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WELCOME TO DOC FORD COUNTRY!
WHERE Marine biologist, Dr. Marion Ford and his
. . . mystic hipster sailor pal,
Tomlinson might or might not be modeled after real people but, to their many kindred readers, the two men are as real as Florida’s Gulf Coast and the islands that provide the settings for Randy’s novels. If you have read all nineteen novels (soon to be twenty) you’ll recognize a few faces here, a few names and more than a few quirky characters. But if you are new to Doc Ford country, we hope you, too, find a home among the sun-baked, laid-back people who inhabit Florida’s Mangrove Coast of fiction and fact.
![SAMPLE CHAPTERS FROM
NIGHT MOVES
COPYRIGHT RANDY WAYNE WHITE G.P.Putnam’s Sons 2012
NIGHT MOVES
BY RANDY WAYNE WHITE
DOC FORD # 20
Release Date: 3 March 2013
ONE
We were half-a-mile high in a bright Everglades sky, on the trail of five Navy torpedo bombers that vanished in 1945, yet my friend, Tomlinson, remained fixated on the fate of our marina's cat which had gone missing only two days earlier.
The curse of obsession is one of the few qualities my hipster neighbor and I share.
"The problem with cats," he lectured through the plane's intercom, "is they have the ability to block human brain probes whenever they're in the damn mood -- hunger and horniness, the only exceptions. Otherwise, I would have tracked him down last night. Crunch & Des is always on the prowl, which I used to admire. Not now. Either something bad happened, or he's behaving like an ingrate. Showing off just to prove he doesn't need us, the inferior species. Doc'll back me up on this one. Won't you, Doc?"
Crunch & Des is the communal cat at Dinkin's Bay Marina, Sanibel Island, west coast of Florida, where I run a small company, Sanibel Biological Supply. When, as a young stray, he appeared at a Friday night dock party, a friendly debate ensued over a fitting name for an ink-black kitten with six toes on each paw. By the time three favorites had emerged --Poe, Sasquatch and Ernest -- many cold beers (and saucers of milk) had been consumed, and debate had become mildly contentious. Fortunately, Mack, who owns the marina, intervened. He had just finished one of the late Phillip Wylie's books, so honored the writer by naming the cat after Wylie's two hard-nosed 1940s fishing guides. It seemed an absurd choice at the time, looking at that sleeping, pot bellied kitten curled next to a beer keg. Within a year, though, the cat was big enough, and sufficiently scarred from battle, to shoulder two names.
"If a gator grabbed him, Tomlinson continued. "I think I would have sensed the panic vibes. Like alarm bells, you know? With sentient beings I care about -- I don't think of cats as animals, understand -- day or night, my subconscious maintains a telepathic link. Not always, of course; I'm not foolproof, but usually. If bobcats had jumped him, same thing. That's why his disappearance has me so freaked. I think the little bastard's just screwing with my head. Like when women intentionally try to make us jealous -- but, hey, don't get me started on that subject."
Beside me, at the controls of his beautiful little Maule M-7 seaplane, Dan Futch, the best pilot I know, glanced at me, his expression asking, You trust this guy?
I nodded, Usually, before adjusting my headphones and saying, "Shouldn't your mystic powers be focused on Flight Nineteen? Five planes, fourteen men vanish without a trace -- make a telepathic link with pilots who've been dead for seventy years, I'll be impressed. We'll look for the cat when we get back. If he hasn't turned-up already."
Tomlinson was sitting behind me, so put a hand on the back of Dan's seat to make his point. "Doc gets pissy when dealing with stuff that can't be explained, you ever notice? Same with anything that requires emotion. He's crazy about the cat, that's the problem. Which is why he wants to change the subject. Jealous, too! A month ago, Crunch & Des spent a week on my boat instead of sleeping in Doc's lab, and the man practically accused me of kidnapping." Tomlinson nudged my shoulder. "You asked the fishing guides if I'd drugged him with cannabis catnip. Admit it." He paused for a thoughtful moment. "Besides . . . they didn't all die, I already told you. Not all fourteen men, anyway. One of them is still alive -- or was until recently."
