CORONADO, CALIFORNIA
September 1989
It says, ‘George H. W. Bush, President of the United States.’”
“Bullshit, let me see that!” I said, grabbing the letter from the command master chief. “Well, I’ll be damned. It does say George H. W. Bush.”
Master Chief Bill Huckins pulled the White House letter back from me and began to read the memorandum. Huckins was the senior enlisted man at SEAL Team One. Tall, stocky, always red-faced, with a gregarious personality and a cutting wit, he had the respect of every man in the Team. I was the Executive Officer (XO), and with the commanding officer deployed to the Persian Gulf, that put me in charge of SEAL Team One, and Bill Huckins was my right-hand man.
“The President of the United States requests your assistance in locating a Navy P2V2 reconnaissance plane lost in British Columbia, Canada, in 1948. The plane departed Whidbey Island Naval Air Station on November 4, 1948, for a routine patrol and was never heard from again. A Navy search and rescue crew located pieces of the wreckage in 1962, but owing to the hazardous conditions, were unable to recover much. For the next twenty-seven years, the plane remained lost. Recently, a bush pilot flying in the region of Tofino, British Columbia, spotted a shiny metal object inside an extinct volcanic crater near Mt. Guenes. The base of the crater is filled with water and it is possible that the remains of the aircraft lie deep beneath this mountain lake. On board the plane were nine souls and it is our duty to locate them and return their remains to a proper resting place.”
The master chief stopped reading. “The letter goes on to give the point of contact and directs us to respond to the President’s request by this Friday,” he said.
“Why would the President of the United States care about a plane that was lost over forty years ago?” Huckins asked.
“Bush is a former naval aviator,” I answered. “My guess is one of the crew members’ family must have approached the POTUS and asked for his help.”
“Okay, XO, but why us? Why SEAL Team One?”
“Because who else can mount an expedition into the middle of nowhere Canada that requires climbing and diving?” I responded.
“Not just diving,” Huckins said, unrolling a topographic map of the area. “High-altitude diving.”
I surveyed the map as the master chief pointed out the terrain.
“Those mountains in that area go as high as eight thousand feet,” he said. “And the crater lake the President is talking about sits at about three thousand feet. That means all our dive tables need to be revised.”
The region was as isolated as any I had ever seen. The mountains around the suspected crash site were exceptionally steep, and there wasn’t a level piece of ground within a hundred miles of the site.
“We’ll need someone who knows his shit,” I said.
Without hesitation the master chief said, “I’ll give Barker a warning order.”
Senior Chief Geoff Barker was the preeminent diver in all the SEAL Teams. Tall, heavyset, with dark hair and a big soft face, he could outswim and outrun most of the smaller, fitter guys in the team. He supervised our SEAL Team One dive locker and was one of the most professional enlisted men I had ever worked with. He did know his shit.
“Who else do we need?” I asked.
But before the master chief could answer, I knew who I wanted.
“Get me Pat Ellis,” I said. “He’s a lead climber and has the intel background to do the prep work.”
The master chief nodded his approval.
Pat was everyone’s image of a Navy SEAL, also tall, but with strong angular features and a sharp intellect. And with Pat, there was a level of maturity that wasn’t common in most young petty officers.
“And let’s add Greg Walker.”
“Good choice,” Huckins acknowledged.
Walker was a quiet fellow, with a dark complexion and large mustache. While not a SEAL, as a Navy First Class diver he was the most knowledgeable about the science of diving. He was the second in charge of the dive locker at SEAL Team One and had earned the respect of every frogman in the command.
“Finally, throw in Doc James, he’s good all around,” I said.
“Who do we put in charge?” the master chief inquired.
“The senior chief can lead it,” I responded.
“Sir…” the master chief said, drawing out the word with a certain amount of derision. “You know there is no way Admiral Worthington is going to let the senior lead this effort. He’s going to want an officer-in-charge.”
