Shadow Tyrants

FIFTEEN

After a thirty-hour voyage that allowed everyone on board the Oregon to get a good rest, they arrived at the twenty-mile exclusion zone around the forbidden island and prepared for a morning reconnaissance. The Indian government didn’t monitor the area in real time, so the odds of running across one of their Coast Guard patrol vessels were slim. However, Juan wasn’t going to take any chances of a flyover by one of their airplanes, so he thought it best to approach its shores by stealth.

When he reached the Oregon’s moon pool, the familiar smell of fuel and seawater greeted him. The cavernous space was the largest on the ship, with a gantry crane suspended above a rectangle of water the size of an Olympic swimming pool. The water in the moon pool was level with the ocean, so there was no danger of the chamber flooding. Two enormous doors in the keel swung down and away to allow vessels to be launched and recovered unseen.

A large submarine called Nomad, designed for deep-water dives, remained hanging from the ceiling in its cradle.

Its smaller sibling, the Gator, had already been lowered into position for its dive through the open keel, and the clang of metal echoed through the huge space as the submersible was made ready. The forty-foot-long submersible had a low-profile cupola with narrow windows on all four sides and an air snorkel behind it. The flat-topped deck was barely above water level. Like an alligator, it would be nearly invisible at night, capable of sneaking up on ships at sea with no warning using battery-powered motors. It could fully submerge, but also rise to the surface and use powerful diesels to dash across the water.

As he descended the stairs to the wet-deck, Juan was surprised to see helicopter and drone pilot George “Gomez” Adams, who didn’t venture into this area of the ship very often. He’d gotten his nickname after a dalliance with a drug lord’s wife who looked just like Morticia Addams from the sixties television show The Addams Family. Because of his dashing good looks and a handlebar mustache that would look appropriate on Wyatt Earp, Gomez frequently got himself into that kind of trouble.

“I thought you flyboys didn’t like going underwater,” Juan said.

“Only when we’re in something that’s supposed to stay in the air,” said Gomez, who was tinkering with a saucer-sized quadcopter drone. “Since we’re going to be doing some delicate reconnaissance today, it seemed like a good idea for me to come along. Besides, you won’t need me in the helicopter for this operation.”

Juan nodded. “Right. No clearings big enough to land in. But what if we need you to operate some of the other drones on the Oregon?”

Gomez bent down and picked up a gadget the size of a videogame controller. “I’ve got a new toy. Max rigged this up for me. With the high-def screen we have on the Gator, I can operate any drone on board the Oregon remotely. I can even use it if we’re submerged, because of the telescoping antenna. This allows us to extend the control range of all our drones.” He nodded to a whip-thin metal projection at the back of the Gator that was currently at its full extension.

“Then we’re happy to have you along. Did Max brief you on the mission parameters?”

Gomez nodded. “We stay as invisible as possible. Don’t want the natives to know they’re being observed, right?”

“Right. Will they be able to hear or see the drones?”

“They won’t be able to hear this one as long as I keep it above a hundred feet. At low speed it’s whisper quiet. Assuming they don’t happen to look straight up at it, we should get in and out unobserved.”

“The island jungle is thick. Will you be able to dodge the trees while we have the camera trained on the ground?”

“With the obstacle avoidance software we just installed, the drone will automatically fly around anything thicker than a telephone wire.”

“Given the natives have never had any contact with the civilized world, I’d say you won’t have to worry about stray electrical cables.”

“Just vines,” Gomez said. “I’ll be careful.”

Juan followed him down the hatch into the Gator’s cabin. Linda was already at the controls. Eddie, Linc, Raven, and MacD rounded out Juan’s mission team. Juan didn’t think they’d be going ashore, but they were prepared anyway. All of them except Linda and Gomez were wearing tactical gear, and the cabin held dive equipment and a full complement of weapons in case some unwanted visitors had already landed on the island. Engaging the indigenous natives was strictly prohibited no matter what happened.

When the pre-mission checks were completed, they closed the hatch, and the tethers were detached. Linda dived the boat, and the Gator sank below the Oregon. When it was clear of the keel doors, she guided it away from the ship and up until the air snorkel poked above the surface, allowing them to switch from battery power to diesel. The motors purred to life, and they settled in for the hour-long journey.

When they reached the protective reef around the island, they surfaced and Gomez launched the drone.

Linda came up just far enough for the cupola to emerge from the water. The deck was inches above the calm surface. Since the hatch slid open, a careful observer on the island looking in their direction would be hard-pressed to see them.

The four propeller blades on the drone whirred to life and it shot up through the open hatch. MacD closed it, and Linda dived back down so that only the snorkel and antenna were visible.

They crowded around the large screen while Gomez guided the drone toward the island. It crossed over the waves crashing onto the formidable barrier reef.

