Rescuing Amelia Earhart: Chronicles of the Nevada Navy, #2

Chapter One

29 June 1937, Lae, Papua New Guinea

4:45 PM local time, 6:45 AM GMT

Mr. Mallory, you are insane.

Amelia Earhart, reclining in a bamboo lattice cobra chair, turned her head to the open-air window. The fetid aroma of the Papua New Guinea rainforest enveloped her and her strange visitor in a brisk, shower-driven gust.

Dismissing him.

Ah. That famous profile. Mallory nodded, noting the often-unruly blond hair and a delicate nose; those well-known Nordic features forever imprinted on celluloid and glossy magazine covers. Indeed not a girl at 39, but still beautiful and intriguing, one might say.

Mallory, seated across a small teak bar table from her, turned to look out that same open-air window of the Cecil Hotel, seeing what she saw. The end of the runway--- not much more than a grass strip. Beyond that, a hangar, more a corrugated steel-covered arch, where a Lockheed Electra 10e, tail number NR16020, crouched in the equatorial heat of the golden dusk. Waiting for a minor engine repair. After a seven-hour slog from Darwin, Australia, that same day.

Perhaps. But some might say…

Richard Mallory paused. He was not a big man, Mallory. About an inch taller than Amelia, with walnut eyes, a bit of a crooked nose, and a carefully groomed mustache, trimmed just so. With his salt and pepper hair slicked back, and in every sense, from his white shirt to khaki pants, he radiated restrained arrogance.

Mallory’s clear upper-class enunciation betrayed the Eton/Sandhurst education, which had entitled him to a commission twenty years ago as a raw Lieutenant in the 15th (Scottish) Division, British Fifth Army. Just in time for the Third Battle of Ypres—Passchendaele. Lieutenant Mallory became Major Mallory within ten days as his fellow officers of higher ranks were sequentially slaughtered in charge after useless charge, earning him an unwanted Victoria Cross. The Hun hard set against the British Fifth Army assault. Now, twenty years later, a reserve Colonel—but also the Oceania Department Head of MI-6.

…Some might say, Mrs. Earhart-Putnam….

AE, Mr. Mallory. Call me AE. You don't want to sound like a publisher. She said, not taking her eyes off the two mechanics working on NR16020 in the distance.

Very well. AE. Please call me Richard. Some might say that your next leg, say, a tidy 2500-mile trip across the Pacific at night to an island barely a mile and a half long is…well….

Insane? AE turned her head, giving him the look. That same look he had seen before in a hundred magazines. The head tilted to one side, the sly smile. The famous gap in her front teeth. Point taken, Richard. You are probably a major or a colonel, aren’t you? Somehow you intelligence types are always some sort of officer, aren’t you?

Mallory was about to reply when she waved him into silence.

Look, Colonel or whatever you are. I’ve been 22,000 miles on this little sojourn around the world the hard way. I have yet to cross the Pacific, true, but with a couple more hops? I’ve done it. Got the record. That no man—or woman—has done. That transcends your petty little state politics. Your little spy games. This World Flight is something for women everywhere. We don’t just raise babies and cook dinners anymore. We fly the oceans.

Mallory nodded, uncomfortable with the lecture, knowing she had more to say.

…And it hasn't been easy or cheap. Although, in some ways, the flying was easier than the fundraising. Got any idea how much money it takes to do this?

Mallory, trying not to look bored, answered the rhetorical question anyway.

Just under $102,000, not counting the paid-for Lockheed Electra 10e, I should think---

AE interrupted, the sly smile resolving into a smirk. Now there's a surprise. A well-informed spook.

He didn't much care for spook,; as if his professional career could be boiled to a single rude Americanism. Yet Mallory hid it well, simply stirring his Scotch and soda and continuing undeterred:

…Most of which you have already spent, one can only imagine. Petrol, of course. Mechanics, parts, and such. Even sending a cablegram to Tutuila Naval Station at Samoa for fifty-six cents a word. Almost using the last of your travel checks. Accounts quite knackered, don’t you know. Tedious, really; all those little sums.

That got her attention. A moment of silence while she regarded Mallory, her eyebrows down. Then, a faint look of distaste, like watching an ugly African beetle inch toward her.

"You know, Colonel Mallory? I’ve become bored with the subject of spies and spooks. And for the life of me, I can’t imagine why. Could it be that I’ve traveled 22,000 miles, and tomorrow another 2,500 to go? And just landed after seven hard flying hours from Darwin? No. Can't be that.

