Night Moves (Doc Ford) - By RandyWayne White Page 0,112

gentleman’s big-time—” Diemer, he was talking about. “Swissair. Me, mostly seaplanes. I flew a Mustang once at an air show. My god, you pilots back then, there wasn’t room in the cockpit for balls the size of yours.”

Sampedro liked that. Squinted at the keyboard and said, “Tell nurse box ’em up. If she finds ’em.” Gave Diemer a sharp look, then began an ironic exchange: “From Swit-zer-land?”

“No, Lieutenant.”

“Good. Cowardly shits.”

“My grandfather was Luftwaffe. Flew Junkers, then Messerschmitts.” Which made it okay for Diemer to squat near the old man and point at a photo. “This is from your wingman’s ship. You must have been flying the other Avenger. Torpedo Bomber 54? Tell us what happened, perhaps we can find the remains of your ship, too.”

Sampedro swallowed, his mind drifting again. There was a reason he had never told his family what had happened that night—guilt, I suspected. Or something so scarring he refused to relive it. Share details now or take the truth to his grave? That was the decision the man was wrestling with—a decision he seemed to postpone by typing. “You have chart? Show where found Coachie’s ship. No deal unless show me.” Looked up at Diemer and Futch—a fierce look—then his synthesized voice explained, “Mission classified!”

“Uhhh, sure. Understood, sir.” Dan began unrolling charts he’d brought along with his briefcase. Selected one of the largest—Captiva to Cape Sable—and enlisted Tomlinson and me to hold it open for the man to see. “You recognize the area, sir? It’s changed a lot—”

Sampedro rasped, “Point to spot!” using his own voice, head off the pillow now, excited by the shapes of islands he had once viewed from his own aircraft. Then reached out a pale hand. “Near Estero Bay . . . has to be. Damn it, I . . . told them!”

Dan didn’t respond for a moment, then said, “No, sir. We found the wreckage way to the south.”

The aviator grimaced, not wanting to believe it, but listened while the younger pilot touched a finger near the top of the chart and worked his way down, saying, “Sanibel . . . Estero Island, Bonita Springs, and we’re here, Naples. But we found the tail section and some other wreckage all here—about twenty-five miles southeast. A little place called Hawksbill Creek.”

The expression of dismay on the old man’s face communicated disappointment, pain, loss. His head fell back on the pillow. “Can’t be. No! Was . . . so sure.”

I was ready to ring for the nurse—the old guy had been through enough. But Tomlinson took charge by sitting on the bed, patting the man’s leg. “We can come back another day—if you want us. But there’s something you should know before we split.”

The man lay staring at the ceiling. “So damn sure,” he said again. Sniffed, blinked, tired of something, then stole a glance at the note on the table and asked, “How did . . . you know?’

“Your wife’s scrapbooks,” Tomlinson replied, “and your nicknames, I found a list,” which confused everyone in the room, but not Angel Sampedro, who simply nodded while my pal added, “Pawn Man, that’s what your crew called you.”

“Pawny,” the man smiled, thinking back.

Tomlinson gave me a look that meant something. “Yeah—makes even more sense. Trust me on this, Mr. Sampedro, we haven’t told anybody anything yet. Use the keyboard, save your air. As far as we’re concerned, unless you tell us different, what you say will stay in this room.”

Tomlinson had no right to make such a promise, although it contained a kernel of truth: sitting around the breakfast fire that morning, the four of us had agreed to protect the Bone Field and shell pyramid until we had settled on which experts to contact. The tiny amount of wreckage we’d found—so far, anyway—didn’t justify revealing the location of a place that resonated with the weight of history, an archaic nucleus that would attract every artifact hunter and Flight 19 kook within Internet range.

The old man had no reason to believe Tomlinson. My impression was that it didn’t matter. Sampedro had lived with some secret he had carried for too many years. He was dying. We were his last contact with aviators he had once known, with the man he had once been, and it was time to cut the secret free. He reached for the keyboard and began typing, allowing a computer chip to speak to us from a long-gone night in February 1944.

—

“MY FAULT, NAVIGATION SNAFU. Killed three buddies, you sure about