Clive Cussler; Craig Dirgo (36 page)

Thump, thump, thump.

Berry stared at the fish.

Pop, pop, pop.

“Damn,” Berry said aloud, “it’s coming from above.”

Squinting through the mist, he scanned the sky for the source of the noise.

“WE MUST MAKE a decision,” Nungesser said. “To the south the clouds seem thicker, but looking north and east I can see light.”

“Without the airspeed indicator,” Coli said, “it’s difficult to calculate fuel burn.”

“We fought the good fight,” Nungesser said, “but I believe the Orteig Prize is going to elude us this trip.”

“If we continue on for New York, we will arrive on fumes,” Coli said.

“But the Paris-to-Quebec prize is within reach,” Nungesser noted.

“Quebec is only two hundred miles away,” Coli said easily. “We could make it with two hours of fuel remaining.”

“Then it is decided,” Nungesser said. “We make Quebec today, refuel, and make New York tomorrow. As soon as the weather cooperates, we fly home west to east.”

“Not quite as we’d planned,” Coli said, “but whatever is.”

“I’ll make the turn,” Nungesser said wearily.

If all went as planned, they could still beat Chamberlin and Lindbergh across the pond. And they would make the return flight with the benefit of experience. The Frenchmen were not giving up—at least not yet.

ANSON BERRY STARED up at the clouds. The noise was closer now and becoming more defined. What had first sounded like a faraway locomotive now sounded like a logging truck in the air. Berry now knew it was a plane, a rarity in these parts, but where was it? The sound was coming from the south and growing in volume. He craned his neck around. For a second, he saw a flash of white. Then only clouds once again. He followed the sound as it passed over the lake from south to north. The sound diminished, then he heard it sputter, then go quiet.

“MERDE,”
NUNGESSER SHOUTED.

Though Nungesser had no way of knowing it, the slide in the carburetor had frozen open. Raw fuel had poured into the float bowl and was choking the engine. Inside each of the twelve cylinders, the spark plugs were becoming wet. A strong spark might have helped matters, but the lightning strike had weakened the alternator and wreaked havoc with the voltage regulator. Just then the engine fired up and raced.

“Buy us as much altitude as you can, Captain,” Coli shouted. “I’ll seek out a lake for landing.”

Nungesser pushed the throttles forward.
White Bird
clawed at the air.

ANSON BERRY WAITED until the plane was out of earshot, then resumed his fishing. Two more pickerel and he would call it a day. He had an hour, maybe two, of light, and he wanted to be inside his cabin with dinner on the table before night fell.

THE ENGINE SPUTTERED and died once again. The clouds were thinning, and Nungesser knew there were clear skies only a few hundred feet above.
White Bird
continued to climb, powered only by the force from the last burst of speed until she exhausted her forward momentum. For a brief second, Nungesser could see the bank of clouds from above. To his left there was a hole in the layer, and he glimpsed the blue-green hue of water. Flaring his propellers, he pitched
White Bird
over in a dive.

“Hold on, François,” he shouted.

Mountains and bogs and wilderness below.
White Bird
floated down, slow at first, then gaining in speed. The landing angle was all wrong. Instead of a gradual descent, White Bird was plunging down like an albino fish hawk after prey.

Nungesser jammed an unlit cigar into his mouth and clenched his teeth as they fell downward, just on the edge of control. Coli knew it was bad—in the last hour his emotions had gone from exhaustion to disappointment to euphoria to acceptance. He was no longer mourning the end of his dreams but praying instead that he might somehow live. The hell with New York City or even Quebec—just to land safely once again would be enough. He removed a rosary from his leather flight bag and clutched it in his hand. Nungesser struggled with the yoke to pull
White Bird
from the steep dive, but the controls were sluggish and his arms weak from the long hours without sleep.
White Bird
slowly began to flare out of the dive. Nungesser could see the water below.

“François,” he shouted, “we’re going to make it.”

A moose stood in water up to his belly. He was chewing a mouthful of plants. A shadow passed over his head, followed a second later by
White Bird.
The sound of the wind whipping against the fabric wings less than twenty feet overhead spooked the beast. He beat a hasty retreat out of the water toward shore. Nungesser had managed to level out the plane, but he had no way to slow the forward movement. He slowly lowered the plane down to water level.
White Bird
was now ten feet above the water. He stared forward out of the cockpit.