Absurd. He was speaking of a missing aviator who had lifted-off from Lauderdale sixty-eight years ago, on a routine flight that should have taken two hours, but, instead, has baffled generations of searchers, and spawned the myth of the Bermuda Triangle.
I ignored my friend by looking out the starboard window, and asking Dan, "We're close to Big Cypress Swamp, right?"
The pilot's eyes shifted to the GPS screen mounted above a console of gauges and electronics. "Parks aren't marked on this software version. Everglades City is about fifteen miles off our tail; Tamiami Trail a few miles north. No roads or landmarks for the next thirty miles until we're closer to Miami. So you can see why it'd be easy to get lost without electronics. Or think you're still over water. The more research I do, Doc, the more I'm convinced it could have happened."
Futch, too, was thinking back to that stormy winter night when the five torpedo bombers went missing. It was possible his theory was valid, but I was skeptical despite the fact my pilot pal knows a lot more about aviation and missing planes than I'll ever know. We were over a sea of sorts -- a sea of scud-colored swamp and sawgrass; the horizon a plain of flaxen gold in the late morning sun. Below, the earth was pocked with limestone implosions, random as craters on the moon, and there were islands of cypress trees that illustrated isolation, each silver dome set miles apart, alone, eroded into tear-shapes by the slow flow of water draining seaward off the Florida plateau. A river of grass, Marjorie Stoneman Douglas had described it, which is accurate, but does not capture the immenseness of the lower forty-eight's largest roadless, unpopulated wilderness -- the Everglades.
"We've got some thermals building up ahead," Futch said, "but that's what we're here for, right? And that high pressure system is still moving toward us from the northeast. So it's looking like we chose the right day." The man was preparing us for the bumpy ride ahead, but his manner said, No need to be concerned.
I wasn't. Much of my traveling life has been spent in choppers and small planes, and I've done some flying myself. No where near Futch's league, though, a man who has logged more than twenty-six thousand hours in the air, and is among the most respected seaplane pilots in the country. In my earphones, I heard Tomlinson respond, "So far, the smoothest ride ever." Then added, "You ever think about flying into a water spout? You know, just to see what would happen? I did it once in my sailboat. Really an interesting experience. Maybe not today, but let your subconscious work on the idea. I'd go with you."
In reply to the pilot's questing look, I nodded, then shook my head: Yes, Tomlinson had sailed into a waterspout. No, he was not crazy. With my expression, I conceded, Well . . . maybe a little.
As we communicated, the little plane shuddered then began bucking at the rim of a thermal, which was not unexpected. But then something in the tail section went BANG. For a moment, the seaplane paused in midair, listing mildly to port, as if it, too, was surprised, and suddenly undecided about which laws of physics applied. Beside me, I was aware that the steering yolk had lost resistance, moving freely as a trombone slide in Futch's hands.
"Pitch control elevator," he muttered, "it's gone," which is something you never want to hear from a pilot, yet he said it coolly, as if he'd anticipated the possibility. Had maybe even practiced what to do. At the same instant, the plane teetered nose-heavy, like a rollercoaster that has topped a hill, then we dropped from the sky like a dart, the propeller pulling us downward. The sick sensation of my stomach falling slower than my chest plastered me to the seat. I thrust out my hands to stop the earth from accelerating toward us, but the windshield flooded the cockpit with mushrooming details of where we would soon impact: a prairie of lilies, rock and sawgrass; a film of black water glittering beneath.
