The male of her kind grabbed her by the arm and led her to the front of the craft. He guided her to a seat and pointed at a glowing red dot the size of her thumb on a keypad. “Push this as fast as you can!”
She understood what the male said and complied. The guns of the spacecraft came alive and the hanger was littered with a spray of red lasers. An external barrel on each side obeyed the command and spat out destructive rounds each time the red light was tapped. Explosions rang out in front of them as the rounds proved fatal to two smaller patrol vessels. The percussion shook the transport as the craft lifted off and was flying backward through the hanger opening as Sonia continued to fire. Just as they flew backwards out of the hanger, on the other side of the burning patrol vessels, a large transport littered by laser rounds exploded. The detonation caused a chain reaction of explosions assuring that most of the spacecraft and personnel in the area of the hanger were destroyed. The transport shook violently, nearly knocking Sonia out of her seat. The male continued to fire as explosions continued to light up the night sky. Without warning, the craft spun around and darted into the atmosphere.
Sonia watched as a small section of her former prison burned. She concentrated on the red-orange fire until she was no longer able to see it. “Why do you look like me?” she asked, “what do you want with me?”
“Nothing. I saw you running and decided to help you,” the first question was still settling into his thoughts. “What do you mean? Have you never seen others like us?” the man blurted out as he looked out across the horizon for incoming.
“We are all slaves. Why are you not a slave?” her eyes were wide open in awe.
His empathy for the woman increased. He wasn’t certain how much information to give or how to help her. By her looks, he estimated that she was older than he was by approximately ten years. She was dirty, heavily scarred and smelled awful.
“My name is Honoré. I am not here to hurt you or anything like that. I will take you where you can get help. Maybe get back to your kind,” he replied anxiously scanning the electronics and the atmosphere in front of them.
“My kind are all slaves,” her eyes narrowed and she looked at him with more hesitancy.
The craft took off with great speed then Honoré spoke a command, leaned back in the chair and exhaled for a second. He stood, then walked to the rear of the craft. He motioned for her to follow. A two-foot wide metal door swung open and revealed a small room. Honoré opened a second compartment, dug for a few minutes and pulled out some clothes. “They belong to a friend of mine named Sachi. She wouldn’t mind if you wore them. You can clean off and dress in there,” he said pointing into a room off on the side that included a shower.
Tears filled her eyes and she slid down the metal wall to her knees. She was free. Truly free and just like in her dreams there were free beings like her. For the first time, hope became real.
Chapter 3
The suddenness of the loud invasive noise jolted Gunner Dawson out of bed. To make matters worse it interrupted a night of satisfying REM sleep and a pleasant dream which were very rare. He never seemed to get used to it and morning after morning it was the same story. The alarm went off and he rolled over and slapped the snooze button when he really wanted to drive his fist through the plastic nuisance. Somehow, he always managed to restrain himself.
This morning he seemed especially tired. Gunner paused for a second and looked back at the clock. He proceeded automatically to the second daily ritual of wondering if the annoying electronic device was even displaying the correct time since he had missed the time check from the pilot house. Gunner couldn’t remember where they were the last time he rolled the clock back adjusting for the change in time zones. Over the course of thirteen thousand nautical miles the fleet motored to get down to the South American continent, the Fourth Fleet had passed through fourteen time zones since leaving the Sea of Japan. He was less interested in the current Greenwich Mean Time than the local time. It was good to have some sort of idea of what the natives were doing and what part of their day was occurring in real time.
Initially, SOUTHCOM or Southern Command had ordered the Fourth to leave the Caribbean for the Sea of Japan. The purpose was a show of strength to the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The sadistic leader insisted on pushing boundaries and beating the war drums by making threats to launch missiles at Japan, South Korea, and Guam. Jong Un held millions hostage while he screamed death to America and worked to develop long-range nuclear missiles that would be capable of reaching the United States mainland. For the US, it became a matter of inaction while waiting for missiles to be inevitably pointed at Los Angeles and the West Coast or act beforehand and prevent the regime from obtaining the ability by whatever means necessary.
If a military response was to be required, any strike needed to be fast and unequivocally crippling in order to prevent the deaths of millions. Diplomacy and sanctions proved to be fruitless and America appeared to have moved beyond any possibility of avoiding a conflict. The United States decided on a strategic strike to take down as much of Jong Un’s military capabilities as possible at one time rather than to side with apathy and risk an unavoidable nuclear incident on the American continent.
The only country in the world capable of addressing the issue in a peaceful manner was China. Initially, the Chinese put up a façade and appeared as if they were diplomatically addressing the North Korean problem. With the American military already involved in what seemed to be a perpetual war in the mid-east, China saw any conflict as a way to spread thin and further weaken the military and finances of the United States. The war would benefit China as their primary goal was to be the ultimate economic and military powerhouse in the world. China, Russia, and Iran would back the rogue nation in the event of a military response from the Americans.
