USS JOHN C. STENNIS, CVN 74, 140 MILES EAST OF PERU 28 HOURS LATER
After almost seven full years of continuous warfare, the USS John C. Stennis had been mysteriously ordered from her home port of San Diego, California, with only half of her complement of warplanes. And those that weren’t actually on the roster for flights were stored belowdecks in their hangars. The ship’s crew of nearly five thousand–plus were curious as to the strange craft that lay in eleven distinct pieces of ten-foot sections on her flight deck. They knew they would find out soon enough, as another warship had joined them early that morning. The USS Iwo Jima, a navy assault ship, was brimming with U.S. Marine Corps helicopters, and the scuttlebutt said those choppers would be removing the strange package from the Stennis’s flight deck.
Off in the distance, the Department of the Navy wasn’t taking any chances, as another carrier battle group was two hundred miles east of the Stennis’s position, to assist in an emergency, since they were shorthanded on attack planes. The USS Nimitz was riding shotgun, making the crewmen on-board the giant ship feel somewhat better about their hurried sailing orders.
The Styrofoam-packaged sections were flown from Louisiana to Los Angeles, where they were transferred onto army UH-60 Blackhawks and then flown out to the Stennis just 160 miles from South America. This would negate the need for flying over foreign territorial land and sea, as well as the need for asking permission from governments that become overly curious and suspicious. The plan was devised by Niles Compton, using the authority of the president. The mission was classified as a field test by a private company. That company just happened to be the Event Group.
Master Chief Jenks and the support team from the Group were still working on the engines and the electronics suite for Teacher. The task was made far more difficult because of the rush out of New Orleans to California and then having to install everything with the boat lying in eleven sections. The master chief had already threatened the lives of almost everyone on his team and some of those of the Stennis. Jack had actually and absentmindedly reached for a sidearm he wasn’t wearing when Jenks had confronted him about something Jack had no control over. Actually, Jenks was mortified when he found out that Jack Collins was serving as head of the expedition and was essentially the man that saved his boat from the scrap heap. So Carl had seen him do something the master chief had never done before: he apologized to the major.
Carl joined Danielle on the signalman’s platform overlooking the flight deck and was grateful for the sea air.
“This is what I miss about sea duty,” he said as he stood by her side, “the air, can’t find it in the desert.”
She smiled and went back to watching the activity below with Teacher.
“Hi there,” Sarah said as she joined them.
“Well, if it isn’t Wild Bill McIntire,” Carl teased her.
“Funny,” she said as she lightly punched him on the arm.
“Seriously, Jack said you handled yourself at the Little Bighorn like a pro.”
“So, Ms. Serrate, has Jack assigned you any duties yet?” Sarah asked as her attention swung to the Frenchwoman.
“Yes, it seems I will be assisting Professor Ellenshaw’s Crypto group, all three of us,” she answered. “And please call me Danielle. We’re going to be shipmates, after all.” She smiled but her eyes bore into Sarah’s.
Sarah didn’t respond. In her mind, something wasn’t quite adding up with this woman, and she couldn’t put her finger on it. Of course it just might be the fact that the attraction between Carl and Danielle was evident to anyone with eyes. Sarah wondered if she was jealous for her best friend who had died over a year ago. The friend and woman Carl had loved was killed on a mission not unlike the one they were currently undertaking. Now, here, the ex-wife of Colonel Henri Farbeaux, an enemy anyone in the Group would give five years’ pay to bag, just conveniently showed up with her offer of help? Sarah wasn’t buying what this interloper was selling, even though her director and even Jack seemed to be.
“I understand you’ll be heading your own science team,” Danielle said.
Sarah nodded, leaning back so she could see around Carl. “Yes, a two-man geology team, but we’ll be a part of Virginia’s overall sciences attachment.”
Danielle was about to comment when the steel hatch opened.
“The major says we’re needed in the ward room. Professor Ellenshaw wants to speak to the Group,” Mendenhall said as he popped his head out of the hatch. His forehead was still half-covered by a bandage from the stone chips that struck him in the gunfight two days before.
Carl was about to say something, but Sarah held her hand up and stopped him. “We already heard about your little nickname for Ellenshaw’s Crypto Department, so don’t say it,” she said as she anticipated his small joke.
“What, that we’re about to be briefed by the ‘Creepy-zoologist’?”
Sarah just rolled her eyes.
Professor Charles Hindershot Ellenshaw III gave a briefing on the skeletal hand. But the facts just weren’t there to support any conclusions as to the animal’s origins or design. He had a lot of speculation and had prepared well for any contingency, but still had no real information to give other than the fact he would consider it a crime to harm such a species if it truly did exist. Jack cut him short as he started to preach about animal rights and how special and unique this creature would have to be to be alive at all in the modern world.
Sarah’s briefing was more to the point and actually had a purpose. Gold, if any, would not be touched. The mine, if it existed, would be placed off limits because of the fact that the president had ordered it so. The geology team would follow its orders to the letter. With the assistance of Major Collins and his security team, if the mine did contain any gold deposits as the legend said, it would be treated as property of Brazil.
“Major,” Mendenhall said as he entered the ward room. “The Iwo’s helicopters are starting to line up and almost ready to start taking on Teacher.”
The helicopters would airlift the sections of the boat to the small village of Rio Feliz, on the Amazon a hundred miles west of the Peruvian border. That was where the Event Group would start its expedition, saving valuable time by flying through a gap in the Andes and going straight to the source, the confluence of the Rio Negro (the Black Tributary) that fed off the main Amazon River. The route was exactly as Captain Padilla had laid down on the map and also what he had supposedly described in the diary.
The president had supplemented information to both the Peruvian and Brazilian governments on the pretext that they were experimenting with new mapping procedures and software, and that the two governments would be the beneficiary of those experimental new devices and the more accurate underwater maps—a pretext that the team would be doing as routine procedure in any case.
It was an amazing sight to see the Seahawk helicopters, the navy’s version of the Blackhawk, lined up in the air off the stern of the John C. Stennis. One by one they would approach and hover as Jenks supervised the hookup of the sections of Teacher. Eleven Seahawks in all would ferry the sections to the village where the parts would become a whole, and everyone prayed the thing would float. The discovery team was on deck as the last section, the bow, covered in form-fitting plastic, was lifted into the air. Then the last hovering craft came in and, in amazement, they watched as the U.S. Marine Corp’s MV-22 Osprey, the stubby-winged, tilt-rotor assault craft, slowly landed on the Stennis’s flight deck, its two massive propellers making a humming sound from their perch atop the tip of the short wings. Before they realized it, a second Osprey landed in back of the first.
“I hate these things,” Carl yelled into Danielle’s ear.
“Why, because it’s a radical design?” she asked, holding her bush hat in place through the wind the Ospreys created.
“No, it’s because a marine pilot is driving that radical design!”
As they loaded their bags and personal items, Jack turned and looked at the flying bridge. There, the captain of the Stennis waved and saluted. Jack returned the gesture. The Stennis would stand off while the mission was in progress, in case they ran into trouble.
And so the third expedition was on its way to Hernando Padilla’s valley, where a beautiful lagoon was ready to spill her secrets. What this group didn’t know was the fact that another faction was already closing in on the legendary dark water.