“You don’t need an officer to lead this operation,” I argued. “Barker is more than capable of handling this mission.”
The master chief didn’t say a word. He just nodded politely as if to confirm that I was a lunatic.
“Screw you,” I said, laughing. “Call Naval Special Warfare Group One and let them know that we have our team and we can be ready to go early next week. And stop giving me that look.”
“What look?” the master chief asked, feigning surprise.
“Yeah, that look,” I fired back. The master chief just smiled.
He had been right, of course. Admiral George Worthington, the commander of Naval Special Warfare, not only insisted that an officer go along on the mission, but ordered me to be the head of our little expedition. I didn’t complain too much. It was an opportunity to get out of the office and hike the outback of Canada. While none of us really expected to find an aircraft that had been missing for over forty years, it was another adventure, and who didn’t want another adventure?
Doc James was on travel and unable to join us, so we added Petty Officer Chuck Carter to the team. The five of us—me, Senior Chief Geoff Barker, Petty Officers Ellis, Carter, and Walker—were boarding a C-130 bound for Naval Air Station Whidbey Island in Washington State. The plan called for us to land at Whidbey and transfer to a Canadian cargo plane for the final flight into Tofino, British Columbia. Once at Tofino we would rent a small helicopter and take turns lifting our gear and personnel into the suspected crash site.
The loadmaster motioned us onto the airplane. We were ready to take off.
“Look, XO,” the master chief yelled above the noise of the spinning props. “I know this seems like a lot of fun to you, but you guys are heading into an area where no living being has set foot in decades.”
“A little dramatic, aren’t we?” I said.
“I’m only saying—be careful. You don’t know what’s out there, and if you get into trouble, help is a long, long ways away.”
I could see it in his eyes—the master chief was genuinely worried. Worried like a mother sending her child off to their first day of school. I smiled, shook his hand, and said, “Gotta go. Hold down the fort until we get back.”
The master chief nodded, gave a half salute, and turned away.
As the plane lifted off, Barker, Ellis, Carter, and Walker were already dozing. I pulled out a small laminated copy of the topographic map and looked at our destination one more time. It was a long way from anywhere, but we were five experienced sailors and I was certain we could handle anything we might find. Absolutely certain.
“You’re looking for what?” The bearded man laughed.
“That again, eh,” his ruddy-faced partner roared.
I was beginning to regret stopping for dinner. The German-style restaurant with long picnic tables, wood-beamed ceilings, and several large grandfather clocks was the only place open for food and it was Oktoberfest in Tofino. The oompah music blared in the background and lederhosened men and large-breasted women danced the polka while my team and I downed some brats and sauerkraut. Barker, a teetotaler, sipped his Coca-Cola, while the rest of us guzzled a liter of hefeweizen.
“Do you Yanks know how many times pilots, trappers, fishermen, and tourists have said they saw some”—ruddy face paused to choose his words—“shiny object?”
At the words “shiny object,” Geoff Barker took a deep, exasperated breath. They were the exact words the President had written in his letter to the command. We had rushed to pull together this small team, and Barker, in particular, had worked long hours to get the right climbing, diving, and camping gear ready for this operation. Now it seemed we were on a wild Canadian goose chase.
Trying to be positive, I defended our plan. “We have it on good authority that a large metallic item was spotted here,” I said, pointing to the laminated map.
“A shiny object, you mean.” Bearded man snickered, wiping the beer foam from his whiskers.
“Sonny, it’s been over two decades since anyone spotted that wreckage,” ruddy face said. “Even if a plane had crashed in those mountains, it would be buried under a hundred feet of snow and ice and you’d never be able to get to it.”
“And the snow never melts in these parts,” bearded man offered, tapping the map.
Bearded man was partly right. For almost the entire year the snow never melted in these mountains, except for two weeks in late September—and then only partially. If we had any chance of finding the plane, it would have to be in the next two weeks.