Pilots use the abbreviation G-lock to describe the loss of consciousness that occurs when excessive gravitational force drains blood from the brain. Maybe that's what happened to me, because the next few seconds were a blur of images and sensations. I was aware of Dan working feverishly at the controls, his right hand darting between the trim wheel and the throttle, while his left babied the steering yoke. Even wearing headphones, sound was obliterated by engine noise, the airstream howl of chattering aluminum, so those moments passed in a roaring silence. Later, Tomlinson would swear he'd shouted, "Looks like we'll be on the ground early!" before whispering some Sanskrit chant. Maybe it was true. If so, his words didn't register. All I remember clearly is taking comfort in the confident flow of Futch's hands moving among the controls, all the while my eyes fixed, unblinking, on a patch of limestone that was hurtling toward my face.
Gradually, though, I became aware of the plane's changing angle of descent. We were still plummeting toward the hardpan, but on an incline that suggested we might hit belly first, and not auger in like an arrow. Great! Emergency crews would be able to identify us piece by piece instead of scraping us off the ground with shovels. Then, off to starboard, a flooded sink hole came into view, and I felt hopeful. The pond wasn't large, but at least it would soften our impact when the seaplane's floats made contact. Maybe I pointed, maybe I called out advice, I'm not sure. But it only caused Futch to shake his head and raise his voice above the din, yelling, "No -- the grass! Water will kill us!" He stabbed at the trim wheel, then applied throttle. Increase speed while landing? That was a new one. Seconds later, as the earth rushed up to crush us, the man hollered, "Hold on guys, we're going in hot!"
Yes we were.
One hand on the door latch, my eyes moved to the air speed indicator while Futch tilted the nose until blue sky filled the windshield. We were doing a hundred knots, and still gaining speed as we ascended. The odds of surviving were plummeting just as fast.
On those rare occasions, when imagining how I will deal with the inevitable, I embrace the hope I'll accept my last moments as a rational man, which is to say dispassionately, beyond the reach of panic. Which is pure damn fantasy. I was too numb for panic, but did feel a suffocating dread that, perhaps, is as inevitable as death itself. Worse, that fear was blended with regret -- regret for all the infinite experiences, done and undone, that vanish with the last thump of our own fragile hearts. At the end, in truth, my thought-stream was neither detached nor rational, just pitifully human: Not yet! I don't want to die! Not like this!
Die in a small plane, on a sunny February morning, searching for something that is synonymous with paranormal weirdoes, and the UFO lunatic fringe? What a damn ridiculous way for a rational man -- a respected marine biologist! -- to end his years.
Not that I'm a believer, but Tomlinson had implied a spiritual verity by speaking on behalf of all our sorry asses: God must alternately flood the eons with ironic laughter -- or his grieving tears.
CHAPTER TWO
I would not have wasted a minute searching for the iconic Flight Nineteen, let alone a day flying around Florida, if Dan Futch hadn't asked me to get involved. The man comes from Old Florida waterman stock, a forth generation fishing guide when he's not flying charters, and he's as solid and smart as they come.
It didn't matter that Futch had convinced me there was a statistical chance the bombers had disappeared in the Gulf or Everglades, not in the Atlantic, as most believed. It didn't matter that, out of all the so-called "experts" on Flight Nineteen, few had done enough original research to be credible. And those few, with rare exception, agreed that there were so many variables, so few facts, that it was impossible to reach an unimpeachable conclusion about the fate of those five planes.
I joined the hunt because Dan is Dan Futch. True, he'd helped me land a controversial tarpon project in Boca Grande Pass, so I owed him a favor. But he is also among the most competent men I know -- a quality that runs in his family.
A month ago, Futch had landed his seaplane in Dinkin's Bay, and appeared in the doorway of my laboratory carrying a briefcase. I assumed it had something to do with the tarpon study I had recently completed. Wrong -- nor was it a purely social call, but that was okay, too. We've been friends for years, and he has arrived carrying all sorts of odd objects -- from a small brass canon he had salvaged, to a hydraulic oyster shucker -- but a leather briefcase was unexpected.
"Take a look at this, Doc," he'd said, unbuckling the hasps. "One of my nephews found it snorkeling. What do you think?"
