Electra

Chapter 33

It didn’t take them long to skirt the island until they approached the side where the camp was. Most of the activity was now centered on the beach, where the Mizuhi and EARHART teams alike avoided the burning jungle and discussed the aftermath of the sunken ship. When Maddock could see the camp in the distance, he pointed in the direction of the clump of vegetation where they’d hidden the crate.

“It won’t be long before they organize enough to notice that we’re both missing, and that a bomb ruptured the hull that caused the ship to sink, and put two and two together.”

“As if they weren’t looking for us already.” Bones hunkered lower against the sand.

Maddock nodded. “We have got to get out of here. Let’s move. We’ll get that crate and come back around the same way.”

He and Bones crouched low as they ran, maintaining as low a profile as possible while still being able to move fast. When they rounded the end of the island that the camp was on, they transitioned to a low-crawl, moving on their bellies across the sandy soil toward the demolished radio tent. Bones let out a muffled curse as his elbow ground into a smoldering ember.

After some more excruciating progress, Maddock scoped out the surroundings and then risked standing up for a better vantage point. He looked around quickly and then lay back down. He pointed off to their left. “Looks like our plants are still there.”

“Hopefully the crate is, too.”

“Let’s go find out.”

The two special warfare operators resumed their rapid low-crawl toward the objective. They had to skirt around a remaining pocket of wildfire that threatened to overtake their hiding place. When they rounded it, they saw no other people and had a clear path to the stand of foliage. They low-crawled the entire way, taking no chances. Smoke filled the air, lowering visibility, but down low to the ground they found it easier to breathe. They crawled directly into the grouping of plants without standing up, Maddock in the lead.

“It’s here!” Maddock reached the crate and jostled it slightly, testing its weight. “Still heavy.”

“We should probably open it to make sure they’re still in there.”

“You mean in case someone found it and took out the smallpox containers and replaced them with rocks?”

“Yeah. I’d hate to carry a box of rocks all the way back to the Commander after everything we’ve been through, wouldn’t you?”

Maddock pulled the lid off the box and peered inside. “Still there.” He replaced the lid.

“I’ll get the poles.” Bones slunk off deeper into the remaining greenery and came back with the two cut logs they’d used to transport the crate.

“If we use those we’ll have to stand, or at least crouch,” Maddock pointed out.

“We can crouch. Let’s just get out of here. I’d rather be cooped up in that model airplane again with a box full of smallpox than hang around here.”

“Agreed.”

Maddock slid the box out from the plants while Bones took the poles and acted as lookout. After establishing that it was clear, they placed the strongbox on the poles and took up their positions at either end. They set out back the way they had come, but the going was much slower carrying the heavy box in an awkward crouch position to lower their profiles.

They forged on, though, stopping every so often to take a break where they sat low on the ground, watching and listening. On one of these breaks, they heard footsteps approaching them. A Mizuhi crewman wielding a machete hacked his way through some brush as he approached Maddock and Bones’ position. Whether he was looking for them specifically, or the crates, or was simply scouting out the island, they didn’t know. But they knew one thing: they had to take him out before he saw them and radioed a report.

Bones unsheathed his dive knife while Maddock slid one of the poles out from under the crate to use as a martial arts-style weapon, although it was somewhat too long. Bones stayed with the crate, guarding it, while Maddock advanced toward the approaching threat. He twirled the pole a couple of times, testing his balance with it, but decided just to go with a simple jabbing motion.

The interloper spotted him when they were about eight feet apart. He reached for his radio and raised his machete simultaneously. Maddock, in contrast, was of single-minded purpose. He thrust the pole into his opponent’s abdomen. The wind left the crewman in a rush and both his radio and machete dropped to the ground.

“Bones: vines!” Bones used his knife to cut some nearby vines they could use to tie the man up. They trussed his arms and legs into a crude hog-tie. Maddock patted the man down but he carried no firearm. Then they gagged him with more vines and left him on the ground, Maddock appropriating both his machete and the radio. He made sure to turn down the volume of the radio to avoid the risk of radio chatter giving away their position as they advanced toward the beach.

