by Jack Du Brul
“Nice nap?”
“I’m like a narcoleptic whenever I get on a boat,” Mercer confessed. “We cast off and I’m out like a light.”
“Your big friend too?”
“No. He’s ex-military. He’s been trained to grab sleep whenever and wherever he can.”
“So, what are you two really, mercenaries?”
“No. We really are looking for an old plane wreck. The problem is there’s another group interested too. We’ve sent them searching in the wrong direction, but they are dangerous, capable men.”
“Dangerous?”
“I won’t lie. They’ve killed people looking for this plane.”
“What plane are you looking for?” Reyes asked. “And if you say Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Electra I’m adding an idiot’s tax to my charter fee.”
“Tack it on, Captain, because that’s exactly what we’re looking for.”
Reyes threw up his hands theatrically. “Lord save me from fools. It’s your money, mate. Your charter. But let me be the first or maybe the last to tell you she’s lost somewhere more than a thousand miles northwest of us in about twenty thousand feet of water.”
Mercer said, “When she left New Guinea, she was carrying a geological sample that messed with the plane’s navigation gear. She and Fred Noonan were off course ten minutes into their flight but kept on going because they didn’t know it. One of the most powerful computers in the world ran the numbers for me, and it says she ran out of fuel someplace close to Futuna Island, a place so far off the beaten trail that no one ever looked for her there.”
“So you’re treasure hunters looking for her plane like all the other blokes mucking about the South Pacific?”
Mercer shook his head. “Two weeks ago Amelia Earhart meant no more to me than she does to anyone else. But a friend of mine died for a sample of the mineral she was carrying, and the men who killed him are after the rest. I plan on denying them that prize.”
The two men regarded each other, assessing to see what was real and what was an act. In the end Rory Reyes said, “Fair enough.” He bumped the throttles a little to put on some more speed without jeopardizing too much of their fuel range. The twin Cummins diesels purred.
It took a total of twenty-four hours to reach Futuna and Alofi, and the last eight of them were spent battling rain squalls and wind gusts that would have made it miserable if they were on a sailboat, but the motor yacht had no problems bulling its way through the Pacific chop. Although it was morning when they arrived, the sky was dark and tempestuous. Rain fell in line-straight patches, and over the horizon flashed the electric cannonade of lightning.
“We’ll swing around and tuck into the channel between the two islands. It’s the best cover we can hope for before the real storm hits.” Reyes made to adjust the helm, but Mercer put a hand over the captain’s wrist. “Huh?”
“Booker needs to get to shore first. Then we can find cover.”
Reyes didn’t like that one bit. “What the hell for?”
“We were prepared to wait days for a storm like this,” Mercer told the man. “It would be a shame to waste this one.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I have a theory that if Earhart’s plane is within reasonable distance of the island, there are going to be an inordinate number of lightning strikes over its resting place. To see that, Booker needs to watch the storm from the top of the tallest hill here.”
“Mount Kolofau.”
“If you say so.”
Booker just now appeared on the aft deck below the tall bridge. He had spent a great deal of the trip down in his cabin unwinding the block of copper wire and carefully respooling it around a length of broom handle he’d borrowed from the skipper. He wore jungle combat fatigues under a military-style poncho. His silhouette appeared misshapen, like that of a hunchback, because under his weatherproof cape he’d thrown a rucksack over his shoulder.
“Mercer!” he bellowed up over the sounds of the growing storm.
Mercer stepped out from under the fly bridge and into the warm rain. He descended the exterior ladder in shorts and a borrowed rain slicker, and in seconds his hair was plastered to his head. He had to flick it often to keep water from clouding his vision.
Sykes rubbed his own denuded scalp and grinned. “Bald is beautiful, baby.”
“You got everything you need?”
Book patted his hump. “All set. Give me a hand with the Zodiac and wait for my call.”
