“Well, there was one professor, Professor Cecil Hughes who misidentified him as Parnell Sicard. And although there is similar likeness from our year book photo, it is impossible that it could be him.”
“Why is that, Dean?”
“Because Parnell died in the Mideast back in 1983.”
“Can you send me that photo? Oh, and Dean, what did Hughes teach?”
“Theology.”
“Thanks, Dean McNally, you’ve been very helpful.”
VIII. ANCESTRAL KAI
Looking out from the bridge of the Shobi Maru, her captain, Kasogi Toshihira, worried about the front moving in across the part of the Pacific he was traversing with sixty-five hundred new Toyota Tundras and Tacomas in the hold of his vast floating parking lot. The wide expanse of calm, for the moment, blue ocean spread out before him like a soft carpet. The bottom of his vista was dotted with the early morning ritual run of the three Imperial Marines of the Japanese Defense Force keeping their regimen and their physical prowess in peak condition. Since the re-emergence of pirates, the Japanese government posted the JDF Marines on cargo ships that were the main artery of the economic lifeblood for the island nation.
As he watched the soldiers effortlessly perform synchronized push-ups, he thought how surprising it was that attacks on car carriers were as rare as they were, especially a ship configured like his — RORO, or Roll On Roll Off. It was a ship type that required no loading and unloading equipment or any special port. All that was needed, other than the metal ramps that were part of the ship’s equipment, were drivers.
An entire boat could be unloaded in a matter of hours. The Marine detachment was on his ship because the remnants of SEATO, the South East Asian Treaty Organization, the counterpart of NATO, had determined that this particular cargo of pick-up trucks had a paramilitary value, it being the platform of choice for insurgents and rebels. These amateurs cobbled Russian and Chinese missile launchers and anti-aircraft guns to the truck beds. The world’s TV news reports were peppered with these hastily assembled weapon systems, which prominently displayed the large red Toyota logo across their tailgates.
Kasogi’s grandfather had sailed these waters for the Imperial Navy during the war against American and English imperialists. He was the commander of the great battleship Musashi, a Yamamoto-class battlewagon that was the sister ship to the glorious Yamamoto. It was a somewhat more esthetic improvement in terms of her sleeker lines and more proportioned profile, which made her name Musashi, meaning elegant or splendid, a fitting touch. Now, because his grandfather and the Empire had lost that war, the Navy was reduced to a coastal defense role, and Kasogi was shuttling cars to America instead of following in the path that surely would have led to command of an aircraft carrier or fleet, if Japan had been allowed to have offensive weapons.
“Captain, contact five thousand yards astern.”
Kasogi quickly snapped out of his retrospective frame of mind. “Commercial traffic?”
“Small signature, wait, three targets closing at thirty knots,” the radar operator twenty feet to right in the wheelhouse reported. Before the natural acoustic echo of the seaman’s voice faded off in the cavernous bridge, Kasogi hit the recently installed large red button, which sounded a klaxon. The Marines immediately broke their pace and scrambled at a flat-out run to their weapons lockers. The muted sound of all watertight doors being closed and sealed followed. The radio shack started transmitting an advisory back to the shipping company that a potential attack was under way.
From over the mast atop the bridge, the best weapon Kasogi had was buffeted by the air as the American-made Cobra attack helicopter roared into a big loop and tilted its main rotor in a beeline to the three blips now forty-five hundred yards in his wake. This additional weapon was a part of the aviation branch of the Japan Air Self-Defense Forces. Even though he was merchant marine, he was at least in ceremonial command of the kai (sea) and kuu (air) troops. Kasogi took a position on the starboard thruster control station right off the bridge, where he could see the stern of his ship. The Marines had taken up positions aft, training their Squad Automatic Weapons and one portable Gatling gun at a target they couldn’t yet see. Only four times before, twice without the Marines and armaments, had his ship prepared for an attack. Luckily, each time it had been a false alarm. Even so, on one of those very days, a Greek freighter, not ten miles from his ship, had been taken and her cargo and crew held for nearly a year until a ransom was negotiated and paid.
Kasogi thought of his son’s tenth birthday, now six weeks away. He was planning to be at the celebration, not held in a makeshift prison in some God-awful desert prison camp. He found himself urging the copter to get there already and report. A few seconds later, the radio crackled, “Fishing boats, changing course to the west. Repeat — fishing boats, changing course to the west.”
Kasogi took his first deep breath since the initial report of the targets seven minutes ago. It was like a shot of whiskey finding its way to every nerve ending in his body. His shoulders resumed the erect posture of an officer befitting his rank and his next breaths were deeper and sweeter than any he could remember that week.
∞§∞
On the way back to the hulking car carrier’s improvised helipad, Lieutenant Pilot Koji Takahashi smiled as from his noisy perch two hundred feet above the calm Pacific Ocean he saw the dark grey outline of a huge whale underwater, right behind the Shobi Maru, probably feasting on plankton stirred up by the huge props of the forty-two hundred metric ton displaced hole in the ocean. He snapped a picture with his iPhone and then keyed his mic to inform the captain of the good luck omen that was playing and feasting off the tail of his ship.