The lake ended less than two hundred yards ahead. A rocky ridge rising eight hundred feet in the air lined the shore. If the engine would fire one last time, he might be able to force the plane into a 180-degree turn. He tried the starter, but the engine was dead. Nungesser pushed the yoke all the way down. They would not have a soft landing.

White Bird
struck hard.

The bottom of the stationary propeller cut into the lower fuselage. The top broke off and shot rearward like a razor-sharp boomerang. It severed the top of Nungesser’s head just above the eyebrow.

The brain matter splattered Coli, who screamed in horror.
White Bird
continued forward on momentum, the ripped lower fuselage dragging while the left wing dipped over and struck a rock.
White Bird
spun counterclockwise as the wing was ripped off the side. Coli fell out and was hit in the chest by the horizontal tail wing. It crushed his ribs and broke his back. He was alive when he slipped from the wreckage, but he had no feeling in his arms and legs.

And then it was quiet, save for a small fire that the rain quickly extinguished.

II

Rain, Black Flies, and Bogs
1984, 1997, 1998

ONE OF THE GREAT MYSTERIES OF HISTORY IS ONE THAT is little known nor long remembered. The tale of the
White Bird
and Nungesser and Coli could be a story by Stephen King, all the more so since the plane probably lies within a hundred miles of his house in Bangor, Maine.

The
White Bird
and its legend lay lost and forgotten for sixty years until author Gunnar Hanson researched the aircraft’s disappearance in 1986. Until then, it was generally thought that Nungesser and Coli had gone down in the middle of the Atlantic, but Hanson discovered that they had made it across the coast of Newfoundland, and then some.

Though the sky was heavily overcast with clouds as low as eight hundred feet, there were seventeen reports from people who heard it go over. Two claimed to have actually seen a white plane heading southwest at the approximate time that it was due to reach the North American continent. What gave the sightings, or rather hearings, credibility was the fact that they were all in a straight line, so there is little doubt
White Bird
made it across the North Atlantic and beyond Newfoundland. Four more sightings came in from Nova Scotia. At this point, Nungesser and Coli must have cut west for the Maine coastline. The final accounts, again in a straight line, came from people living in Maine.

The last person to hear the plane go over was Anson Berry, a reclusive fisherman who lived in the wilds alone. While fishing in a body of water known as Round Lake, about twenty-five miles north of the village of Machias, Berry heard a plane fly overhead late in the afternoon. He could not see it because it was in the overcast. The white color of the plane would have also made it difficult to spot against the clouds.

His earwitness account became colored through the years. Some claimed that he heard the engine sputtering and then die before a loud crashing sound. Others swore he never said any such thing. The next day, he walked to a small general store and asked if anyone else had heard an airplane fly over. No one had heard anything. But one old fellow, who was a boy when he knew Berry, stated emphatically that Anson never said anything about a plane crashing.

Because Berry was known as an honest man, no one ever doubted his story. His account also holds water because five other citizens of Maine who reported the
White Bird
passing over their head were in a direct line northeast of him.

Anson Berry will forever be a footnote in history as the last man to hear the engine of
White Bird
pass in the clouds above. The next thirty miles along the projected course of the aircraft would have taken it over totally uninhabited, thickly forested country, speckled with lakes and spreading into a vast impenetrable bog. Several miles past the great bog, the landscape becomes populated with towns and people, none of whom reported seeing or hearing the
White Bird
in 1927.

Theories abound. One has the intrepid French pilots, realizing that they can’t make New York, turning for Montreal. But that distance was too great for them to make with the fuel aboard. Or, knowing they were lost over land, they might have turned east for the coast and crashed in the sea. Another theory, backed by psychics, has them flying low and crashing into a mountain. Take your pick.

I CONTACTED GUNNAR Hanson in the summer of 1984. At that time, he was working with Rick Gillespie of TIGRE, another group interested in solving the mystery. Having other projects on the table, I dropped the matter until a few months later, when Gunnar called me to say he’d had a falling-out with Gillespie. I asked if he would like to pool search efforts with NUMA and me. He did.

We arranged to meet in Maine near the Round Lake area where Berry had lived. Ray Beck of Chatham, New York, also joined us, since he’d reported seeing an old engine half-buried in the ground above the Round Lake hills less than a mile from where Berry heard the plane pass. This was during a hunting trip in 1954. He generously offered the use of his vacation cabin, which was not far from the search area.

