Electra, page 3
Far out to sea Maddock spotted what must have been a sizable ship to be visible at this distance. Other than that, the ocean, too, seemed empty.
Did it conceal Amelia Earhart’s airplane?
Maddock didn’t have long to wonder because they soon were dropping down vertically into a cleared area not far from the camp. On the ground, a group of three men waited, shielding their faces from the blowing coral dust kicked up by the chopper’s rotors. One of them was taking pictures of the chopper as it landed.
The pilot turned around to face them. “This is where you get off. I’ve got to get back to Manila. Enjoy your stay and good luck!”
Maddock and Bones grabbed their backpacks and jumped from the helicopter onto the coral island. Immediately they felt the sunlight on their backs and the humidity in their lungs. They ducked until clear of the rotors. When they stood straight again a man of average build somewhere in his sixties was standing in front of them, hand extended. He wore a khaki outfit complete with wide-brimmed straw hat, sunglasses and leather flip-flops. He sported a bushy white beard and mustache. Two other men stood beside him, one of them snapping pictures of Maddock and Bones with a 35mm camera. EARHART already had their photos as part of their bogus employee files from the “dive company,” but still, it wasn’t comforting to know they were being photographed while actually on a mission.
“Welcome to the Phoenix Islands,” the man with the beard said, pumping Maddock’s hand and then Bones’ rapidly in turn. There was no real enthusiasm to the greeting, Maddock noted. He was just going through the motions. “First time, I presume?”
“That’s right,” Maddock said. Bones nodded in agreement.
“Hopefully we find this damn plane and you have a trip to remember. Something to tell the grandkids, right?” Grandkids were the furthest possible thing from Bones’ mind, but he smiled and laughed politely.
“I’m Fred Spinney, Director of The EARHART Group and leader of this expedition.”
Maddock steeled himself for a convincing delivery. “Jim Abott, sir, from Deep Star Divers. Nice to meet you.”
Spinney nodded and then looked at Bones, who said, “Keith Winslow, also from Deep Star. Great to meet you.”
“Wow, I thought your name might be Running Bear or something like that!” Spinney looked at one of the men standing next to him as if to see how big a laugh he had elicited, but the short, pudgy man with a sweaty forehead only shook his head and extended a hand.
“That’s funny,” Bones said to Spinney. “Actually, they call me Crapper because I chew annoying white guys up and… well, you get the picture.”
Spinney’s jaw dropped and Bones smiled and winked. “Just messing with you guys. I’ll answer to Winslow or Keith, either one.”
Maddock gave Bones’ foot a subtle kick. Don’t rile this guy up too much.
“Pleased to make your acquaintance, gentlemen. I’m Steve Carlson, Director of Research for The EARHART Group.” He dutifully pumped Maddock and Bones’ hands.
“Steve, here, is a big part of the reason we knew to look on this island, to find Earhart’s plane out of all the places it could be,” Spinney said.
Maddock and Bones nodded politely and the other man with Spinney stepped forward. “G’day. I’m George Taylor, expedition topside photographer. I shoot pictures and video of everything that doesn’t take place underwater.” He spoke in an Australian accent and had piercing blue eyes. He wore tattered shorts and flip-flops as well as a beige photographer’s vest festooned with photographic paraphernalia.
As soon as Maddock and Bones finished shaking Taylor’s hand, Spinney said, “Brace yourselves.”
The helicopter lifted off and the men turned away from the blowing dust until the craft was well overhead. They watched it turn and then head off in a northwesterly direction until it was a mere yellow speck in the sky, the sound of birds chattering once again the loudest noise on the atoll.
“That’s probably the most traffic we’ll see here until our next supply drop in two weeks,” Spinney stated. “If there’s one thing this place has in spades, it’s peace and quiet. But we’re early to bed, early to rise, here, so it works out for the best.”
He pointed down a sandy track that led away from the landing area. “Let’s get on over to camp, shall we?”
