“We’re stopping?” April asked.
“No choice. Out here, they’re the sheriff. You ever spot anything?”
She shook her head. Scott moved the engine mixture levers to the full lean position and the two radial engines coughed to silence, leaving only the noise of the Honda generator in the back of the cabin. April could see the camera settle to the bottom with a slight jar, the image of disturbed sand shooting up briefly in front of the lens caught in the light.
“I’m going to haul her up, Scott,” Jim said, glancing at the cutter, which was now less than a quarter mile off and looming large, its hundred-fifty-foot length becoming intimidating to anyone sitting in a seaplane at wave level.
The TV screen was still on and April saw the camera jerked off the bottom. Without the stabilizing influence of the tow line pulling the platform’s tail fins to steady it in one direction, the camera began to turn, the light shining to the left more and more, picking up the outline of something in the distance. April looked closer, squinting at the screen.
“Is the videotape running?” she asked.
“Yes. Why?”
“I… I’m not sure what I’m seeing. It looks metallic,” she said.
Scott looked at the same image and immediately leaned forward.
“Jim! Stop pulling. We see something to port.”
“Can you go over that way?” she asked.
Scott nodded and reached for the mixture, prop, and throttle levers and flipped on the starter for the right engine, which coughed to life with one turn. As the Widgeon began moving he kept a heavy foot on the right rudder to try to guide it as he brought the left engine to life.
“In this direction?” he asked April, who was nodding energetically.
The sound of the same Coast Guard crewman’s voice on the handheld registered their instant alarm that the quarry was starting up.
“Aircraft November Eight Seven One Bravo, you have been ordered to heave to, and that means stop your engines. That is an order. Stop your engines.”
Scott grabbed the radio with one fluid motion. “We’re only maintaining stabilizing headway. We’ll shut down when you’re close enough to throw a line.”
The crewman repeated his order as Scott jerked his head back and forth from the screen to the compass.
“That’s it! Scott, that’s the Albatross!” April cried.
“Are we close enough?”
“Yes! Can you stop?”
The engines wound to a halt.
“Give Jim some guidance,” Scott said. “Should he pull it up, let it down… what?”
“Ah… up a little, Jim,” she said.
Scott repeated the order.
The cutter was slowing now, and in his peripheral vision Scott could make out several crewmen on the bow readying lines and a boarding party, though how they were planning to board such a tiny floating aircraft was anything but clear.
“I can see the left engine, but… it’s the other one I need,” April said, leaning down toward the under-dash panel hatch. “Jim, can you twist it left somehow?”
Slowly the image changed, the camera rotating left imperfectly, but with enough clarity to see a twisted mass of metal where the right engine would normally be mounted, and large gashes in the wing beyond.
“My God, number-two engine dropped to one side on the mounts and the prop blades ate into the wing!” she said.
“April, we’ve got to get that videotape out of there. They may confiscate it.”
“Can you… can you wait? I’m getting a better shot every second.”
Scott scrambled out of the seat and into the back, positioning himself at the small portable mini-cartridge VCR.
A voice amplified by a bullhorn could be heard clearly now in the cabin, ordering them to stand by for two crewmen to come over by raft and inspect the aircraft.
“Come ahead, lad. We’re not doing anything illicit over here,” Jim was bellowing back.
“What are you doing out here?” the officer asked.
“Testing a new underwater video system. I’m getting ready to pull it up now.”
April was watching the right wing slowly come closer. The engine had somehow dislodged, or shaken itself free from its mountings, but rather than drop off the Albatross entirely, it had lurched to the right and let at least two of the propeller blades eat into the leading edge of the wing and the fuel tank like some sort of bizarre buzz saw. The sight of it was both fascinating and sickening.
How on earth did they get out of there alive? she wondered. They couldn’t have been more than seconds away from exploding in midair.
“April! Tear yourself away and record the latitude and longitude coordinates on the small GPS. Precisely! Every decimal place, and triple-check your work.”
She grabbed a pen and did so, folding the resulting piece of paper and putting it in her parka, then thinking better of it and stuffing it down her bra.
There was a boat in the water now with an officer and a crewman aboard, and they threw off the lines and began motoring toward the Widgeon.
“April, if there’s something restricted around here, they may want to confiscate this tape. I need to end this now.”
“Okay,” she said. There were other scrambling sounds in the back before she heard the generator die and saw the picture go dark.
“Tell Jim, as quietly as possible, to pull the camera up.”
She relayed the word and watched with admiration as he seemed to be merely shifting position while actually winding in the line with the camera on the other end.
“What does he mean, restricted area?” April asked as Scott came back forward.
“I don’t know. There was nothing on the charts. I doubt there’s anything he can do legally, but I’d say that other boat was watching the area for them. So something’s going on.”
The small boat pulled alongside the bow, and Jim helped the young officer aboard and down to the interior of the cramped cabin.
“Who’s the master… or pilot in command?”
“That’s me, Scott McDermott,” Scott said as he shook his hand. “That’s Jim Dobler who helped you in, and this is April.”
The Coast Guard lieutenant nodded in response. “I don’t understand the problem here, Lieutenant,” Scott said. “I checked all the notices to airmen and my charts are current, and there are no notices about steering clear of this area.”
The Coast Guardsman held his palm up. “Look, this is not an arrest or anything, but we’ve got an unannounced military operation going on out here, and the word didn’t get out, but it’s our job to spread it anyway. So we’re going to have to run you off.”
“But, what’s going on out here? I’m ex-Navy. You can tell me… or not. I guess that doesn’t cut any mustard.”
“Well…” The officer smiled. “Since you’re Navy, you know I can’t tell you unless you have both a current clearance and a need to know, and I’m not even sure I have a need to know.”
“Okay,” Scott said. “I’ll pretend to understand that.”
“Look, since you had a camera in the water, I’ve got to ask you whether you were videotaping anything, and whether you saw anything but fish.”
“One gigantic halibut we’d all like to eat, a lot of fish, a shark, and crabs were what we were seeing. We did have a tape in there about the time you showed up, but we had only started to run it. I doubt there’s anything there.”
“Then I’m sorry, but…”
“You need the tape, right?”
The officer nodded. “You’ll get it back in some form. Let me get your address.”
“Look, where else should we be avoiding you guys? I mean, are there any other unmarked areas we should stay out of? It would be better to tell me. I’m not great on intuiting these things.”
The lieutenant chuckled as he glanced at April, letting his eyes linger on her a bit before turning back to Scott.