We gathered together and began walking the hills south of the lake. As coincidence would have it, Gillespie and his TIGRE group were also searching the area at the same time. It was raining, and Gillespie stayed in the town of Machias and held press conferences, claiming the discovery was only hours away.

My feeling has always been not to make a big deal out of an expedition until you have something to show for the effort. What was amusing was that we came, we searched, and we went home without Gillespie or his TIGRE group knowing we were present.

We forged through the wilderness of the beautiful country while the precipitation fell in a constant drizzle. For two days, we tramped the hills, Ray Beck trying to retrace his footsteps during the sighting of the engine so many years before. Nothing was found. Discouraged and soaked through clothes and skin, we returned to the cabin and made plans to try again the following year.

If I have learned anything looking for lost history, it is to keep an open mind and not become hung up on one theory and one theory only. Having always had faith in psychics, because they are such amiable and interesting people, and believing they see things that most of us can’t, I contacted Ingo Swann. Ingo is perhaps the world’s most respected
remote viewer,
a term now in use for people who imagine beyond.

He thought the
White Bird
project would be an excellent opportunity to conduct a controlled experiment. His associate, Blue Harary, well known for his work in remote viewing at Stanford University, came on board, as well as a lady named Fanny from Miami, Florida, who’d worked for many years with police departments in solving crimes. She holds classes for men and women with psychic talents and thought it would be a great chance for them to hone their skills. And, since they were working in different parts of the country, Ingo felt that there wouldn’t be any danger of them referencing or tuning in to one another.

First, Ingo sent them photos of Nungesser and Coli and their aircraft, along with a chart of the North Atlantic. His question was: “Did they go down in the ocean?”

They all came back with a no.

Then maps of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and the Bay of Fundy were sent.

Again the answer was no.

Next they received a map of Maine.

This time they replied with a yes.

He kept reducing the maps until he sent them a topographical map of the Round Lake area. Without hesitation, Ingo, Blue, Fanny, and her six students all put the plane wreck within a quarter-mile grid on the southern slope of Round Lake Hills. This struck me as amazing. Never in my dreams had I expected them all to agree on a crash site. If it were this easy for them to find lost historical ships and aircraft, future operations would all include psychic readings.

Now it was time to check out their predictions.

We gathered at Ray Beck’s cabin. Ingo and I met at the airport in Bangor and drove into the woods. How I managed to find the cabin during a thunder and lightning storm in the wilds of Maine, I’ll never guess. But miraculously I took all the correct turns until the lights of the cabin appeared. Ray was there, along with an old backwoodsman named Andy and two young fellows from New York City. Thunder rattled the log walls of the cabin as lightning flashed all around. It was indeed a haunted night. We sat amid the tempest, the big-time author, the renowned psychic, Ray Beck, who’d achieved fame and wealth inventing methods of plastic manufacturing, and Gunnar Hanson, a huge bear of a man at least six feet six and weighing 250 pounds. Only then did I learn that Gunnar was also an actor and had played the role of Leatherface, the butcher who dismembered bodies in the cult movie
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

It goes without saying that I didn’t get much sleep that night.

For the next two days, we combed the site as directed by the psychics. Their visions indicated that the plane had become buried, so I brought along a small magnetometer, but it proved useless. There is so much ferrous geology under Round Lake Hills that the needle on the mag’s dial pegged and stayed there.

Then a plague struck. Just as we were wrapping up the search, the infamous Maine black flies appeared. I thought mosquitoes were bad. They’re trifling compared to black flies. Two things mystify me. One, how such a teeny-weenie insect can cause such an irritating bite. And two, why anyone would go to live in the wilds of Maine where they proliferate and attack. Ray Beck saved everyone a fate worse than death by passing out hats with nets that covered the head and neck.

The resulting search came as a crushing defeat.
White Bird
was not there. The entire ground was covered twice, inch by inch. Not a shred of an aircraft was found. Swann and the others were stunned with disbelief. How could eight remote viewers, working in separate areas of the country, come up with the same location yet nothing be found? Could they have tapped into one another’s minds? Is the plane indeed buried beneath the rocks of Round Lake Hills? Or was it carried off and sold for salvage many years ago without the finders reporting it? There were no solid answers.

