stars that could be seen there.