I'd been making notes on a gravid stingray penned outside because the animal was too big for the aquaria that line the walls of my lab. But I stopped what I was doing, and said, "What'd you find this time?"
On the marble top of the chemical station, Futch placed a triad of levers affixed to a metal plate. Beneath a patina of barnacles, the levers were forged of brass and stainless, still solid but frozen by corrosion. On the plate was die-stamped, MIXTURE, in military block letters. Enough barnacles had been sanded away that I could also read AUTO LEAN/AUTO RICH/FULL RICH on a tracking rim that guided the levers. In what might have been yellow paint, remnants of numbers were barely visible along the aft edge of the plate. Serial numbers? Possibly. The apparatus had the weight and feel of something that had been precisely machined, engineered to meet demanding specs and tolerances.
"You want those numbers checked under a microscope?" I'd asked. "It won't fit, but I can drop the viewing tray, or maybe we can rig something. At lowest power, we might get more detail. It's from the controls of an old airplane, right?"
What Dan's nephew had found was the throttle assembly from a World War II torpedo bomber, an Avenger. The Avenger, as Dan would explain, was the largest single engine war plane of that era. The ship carried a crew of three -- pilot, radioman and gunner -- plus a single thousand pound torpedo, along with a lot of clunky radio equipment that, today, would have been distilled into something the size of an iPod. The plane had a thirty-yard wingspan, a range of a thousand miles, and cruised at 140 knots, or about 160 MPH. Fully fueled, even carrying a payload, the plane could stay aloft at cruising speed for six hours or more.
"That's key to what makes this interesting," Dan had told me. "Six hours of flight time, and a range of a thousand miles. Remember that -- it'll help you keep an open mind."
The comment piqued my curiosity, yet I failed to make the connection with the fabled Flight Nineteen. No reason I should. Why would a Futch be interested in a bomber squadron that had, according to legend, been abducted by aliens, or disappeared into a time warp? For him, it would have been as out of character as expressing an interest in aroma therapy, or vampires . . .
[Futch hands Doc a book and summary of the few facts and figures regarding Flight 19 that are verifiable.]
. . . . I looked up from my reading long enough to reassure myself by saying, "You're too smart to believe in the Bermuda Triangle thing. What happened to those men might be a mystery. But there's nothing mysterious about planes or ships disappearing at sea, which no one knows better than --"
"You're preaching to the choir," Futch had interrupted. "Even in shallow water, there's nothing harder than finding a small chunk of anything in a big chunk of ocean. Doc, the only reason those planes haven't been found is because no one's found them. Sounds simple minded, I know, but there you go. At least, no one realizes they found them."
The emphasis implied an interesting possibility. Modern fishermen use electronics to scan the ocean's bottom for what they call "structure." It is a generic term that applies to any rock, hole, ledge or three dimensional object that provides shelter and prey for fish. Fisherman don't much care what constitutes the structure, and the locations are kept secret, always logged by precise GPS coordinates. These coordinates are known as "numbers."
Every off-shore fisherman accumulates a list of known structures, and those numbers are hard currency in fishing circles. Numbers are jealously guarded, although sometimes traded and occasionally sold. The lucky few who stumble onto an undiscovered piece of structure, however, keep their mouths shut. They trust no one. The smart ones use all sorts of trickery to disguise their true destination when they head off shore. Rather than be seen fishing a new number, the smart ones will drift the site, engine cowling open as if they've broken down. A virgin chunk of structure is a fishing gold mine to its discoverer -- and also its claim jumpers.
"I see what you're getting at," I said. "Particularly over the last ten years. Digital sonar is a dozen times better than the old white line recorders, and GPS is more accurate than ever. Could be that one, maybe all five Avengers, have been found, but no one's bothered to dive the numbers and see what's down there. That's what you're thinking?"
"The odds are even better if they went down in less than two or three hundred feet of water," he'd responded. "Back in the seventies, when Mel Fisher's bunch finally found the Atocia, divers had to dodge all sorts of fish hooks and lures snagged on stacks of silver bars. Wouldn't be the first time an important wreck has been found but not identified."
