Electra

Chapter 29

Maddock withdrew from the slightly open door. He was pretty sure he hadn’t been spotted and the men seemed unaware that shots had been fired on the ship, but the adrenaline was still surging. From the looks of things, Tomoaki continued trying to get information out of Carlson, information the researcher did not have, but that Maddock did, much of it carried right on his back. Spinney, meanwhile, was still conscious but slumped over on the table, head on his elbows like a sleepy school kid. Except that sleepy school kids did not have blood trickling down their foreheads. Maddock sure as heck did not want to end up sitting at that table next to the EARHART Group men, where he would be hated by both parties in the room. At least he was now armed, and with the element of surprise he might even be able to eliminate Tomoaki and his goons with an offensive attack, but if that failed he was ridiculously outgunned.

Instead, he opted for continued stealth in pursuit of a satellite phone. He wasn’t looking forward to breaching the radio room, where more machine-gun toting lackeys likely waited, but he was all too aware that as long as they remained aboard, it was only a matter of time before either he or Bones was discovered. Mission success depended on making that sat-phone call.

Maddock slipped very quickly past the door, conscious of the fact that even though he turned his face away as he passed, the sight of a barefoot, shirtless man with a backpack would raise suspicions immediately. He paced down the remainder of the walkway until he reached the stairs leading down, recalling the voices he’d heard just before reaching the room with Spinney and Carlson. But now nothing disturbed the near-silence.

Wait…not silence…a sound. A voice? It was eerie, an ethereal wail, coming from what sounded like it might be underneath him. He crept down the stairs, head on a swivel, alert for any human presence. The ocean rushed by on his right, the ship now at cruising speed. He wondered fleetingly where they were going, but had no time to ponder it as he reached the bottom of the staircase and looked behind him. A cavern-like space yawned beneath the overhang of the stairs and superstructure above, dominated by a large-diameter pool five feet high above deck, filled with water.

In the pool a black fin sliced through the water. Maddock moved to it for a closer look, noting the single, closed door set into the wall behind it. He moved to one side of the pool so that should someone emerge either out on deck behind him, or out of the door, he could duck behind the pool’s side for cover.

He walked up to the edge and peered over. For a moment, he entertained the possibility that this was perhaps a shark, but no…it was a small whale. As if to confirm this fact, the whale exhaled a plume of mist with a breathy gasp.

And not just any whale, Maddock realized, following the animal’s circular pattern with his gaze. The black hide, the rounded melon, rows of peg-like teeth…this was a pilot whale. The pilot whale, Maddock corrected himself. Shankey survived the explosion that sent the plane over the ledge!

Unless they had a second pilot whale? This small holding pen looked barely big enough for one whale, much less two, not that he would hold Mizuhi Corp to high moral standards. But looking closer, Maddock examined the ridges of the dorsal fin. He knew that, much like human fingerprints, dorsal edge patterns were unique to individual whales. He recalled from their close scrapes with Shankey that there was a distinctive triple-notch sculpted out of the top edge of the fin, just below where it curled over. There it is. This was definitely Shankey.

Although knifeless at the moment, the whale was currently outfitted with a new explosive. An LED light on the disc-shaped device blinked green, which Maddock knew meant the explosive was not currently armed.

Looking more closely at the tank, Maddock could see that a plastic chute was gated off inside of it. When the gate was lifted, though, he could see that the whale could slide through the tube, which went through the ship’s side and overboard. He heard the ship’s engines change in pitch. The motion of the vessel changed, too, becoming more rocky as it slowed. Cautiously, Maddock moved to the rail near the opposite side of the tank so that he could look off the ship. Expecting to see only choppy, open ocean, he had to make himself look twice at the land mass now not far in front of him, brimmed with orange fire.

The atoll!

They floated just outside the calm waters of the lagoon. What are we doing back here? Maddock wondered if it meant that Tomoaki had gleaned information he found to be promising from Spinney and Carlson regarding the location of the crate. He tried to suppress his nerves as he speculated as to whether the Mizuhi team sweeping the island may have come across their smallpox crate hidden in the foliage. That would be extremely problematic. Hopefully Tamoaki was just pursuing some wild goose chase given to him by Spinney and Carlson.