Suddenly, a large woman with massive cleavage grabbed my free hand and yanked me to the dance floor. “Let’s polka!” she shouted, spinning me around.
“I don’t dance,” I objected, stumbling across the wooden floor.
“We polka,” she said again in broken English.
Bearded man, ruddy face, and my four companions all began to clap loudly and yell encouragement. What the hell, I thought. The polka looked a lot like the Texas two-step.
Grabbing my large German fräulein by her plump hands, I began to move around the floor, bumping everyone in my path—much to the amusement of my fellow frogmen and the well-dressed band director, who kept yelling, “Everyone polka!”
As I looked over at the table, bearded man and ruddy face were laughing, but in the back of my mind, I knew their laughter had nothing to do with my dancing.
“Lower,” I yelled. “You’ve got to get me lower!”
The pilot of the small Bell helicopter acknowledged my request and brought the helo down another six feet. Precariously balanced on a large boulder, Barker and Ellis reached for the scuba tanks as I handed them out the side door of the helo.
Walker passed me the remainder of the equipment, took one final look inside the helo, and announced that all the gear was out. I nodded to him to get out of the bird, and with one smooth motion he slid across the deck of the helo, out the side door, and onto the boulder below.
Tapping the pilot on the shoulder, I shouted, “Thanks for the lift.”
Looking over the barren landscape, steep mountain peaks, and treacherous ice floes, he shouted back, “Be careful out here! If I don’t hear from you in four days, I will be back.”
I nodded thankfully, patted him on the back one final time, and slid out the side door into the waiting arms of big Geoff Barker.
We all watched as the helo banked slowly right and struggled to gain altitude. The blades were grasping at the thin air and the whine of the engines echoed loudly off the surrounding mountains.
Within minutes all was quiet. Dead quiet. With all of our gear heaped in a pile at our feet, the five of us stood precariously on the large rocks surveying our new surroundings. It was spectacular.
On three sides were peaks rising up to five thousand feet. Below us was an ice blue mountain lake that spilled off the open edge of the basin. How far the water dropped we couldn’t tell, but it appeared to fall endlessly into another valley below. While a few pine trees dotted the landscape, there was no sign of other life—just rock. Big rocks.
As predicted, all the snow was gone, with the exception of a long, narrow ice floe that extended several thousand feet from the top of the mountain on the far side to a place about three hundred yards up from the lake.
“Well,” Ellis announced. “We’re here. Now what?”
It was only 1500 hours, but the light was fading fast as the sun slowly sank behind the tall mountain peaks.
“Let’s set up camp for the night and we can begin our dives in the morning,” I said.
“I found a spot over here,” Barker said. “We can fit both tents on the same boulder and still have some room for a fire and a few camp stools.”
“Well, we won’t have to worry about bears or mountain lions,” Ellis said, surveying the mountainside through the scope on the .300 WinMag. “Nothing lives up here.”
“It’s gonna be dark soon,” Barker said. “Let’s get moving.”
Within an hour we had shifted all of our equipment to the only flat area inside the basin. Barker was right, though. The campsite worked nicely.
Barker and I shared one tent and Ellis, Carter, and Walker were in the other. By 1700 the sun was gone completely, but stars lit up the night sky. Comets dashed across the horizon just above the peaks, and the Big Dipper, normally the brightest stars in the sky, were consumed by the surrounding heavens. In all my years in the Teams, from the jungles of Panama to the mountains of Alaska to the middle of the South Pacific, I could not remember a night where the stars shined so very brightly.
Bundled in Gore-Tex jackets and wool pants, we sat around the fire trying to stay warm.
“Do you really think they’re down in that lake, XO?” Walker asked.
“I don’t know, Greg. Maybe we’ll find out tomorrow,” I said.
“Damn, that would be cool, wouldn’t it,” Ellis chimed in. “What if that plane is really still there, preserved in the icy waters, just waiting for us to find it?”
