Chapter 10

Maddock and Bones finished off the last of their fish dinners and set their plates aside. Spinney, Carlson, their radioman, Sims, and the Australian photographer, George Taylor, had retreated to the research tent earlier, where they worked on the artifacts and press release. Spinney had been discussing possible titles for the media release all night, and so far, his favorite seemed to be, “Fred Spinney’s EARHART Group finds the Lost Airplane of Amelia Earhart in the Phoenix Islands.” Spinney and his associates were still arguing about it when they left. Without them at dinner, the divers had enjoyed a lively recounting of the day’s events.

“Too bad, no lobster for supper tonight, eh boys?” Bugsy joked, cracking up the team. The topic of conversation around that night’s campfire dinner had been a steady diet of Mizuhi and their trained pilot whale. The divers rehashed the events of the day in detail, exaggerating some things, underplaying others, depending on who was telling the story and how it made them look, but all agreed on one thing: “Mizuhi’s not going to stop until they kill somebody,” Bugsy summarized.

“I wonder how safe it will be to dive tomorrow,” mused another.

Bugsy shrugged and said, “We know now that if the ship is as close as it was today, that’s within striking distance for their whale. So if we see it there tomorrow, we could decide to call off the dive.” He lowered his voice. “We could ask Spinney to call Mizuhi on the radio and come to some kind of truce before we get wet again.”

“And if he says no, he won’t call?” one of the divers who had been inside the plane with Maddock and Bones asked.

Joking, but softly called cries of “Mutiny, mutiny, mutiny…” rang out around the fire.

“We’ll just have to see how it goes tomorrow. Get a good night’s sleep is what I advise.” Bugsy stood and stretched, then headed off to his tent. Spinney’s other three divers remained talking, but Maddock and Bones excused themselves shortly after Bugsy left and walked to the tent they shared. Inside the shelter, Maddock spoke at a near-whisper to Bones.

“I think we should talk to somebody who knows something more than we do about Amelia Earhart.” He grabbed his backpack and from it removed the satellite phone given to them by their mission handlers.

“Like who?” Bones eyed the phone with concern. “That’s military property, encrypted and for mission use only.”

“Since when do you care about things like that?”

Bones shrugged. “Since never. I just wanted to see what it feels like to be you. It’s boring.”

Maddock rolled his eyes. “This is for mission use. I don’t understand what’s going on with this plane. Spinney and Carlson say that it’s not the same model that Earhart flew. But the serial number is the same.”

“What? You mean it might not be the right plane? Dude, you know how I feel about doing work for nothing.”

Maddock sighed. “I don’t know. I only know that I heard Spinney and Carlson say that the plane down there is an Electra model 12, while Earhart should have been flying an Electra model 10E.”

“And there are the bullet holes.”

Maddock looked over at Bones, whispering sharply. “Right! But…” He broke off, lost in thought.

“But what?”

“That part of it might make some sense, because…why are we here?”

“To find Earhart’s plane,” Bones said.

“Well yeah, but more specifically?”

“To bring certain things from the plane back to the Navy.”

“Bingo! Film. And smallpox canisters. To the military. And we did find those weird cameras. All of which suggests some kind of military involvement.”

“Okay, that could explain the 50-cal damage, if she flew into a war zone. But what about the plane being the wrong model?”

Maddock turned the sat-phone over in his hands. “I just don’t know. Maybe Spinney and Carlson are wrong and it is a 10E? Maybe they’re right and she really did fly a different model that wasn’t publicized, because it would have been considered cheating or not as impressive a feat? Or maybe it’s just not her airplane.”

“Another Electra from the same time period that just happened to crash in this part of the world?” Doubt filled Bones’ face.

“What I don’t like about this whole thing from an information-gathering standpoint is that we’re in the middle of two biased parties. Spinney and his group want to believe more than anything that they’ve found Earhart’s plane. The realization of a long-time goal could be clouding their judgment. On the other hand, it’s in the Navy’s best interest to compartmentalize what they know and only tell us the bare minimum of what we need in order to accomplish our mission objectives.”

Bones nodded. “The commander about told us as much in the briefing.”