I nodded, familiar with the story. I told Dan I'd had a similar experience, a few years back, when Tomlinson and I formed a little salvage company to recover the manifest of a wreck we'd found off Sanibel Island. Anglers had been working the spot for years -- lots of broken leaders and hooks -- but we were the first to actually see what was on the bottom.
"It's kind of funny when you picture it," Futch had observed. "Some poor fisherman cussing his bad luck, pissed off 'cause he's lost a three dollar lure, not a clue in the world he's just snagged a fortune in Spanish treasure. Whole time, it was right there under his feet." Futch had paused, anticipating my reaction to what he said next. "But that's only If the planes ditched at sea. Which has never been proven."
It was a pet theory of his, I could tell. So I'd motioned to the throttle plate. "But you said your nephew found this thing snorkeling. Even if he was close to land, it couldn't have been that deep. How much water?"
What I wanted to ask was where the throttle had been found. But such a question is a breach of protocol in every branch of saltwater discipline: fishing, diving and salvage recovery. So I tried to narrow it some by adding, "The planes ditched in the Atlantic, from everything I've heard. Even Palm Beach, where the Gulf Stream sweeps in close, it still had to be within a few miles off shore."
Futch was smiling -- he knew I was getting into it. "The Atlantic is another 'fact' that's never been proven. Keep reading. I've got a box of Pine Island grapefruit promised to the ladies aboard Tiger Lilly. And a bag of stuff your sister wanted from the Bahamas. I'll be back in fifteen, and tell you what's on my mind."
I don't have a sister. The man was referring to my cousin, Ransom Gatrell, who introduces me as her brother because I'm her closest blood relative. The woman is quirky, wonderful and sometimes tricky. Rather than correcting him, though, I'd offered good advise. "Don't let Ransom talk you into anything stupid. What'd she make you sneak through customs this time?"
Futch had dismissed the question by motioning to the stack of research. "I tried to separate confirmed facts from the bullshit, and then summarize -- all numbers in civilian speak, so it would be easier to share. Read through it and see what you think. Oh, there's one more thing -- " The man had paused in the doorway. "-- there was no moon that night. You'll understand what I mean. And military logs confirm the planes all left Lauderdale with a full load of fuel."
My curiosity spiked.
So I read, skimming through bios of the fourteen dead airmen, then a weather report out of Miami dated 12-5-'47 that suggested flying conditions were not ideal, as commonly believed. On that long-gone day, there were scattered squalls along the coast, some generating winds in excess of fifty knots, with clouds that limited ground visibility to less than a thousand feet. Worse, after sunset -- which was at 5:36 p.m. -- a massive cold front was expected from the northeast. Instead of ideal conditions, the fourteen aviators had been aloft, presumably, when a meteorological collision had occurred: a high pressure mass met a low pressure phalanx of thunderstorms.
I leafed through two pages of diagrams, several maps, then began to read more carefully:
The first indication the squadron was in trouble came ninety minutes after take off, 3:40 p.m. A senior flight instructor in an unassociated aircraft intercepted a radio exchange that suggested Flight 19's pilots were confused about their location and their heading. The senior instructor reported hearing the following from one or more of the squadron's pilots: "I don't know where we are . . . . We must have gotten lost after that last turn. . . Anyone have suggestions . . . ? What's your compass heading?"
After several attempts, the senior officer made brief contact with the squadron's flight instructor, Lt. Charles Taylor. Reception was poor, often garbled, but the senior instructor reported Taylor as saying, "Both of my compasses are out. I'm sure I'm over the Florida Keys, but I don't know how far down. And I don't know how to get to Lauderdale."
According to logbooks, the instructor told Taylor "Put the sun on your port wing and fly north until you see Miami," -- good advice IF the squadron was over the Keys.