“As clear as that water is, it won’t take too many dives to determine if it’s there,” Barker said, adding another pallet to the fire. We had bundled all our gear on small wooden pallets and had enough firewood to keep us comfortable for several nights.
“Can you imagine what it must have been like?” Carter said. “I mean, these guys are on a routine flight, nothing to worry about, and then bang, something goes wrong: a bad engine, icing, something, and within a matter of minutes they are struggling for their lives trying to keep this big ol’ plane in the air.”
“My guess is the pilot saw the lake and thought it might be an open pasture,” I speculated.
“Yeah, must have really sucked when he got closer and realized it wasn’t grass, but water,” Barker said.
“Wait a minute, when did this accident occur?” Ellis asked.
“November 1948,” I answered.
“Wouldn’t the lake have been frozen in November?” Ellis continued.
We all looked at each other, surprised the question had never come up.
“Sure, sure it would’ve,” Carter said excitedly.
“So…” Barker said, hoping someone would finish the sentence.
“So…” I said, jumping in, “if he actually made the lake, but couldn’t stop, then the plane would have careened into the side of the mountain.”
“At about 120 miles per hour,” Ellis added.
“Yeah, but if that was the case, we would have seen remnants of the plane scattered all across the mountainside. And we saw nothing,” Barker said.
“Ah, we’re probably nowhere close to that crash,” Walker mumbled. “I say we give it a day, and if we don’t find anything we break out the radio and call the helo back.”
At Walker’s suggestion everyone went quiet. We were prepared to stay four days looking for the wreckage, but Walker was right. There was no plane anywhere in sight. If it wasn’t under the water—it wasn’t here.
“All right, guys, we have a big day ahead of us. Let’s turn in,” I said.
“Roger, sir,” Barker answered. “I’m going to throw one more pallet on the fire, just in case Bigfoot is out there.”
We all retired to our tents, jumped in our sleeping bags, and within minutes all I could hear was the sound of the crackling fire and the snoring of tired men.
As I rolled over in the bag, I couldn’t help but wonder about the fate of those lost crewmen. I was hoping we would find some answers in the morning. But the morning was still a long ways off.
I was shaking uncontrollably. Pulling the fabric of the sleeping bag as close to my body as possible, I tried to get warm, but it just wasn’t happening. We had underestimated how much the temperature would drop at night, and my bag clearly wasn’t rated for this kind of weather.
As I rolled to my left, reaching for my spare jacket, I noticed something was missing.
Barker.
I opened my eyes and waited a minute until they adjusted. The shadow from the fire flickered against the tent and I could vaguely make out a silhouette by the flames.
Struggling out of my bag, I threw on my Gore-Tex jacket, unzipped the fly on the tent, and stepped outside into the bitterly cold night air.
Barker was sitting on a stool warming himself by the fire.
“You okay, Geoff?” I asked.
Without even looking in my direction he muttered, “I’m fine.”
I looked around to see if there was a whiskey flask that Barker might have smuggled into our campsite. He was a tough, proud man, but the bottle had always haunted him. A year earlier, after several minor incidents, he had gone cold turkey. Since then he hadn’t taken a sip of alcohol. Or so I thought.
I grabbed a camp stool and sidled up beside him, trying to see if I could get a whiff of booze.
“I’m not drinking. If that’s what you’re thinking, XO.”
I threw another pallet on the fire. “Then what the hell are you doing out here? It’s freezing.”
“I just couldn’t sleep. That’s all,” Barker said.
“You’re not very convincing, Geoff. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he snapped. “There’s nothing wrong!”
“All right,” I said. “I know you didn’t come out here to get warm, because it certainly isn’t any warmer outside the tent.” Even by the fire the air was thin and crisp, and a slight breeze brought the frigid air from off the snowbanks to settle right on top of our campsite.
“I’m fine,” he said again. “Just fine.”
