“So, you think you can work together?” Spinney demanded of his lead diver. The man nodded, looking at the two new divers. “Checked out your resumes. Impressive. Did some North Sea oil rig work myself, back in the day, We’ll have to compare war stories.”
Maddock and Bones had in fact dove on an oil rig in the North Sea, but it was in support of a clandestine Naval operation, not a commercial job. But they played the part, nodding and smiling, Bones saying how he’d buy the drinks if they ever got off this piece of coral.
Spinney looked at his watch before addressing his diver. “Good. So you’re the only one not requiring a surface interval, right?”
The man nodded. Maddock and Bones knew he was referring to time off between dives to avoid the bends, caused by a buildup of nitrogen in the bloodstream.
Spinney continued. “Then get a move on. Whichever one of you can do the longest dive now according to your computers, take these two down to the site. You don’t have to do the whole dive with them, just bring them down to the plane. They can make the rest of the first dive themselves, am I right?” He stared critically at Maddock and Bones, who merely nodded, thinking how perfect it was to be left alone on the site.
“Oh, almost forgot.” Spinney picked up a folder that lay on a nearby table and pulled some photos out of it. “Here are first images of the plane. Like we said, it’s stuck under a coral shelf on the edge of the reef in more than two-hundred feet of water.”
He handed Maddock and Bones the printouts while the divers looked on. Maddock and Bones studied the grainy shots of a sunken, historic airplane.
Spinney looked over their shoulders at the photo. “Looks like an Electra model 10-E to me! But let’s get you down for a closer look. We still need a serial number to confirm it.”
Spinney clapped his hands in a chop-chop fashion as he looked at his dive team. “Get ‘er done. I want these new guys up to speed quick-like.”
Then he, Carlson and Taylor, who was hastily taking snapshots of the divers talking to Maddock and Bones, departed the dive tent.
“You heard the man.” The diver who’d given his name only as ‘Bugsy’ tossed a couple of wetsuits at Maddock and Bones.
“Let’s do this!”
Chapter 4
An hour later, Maddock, Bones and Bugsy stepped aboard an inflatable Zodiac boat tied to one side of the small pier Maddock had seen from the helicopter. A blue seaplane was tied to the other side of the pier. A squat, muscular Asian American man greeted them from behind the boat’s steering console.
“Bruce Watanabe, pleased to meet you.”
“Likewise,” Maddock shook his hand. Undercover or not, the boat operator was the guy who would be driving them to and from the dive site, and they wanted to be on good terms with him if at all possible.
“It’s not the Love Boat but it’ll do, right?” Bones offered his infectious grin, which Watanabe returned.
“Hey, if we confirm this plane is actually Earhart’s, we all plan to have a celebration at one of the resort islands — drinks on Spinney!”
“Sounds good to me,” Bones returned. And it did. But he felt a pang of regret since he knew those drinks would never come, at least not with anyone from Spinney’s team. His job was to get those assets off the plane and return them to the U.S. Navy. Only then would he be celebrating.
“That the break in the reef, there?” Maddock pointed to a notch in the atoll brimming with whitewater. Like Bones, he too was thinking forward to the mission and getting it done.
Watanabe nodded and Bugsy responded.
“Water in the lagoon has been calm for us in the morning with a light wind kicking up by afternoon. There’s a passage in the atoll through the surf line. Once we get through that the dive site’s usually not too choppy. But the currents underwater are wicked. Let’s get out there and I’ll brief you some more when we’re on site.”
Watanabe put the boat into gear and they raced across the calm lagoon at a good clip. The water here was shallow and gin-clear. To Maddock it looked as though they were about to hit various coral formations growing on the bottom. Watanabe and Bugsy were obviously used to it, not appearing concerned in the least. Maddock and Bones enjoyed the feel of the salt spray on their faces as the boat glided across the lagoon.
In a couple of minutes Watanabe eased back on the throttle and the Zodiac slowed as it approached a cut in the coral ring. Fast-moving water sloshed around in the opening, waves splashing against its sides.
“Hold on!” Watanabe gunned the outboard and they rocketed through the channel into open ocean. A couple of minutes later they approached an orange marker buoy.
“Wreck’s a little ways out there,” Bugsy said, pulling on his wetsuit, “but we’ll follow the buoy line down to the shallow reef and get situated. From there we’ll swim out to the edge of the drop-off and head down to the wreck.”
“Sounds good.” Maddock and Bones pulled their gear on.
“So like we discussed, as soon as we come within sight of the airplane, I’m going to head back to the boat. I’ve done too many deep dives lately and I’ve got to go again tomorrow. But you two will stay down there to check out the site.”
Maddock and Bones completed a check of each others’ gear and said they were ready.
“So you’ve used the full facemasks with comm gear before, right?”
The masks Maddock and Bones wore were not standard dive masks, and not helmets either, but something in between. They were rubber and covered the entire face, but not the whole head. This meant that the divers could breathe through their noses, and talk through integrated transmitters, while underwater. Bugsy moved to a box lying on the deck containing some electronic gear. He keyed a transmitter while looking at Maddock and Bones.
“You hear me in there?”
“Get out of my freaking head, man!” Bones joked. Both he and Maddock were intimately familiar with underwater communications gear, but he played the part of someone for whom it was still somewhat of a novelty.
“I hear you loud and clear.” Maddock’s voice was audible not only to Bugsy and the boat driver, but also to Bones.
“Great, so we’ll be able to talk during our dive, and Bruce will be able to hear us up here. Ready?”
Maddock and Bones moved to one side of the boat while Bugsy went to the other. The three of them flopped backward into the water. As soon as the bubbles from their splashes cleared, they could see the bottom of the ocean thirty feet below as though they stood in the shallow end of a swimming pool.
“Nice clear water,” Maddock said, testing the comm channel.
“Like a Jacuzzi, too, only with you two clowns instead of a couple of babes and some champagne,” Bones said. After San Diego, the tropical ocean felt like a warm bath.
Bugsy’s voice came over the frequency. “Yeah, up here we’re practically burning up, but believe me, two hundred feet down you’ll be glad for the suits. Bruce, you hear us?”
“Copy that, I hear all three of you.”
Bugsy nodded at Maddock and Bones as he wrapped a hand around the buoy line. “Down we go. And we may not have champagne, but if you’re not careful the nitrogen narcosis will give you a nice buzz.” In addition to the bends, another danger of deep diving was the narcotic effect nitrogen could have on the brain; like having a few beers in a short amount of time, it affected judgment. Bugsy jerked a thumb downwards and the trio vented the air from their buoyancy compensator vests and began to sink.
They reached the bottom and Bugsy pointed down the slope. “This way.” The flat sandy bottom studded with patches of coral now gave way to a steep incline covered in a riot of hard corals and sea fans, like an underwater garden. Small, colorful fish darted about, and exotic-looking shrimp and crabs scuttled between coral formations. Maddock looked up one last time before the slope transitioned to a near-vertical incline and saw the silhouette of their boat limned against the tropical sun.