Spinney, Carlson and Taylor led the way, with Maddock and Bones ambling close behind. As they walked, Spinney peppered them with questions without looking back.
“So you came out from California, is that it? Long flight, how was it?”
Maddock and Bones said they thought it wasn’t bad.
“Good, so you feel up to getting right to work?”
Truthfully, after being whisked halfway around the world following their training exercise and having only aircraft to sleep on and eat from for the past two days, they were ready for a sleeping bag. But they were SEALs, and SEALs could go and go and go if they had to, plus they had a mission objective to achieve and so getting right to work appealed to them. Still, although a couple of divers new on the job might want to appear eager to please their employer, they didn’t want to appear over eager, lest it would somehow tip Spinney off to their cover.
So Maddock said, “Sure, we’ll get settled into camp, meet the dive team, get briefed on the site, right? Dive first thing tomorrow?”
Spinney bellowed a hearty guffaw that caused a small flock of birds to take to the air from where they’d been roosting in a bush. “How about we do all of those things, and you make your first dive today to get acquainted with the wreck site? Nothing strenuous. Just get down there, have a look-see. You up for that?”
While this was actually preferable for Maddock and Bones, Maddock couldn’t help but think that a civilian employee would feel coerced into making the dive whether he wanted to or not. It could potentially be a safety issue, and was the first tiny red flag for Maddock that Spinney was willing to play fast and loose with the safety of others in order to meet his goal of finding and ultimately raising that plane.
“Dive today? Sure, whatever you think is best.”
“No problem,” Bones added.
“That’s what I like to hear!” Spinney followed the path as it traced the curving beach of the island and then pointed ahead. “Camp’s up this way.”
They emerged through a patch of foliage into a grassy clearing.
“This is the highest point on the island.” Spinney took an exaggerated couple of steps up a small rise as if to underscore this point. “Elevation three feet!”
A small tent city stood in the clearing, which was ringed on three sides by vegetation and the beach on the fourth.
“C’mon, I’ll give you the grand tour.” Spinney led them to the radio tower they saw from the helicopter, situated on the edge of camp. An open tent at the base of it held folding tables stacked with electronic equipment. Portable solar panels ringed the communications tent.
Spinney pointed to the lone man inside the tent, who, because he was wearing headphones, could not hear them. “This is our Communications Director, Harvey Sims. Pretty much the only reliable means of communication with the rest of the world from out here is via shortwave radio, so Harvey keeps us in touch.”
Sims sat in a folding chair in front of the gear. Spinney walked into the tent and tapped him on the shoulder. The man jumped in his chair, apparently spooked. Upon seeing it was Spinney, with others behind him, the man smiled sheepishly and stood.
Like Spinney, this man also sported a full beard, but his was black. His jocular cheeks were pale, with a tinge of sunburn to them.
“Sorry, Harvey, didn’t mean to startle you. Maybe ease up on the coffee?”
Sims waved at his radio gear. “I was tuned into your chopper’s air band,” he said, looking at Maddock and Bones. “Your pilot just told the tower in Manila he was glad to drop you two bozos off!” This elicited peals of laughter from Spinney.
Maddock and Bones smiled good-naturedly.
Sims appeased them. “Kidding. I was tracking a faint signal from Germany, straining to hear through some solar flare interference when you tapped me. So these are the new kids on the block?”
Spinney nodded and introduced Maddock and Bones, who cordially greeted the radio operator under their assumed identities.
“In any kind of emergency,” Spinney explained, “Harvey, here, is our lifeline. He can reach just about anywhere to get a message out.”
Carlson addressed Maddock and Bones. “A lot of amateur radio operators around the Pacific Rim reported receiving signals from Amelia Earhart in the hours after her plane was calculated to have run out of fuel, indicating that she had either landed somewhere or perhaps her plane floated for a while before it sank.”
“Sank right here on this atoll!” Spinney added with relish.