I patted Barker on the back and got up. Sometimes you just have to let a man deal with his own demons. With one more surge of warmth from the fire, I ran back into my tent, diving into the bag as quickly as possible. The remainder of the night was spent fighting off the cold and a full bladder. It was three hours until sunrise, but as far as I was concerned, morning couldn’t come soon enough.
My watch said 0625, but I could tell the other guys were already up and stirring around. I dressed quickly and stepped outside. The scenery, and the altitude, took my breath away.
The sky was almost cloudless and the vibrant colors of nature drew a distinct line between the earth-toned mountains, the deep blue water, the blinding white snow, and the green treetops in the valley miles away.
Barker was just where I had left him several hours earlier. He had never returned to the tent. On the other side of the fire were Carter and Walker. Ellis was down checking out the lake. All three men seemed quietly preoccupied.
I reached down, grabbed the REI coffee pot, and filled up my canteen cup. “What’s for chow?” I asked, knowing that all we had were C-rations. No one even looked up from the fire.
Pulling up a camp stool, I grabbed a board from one of the pallets and stoked the fire. “We ready to do some diving?”
No one answered. “Geoff, is the gear ready to go?” I asked.
“Yes sir,” Barker answered, struggling to sound motivated.
“Okay,” I said, sipping my coffee. “What’s wrong with you guys?”
The three men all looked at each other, but no one spoke.
“Come on,” I prodded gently. “What’s going on here?”
I could see that neither Barker nor Walker were going to open up. But Carter was just waiting for an opportunity to say something.
“Chuck, tell me what’s going on.”
Carter looked at the other two men, glanced around the campsite as if to see if anyone else was listening, and then asked Barker and Walker, “Did you see it?”
“See what?” Barker said, raising his voice.
“I saw it,” Walker offered.
“Saw what? I asked.
Carter hesitated for a few seconds and I leaned across the fire as if to hear a schoolyard secret.
“Yes…?”
“There was someone outside our tent last night,” Carter said. “He walked around our campsite.”
I scanned the expression on each man’s face. There was no twinkle in their eyes, no sly smile around their lips, only a tense sense of bewilderment.
“It was Geoff,” I said, laughing. I looked over to get confirmation from Barker. But he remained stoic.
“It wasn’t me,” Barker said with a tinge in his voice.
“Of course it was,” I replied.
“No, it wasn’t,” Barker said quietly. “That’s why I got up and went outside. I saw a man walking around the tent. I thought it was Pat, but when I called out he didn’t answer.”
I looked at Walker and Carter. “None of us left the tent last night,” Carter said. Walker nodded.
“He was there, all right,” Carter added. “He must have been over six foot tall and heavyset. He circled our entire tent a couple of times, stopping occasionally like he was looking inside.”
Walker jumped in. “When he wouldn’t answer, I opened the flap of the tent and looked outside, but there was nobody there.”
“Geoff is about six foot tall and heavyset,” I countered.
“Yes sir, but not even Geoff can walk on thin air.”
“Thin air?” I asked.
Carter got up and motioned me to the side of their tent.
The boulder our campsite sat on was about twelve feet in diameter, and the tent that Ellis, Walker, and Carter shared was butted up against the edge of the rock. Off the back side of their tent was a sharp drop to the ground below, and there was no room between the edge of the tent and the end of the boulder.
“I told you he walked around the entire tent,” Carter said.
“Might be just a little hard for a man Geoff’s size to tiptoe around that,” Walker said, pointing to the base of their lean-to.
I edged over to see if I could walk the circumference of the tent, but clearly there was no room on the back side for anyone to maneuver safely.
“So what are you guys trying to tell me here? You saw a ghost. Is that it?”
“Look, XO,” Barker said. “I know this sounds crazy. When I was drinking a lot it would have made sense. When I drank I would see things that weren’t there, hear voices that weren’t there, believe things that weren’t true. But I wasn’t drinking last night and I know what I saw.”
Carter and Walker nodded in agreement.
“And there is something else,” Barker said.
“Something else?”
“That plane is here. In this crater,” Barker said. “It’s not in the lake.”