"Is it because I'm exhausted by the ticker-tape parade I didn't get when I landed in Lae? No sir. Oh sure, some appreciative locals. Some of the press, yeah. No, what I actually got was some spook from MI6. A spook who wants me to pick up his spy on Nauru Island, halfway to my destination of Howland Island. The spy, says my new spook friend, has valuable knowledge, and the British—not the American— government would be most grateful for my help.

"Landing on a beach—not a runway, mind you, not a grass strip either—a beach. At night. Only by the light of the phosphorescence of the surf and a sliver of a moon, oh, and yes, there’ll be a few odd homemade lanterns defining a centerline. So pick up this spy and transport him to Howland, where he will disappear.

"Never mind the hazards of a beach landing. Or that everyone on Nauru would hear me pick up this secret spy. Oh, and don’t worry that it might cost me 80 gallons of 100-octane aviation fuel to do it. And also, never mind, I have another 1200 miles to fly in the middle of the night. Eighty gallons? That's one hour of flight time, Mr. Mallory.

Probably wouldn't occur to you that I might want another hour of flight time. An hour I might need hunting for my little airstrip at Howland in the middle of a vast ocean.

AE stood and leaned in toward Mallory, her knuckles going white on the table. Those blue-gray eyes bored into him, a stern expression that could probably intimidate most men. But, instead, Mallory merely held her gaze and raised an eyebrow.

"Colonel, I occasionally teach at Purdue University. I always tell my students that there are no dumb questions. But you have me, sir, because your question is not only dumb but insane.

Good day to you, sir. I have dinner plans for this evening, and I can assure you that I need to freshen up.

AE turned away from the table, pausing for a last look out the window at the distant hangar.

Mallory already forgotten.

AE was thinking to stop by the Electra again before returning for dinner. So she was almost surprised to hear Mallory say behind her back as she started out:

Lucky Lew Halliday.

Lewis Halliday. AE froze. Her vision instantly clouded; she steadied herself with a hand on the back of the cobra chair.

She hadn’t heard anyone say that name for twenty years.

Lewis Lucky Lew Halliday. A kaleidoscope of images finally resolved to one: a horribly disfigured young man lying in Spadina Military Hospital in Toronto, where AE was a nurse’s aide in the last year of the Great War.

A Canadian soldier was Lucky Lew, who had been mustard-gassed at Ypres in 1917 and invalided out. Invalided out, maybe, but too late, of course, his lungs were already ruined, and now tuberculosis was finishing the job. He knew it, and she knew it, yet she had spent hours reading to him and listening to his hoarse whispers, coughs, and rattles. He never saw that Christmas of 1917, and she had secretly mourned his loss. Nobody, not even GP Putnam, her husband, the Knower of All Things, knew that.

AE woodenly turned and sat heavily in the cobra chair, the interlaced bamboo reeds creaking softly. Blood pounded in her ears, her vision clouded, and her knuckles went white as she gripped the arms of the chair. All of which must be playing across her face for Mallory to enjoy. Unable to meet Mallory’s eyes, knowing the smug expression he must have, his easy triumph over the famous Amelia Earhart.

But no, when she looked up, the brown eyes were not even on her, just a distant look of infinite sadness.

Finally, he picked up his Scotch, rotated it slightly, and watched the amber liquid swirl in the twilight.

"Your young Mr. Halliday? A victim of chemical weapons. Now banned by the Geneva Convention, of course. But lately…lately a most alarming development. You are probably aware that another Sino-Japanese war is brewing as we speak. The Nazis taking an interest, don’t you know.

The Japanese and the Nazis seem to have quite reinvented poison chemical agents at a so-called tropical disease research station on an extremely remote island. Our intelligence indicates that these poisonous chemicals are so lethal that even a small amount could kill 500,000 civilians in China. Which is what the Japanese plan to do. Bit of a demonstration of Japanese power. In Nanking. In about 90 days.

Mallory paused, looking at her, one eyebrow raised. Eyebrow raising must be an MI6 thing.

AE just stared.

Nauru?

Indeed.

AE leaned into the table and put her head in her hands, absently looking at the fine grain of the polished teak tabletop. Searching for a way out of this.