The ten-foot inflatable was stowed on its side along one gunwale. The two men waited for a break in the wind so they could unclamp it and get it into the water before a gust tore it from their grasp. Using the painter line, Mercer wrestled it to the transom while Booker Sykes opened the dive door and stepped down onto the platform. The Suva Surprise was bobbing on large swells, so as soon as Sykes’s feet hit the platform his legs were awash; no doubt some water overtopped his combat boots, no matter how tightly they’d been laced.
He turned to Mercer and called over the wind, “Next time you can have the cush bed and I get to stay aboard for this part.”
Mercer shot back, “You’re nuts if you ever think there’s going to be a next time. In you go.”
Booker leaned one long leg across to the little inflatable, steadied himself for a moment, and then bodily flung himself into the craft. Mercer fought to keep from being pulled in after him, but he wouldn’t let go of the line until Sykes had started the outboard motor that was attached to the Zodiac’s stern. He watched through the squall as Sykes first primed, then yanked the starter handle. To Captain Reyes’s credit, the one-cylinder four-stroke fired to life on a single pull.
Sykes flashed him a thumbs-up and Mercer released the line. Booker cut around the back of the sport fisherman and carved a channel through the heaving seas for the nearest beach, about three hundred yards away. He was an expert small-boat operator, so he had little trouble battling through the surf line and running the Zodiac high onto the beach on a particularly tall wave. The rain was thickening; Mercer could barely see Sykes raise the motor and drag the Zodiac above the tide line, where he could tie it off to one of the countless palm trees. He threw Mercer an exaggerated wave to tell him he was all set, and vanished into the jungle.
Mercer climbed the chrome ladder back up to the bridge. He was soaked and thanked the captain for the hand towel he tossed him. “We’re good to go wherever you feel it’s safest to ride out the storm.”
“Like I said before,” the Aussie replied, “the channel’s safest.”
“The channel it is.”
Twenty minutes later, the walkie-talkie in Mercer’s cargo shorts squawked to life. “Cool to Nerd. Come in, Nerd. Do you copy?”
“At what point,” Mercer asked Sykes, “did people start telling you you’re funny?”
“Day one, brother, day one.”
“You in position?”
“Yeah, I’ve got a good view of the southwesterly approach to the island. I’m at about four hundred meters elevation, so that should give me good range even with the storm. I’m ready to get bearings, and if we get lucky the laser range finder’s good to go, but I think the rain’s going to eighty-six that idea.”
“Do what you can. I’ll be sleeping in a comfortable bed tonight, dry, and with a belly full of warm food. Enjoy your MREs and lonely vigil. Nerd out.”
The storm raged throughout the day and into the night. Mercer and Reyes played cards for a while, then Mercer helped him tinker with the pair of Cummins in the engine room. Although they were in range, Book kept radio silence more out of habit than necessity. And as much as Mercer wanted to call to find out if their hunch was right, he played the waiting game too. It wasn’t until dawn broke clear and sweet, with gentle trade winds and tolerable humidity, that Book finally radioed in.
“Cool to Nerd, I’m ready for extract, over.”
“It’s not over until I say it’s over, over.”
“Do I have to tell you over and over that
it’s over, over.”
Mercer laughed. “I take it by your good mood that some balloon-chested island princess found your bivouac?”
Sykes chuckled lecherously. “It wasn’t my bivouac she found.”
Mercer cut him off, anxious to know whether his idea had paid off. “All right, enough…spill.”
“One niner five degrees from my position, no more than five miles off the island, is a spot in the ocean that got walloped all last night by lightning. It was the most amazing thing I’d ever seen, Mercer. The sea seemed to glow for a mile around, like it had absorbed the electricity and fluoresced like neon or something.”
Mercer roared with delight. “I owe Jason a case of his favorite Scotch.”
“I prefer bourbon, don’t forget.”
“I might even spring for a bottle or two of that.”
“Bottle or two? No respect, I swear to God, none at all. Get your butt into gear and pick me up. We can be diving the wreck in less than an hour.”
Captain Reyes had the engines warmed and idling. As soon as he heard they were ready, he engaged the transmission. He eased the boat back around the western tip of Alofi Island and cruised parallel to the southern coast before turning inward to the beach where Booker was waiting.