“Did the man walking around the tent tell you that?” I said, expecting to get a laugh.
Geoff didn’t laugh.
In my years in the Navy many unexplained events would affect my life. I learned to trust my instincts and oftentimes the feelings of others around me. It was clear to me that Barker, Walker, and Carter had seen something, heard something, felt something that in their hearts they believed to be true. While I hadn’t seen or heard or felt anything last night, that didn’t make the event unreal.
“All right, boys,” I said, looking at the ice floe high on the mountainside. “Grab the picks and ropes. Let’s go find ourselves an airplane.”
The large rocks covering the mountain made movement from our base camp to the ice floe slow going. Additionally, Barker, Ellis, Carter, and I were weighted down with climbing rope, crampons, ice picks, and lights. After about forty-five minutes we arrived at the base of the ice. The foot of the floe was about fifty yards across and ended abruptly, without the gradual, sloping curvature normally found in these sorts of formations.
From our vantage point on the west side of the mountain we could see the entire basin. The waterfall off the lake into the valley below seemed even more dramatic. While it was difficult to tell the length of the drop, the volume of water spilling over the edge made me worry that any dive in the lake could be more dangerous than I envisioned. The current at that depth could sweep a man away quickly. I mentally made a note of the problem.
Above us the mountains rose steeply. There was no easy route to the top. Reaching the peak would require several hours, even for an experienced climber. With the gear we brought, we were not equipped to go much beyond the middle of the ice floe.
Barker tapped on the outside of the floe with his ice pick. It appeared solid, but with each strike of the pick, there was a change in the pitch.
“Almost sounds hollow,” Barker said, trying to peer into the ice.
“If it were hollow it seems the weight of the ice would collapse upon itself,” Ellis noted.
Barker took off his gloves to get a better grip and then began to swing the pick with his full force, focusing on a small spot at the end of the floe. Before long, we all joined in.
As each minute of digging passed, the color of the ice at our entry point began to change. It became darker, reflecting not only the outer sunlight, but the absence of light from within.
Suddenly Barker’s pick passed through a thin layer of ice.
“It is hollow,” he said, struggling to unwedge his axe.
Within thirty minutes we created an opening large enough to get a body through. Poking the flashlight into the hole, I could see that the floe had created an archway extending up for several yards, but it was difficult to see much else from outside the ice. Barker slipped on a climbing harness, attached the rope to his carabiner, grabbed a flashlight, and began to step into the hole.
“Geoff, I don’t know about this,” I said. “I can’t tell how stable this formation is. If the ice collapses, it will be very difficult to get you out. I don’t want you doing anything stupid.”
Barker looked at me with the confidence of a man who had been in these situations before.
“I’ll be fine, XO.”
I nodded.
“All right. Move out.”
Ellis picked up the slack on the rope and I kept close to the hole, talking to Barker as he moved.
“Everything okay?” I yelled as he faded from view.
“Fine,” came the echo.
I watched as the rope paid out farther and farther. Barker was now almost fifty yards into the cavern, when suddenly the rope snapped taut.
Barker began yelling, but I couldn’t make out his words. Grabbing my flashlight, I ducked into the opening, latched on to the rope, and began moving in his direction.
The rocks inside the cavern were smaller, but they still made movement difficult. The ice on the ceiling was melting and I could see that certain areas of the ice floe were thicker than others. My heart was pounding from the altitude and adrenaline.
At the edge of my beam, I could see Barker coming down the hill in my direction. We met halfway. The look on his face said it all.
As he turned his flashlight up the mountain, there, smashed into a million pieces—was a 1948 P2V2 Navy airplane.
“Holy shit.” I smiled. “Would you look at that!”
As the beams from the flashlight reflected off the ice we could see the outline of the aircraft. It was almost as if it had landed intact and then been pulverized over the years by tons of thawing ice falling from the cavern’s roof.
“It looks like our midnight visitor was right after all,” Barker said.
