flare to the east—another survivor! The storm had certainly blown their ships northwest, so he shared the logical guess: the collision had occurred north of Marco Island.
For three days, planes and boats had searched, and Sampedro was still bitter—and suspicious—about why it had been called off so soon. Nothing close to the massive efforts he read about one year later when the Flight 19 Avengers vanished. “War was over by then,” he reasoned. “Life not as cheap—too late now to worry.”
Vargas Diemer, the historian, keyed in on the old man’s suspicions when he said, “The heavy cruiser that carried the bomb to Guam—the world’s total stock of enriched uranium in one container. You haven’t wondered about that, Lieutenant?”
“Yes . . . many times.” Sampedro spoke the words, his eyes moving to Tomlinson, who had reached for the note he had written.
“Night torpedo runs,” Diemer continued, “that had to strike you as odd. On barges—barges the size of a battleship, you said. Why train to bomb anything bigger than a sub? Unless your government was worried the Japanese might disable or capture the ship carrying the atomic bomb. That they might have to order specially trained pilots to bomb the—”
“No!” Sampedro said. Coughed the word, as he did earlier, angry, but then calmed himself to concede through the synthesizer, “Thought about that, sure. Still do. Order us to sink our own ship—but would never happen. Not us. Not me, Coachie, Dakota, and Harley. Jap subs got her anyway, but later. Still feel guilty maybe could have protected her, Japs would’a been so confused by our talk. Could’a sunk that fuckin’ sub! Instead thousand sailors dead on the . . .” The man’s finger hesitated—a naval aviator still mindful of his training—then wrote, “Still dream ’bout saving those men on the Indianapolis.”
Jesus Christ—Dan and I both stunned by what we’d just heard, but not Vargas Diemer, the historian, who was now even more suspicious and started to ask another question, but I cut him off, saying, “Stow it!”
The USS Indianapolis . . . my god, a war ship on a mission so secret that sailors who’d survived the sub attack had spent days adrift before radio silence was broken. Sharks had found them the first night among the blood and oil. By the fourth or fifth day, sharks were feeding in mass, killed six or seven hundred screaming men—I couldn’t remember the numbers—before the first rescue plane touched down.
Tomlinson stood, slipped the note into his pocket, and took charge of the laptop as he reseated himself at the old man’s shoulder, the old man weeping now. Gave the Brazilian a warning look, Enough! and put a hand on Sampedro’s shoulder. “Mr. Sampedro, you haven’t seen where we found the wreckage.” Waited several seconds, then said, “We were sent to tell you—help give you some peace about what happened, that’s what I think. Please . . . look at these photos.”
“Should have . . . died,” the man said, but Tomlinson wouldn’t let him push the computer away. Instead, one after another, he clicked through photos of the shell pyramid, pottery shards, ancient shell tools. “Look . . . what do you think this is?” until he had the aviator’s attention.
Then explained, “There is where we found the wreckage—where your three brothers died. A power spot. Sacred ground! Last night, going through your wife’s scrapbooks, it all came together in my head and I knew why the spot had called to us. Harley, Cochise, the others, they’re still there, man.”
Coachie had been the wingman’s nickname, not Cochise, but Sampedro, sitting upright while Tomlinson stuffed a pillow behind him, was suddenly interested. Looked at a few more shots, then asked, “Bones . . . they died . . . in an . . . Indian place?” His face, his tone, wanting to believe. There was a sadness in his manner, though, and I knew he was thinking about the flare he’d seen—seven decades spent wondering if one of his men had survived.
Tomlinson picked up on it, too, so closed the computer, sparing the man photos of a parachute harness and a tube of morphine, telling him, “From what we found, the crash happened so fast, none of them suffered. It was the right time for your brothers.”
“An Indian place,” Sampedro murmured, his mind drifting again.
“Not Pawnee or Dakota,” Tomlinson replied to Pawn Man, the aviator. “Ancient, though. See what I’m saying? You didn’t kill your friends. Angel—they were leading you home.”
As we exited the