Skyhook

by John J. Nance

  “Okay, this wave looks like a winner,” Scott said, working the rudder to sideslip the Widgeon a few degrees to the left. “Nope,” he said, as he quickly goosed the overhead throttles and pulled up to evade the wave just beginning to break suddenly, the white foam passing so close beneath them that April caught herself worrying that her seat cushion might get wet.

  Once more he lined up on a moving wave crest, this one not as large as the last.

  “These are three-foot seas?” Jim fairly bellowed at him. “They look like ten!”

  “Naw, they’re within limits,” Scott replied. “Here we go!”

  This time he found the exact position he wanted and pulsed the yoke forward just enough, setting the bottom of the Widgeon’s hull into the crest at a little over seventy knots and kicking the rudder left at the same moment, riding with it as he throttled the engines back and held on, waiting for the flying boat to make the uncomfortable transition from aircraft to watercraft as the hull let itself be sucked into the sea and the pontoons on each wingtip made contact.

  “Whee-e-e-e!” he said, the exultation prompting April to roll her eyes. Slowly she began to regain confidence in her immediate survival. All her seaplane landings as a pilot had been on smooth water in high-wing single engines on floats, which meant that three-foot waves looked mountainous.

  In the air, the Grumman Widgeon had merely bounced through any turbulence it encountered, but now it was a seasick machine, wallowing in all three axes at once as Scott idled the engines and checked his GPS, pointing north.

  “We’re two miles northwest of the coordinates you gave me,” he said to her, holding the map. “Exactly where I wanted to be.”

  She was nodding, having agreed that the Albatross would have had to come down within sixty seconds of the last satellite burst from her little GPS-based tracking unit, and at 140 knots, that translated into a bit more than two miles.

  “What can I help you with?” she asked.

  “Go back and open the main upper hatch on the door. Get the little Honda generator going and stand by to plug in the video cords.”

  She lifted herself carefully out of the copilot’s seat and squeezed past him to get to the back, well aware that Scott McDermott would be appraising her shape in the tight-fitting jeans she’d changed into. She’d pulled out a heavy blue sweater to wear over a white blouse and exchanged her beautiful parka for a heavily insulated leather jacket. Jim had insisted on giving her a spare, greasy work parka, and with the cold wind now whistling through the small cabin, she was glad she’d relented.

  He waited for her to get to the back, then worked his way under the forward panel to open the nose hatch as Jim pulled the underwater camera apparatus from a plastic shipping container and hooked it up. He passed the camera forward as he prepared a reel containing three hundred feet of umbilical cord.

  Within ten minutes, Scott was back in the captain’s seat of the Widgeon while Jim stood in the open nose hatch, and April occupied the copilot’s seat, holding the color monitor on her lap as the stabilized camera began its towed journey along the bottom.

  Scott inched the engine power up enough to maintain a three- to four-knot speed on the GPS readout as he maintained a southeast course. The TV camera was hanging approximately five feet above the sandy bottom some 250 feet down, its tail fins keeping the housing steady while the joystick—which April was controlling—pivoted the lens left and right. The camera platform carried a powerful searchlight that stabbed into the inky cold blackness below.

  Rocks and seaweed were interspersed on the screen with darting fish and startled crab scurrying out of the way. A small tiger shark swam by and disappeared with an almost aggravated flip of its tail as the camera routed a huge halibut.

  “Jim,” Scott called out. “That halibut has to be a hundred pounds!”

  “Damn,” he replied. “Now you’ve made me hungry, and here we are without a flight attendant.”

  The cold marine air was cascading in through the open nose hatch and out the rear hatch, chilling April thoroughly. She pulled her parka around her a bit more tightly, zipping the lower portion as she breathed in the fresh sea air.

  The sun was already very low on the southwestern horizon, its fiery orb cupped by the hills of Montague Island to the west. It was a strange feeling, she thought, to know that only three days ago her mother and dad might have died where she was now floating. It was also strange to think that she had awakened in Sequim less than fifteen hours before with no plans to be in Alaska, let alone in a seaplane trying to catch some glimpse of underwater wreckage. And it was nothing short of surreal that N34DD was somewhere below them now in the murk. The reality of just how difficult it might be to find her began to sink in.

  “How long do you think we can keep looking before we have to start back?” April asked Scott, whose eyes seemed to be fixed on the horizon to the right.

  “About two hours. I don’t want to take off in the dark.” He leaned under the forward panel. “Hey, Jim. What do you make of that boat at three o’clock?”

  “Where?” Jim asked, his voice distant, even though he was standing in the bow hatch only two feet in front of the windscreen. “Hard to hear you up here.”