“Say what?”
“Never mind, sir.”
I could hear Ellis yelling, checking to see if we were okay. I responded back in a calm voice, knowing that he wouldn’t understand my words—but he wouldn’t move from the opening until he sensed panic and several tugs on the rope.
Barker and I climbed back up the mountain toward the wreckage. I walked up the starboard side of the plane while he took the port. Pieces of metal were strewn everywhere, but in a recognizable pattern. The tail section and the rear fuselage were nothing but fragments, none larger than my fist.
Suddenly, a large chunk of ice dropped from the ceiling, crashing into the midsection of the aircraft. Looking up, I could see the water beginning to cascade from the top of the roof to the sides. The cavern was melting, and more quickly than I realized.
As we approached the wing section, Barker called out, “Sir, over here.”
He reached down and pulled a long piece of leather from the wreckage. There on the back side of the worn brown cloth was a circular patch—the squadron’s emblem, still intact after all these years.
“One of the crewmen’s flight jacket,” he said somberly.
I nodded, knowing that the crewman was likely wearing that jacket at the time of impact. “Any signs of remains?” I asked.
Barker picked through the rocks and rubble, but there was nothing to be found. We continued to move up the length of the fuselage.
“Hey, look,” Barker said excitedly. “It’s a .50 cal!”
Pushing the heavy rocks aside, Barker lifted the barrel of a .50-caliber machine gun, but the receiver section of the weapon was still buried beneath more rubble. Making my way across the center section of the aircraft, I joined in and we pulled the remaining stock of the gun out from under the debris. The weapon was almost completely intact. The barrel was bent slightly, but everything else seemed to be functioning.
“Incredible,” Barker said. “The entire plane is crushed into pieces, but the .50 cal survives.”
As I put the butt of the gun back on the ground, I noticed a small translucent piece of bone. I was no expert, but it appeared to be part of a hand. Digging further, I found another fragment, and Barker, who was searching as well, picked up a third piece.
By now we were soaked from the melting ice and shaking from the cold. “Hey, boss,” Barker said. “I think it’s time we got out of here before we join the crew—permanently.”
We gathered up the jacket and the bones and returned back down the cavern to the opening. We stepped through the hole, into the bright sunlight.
“Well?” Ellis asked, coiling the rope around his shoulder.
“It’s there,” Barker answered.
“Hot damn!” Carter yelled.
“I knew it!” Ellis proclaimed.
“Let me have the harness,” Ellis said. “I’ve got to see this!”
“We’re not going back in until we have a good plan. It’s too dangerous right now,” I said.
“Geoff, you and Pat see if we can enter the cavern from the side. Up near the wing section. If we can get in from that angle then we can reduce the distance between the wreckage and our escape if things go bad.”
“Roger, sir,” Barker acknowledged.
“You going to call this in, XO?” Carter asked.
“Not yet, Chuck. Let’s give it a day before we radio in what we’ve found.” Overnight some other naval officers from the Pentagon and Hawaii had flown in to help assist in the identification of remains, if any were found. Additionally, some members of the aircrew’s family had come to Tofino. During one of our pre-mission coordination meetings, I had naively agreed that if we found anything at the site, I would radio back to Tofino and those relatives who were fit enough could join us to pay their last respects. But I assumed that if we found the aircraft it would be underwater and most of the elderly folks wouldn’t want to make the journey just to look at a picturesque lake—even if their relatives were buried beneath it.
Now that the wreck was accessible, some of the more adventurous men would definitely opt for coming out to see the remains.
Over the course of the next few days, with the help of a small Navy recovery team, we continued to pick through the wreckage, but there wasn’t much left of the plane. We salvaged another machine gun and some additional bone fragments, but the cavern became more unstable every day. Finally, I decided to call off the search. I radioed back to Tofino that we had found the plane and any relatives wanting to join us were welcome to fly out.
