Clive Cussler; Craig Dirgo

by The Sea Hunters II

  “Let’s stop on Olasana and drink some coconut milk,” he said.

  Luckily, Eroni, now clear of the possible Japanese, agreed.

  ON OLASANA, THOM watched the men approaching. He stared at them carefully. Even at this distance they appeared to be natives, but were they islanders consorting with the Japanese? At that instant, he made a decision that would seal their fate. He waded into the water and began to call out to the men. The natives stopped and began to turn away. Then Thom got a brainstorm.

  “White star,” he shouted, “white star.”

  The natives had seen the emblem on the lower wings of the American planes. In addition, most knew that if they helped an American pilot, there was usually a reward.

  “American,” Biuku said at last.

  So they paddled over. With help from Thom, they stashed their canoe in the brush.

  After a hurried conference, Thom convinced them to take Starkey in their boat back to the base at Rendova. It was almost forty miles distant and the sea in Blackett Strait was choppy now, but the three men set out.

  KENNEDY HAD LOADED the water tins and hard candy into the dugout. After leaving Ross to guard Nauru, he was paddling back toward Olasana Island. His plan was to share the spoils with the crew, then have them all move south to Nauru.

  Biuku and Eroni made it partway into Blackett Strait before they had to turn back because of the worsening weather. At the same time, Kennedy was returning to Olasana with the water and candy. The two canoes met near the island and glided onto shore.

  THAT NIGHT, KENNEDY and Ross tried to paddle out into Ferguson Passage, but their boat overturned and they nearly drowned. They managed to swim to Nauru and fell into an exhausted sleep.

  The night passed slowly on Olasana. A few of the crew were distrustful of Biuku and Eroni and spent the night watching them carefully. Not knowing whether the native men were loyal, they feared the two would slip off into the night and report them to the Japanese for a reward. On the other side, the massive men armed with black handguns intimidated Biuku and Eroni. They wanted to explain that they only wanted to help, but what little English they spoke would not allow them to get their point across. The Gizo Scouts slept, but with one eye open.

  The following morning, when Kennedy returned to Olasana, he knew it was time to do something. Kennedy needed to trust the natives—it was their only hope. Taking a knife to a coconut, he scratched out:

  NAURU ISL.

  NATIVE KNOWS POSIT.

  HE CAN PILOT II ALIVE NEED

  SMALL BOAT

  KENNEDY

  He asked the two natives to deliver the message, and they set out for Rendova at once. Stopping in Raramana, they showed the coconut to Benjamin Kevu, the English-speaking leader of the scouts. Kevu knew that Evans was moving his base, and he sent a native to deliver a verbal recap of the message on the coconut. Biuku and Eroni continued on toward the American base at Rendova.

  REG EVANS HAD moved from the top of Kolombangara Island down to water level on Gomu Island. As soon as the native arrived with the message from Kevu, Evans began planning a rescue. Drafting a reply, he ordered seven of his scouts to leave in the morning for Olasana. The text of the message was:

  ON HIS MAJESTY’S SERVICE

  TO SENIOR OFFICER NAURU IS.

  FRIDAY II AM HAVE JUST LEARNED OF YOUR PRESENCE ON NAURU IS & ALSO THAT TWO NATIVES HAVE TAKEN NEWS TO RENDOVA. I STRONGLY ADVISE YOU RETURN IMMEDIATELY TO HERE IN THIS CANOE & BY THE TIME YOU ARRIVE HERE I WILL BE IN RADIO COMMUNICATIONS WITH AUTHORITIES AT RENDOVA & WE CAN FINALIZE PLANS TO COLLECT BALANCE OF YOUR PARTY

  AR EVANS LT.

  RANVR

  Before dispatching the trio of canoes, Evans loaded them with supplies. Rice, C rations, cigarettes, cans of hash along with native pawpaws, boiled fish and stoves to cook, tins of water, matches, and fuel. As soon as the natives reached the shipwrecked crew, they set to work fashioning shelters out of palm fronds, cooking food, and lopping off coconuts so the men could drink the sweet milk. Then they showed Kennedy to a canoe and hid him under palm fronds, so planes flying over could not see him. They began to paddle back to Evans with Kennedy.

