The Wreck Emerged

by Joseph Webers

  “Don’t you want to look in the last ones first?”

  “No!”

  They said a quick thank-you to God, the source of all their sustenance, then dug in.

  “Aah,” Maggie said contentedly.

  “Aah,” Matt replied.

  The fourth cabinet contained soggy rolls of paper towels, some cloth towels, a roll of plastic bags, a spray bottle of a popular carpet cleaner, and other miscellaneous cleanup supplies in metal bins.

  The fifth cabinet was lying on its back. When they opened it, they found it completely full of sea water. “Nice!” Maggie said. “We can use the water to wash Jenny’s makeshift nappies, which I think she’ll need soon.”

  “Yes,” Matt replied. “We can use those metal bins, so we don’t contaminate the whole cabinet full of water.”

  63

  “Maggie, it hasn’t been twenty-four hours yet.”

  Maggie remembered the promise. “All during, right?”

  “Yes, you remembered. I also owe you a question.”

  “You do? I hope it’s an easy one.”

  “I said I’d ask you again tomorrow to see if you’d change your answer. Our plane was shot down and destroyed.”

  “Yes! Yes, yes, yes! Except for the poor people who died.”

  Maggie had been thinking about the questions earlier. “I have one for you.”

  “You do? I hope it’s an easy one.”

  “Jenny was born missing a foot.”

  Matt grinned. “That doesn’t count. It wasn’t after I whispered in your ear. But I want to see where you’re going with this, so I’m going to let it count. And I’m going to say yes, because I’m sure that’s the right answer, but you’re going to have to explain it to me.”

  Maggie grinned back. “The teacher becomes the student. Just about everybody in Bristol and Cheltenham knows about Jenny’s foot. The doctors, the hospital staff, my mum and of course all her friends, my friends, the teachers at school, and the childcare place. There are x-rays and the birth certificate with her footprints. When we get back, it will be undeniable that something amazing has taken place, and it will be so exciting to tell them all about it.”

  The sound of thunder in the sky told them a plane, probably military, was approaching. “There’s no haze,” Maggie observed. “It must be friendly.”

  Matt couldn’t fault her logic. “Yes, it’s still ‘all during’.”

  They made their way back to their coffin-boat and were standing on the pallet when the plane screamed overhead. They both waved wildly. The US Air Force fighter jet flew a little farther, then the pilot circled around. He slowed down as much as he could without stalling, and headed straight toward them, waggling his wings as he came. They watched him fly past, speed up, and disappear over the horizon.

  Then Maggie remembered something. “Matt, with all the excitement, not the least of which was the food, I almost forgot something important, I think. I had a dream during the night.”

  “Wow! Tell me about it.”

  “It was in amazing color. I’ve never had a dream like this before. So detailed. We were on the GSM, just Jenny and I. You weren’t there, and Jenny was a grownup. Suddenly, a great white shark rose up out of the water and threw up. Out came a lot of broken life preservers, a lot of empty water bottles, and a lot of plastic bottles half full of what looked like a brown liquid with gooey solids in them.

  “Jenny and I were grabbing what ones we could and throwing them in the open coffin on top, but some were flowing away faster than we could get them. Some of the ones we got, slipped out of our hands and fell back in the sea. When there was nothing left to grab, we looked at the coffin, and light was coming out of it, and singing. We looked in, and it was full of people. Live people!”

  Matt thought for a few moments. “Was anything written on the broken life preservers? And were you you in the dream, or were you an observer watching you and Jenny from above or some other vantage point?”

  “I was me in the dream. I could see Jenny, but I couldn’t really see myself, just my hands and arms. But I knew I was there. Yes, there was writing on some of the life preservers, but it was too small for me to be able to read it. Some bottles had writing, too.”

  Matt spoke from his experience. “Here’s what I’ve found. Whether we think the dream is a spiritual dream or not, that is, one that God gives us, we need to ask him for the interpretation. That’s before we try to figure anything out. So, Lord, we ask you in Jesus’s name to give Maggie the interpretation of the dream you gave her, because you delight in giving good gifts to your children.”

  “What do you think it means? I’m new to dreams, but you seem to be an old pro.”

  “Well, it would be tempting to think your dream was simply a reliving of the shark incident yesterday, except that it was in such vivid color. Therefore, I believe it was God’s dream. When God gives a dream, some things are usually constant, meaning you can generally interpret them the same in almost all dreams, but of course there will be exceptions. For example, Jenny being an adult doesn’t necessarily mean she is, say, twenty-one years old, but God considers her mature enough in spiritual things to be able to help you in what you are doing.

  “I think all the bottles and life preservers are people. Your act of catching them, Maggie, was that you have a great story to tell them. The story that started, perhaps, with your getting an airplane ticket, and it’s not finished yet. It seems like there were three different types of people, and because they came out of the shark, they were all dead.

  “You and Jenny fished them out of the water, which may mean you were telling them the whole story of what happened to you over the last day or so. Some rejected your story and slipped away, and others listened, but didn’t receive what you had to tell them. Some received Jesus when they responded to your story. Those were the ones who came alive and were full of joy. I’m sure there’s more, and my thoughts might not be completely correct. We will have to ask God for him to give you more understanding.”

