Electra

Chapter 3

“That’s our island.” The pilot of the Sikorsky pointed down at a ring of coral set against a dazzling blue backdrop. A non-military charter pilot who knew nothing about his passengers other than they were part of an expedition to find Amelia Earhart’s plane, he engaged in some radio chatter as he banked the craft toward the designated landing spot.

In the rear passenger seat, Maddock and Bones gazed down at their destination. They were travel-weary after nearly fifteen hours in the air; Honolulu was already a distant memory to them, like a dream. Manila was a blur of airport red tape that ended with them boarding the chopper over an hour ago.

“That’s it?” Bones squinted out the window. “I thought that was just a cloud shadow.”

“That’s probably what Amelia Earhart thought, too. We’re at the same altitude, one thousand feet, that she was coming in at looking for Howland.”

“You bring a lot of people out here?” Maddock held his new digital camera up to the window and took an aerial snapshot of the island. He knew from experience that it might come in handy. The atoll consisted of a thin strip of land in a rough oval shape surrounding a shallow, turquoise-colored lagoon. The outer edges of the land featured sandy beaches, while the middle of the ribbon-like land mass was green with scrub forest and coconut palms.

“I’ve been to the Phoenix chain before, but this is my fist time to Orona. Pretty much nobody goes here, ever. Hold on,” the pilot finished, indicating that he needed to focus on the landing. Maddock and Bones gripped the hand straps hanging from the ceiling as the pilot brought the aircraft lower until the tops of the palm trees bent with the force of their rotor wash.

As they leveled out and skirted the treetops, Maddock looked out along the atoll and spotted the tallest man-made structure on the island — a radio antenna atop a metal tower. A few tent-like structures were set up at the base of it. Bones pointed over to one end of the island where a seaplane and a small boat floated beside a modest pier. In a clearing on one of the larger strips of land where it flared out before continuing on as a thin ribbon, an encampment was visible as a rag-tag patchwork of multi-colored tents. That was all there was on the atoll. Everything else was just sand, coral, jungle, lagoon and ocean.

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!”