After feeling emboldened by the support of its allies, and sensing that an attack from the American military was imminent, Jong Un ordered his military to send a message to the United States, South Korea, and Japan. Gunner recalled the moment he received word that the North Korean military had done the unthinkable. In a show of force, the rogue nation launched a Hwason-10 from a facility in Pyongsan with intentions of striking Soul in the south. The missile was hacked and reprogramed by the US military. It was redirected to the west and landed in the North Korean city of Sariwon killing an estimated twenty-thousand people.
Within an hour of the incident, it was proclaimed that Kim Jong Un had been assassinated. Images of his dead body revealed that he was shot in the back of the head with a two-inch exit wound in the forehead. The North Koreans falsely accused the United States of the death of their leader claiming that American special forces were the ones responsible. Interestingly, despite this, the North Korean military took control of the government and began the slaughter of all the Jong descendants ending their dictatorial rule.
The aggression displayed by military leaders in the North during years of oppression, starvation, and ruling with an iron fist, didn’t sit well with the citizenry. The people had enough. The nation was becoming increasingly unstable. The North Korean civil war had begun.
The North Korean military considered a strike against the US and believed that it would unite the nation by engaging the enemy of the west. Had they possessed missiles that could have reached the American mainland, they would have given strong consideration to using them. Destabilization of the nation became more than the military leaders could contend with. But the social unrest resulted in the Korean military striking hard against domestic opposition, engaging in mass public executions to quash the emboldened and rebelling citizenry. Weapons and food began to funnel past the border and find its way to once starving and defenseless rebel forces. The resistance did not waver and civil unrest escalated.
Despite all the tension in the region, the Fourth was commanded to leave the Sea of Japan for another increasingly unstable region. Most would have seen the Southern Caribbean as a welcomed venture; however, Venezuela’s
economic success had led it down a path of class envy and warfare. Fiscal success was often used by opportunistic politicians, such as Hugo Chavez, to propagate a false narrative intended to breed a love of socialist ideals while turning the people against corporations and the wealthy. His message spread like gas on flaming tinder resulting in the eventual election and empowerment of the corrupt leader. Chavez’s economic policies were not sustainable and when the price of petroleum fell, the Venezuelan economy tanked with it. The once wealthy nation was now wrought with corruption, hyperinflation, a lack of food, high unemployment and a severe lack of basic services. News stories of the desperate plight of the people of Venezuela had spread across the continental United States and around the world. With the nation becoming increasingly unstable, it became a potential breeding ground for terrorist organizations.
After Chavez’s death, Nicholas Maduro was elected to take his place. Maduro had proven to be even more corrupt and inept than his predecessor resulting in his rejection by the Venezuelan people. The situation became more volatile when Russia and Cuba deployed military assets to prop up the nation’s self-anointed leader in an effort to legitimize a corrupt reelection effort. Maduro claimed victory despite being opposed by more than eighty percent of the population. When the Supreme Court took the unprecedented action of dissolving parliament and assumed its authority, Maduro’s stranglehold on the impoverished nation was solidified. With Maduro’s support, Russia had a doorway into Central America and potentially to the United States causing great concern among those in Washington.
Gunner sat up and retrieved a small clear plastic box with a green lid. It contained ten disposable cameras he purchased as a novelty in a little side shop in Chiba just east of Tokyo Bay while in port for repairs. He wasn’t sure why he had made the purchase and second-guessed the silliness of using such an outdated device to memorialize his time in the NAVY. Perhaps it was out of nostalgia since he had used them as a teenager. Despite the inferior quality when compared to that of a modern digital camera, they were cheap and didn’t require electricity or a memory stick to operate in the unlikely event something went wrong with his cell phone. Plus, they could go underwater, which his current smartphone could not do. He decided to use them only for non-important events where vivid colors were not required to get the gist of the photo such as a fiery sunset or the glowing waters of Culebra. It was more suited for deserts or areas around the Mid-East. The major downfall was the lack of instant gratification of being able to look at the shots as soon as they were taken instead of waiting for an unknown period of time for the photos to be developed and returned.
Under normal circumstances, the trip would have been nine-thousand five hundred nautical miles. Since the signing of the Torrijos-Carter treaty in 1977, the United States no longer managed the Panama Canal. Due to the actions of President Carter, that dubious distinction had been bestowed upon the Chinese who were using it as a bartering tool due to escalating tensions and trade disputes between the two nations. In an unprecedented show of strength, the United States was refused military access at the time and the route was directed from the Sea of Japan toward the west and the manmade waterway through the Sinai desert in Egypt known as the Suez Canal. The one-hundred and twenty-mile-long Suez connected the Red Sea and the Mediterranean which were both the exact same level alleviating the need for the installation of locks to control water flow. Passage, while slow, was easy.