  Maggie gasped. “Matt! I just thought of something. Close your eyes!”

  “And stick out my tongue?”

  “No, silly. Remember your dream. What color was the little boy’s hair? Do you see it?”

  “Yes, it was light, almost white. Why?”

  “Now open your eyes and look at the mud. Is it the same color?”

  “Yes, exactly! Maggie, you’re a genius.”

  “Help me put the pad between these coffins and I’ll lay Jenny on it, then we’ll scrape the mud down to the hard bottom we felt. It was only several centimeters in the shallow areas.”

  They were both getting more and more excited as they talked about this. Soon Jenny was deposited into the makeshift bed where she was still sleeping peacefully. When they stepped down onto the mud on the south side of the pallet, they found that the sun was beginning to dry the surface of the mud, and it was crusting over. The crust was very thin, and it was easy to scrape the mud from the bottom of the trough.

  “Only about ten centimeters. Look, Matt!”

  The water leaking out of the mud kept pushing fresh mud onto whatever the hard surface was underneath, but finally they scraped it away fast enough to see the jet-black rock under the mud. “It’s the boy!” she said.

  Maggie took a closer look at “the boy.” “It looks like lava, like the lava I send around the class when they’re learning about volcanos.”

  Matt got down on his hands and knees in the mud. “I think it’s basalt.”

  “So we’re both right. Why do you think it’s basalt and not lava?”

  “I picture lava as being rounded and long and flowing, like giant logs. Like pictures I’ve seen of the Hawaiian lava flows. But as you can see, this island is perfectly flat here, as far and wide as we can see. Why do you think it’s lava and not basalt?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Maggie said. “After all my students have felt the lava, I tell them lava is simply molten basalt that has come to the surface.”
r />   64

  At 6 a.m. in Chicago, JC Smalley’s phone woke him out of a rather pleasant dream. Hoping to sleep in, he had not set his alarm. It was Phil Henry. He was excited, a feeling JC was sure was foreign to him.

  “JC, I’m activating the VTC as we speak. Get your VTC controller to light it up there. I’m having Bob McGee and Captain Palova on, too.”

  “Is it okay for Dusty Mae to join us?”

  “Yes, certainly. There is some astounding news. All the field offices will eventually hear it, and there’s no reason she shouldn’t hear it first.”

  JC had no phone list, so he called Penny, to have her tell Jackie to crank up the VTC, and let Dusty Mae Watt know.

  “Dusty Mae is out of the building on a different issue, but I’ll tell her when she gets back, which should be soon. I’m going to join you unless you tell me not to.”

  He dressed hurriedly and got to the VTC room in time to see Jackie in her bathrobe in the control room. His monitor lit up along with the monitors of the other three. All of the other monitors glowed dimly; they were on, but not getting a feed from the other participants. Captain Palova and Bob McGee were already visible. Phil’s monitor merely showed a vertical white oblong on a dark background.

  Captain Palova was speaking. “I believe you should call the others also. They may not be able to make it, but they would be pissed if they found out something from the news, whenever they finally watched, that they could be finding out here.”

  Bob and Phil agreed, and Phil’s assistant started making the calls.

  Phil’s voice came from the oblong object. “We won’t wait for them. In the meantime, what you see in my monitor is a satellite image of the location where AW flight 94 went down yesterday. Captain Palova’s Air Force contact had his boys change their normal patrol route to include that site. What we know is that at 11 p.m. Eastern last night, even though there was very little moonlight, we would have seen this and it wasn’t there. At 4 a.m., it was already light there and the patrol sent word that not only had an island appeared, but at one end of it was the airplane. Upside down, with parts scattered everywhere. Captain Palova, what else?”

  “What they reported is that the forward section of the plane was separated from the fuselage, the bottom of the plane appeared to be shredded, and there were objects present which looked too big to be luggage or cargo. Halfway up the white area, at one edge, were two people who looked like they might be survivors. Before we go any further, is it possible for you to zoom in any more on the island?”

  Phil was on the phone with the agency controlling the satellite. “Yes. I wanted to show you the whole island first.”

  Soon the southern end of the island filled the monitor. A little more zoom put the plane in the center of the picture. It was slightly out of focus and nothing else on the ground could be identified. Phil was still talking on the phone; soon the camera panned north and east. A small brown square appeared, but no details could be seen.

  Bob McGee had access to assets that could provide the necessary detail. “It may take a few minutes if they aren’t on a higher priority mission. I’ll let you know.”

  While they were waiting, JC asked Captain Palova if the USAF planes had video capability. He guessed they didn’t; if they did, they would already be seeing that video.

  “They generally have the capability, but this morning, the pilot reported his video was non-operational.”

  Bob reported the satellite, which was not quite directly overhead of the island, was in the process of retasking to slew its camera to it. Another minute or two should do it.

  Captain Palova spoke up. “I just heard from the Air Force. As soon as the patrol aircraft reported the island, they sent a recon aircraft with video and survey capabilities to that area. They should be there soon. Their main job is to do a complete three-dimensional mapping of the island, and they will send us video of whatever we request.

