Mercer met Booker’s eyes and nodded. The African American grinned around his regulator and flashed Mercer the okay sign.
Sykes carried a large nylon bag folded into a pouch attached to his dive belt. He unfurled it and anchored it on the seafloor next to the open hatchway. It was tight confines, but he and Mercer managed to wrestle the small trunk close enough that they could lift it out of the plane and settle it into the bag. The case had cracked during the crash, and a string of crystals fell free as they maneuvered it. Rather than try to deal with preserving Dillman’s old steamer trunk, Book tore off its lid and let the whole thing collapse into the bag. He picked out larger chunks of the disintegrating trunk, including sheets of copper that had so dissolved over the years they were little more than a film of verdigris.
Mercer swept the hold for more loose stones and picked out dozens. No wonder, he thought, that the crash site attracted so much lightning. The minimal shielding Mike Dillman had devised was now worthless, and Sample 681’s bizarre affinity for electricity could be fully realized. He thought, too, that any curious islander or Western diver hoping to explain why this one spot of ocean attracted so much lightning would have found the sunken boat and deduced it was somehow the reason.
He placed handfuls of crystals into the bag until he’d recovered them all. He backed out of the hold while Booker cinched the dive bag tight. He attached a flotation balloon and inflated it enough so the bag was neutrally buoyant. Book jerked a thumb upward. Mercer held out one finger and finned up and over the cockpit windows. To access their plane, Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan had to climb in through a hatch cut into the top of the fuselage. Mercer scraped away some bits of stone and sand and found it easily.
He wasn’t sure why he wanted to do this. He’d told himself moments earlier that he didn’t want to disturb the site, and yet he couldn’t stop himself from opening that hatch. The hatch popped loose effortlessly in his hands. Visibility was excellent in the cabin, which had been sealed for eighty years, though Mercer knew if he entered, his movements would stir up the detritus covering every horizontal surface. He rotated his dive light to look forward. Additional light filtered in through the slime on the windows, so he could see nothing but vague shapes and shadow. Aft he could clearly see the remains of a seat that had seen its cushion long ago consumed by some sea creatures. On the floor below it were buttons that had once adorned Fred Noonan’s now-dissolved shirt and other smaller lumps hidden in the slime.
Out of respect, Mercer wasn’t going to enter the cabin through the roof hatch to determine what remained of the fabled pilot. He liked the images through which the world knew her — a sexy, determined tomboy type, smiling as she stood next to an airplane — and not what he knew was hidden from his view by the tall-backed command chair before him.
Running between the cockpit and navigator’s seat was a stainless-steel cable, and he recalled from the little research he’d done since first learning of Earhart’s involvement that this was how the pilot and her navigator communicated during the flight. They passed notes back and forth written in grease pencil, on an early form of whiteboard.
Gingerly he reached out and grasped the wire. It was a little slack, but when Mercer pulled it came freely. The board had been next to Amelia during the end of the flight, those frantic minutes before the plane struck the ocean and sank. She had to have known it was coming and would have had time to think about what would be her final words, as the fuel gauges slowly spun down to empty and the Pratt & Whitney starved.
He pulled ever so gently until the board came gliding out of the gloom. He dared not touch it, so he craned his head awkwardly into the cabin and cast his light on the board. Whatever it was made of had repelled the slimes and molds that were flung like cobwebs around the cabin. The white slate was clean except for the following words:
George, thank you for the adventure that has been my life.
I love you,
Me
Somehow he knew that’s how she signed their most intimate notes and felt like he’d just read the most honest and beautiful thing ever written. He never knew a person could tear up in a diving mask and realized ruefully that he couldn’t wipe away their stinging saltiness.
He returned the board to where it belonged next to the pilot’s seat and eased out of the plane. He closed the hatch reverently, rethinking his decision to let the world know about his discovery.
Book was there, waiting. Mercer gave him a slow nod, and together they returned to the surface, the bag of crystals in tow.
Rory was on the dive platform when they reached the surface. Mercer spat out his regulator, having used the slow ascent to process his feelings. For the time being he was going to focus on the fact that he’d recovered the last cache of the lightning stones, and he knew now he could use them as a lure to finally flush out his enemy.
“Well?” the Aussie asked in that peculiar twang.
“One Lockheed Electra Model 10,” Mercer said, now grinning like the Cheshire cat, “circa 1937 or so.”
“It’s her?”
“Positive,” Mercer assured him. “We’ve found Amelia Earhart after all these years.”
“I’ll be buggered,” Reyes said. “I had my doubts about you two, but no more.”
Sykes handed up the bag, and Reyes had to strain to haul it clear. Water poured out of it until it was light enough for him to lift it over the transom and manhandle to the deck. The stones weighed more than fifty pounds, and the bag still leaked gallons of water. He then helped each man out in turn, giving them the high five and a hearty slap on the back.
While they were shucking their gear, Rory came back with a bottle of Dom Pérignon. “I keep a few aboard so if a charter catches a big one they don’t mind shelling out some extra coin for the good champers. This one’s warm, but who gives a tinker’s toss.”
He popped the cork over the side like he was firing a starter’s pistol and held the frothing eruption of sparkling wine to his lips before passing the bottle to Mercer. Mercer took a mouthful of foam and gave Book his turn. By the time the bottle had gone around a second time, the carbonation had relaxed enough so they could enjoy the wine’s sublime taste and texture.
They finished the bottle and Reyes broke out the Foster’s. He gave the men a hand with their gear and asked if they wanted lunch before returning to Fiji, and when they said no he climbed to the flying bridge to start the long haul back south and home.
With the twin engines getting on line, Mercer went below to rinse the salt from his body — but he quickly detected another sound that was distinct from the throaty diesels’ roar. It was a higher-pitched note, and he knew what it was. He’d heard it the day before, and it had raised his hackles then.
Mercer grabbed a pair of tennis shoes from his cabin floor and raced back out onto the rear deck. Booker was lolling in the fighting chair, his broad chest rising in the slow rhythms of a man already asleep. But even before Mercer could slap his shoulder to wake him, Sykes’s eyes flashed open as he, too, detected something.
“What?” Sykes said, coming alert.
“Not sure,” Mercer said, scanning the skies above Alofi Island.
The plane didn’t come over the top of the isle. It flashed around the flank instead, barely skimming above the waves. So low, in fact, that its propellers kicked up spray in its wake.
They hadn’t heard the regular supply plane out of Wallis Island the day before, Mercer realized. It was a twin-engined flying boat they’d heard land on the far side of Alofi. It had taken off again as part of the illusion, presumably after dropping off an observer to watch the men aboard the sport fisherman that was anchored in the spot where Jason Rutland had calculated Amelia’s plane would be. And now the venerable PBY Catalina, a World War II — vintage workhorse that was still in wide use throughout the Pacific, was rounding the island again and charging straight at the Suva Surprise.