But Nauru is under Australian control. Plus, you Brits have your own phosphate mines there. So, how can they get away with this? Can’t the police or your army simply arrest them?

Mallory nodded passively, with a hint of satisfaction. She was taking the bait.

"An excellent question, AE. The unit on Nauru is called the Pacific Islands Unity Disease Research Station. It is quite popular with the locals, providing free medical treatment to all islanders—including our Commonwealth Australian brothers. At some expense, we know that the unit reports directly to Dr. Ishii at the rather infamous Unit 731, which is even now experimenting on Chinese civilians in occupied northeast China.

Thousands have already been killed at Unit 731 by toxic chemicals and biological germs. But our Australian brothers-in-arms? Choose not to believe us, the old sods. They have quite the cozy trade pacts with Mr. Jap, don’t you know, and they will have none of it. As to our phosphate mining company? Of course, they can do nothing. Except smuggle in the odd intelligence officer.

Amelia's turn to interrogate the master:

"But you know all this. So what? Just get your spy out the same way you got him in. All you'll do anyway is have one of your starched-shirt diplomats from—what? The Foreign Office? Write a tut-tut letter to the Emperor.

"That's worked out pretty well with your Nazi friends so far. All your tut-tut letters and what’s happened? You boys have given Hitler the keys to the candy store, haven’t you? First, they got the Rhineland without even a whimper from you or the French; now they want Austria. And your wuss of a PM? Neville Chamberlain? He’ll give it to them. Didn’t Hitler say, about your boy Neville, that he was ‘…an impertinent busybody who spoke the ridiculous jargon of an outmoded democracy?’

So what’s the point? A lot of blather, no action, and lots of innocents die. That’s what governments do, isn’t it?

AE almost felt sorry for Mallory, hamstrung by the cross-conflicting politics of a spook in HM’s government.

She had him.

So why didn’t he appear concerned?

Mallory seemed interested in his fingernails as if the last manicure had somehow been imperfect.

Defeated? Not hardly.

Mrs. Earhart-Putnam. I don’t think you quite understand how we operate in the Oceania Department of MI6.

Oh, yes, there’s that, Colonel. How could one forget? Everyone else, the slow-witted army, the navy, the politicos at Whitehall, the Americans; none too nimble in the brains department. But you, you MI6 wizards, you, no, you’re magicians, are you?

Ah. The famous Earhart sarcasm.

Our agent, AE, will get a sample of this new poison.

Now there’s an original thought. So? AE’s face was flushed, eyebrows down, muscles tensing in fight-or-flight.

So then the note from Whitehall to the Emperor won’t be tut-tut. It will be tut-tut-tut. You’re boring me, Mr. Magician. Get a sample? Send it by Royal Mail. Or Pony Express. I don’t care. I have a flight to plan.

AE took a deep breath. Tired from the long flight. That this self-serving spook would use Lew Halliday; pull his brave visage out, and soil it with cheap political theater. She released the breath, a momentary long blink.

Once again, she stood, almost overturning the cobra chair; this time, she was leaving.

Mallory merely raised his eyebrows. Again.

Not quite, AE. Our intelligence officer? First, the officer will arrive at your aircraft with the sample. Then, as you take off, the charges she set will go off, annihilating the entire facility and all the poisons. Match point to us. At least for a while.

AE paused, hands on hips, an unfocussed look at nothing.

She?

Ah, yes. I may not have mentioned that our intelligence officer is a woman.

A bemused smile from Amelia.

Colonel? I may find that I have a few minutes before I must freshen up for my dinner appointment.

***

At that very moment, two US Navy vessels, the tug Ontario and the seaplane tender Swan, plus the Coast Guard cutter Itasca—all assigned as guardships to report weather conditions and relay radio messages for the Earhart World Record flight—had been patiently waiting for almost a week at their designated guardship stations. The Ontario was 200nm southwest of Nauru. The Swan was halfway between Honolulu and Howland Island, AE’s destination, and the Itasca swinging at anchor off Howland Island.

But there was a third vessel, a late arrival, requested urgently and privately by President Franklin Roosevelt in an eyes-only cable to David Gunn at Pyramid Lake, Nevada. David Gunn, the grandson of the founder of the Nevada Navy, had immediately met with Admiral Horatio Herbert Sims, the Nevada Navy’s Chief of Naval Operations.

