Lucky Girl - Mike Harris - Bog

A twelve year old girl named Tina goes out with her Mom and Dad almost every weekend to search for Spanish Treasure off the Florida Keys. They drag a small magnetometer off the side of their cabin cruiser 'Lucky Girl', hoping to make a discovery. Every weekend they're disappointed, but Tina's dad is sure that one day they'll make a discovery and they'll all be rich! Finally, one afternoon, when a terrible storm is about to hit, their 'mag' finally comes to life and indicates that something big is just thirty feet down. Tina and her father quickly pull on flippers, grab a mask and go over the side to see what's below them. They're shocked to see a fortune in gold coins, trinkets and bars, spread out on the sand. Frantically they both start picking up hand-fulls of gold coins and hurriedly bring them back to the boat. But after just three quick dives, the storm is upon them and Tina's dad knows they must head for home. During the terrible storm 'Lucky Girl' drops into a deep trough from which it cannot escape. When 'Lucky Girl' goes down, only Tina is able to fight her way to the surface and survive, because 'Lucky Girl's' life ring pops to the surface next to her. After floating all night on the life ring and hanging on to one golden Spanish coin, she's picked up the next morning by Captain Ortega, who's heading out to the fishing grounds off Key West in his shrimp boat. The friendly shrimp captain eventually becomes her official guardian, raises her as his own and sends her to the University of Miami where she graduates with a degree in oceanography. All through school Tina always vowed to herself that one day she would return and find that fortune in golden trinkets, coins and bars, that she had seen when she was a child. When she graduated from college, two friends, Liz, a gorgeous beach bunny from California, and Carlita, a beautiful bombshell from Cuba, decide to form a company with her in Key West, and call it 'Lucky Girl' Salvage. They didn't know at the time that Key West was having a terrible time with gangsters running drugs through the area. Even Captain Ortega was afraid to go out in his shrimp boat, for fear some gangster would kill his crew and steal his boat to run drugs. When two good looking guys, Rodney and Kevin, offer to take the three girls for a joy ride in their super fast X-23, they accept the invitation and look forward to the exciting experience. But three gangsters, Dirk, Carlos and Sanchez, in their own speedboat, called BLACK COBRA, try to steal the X-23 during the ride. When they kill the two boys in cold blood, Tina hits the throttle and tries to outrun BLACK COBRA, but crashes in shallow water and careens out of control into a Mangrove thicket. Captain Ortega manages to save them before they're killed by the hoodlums, but they run into more trouble when their first customer, a friendly old man named Mr. Carruthers turns out to be head of the drug gang that killed Rodney and Kevin and tried to steal their X-23. Mr. Carruthers tells them the small fourteen-foot boat that he and his wife liked to go fishing in sunk, and for sentimental reason, wanted 'Lucky Girl' Salvage to find and recover it for them. When they did find it, it wasn't a small fishing boat! It was a forty-foot long cigarette boat that sunk when they tried to steal it previously. While underwater checking out the overturned racer, Carruthers sends down Rock and Two Bit with loaded 'bang' sticks to kill Tina and Carlita. Only by using skills taught at the University are they able to kill the two gangsters trying to kill them. When they surface, they're again attacked by Dirk, Carlos and Sanchez in BLACK COBRA. 'Lucky Girl' shows with three girls in Bikini swim suits can do to outsmart bad guys with loaded 'bang' sticks. Tina, Liz and Carlita have to overcome many dangerous situations before they ca