Maddock looked at the sat-phone. “So I’d like to talk to a neutral party who knows something about Earhart and might be able to fill in some details for us. Who do we know that would be good for that?”

It didn’t take Bones long to come up with an answer. “Jimmy Letson?”

A smile overtook Maddock’s features while he thought about this. Letson was an ex-Navy man who now worked as a reporter in the Boston area. He was knowledgeable about a lot of things, especially those involving conspiracies, and he was good with computers. From time to time they’d asked him to look things up for them and found him to be good at it, although he always expected something in return, usually a quality bottle of liquor.

Maddock rummaged through his pack until he found his address book. “Let’s give him a call, but not here. Outside camp.”

They exited the tent and strolled through the outer perimeter of the campsite, avoiding the research tent and the other sleeping tents. They passed the dive tent, where the compressor was now silent, their tanks having been refilled earlier in the day. At one end, they came to a sandy trail that led down to the lagoon-side beach. Exotic birdcalls punctuated the evening while a half-moon cast its silvery light across the atoll’s lagoon.

They took the few steps down from the slightly elevated base camp to the beach, then walked for a while up the sandy strip until they came to a palm tree leaning out over the sand. Deciding they were now suitably far out of earshot from the team, Maddock leaned against the tree and activated the sat-phone.

“What time is it in Boston?” Bones asked. “I can’t keep track of this time zone crap.”

“Late. But it’s not like he keeps regular hours.” Maddock shrugged.

“What” came the curt answer on the other end of the line.

“Jimmy, it’s Maddock. I know it’s late, but do you have a few minutes? I’m with Bones and we need a favor.”

Letson’s voice sounded tinny but audible coming through the speaker from thousands of miles away.

“You still have my address?”

“Yeah, but we’re not in the neighborhood, we’re in the field — sorry, can’t say where — just want to chat.”

“I don’t want to see you, either, I just want to make sure you know where to send my Chivas Regal.”

“We made good on the last one, didn’t we?”

“Yeah, that space capsule thing. You just can’t do anything without my help, can you?”

“I guess not. So listen. What we have going on here is even more so. We need to clarify some things. You ready for this?”

“Yeah, go ahead. Been up working on a deadline, so the two most important machines to my existence, the coffee maker and the computer, are both fired up. What do you need?”

“We have questions about Amelia Earhart, especially the type of plane she was flying when she disappeared.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. Maddock watched as Bones, who couldn’t hear the other end of the conversation, occupied himself with maintaining watch, head on a swivel as he surveyed their surroundings for signs of anyone coming their way.

Letson barked a laugh. “Funny. You don’t have anything better to do than call and mess with be because I did a magazine article about a year ago on Earhart. I’ll have you know, that was some serious journalism. I spent…”

Jimmy! Focus!” Maddock said. “We really do want some intel on Earhart.”

“Oh.” Jimmy sounded surprised.

“So what can you tell us about the plane? Was it an Electra 10E?”

“Yes, yes, that’s right. Well, it’s half right…” He trailed off.

“Don’t mean to rush you, Jimmy, but we’re deep in the field and I’m not sure how long my sat-phone battery’s going to last.”

“Ungrateful as always.” Nevertheless, Letson began speaking rapidly. “Right, so officially, on her round-the-world flight during which she and her navigator disappeared, she was supposed to have been flying a 10E. And on the first attempt, she definitely was. But…”

“Hold up. Did you say first attempt? As in, she tried the round-the-world trip more than once?”

“First you tell me to hurry, then you interrupt me. Make up your mind, Maddock. But, yes, that’s correct. Let me lay it out for you. The first trip was definitely in an Electra 10E. She left from San Francisco, flying west, with her first pit-stop in Honolulu.”

“Okay…”

“During the takeoff in Honolulu, she had an accident, what pilots call a “ground loop,” where she crashed while still on the runway. Nobody got hurt but the plane was pretty messed up and they had to crate it up and send it back to California for repairs at the Lockheed factory.”

“I’m surprised to hear she crashed.”

“Eh, it wasn’t the first time. Thing about Earhart was, she wasn’t really a crack pilot, you know? She was more of a daredevil type. She admitted herself that she didn’t fully understand how to operate all of the electronic equipment aboard the plane when she left, although it’s probably because there were last minute equipment substitutions made.”