  “I also alerted the Marine Corps at Camp Lejeune to deploy their new King Stallion MH-53K heavy lift troop-carrier to that location. They have no idea of their mission yet. All they know at this point, is they have one hour to get that helicopter in the air. It will take at least one refuel on the way, and they will coordinate with the Air Force for that support. I alerted the Air Force that the Marines would be calling them.”

  JC added, “You may have already thought of these, but I am going to make some recommendations. One, an anti-aircraft battery. The plane was shot down, for some reason, over a very deep part of the ocean. The whole world will soon hear about the island and the plane on it. Whoever destroyed the plane might send more sorties against it.

  “Two, an Explosive Ordnance Disposal team. The forward section having separated from the fuselage tells me there was explosive ammunition fired at AW94, and there may be duds present. The EOD team needs to take their chemical detection kits and equipment, since we don’t know yet if there is any connection between the chemical threat and this event.

  “Three, a coroner and three-hundred-plus body bags.”

  65

  They were in the middle of a second breakfast, when Maggie looked all around, perplexed. “Matt, I’m suddenly having a powerful thought, that we are being observed by a satellite.”

  “Okay, let’s act on that thought. Let’s wave to where you think the satellite is, and raise up Jenny to show her to the satellite. This may sound silly, but our action doesn’t cost us anything and may prove to be very profound. You start waving and I’ll follow your lead.”

  Maggie looked somewhat overhead, and slightly to the south. She pointed, then they both waved. After five seconds, Maggie held Jenny up.

  Matt said, “Continue to look there about ten seconds, so they can see our faces.”

  When they had finished and turned away from looking skyward, Matt explained, “If they have the technology to get a good view of our faces, then they should have the technology to compare those faces to the passport photos of everyone on board. They should be able to figure out who we are.”

  “That assumes my thought was a reality.”

  “I’m treating it that way. If it was really a God-given thought, we’ll eventually get confirmation of it, for your sake.”

  “For my sake?”

  “Yes, so you’ll understand how God can communicate with you. I mentioned it didn’t cost us anything. If acting on the thought may have had bad consequences, then we should ask for God’s peace or his red flag.”

  66

  While JC was speaking, an image of the island surrounded by ocean filled Bob’s monitor. The satellite’s camera zoomed in and slewed to the southern end. The airplane came into view. The zoom continued; they could see the shredded underbelly in sharp focus. JC asked Penny to have Jackie move the images to the larger monitor for better viewing.

  Bob spoke. “From here it would get a little tricky. In moving laterally, the picture would seem to jump rather than moving smoothly. So instead, I’ll have the operator zoom out, move laterally, then zoom back in. We’ll look at several objects in the vicinity of the fuselage.”

  The first object was the cockpit portion of the plane. It was located a short distance from the fuselage. It was lying on its side, severely damaged, and the edge where it had joined to the fuselage was mangled and badly torn and jagged. Cables were stretched out from that edge a little way. The camera zoomed in closer, but nothing inside the cockpit was visible.

  In turn, they viewed the tail section, several pieces of luggage and cargo, and what appeared to be a large metallic tank, split wide open in the middle. “This is what I believe Captain Palova was referring to, about the object too large to be luggage or cargo. Phil, did you get the passenger, cargo, and baggage manifests from Air World?”

  “Yes, Bob, the cargo is listed by weight and cube. I don’t see anything on the list that would match that volume.”

  “Captain Palova will eventually have folks there to examine that more closely, and it doesn’t look like anything there will be c
hanging over the next several hours. Now, what I really want to see are these survivors.”

  The camera zoomed out and slewed north. When the brown square became visible and centered in the monitor, the camera began to zoom in. They could see the square was made up of brown rectangles side by side, with a series of five shiny squares starting at the brown square and leading toward the interior of the island. The zoom continued, and the image resolved to two people standing at the middle shiny square, which now appeared to be a metal cabinet.

  The camera finally reached the limit of its zoom capability; the two could be clearly seen in the monitor. One had shoulder-length brown hair and was wearing a gray top, and appeared to be holding something pink; the other was a dark-haired man wearing a white shirt, and was larger than the first one. They appeared to be concentrating on the contents of the cabinet.

  Suddenly, they both looked up into the sky. The smaller figure pointed directly at the camera, and they both started waving! After several seconds, the smaller of the two, who they could tell was female, held up the pink thing she was holding; it was a baby! She brought the baby back down, pushed the hair out of her own face, and they both stared directly toward the camera. After about ten seconds, they both waved and went back to what they were doing at the cabinet.

  “Are you kidding me?!” “Holy cow!” “Did you see that?” Everyone was shouting at once, then “What just happened?” Everyone fell silent. The camera was still focused on the pair.

  JC tore his eyes away from the screen long enough to realize Dusty Mae was now on, along with one other new attendee he didn’t bother to take the time to identify.

  Bob McGee was the first to offer a suggestion. “I can think of three possibilities,” he said slowly. “Either the satellite came down and hovered about twenty feet above them, or every couple minutes they turn to the sky and wave, or …” He couldn’t bring himself to say it.