Later, investigators would conclude that Taylor had badly misjudged his location. How could five planes have gone so far south when their mission consisted of a route that took them due east, then northwest, then southwest? Investigators were quick to dismiss the possibility, even though Taylor had served as flight instructor in Miami and Key West during the previous nine months and had logged nearly two hundred hours flying over Florida Bay and the Keys.
The search efforts that December night would only compound the tragedy when a long range Martin Mariner, a "flying boat," was launched and exploded in midair, killing its crew of thirteen volunteers.
Half an hour later, when Futch returned to the lab, I looked up from my second pass through his summary to say, "You believe Taylor's version, don't you? You think he was right about being over Florida Bay, not the Bahamas. That's what this is all about."
Straddling a lab stool, Dan had given it some thought before replying, "I'm not convinced of anything, and that's the truth. But I find it damn interesting that a seasoned flight instructor, who'd spent nine months flying the Keys, would say 'I'm sure I'm over the Florida Keys' unless he was sure. But that's just one piece of a mixed-up puzzle. There's been so much misinformation printed about what happened that day and night -- including the military's official six hundred page report. And dozens of bullshit magazine stories and 'documentaries' that include outright lies. Hell, one of those so called writers even claimed to have piloted a sixth Avenger on Taylor's flight but survived. Which is total fantasy, but it's still repeated today."
"All because your nephew found this." I touched the throttle assembly. "Or were you already interested?"
"It lit a fire under me, but that's not the reason. I'm a pilot. I don't know how many hundreds of times I've flown that Lauderdale-Bahamas route. And there wasn't a single trip I didn't think about those fourteen guys -- plus the thirteen others who died trying to save them. They all volunteered for what they knew was hazardous duty. Men like that deserve to be found -- don't you think?"
I couldn't disagree. So I listened to Futch explain that, for the last ten years, he'd been trying to piece the real story together. Not working on it full time, of course. He was too busy fishing Boca Grande Pass during tarpon season, and flying charter clients all over the Caribbean the rest of the year.
"It's more of an occasional hobby. Doc, you'd be surprised how many men who served at Lauderdale Naval Airbase during the second war ended up retiring to Florida. Some who flew Avengers on that exact same training route, never had the first problem. Even a few who were actually there the day Flight Nineteen disappeared.
"I'm lucky. I fly clients all over the state. When I get the chance, I visit these old pilots in person -- a couple times, only a few months before they died. I'd look at their scrapbooks and listen to their stories." Futch had grinned. "My god, it's fun listening to an eighty-year-old guy, who use to be hot shit Avenger jock, get all fired up over some of the crap that's been written about Flight Nineteen. Most of 'em believe government investigators were more interested in placing blame than nailing down what actually happened that night. So they're eager to help, once they know I'm a pilot, too.
"One thing they're all convinced of, Doc, is those fourteen sailors and Marines were competent men. They weren't a bunch of screw-up rookies like some accounts say. Several were combat veterans from the Pacific war. Some highly decorated heroes, the flight instructor included -- despite some of the bullshit that's been written about Charles Taylor. They didn't fly into a time warp, and they weren't the victims of some shady government conspiracy. The men I've talked to are convinced their squadron mates got so damn lost, so turned around in a storm, they didn't have a clue where they were. Didn't even know if they were over land or water. You saw the time line I made of radio transmissions?"
I had. Once the pilots were lost, they began a series of course changes, desperately searching for mainland Florida. Even after sunset, they continued to zigzag their way into oblivion -- thus the title of Gian Quasar's book.
Futch said, "It was a black night. A storm ceiling of less than a thousand feet in planes that had primitive electronics compared to today. No landing lights, no gyro compasses -- that's a key detail -- and very limited radio range. At a time when Florida was one of the most sparsely populated states in the union."
"No gated communities," I offered. "No bright lights from shopping malls and football stadiums."