With the crate loaded up again, they moved out once more, now more cautious than ever after their encounter. They pushed and pulled the crate forward on its pole system, keeping their heads down. After two more rest stops they could see the final stretch to the lagoon-front beach. It was a long haul, trundling the crate to the beach, but they made it without further incident. When they knelt on a small berm on the edge of the sand, Bones left Maddock behind with the crate to get a good look down the beach. He returned after a couple of minutes.

“Still looks about the same. Our boat-plane is still there, and the group is still hanging out on the center of the beach.”

They took up the poles again, knowing that they would make a very conspicuous profile once they ventured out onto the sand where the Mizuhi group could see them.

Maddock pointed. “Let’s move out along the berm until we’re even with the plane, that way we’ll be on the sand as little as possible.”

Bones agreed and they headed off toward the plane just above the beach. They were weary from lifting the crate by now, but knew they would need one more burst of energy to make their escape. When they were looking straight across the beach at the plane, they set the poles down. Maddock addressed Bones solemnly.

“They’re going to start shooting at us as soon as they see us.”

“At least it’s still dark out.”

“Not for long.” Maddock inclined his head toward the east, where the first traces of light crept over the horizon. “For this final dash I say we forget the poles, just double-carry the box to the plane, get it into the cockpit, then shove off.”

“Roger that.” Bones flexed his hands in preparation. The pair of SEALs hefted the crate of deadly bio-agents and tested their grip. Then it was time to go. Maddock counted them off.

“On three, two, one…now!”

They jogged off across the sand, each on one side of the weighty box, moving like a four-legged spider, turning this way and that to compensate for dips in the beach. They had just reached the plane, water lapping around their ankles, when they heard the first shouts.

“They spotted us, Bones. We better load this puppy and get while the getting’s good.”

A four-rung ladder led up to the cockpit. Bones, already familiar with it, climbed three steps up and turned around. Maddock pushed the deadly crate up into his outstretched arms. The weight of the crate almost pulled Bones off the ladder but Maddock shoved upward on the box and the big Indian was able to grip the edge of the cockpit and regain his balance.

“Go, Bones!” Maddock pushed on his legs to propel him over the lip of the cockpit.

Bones nearly fell into the plane, doing his level best to control the crate’s descent. It landed with a thud on the bottom of the cockpit, but upright and not too hard. But there was no time to check on it now.

Someone called something in Japanese to them, followed by an English sentence: “Hey! Stop right there!”

Maddock dropped back into the shallow water and began to push the big model out into the lagoon. Just when it started to move he heard the heartbreaking sound of metal sliding on sand as the plane’s landing gear caught on the bottom.

Someone yelled in Japanese.

The plane lurched sideways with the sudden shift in momentum. “What’s up?” Bones called down from the cockpit. Maddock wrenched the plane free by holding onto a strut and pulling as hard as he’d ever pulled anything in his life, hoping the piece of metal didn’t break free of its rivets. But it held and then the life-size model was floating free, bobbing in the gentle waves close to shore. He gave it a few more forceful shoves, and on the last one pushed off the bottom onto the ladder.

Angry yells, also in Japanese, followed, and then, as Maddock dropped into the cockpit next to Bones, the first shots came.

“Paddle, Bones. Paddle!”

They each stuck one of the handmade raft paddles over the side of the cockpit and into the water. They started to paddle, quickly falling into a familiar rhythm.

“This remind you of BUDS training or what!” Maddock looked over at Bones, who almost looked as though he were having a good time. But then a bullet pinged off of the plane, sending a spark through the darkness in front of them, and Bones grew sober, paddling even harder.