Gunner had taken a number of photos while passing through the Suez including some unidentified ruins which consumed the 24 exposures on three of the cameras. These were marked with ‘Suez 1’ through three. He continued to shuffle through them and stopped and removed one in particular. On the clear plastic casing, there was a large black X on the top that he had made with a marker. Several times Gunner considered throwing the camera overboard so that its contents would never be seen by anyone, including himself. He often found that photos had the ability to conjure emotions that were not always wanted or positive. The sadness associated with a picture of a loved one far away, a deceased family member, of youth that had long since passed, of childhood friends, or of times that could not be relived, made Gunner wonder why mankind had been so fascinated with them. The film in this camera contained something he never wanted to see again. He wasn’t even sure why he always managed to talk himself out of smashing or discarding it. Surely the Navy would be none too happy that he had the photos even if he would have been unable to get the film developed.
Initially, the fleet was comprised of the USS Abraham Lincoln a Nimitz-Class carrier, the USS Roosevelt, USS Farragut, USS Lassen, the USS Paul Ignatius, which were Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, and the USS Gettysburg, a Ticonderoga-class cruiser. A second cruiser, the USS Shiloh had also accompanied the fleet. The formation through the canal was the USS Roosevelt, the USS Shiloh, the USS Gettysburg, the USS Abraham Lincoln, the USS Lassen, the USS Farragut, and the USS Paul Ignatius.
This was Gunner’s third time making the passage through Egypt. He felt much safer in open water, especially since the USS Cole bombing in October of 2000. It just seemed too easy as two men in a fiberglass boat with four to seven hundred pounds of C4 explosives had simply approached the port side of the ship and detonated the bomb. The result was a forty foot by sixty-foot gash, seventeen dead, and thirty-nine injured sailors. How the suicide bombers were able to get that close to the Cole was a mystery to him.
He tried to convince himself that Egypt was not Yemen. But this was a new world and radicals seemed to lurk in every corner of the Middle East…and the world for that matter as they sought to use one justifiable cause after another to destroy the West. To Gunner, each time the fleet had seemed vulnerable as it slowly motored up the center of the six hundred and fifty-foot-wide canal.
The terrain around them was flat for the most part and easily accessible by those hostile to the United States. To the west, the Kanat Al Sweis Rd., and to the east, the Al Ki Mish were alive with dust clouds that were kicked up by trucks passing almost tauntingly back and forth. It seemed that it made for too easy of an access on both sides of them.
With the approaching Al Salam Bridge, which each vessel would have to pass beneath, there was always the potential for the unthinkable. Despite the American firepower motoring through the Suez, extremists didn’t seem to care or have the capacity to think rationally. Any damage or American deaths would be declared as a victory by one of the demented organizations seeking glory and converts to their misguided causes. The extremist would go down as martyrs who had ascended to paradise taking the souls of all the innocent people whose lives were taken by their hands to be their servants for eternity. It was a completely illogical and foreign concept to him reached without the need to be very analytical. It simply required a polluted mind and a willingness to be duped. It was sad and far too irrational for any sane person to comprehend.
Gunner turned his attention away from the vehicles on the dusty road and looked upward. The sky was clear, and the afternoon sun offered proper lighting and an opportunity to take what he knew would be decent but not remarkable photos of the journey. For this, as on prior trips, he would use the disposable cameras since he was mostly surrounded by sand and blue skies and the photos would not capture anything remotely remarkable.
Gunner recalled standing on the weather deck as the USS Shiloh, the cruiser that had been ordered to accompany them, was approaching the Al Salam Peace Bridge just after the USS Roosevelt had cleared and was motoring north toward the Mediterranean. Gunner noticed an odd occurrence in the lanes on the south side of the bridge. Several trucks abruptly stopped over the center of the canal and were blocking traffic. At first, it appeared that one of the trucks was experiencing mechanical failure. That thought was kicked aside when a man with a red and white turban exited the vehicle, ran to the rear, and jerked down the tailgate. Something was amiss and the other crewman knew it. The man yanked back a large brown blanket from the truck bed sending it without concern onto the roadway. Three f
igures sat up in the bed of the truck and moved down toward the back then rolled off the tailgate landing carefully on their feet. Gunner immediately realized their intentions, but the only unknown was the method of delivery. When the men stood and turned their grossly misshaped bodies it reminded him of clowns with padded suits. The men began to wobble awkwardly while attempting to make their way toward the cable supports. It would have been comical if the situation was not as serious and deadly as it was. It was plainly obvious that explosives were weighing down the suicide bombers who were nearly immobile and were struggling to get to the railing. There was no doubt of the potential effectiveness of the amount of explosives on the bridge.
Instantly, the cruiser was abuzz with activity as sailors moved toward their respective stations in preparation for the unthinkable. Some were wondering if the plans were to detonate with the intentions of caving the bridge in on the cruiser, or if they were going to jump onto the deck. The immediate thinking was that they were not able to shoot at the bridge as it was backed up with innocent Egyptians who had no part in what was about to happen. Firing off several shots and potentially setting off bombs of that magnitude would cause catastrophic damage to the structure and an unknown number of casualties.
Gunner fell forward as the Gettysburg attempted to reverse its momentum in order to give the Shiloh room to do the same. The four General Electric LM2500 turbine engines churned the water in an attempt to quickly reverse their position. The Shiloh, as if synchronized, was attempting to do the same before the bombers were in position to jump onto the cruiser.
Universal Code Page 5