But what was and is the Nevada Navy? Which no one has ever heard of, except for the gold braid ranks of the world’s major navies. Founded in 1888, Nevada Navy combat rescue submarines have been prowling the world’s oceans from their Anaho Island base at Pyramid Lake, Nevada. Transiting the Great Basin Cavern River to reach the Pacific. And called ‘Ghost Boats’ by victims of hurricanes, tsunamis and natural disasters. The submarines appear, rescue and disappear like ghosts. Sometimes, they even battle to rescue, thus ‘combat rescue.’ Plus, equally essential missions: deter overfishing, illegal whale harvesting, iceberg patrol, and subsea anomaly charting-- latent volcanoes.

But this? This was something else.

Admiral Sims immediately dispatched a flash message to the Nevada Navy Mako-class ghost boat submarine Whitetip, Captain James Lord Jim Aubrey, commanding. The Whitetip was conducting performance trials and testing off Hawaii with the new Goshawk heliplanes recently deployed to the Nevada Navy submarine fleet.

DTD: 30JUN37 1315ZULU

TO: WHITETIP, AUBREY COMMANDINGMAKE PREP IMMEDIATE DEPARTURE TO HOWLAND ISLAND 0 DEG N 176DEG37MIN21SEC W TO EXTRACT PERSON NEFERTITI AND PACKAGE REPEAT NEFERTITI AND PACKAGE FROM ARRIVING EARHART FLIGHT STOP

EARHART ETA HOWLAND EXPECT 1 JULY TIME TBD STOP

UTILIZE ANY REASONABLE MEANS TO EXTRACT PERSON NEFERTITI STOP

AVOID DETECTION BY USCG ITASCA ANY USN OR ANY IJN IF POSSIBLE STOP

ENROUTE RENDEZVOUS WITH PAA SAMOA CLIPPER AT KINGMAN REEF 6 DEG 24 MIN N 162 DEG 28 MIN W DUE YOUR 30JUN POSIT APPROX 1500ZULU STOP

DEPLANE PERSON MCFARLAND CRITICAL YOUR MISSION STOP

ROE NOVEMBER KILO IN EFFECT REPEAT ROE NOVEMBER KILO IN EFFECT STOP

USE WITH DISCRETION STOP

IF FEASIBLE AS ALWAYS STOP

SIMS NN CNO ANAHO ISLAND SENDS

Within the hour, a ghostly gray-black shark-submarine stood out to sea, veeing a whitewater wake at 25 knots through the darkening waters of the late-afternoon turquoise Pacific. Whitetip, some 150nm southwest of Honolulu, turned into the wind to trap—recover—the approaching Goshawk heliplane on the submarine’s tiny aft hangar deck. Moments later, the Goshawk, pinned like a butterfly to the flight deck elevator, blades folded, descended into the hangar bay. The folded-back hangar deck closed over the hangar bay. The submarine’s bridge retracted into the dorsal fin of the great shark-sub, and Whitetip submerged, banking into a starboard turn and increasing speed to 40 knots.

Heading 230 degrees; 11 hours to Kingman Reef.

Whitetip was on the way.

And Amelia would soon be on her way to an unforeseen rendezvous near Howland Island.

Chapter Two

Wardroom NN Whitetip

300 miles SSE of Honolulu Hawaii

8:50 PM local time, 6:50 AM GMT

Whitetip’s Executive Officer (XO), Theodore Christopher ‘Kit’ Carson, flipped the radio message flimsy back onto the scarred teak wardroom table. He brushed back longish black hair, rested his elbows on the table, and exhaled as he did after a run through the high desert mountains around Pyramid Lake.

Sir, what in the hell are they thinking back there?

Appears to be a bit of the skullduggery, eh, Number One?

Skullduggery, Skipper? Those guys don’t get laid nearly enough at Anaho Island. This is horseshit. And these Rules of Engagement? ROE November Kilo? That’s a shooting war. Could get us killed in a heartbeat. Ever see a submarine get opened like a tin can?

Captain James, ‘Lord Jim’ Aubrey, could hardly disagree. And in fact, yes, he had seen a submarine opened like a tin can. He was aboard the HM Submarine M1 when it was ripped open like a tin can just 12 years ago.

Unable to shut out the memory now, he poured himself a mug of Earl Grey, made with loose leaves in a proper strainer, not those wretched tea bags the Americans so loved.

Reflecting now. Yes, the M1 disaster. It was how he had wound up with the Nevada Navy.

