Atlantis: Devil's Sea Read Free Page B

dropping the nose of the plane. The gold beam missed them by less than ten feet.
    “Stop transmitting!” she yelled as she pulled the plane out of the dive and banked hard left. The fog was now less than two miles away, a wall stretching as far as she could see north and south and reaching up at least fifteen thousand feet.
    “What was that?” Noonan was flipping switches, cutting power to their transmitter and receivers.
    Earhart noted the fuel gauges. Not much left, and she had no idea where they were. Glancing out the window, she noted that even though she was flying a parallel course, the fog was closer, which meant it was still expanding.
    “I’m going to ditch,” she announced.
    Noonan said nothing, knowing there really weren’t any other options. They had an inflatable raft on board, and it was best to go down while they still had engine power so she could have some control of the landing.
    Earhart turned away from the strange fog and began descending. Fortunately, the water was relatively calm, the swell no more than half a foot. When they were ten feet above the waves, she began throttling back, slowing the plane to just above stall speed.
    The Electra hit, bounced hit once more, and again bounced into the air. Then they were down, both slammed forward against their seat belts as the water slowed the plane. Earhart cut power to the engines, and an eerie silence reigned, strange after so many hours in the air, the sound of the engines their constant companion. Her first thought was that silence was the sound of failure: she had fallen short of her goal. She shook that thought out of her head and knew she had to focus on the immediate problem, which was getting out of the plane. She unbuckled, knowing they had some time before the plane went down, as the empty fuel tanks would keep it afloat for a little while. Earhart got up and began gathering essential equipment.
    Noonan opened the door below the right wing, then went and got the raft. Earhart stuck her head out the door and looked to the rear. The fog was still coming, now less than a quarter mile away. Noonan began to inflate the raft after tying it off to a wing strut, while she piled supplies next to the door. She considered making a distress call, but the memory of what had happened the last time she’d transmitted stopped her. When they didn’t arrive, the Itasca would come looking for her. And she knew her husband would get the president to launch a search.
    “I hope whoever warned us is nearby,” she told Noonan.
    “That wasn’t lightning that almost hit us,” he said.” It’s like someone shot at us.”
    “With what?”
    Noonan had the raft mostly inflated and was still pumping when the fog reached the tail of the plane. Earhart couldn’t see more than a couple of feet into it. The plane was beginning to settle deeper, water washing close to the doorway.
    “Let’s go,” she said. “We can finish pumping once we’re away.” Then she remembered the photos and her journal. “Wait a second.”
    She dashed back into the plane, ran to the cockpit, and grabbed the box containing the photos she had taken for the Navy and her journal. As she came back, she could barely see Noonan standing in the raft, holding on to the wing. She was just about to step through the door and into the raft when a long tentacle shot out the water and wrapped around Noonan, who gave a surprised yell. She froze in place.
    “Help me!” He screamed as he was lifted into the air.
    Another tentacle surfaced, searching along the bottom of the wing by feel. Then a half dozen more, like a forest of red, exploded out of the water. Earhart remained still, fear and self-preservation locking her in place inside the aircraft. She could see that there were what appeared to be mouths on the ends of the tentacles, about six inches wide, snapping open, revealing rows of razor-sharp teeth.
    As she watched helplessly, one of those mouths struck Noonan in the chest and bore into