  Meanwhile, Biuku and Eroni had reached the base at Rendova.

  It was almost six that evening when Kennedy slid from under the palm fronds and shook Evans’s hand. Evans motioned to his crude hut. The men immediately began to discuss the rescue plans.

  “Have the boats stop here and pick me up,” Kennedy noted. “I’ll lead them through the reefs.”

  “You’ve been through a lot,” Evans said, staring at the skinny, sandy-haired man. A beard covered the man’s face, and his lips and cheeks were chapped and red. Only the man’s eyes were clear—they burned with a conviction that brooked no argument “Why don’t you let us handle it?”

  “I’m going back for my men,” Kennedy said, “period.”

  “Okay,” Evans agreed. “I’ll radio Rendova.”

  The signal to the boats was to be four shots in the air. After checking his .38, Kennedy realized he had only three shells left and borrowed a rifle from Evans. Then he set off with the natives in a canoe for a nearby island where they would meet the rescue boats.

  At 8 P.M. that night, he heard the engines of the boats and fired into the air.

  PT-157 pulled close, and Lieutenant Cluster shouted across the water.

  “That you, Jack?”

  “Where the hell have you been?” Kennedy said.

  Hauled aboard, Kennedy took a place on deck with Biuku and Eroni, who were there to help guide the boat. The PT boats roared up the channel. In half an hour, they were off Olasana.

  “Slow down,” Kennedy said, “and lower a raft. We will lead you through the reef.”

  Climbing into a rubber raft with Biuku and Eroni, Kennedy led PT-157 safely through the coral. Once inside the reef, he began to call to shore.

  “Lenny, Barney, come on out,” he yelled.

  The crew of PT-109 walked into the open. They could scarcely believe the ordeal was at an end.

  The survivors were ferried out to the PT boat in the raft. Once they were all aboard, Kennedy showed the helmsman the way back through the reef. It was almost 10 P.M. when PT-157 reached open water and the skipper set a course for Rendova. As soon as the boat was gliding over the water at close to forty knots, a bottle of brandy appeared and the crew took a drink.

  “Thank you,” Kennedy said to Biuku and Eroni.

  Biuku smiled, but he could not resist the urge to kid with Kennedy. “You loosim boat, no find ever again, but you still a-number one,” he noted.

  II

  I Have a Special Room in My Mind for You 2001

  CRAIG DIRGO:

  “You and Dirk go over there and see what you can find,” Clive said.

  I was staring at a chart; the water showed two-thousand-foot maximum depth in the Strait.

  “What do we use for a boat?” I asked wisely.

  “Not to worry,” Clive said. “My son Dirk has been talking to the local dive shop owner. He has a few boats for charter.”

  “What else?” I asked.

  “I’d get a malaria shot if I were you,” he said, “and typhoid—just get whatever immunizations they have.”

  It was late July 2001, and I was sitting on the back porch of Clive’s house in Colorado. It was all of about sixty degrees outside, we were discussing malaria and tropical breezes, and I was looking at a map of a series of islands halfway around the world.

  “What exactly do you want us to accomplish?” I asked.

  “Find out where it’s not,” he said, “and have some fun. That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?”

  Clive has a strange idea of fun.

  A few days before, I’d flown from Fort Lauderdale to Phoenix, stayed the night with Dirk, Clive’s son and the president of NUMA, then rented a car and driven north. After editing what we had finished on this book, I was due to leave Clive in the morning to drive back to Phoenix.

  “Anything els
e?”

  “Stay out of the casinos in Australia,” he said, “and don’t believe Dirk’s system for blackjack. The house always wins.”

  I left at first light for Phoenix. Somewhere in Arizona, I picked up a Navajo who was hitchhiking and dropped him at the hospital in Phoenix. Strangely enough, this was the same day that President Bush was awarding the Medal of Honor to some of the remaining code-talkers. It seemed fitting, so I asked him about Native American philosophy.

  “There is a pace to everything,” he said.

  “So what’s the key?”

  “Must be pacing,” he said, just before he fell asleep.

  THE PACE ON July 28 was fast. We raced from store to store, trying to buy anything we felt we would not be able to find on Gizo, the island that would be our base in the Solomon Islands. Batteries, duct tape, tools, and trinkets. T-shirts for gifts, a portable depth sounder from Wal-Mart.

