Electra

Chapter 21

Maddock and Bones concealed themselves in some tall weeds just outside of camp. They could hear electronic chatter coming from the radio tent, but other than that saw no signs of activity. The rain had let up a little but was still coming down. They moved off in a crouching run toward the sleeping tents.

When they neared them, they were mortified to see George Taylor himself walk into his tent, coming from the campfire area. Bones muttered a curse under his breath. He looked at Maddock. Now what?

Bones pointed at Taylor’s tent. They would have to do what they would have to do. Just as they were about to move, Taylor exited his tent, walking back the way he had come. Maddock exhaled as he and Bones crouched low to the ground. They waited until Taylor had walked out of sight, and then sprang into action.

They sprinted to the tent and ducked inside. There was a sleeping bag on the floor, a packing crate — not an artifact — used as a small table on which sat a lantern and a camera, and a stack of books about Amelia Earhart on a covered table of some sort.

Maddock indicated with hand signals for Bones to keep watch. The big Indian crouched behind the tent flap, peeking outside while Maddock slid the books to the floor and uncovered the table.

The crate!

But would it still contain the film?

He hissed at Bones. “Crate’s here, I’m going to open it. Stay on post.”

Bones continued to keep watch while Maddock used his dive knife to pry open the crate. There was only the sound of rain pattering on the tent fabric while he evaluated what lay inside.

The same undeveloped film rolls they’d seen before.

“It’s here!” He removed his backpack and opened it, setting it on the floor next to the crate. “I’m going to put the film in my pack so we don’t have to carry the damn crate, and Taylor might not know for a while the film’s been taken from it.”

“Good idea.” Bones’ head turned back and forth as he maintained watch.

Maddock found a small knapsack and a large Ziploc bag, and packed up all the film. He put the pack on his back. Then he put the lid back on the crate, covered it with the blanket again, and finally put the books back on top as they were before.

“Let’s go!”

“Hold on! Someone’s coming!”

Bones pointed to the right from the open tent door. Two of the divers walked toward them, talking in hushed tones. Maddock and Bones shrunk back from the tent door. The divers continued walking past Taylor’s tent and ducked inside the tent next to it.

Breathing a heavy sigh of relief, Maddock pointed through the tent’s far wall to the jungle. Bones nodded, and the two SEALs ran from the tent to the nearest cover of foliage. From there they low-crawled to the edge of the jungle, where they listened for signs of people. Hearing none, they stood and crept into the forest.

The trip through the jungle was again slow and arduous, with much rainwater accumulated on the ground. They continued to be stealthy, not assuming that no one would be looking for them in here. Covered in mud, they painted their faces to further camouflage themselves. An hour later they neared the cave.

After crouching in the leaves of a fallen tree for a few minutes to ascertain it was safe to proceed, Maddock and Bones ran to the bottom of the boulder jumble that led up to the mouth of their hiding place. They climbed up inside it. Maddock shrugged off the backpack and set it down next to the crate containing the smallpox.

Maddock gave Bones a high-five. “We’ve got everything we need to make the Commander happy.”

“Now if we can just get off this godforsaken rock.”

Maddock pulled open his backpack to pull out the satellite phone. “Let’s make that extraction call. They said it would be—”

Maddock cut himself short, a hand still groping around inside the pack.

“What is it?” Bones eyed the pack with alarm.

“It’s…” Maddock trailed off once again as if unwilling to commit to a statement that scared him.

“It’s gone? Tell me it’s not freaking gone, Maddock!”

Maddock held the pack upside down and shook it. He unzipped a few of the larger side pockets and searched inside. He shook his head.

“I could tell you it’s not gone, but I’d be lying.” He looked up from the pack to Bones, whose mouth dropped open in stunned disbelief. He glanced around the cave, in case it might be lying in view on the ground somewhere. But besides his own small pack and the crate, there was only the moist, smooth packed dirt of the cave floor.

“Hold on…” Bones took off his own small pack and rifled through it. He threw it back down. He eyeballed the box. “No possible way it could have fallen in with the smallpox?”

