When they reached the mouth of the tunnel, overlooking the ledge where the Electra’s tail protruded from the cave, Maddock was tempted to simply slide the box over the edge, letting it tumble through the water to the bottom below. However, on the off chance that this thing really did contain some kind of smallpox bombs, he decided that they better do it the hard way. He and Bones each held onto the crate and swam it down gently to the bottom in an upright position. From there, they lugged it to the edge of the wall, where thousands of feet of ocean lay below them, and two hundred feet beckoned above.
Bones deployed the lift bag and they rigged it to the crate. When it was ready, Maddock said into the comm system, “Okay, we’re leaving from the ledge with the—”
He interrupted his communication as a flash of black entered his peripheral vision.
“Say again — you’re breaking up,” one of the tunnel divers said, not realizing Maddock had simply stopped speaking. It was Bones who responded.
“We’ve got a whale of a problem out here!”
Chapter 17
The pilot whale homed in on them. As it neared the ledge, however, Maddock could see that something was different about it. “Shankey’s not living up to his name.” He focused on the animal’s rostrum, where the blade had been attached.
“You’re right,” Bones said, “I don’t see a bayonet on it anymore. But I do see something…”
Maddock stared at the object the whale carried in some kind of harness. He was struggling to make it out when he saw the blinking LED light.
“Bomb, incoming!” With respect to his cover, the military jargon wasn’t the best choice of words, but right now that was the least of his concerns. Three tons of trained whale was driving right at them strapped with an armed explosive device, two-hundred feet underwater.
Maddock glanced backward, confirming his suspicions. They stood directly between the whale and the airplane, its metal surface no doubt the whale’s intended target for its hockey-puck-sized payload.
“I’m fresh out of lobsters, got any ideas?” Despite the attempt at humor, the tension in Maddock’s voice was palpable as the whale neared. He looked over at Bones and saw him fiddling with one of his gear hoses.
“Keith, what’s up, it’s almost on us!” He didn’t see how they were going to stop the massive animal from going where it wanted to go.
Then he heard a sound sort of like a car horn. Loud, disconcerting. Underwater, it was difficult to pinpoint the direction from where a sound originated, but when he looked over at Bones he saw him holding his mouthpiece in one hand and blowing into some sort of contraption attached to his buoyancy compensator hose. Maddock felt a sense of hope as he realized what it was. An underwater signal horn, it was a noisemaker used to attract the attention of nearby divers. But in this case, he supposed Bones was hoping it would annoy the hell out of this whale and distract it from planting the bomb on the airplane.
As the cetacean came in on a trajectory that would take it directly over their heads and right to the Electra, it suddenly sheared off to the left, arcing away from them as it swam nearly upside-down. Bones continued to blast away on the horn while Maddock added to the cacophony by rapping on the back of his scuba tank with his dive knife, hoping the piercing underwater signature would disorient the beast.
Maddock watched as the whale circled tightly and came at them again. This time, however, its course was lower and skewed more to the left of the airplane. It barreled in fast, causing Maddock and Bones to move closer to the edge, Bones dragging the crate and its lift bag with him. Then, as the pilot whale reached the ledge to their right, it belly-scraped as it rode up onto the rocky shelf.
The other divers were calling out, now, “What’s going on? What’s happening?”
“Whale’s trying to stick a bomb on the plane,” Maddock blurted out in a rush of words.
They watched as the big animal spasmodically twisted around after hitting the coral shelf, closer than before to the sound of Bones’ incessant horn blowing. It writhed in place before swimming off into open water without having come into contact with the aircraft.
Yet, as Maddock examined the patch of coral where a cloud of sediment now began to settle, he saw that it had left something behind. A small, disc-shaped object.
The bomb.
It had probably dislodged accidentally when the whale scraped its belly against the ledge, but it didn’t matter why it was there. It was there, and judging by the LED’s hectic blinking, it had been activated.
Maddock quickly calculated the distance between himself and the explosive device. It was set way back on the ledge, almost to the coral wall the plane disappeared into.
Don’t.
He had considered swimming to it, picking it up, and returning to the ledge to drop it over the side in hopes it would explode down along the wall. But the little voice in his head told him there wasn’t enough time. He grabbed Bones by the arm and pointed to the surface.
“Let’s go!”
He then warned the other divers. “Bugsy — you guys back there — brace yourselves, bomb’s gonna blow!”
Bones put some more air into the lift bag so that it would rise faster and then he and Maddock kicked off from the ledge toward the surface. They had just cleared the overhang when the bomb went off.
Underwater, the sound was muted to a dull rumble, but they felt the pressure waves in the water, even separated from the blast by the coral overhang. Maddock knew from their Basic Underwater Demolition School training that had that rocky buffer not been between them and the explosion, they almost certainly would have been killed. As it was, he felt a sharp pain in his ears. He and Bones looked at one another. The stout Indian indicated he was fine, and still clutched the lift bag with the crate.
Then, just as they resumed their ascent, the coral overhang crumbled and broke away from the wall beneath them. Maddock and Bones hovered in place, trying to see through the cloud of debris created by the falling overhang. When it did clear, they had trouble believing their eyes.
Maddock was the first to voice his concern over what they saw. “Bugsy, get everybody outta there! The whole ledge is crumbling!”
No sooner had he finished his sentence than they watched in astounded horror as the coral shelf broke away and slid into the deep…
…and with it, Amelia Earhart’s famed Electra.
Maddock and Bones watched dumbfounded as the legendary aircraft nosedived into the depths with the falling coral, as if on a final flight into the abyss.
As captivating as the sight was, Maddock could think of only one thing. He yelled into his mask mic.
“Bugsy? What’s your status?” The comm channel filled with blaring static. Maddock looked at Bones. He was about to tell him to surface with the crate alone while he went back down to make sure the other divers were okay when he saw the two men who had been in the plane swimming up toward them from where the ledge used to be.
Then Bugsy’s voice came over the comm line, frantic, frayed, stunned.
“I’m out! I’m out! But Scotty…he’s still in there! Tunnel collapsed!”
Bones pointed to his air pressure gauge. It was in the red. Maddock’s was too.
“Is there anything we can do for him?” Maddock returned.
“Negative. Negative! He’s already…he’s dead, crushed, I saw it!” Bugsy’s voice cracked while he swam. “It’s still coming down.” Then, after a short pause: “My God — what happened to the ledge? Where’s the plane? Where am I?”