Not known to history, but James Aubrey was the sole survivor of the sinking of the HMS M1, an outsized gun cruiser submarine built for World War I. The M1, by that time, was more or less a useless relic when she encountered the S.S. Vidar, a Swedish freighter, one cold November night in 1925.

At that time, Aubrey was an Oxford-educated gunnery sub-lieutenant, temporarily assigned to M1, not even on the official crew list. M1 was cruising at periscope depth in the English Channel shortly after midnight when the Vidar slammed into the sub, splitting the main gun turret. Opening the turret and the magazine—where Sub-lieutenant Aubrey was performing an ammunition check—to the sea. The gushing whitewater flood swept Aubrey out of the massive submarine. After an eternity, he surfaced, choking on diesel oil in an undulating lake of debris and bodies. Then, rubbing the oil out of his eyes, he glimpsed the disappearing stern lights of Vidar. His only hope for rescue vanished into the cold, starry night.

Sub-lieutenant Aubrey thinking---done for. He had no life jacket, but even if he had one, a life jacket would allow him to float until he died from hypothermia, certainly within the hour. Defying logic, however, the ingenious sub-Lieutenant Aubrey did what he could to stay afloat. Removing his pants, he knotted off the cuffs and trapped air inside the pant legs, giving him two small leaky pontoons to keep him more or less afloat.

Then he switched on his waterproof flashlight, which had been on a lanyard around his neck as he had worked in the dim ammunition locker before the collision. Now he could search his oily slick of debris for any survivors, or failing that, anything to help him float, signal, or live another hour.

Nothing.

Nothing but ripped corpses, cork fragments, odd bits of wood and oil. Except…

Caught as a momentary glint in the beam of his flashlight. Something distant but vertical—above the waves. At first, he thought it was some illusion, some trick of the sea at night as he slid up and down the freezing black rollers of the dark English Channel.

Then again. That glint; the object looming larger and closer. And moving. A fin. A shark.

Sub-lieutenant Aubrey now done for, but twice over. How many ways could a sailor die? Freeze from hypothermia? Or just a quick but greasy meal for a blue, a thresher, or a hammerhead?

But…but the creature…surfaced? It was huge. A shark? Couldn’t be; too large. Not possible.

It was a vessel—a damn submarine! As he watched, between icy waves dunking him, the dorsal sail split to reveal a platform, the submarine’s bridge emerging, complete with periscopes and some sort of revolving plate.

He had never seen the like. Then the submarine turned toward his oily patch of debris, a searchlight snapping on from the bridge, scanning the ocean around the massive shark sub. His numbed brain could hardly absorb that when the sub turned, it was propelled by a tall, articulated mechanical fin at the stern, the upper half of the fin darkly protruding through the rolling ocean. If he hadn't been semi-conscious, he would have termed the ‘caudal tail’ as an Oxford-educated college man.

Whoever they were, not RN, indeed, because there was no such craft in the Royal Navy, he was in no condition to be picky. With his ebbing strength, he waved his lanyarded torch—his flashlight, which now felt like it weighed 20 stone. He thought he kept waving until a boat picked him up, but in fact, a single wave of his light—before he passed out—attracted the attention of the bridge crew of the Nevada Navy submarine NN Whale Shark. Whale Shark was transiting the Channel, headed back to the Nevada Navy base in Cuba when the Boat’s alert sonar operator detected the collision and alerted Captain Morrisey.

When he recovered consciousness in Whale Shark’s Med Bay, Aubrey told Morrisey about the collision. Morrisey just shook his head sadly. There were no other survivors. Whale Shark had sonar-searched the wreck and then sent its mini-sub to examine the hulk in detail. M1’s crew had died shortly after the collision; no watertight doors were closed, and M1 was steaming under peacetime conditions. The entire sub had flooded within minutes.

Morrisey sighed; nothing for it. Looking down at the sandy-haired survivor, a bandage over a deep cut from his chin to the right ear. Then he said: we can let you off near Portsmouth, but you see, we cannot directly contact the Royal Navy. Only a few in the Admiralty know about us.

Aubrey had merely said: tell me more about your vessel—and this Nevada Navy of yours. My future with the RN is over. Someone has to take the blame for M1, and it will undoubtedly be the sole survivor, said Aubrey, particularly an officer, regardless of his responsibility. They would say: You were assigned to check the ammunition stores? They would say: Why weren’t you advising your commander of the potential danger of the approaching vessel instead? Ride in and shoot the wounded; the job of the high command.

