Night Moves (Doc Ford)

10




IN THE FABRIC OF UPROOTED TREES WERE BONES. Human bones.

It took awhile to train the eyes. A cranial plate blended with clamshells. A jawbone was lichen-splotched, edged with brown—just rotting wood until the teeth jumped out at you. Human incisors, a partial skull grinning. Half a grin here, an upside-down smile over there.

There was a technique. Kneel and focus on one small spot . . . allow details to blur, then refocus. Once my eyes had learned the trick, the next step was to reconstruct.

An unbroken piece of femur . . . so the ribs should be . . . where?

More than once, I marveled at my blindness. When parts of human scaffolding finally assumed form, I would scold, How in the world could you have missed that!

Once unmasked, though, it was the bones themselves that refused to liberate my eyes. Soon, I was surrounded. Pieces of the dead lay everywhere: sprouting from gray marl where nothing grew, scattered beneath a mangrove cavern that did not permit sunlight. People who had lived and laughed and dreamed, Tomlinson reminded us when we’d made our first discovery, and who had ended their journey here.

So we looked but did not touch. Moved from spot to spot, calling out our finds, but in low voices. Then knelt to inspect.

Tomlinson, to my right, was kneeling now over some new revelation, then abruptly stood. “That’s me all over,” he said, meaning an area of scattered bones. And then smiled.

Futch was the first to realize it was a joke and he laughed. I laughed, too, which changed the dark mood of this place, but not much.

“You’ve been here how many times?” I asked.

The pilot was on his knees by an uprooted tree. “Uhhh . . . third trip since I was a kid. About a twenty-year gap between then and a month ago when I brought my nephew. I don’t think anybody else knows about this place.” He looked around. “I don’t see any sign, do you?” Garbage, he meant, the tin and plastic spore of our species.

Tomlinson said, “That’s wise. Keep it in the family.”

“That’s what we decided. We’d been exploring the creek, Daddy and me. Used a saw to cut our way in—this was back in my teens. He spotted those gumbo-limbos and knew there must be an Indian mound. I don’t know why he wandered this far back in the mangroves.”

“State archaeologists have to know about it,” I said. “From satellite photos, if nothing else.”

“Sure. But I’ve never seen another human footprint on this marl flat. That tells you something.”

Futch turned in the direction of the mound, a hundred yards to the west, the ridge shielded by swamp. Then looked up at the tree canopy, his mind still on the missing planes. “Thing about this place is, back in the forties it was off the normal flight grid. Key West, they’d fly up the coast to Buckingham or Fort Myers. Orlando, the flight line runs north of here. The air base at Miami or Lauderdale, it’s way to the southeast.”

“A plane crash wouldn’t have been spotted,” I offered. As I said it, we were suddenly aware of the sound of an approaching airplane. Single engine, a private plane, maybe a Cessna, flying low.

In unison, we looked up, but foliage blocked the sky. The engine noise suggested the aircraft was passing to the west where Dan had landed his Maule, then secured it with anchors and spring lines hitched to mangroves. So we waited.

“They noticed your seaplane,” Tomlinson said after several seconds. The aircraft had circled, but was now heading away. North or northwest, from the sound.

Dan shrugged, then returned to the subject of finding wreckage. “Even if search planes were scrambled—a spot this thick?—they might have flown right over. A lot of wrecks were never found. Just a few years back, I probably already told you, an Avenger was found in the Glades. Took a grass fire to uncover it. Ten years ago maybe? First time the wreckage was ever seen.”

His eyes returned to the uprooted tree while he laughed, “Besides, I just proved this place isn’t easy to find. Even when you know it’s here.”

We’d gotten lost. Despite a handheld GPS, for more than an hour we’d wandered in zigzags through swamp and ridges of shell. Finally, we’d hacked our way straight to the creek, then waded against the tide looking for familiar landmarks. Even then Futch wasn’t sure this was the place—one marl swamp looks like another—until he remembered the trick from childhood, how to focus and refocus until the bones made themselves known.

