“I’m all ears.”
“The reverse direction only makes sense from a military standpoint. Because weather-wise, it sucks going west-to-east. Not only are you bucking a headwind the entire way, you also hit the monsoon season over in India, which she did and nearly crashed into the Indian Ocean. But from an espionage standpoint, it’s great.”
“Why?”
“Because if you’re spying, you want to carry evidence of that spying — I’m talking about film — with you for the shortest possible time. They accomplish that going west-to-east rather than the other way by hitting the most important war theater, the South and Central Pacific, last. A lot of the countries she had to pass over weren’t exactly friendly and only grudgingly granted temporary airspace visas. If they went east-to-west, on the other hand, they’d have to do the spying soon after leaving from Honolulu, a major media stop, by the way, where everyone would see the new plane and possibly notice the modifications made to it at the very beginning of the trip. Then they’d have to schlep that highly sensitive spy film in and out of various customs stops the whole rest of the way around the world.”
Maddock was floored. “Wow. So, was Earhart a spy?”
“I don’t have a Magic Eight Ball, Maddock. But if I did, it would read: Signs point to yes.”
Chapter 11
Maddock pulled back the flap of their tent and peeked outside. Quiet, dark, no signs of human activity. He whispered to Bones, “Clear. To the dive tent.”
Bones followed him out of the tent and they walked casually but quietly through the camp. If anyone were to see them at this point, they would simply say they were going to take a leak. They reached the dive tent and loaded one of the wheelbarrows with two sets of SCUBA gear and a lift bag. After checking the area again for signs of people, Maddock set out in front as a scout while Bones wheeled the cart. Were they to be seen with the gear, their situation would be very difficult to explain and likely raise suspicions no matter what they said.
They made it down to the pier without any trouble and loaded the gear into the inflatable boat. Maddock checked and was relieved to see that it had been patched more professionally since the duct tape repair out on the water. It appeared to be holding air. He eyed the boat’s motor, then looked over toward camp, shaking his head.
“Too much noise to use the outboard. We’ll have to paddle.” He glanced at the two emergency oars on either side of the boat. Bones nodded and picked one up.
“Just like the good old’ days in BUDS!”
For the two Navy SEALs, the physical exertion of the paddle was not a factor. Even after what they had been through, they could do it as easily as walking a block down the street. They would have preferred to get to the site faster, though, but it was not worth the risk of being heard.
They cast off from the pier, Maddock and Bones on opposite sides of the boat, paddling in sync toward the marker buoy at the edge of the reef. The water in the lagoon was so calm and still that by the light of the half-moon they could see individual corals on the sea bottom as they passed over in the boat. About fifteen minutes later they reached the marker buoy and dropped anchor.
They quickly donned their gear, doing a quick check to make sure it was all working properly. They made it a point to deactivate the comm units. They doubted anyone would be monitoring the channel in the middle of the night, but they had no way of knowing for sure and it wasn’t worth the risk. They would just have to make do with the old-fashioned way, hand signals. Bones grabbed the lift bag and clipped it to his belt. Ready to make the dive, he scanned the water around them.
“No sign of the whale.”
Maddock looked out at the ocean. “I don’t see the Mizuhi ship, either, but they could just be leaving their lights off to black themselves out.” A ship any distance away without navigation or anchor lights, even a large one, was extremely difficult to spot on the water at night, even in the light of a half-moon.
“Let’s do it. Quiet.” Bones dangled over the boat’s pontoons and slid into the water rather than tumbling in backward, to avoid making a loud splash. Maddock followed suit and then gave the thumbs down signal to descend. They dropped down the thirty feet to the reef, switching their dive lights on only when they had reached the bottom lest they be seen from the beach.
Maddock consulted the compass on his wrist and pointed off to their left. He and Bones swam in that direction, finning quickly over the same brain corals and Staghorn coral formations they’d seen during the day. The reef life was different at night; there were not as many fish swimming about, but they spotted some not usually found in the day. Lots of lobsters now scuttled about in the open, too, Maddock noticed, but there was no reason to grab one now.
After a few more minutes of rapid swimming, they still weren’t seeing the crate, only the undersea garden of the reef with its towering corals and meandering patches of sand. Maddock watched as a jellyfish pulsed across his field of vision, dragging behind a trailing mass of stinging tentacles. The water was so clear they could see the moon in the sky from down here, so being able to see wasn’t the problem. For one heart-stopping moment, Maddock considered that maybe someone found it — either Bugsy or one of his divers, or perhaps even Mizuhi? Had the whale alerted them to its presence? It was the kind of thing they could be trained to do, and clearly they had put some effort into training it.
But then Bones jiggled his light beam, indicating he saw something up ahead. Maddock also shone his beam on the same spot. There, across a wider sandy patch and next to an isolated branching coral formation…
The crate!
They kicked over to it. As they dropped down in front of it, a large moray eel slithered out from beneath the box and darted between Maddock and Bones and off into open water, startling the two Naval warriors.
They shook it off and got to work. As before, Maddock helped Bones position the crate into the lift bag’s web of netting, and then Bones used his regulator to fill the bag with air. When it hung suspended in the water, dangling a few feet above the bottom, Maddock checked his compass, orienting himself. Then he pointed in the direction of the boat and he helped Bones drag the lift bag rig over the reef. The going was slow compared to free swimming, but they made steady progress without stopping, and about ten minutes later, they came to the buoy line.
Maddock looked up and saw the dark outline of the Zodiac at anchor. They ascended, surfaced near the boat, and swam over to it. Maddock removed his gear and got in first. He then assisted Bones with wrangling the heavy crate into the boat, followed by Bones’ gear.
Bones pulled in the anchor and they paddled the boat back across the lagoon. When they neared the shore they paused, watching and listening for signs of activity. Detecting none, they sculled the rest of the way to the pier and tied up the Zodiac in the same position in which they had found it, facing out to the lagoon. Maddock made it a point to re-enable the communications units so it didn’t have to be done in full view of anyone tomorrow.
They loaded the dive gear and crate into the wheelbarrow and trundled it to the foot of the pier. They had just stepped onto the beach when they heard a voice coming from the shadows.
“Step away from the crate, mates!”
Chapter 12
Maddock and Bones froze, looking around for the source of the voice. It had an Australian accent, though, which told Maddock immediately who it was. Suddenly a man rose from a nearby bush. He shone a flashlight from a cupped hand on the pistol he held in his other hand.