“We’re here to help confirm that for you.” Maddock felt weird looking Spinney in the eye while uttering such a half-truth, but technically it was correct. Bones gave a big grin while nodding, but he said nothing.
“Speaking of, let’s get to it.” Spinney stepped away from the radio station.
“Good luck and dive safe!” Sims told them before turning back to his equipment.
Maddock and Bones once again fell in behind Spinney, Carlson and Taylor. Maddock spoke softly as they walked away from the radio shack.
“Seems like an awful lot of people are wishing us luck lately.”
“You noticed it, too?
They walked across the cleared area, passing two Pacific Islanders who were washing dishes under a lean-to. Spinney waved to them but did not offer introductions. On the other side of the clearing they reached a large tarp suspended from a group of palms, under which was a gas generator powering an air compressor. One man, clad only in a wetsuit from the waist down, monitored the compressor’s gauges, while another in identical dress was loading scuba tanks into a wheelbarrow. Two more men were rinsing additional scuba equipment in buckets of fresh water.
Spinney raised his voice over the compressor’s hum and rattle. “Gentlemen, please meet the newest members of our dive team—your new colleagues.” At this all four men under the tarp looked over at Maddock and Bones with interest. Names were given, including the cover names Maddock and Bones were getting used to using.
“So, you think you can work together?” Spinney demanded of his lead diver. The man nodded, looking at the two new divers. “Checked out your resumes. Impressive. Did some North Sea oil rig work myself, back in the day, We’ll have to compare war stories.”
Maddock and Bones had in fact dove on an oil rig in the North Sea, but it was in support of a clandestine Naval operation, not a commercial job. But they played the part, nodding and smiling, Bones saying how he’d buy the drinks if they ever got off this piece of coral.
Spinney looked at his watch before addressing his diver. “Good. So you’re the only one not requiring a surface interval, right?”
The man nodded. Maddock and Bones knew he was referring to time off between dives to avoid the bends, caused by a buildup of nitrogen in the bloodstream.
Spinney continued. “Then get a move on. Whichever one of you can do the longest dive now according to your computers, take these two down to the site. You don’t have to do the whole dive with them, just bring them down to the plane. They can make the rest of the first dive themselves, am I right?” He stared critically at Maddock and Bones, who merely nodded, thinking how perfect it was to be left alone on the site.
“Oh, almost forgot.” Spinney picked up a folder that lay on a nearby table and pulled some photos out of it. “Here are first images of the plane. Like we said, it’s stuck under a coral shelf on the edge of the reef in more than two-hundred feet of water.”
He handed Maddock and Bones the printouts while the divers looked on. Maddock and Bones studied the grainy shots of a sunken, historic airplane.
Spinney looked over their shoulders at the photo. “Looks like an Electra model 10-E to me! But let’s get you down for a closer look. We still need a serial number to confirm it.”
Spinney clapped his hands in a chop-chop fashion as he looked at his dive team. “Get ‘er done. I want these new guys up to speed quick-like.”
Then he, Carlson and Taylor, who was hastily taking snapshots of the divers talking to Maddock and Bones, departed the dive tent.
“You heard the man.” The diver who’d given his name only as ‘Bugsy’ tossed a couple of wetsuits at Maddock and Bones.
“Let’s do this!”
Chapter 4
An hour later, Maddock, Bones and Bugsy stepped aboard an inflatable Zodiac boat tied to one side of the small pier Maddock had seen from the helicopter. A blue seaplane was tied to the other side of the pier. A squat, muscular Asian American man greeted them from behind the boat’s steering console.
“Bruce Watanabe, pleased to meet you.”
“Likewise,” Maddock shook his hand. Undercover or not, the boat operator was the guy who would be driving them to and from the dive site, and they wanted to be on good terms with him if at all possible.
“It’s not the Love Boat but it’ll do, right?” Bones offered his infectious grin, which Watanabe returned.
“Hey, if we confirm this plane is actually Earhart’s, we all plan to have a celebration at one of the resort islands—drinks on Spinney!”