"Between Palm Beach and Jacksonville, not many ground ranges to fix on," Dan agreed. "And if they turned inland? Even Orlando was just citrus and cattle. Hardly any lights at all, coast to coast. I mentioned no gyro compasses? I've flown those old warplanes at air shows. Make a sharp bank, and the compass spins like a damn top. Even after you level off, they're squirrely as hell. Which is just one reason our air bases lost fifteen thousand guys to training missions. You believe that?"
I said, "That can't be true."
It was. "In only five years," Futch continued, "there were more than seven thousand plane crashes on U.S. soil! I had no idea 'till I did the research -- most those guys never even got a chance to face the damn enemy! Hell, the Gulf' and Atlantic are littered with wreckage from old Avengers, B-fifty-twos, Mustangs -- the whole list. People today don't realize that, to be a fighter jock back then, you'd better have balls of brass and nerves of steel. "
Futch named some of the steely men he'd interviewed -- several were important players in the Fort Lauderdale Avenger squadron. Then he'd methodically listed a couple of facts that, although historically accurate, only made the story more inexplicable.
At 5:30 p.m. on that December day, land based radar stations, although unable to pinpoint the squadron's location, triangulated a probable location as a hundred miles north of Lauderdale, and twenty miles out to sea. This information was not passed on to the lost pilots because of poor radio reception, or human oversight.
At 6:20 p.m. -- nearly an hour after sunset -- Airbase Lauderdale logged it's last transmission from Flight 19. Lt. Taylor was heard radioing his squadron, "Close in tight, we'll have to ditch unless landfall. When the first plane drops below ten gallons, we'll all go down together."
Automatically, my brain did the math. The Avengers had taken off at 2:10 p.m. They'd gotten lost. At 6:20 p.m., when the flight instructor's last transmission was intercepted, the planes should have had almost two hours of fuel left. At 160 mph, even one hour in the air was a substantial amount of time. Where the hell had those fourteen fliers ended-up?
There was another fact that Futch found perplexing.
"Three weeks after the Avengers went missing, the brother of one of the crewman received this. You figure it out."
Futch had placed a photo of a yellowed Western Union telegram in front on me. The typeface was faded but legible:
Jacksonville Flo Dec 26 10:15 am
Cpl Joseph Paonessa
Marine Barracks 6th and Eye St. Southeast
YOU HAVE BEEN MISINFORMED ABOUT ME. AM VERY MUCH ALIVE.
GEORGIE
Before I could ask, Futch explained, "George Paonessa was a radioman aboard one of the lost Avengers. His brother, Joe, was stationed at Jacksonville Marine Base the day that telegram arrived. That's a verified fact, by-the-way, not fantasy. Something else: only the family called George 'Georgie.' And Paonessa's father and mother both said that no one knew that nickname outside the family. Some say, until the day she died, Mrs. Paonessa was convinced that George sent that telegram."
If Futch expected me to be mystified, he was disappointment. I'd told him, "When a disappearance makes headlines, the kooks and cranks come out of the woodwork. The telegram's a hoax. Or a cruel joke. 'Georgie' is the common familiar form of the name, so someone made an obvious guess." Looking through the north window, I had paused. Puttering toward my stilthouse was Tomlinson in an inflatable dinghy, his sailboat, No Más, floating pale gray at anchor just beyond. He was shirtless, a bottle of beer in his free hand, and wearing a monkish-looking hat he'd woven from palm fronds.
"A very sick joke," Futch had agreed. "It hits home, though, because I've been checking the source code. You're going to like it." His tone became confidential as he tapped the paper in front of me. "There's a chance this telegram was sent from here. Not Sanibel, but just across the bridge. The old telegraph office is still there, even after they built the condos. You know the place -- that little yellow shed off to the left when you leave the island? It was one of the few Western Union stations between Key West and Tampa. No wireless in those days. Everything had to be hardwired."