  “What about rope?” asked Dirk.

  “Buy it,” I said.

  “Water purifier?” I asked, as we steered a cart through the discount store.

  “But of course.”

  “Check out these Planet of the Apes action figures,” I said, as we passed an end display.

  Dirk’s girlfriend wanted us to take her to the opening tonight as a last celebration in civilization.

  “We need those,” Dirk said.

  Into the cart they went.

  We bought a large wheeled plastic tub for storage.

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Kerrie, Dirk’s better half, arrived to drive us to the airport in her new Honda. She stared at the piles of equipment.

  “No way,” she said.

  We had managed to cram it all inside, but just barely.

  Arriving in Los Angeles that afternoon, we retrieved our luggage, propped the bags on a pair of carts, then rolled them over to the international terminal and checked in with Air New Zealand. Later that evening, we were on our way. Our route was Los Angeles to Auckland, New Zealand, a short stop, then onto a different plane for the flight to Brisbane, Australia. We arrived at the airport in Brisbane, where we had a night’s layover before we caught one of the twice-weekly nights to the Solomon Islands, so we rented a car and set out.

  Dirk drove us to the hotel, and we checked into our room.

  Then we walked across the street to the casino.

  The next day, a few hundred dollars lighter, we flew on a 737 to Honiara, the capital of the Solomon Islands. Honiara has all the charm of Manila after the fall of Marcos. Sporadic power outages and deserted buildings seemed the norm. The Solomon Islands had experienced a recent coup d’etat, and the U.S. State Department had a travel warning in place. We met with Ms. Keithie Sauders, the American consular officer, who filled us in on the situation. After assuring us we’d have no trouble, she wished us well and asked that we keep her up-to-date on our progress.

  By now, the long flight was catching up with us, and we tumbled into bed for a few hours’ sleep. The next morning, we gathered our gear, took a cab to the airport, and caught a DeHavilland Otter turboprop to Gizo Island. The flight was uneventful.

  From the air, the Solomon Islands look like the tropical paradise that people always imagine. Blue and green waters lap at small tree-clustered islands. The sand ringing the islands forms a white outline, while small boats and canoes form gentle wakes when viewed from the air.

  The pilot brought the DeHavilland down on the grass runway, and we rolled to a stop.

  The airport for Gizo is located on Nusatupi Island just across the water from Gizo. It consists of little more than a cement block shack, a tank for refueling, and a path that leads to a dock where small boats transfer arrivals across the water to Gizo. We climbed out of the plane and looked around. A man who looked like the cartoon character Yosemite Sam walked over.

  “Dirk, Craig?” he asked.

  “You must be Danny Kennedy,” Dirk said.

  Danny has a great story. He worked as an electrician involved in the construction of Disneyland, then took his money and set out to travel the world. After a short stint as a dive instructor in Hawaii, he started to wander throughout the South Pacific, landing in the Solomon Islands in the early 1980s. Finding the people and diving to his liking, he decided to stay. Now he’s an institution. I think it’s safe to say that most people visiting Gizo will at one time or another bump into Danny. An eternally optimistic and friendly man given to repeating bad jokes and local legends, he proved to be a valuable ally. He lives above town in a beautiful house, with his Australian wife Kerry and their teenage daughter, who was born in the Solomon Islands. Danny knows the history of PT-109. In addition, he knows the waters around Gizo like the nose on his face.

  “How was the flight?” he asked.

  “Not too bad,” I answered.

  “You’re lucky,” Danny said. “A couple of weeks ago, the pilot came in too low and hit a dugout canoe on approach—luckily, the islander saw him coming and jumped over the side. He was aggro, though, I can tell you that.”

  “Aggro?” asked Dirk.

  Danny speaks a strange combination of English, Australian slang, and pidgin, the local language.

  “Aggro,” Danny said, smiling, “aggravated.”

  Grabbing some bags, he started for the dock.