Six weeks later, he was at the Nevada Navy Academy. Nicknamed ‘Lord Jim’ by his amused classmates at the Academy for his accent, Oxford education, and encyclopedic knowledge of Shakespeare, he was an XO in the boats by 1930 and now the Captain of the new Mako-class submarine Whitetip here in 1937.

His thought train was now interrupted by his executive officer.

Skipper, this frag order sounds a helluva lot like we’re gonna go messin’ in somebody else’s business. Commander Carson looked up at his Captain, a tall, lean man, immaculately fitted with his white polo shirt and tan pants, his pronounced nose almost Gallic, and dark brown eyes inviting confidence. Like a priest.

Almost spooky sometimes, was Lord Jim.

The Captain said nothing.

The XO smoothed the message over the teak table and then sat back against the red leather cushion of the wardroom table booth.

It all sounds like spy shit to me. These November Kilo Rules of Engagement? That means you can shoot the shit outta’ whoever you want. USN, RN, Imperial Japanese Navy—the IJN. Barracuda torpedoes, chain guns, our brand new Goshawk heliplane, rockets, machine guns, Marines. Jesus, we never see November Kilo ROE. Somethin’ is way the hell up. Did we just now decide to go to war against the rest of the fucken world?

Delicately put as ever, Number One. But you are quite correct.

Ah. His executive officer, or Number One, as all RN Captains called their executive officers. An American cowboy was Commander Kit Carson. Or an Indian. He was both, and a muscular 5-foot 10, jet black hair and dark eyes, the dark skin betraying his half-breed heritage. His grandfather, the original Kit Carson, had taken several Indian wives. However, Kit’s grandmother, Making-Out-Road, was a Cheyenne with two undocumented children, one of them a male, Thomas Abraham Carson, Executive Officer Kit’s father. Who taught him to ride the high ridges of the Ruby Mountains in Nevada, track the mountain goat, and wrangle sheep and cows. And by example, drink and shoot. Thomas Abraham once did a 2-year stretch at Nevada State Prison for shooting a man in Virginia City. A white rancher figured to cut up a half-breed for fun at the Bucket of Blood Saloon before Thomas Abraham convinced him otherwise with a Marlin Number 32 Standard 1875 Pocket Revolver. Didn’t kill the man, but half-breeds were prohibited from shooting white men, regardless of the provocation.

Aubrey’s Number One was intelligent and insightful but calm and dangerous in a firefight or fistfight. Nevertheless, Aubrey was not at all unhappy with Commander Kit Carson as his executive officer.

Rough men—and women, frankly—all tough and as competent as Aubrey could make them. Yet it sometimes left Aubrey missing the rather rigid but predictable and comfortable decorum of the RN. He could do nothing about it because the Nevada Navy was a cross-section of people. His crew was a polyglot of races and origins; North and South Americans, Europeans, Africans, Asians, Russians, and even a few Polynesians.

He needed and required a disciplined crew who would embrace—not love—his training regimens. He needed such a crew, and he had trained such a crew to almost automatic perfection. Would he ever get used to women on his boat? About a third of his crew was women. But, of course, he respected the women for their talents and skills at their jobs, from the engine room to the torpedo room to the aircrew—Airedales, as his Number One called all aviators. Women on the Boat? No.

"You really gonna run with this?

…Skipper? You still with us?

Aubrey realized that he had been staring at his tea. Not drinking, not moving. Listening to the soft whir of ventilation in the wardroom. Somewhere in the boat, a compressed air jet and a grinding tool. Typical sounds of the Boat in transit. In peacetime. But ROE November Kilo? Could be battle stations and silent running very soon. This time? Maybe not just a drill.

Ah, yes, Number One. Woolgathering, I should imagine. And no, I am not going to ‘run with this,’ as you say. We shall stay on course for Kingman Reef; no harm in that. High time to sort this out with the gold braid lads, I should think. Can hardly go ‘round with November Kilo, finger on the trigger and that sort of thing. I shall send a message or two back to the Admiral at Anaho Island.

Yep. Carson blew out a breath and muttered, Explainin’ to the brass how come they’re wrong. Always worked for me.

Did you say something, Number One?

Naw, Skipper. Let’s light ‘em up.