“I don’t think these are our pilots,” I said, getting to my feet. “The incisor teeth, you notice? They’re all filed flat on top . . . the ones over here, anyway. But it’s not intentional. I think these people ate food that was loaded with sand.”

“An ancient place,” Tomlinson agreed, referring to contemporaries of the Maya. The Calusa had been sea people, living mostly off fish and clams, anything they could kill and cook over a beach fire.

Dan said, “Then why aren’t they in the burial mound? That’s what doesn’t make any sense. Bones just laying out here on open ground. Or . . . it’s possible that we’re looking at remains from two completely different time periods.”

The remains of World War II pilots mixed with those of an indigenous people, he was thinking.

I turned to Tomlinson and suggested, “Burial platforms, maybe? I didn’t find any charred bones, so pyres are out.” Then said to Futch, “It’s just an idea, but think about getting archaeologists involved with this place. Discuss it with Kathy and the rest of your family, this could be an important discovery. How many know?”

Tomlinson was walking away from the creek toward a wall of vines, then stopped. “Not wind burials,” he said, shaking his head. Then stood in silence for several seconds, hands at his sides, before saying it again. “Definitely not wind burials. No platforms . . . no ceremonies. The people who died here”—my friend appeared to wince and then straighten—“they weren’t buried. These people were . . .”

I gave it some time before asking, “Were what?”

Futch had picked up his backpack and was walking toward the same wall of vines, a satellite photo from Google Earth in his hands. “If there was a crash,” he said, “it either came from this direction or hit the trees from behind us coming from the northeast. Which would make sense.”

The pilot was swinging a machete as I asked Tomlinson for a second time, “These people died how?”

When he still didn’t answer, I shouldered my pack and walked toward him, saying, “What’s going on? Whatever you’re thinking, it’s purely your imagination. Don’t believe me if you want, but it’s true.”

Maddening, but it was classic Tomlinson: making jokes one moment, the next he’s mired in some dismal trance—the paranoid residue, possibly, of one hallucinogenic voyage too many.

I put a hand on the man’s shoulder and turned him. “You okay?”

Tomlinson didn’t look okay. His face was pale, beaded with sweat. Eyes dazed, but they also communicated suffering. “You’re dehydrated,” I told him. “How many times do I have to say it? If you wait until you’re thirsty, it’s too late. Here . . . drink this.”

“I need some sunlight, Doc,” he replied, then brushed past me, ignoring the canteen in my hand. “I’ll be at the creek when you’re ready. I’m done exploring for today.”

Tomlinson, the sensitive psychic, was wrong once again.

Futch had vanished in the foliage, already some distance between us, but close enough there was no reason for him to yell, “My god! Oh . . . my . . . god!”

I spun, feeling a familiar burn down the back of my neck.

“Doc! You won’t believe this!”

Inexplicably, as I headed off at a jog, Tomlinson called after me, “I knew it was there.”

Unlikely. Not when I saw what the pilot had found.

No one but an expert could have identified a wedge of metal, six feet high, that had buried itself in muck like a hatchet. Then had remained there, stationary, while seven decades of vines and tree roots had winched it deeper into the earth.

The Grumman TBF-1 had several distinctive features, as only someone like Futch would know. He had found an aluminum component. Just the tip—the rest of it, like an iceberg, was implied.

“It’ll be obvious when I cut more vines,” he told me, sounding numb. “But you see it, right? See the shape?”

Yes, I did.

It was the tail rudder off a World War II torpedo bomber. I could only guess, but Futch seemed sure.

An Avenger.

—

AFTER HOURS OF BATTLING mangroves and mud, I settled back and relaxed while the seaplane transported us from the silences of history and wilderness, toward Sanibel Island, where the bridge would be busy with twenty-first-century traffic and where Dinkin’s Bay awaited, a time warp in its own way.

The giddiness of discovery had worn off. We were tired, bruised, and I’d had to break out the first-aid kit more than once. Now, while insulated from the world below, was the time to discuss how to proceed.

