In the cool of the night, Amelia started the engines and attempted to use the HF radio to call for help. After failing to receive any response after fifteen minutes, she killed the engine and went to sleep.
In the morning she woke up in the gray of predawn. Noonan was already awake, staring out at the ocean.
She said, “Good morning.”
“Morning.”
“Shall we make an early start of it?”
“Yes. We’d better. What if someone comes by?”
Amelia glanced at the remains of the nearby shipwreck. “If anyone does a flyover they’re bound to spot the Electra.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“The wreck of the SS Norwich City. It’s an obvious scar on the otherwise untainted reef. It was the first thing I spotted at a thousand feet. Anyone flying overhead would spot it, and a second later, their eyes would recognize the Electra on the reef next to it.”
“Good thinking.”
She smiled. “I’d like to say I thought that far ahead, but it was just luck. I only realized when I looked back at the two stranded vessels from the shore.”
“What if the Itasca sends a search party?”
“What if?”
“We’ll be gone all day.”
“They’ll wait for us. Just in case, I left a note in the cockpit to say that we’d gone to explore the southeastern end of the island.”
“All right. I see you’ve thought of everything. Let’s go.”
They followed the trail Noonan had taken the previous afternoon to the atoll’s lagoon. The ground was flat and porous, leaving no freshwater for their consumption. There were enough supplies on board the Electra to keep them alive for about a week, but they wouldn’t make it much longer than that.
At the lagoon, Amelia spotted something dark hidden in the underbrush of the dense forest in the southwestern region. “What is that?”
Noonan stared at the place where she was pointing. “I don’t know. It could be an old hut.”
“Let’s go find out.”
They followed the outskirts of the lagoon in a counterclockwise direction until they reached the southern end, where the shallow water of the lagoon ended in a long white stretch of sand. Where the lagoon met the forest was a thick rockery of black pumice.
Amelia stopped.
Noonan asked, “What?”
“Let’s make an SOS sign here on the white sand. With the black stones on the white sand this will stand out like a giant signpost.”
Noonan shrugged. “Okay, let’s double up on our chances.”
They worked until midday to lay the black pumice stones side by side to form the letters SOS in thirty feet high lettering. Afterward, they rested beneath the shade of a forest of coconut trees, carefully drinking small amounts of their precious water.
When the worst of the heat had subsided, they continued following the lagoon until it reached a decidedly man-made waterway leading into the forest. At a glance, Amelia knew someone had intentionally carved a path into the jungle for the waterway.
They stepped into the warm water, following it beneath the thick vegetation. The water was shallow, no more than a foot deep, and roughly six wide.
Sixty feet into the makeshift canal, they both stopped.
There, in front of them was a large shed with a tin roof. The canal entered the storage facility and inside were hundreds of drums of aviation fuel.
“What is this place?” Amelia asked.
“It looks like a fuel depot,” Noonan replied, pointing out the obvious. “It looks like someone’s been using the lagoon as a landing site and refueling station for seaplanes.”
Amelia glanced at the tin roof, painted in greens and yellows to form a tropical camouflage. “Someone’s gone to a lot of trouble to heavily conceal this place from the air.”
“It would seem so. The question is, why?”
Amelia looked at the side of the first drum of aviation fuel. Oriental writing that she couldn’t decipher lined the edge of it. “What is this writing, Chinese?”
Noonan shook his head. “Japanese.”
She stared at the depot through narrowed eyes. “Why would the Japanese be storing hundreds of drums of aviation fuel in secret out here?”
“There’s only one reason I can think of.”
“What’s that?”
Noonan swallowed. “In prelude to war.”
Over the course of the next five days, Amelia and Noonan split their time and effort between shifting the 55-gallon drums of aviation fuel, foraging for food, and using the HF radio to try and contact someone for help in the night time. They subsisted on a diet of coconut crabs, turtles, giant clams, and birds. There was no fresh water on the island, which meant they needed to ration their water supply from the Electra to last until they could refuel and takeoff again.
They needed twenty drums to fill the Electra’s 1,100-gallon long range fuel tanks. That meant twenty individual trips of nearly three miles. A single trip entailed floating a drum along the shallow canal and around the shallow edge of the lagoon, before rolling it across the trail to the western beach and then along nearly two miles of sand.
Amelia imagined the world’s reaction when they flew into Honolulu more than a week after going missing. It would be the story of the century. The triumph of good over adversity, a tale of tenacity beating despondency, as two castaways saved themselves. It was a good thought, and she found herself cheerful on her way back to the fuel depot for the 17th drum.
She headed down the southern end of the lagoon and stopped — because the black pumice stones that she and Noonan had so painstakingly lined up in the shape of SOS, were now missing!
Noonan met her gaze, his face filled with a fear she’d never seen him wear.
From out of the jungle on the opposite side of the lagoon, a Japanese soldier kneeled down and aimed a rifle at them.
Noonan shouted, “Run!”
Amelia turned.
A shot fired, followed by others in rapid succession until the rifle’s magazine was empty.
She dropped to the ground. Looking over her right shoulder, and saw Noonan covered in blood, breathing heavily.
“Sweet Jesus!” she cried.
Noonan tried to speak, but only frothy blood came from his mouth.
Amelia turned to help him, grabbing his hand and squeezing it hard.
Another shot fired.
It went wide over their heads.
Noonan swallowed, gritted his teeth, trying to muster the energy to speak. “Go!”
“I’m not leaving you!”
He met her eye, his voice emphatic, “Yes, you are!”
She shook her head. “I can drag you back to the Electra!”
“No. You can’t!” His cobalt blue eyes turned to steel and defiance. “You have to escape. Someone needs to tell the world, the Japanese are preparing for an invasion.”
Amelia mouthed the words, “No, I won’t leave you,” but already, she knew Noonan was speaking the truth. Their lives didn’t matter. If she was injured, she would have insisted on him leaving her behind.
“Go!” Turning to the practicalities of her escape, Noonan said, “Don’t fly to Honolulu. You’ll never reach it with your current fuel supply.”
“Where should I go?”
“Set a bearing southeast, to New Zealand!”
Amelia looked at him through tear-filled eyes, squeezed his hand, and said, “I won’t let the world forget what you have done!”
She then turned and ran.
Amelia didn’t stop running until she reached the Electra. She removed the wheel chock and climbed onboard, closing the hatch behind her.
She flicked on the master switch and started the engines, quickly advancing the throttles forward until the propellers picked up their speed, disappearing in a whir.
Amelia reduced power to the starboard engine and increased throttle to the port engine, causing the aircraft to rotate on the spot. She brought the Electra to a full stop facing south. Far in the distance, she spotted something that turned her blood to ice.