Atlantis: Devil's Sea Read Free Page A

There bad weather delayed them, and she came down with dysentery. Also during that time, Noonan had made repairs on the long-distance receivers and transmitters, which had been giving them trouble all through the long flight. On 27 June, they’d flown from Bandoeng to Darwin, where more repairs on the direction finder were completed, and their parachutes were shipped back to the States. Given that the rest of the trip would be over the Pacific, the parachutes were no longer needed.
    They’d reached Lae, New Guinea, on 29 June, over two-thirds of the trip done and seven thousand miles to go. But the last legs were all over the Pacific, the most dangerous part of the journey. At Lae, she had cabled her last article to the Herald Tribune and her last journal entry to George.
    “I need a fix,” Amelia said. “We’re getting close, and we’re not going to have fuel to turn around if we miss it on the first pass.”
    “I know that.” Noonan’s voice was tight. They were both exhausted. “I don’t know why I can’t pick up the ship. The equipment is working correctly,” he added defensively.
    There was a smudge on the ocean ahead. Earhart’s heart leapt as she though it must be smoke from the Itasca. She grabbed the transmitter and keyed it. “K-H-A-Q-Q calling Itasca . I see smoke. Are you making smoke? Over.”
    There was no answer.
    Noonan had a set of binoculars, and he put them to his eyes. “I don’t think that’s a ship’s smoke.”
    “An island?” Earhart asked.
    “It’s like fog.”
    “It can’t be fog,” Earhart said. “It’s too small.”
    “It’s getting bigger,” Noonan said.
    Even without the glasses, Earhart could see that it was growing larger. There was a yellowish tinge to the fog, and it was billowing upward and out ward at an unnatural rate.
    “I’m getting something,” Noonan said. He had his hands over his headset, listening intently.
    Amelia’s gaze shifted between the compass and the growing cloud on the horizon as she waited.
    “I don’t know what it is,” Noonan finally said. “A lot of static, then what sounds like Morse Code, but I can’t--” he fell silent once more as he focused on listening, his eyes closed. “It’s clearer now.” Noonan opened his eyes and picked up a pencil and began to record the letters in the flight log, speaking them out loud, as he heard the dashes and dots.
    “T-U-R-N-O-F-F-R-A-D-I-O-O-R-D-I-E.”
    “What?” Earhart was so tired her brain couldn’t make immediate sense of the letters.
    “Turn off radio or die,” Noonan succinctly informed her.
    “We can’t. We won’t be able to navigate.”
    “Hell, we haven’t’ been navigating for hours, “ Noonan noted.
    “Who’s sending?” Earhart was confused. If it wasn’t the Itasca, who was out here in the middle of nowhere?”
    “I have no idea.”
    The fog was now less than five miles ahead and was huge, blocking their path now at twelve thousand feet and continuing to climb. In all her flights, she had never seen anything like it. She had a feeling they shouldn’t fly into it, but if she changed course, she would burn fuel and get off their track to Howland Island. A startling thought crossed her mind: Had she already flown past Howland Island and the Itasca? She pushed that negative thinking aside. She knew exactly how fast they had been going and how long they had been in the air. But, she argued with herself, there was the possibility of a strong headwind or tailwind, multiplied by the nineteen hours they’d been in the air, skewing her math.
    “I think we should shut the radio off,” Noonan suggested, drawing her back to the immediate problem. “I don’t like the looks of that.”
    “Find out who’s sending,” Earhart ordered.
    Noonan had a knee key on his thigh, and he tapped out a quick query in Morse, trying to get the identity of the sender of the message.
    A golden beam slashed out of the fog directly for the Electra. Earhart reacted, pushing forward and