“We need to do this right,” Dan said through the intercom. “We’re equal partners. So let’s hear some suggestions.”

“We don’t tell anyone,” Tomlinson said immediately. He was still subdued, but at least had returned to the current decade. “Not about the wreckage or the Bone Field. I have some close archaeologist friends, but that spot is sacred. It’s too late for us. We’ve already breached the capsule. So I say we ask their permission to find what there is to find. One way or another, we’ll get our answer—and god help us.”

“From the archaeologists, you mean?” Futch was confused, but already didn’t like the idea.

“From the people who died there,” I translated. Then said to Tomlinson, “He’s asking for ideas. We want to uncover enough wreckage to ID the plane but without messing it up contextually, or getting arrested. In other words, what’s our next move?”

“Exactly,” the pilot said. “We’re going back there, that’s a given. I am, at least. But we need to agree, come up with a plan that’s organized. Something low profile that makes the best use of our time. And we still have to dive that damn creek!”

He had known from the start that there were realities and obligations that, if not handled properly, could bite us in the butt. Possibly even put us in jail or nail us with a heavy fine. Early on, he had stepped away from the tail section and made that clear, saying, “Let’s think this through before we do something really stupid. We’re on government-owned land, okay? The government still owns this plane—what’s left of it, anyway. So let’s take a minute and talk.”

This was before we’d searched the area for more wreckage, but after we had cleaned away enough foliage for Dan to be certain he’d found a tail rudder off an Avenger. On his iPhone were photos of Avengers in flight, and he’d waited while Tomlinson and I compared them with the buried monolith.

Yes . . . we were looking at the aft section of a tail fin, minus the wings, elevators, and the tail. The fin’s top edge was flat—distinctive. Same with the contour of the aft edge. According to photos, Avengers carried ID numbers on the tail and rudder, numerals painted in white, two yards high. There was too much moss and mud to see if paint had survived.

The shape of the tail matched, though. Tomlinson was convinced. I was willing to be convinced. There were certainly similarities.

Dan had explained, “I’ve read books on aviation archaeology. I don’t claim to be an expert, okay, but I know that amateurs can screw up everything by changing the context of a crash site. We’re not going to do that. Just like back there”—he had tilted his head toward the Bone Field—“we look, we take all the photographs we can. But we don’t touch. At least, we don’t move anything. Not yet, anyway.”

The temptation to see more of the tail rudder, though, was overpowering, and the pilot wanted to remove the detritus that cloaked it. Were we okay with that?

“If there’s a number,” I’d asked, “it might confirm the plane’s from Flight 19?”

“Helpful, but no,” was his answer. Confirmation required something called a data plate.

“It’s sort of like a ship’s bell when a diver finds a wreck. Positive proof. On a plane, the data plate’s under the fuselage, port side, on the stabilizer. But a tail number would narrow it down. So I say we clean off what we can—not all of it. Then search for the fuselage. After that, the photograph-only rule applies.”

So we did it. Wearing gloves and using dollops of freshwater, we took turns peeling the decades away. Soon, a faded numeral was revealed: 3. Only the top half, though—the tail rudder had hit the earth like a spear, so the rest was buried.

When Futch had seen enough to be convinced, he stepped away and began to pace, ignoring Tomlinson’s rapid-fire questions about the significance.

He’s hiding something. That was my impression. Or Dan, too, realized that a section of paint might have been sheared away by the crash. In the military, letters and numerals are segmented because paint is applied over a stencil. Instead of a 3, it could have been an 8.

All Futch would say is, “It’s not bad news, I can tell you that much. In my flight bag, I’ve got the squadron list, numbers for all five planes. Judge for yourselves when we get back. Right now, we spread out and search. Doc, do you have a notebook? I wish to hell I’d brought a measuring tape!”

Each small discovery had been photographed, then dutifully paced off, all bearings anchored to the Avenger’s tail rudder. Then the spots were given a tagline and added as waypoints in the handheld GPS.