“Nope.”

“Maybe it was in the film crate and we didn’t notice it in Taylor’s tent?”

“I think you’re on the right track with Taylor, or somebody from Spinney’s team, but I looked in there with a flashlight, Bones, and it wasn’t in there.”

“Okay.” He looked over at Maddock, who was once again checking his pack. “So what could have happened to it? When’s the last time you saw it for sure? The last time I saw it was when you used it to call Jimmy.”

Maddock gazed at the cave ceiling while he thought. “Last time I know I saw it was on the raft right before the dive.”

“You brought the sat-phone with you on the raft?”

“Yeah. I took it out on all the dives and left it on the boat, including the raft.”

“What the heck for?”

Maddock shrugged. “For one thing, who knows, maybe we might need it…” Bones frowned and Maddock continued. “For another, I didn’t like the idea of just leaving it in our tent all day for Spinney and Carlson to snoop and find while we were out diving.”

Bones gave an accepting expression. “I can see that. So you think Bruce Watanabe could have snagged it from your pack while we were under?”

“It’s possible. He seems like a nice guy, but…”

“He’s loyal to Spinney and Spinney’s kind of a douche.”

“True, but it also could have been anyone else. Bugsy? The radio guy, what’s his name?”

“Harvey.”

Maddock nodded. “Harvey Sims, that’s it.”

“He was never around the campfire much when we were, either,” Bones added.

“And let’s not forget about the fearless leader himself.”

“Yeah, Spinney wasn’t around the fire much, either.”

Maddock stood up and began to pace the confines of the narrow cave, staring out at the dark jungle when he reached the mouth and then at Bones on the way back. “Okay let’s think about the situation. We’re ready for extraction but have no way to contact the extraction team or our handlers, at least without blowing our cover.”

Bones nodded, assuming a mocking tone. “Excuse me, Mr. Spinney, do you have a satellite phone we can use, because we need to call the Navy to tell them to pick us up in one of those black helicopters because they want the stuff we took from Amelia Earhart’s plane as soon possible. He’ll understand, right?”

Maddock thought for a moment. “Getting serious for a second, I think it’s safe to say that Spinney probably sleeps with his sat-phone…”

“Up his tailpipe,” Bones cut in.

Maddock grimaced. “We can also assume we wouldn’t be able to get it without starting a major confrontation.”

Bones gave a gesture of non-commitment. “I’m ready.”

“If it comes to that, then we have no choice, but there might be a clandestine option left.”

“Do tell.”

“We just mentioned Sims.”

“Yeah, Harvey and all his geek toys in that tent full of…oh!” Bones’ face lit with awareness.

“Yeah. The ham radio tent. We could use the shortwave set to send Morse to Base Team.”

“It might be overheard.”

“By a few random radio operators around the world, sure, but the frequency is pretty obscure. The biggest worry is just being seen physically in the radio tent by anyone.”

“Do you know the frequency they would use? Because I forgot that along with most of that academic crap they tested us on once upon a time.”

Maddock thought for a moment. “I’m pretty sure I do. And worse comes to worse we could ask an amateur radio operator to relay a coded verbal message.”

“So how do we get at that radio gear? Sims is always in there. He’ll be in there now for sure with everything going on with the press releases and whatnot.”

“Except when he’s sleeping. So we wait until the middle of the night.”

Bones looked out at the rainy jungle. “Great! All we have to do is sit around for about eight hours, right?”

“Six ought to do, including travel time.”

Bones nodded. “Sounds good to me. We stay out of trouble and get some shuteye in here for the next five hours.”

Maddock lay down on his back on the tunnel floor. “How about I get some shut-eye for the first two-and-a-half while you keep watch, then you sleep two-and-a-half while I watch. After that it’ll be time to move.”

Bones nodded and moved a little closer to the edge of the cave. “Sweet dreams, Maddock. Go easy on the snoring.”

Maddock glanced at his watch just before he closed his eyes. If all went well they’d be making their extraction call tonight.