  After loading the luggage aboard a small boat, we crossed the short span of water and docked in front of the Gizo Hotel. We checked in and stowed our luggage, then walked through the town to Adventure Sports, Danny’s dive operation. Gizo is not a large town, and the main business district is clustered along the waterfront. Directly in front and to the left of the hotel is an open-air market. To the right is a concrete pier, where the local island tramp steamer docks. There is a strip of pocked, potholed pavement left over from the time the Solomon Islands was a British protectorate, but for the most part the roads are packed dirt.

  This is not a tourist-tainted town.

  The few stores in Gizo are owned by Chinese traders, and entering them gave me the feeling that I had arrived through a time warp into a northern California gold-rush hamlet after the vein had run out. The selections ran from tin tubs for washing to bolts of cloth. Food choices for lunch included coconut flour crackers, canned tuna flavored with curry, and cookies.

  The town has three restaurants. The one at the Gizo Hotel we quickly grew tired of; the Nest, midway through the town, had an actual television hooked to a satellite receiver so the customers could watch CNN; and the PT-109 restaurant, which featured the best food.

  The PT-109 is an open-air affair attached to a two-story home that operates as a lodge for divers. Danny’s dive boats moor just outside, and his shop is just across the street. If you want to eat there, you need to call ahead—it is open only when there are customers, and since the coup, that’s rare.

  In general, Gizo is unspoiled by the trappings of capitalism. As a tourist spot, it would have probably dropped off the map save for a few important items. The first is the water—it is a wonderland of undersea beauty. Corals of all types, fish of so many colors that you’d need a prism to duplicate the beauty, temperatures that are perfect.

  The second is the people—the Solomon Islanders are some of the friendliest you could ever encounter. Eternally patient, always smiling, they make you feel welcome. With the economy on the skids, the locals make their way as best they can, but times are tough right now. I can only hope it improves soon. The island has a lot going for it.

  Gizo Island and these people would be our home for the next two weeks.

  DIRK AND I had decided that our best course of action was to see if we could first locate the wreckage that had been reported by Reg Evans on the reef off Nauru Island. Our vessel for the search would be one of Danny’s dive boats. The boats are narrow-beam affairs with a PVC tube canopy over the top and twin benches along each side, with holes to place tanks. Approximately twenty feet in length and powered by single or twin outboard motors, they are perfect for small diving groups but a little too exposed to the w
eather for search operations. Danny supplied a folding wooden chair that fit amidships, and we sat the large plastic tub in front. On the tub we placed the gradiometer, which we took turns operating. For navigation we had a handheld GPS.

  The setup was as far removed from the extravagant search boats you see on the Discovery Channel as we were from a Hard Rock Cafe. This search was on the low end of the high-tech scale. The first few days, the winds and currents were favorable, and we were able to work along the surf line just off the ledge of coral off Nauru Island. Other than a single target of promise, the area under the water was bare of magnetics. The operation went like this: In the morning we would eat breakfast at the Gizo Hotel. This consisted of toast, a few slices of mango or pineapple, and maybe some cold cereal. Then we would carry our tub of equipment the half-mile to Danny’s shop. Sometimes the restaurant would make us lunch—egg-salad sandwiches—but usually we would stop at the Wing-Sun store for cans of tuna, crackers, and bottles of fresh water. Lunch in hand, we’d continue on to the shop. Then we’d load the equipment in the boat. Once we were situated, one of Danny’s boat drivers would join us and we would set out to search.

  Once clear of the dock, we would lower the gradiometer probe into the water and allow it to calibrate itself, a process that usually took a half hour or so. For weight on the probe itself, we used a rock attached to a thin line designed to break away if we struck the bottom—something that happened at least a dozen times—and to keep the cable clear of the propellers, we propped it off the side, using an old oar that stuck from the starboard side.

  It was all jury-rigged, but it seemed to do the job.

  Once the gradiometer was calibrated, we would pull it back in, then set out for the search area. That usually required a half hour or so in transit. Once on-site we would begin to drag, using the GPS to make straight lines. Then we would drive back and forth, seeking a target. Around noon we would pull over to the closest island and climb off the boat. After a quick bite to eat and a few moments spent watering the palm trees, we’d climb back in the boat and start another line. Afternoons usually brought rain—since we were basically out in the open, we’d try to shelter the gradiometer as best we could. If the rain was prolonged or heavy, we’d head back to Gizo and wait it out.