That afternoon, Watanabe took the entire dive team — Maddock and Bones plus Spinney’s four divers — out to the wreck site. Maddock and Bones sat across from each other, each reading the others’ thoughts as they sat amidst the other men. Retrieving the crates they’d found inside the plane earlier without anyone else knowing about it was going to be very difficult.
Once on site the dive team leader reviewed the plan. Two of Spinney’s divers were to search the tunnel system for bodies or bones, while two more would accompany Maddock and Bones into the airplane.
A few minutes later the six divers drifted over the coral lip and onto the ledge where Earhart’s plane had sat for over six decades. Maddock led the way into the tunnel’s ceiling entrance.
“You can go either left or right here,” he explained through the communication units to the two divers who were charged with searching the tunnels. “Left leads eventually to the airplane, but with forks along the way, and right is unknown; we never went that way.”
The tunnel team headed off to the right while Maddock and Bones led the other two divers left and to the airplane’s cockpit chamber. When they dropped into the cavity, Maddock made a beeline for the plane’s windshield. Bones was only a fin length behind him. They needed to be the first ones inside the wreck.
“Easiest access looks to be through the windshield,” Maddock said as he glided through it. The other two divers treaded water while they assessed the opening and waited for Maddock and Bones to move deeper into the plane. Maddock didn’t need to tell Bones what they needed to do.
They swam to the rear of the plane and located the two boxes, in plain sight. Behind them, the first of their two “associates” entered the cockpit. Maddock looked around and saw a section of metal that had peeled away from the fuselage. He pointed it out to Bones and then worked to curl it over one of the boxes.
He looked toward the cockpit and saw the second diver now entering, the first facing in his direction.
Bones looked around but could find nothing else with which to cover the second crate. The second diver was now inside the cockpit, his partner turning slowly around to face into the cargo hold. Maddock made a rapid, frantic hand motion indicating for Bones to move the second crate closer to the first, right next to it. While Bones moved the crate, Maddock peeled back some more of the metal sheeting that had separated from the plane’s body. He pulled it off the side, knowing what Carlson’s reaction would be to causing further damage and disturbance to a modern archaeological find of such significance, until the metal covered both crates. Bones pulled the end of it into place, tucking it under the second crate with his gloved hand.
The two strongboxes were now hidden from direct view, but just barely.
The first diver swam into the hold with them. Maddock’s heart stopped cold when he asked, “What are those?” Then he saw that he was pointing to the dome cameras. Maddock almost told him it was a camera and then checked himself. He was just supposed to be a run-of-the-mill commercial diver. His false identity had no reason to know about any special equipment Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan might have been using.
“Got me. I’ll take some pictures.” He made a show of taking snapshots around the cabin, taking care to avoid the obscured crates. Bones did the same. The second diver knelt at the space between the cockpit and the cargo hold, the rear area not large enough to accommodate all four of them at once.
Maddock pointed out the navigation equipment they’d spotted earlier and unclipped a mesh bag from his belt. “See that sextant and stuff? I’ll bag that and bring it up.” Maddock knew that the navigation gear had nothing to do with his mission, and so it would help to bolster his cover if he handed it over to Spinney.
“Definitely. I’ll get some of this other stuff.” Bones began picking up random odds and ends — loose bolts, small things Maddock couldn’t readily identify, corroded tin cans — and put them in a bag of his own. Neither of Spinney’s two divers took any pictures, which Maddock was grateful for. They didn’t need anyone wondering later on what was going on with that curl of scrap metal back there.
After a couple more minutes of collecting, the diver in back with Maddock and Bones looked at his air pressure gauge and said to his dive buddy in the cockpit, “I’m a thousand psi. How about you?”
“Nine hundred. We should go.” Maddock knew he was right. The team had an agreed-upon minimum reading of one thousand psi air at this depth. If they didn’t have more than that, they had to return to the surface.
“What about you guys?” He looked into Maddock’s eyes through his mask. Maddock brought the gauge up to his face, catching a stare of caution from Bones as he did so. The question was not as simple as it seemed. More experienced divers used less air. This was because they were more comfortable in the water and knew proper breathing techniques and swimming methods to conserve energy and air consumption. He and Bones weren’t supposed to be more experienced than these guys. Equal, maybe, but not more.
Maddock’s gauge read 1,800. “I have one thousand, three-hundred,” he told the diver.
“Twelve-hundred here.” The big Cherokee would use more air than the smaller Maddock, so this reading made sense.
“Wow, I’m guessing you two guys aren’t smokers?” The other of Spinney’s divers laughed.
Maddock and Bones both said that they weren’t.
“Okay, well John and I are going to head up to the deco stop and do our hang time. We’ll see you on the boat.” Maddock and Bones knew that he meant they were going to ascend to a shallower depth in order to avoid decompression sickness before surfacing.
“See you in a few.” Maddock studiously snapped off a couple of more pictures while Spinney’s two divers exited the plane through the cockpit window.
“Here comes the tunnel team,” the diver said about a minute after leaving the plane. He called out to Maddock and Bones by their cover names. “All four of us heading up now. See you on the boat.”
“Copy that.” Maddock immediately wrote something on his slate, pointed at the crates, and showed what he had written to Bones.
Take them to reef.
Drop there. Pick up tonight.