“Go on…”

“So some funny things happened in the two months between the Honolulu incident and her second attempt.”

Maddock’s heart raced. “Like what?”

Letson paused for a second during which Maddock could hear waves breaking out on the reef. “She tried again from San Francisco, but this time there was no announcement made, no big media fanfare. She was married to the publisher, George Putnam, who was also her manager and very big on promotion. He really knew how to pimp her out to the public — female pilot breaking a new record and all that…She did lots of ‘em: first Atlantic crossing, first California to Honolulu, an altitude record… After a while the only one left was the equatorial circumnavigation of the globe — by far the most difficult. Anyway, on the second round-the-world attempt, nothing was announced until she popped up in Miami and said, ‘Here I am! Going around the world again! Started from San Francisco, so I’m already three thousand miles into it!’”

“That’s odd.”

“Absolutely. But what’s even more strange is the direction of the new flight.”

“West-to-east?”

“Exactly. The first attempt was east-to-west, as one would expect for an equatorial circumnavigation that time of year, since that’s the direction that will give you the least wind resistance.”

“But she didn’t go that way.”

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

Letson took a deep breath before continuing. “To understand the answer you need to be aware of some of the so-called conspiracy theories that surround Earhart’s final flight.”

“Lay it on me.”

“Okay. A lot of people think that Earhart was enlisted by Franklin Delano Roosevelt as a spy. Some rumors even have it that Earhart was captured by the Japanese and later forced to become one of the ‘Tokyo Rose’ radio broadcasters — English speaking women delivering Japanese propaganda to American troops. But anyway, because she would be flying over the Japanese-held regions of the Pacific, FDR wanted her to take photographs of any evidence of military buildup she saw there. She would also be flying over the desert regions of Northern Africa, where there was military buildup occurring as well, but the Pacific was the big gem.”

Despite the tropical air, Maddock felt a chill shoot down his spine as he pictured the rusted dome cameras in the Electra out on the reef. Maddock was speechless as he contemplated this, so Letson went on.

“There’s more. A lot of people assert that the airplane Earhart took off in from Miami was not an Electra 10E, but was actually an Electra 12, and a heavily modified 12 at that. Extra fuel tanks, bigger engines… So this thing could fly substantially farther, faster and higher than the original Lockheed Electra that she and Putnam bought with their own money.”

The skin on Maddock’s arms began to crawl as he recalled Spinney looking at his pictures. Electra 12…

“And that’s another thing: money. This second Electra had absolutely no record of Earhart or Putnam — by the way, do you like how even though she was married to a successful guy she still kept her own name, in the 1930s — that’s women’s lib for you, right? Anyway, there was no record of her or Putnam buying it. No manifest, invoice, work order, receipt, nothing. Nada”

“Because the military paid for it and gave it to her?”

“Finally, the slow learner begins to catch on! The military also seems to have provided her with fuel, oil and even infrastructure, such as the runway they built for her on Howland Island, all for what was supposedly a civilian operation? But there’s even more to it than that.”

“I’m all ears.”

“The reverse direction only makes sense from a military standpoint. Because weather-wise, it sucks going west-to-east. Not only are you bucking a headwind the entire way, you also hit the monsoon season over in India, which she did and nearly crashed into the Indian Ocean. But from an espionage standpoint, it’s great.”

“Why?”

“Because if you’re spying, you want to carry evidence of that spying — I’m talking about film — with you for the shortest possible time. They accomplish that going west-to-east rather than the other way by hitting the most important war theater, the South and Central Pacific, last. A lot of the countries she had to pass over weren’t exactly friendly and only grudgingly granted temporary airspace visas. If they went east-to-west, on the other hand, they’d have to do the spying soon after leaving from Honolulu, a major media stop, by the way, where everyone would see the new plane and possibly notice the modifications made to it at the very beginning of the trip. Then they’d have to schlep that highly sensitive spy film in and out of various customs stops the whole rest of the way around the world.”

Maddock was floored. “Wow. So, was Earhart a spy?”

“I don’t have a Magic Eight Ball, Maddock. But if I did, it would read: Signs point to yes.”

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