Maddock looked back and saw an angry mob standing on the beach, yelling and shaking their fists at them. He took consolation in the fact that they had no watercraft whatsoever — no lifeboats, tender vessels, not even a raft, with which to give chase. He wondered if one or some of them might try to swim after them, since they couldn’t paddle faster than a good swimmer, but so far no one did. Maddock supposed he could beat them down from the boarding ladder with the paddle if they tried, but for now it seemed they were content to take potshots at them from the comfort of the beach.

A round penetrated the fuselage, luckily above the waterline, but Maddock knew that they needed to put more distance between themselves and the island. He paddled harder than he ever had in his life, even in the grueling SEAL training exercises they’d been put through in San Diego, eyes fixed on the line of frothing water that marked the outer edge of the lagoon.

They passed over the sunken ship, its gloomy form now a permanent fixture of the underwater landscape. Random floating objects still trickling out of the wreck bobbed in their wake as they rowed hard for the outer reef. One more shot zinged against the plane’s tail fin, and after that the shots petered out, the men on the beach realizing that the impromptu rowboat was too far away to hit.

Then a new problem presented itself: maneuvering through the narrow cut in the reef out to the open ocean. But it was one they much preferred to being shot at. Still, they both knew that should they miscalculate and wind up on the shallow rocks, their fragile craft would be dashed apart, and they would have no choice but to return to the atoll like a pair of wet dogs climbing out of a pool.

“Right turn,” Bones called out as they approached the opening in the reef. Maddock lifted his paddle from the water while Bones dug his in, and the cumbersome model swung to the right.

“Straight ahead!” Bones relished his role as rowing captain; he’d been a leader in that area back in BUDS, and he called out directions with gusto, leaning into his paddle strokes, giving it everything he had. Maddock knew that he somehow had a good sense for how to control the ungainly craft, and he followed orders, doing his best to keep them off the reef. And then they were shooting through the cut, flying into open ocean, the breakers spraying off the sides of their boat-plane that had just delivered them from the atoll.

“We made it!” Bones yelled. He turned around to look back at the distant beach. “Screw you guys!”

Maddock stared at his friend, resting. Bones saw that Maddock wasn’t sharing in his enthusiasm.

“Now what?”

“Do you know where we’re going, Bones?”

The burly Cherokee stared out to sea, at the largest body of water on the planet, the Pacific Ocean. “I guess not.”

Maddock reached into his backpack and brought out the digital camera. He activated the screen while they floated there, just beyond the reef. He scrolled through the images he’d taken, seeking the ones he’d snapped during their helicopter flight in.

“Here.” He held the camera’s small screen so Bones could see it. “This is the nearest island to here that had any kind of civilization on it.”

Bones squinted at the picture, which showed a white sandy beach fringed with palm trees, with a row of over-water bungalows stretching out over an aquamarine lagoon. “Oh, I remember that. But geez, Maddock, by helo that place was like ten or fifteen minutes away….in this thing it could take…days.”

“Then we better start rowing.”

Bones looked out to sea. “Which way?”

Maddock oriented them with the photograph, pointing off into the distance. Bones looked up at the sky and fixed their position against the rapidly fading stars. “I learned celestial navigation as a kid to honor my ancestors. It’s getting light out now but I can fix our position by the stars to get underway on the right course and then hopefully it won’t be cloudy when the sun comes out and I can use that.”

“Well then — hey, look!” Maddock pointed off to their right, where a sleek, dark shape moved slowly along the surface.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Bones slapped his forehead. “Shankey! We can’t take any hits in this thing, Maddock, if he—”

“Hold up, look. He’s not coming at us.” The pilot whale stopped and spyhopped, sticking its head vertically out of the water. It looked at Maddock and Bones, made some clicking noises, then turned and swam off in the opposite direction.

“He’s not going to attack us? No freaking way!”

“Nope. Just wanted to say thanks for getting him out of that tank, I guess.”

Bones called after the whale. “Later, dude. Hope you find yourself a hot porpoise babe or two.”

Laughing, the two SEALs paddled out to sea, the sun rising off to their right.