Bones nodded. It was a plan that might just work. This was the last dive of the day for everyone. If they left the boxes on the shallow reef flat at the top of the wall, near the boat, they could do an easy and quick dive tonight to retrieve them before anyone else was the wiser. Bones moved to the crates and peeled back the sheet metal that had so far prevented them from being seen.
Manhandling the heavy boxes through the plane and out the windshield was not as easy as they’d hoped. It took Maddock and Bones a lot of effort to get just one of the boxes outside the plane. They knew that from there they’d have to maneuver it through the tunnels back out to the ledge. That meant if any of Spinney’s divers should come back down to the ledge for any reason, they would see it.
They swam back to the remaining crate. It was even heavier than the first. Maddock consulted his air gauge. Now he really was down to 1,300 psi. The heavy exertion of wrestling with the boxes was taking its toll. Plus they would have to do some extra swimming up on the shallow reef to dump the box before going to the boat. He gave Bones a thumbs up, the signal to ascend. Bones glanced at his own pressure gauge and nodded. He pulled the metal back into place over the crate they would have to leave in the plane.
The SEAL duo swam out of the plane through the windshield and up into the tunnel with the crate. Bones shoveled the crate ahead of him through the tunnels, guided by Maddock. A few minutes later, they came out in the cavern under the ledge where the main body of the plane stuck through the coral wall. Reaching the tail section, they looked around for signs of the other divers but thankfully couldn’t see any.
Maddock pointed to the lift bag, a device used in underwater salvage operations consisting of a large, heavy-duty bag that could be filled with air from a scuba regulator, clipped to Bones’ belt, indicating that they should use it to lift the crate.
Bones set to work preparing the webbing harness of the bag while Maddock pushed the box into position. When they had it set in the harness, Bones took the regulator mouthpiece from his mouth and used it to inflate the lift bag. As the bag began to fill, slowly lifting the box from where it rested on the ledge, Maddock guided it off the ledge and clear of the overhang.
With the box suspended in open water, as if floating in a void, Maddock and Bones began their ascent. Bones was careful to regulate the speed of the rising lift bag. Air expanded as it rose to shallower depths, and he had to occasionally vent air from the bag or it would rise too fast and get away from them. If they lost control of it, the rig could shoot to the surface without them where the other divers on the boat would see it.
They reached the top of the wall and the shallow coral flat, where the outline of the boat was visible above. Maddock considered their options. Their bubbles would be visible to those in the boat now. He decided to make communication with the team. Remaining quiet after so long might be suspicious.
“We’re making our deco stop,” he announced.
Watanabe’s voice came back. “Copy that. You have artifacts, right? Spinney’s already asking about what we found.”
Bones smirked as he eyed the hanging box. Maddock glanced at the mesh bag clipped to his belt loaded with the navigation gear.
“Yeah, we got some good stuff — navigation equipment, I think, but I’m not sure — and some photos.”
“Roger. See you in a few.”
Maddock pointed out across the flat reef, away from the boat. Bones nodded and they began moving, with Maddock swimming slightly above the bag to block its yellow material from being seen by the team while they were close to the boat. It might seem a little odd that they were moving around during their decompression stop instead of remaining in one place, as was the norm, but as long as one stayed at a constant, suitable depth, there was nothing wrong with it.
In fact, Maddock thought, as he spotted a pair of antennae sticking out from under a coral formation, he could think of a good reason for doing it. He swam at an angle toward the lobster, careful not to spook it. When he saw it start to crawl backward into the coral, though, he knew it was alerted to his presence, so he backed off and circled around. Bones held his hands up in a what are you doing? gesture, and Maddock pointed at the lobster. If he could catch it, it would present the perfect excuse for wanting to swim around over the reef during the decompression stop.
Maddock swam over the top of a bulbous brain coral four feet in diameter and descended head first to just above the spot where the lobster continued its retreat, hoping to surprise it. The tactic worked. The “bug,” as divers called them, had walked further away from the coral out onto the open sand. Maddock stopped, poised above the sloping brain coral. He would have to move fast and decisively or the bug would retreat into its coral haven and not come out again.
He took a deep breath, held it for a second while he watched the invertebrate stop walking, and then he sprang. With a powerful kick of his fins, Maddock closed on the creature, trapping it firmly in the sand with both hands. He felt its powerful tail muscles working as it tried to flee but he maintained a firm grip with his gloved hands until he was able to drop it into the same mesh bag that held the Earhart artifacts.
He caught up with Bones, who was still dragging the lift bag across the reef. They were now a safe distance from the boat, but not so far away that the site would be difficult to find later. Still, their return would be at night, so Maddock looked around for any kind of distinctive terrain or landmarks they could use as a reference point. He spotted a thick cluster of branching Elkhorn coral in the midst of an otherwise sandy patch and decided that it would have to do.
He pointed it out to Bones, who nodded and released the air from the lift bag so that it dropped onto the sand next to the bright yellow formation. As Maddock swam up to Bones, he spotted another lobster, this one positioned for an easy grab. He scooped it up and dropped it into the bag. Bones gave him a big grin, and then pointed back toward the boat. It was time to go.
The pair of SEALs traveled across the reef until they were directly under the waiting Zodiac. They slowly swam to the surface, where the divers were waiting to grab their gear as they came up. When Maddock put his head back into the water to remove his fins, he saw something below.
Something sleek and dark was moving toward them from out of the depths. Moving fast.