“Sounds good to me,” Bones returned. And it did. But he felt a pang of regret since he knew those drinks would never come, at least not with anyone from Spinney’s team. His job was to get those assets off the plane and return them to the U.S. Navy. Only then would he be celebrating.
“That the break in the reef, there?” Maddock pointed to a notch in the atoll brimming with whitewater. Like Bones, he too was thinking forward to the mission and getting it done.
Watanabe nodded and Bugsy responded.
“Water in the lagoon has been calm for us in the morning with a light wind kicking up by afternoon. There’s a passage in the atoll through the surf line. Once we get through that the dive site’s usually not too choppy. But the currents underwater are wicked. Let’s get out there and I’ll brief you some more when we’re on site.”
Watanabe put the boat into gear and they raced across the calm lagoon at a good clip. The water here was shallow and gin-clear. To Maddock it looked as though they were about to hit various coral formations growing on the bottom. Watanabe and Bugsy were obviously used to it, not appearing concerned in the least. Maddock and Bones enjoyed the feel of the salt spray on their faces as the boat glided across the lagoon.
In a couple of minutes Watanabe eased back on the throttle and the Zodiac slowed as it approached a cut in the coral ring. Fast-moving water sloshed around in the opening, waves splashing against its sides.
“Hold on!” Watanabe gunned the outboard and they rocketed through the channel into open ocean. A couple of minutes later they approached an orange marker buoy.
“Wreck’s a little ways out there,” Bugsy said, pulling on his wetsuit, “but we’ll follow the buoy line down to the shallow reef and get situated. From there we’ll swim out to the edge of the drop-off and head down to the wreck.”
“Sounds good.” Maddock and Bones pulled their gear on.
“So like we discussed, as soon as we come within sight of the airplane, I’m going to head back to the boat. I’ve done too many deep dives lately and I’ve got to go again tomorrow. But you two will stay down there to check out the site.”
Maddock and Bones completed a check of each others’ gear and said they were ready.
“So you’ve used the full facemasks with comm gear before, right?”
The masks Maddock and Bones wore were not standard dive masks, and not helmets either, but something in between. They were rubber and covered the entire face, but not the whole head. This meant that the divers could breathe through their noses, and talk through integrated transmitters, while underwater. Bugsy moved to a box lying on the deck containing some electronic gear. He keyed a transmitter while looking at Maddock and Bones.
“You hear me in there?”
“Get out of my freaking head, man!” Bones joked. Both he and Maddock were intimately familiar with underwater communications gear, but he played the part of someone for whom it was still somewhat of a novelty.
“I hear you loud and clear.” Maddock’s voice was audible not only to Bugsy and the boat driver, but also to Bones.
“Great, so we’ll be able to talk during our dive, and Bruce will be able to hear us up here. Ready?”
Maddock and Bones moved to one side of the boat while Bugsy went to the other. The three of them flopped backward into the water. As soon as the bubbles from their splashes cleared, they could see the bottom of the ocean thirty feet below as though they stood in the shallow end of a swimming pool.
“Nice clear water,” Maddock said, testing the comm channel.
“Like a Jacuzzi, too, only with you two clowns instead of a couple of babes and some champagne,” Bones said. After San Diego, the tropical ocean felt like a warm bath.
Bugsy’s voice came over the frequency. “Yeah, up here we’re practically burning up, but believe me, two hundred feet down you’ll be glad for the suits. Bruce, you hear us?”
“Copy that, I hear all three of you.”
Bugsy nodded at Maddock and Bones as he wrapped a hand around the buoy line. “Down we go. And we may not have champagne, but if you’re not careful the nitrogen narcosis will give you a nice buzz.” In addition to the bends, another danger of deep diving was the narcotic effect nitrogen could have on the brain; like having a few beers in a short amount of time, it affected judgment. Bugsy jerked a thumb downwards and the trio vented the air from their buoyancy compensator vests and began to sink.