He was talking about tiny Punta Rassa, just across the bay. Today the spot is adjoined to the Sanibel Causeway, plus a cluster of high rises and a resort hotel. For two centuries, though, the village had been the primary cattle port between Cuba and Florida. When the battleship Maine was sunk in Havana Harbor, the first distress message was sent to Punta Rassa, not Key West or Miami. Now, Punta Rassa isn't even shown on most maps.
I told Futch, "There's someone coming who'll appreciate this telegram a lot more than me. . . .
A few minutes later, Tomlinson was drinking my last beer while he listened to Futch re-tell his story. It was no surprise that he -- a devotee of the paranormal -- loved the connection between a local one-room telegraph station and Flight Nineteen. So the three of us had spent the afternoon discussing details, probabilities and possibilities. Before leaving, Futch had loaned us his dog-eared copy of They Flew Into Oblivion, assuring us it was the most carefully researched book on the subject
"You've got the salvage gear, and the experience. I know planes," Futch had told us. "If you're interested, it's something we can work on independently. You know, get together when there's a reason. Start by talking to fishing buddies, the ones willing to trust us with their private GPS numbers. Chart the unidentified pieces of structure out there, and match the locations with Army Air Corps logs. In the meantime, when the water clears-up, we'll dive the place where my nephew found this." Futch had tapped the briefcase where he'd stowed the throttle mechanism.
Finally, I had asked the obvious question, but in the most general of ways. "I assume he found it in the Gulf, not the Atlantic. But was it north of here, or south?"
My shotgun tactfulness had amused Futch. "If I didn't trust you, I wouldn't be here. My nephew found the throttle in a mangrove creek south of Marco Island. Hawksbill Creek, it's called on the charts. There're a couple of Indian mounds way back in. And something else I'm going to trust you with -- is that okay?"
Tomlinson had nodded while I waited.
"Near the mounds there's a marl flat there I call the 'Bone Field.' Human bones. They're scattered all over the place; stuck in the roots of trees, sticking right out of the mud. My daddy and I found it too many years ago to remember. We always figured it was an Indian burial ground, so we didn't report it. Now I'm not so sure."
I've known Tomlinson a long, long time, but I'd never seen his eyes glow a brighter shade of turquoise than when he heard the words, 'Bone Field.'
Futch added, "Tell you what. We'll keep a close watch on weather around Lauderdale. Next time it's similar to the night those Avengers went missing, we'll hop in my plane and fly the area. I've got a theory about what happened to those pilots. I can't tell you how many times I've flown a thirty-knot tailwind east to Lauderdale. Then, on the return trip, I climb a couple thousand feet to catch a northeast tailwind home. Best way to convince you, is show you."
"You did this on the same day?" I'd asked.
"Same afternoon. Couple years ago, in the worst kind of weather, I gained sixty knots of air speed riding one of those northeast storms home. Wind on the ground was southwest but, man, I was like a rocket ship going the opposite direction. If it wasn't for my GPS, I'd have been fifty miles out in the Gulf when I dropped down through the clouds, instead of over Boca Grande." The pilot's smiled asked, See how easily it could happen?
Which is why, the night before something went BANG in the tail section of his plane, Dan Futch had bunked on the porch outside my lab. Skies over Sanibel Island were flawless, but NOAA Weather Service was predicting a near repeat of December 5, 1945: next-day squalls along the Atlantic Coast; southwest winds expected to turn by afternoon and blow heavy from the northeast.
"I didn't expect this kind of luck until hurricane season. Maybe even as late as November," Futch remarked that morning as we buckled ourselves into his little Maule float plane.
The man was right, in a way. Dying in an Everglades plane crash was unexpected luck, indeed.
RANDY SAY’S THIS IS ONE OF HIS ALL TIME FAVORITE DOC FORD NOVELS -- THE MOST COMPLEX, MUCH OF IT BASED ON FACT; IN WAYS, THOUGH, ALSO THE TROUBLING -- THE BOOK’S ENDING COULD MEAN THE END OF MARION D. FORD. Steve Grendon, Assistant to Randy Wayne White
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