***

30 June 1937, Lae, Papua New Guinea

2:05 PM local time, 4:05 AM GMT

Amelia Earhart found herself in an unusual position, particularly concerning men: she was nervous. After the discussion with Mallory last night, she now had to get Fred Noonan’s concurrence with this crazy plan.

Fred Noonan was about as solid and unflappable as a man could be. Born in Chicago, Fred was moved to Seattle at a young age, where he shipped out on the Merchant Marine when he was 17. He spent the next 22 years in ships of various sizes, eventually rounding Cape Horn seven times, three of those trips under sail.

In the early twenties, Noonan received his pilot’s license and worked for Pan Am as a navigator, successfully navigating the rugged Sikorsky 42 flying boats across the Pacific. His navigation included more than a dozen trips to Wake Island, which was not much larger nor more remote than Howland Island, their next destination, about 2500 miles away.

Navigating 2500 miles across the Pacific to a remote atoll was not scary for Noonan. For him, it was all charts, sun and star shot observations, and calculations; he had performed such analyses thousands of times, whether on ships or planes.

This was not risking his life.

Different from landing on hard-packed beach sand or coral at night with no lighting except for a few homemade lanterns down the centerline of a flat stretch of beach. For him—why in the name of God would he agree to do something as crazy as this?

Amelia frowned.

What motivates a guy who has survived having three ships torpedoed out from under him during the Great War? But, hey, let’s pick up a spy from Nauru in the middle of the night--- from a beach landing? It'll be a little break in the long flight. Stretch your legs, maybe?

This was risking his life.

Amelia had told Mallory that she would do it only if Noonan would, as if she had a choice. If my navigator opts out, you’re done. Mallory agreed, of course, as if he had a choice.

And now, as Fred spotted her drinking milk in the bar in the Cecil Hotel, he waved. She knew he had just been to the radio shack for a time check and looked happy. He was ready to go whenever they could get the Lae-Howland weather and the mechanics to sign off on the engine repairs.

So, AE, did we hear from Tutuila Naval Station about the weather? Or are they sitting on their collective butts, which might also damage their collective brains?

Noonan chuckled at his joke and plopped into the cobra chair across from AE, noting her lack of response.

Can’t be that bad, AE. Why so glum?

And she told him. She told him everything. Mallory, Lucky Lew, how the Japanese manufactured the poison chemicals on Nauru. Unit 731. Ishii’s experiments. The planned Japanese ‘demonstration’ would kill 500,000 Chinese in Nanking. The Nauru facility. The spy setting charges. The extra 80 octane that Mallory said that the spy would have waiting. Watching his expression change from carefree amusement to caution to incredulity.

A long silence between them as AE allowed Noonan to collect his thoughts, along with a mid-afternoon Scotch. Served by Timka, the same willowy, smiling, flirting Melanesian girl that he had so admired when they first arrived yesterday.

Fred Noonan didn’t even notice Timka or the Scotch. Just stared out the open window as if AE didn’t exist.

Finally, he turned to her, his craggy features looking older than his 44 years. His blue eyes bored into hers.

OK, AE. I’m in.

She was astonished. Just like that? Before she could help herself, she blurted out:

You are? But why?

Noonan smiled. He lifted his glass to her and seemed to take a deep breath of a humid afternoon breeze flowing through the open window.

"OK, AE. Cards on the table. Something we have not talked about for 22,000 miles. The truth about us both. What we’re doing…what we’re doing is a publicity stunt. It will be a world record of sorts, of course. Here's the rub. Wiley Post has already gone around the world—twice! The US Army even did it. Now, what we’re doing tomorrow? Any S-42 Sikorsky seaplane could do it and make it look easy…and take enough passengers to Howland Island to make up a football team.

"So what’s our record? That we did it the hard way? Across the Pacific around the equator? Big deal. The Clippers will do that every two weeks in four or five years. So what?

AE’s face reddened. Not a subject she wanted to pursue. But Noonan continued.

And it can’t be just that famed aviatrix Amelia Earhart thing. Everybody will say, hey, she had to have a man navigate—tell her where she was going.

AE started to rise, fury in her eyes.

Noonan just smiled, holding out extended palms.

"No offense intended, AE. You know that is the way it will play in the press. Ninety percent hooray for Amelia Earhart. Ten percent yawn. Not much of a record. Nevertheless, it gets you speaking fees, faculty position offers, and