I came up with theory number two hundred and thirty-seven. Since the
White Bird
had dropped its landing gear on takeoff from Paris and planned to land in the East River of New York, I figured that if they knew they were about to run out of fuel, Nungesser would have attempted a water landing. It wasn’t outlandish, considering the plane was constructed for just such an event. If this were a possibility, then they may have crashed and sunk to the bottom in any one of a dozen lakes along their projected flight course in a line beyond Anson Berry.

IN APRIL OF 1997, I called on Ralph Wilbanks, and he and Wes Hall towed Diversity up to Machias, where we all stayed at the Machias Inn. Dirk Cussler came along with Craig Dirgo and Dave Keyes, assistant to NUMA trustee Doug Wheeler. Bill Shea also graced us with his presence. There are few people I enjoy as much as Bill. We’ve been through some harrowing times together.

Connie Young, the noted psychic from Enid, Oklahoma, also joined the search. Connie had worked with the FBI on the Tylenol murders, with incredible results. Connie envisioned the
White Bird
coming down in water and drew a diagram that nearly matched Round Lake.

We hauled Diversity over narrow, muddy dirt roads and found a little ramp on Round Lake. Local residents were dumbfounded. They’d never seen a boat that large on any of the lakes in the area and couldn’t believe we had pulled it over back-country roads. The effort didn’t come easy. Ralph had to stop often so the guys could chop off branches that hung over the road.

Every inch of Round Lake was surveyed with both sidescan sonar and magnetometer. Wes dove on two or three interesting targets, but they all turned out to be old logs. The water, strangely enough, was not blue or green, but a dark, rather attractive brown from the tannic acid in the logs that littered the bottom.

We found no trace of
White Bird.

The other lakes we planned to search were in primitive areas that Ralph’s boat could not penetrate. He made a magnificent effort to take it all the way to the next body of water, Long Lake, actually arriving at a crude ramp, but the water was shallow and too littered with rocks for Diversity to be launched without knocking holes in her hull. This called for plan B.

We were lucky in meeting Carl Kurz, a local schoolteacher who was also an avid hunter-fisherman and restored rifles and shotguns. He generously offered his Zodiac boat with an outboard motor for our back-country searches.

The rain came down as we tackled Long Lake, which stretched on the other side of the Round Lake Hills. Ralph stayed reasonably dry in his slickers and big red fireman’s hat but grumbled most of the time, while Wes seldom muttered a word. The rest of us wandered around the woods between showers, but mostly sat in the cars.

During dinner that evening, Wes rolled out the sidescan recordings of Long Lake and examined them inch by inch. Plenty of rocks, but no sign of an aircraft or a lost fisherman’s boat either.

Over the next few days, we searched two more lakes without success. Still no
White Bird,
but we had fun despite the continuous rain. Everyone had their fill of Maine lobsters. I saw one store that had lobster on sale for $2.99 a pound. Our morning breakfasts were enjoyable, as we gathered around the table at Helen’s restaurant and planned the day’s search. And then there were Helen’s scrumptious pies. If he could have, Ralph would have loaded up
Diversity’s
cabin with them for the trip back to Charleston.

Dave Keyes took off early, because he was getting married and wanted a tattoo of his wife’s name.

Craig, Dirk, Connie, and I drove back to Bangor to catch the flight to Boston and then on home. I stopped at Stephen King’s house and walked up to the front porch. There were three or four cars in the driveway, including a Mercedes-Benz sports car. I rang the bell, knocked on the door, and mugged for the TV surveillance cameras. Nobody answered.

I yelled. “King, get out here, it’s Cussler.”

Dead silence.

I never knew if he was home or if I was persona non grata.

FOOL THAT I am, I’d have probably volunteered for the rack during the Spanish Inquisition. I brought the gang back for another try in 1998. Except for Connie and Bill, the same motley crew returned. This time we were joined by my son-in-law, Bob Toft, and by William Nungesser, distant relative of Charles, who enthralled the team with stories about his famous kinsman.

Ralph and Wes searched the lakes while the rest of us tramped through the jungles of Maine in a futile search for White Bird. And guess what? It rained the whole time. We all came back to the hotel drenched. I’ll bet the manager would have turned the air blue with four-letter words if he’d known that I dried my sneakers in his microwave.