Booker had stowed his shirt and poncho in his bag, so he stood like a half-naked statue of an idealized male figure, each muscle from beltline to throat etched and edged against his smooth dark skin.
“Jesus, mate,” Reyes said, watching Booker on shore. “I knew your buddy was big, but he is bloody ripped.”
Mercer said absently, “He can’t work out his brain, so he trains his body.”
The charter captain shook his head. “You two are a pair. How’d you meet? Military?”
“What?” Mercer dragged himself to the present. He’d been staring out to sea, imagining what they would find on the dive. “Ah, no. Booker was a sort of babysitter for me when I was working on a government contract. I realized pretty quickly that there’s no one who I’d want watching my back other than him.”
“Good to have a mate like that,” Reyes said. “Rare.”
“Yeah.” Mercer thought about Abe for a moment. He’d been another of those rare sorts.
Sykes dragged the Zodiac into the surf and rolled over the gunwale as had been drilled into him when he took a SEAL training course at Coronado Beach, near San Diego. Like his entrance the day before, he timed his race through the rollers with an expert eye and squirted past the surf’s break line without upending the boat or even dousing himself with spray. In a few seconds he’d motored out to the Suva Surprise. Mercer was at the transom and ready to catch the line Book tossed up. He hauled the inflatable tight to the dive platform, and Sykes slid across and stood.
“Thanks.”
“You can really thank me for the coffee I have for you in the holder at the fighting chair.”
“I take back all my earlier nasty comments. You are a good man after all.”
Together they manhandled the Zodiac out of the water and secured it to its mounting clamps along the port-side gunwale.
Mercer called up to the bridge, “Okay, Rory, you know the bearing and distance. Let’s not waste any more time.”
The idling engines burst to life, and a creaming wake grew from the back of the large fisherman. Mercer and Book used the time to start laying out scuba gear. They weren’t yet sure of the depth, but they had decided they wouldn’t need wet suits in these tropical waters. Reyes’s gear was all well cared for and of the finest quality. Even Sykes, who was used to Uncle Sam buying him the best and latest toys, was impressed. Since he had more experience, he would be lead diver, Mercer his backup.
Twenty minutes later, the engines dropped back to idle and then went silent. Then came a rattle followed by a splash. Reyes appeared above them, his head covered in a big white floppy hat. “We’re here and you’re in luck. Water’s only eighty feet. Shallow enough for me to drop anchor.”
“Excellent,” Mercer said. “Our plan is to do a preliminary dive and get the lay of the land, so to speak. We might get lucky and you’ve put us on the mark. If not we’re going to have to use the side-scan sonar you rented for us back in Suva.”
“You want to tow it with the Surprise?”
“Not necessary. It’s a small enough unit that we can drag it behind the Zodiac.”
“Whatever you fellas want is fine by me. Lay out a spare tank, and I’ll monitor you from the surface. If one of you gets into trouble I can lend a hand.”
That service wasn’t part of their charter deal, and Mercer suspected that Reyes was catching treasure hunter’s fever—that most contagious of diseases that compels a sane person to ignore all odds and gamble everything on an impossible dream.
As they donned their gear, Book checked over Mercer’s equipment every step of the way—weight belt, buoyancy compensator, his tanks and regulators. He even tested the rubber flippers and the seal around his mask. “Dive partners,” he said as each piece of equipment passed through his big hands. “Means that if you’re in trouble, I’m in trouble. This goes for our stuff too. You got faulty gear means I got faulty gear. I check it so I don’t drown trying to save you.”
Mercer recognized that this wasn’t a time to joke. Book took his job seriously, and right now he was dive master and that meant his partner understood the stakes. “Roger that.”
Once finished with the final checks, they jumped off the dive platform and splashed into the aquamarine world off a volcanic Pacific island. As soon as their bubbles dispersed, Mercer could see their visibility was almost endless. The bottom looked as sunlit as a country meadow, marred only by the wavering shadow of their dive boat. The gin-clear water was bathtub warm and held them in its intimate embrace.