By that afternoon, we had an additional eight folks on the ground, including Ray Swentek, the brother of the navigator, Edward Swentek. Ray had made it his calling in life to find the plane and have the bodies recovered. Without his efforts none of this would have happened. It was Swentek who had approached the Navy about getting the SEALs to conduct the search. I allowed Ray and several members of the other families to view the wreckage. We roped them in and provided escorts for their safety.
As Ray Swentek walked the length of the plane I could see the pain in his eyes. This frozen metal carcass, twisted and crushed beyond recognition, was the final resting place of the brother he had idolized as a child. Somewhere in the cockpit, now pulverized by ice and rocks, his brother would be buried for eternity.
I watched Swentek scour the area around the cockpit, slowly, deliberately picking through the rubble.
“I was hoping to find it,” he said.
“Find what?”
“His Navy ring. He never took it off even when flying.”
I knew there wasn’t a chance in hell that we would find the ring, but I got down on my knees and began to sift through what was left of the cockpit.
We didn’t find the ring, and as the melting ice began to thaw more quickly, I ordered everyone out of the cavern.
Later that day we assembled all the family members and held a small memorial service near our campsite. Half of the bone fragments we buried under a makeshift cross, the other half we would return to Arlington and provide full military honors to our fallen.
As we gathered around the cross it occurred to me that this would be the final time any man would venture to this location. Most of the crew who perished that night had families, children who grew up strong in their absence, but who would never know their fathers except by some old black-and-white photos.
We bowed our heads and I prayed. “Dear heavenly father, we know these men are with you in heaven. We give thanks for their service on earth and we pray that you will continue to bless their families and loved ones. We thank you for your guiding hand that brought us to this site and for allowing us to return these men home where they can rest in peace among others who have paid the same price. God bless them all.”
“Amen,” came the response.
For a brief moment tears flowed and heads remained bowed.
I glanced up from the gravesite to see Barker staring off into the distance. His head was cocked hard to the right and his mouth was open. Beside him Ellis was wide-eyed and quietly pointing something out to Carter.
Turning around, I looked in the direction of the ice floe, and there, high above the peak, a lone bright object sparkled in the sky.
“It looks like a signal flare,” Swentek offered.
It did look like a signal flare, I thought. In fact, it looked like a military-style parachute flare, bright white, almost silver, suspended in the air, possibly caught in an updraft off the side of the mountain.
Suddenly another flare lit the sky, and then another and another and another. As we watched in silence, the entire ridgeline filled with glowing white orbs that hovered just above the mountaintop.
“Boss,” Walker stammered. “How many flares do you see up there?”
I began to count, but I knew the answer even before I finished.
“There are nine of them,” Carter said.
The orbs hovered for more than fifteen minutes, and then suddenly, one by one, they all rocketed skyward and were gone.
In silence, we packed up the remainder of our gear and shuttled the family members back to Tofino, and as the sun began to set over the mountaintop I boarded the helo for one of the last rides out. As I adjusted the headset the pilot came up on comms.
“You guys are the talk of Tofino, Commander. People have been searching for that plane for years. Now that the lost souls have found their way to heaven, maybe our luck will change.”
I adjusted the volume on my headset and unconsciously leaned over to look the pilot in the eye. “What did you say?”
The pilot grinned. “My ancestors believe that the remains of the dead must be visible to heaven so their souls can be guided through the great dome.”
Checking his compass setting, he glanced around to make certain we were clear of the mountains. “Legend says that the sky is a great dome and there is a hole in it through which the spirits pass in order to get to heaven. The spirits who live in heaven light torches to guide them through.” The pilot craned his helmeted head in my direction and laughed. “It’s all just Indian folklore, but I’m sure some local will buy you boys a beer when you get back to Tofino.”
Sitting back on the floorboard, I watched as the ice floe disappeared into the distance, the thumping of the rotor blades marking our progress back to Tofino.
I looked skyward, smiled, and rendered a salute. The crew was finally home.