If the mission weren’t so dire, Bell would have found the view magnificent. All his attention was focused on finding the airship, however, not on the natural beauty of the scene below. He scanned all around, straining his eyes to catch the unnatural deviation in light from a large man-made object.
Bell wasn’t certain about the seaplane’s range. He’d needed two hours to cross the isthmus and guessed the tank still had some gas in reserve. He’d been aloft for an hour already and assumed it would take him at least forty minutes to get back to Colón. His window of flight was closing rapidly, and as the minutes ticked away, his anxiety rose. He didn’t care about himself. It was Marion’s fate that gnawed at his conscience.
He passed his self-imposed deadline without making a sighting. He knew he’d guessed correctly. The airship had to meet its support ship in these waters. He kept on, his neck and eyes in constant motion as he scanned either side of the aircraft and ahead through the whirling propeller blade for an otherworldly shimmer to mark the dirigible’s location.
His faith withered as more time slipped through his grasp. He slid close to despair when he saw he’d passed his deadline by ten minutes. Even if he found the airship now and followed it back to its base and he rescued Marion, he likely didn’t have enough fuel to make it to shore, let alone all the way back to Colón. He realized the decision had been made without consciously thinking about it. He never planned to turn back at all. He was going to keep searching until the last drop of gasoline had sprayed into the engine, and, even then, he’d keep looking until he had to dead-stick the plane in an ocean landing.
A minute later, he spotted his quarry. The airship was much lower than his plane, maybe only at a thousand feet, so it appeared small from his perspective, but there was no hiding its torpedo-like body knifing through the air. Bell dumped altitude and speed and was soon at a thousand feet and slightly behind the lumbering Zeppelin. The air was so much warmer that he felt the circulation returning to his hands, giving them back their normal dexterity, and he no longer needed to clench his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering.
He looked far ahead and spotted the beam of a searchlight that hadn’t been there moments earlier. It was a signal from the ship to guide the dirigible home. Bell realized that when the Zeppelin came in for its final approach, all eyes would be on it, and the noise of its engines and props would drown out any sounds he made.
He banked left and added some more power. He flew a wide arc around the ship, keeping far enough from her so they wouldn’t hear the buzz of his Hall-Scott motor. He went into a holding pattern as he watched the airship slowly approach its marine tender. It seemed to take forever, but, really, it was only a few minutes.
He thought about how he would have to improvise his escape, then admonished himself for worrying about something so far into the future. He needed all his wits to land the plane on the open ocean under the noses of the German crew. He hadn’t allowed himself time to contemplate the vast quantities of explosives potentially smuggled into the Canal Zone either. That was a problem for . . .
Bell snapped himself back to the present. The airship looked close to the tender now. He had to land. He eased back on the throttle and let the nose fall away. He’d waited too long, so he gave it more power for a few seconds. Soon enough, the ocean reared up under the pontoon, making waves under the aircraft, at what seemed a breakneck speed. From a few thousand feet up, it had looked like a sheet of mercury. Now it resembled the hide of a living, breathing creature whose skin rippled and heaved in unreadable patterns.
The Zeppelin was almost to the metal mooring mast. Bell could see the bright glow of lights aimed up from the white-hulled ship.
He cut more power as he came in to land aligned with the vessel’s bow. Anyone keeping watch would require the keenest of eyes and the best of luck in the world to spot him, but the odds of detection weren’t zero. He edged off more of the throttle until the engine felt like it was almost idling. The speed dropped quickly because of the drag of the heavy pontoon, and the nose of the aircraft kept wanting to drop. Water still flashed under the wing with the apparent speed of a white-water cataract.
Bell pulled back on the stick ever so gently. The nose came up, and then the wings suddenly lost lift, and the plane stalled just a few inches behind the long ocean swell it pushed in front of it. She had kissed the water as gently as any landing Bell had performed and slowed in the dramatic fashion of all seaplanes. He’d done it. He’d snuck in right under their noses. The ship was just a quarter mile away, and he was down safely.
He killed the motor and pulled the plugs from his ears. Despite its distance, he could hear the airship’s motors as it made its final approach. His entire body was stiff when he climbed out of the cockpit, every joint protesting being set in motion again. He crouched down to untie the canoe and launch it on the plainly gentle