Below, the seafloor was mostly sand, broken up by banks of coral outcroppings and chunks of black and gray rock that had been ejected from the earth during the island’s fiery birth. Booker finned down, pausing to adjust his buoyancy and looking back to make sure Mercer equalized the pressure in his ears. He checked his depth when he reached the sandy plain and entered the number into his wrist dive computer. It spat back their bottom time, and he gave Mercer the diver’s okay sign of a circle made by thumb and forefinger.
Mercer returned the gesture.
Sykes had the compass, so he set the direction and pace. Mercer, much less comfortable breathing through a rubber tube, forced himself to inhale and exhale only when he saw Book do it. This way he didn’t make the novice mistake of gulping too much air too quickly.
Soon they began attracting the interest of some local denizens. Mercer couldn’t guess the names of the fish, but he marveled at the fantastic variety of colors and shapes and wondered at the evolutionary niche each one filled. Between the outcroppings, the seafloor showed signs of life as well, tracks and trails left in the sediment from crustaceans and starfish, but it was around the living reefs that life teemed in its multitudes. Sea fans waved gently in the currents. Corals of a million shades and hues burst from the sandy background while schools and shoals and swarms of fish darted and raced, some prey, others predator. Large eyes and blurred shapes peered from some of the deeper crevices, and in one Mercer saw the permanent grin of an eel flushing water though its gills, its jaw open, its mouth a profusion of serrated teeth.
Book roamed back and forth for the better part of a half hour, trying to see anything that would give away the presence of a nearly forty-foot-long aluminum airplane. Though the bottom here was a fascinating and beautiful realm, nothing looked like a target. He shoved off, taking them eastward for a hundred yards so their return to the boat would pass over uncharted territory.
Coming up over a coral head, they saw the bottom on the other side slope away into a narrow valley. The far side of the cleft was only a hundred or so feet away, but the bottom went down a good forty feet deeper than their current depth. It seemed darker down there, more forbidding.
The two men looked at each other. They both felt
it.
The trench walls were gray stone, volcanic rock that had been tortured first in the earth’s crust and again when it spewed from the depths. Sand had accumulated along the chasm’s bottom, but it was an irregular surface of buried boulders and hidden outcroppings. A shadow passed over them, something big enough to interrupt the sun’s beam. They startled and looked up, but there was nothing there. They went back to their search.
As a geologist Mercer saw the anomaly. Part of the canyon wall had given way, sheared clean from its base. An avalanche like this wasn’t so unusual. What struck him was how the rock above the collapsed section of stone was riddled with cracks. He swam up to inspect it. He lightly brushed the stone, and his finger gouged out a small divot. The rock was fissured, so that it crumbled easily. He looked up. The distance seemed impossible, but the evidence was right in front of him. For eighty years lightning had been striking the ocean’s surface above this spot, and the shock of 50,000-degree Fahrenheit electricity—transmuting water into steam with each pulse—had eventually fractured the rock. It was a similar scene to what he’d found in Afghanistan, only here the uncompressible water had allowed the lightning to cause even more damage.
Book drew a question mark in the water.
Mercer nodded and pointed down.
The army vet checked Mercer’s air supply, and his own, and then consulted his computer before flashing five fingers twice to tell Mercer they had ten minutes. Mercer gave him the okay sign and let Sykes lead him down into the canyon.
The water temperature dropped as soon as they started their descent. Both men tested the wall as they finned downward to make certain that it wouldn’t collapse on them when they reached the bottom. Their hands kicked up some flakes and chips, but nothing larger dislodged. Mercer kept one eye on Sykes’s air bubbles to keep his breathing in sync with the dive master’s.
The bottom of the canyon was a jumbled mess of rocks, most of them no larger than a man’s fist, but a few were boulder size. They began moving some of the rubble aside, being careful not to mix too much sediment into the water around them. There was little current down at this depth, so whatever became suspended would stay like that for a time.
