“Mine looks like navigation equipment, from the cargo area,” Maddock said, handing the bag over to Spinney’s eager hands.
Carlson nodded. “That’s the space where Fred Noonan sat. Wasn’t enough room in the co-pilot seat for all his gear, so he rode back there.”
“And you?” Spinney eyed Bones’ bag, which he handed over without a word.
He took a cursory look at some of the stuff and closed the bags, holding onto them. He turned to Carlson and said, “Okay, so no bodies, but we’ve got more artifacts. Let’s get back to camp and catalog these. Hopefully there’s something definitively linked to Earhart in here, then we can make our press release.”
Carlson nodded.
“Big night!” Spinney enthused. He started to turn away and then spun back around. “Oh, Bugsy said you took photos? May I see?” He held out his meaty hand. Maddock called up the shots he’d taken on the device’s screen and handed it to him.
“Got several inside the cargo area this time.” Maddock watched him as he scrolled through the images, clearly fascinated. Then he looked up at Bones. “You too?”
Bones handed over his camera.
“You two mind if we take these back to camp and transfer the files to the field computer?”
Maddock and Bones both shook their heads. They had been careful not to take pictures that would compromise their mission. They would prefer Spinney didn’t scrutinize them too carefully, but it wasn’t worth creating a scene over.
“Rest of the day off,” Spinney said to Maddock and Bones as he and Carlson started up the path. The dive team would need a long topside rest in order to avoid the bends. The undercover SEALs fell back in with the dive team and carried the gear back into camp.
Chapter 10
Maddock and Bones finished off the last of their fish dinners and set their plates aside. Spinney, Carlson, their radioman, Sims, and the Australian photographer, George Taylor, had retreated to the research tent earlier, where they worked on the artifacts and press release. Spinney had been discussing possible titles for the media release all night, and so far, his favorite seemed to be, “Fred Spinney’s EARHART Group finds the Lost Airplane of Amelia Earhart in the Phoenix Islands.” Spinney and his associates were still arguing about it when they left. Without them at dinner, the divers had enjoyed a lively recounting of the day’s events.
“Too bad, no lobster for supper tonight, eh boys?” Bugsy joked, cracking up the team. The topic of conversation around that night’s campfire dinner had been a steady diet of Mizuhi and their trained pilot whale. The divers rehashed the events of the day in detail, exaggerating some things, underplaying others, depending on who was telling the story and how it made them look, but all agreed on one thing: “Mizuhi’s not going to stop until they kill somebody,” Bugsy summarized.
“I wonder how safe it will be to dive tomorrow,” mused another.
Bugsy shrugged and said, “We know now that if the ship is as close as it was today, that’s within striking distance for their whale. So if we see it there tomorrow, we could decide to call off the dive.” He lowered his voice. “We could ask Spinney to call Mizuhi on the radio and come to some kind of truce before we get wet again.”
“And if he says no, he won’t call?” one of the divers who had been inside the plane with Maddock and Bones asked.
Joking, but softly called cries of “Mutiny, mutiny, mutiny…” rang out around the fire.
“We’ll just have to see how it goes tomorrow. Get a good night’s sleep is what I advise.” Bugsy stood and stretched, then headed off to his tent. Spinney’s other three divers remained talking, but Maddock and Bones excused themselves shortly after Bugsy left and walked to the tent they shared. Inside the shelter, Maddock spoke at a near-whisper to Bones.
“I think we should talk to somebody who knows something more than we do about Amelia Earhart.” He grabbed his backpack and from it removed the satellite phone given to them by their mission handlers.
“Like who?” Bones eyed the phone with concern. “That’s military property, encrypted and for mission use only.”
“Since when do you care about things like that?”
Bones shrugged. “Since never. I just wanted to see what it feels like to be you. It’s boring.”
Maddock rolled his eyes. “This is for mission use. I don’t understand what’s going on with this plane. Spinney and Carlson say that it’s not the same model that Earhart flew. But the serial number is the same.”
“What? You mean it might not be the right plane? Dude, you know how I feel about doing work for nothing.”
Maddock sighed. “I don’t know. I only know that I heard Spinney and Carlson say that the plane down there is an Electra model 12, while Earhart should have been flying an Electra model 10E.”
“And there are the bullet holes.”
Maddock looked over at Bones, whispering sharply. “Right! But…” He broke off, lost in thought.
“But what?”
“That part of it might make some sense, because…why are we here?”
“To find Earhart’s plane,” Bones said.
“Well yeah, but more specifically?”
“To bring certain things from the plane back to the Navy.”
“Bingo! Film. And smallpox canisters. To the military. And we did find those weird cameras. All of which suggests some kind of military involvement.”
“Okay, that could explain the 50-cal damage, if she flew into a war zone. But what about the plane being the wrong model?”
Maddock turned the sat-phone over in his hands. “I just don’t know. Maybe Spinney and Carlson are wrong and it is a 10E? Maybe they’re right and she really did fly a different model that wasn’t publicized, because it would have been considered cheating or not as impressive a feat? Or maybe it’s just not her airplane.”
“Another Electra from the same time period that just happened to crash in this part of the world?” Doubt filled Bones’ face.
“What I don’t like about this whole thing from an information-gathering standpoint is that we’re in the middle of two biased parties. Spinney and his group want to believe more than anything that they’ve found Earhart’s plane. The realization of a long-time goal could be clouding their judgment. On the other hand, it’s in the Navy’s best interest to compartmentalize what they know and only tell us the bare minimum of what we need in order to accomplish our mission objectives.”
Bones nodded. “The commander about told us as much in the briefing.”
Maddock looked at the sat-phone. “So I’d like to talk to a neutral party who knows something about Earhart and might be able to fill in some details for us. Who do we know that would be good for that?”
It didn’t take Bones long to come up with an answer. “Jimmy Letson?”
A smile overtook Maddock’s features while he thought about this. Letson was an ex-Navy man who now worked as a reporter in the Boston area. He was knowledgeable about a lot of things, especially those involving conspiracies, and he was good with computers. From time to time they’d asked him to look things up for them and found him to be good at it, although he always expected something in return, usually a quality bottle of liquor.
Maddock rummaged through his pack until he found his address book. “Let’s give him a call, but not here. Outside camp.”
They exited the tent and strolled through the outer perimeter of the campsite, avoiding the research tent and the other sleeping tents. They passed the dive tent, where the compressor was now silent, their tanks having been refilled earlier in the day. At one end, they came to a sandy trail that led down to the lagoon-side beach. Exotic birdcalls punctuated the evening while a half-moon cast its silvery light across the atoll’s lagoon.