“Really?” Tom was skeptical. “What did they want with the container?”
“I have no idea, but I suppose that would all depend on what exactly was stored inside.”
Sam opened the throttle, and the Zodiac skipped toward the muddy beach once more. They rounded the stern of the Buckholtz, and the propeller snagged on something, sending the 2-stroke engine into a high-pitched whine.
Sam closed the throttle and then took it out of gear.
Tom asked, “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. The propeller got caught on something.”
Sam killed the engine and tilted the outboard so they could get a good look at the propeller. It was fouled by something metallic. He pulled at it, and a large chunk of reflective metal came free.
Sam examined the material. “Aluminum?”
“Looks like it,” Tom replied. “I wonder if the Buckholtz was carrying a container full of the stuff.”
“Why?”
“Just look at the water, the place is riddled with the stuff.”
“Really?” Sam squinted his eyes and swept the water. Broken and partially submerged were dozens, if not hundreds of separate pieces of aluminum — giant sheets of foil — scattered throughout the water. “Beats me.”
Sam finished freeing the propeller, dropped it back into the water, and then carefully idled toward the shore. They pulled the Zodiac up on the beach. The beach was lined with a type of black cloth. At first, Sam guessed the material was used to protect the island from erosion, but the more he studied it, the more out of place the material appeared.
Tom said, “What is it?”
“This stuff,” Sam said, picking up the material. “It doesn’t look like it belongs here.”
“It’s not here to stop the runoff from the island?”
“That’s what I thought, but I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
Sam pointed toward the larger rocks and small buildings on the island. They were all covered in the same material. “There’s no reason to cover those things.”
Tom grinned. “I don’t believe it.”
“What?”
“It looks like someone has gone to the trouble of hiding the island while building an artificial island out of aluminum out at sea!”
Sam nodded. “Of course. Aluminum would have reflected the Buckholtz’s radar, making the pilot think he was on the wrong side of the shipping lane. A glance at the Neuwerk Island would have revealed nothing but darkness, and only confirmed the pilot’s terrifying suspicion that his ship was in the wrong place. As a consequence, he turned ninety degrees, trying to avoid a direct collision with what he now thought was the island, and in doing so, ran aground.”
A few minutes later, Sam climbed back onto the Zodiac and motored it across to the bottom level of the bridge. There, he explained the near impossible theory to Gene, who struggled to accept it.
It no longer mattered. The ruse had achieved its objective, and the highly valuable cargo was gone. The Maria Helena would arrive in two days, and then they would pull the Buckholtz back into the water.
Sam’s satellite phone rang. He answered it. “Sam Reilly speaking.”
“Mr. Reilly,” came the voice of the lead British investigator for the crashed Boeing 747 Dreamlifter. “We’ve retrieved the data from the FDR. We are lucky this plane’s FDR had a video feed.”
“And?”
“You’re not going to believe what happened.”
“What happened?”
“I wouldn’t even bother trying to tell you about it. I’ve emailed a copy of the FDR cockpit recording. Just watch it and let me know what you think.”
Sam asked, impatiently, “Do you know how the 747 crashed?”
“Yeah, I just don’t believe it.”
“Why? What happened?”
“Just watch the tape. It gets really interesting at 15:32!”
Chapter Nineteen
Sam opened his laptop, downloaded the document, and pressed play.
Next to him, Tom sat down and stared at the video feed. The flight deck recording depicted the view from a camera mounted directly behind the two pilots. Its wide lens allowed for a clear view of the cockpit, including both pilots, instruments, and the view of their windshield.
Sam’s eyes instantly met the thick cloud cover that obstructed the pilots’ vision ahead. He glanced at the instruments. The pilot in command had more than ten thousand hours of flying time under his belt and had flown the route from Germany to New York hundreds of times before. He had intentionally diverted nearly a hundred miles north of his original route in an attempt to catch a ninety mile an hour tailwind. It wasn’t an unusual detour for the company to take, despite being far from the direct route.
The pilot in command, with clear knowledge of the likely weather patterns in the region, had set up instrument-rated flight — meaning that he would rely entirely on “instruments only” for his navigation and no visual reference.
The first fifteen minutes appeared routine. The aircraft had already climbed and reached its cruising altitude of 42,000 feet. The copilot quietly completed a series of flight reports. Although Sam had never personally flown a 747 Dreamlifter, he’d been in the one that his dad owned many times. To his ear, the aircraft’s four Pratt & Whitney PW4062 engines purred nicely. There was nothing to suggest the aircraft was about to suffer a fatal fault, leading to the aircraft’s demise.
At 15:32 everything changed.
It was subtle at first, and like most disasters, a series of unfortunate events led to the aircraft’s demise.
Sam noted that the pitch of the four engines hadn’t changed.
The pilot on the left — the one in command — looked at the airspeed gauge. It showed their speed had suddenly dropped from 560 to 470 knots. Next to it, the altimeter showed their altitude falling at 100 feet per second.
The captain turned to face his copilot with the calm authority of a man who’d spent his life in command of an aircraft. “What do you make of that?”
The co-pilot shook his head, bewildered. “Maybe we’ve hit a patch of icy air and a downdraft?”
Both men glanced at the artificial horizon — the instrument that showed the aircraft’s attitude, which is its angle of attack relative to the horizon. The image showed them flying straight and level.
“I don’t think so,” the pilot replied. “You’d better check the cargo bay. Make sure we haven’t had a load shift.”
Sam found himself nodding in agreement. It would have been one of his first thoughts in the same circumstance. If a heavy load shifts midflight, it instantly changes the weight distribution of the aircraft, either sending it nose up causing it to stall dramatically, or nose down, causing it to run straight into the ground. Either way, it was a logical explanation.
On an iPad, the copilot flicked through a series of live video feeds showing the cargo bay. After the fourth one, the copilot put the iPad down and said, “No. The cargo’s still intact.”
Sam rewound a few seconds and paused the image of the cargo bay. He felt the spiny prickle of fear pluck at the hairs in the back of his neck. There, in the middle of the massive Dreamlifter’s cargo bay, taking up the entire space, was a large sphere. It sat on a purpose-built container, bolted down and secured by large cargo chains.
He stared at that image. His breathing became uneven, and he felt a knot twist in his stomach. Sam recalled the recent dive he’d made in the Norwegian Sea on board that same aircraft.
The cargo bay had been empty.
No one ever informed him that the aircraft was carrying a load. Someone was intentionally lying to him.
He closed his eyes and sighed.