Chapter 16

A few hours later and shortly after sunrise, the entire dive team including Maddock and Bones were crowded onto a makeshift raft, paddling for the wreck site. Bruce Watanabe had insisted he come along as the “boat pilot” even though all he could do now was to help paddle and remain aboard the raft while the divers were underwater. Although the raft was slow and wet, Bones noted they actually had more room than on the Zodiac. They’d gathered many long logs and had a sizable platform on which to float.

Four of them paddling with makeshift log oars, they reached the marker in thirty minutes. Watanabe tied a line off to the buoy and then produced a pair of binoculars which he used to scan the surrounding waters for signs of Mizuhi’s ship or the pilot whale. After finding nothing, he gave them the okay to dive. As Maddock slipped his mask over his head, looking around the raft at Spinney’s divers, he had to admit they were dedicated to their job, and good at it. They lacked the overall stamina and of course the battle skills he and Bones possessed, but had proven they could stick with a difficult job in the face of adversity, and for that he respected them.

Bugsy gave a quick review of the dive plan, which was a repeat of the previous day’s dive. Four divers were to penetrate the plane and recover artifacts from it, including Maddock and Bones, while the other two were to explore the tunnel system for human remains. On shore there had been a tense moment when Bugsy had assigned Maddock and Bones to the tunnel team, which would have prevented them access to the plane. But Maddock had talked him into letting he and Bones be part of the airplane team again because they had seen something yesterday they wanted to follow up on — a specific place within the aircraft that would be difficult for someone else to find. Bugsy had shrugged and asked the other divers if they had any objections. The two who had been inside the plane yesterday said they wouldn’t mind giving the tunnels a try this time, and so it was settled.

Now, the six of them rolled off the raft into the ocean and followed the buoy line down to the edge of the reef. They spread out in a horizontal line and dropped down the wall to the ledge. There, Maddock and Bones again made a beeline for the tunnel, since once inside it was single file without sufficient room to pass anyone, guaranteeing them to be first to arrive at the plane.

Maddock led the way down the left passage toward the plane, the other three wreck divers behind him, including Bones, while the two tunnel explorers moved off along the right-side passage. Upon reaching the Electra chamber, Maddock swam directly through the windshield without slowing. Bones was close behind.

“You guys have that maneuver down,” the diver next in line noted.

“Practice makes perfect.” Maddock swam through the airplane to the furl of sheet metal covering the remaining crate. He looked into Bones’ eyes while he spoke, to emphasize the importance of the communication that everyone would be able to hear.

Keith, I’m going to unroll this metal here. This is what I noticed yesterday. You check the extreme rear cargo area for anything we might not have seen.”

“Copy that,” Bones said. “You can extract the box from the aluminum coils by himself, so I may as well have a look around and see if I can find anything else that might relate to the mission. After all, this is hopefully our last dive.

The other two divers entered the cockpit and began to scour the forward cargo section and cockpit areas.

Maddock had removed most of the aircraft metal off the top of the crate when he sliced his hand on the thin metal sheet like a paper cut, right through the glove, resulting in a drifting cloud of blood that looked black unless he shone his light directly on it. He cursed softly but one of the other divers still asked him what happened. He saw no reason to suppress the truth at this point and told them he cut his hand on some metal while removing an “object of interest.”

“What is it?” one of them asked.

“Looks like a box. I’ve almost got it free.”

Bones swam over to see how it was going, since it would probably seem strange not to. He helped Maddock pull the box out from under the last of the metal and they examined its seal. It looked good and tight, though they didn’t want to call attention to that fact. Maddock eyed Spinney’s two divers up front, both of them busy searching nooks and crannies. He mouthed the words, “Find anything?” to Bones, who shook his head.

Remembering how difficult it was to get the other crate to the surface, Maddock pointed to the crate and then up. Bones nodded. If anything, Maddock thought, this box was heavier than the first one. They might as well get a move on, even if they had to wait for the rest of the team for a bit on the raft. There was nothing else here for them besides this crate.

Maddock notified the other divers that the box was heavy and that he and “Keith” had best get started wrangling it out of the plane, through the tunnel and rigging the lift bag for the trip to the surface. They agreed, saying they’d either meet them on the ledge or else see them at the decompression stop.

Maddock and Bones worked together to move the box to the plane’s cockpit. They took extra care not to jostle it too much, knowing what it might contain. One of the other divers helped them shove it through the windshield and swim it up to the tunnel entrance. Then he went back to the airplane and Maddock and Bones were on their own to get the box to the boat. Maddock briefly entertained the notion of dumping the box on the reef again for later pickup and saying they dropped it over the ledge into the deep, but decided against it. Paddling back out here at night in the raft wasn’t an attractive option, and he felt a kind of Spidey-sense telling him that it would be pushing their already maxed-out luck.

When they reached the mouth of the tunnel, overlooking the ledge where the Electra’s tail protruded from the cave, Maddock was tempted to simply slide the box over the edge, letting it tumble through the water to the bottom below. However, on the off chance that this thing really did contain some kind of smallpox bombs, he decided that they better do it the hard way. He and Bones each held onto the crate and swam it down gently to the bottom in an upright position. From there, they lugged it to the edge of the wall, where thousands of feet of ocean lay below them, and two hundred feet beckoned above.

Bones deployed the lift bag and they rigged it to the crate. When it was ready, Maddock said into the comm system, “Okay, we’re leaving from the ledge with the—”

He interrupted his communication as a flash of black entered his peripheral vision.

“Say again — you’re breaking up,” one of the tunnel divers said, not realizing Maddock had simply stopped speaking. It was Bones who responded.

“We’ve got a whale of a problem out here!”

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