Night Moves (Doc Ford) - By RandyWayne White Page 0,5
report noted.
The route was to have covered 365 statute miles in approximately two hours and fifteen minutes. But the squadron never returned. No trace of the crew or planes was ever found despite the largest land-and-sea search in the nation’s history . . .
I had 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 simpleminded, 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. Fishermen 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 offshore 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 offshore. 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 Atocha, divers had to dodge all sorts of fishhooks 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 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 offshore.”
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.”