  “The boat off the port bow about a thousand yards,” Scott repeated.

  “What about him?”

  “What’s he doing?”

  April watched Jim turn and look carefully, his weathered face catching the sun in silhouette. She saw him squint and look more closely before turning around.

  “You have those field glasses, Scott?”

  “Stand by,” Scott responded, leaning into the cabin and wrestling a large pair of binoculars from a case. He leaned under the forward panel and handed them to Jim, who began scanning the distant boat. For almost a minute he said nothing. April tried to keep her eyes on the TV screen in her lap, but found herself distracted again by Jim’s leaning down into the hatch to be heard.

  “He’s faking. He’s pretending to be a commercial fisherman, but that’s not a fishing rig, and he has no nets in the water.”

  Scott glanced at April, a flash of concern on his face.

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “Neither do I,” Scott replied, ducking under the panel again to look up at Jim.

  “Is he moving this way, or does it look like he has any interest in us?”

  Jim was nodding before April heard him speak. He lowered the glasses. “He’s taken an interest in us, all right. He’s making straight for us at maybe ten knots, and they’ve got glasses on us, too.”

  “Wait,” April said, straining to see details on the boat with her unaided eyes. “Could he just think we’re in trouble, landing out here like this?”

  “Possibly,” Scott said, climbing back into the left seat and looking over at her. “See anything down there yet?”

  April shook her head. “We’re still in sight of the bottom, but there’s nothing that looks like metal, and I can only see maybe ten or fifteen feet ahead of the camera.”

  “Whoa!” Jim yelped from the nose hatch, the binoculars once again trained on the approaching boat. “There’s another craft behind the first one, closing very fast.”

  “Can you tell anything about it?” Scott asked, but Jim was already nodding with a strange look on his face. “Yeah, kind of hard to misinterpret that angular red stripe on the bow.”

  “Red stripe?” April began, the image popping into her head of Lieutenant Hobbs and the Coast Guard logo in his field safety office in Anchorage.

  “It’s a Coast Guard cutter,” Jim added. “Making maybe twenty-five knots.”

  “Chasing that other boat, then?” Scott asked.

  “No. He’s making right for us. Better pull out that marine-band portable from my kit back there.”

  April kept her eyes on the TV screen, praying for a glimpse of something that resembled an aircraft. The rapid approach of the Coast Guard boat had triggered a very uneasy feeling, and she scolded herself silentl
y for the petty panic. But logic wasn’t overriding the reality of feeling as if she was about to be caught red-handed doing something very wrong.

  Once again Scott scrambled out of the left seat and into the back of the Widgeon, rummaging around in Jim’s bag until he pulled out the portable marine-band radio. He switched it on and handed it forward through the hatch.

  The first call from Jim brought an instant response.

  “Aircraft in the water, this is the United States Coast Guard Cutter Point Barrow. Heave to and prepare to be boarded. You are in restricted waters. Repeat, prepare to be boarded. You are in restricted waters.”

  Jim Dobler started to respond, then looked back at Scott McDermott in confusion, finally handing the radio back through the hatch.

  “You’re the skipper of this craft, Scott. You’d better talk to them.”

  He took the handheld and pressed it to his mouth as he tracked the approach of the cutter, which was looming larger with every minute.

  “Coast Guard Cutter Point Barrow, this is United States registered aircraft November Eight Seven One Bravo. You are hailing us. We will wait for you, but be advised that neither our current aviation charts nor airmen notices as of this afternoon have announced this position as restricted waters. We are not fishing. Repeat, we are not engaged in any activity involving fishing. Over.”

  The message from the cutter’s bridge was the same, and Scott shrugged as he swung the Widgeon around to the northwest and prepared to shut down the engines.

  Jim sensed the turn and was leaning down in the hatch. “Scott, don’t turn too rapidly or you’ll foul the camera line.”

  “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.

  “We had boats out to bar entry to this area, but apparently the brass didn’t think about a seaplane.”

  “Apparently.” Scott reached back and started the generator, turned on the VCR, and ejected the tape from the machine before turning it all off again and handing the tape over. April felt her heart sink as she saw the transfer.

  “That’s the only one?” the officer asked.

  “Only one in there,” Scott replied. “It’s a new toy for Jim, and we were helping him try it out.”

  The lieutenant looked Scott in the eye for a few seconds, gauging his answer and whether there was any reason to probe further, then nodded. “Okay. Mr. Dobler, Mr. McDermott, Ms. Rosen? You’re all free to go.” He turned and squeezed his way out of the plane and back into his boat.