“Hard to believe anyone could get past that reef,” Gomez said.

“There are just a few breaks in the atoll,” Linda replied from the cockpit. “If we need to get closer, I think it’ll be possible to get in, but we might scrape the bottom.”

“First, let’s see if there’s a reason to,” Juan said.

The drone arrived at the beach, which was only a few yards wide before it surrendered to the dense jungle.

“The island is four miles across, so a grid search of the interior will take a while,” Gomez said. “I plan to do a perimeter survey and then work our way in. By the way, what are we looking for, exactly?”

“Anything that doesn’t belong,” Juan said.

“Sounds like we’ll know it when we see it,” Linc said.

“I still can’t guess why someone would want to come to this island,” Raven said. “According to the Indian government, there’s nothing of value here.”

“Except privacy,” Eddie said.

“There’s a whole lot of that,” MacD said. “It looks like the land that time forgot.”

“The natives are lucky they have nothing valuable to the outside world,” Juan said, “or they would have been driven out decades ago.”

The drone began circling the island. The jungle was so thick that they could only see a few yards into the trees before the view was blocked by foliage.

When the drone was halfway around the island, Juan spotted something out of place, so he had Gomez hover.

“What’s that?” he said. “Hold it there, Gomez.”

“Looks like a path,” Eddie said.

He was right. The underbrush was trampled, and they could even see some footprints in the sand.

A cluster of tiny white objects was visible at the edge of the jungle.

“Zoom in,” Juan said, pointing at them.

Gomez adjusted the high-resolution camera until it was at the maximum zoom. The white objects were still small, but the way they were haphazardly arranged looked familiar.

“Am I wrong,” Juan said, “or are those cigarette butts?”

“You think someone came ashore there and had a few smokes?” Linc asked.

“I doubt it,” Linda said. “There aren’t any openings in the reef near there.”

“And, I’d say those natives are wearing shoes.”

“I can fly down for a closer look,” Gomez said.

“Not yet,” Juan said. “In case there are people around, I don’t want to risk showing our hand until we need to. If we don’t see anything else during the perimeter survey, we’ll come back and follow that path into the jungle.”

“Aye, Chairman.” Gomez marked the coordinates on the map and kept flying. They didn’t see anything else unusual until the drone was three-quarters of the way around the island.

“Hold there,” Juan said. Something about the plants didn’t look right. “What do you make of that?”

Raven leaned in close to the screen. “The color is the same, but the fronds on the trees are too stiff. They should be waving in the breeze like all the others have been.”

“What is that thing?” MacD said, pointing at a sharp-edged object jutting up between the tops of the trees. It had to be man-made.

“Now I want to look more closely,” Juan said. “Let’s see what that is.”

“Closer view coming up,” Gomez said, and the drone whizzed toward its target.

As the drone approached, the size of the object became apparent. It was a huge vertical slab of metal painted verdant green to blend into the jungle and be undetectable to reconnaissance aircraft or satellites.

“Descend,” Juan said. “I want to see more.”

Gomez dropped the drone into the trees, which they could now see were actually fakes. The trunks, hidden by the canopy overhead, were telephone poles.

The camera’s sensor adjusted to the sudden darkness and took a moment to reconfigure. When the view became clear again, they all gaped at what they were seeing.

“Is that what I think it is?” Linc said with wonder.

Gomez nodded. “That, my friends, is the largest passenger jet in the world. A double-decker Airbus A380, hidden on a tiny tropical island.”

The wings and fuselage of the gigantic plane stretched out into the jungle, fully intact. It was painted to resemble the surrounding plant life, and it didn’t look damaged.

“How could it have crashed and still look like that?” MacD said in awe.

“Because I don’t think it did crash,” Gomez said. “Let me just check something.”

While the drone maneuvered lower, Raven said, “Although I can’t imagine why, someone could have shipped it here.”

“I doubt it,” Gomez said. “This plane weighs six hundred thousand pounds empty, over a million fully loaded. It would take a mega-sized crane to lift that load. The Indian authorities would have noticed if something that big pulled up to this island, not to mention the huge barge you’d need to haul the airplane here.”

The drone descended until it was below the wings. The camera focused on the massive undercarriage. All twenty-two tires were fully inflated and supporting the plane’s weight. The engines seemed to be in good condition. The tail of the plane was only a few dozen yards from the beach.

Gomez flew the drone around the jet, and Juan could see that all of the trees on the side away from the beach were mature and real. No runway had been cleared in the jungle.

“If this plane wasn’t brought to the island by ship,” Juan said, “and it didn’t crash here…”

He looked at Gomez, who shook his head in amazement. “At a bare minimum, the A380 needs three-quarters of a mile of tarmac to safely touch down. Yet here it is without a scratch on it at the edge of a jungle on a tropical island. I don’t know how they did it, but someone landed this plane.”