One thing was clear. Something was going on with the ship, and so he and Bones needed to regroup. With any luck, Maddock reflected, already moving away from the pool toward the open deck, at least some of the crew would leave the ship for the island, giving them better odds at overcoming the remaining crew while they searched for a sat-phone. He should have Bones with him, anyway, to breach the radio room and bridge areas. He could give him one of the K5s and then they would be much more effective than they were now, split and with one of them weaponless.

He began carefully making his way back to the work deck, the last place he saw Bones. One thing that gave him hope was that, if he had been captured, he probably would have been in that room with Tomoaki and the EARHART men, if he had been. Maddock could only hope he was still at large as he snuck under a stairwell landing and waited for two crewmen to walk past. When it was clear he dashed to the base of a large crane, hiding behind it while scoping out the next leg of his progress. In such a fashion he worked his way toward the stern of the ship, occasionally dodging crewmen, staying out of sight, until at last he was overlooking the work deck.

What he saw made him catch his breath.

The life-size model Electra was now clutched in the jaws of a massive crane, swinging a few feet over the deck as it swayed gently. He didn’t know what they planned to do with it, but that wasn’t his concern. What did cause him anxiety was his view of the cockpit.

Bones lay curled in a ball on the floor of the fake plane.

From his hiding spot behind a boxy air handler tucked back beneath a stairwell, Maddock took in his surroundings. Perhaps a dozen men now occupied the work deck, most of them highly focused on tasks related to moving the plane. Maddock watched as one of the men, seated at a control station for the crane, began to move his hands over its controls.

The crane began to move, carrying the replica airplane with it. He saw Bones stir within the plane but still make no move to sit up.

Don’t get up now, Bones, they’ll see you. He knew it must be difficult for Bones to resist the urge to get a visual on his situation.

Maddock didn’t see how he was going to get Bones out of that plane without anyone knowing. Even with his twin K5s there was no way he could hold off that many of them. And he couldn’t be sure yet, but what were they doing with the model — preparing to lower it over the side into the water? What for?

And then he recalled the talk of Mizuhi’s development goals, how they wanted to turn the island into a profitable luxury mega-resort, complete with Amelia Earhart’s airplane and fancy bungalows dotting the beach. Maddock scratched his head in wonderment. It seemed that when faced with the fact that they were unable to scare the EARHART Group off so that they could lay claim to the island, Mizuhi had made the horrible executive decision to simply take over the atoll by sheer brute force. He took advantage of the island’s remoteness and essentially kicked off the atoll’s sole occupants to begin construction of their new paradise. They had already started burning down the jungle, Maddock thought, watching the island burn to his left, the smell of smoke hanging sharply in the night air. And now they were about to drop a full-scale model of Earhart’s Electra into the atoll’s lagoon, probably to dupe unsuspecting tourists into believing they’d found the real thing! Probably so that tourists could snorkel on it.

Maddock thought fast, clutching one of his two pistols. As soon as they lowered that plane into the water, Bones would be seen by the crew. The situation was rapidly getting out of control. He had to do something, but saw only near-suicidal options. He looked around the ship, at the crew on deck working the plane, saw a few more men streaming onto the work deck, a couple leaving the deck to climb into the superstructure. He needed a major distraction of some sort. Looking over at the burning atoll, he was discouraged. If that wasn’t distraction enough, what could he possibly do to provide one?

One of the men on deck shouted at the crane operator to do something and Maddock saw the plane spinning, with Bones inside, twirling in place as it hung suspended over the deck. He wasn’t sure if they intended to drop it into the lagoon from here, or wanted to get it onto the island itself. Either way, as soon as they lowered it Bones would be spotted. There was no way Maddock would be able to get Bones out of there without getting both of them killed. SNAFU. The situation was so bad, it seemed insurmountable. The ship was too big and had too many crew to be able to locate a sat-phone in a practical amount of time. He shook his head in disgust at their early optimism. Ridiculous. Now they were in a serious pickle that nothing short of a disaster affecting the ship itself would be able to…

A disaster affecting the ship itself…

A devilish grin materialized on Maddock’s face as he stared out over the busy work deck. He banished the phrase long-shot from his brain. Something had to be done.

Hang in there Bones. He chuckled to himself as he glanced at the special warfare operator spinning slowly in the suspended model plane before turning and running back the way he had come.