We didn’t find the fuselage. We didn’t find much, in fact: fragments of metal, the remains of a gigantic tire, a cache of .50 caliber cartridges, unfired, in a rusty linkage belt. And a piece of fabric that might have been an airman’s inflatable vest, a Mae West. A couple of other objects that had less to do with an airplane than the men aboard: what might have been a survival kit, the metal husk too fragile to touch. A collage of straps, buckles, and a sheath of leather that had been lifted off the ground by a tree and was now embedded in the bark. Several more bits and pieces that while undoubtedly man-made had disintegrated beyond identifying. Not recognizable in the field, anyway, but photos might yield something if we did the research.

Combined, the things we found confirmed that an Avenger had crashed in the area or—as I was already thinking—had exploded or collided with another plane overhead.

The tail rudder was the most compelling evidence of all. As we’d strapped ourselves into the seaplane, Dan had opened his flight bag and produced a sheet listing the ID numbers of the missing Avengers. All numbers were prefaced by the letters FT—Fort Lauderdale; Torpedo—but only numbers, he said, appeared on an Avenger’s tail.

No wonder the man had paced when a 3 was revealed. On the Flight 19 list were Torpedo Bombers FT-36 and FT-3.

If a chunk of paint had been sheared away, there were also planes FT-28 and FT-81.

The pilot was excited for good reason. So was I. Tomlinson galvanized his own interest by matching tail numbers with the names of pilots and crew. What he discovered was a surprise to all but him: the telegram sent three weeks after Flight 19 had vanished still meshed with the wild story he’d told at Punta Rassa. “Georgie” had been the radioman aboard FT-36.

Now, flying toward Sanibel at two thousand feet, Futch was trying to rein in his partners, and also come up with a plan. “Here’s what we need to keep in mind, okay? I mentioned the Avenger found in the Glades a few years back. From the moment word got out, the place was a circus. Everyone from UFO nuts to local historians wanted to be the first to prove it was one of the famous missing planes.”

Through my headphones came Tomlinson’s voice. “The wrong types would flood the place. Yeah.”

“We’ve got to protect the place,” Dan agreed. “Believe me, I flew over the Glades the day after it hit the papers. Must have been thirty cars, plus TV crews, parked along the Tamiami Trail. None of them knew the exact location, of course. Even with the sawgrass burned away, the wreckage wasn’t easy to find—you know, parts scattered everywhere. But souvenir hunters hauled off a bunch before the experts got a chance. Not the data plate, though. The data plate proved it wasn’t a Flight 19 Avenger. But you see my point.”

Tomlinson said, “We need a beard. The right beard, no one will ask questions.”

I understood, but Futch was confused again. “Try English, Quirko. Except for Miami, they speak it almost everywhere.”

I said, “He means invent a reason why we’re interested in the Lostman’s River area. He’s right, people will want to know. When that plane flew over awhile ago? Someone’s probably already curious. So we need a story. Something believable, but also so damn boring no one will bother asking. Or follow us. Flying around in a seaplane isn’t cheap—we owe you money, by the way. It’s best if people at the marina see us writing out checks.” I looked over my shoulder at Tomlinson.

“Doc’s a beard expert,” he said. A private joke, which he covered by asking, “How often do we come back? That’s important. I’d be fine with a few times a week—you know, as long as we show proper respect—but people would get suspicious.”

The pilot was mulling it over. “A story that’s believable but boring . . .” Then said, “I’m booked through Thursday. So Friday morning? Maybe camp, which would give us more time. I can’t go anywhere once tarpon season starts . . .”

As they talked, I was thinking about the guy from Adventure World Productions, Luke Smith. I hadn’t mentioned him and wouldn’t until I found out if he was legitimate or not. Either way, Smith would have to be dealt with. Throw him off the trail with a convincing story . . . or invite him along?

Some enemies require more attention than others. So it depended on what my friends Bernie and Donald Cheng had to say.