Maddock gave Bones the thumbs-up signal, signifying he was ready to ascend. The two of them pushed off the ledge toward the light, over two-hundred feet above. As soon as they did, Maddock felt something brush against his wetsuit. He turned to the left, away from the wall, in time to see a large, sleek torpedo shape shoot past them, arcing out into open water.
“What was that?”
“Did you see that?” Maddock and Bones spoke at the same time, over one another. Maddock saw a glint of metal in his light as Bones freed his dive knife from the sheath on his calf, but they saw no sign of whatever it was that had rushed past them.
“See what?” This from Bugsy.
“Not sure.” Maddock kept moving up, with Bones right beside him. Low on air with large creatures in the vicinity was no time to hang around at two-hundred feet.
“We’re heading back to the reef now.”
They reached the shallow, flat reef without further incident and there they performed a decompression stop, simply breathing their air at a shallow depth for several minutes, to avoid the bends. That completed, they ascended the buoy line and surfaced next to the waiting boat.
Chapter 5
Maddock, Bones and the entire EARHART Group team were gathered around a campfire. Dinner had been finished and now the group relaxed, some enjoying a dessert of tangy, exotic fruits while others sipped on cold South Pacific Lager from a cooler. The meal itself, fresh-caught reef fish and rice, had been eaten largely in silence, the team hungry and tired after a day’s work outdoors and underwater. Maddock and Bones were particularly exhausted, and they knew that tomorrow they faced a long, full day of undercover, underwater work. Yet getting to know the team was important, and they had questions they wanted answered.
Some of these focused on tomorrow’s dives, and logistics were discussed at length. They were glad to hear that they’d be doing the first dive of the day alone. Maddock and Bones made subtle eye contact that said, that’s our chance. Neither had yet mentioned anything about the possible tunnel Maddock had found. As he stared into the crackling flames, Maddock wondered if it would help them access the plane. And if it did, that brought up a question that was on all the team’s minds, although it was Bones who voiced it for everyone.
“If that is Amelia’s plane, then there’s a good chance that her and her navigator’s bodies are still in there, right?”
Many in the group nodded. Steve Carlson responded. “It is likely, although all that would be left by now would be a couple of skeletons. Those, of course, would have to be DNA tested for additional confirmation.”
The group contemplated this in silence for a few moments until Maddock looked across the fire at Spinney and asked, “If it does turn out to be her plane, do you intend to raise it, or is finding it and retrieving artifacts from it as far as you plan to go?”
“This particular expedition is only to confirm whether the plane we found is Earhart’s and to recover easily accessible artifacts, but if that goes well a full-scale salvage operation would be on the table for a future expedition.”
“Hopefully we can be a part of it.” Bones took a swig of his beer.
“Do a good job on this trip and it could happen,” Spinney said. After a slight pause, he added, “Bugsy tells me you two did well down there today. Saw the wreck. What do you think? You up for a couple weeks’ worth of diving down there?”
Maddock and Bones nodded enthusiastically. “There is one thing that gave us some concern today,” Maddock said. He told them about the sleek animal that brushed past them on the ledge.
“What do you think that was, a shark?” Bones asked.
They were met with a surprisingly uncomfortable silence.
“Sorry, did I say something wrong? Somebody get bit once?”
Spinney shook his head and held up a hand as if to ward off any other replies. “I’m sorry you had to see that. We were hoping that threat has passed. It’s been a few days since we’ve seen it, but it seems our friends at Mizuhi Development Corporation are at it again.”
Bones looked confused. “Mizuhi Development?”
“Yes, it’s a Japanese consortium of land development companies. They’ve had some designs on this little atoll. They put in some offers to buy it from the Kiribati Republic in the last few years, all of which were rejected. But as soon as we announced we may have found Earhart’s plane here, that’s when they really ramped up their efforts to buy the island.” Spinney’s visage took on a darker mood.
“What do they want to do with it?” Bones asked, looking out at the edge of the campsite into the dark wilderness.
Spinney sipped from a coffee mug featuring the words, “Today’s the day!” and set it down on a rock. “Build a luxury tourist resort. I’ve seen the conceptual renderings. Overwater bungalows, fine dining, winding paths lit by tiki torches, the whole nine yards.”
“Hey, we’ve practically got all that already!” One of the divers joked.
Spinney smiled and went on. “They’ll clear the main jungle and put lodge-style buildings there. The whole beach will have piers and bungalows. Paved helipad and airstrip over there. Big concrete docking pier for large yachts, possibly even cruise ships.” He pointed away from the camp. “But the clincher would be the plane. There’s no shortage of luxury resorts to choose from in this part of the world. But imagine if this one had Amelia Earhart’s airplane hanging from the ceiling of the main lodge, over the bar, and they call the place, ‘The Lost Explorer Resort’ or some crap like that.”
“I’d have a few rounds at that bar,” Bones admitted. Maddock shook his head while Spinney frowned in his direction.
“Yeah, well a lot of people would, I expect. I’m sure their market research told them as much. Even if this plane turns out not to be Earhart’s, which I doubt, I think they’d still try to market it that way. So that’s why they’ve been trying to scare us off lately.”
Maddock looked Spinney in the eye. “Scare you off how?”
All eyes were on Spinney. Maddock suspected it wasn’t because no one else knew the answer to the question, but because they didn’t want to answer it without Spinney’s permission. The cacophony of nighttime insects and small, unseen animals pervaded the air.
“The creature you saw — do you think it could have been a small whale?”
Maddock and Bones traded glances. Maddock answered. “Could have, yes. We didn’t get a good look, though. It brushed against my wetsuit, so I couldn’t actually feel it, either.”
“It was the whale,” one of the divers said.
Bones looked perplexed. “The whale? There’s only one out here?”
Spinney fielded the question. “There’s only one that’s been trained to attack our divers whenever they get near the plane wreck.”
Spinney’s revelation was met with uncharacteristic silence from Bones. Maddock frowned and considered the possibility that their military handlers had known about this threat. As coincidences went, an exercise against trained ocean-going mammals followed by a live encounter with one on the very next mission, would be a big one
No one was saying anything, so Maddock ventured, “You say, ‘trained’ whale?”
“Like Free Willy!” Bones exclaimed. To Maddock’s relief, Bones didn’t make his usual genitalia joke that accompanied the name of the movie whale.
Spinney shook his head. “Definitely not like Willy. First of all, it’s not an Orca, but a pilot whale.”
“Pilot whale?” Maddock said, feigning ignorance. He knew from his training that the small whale had been used in the past as a candidate for the U.S. Navy marine mammal program, before dolphins and sea lions became the go-to species.