IX. THESE BOOTS ARE MADE FOR TALKING
Nine hundred euro is only one thousand three hundred fifty dollars, and they were the best Louboutin boots she had ever seen. She’d cut down on the Starbucks and skip a few dinners out, and in four months or so, she wouldn’t even feel the pinch in her pocketbook — the new one — the French one, the four-hundred-euro one, that anybody who had seen both would agree, went perfectly with the coveted red-soled, knee-high snake-skin-print boots that were actually her size! The normally twenty-five hundred-dollar boots were a deal and a steal. Maybe seven months, Brooke thought as she turned the corner toward her hotel. Her phone rang.
“Brooke, its Bill; are you near a computer?”
“Two minutes away from the embassy.”
“Get on SCIAD and call me once you are on.”
“Bill, what’s up?”
“Not over the phone.”
When Brooke got to the conference room, Joey was already there. The TV was on and CNN international was showing file footage of a big cargo ship. Superimposed on the screen was a still of a reporter relaying information over a phone to the CNN anchor. The lower third title on the screen read, “Toyota ship attacked.”
Bill was on the speakerphone as Brooke used her portable retinal scan device to log on to Bill’s private super-encrypted SCIAD network.
“Okay, I’m on.”
“Good, Brooke. Joey, I think this has a connection to what happened to Brooke in the Indian Ocean and what you are tracking down now.”
“Bill, the news is saying the pirates somehow got a bomb aboard the ship.” Joey said.
“I just sent you a video that the State Department, at my request, has asked the Japanese Defense Forces to hold tight.”
Brooke hit the video icon and a QuickTime movie popped on the screen. It was a voice print pattern that wiggled and modulated as the sound of a voice in Japanese was dialed down low in the background. A zipper of English words traveled past as an interpreter voiced them in synchronization. The voice being heard was identified in a graphic as: JDF PILOT. “Captain Toshihira, you have luck on your aft quarter. There is a magnificent whale surfing in your wake.”
The graphic identifying the speaker changed from JDF PILOT to: SHIP CAPTAIN, “May he stay clear of those commercial fishermen.”
&nb
sp; The video ended. Brooke looked back at the TV. “So the media doesn’t have this?”
“No, and we are going to keep it that way,” Bill said.
“You’re thinking this is Brooke’s whale?”
“You guys tell me.”
“So the pirates didn’t get a bomb on the boat, the whale attached it to the boat? Is that your thinking?” Brooke asked as she watched the endless replay of stock footage of the giant car-carrying ship on CNN.
“Unless you believe in coincidence. I am informed there was a small detachment of JDF marines in addition to the helo stationed on that ship.”
“Is that standard procedure now for cargo ships, Bill?” Joey asked as he jotted down something.
“Only this one — it was carrying Toyota pickups.”
“Oh.” Joey nodded.
“Wanna clue me in?” Brooke prompted with her hand.
“Those trucks are the ones the ragtag guys in battles all around the world use for ‘shoot and scoot’ attacks. Somebody could make a lot of money selling them to outlaw forces.”
“So that’s why they didn’t sink the ship.” Brooke re-ran the voice print video.
“The captain was radioed and told that the bombs were placed above and below the waterline and if he didn’t surrender they would remotely blow the submerged bombs.” Bill said.
“Bill, what happened to the chopper?” Joey said.
“He landed before they knew of the bombs. Once he learned they were going to surrender, he literally had the thing pushed off the deck and into the ocean. Smart move, too.”
“Scratch one heavy weapons platform for the pirates to use in their next attack.”
“The captain and crew and the JDF guys gave up three days ago, the ship was reported missing two days ago, and then presumed lost yesterday. Today the pirates called with the ransom demands for the ship and crew, but not the cargo,” Bill said over the speakerphone.
“Sure, the trucks are already halfway to the killing zones.”
“So they steamed to a port within three days of their last known location?” Brooke said.
Bill posted a map on the SCIAD screen that had the range/search overlay, “JDF and the seventh fleet tactical air units are doing the fan-outs now.”
Brooke paused the playback, “The captain mentioned fishing boats?”
“As far as Naval intelligence has it, they were just that.” Bill said.
“So command control and communications were all centered in the whale?” Joey said.
“Unless the pirates have a satellite.”
When the conversation ended, Joey noticed the box on the end of the table. “Mind?”
“No, go ahead; tell me what you think.”
“Nice boots; you get ’em on sale?”
“Yeah.”
“How you gonna chase down bad guys in five-inch heels?
“These babies aren’t for chasing bad guys, they’re for catching bad boys.”
∞§∞
The crew of the Shobi Maru had been herded off the ship, blindfolded and roped together, and driven in the beds of trucks for four hours over rough roads. The last hour or so was off-road but on soft terrain. On the first morning, Kasogi scanned the terrain surrounding the camp and mentally classified it as scrub desert. That was a good sign, because any vegetation meant some water somewhere, if they were to escape. The three JDF marines and the helicopter pilot had been separated from him and his crew sometime in the night. They were warriors, which meant they might have been summarily executed or were being held elsewhere.
Kasogi Toshihira was mindful that he was still in command of his crew, albeit they were all now the prisoners of the pirates. To that end, he woke everyone at an early hour, stressed exercise, and encouraged story and tale telling to pass the hours. Ostensibly this was to keep up the morale of men who, without having signed up for it, were suddenly prisoners of war. But he also knew that if an opportunity presented itself to escape, his authority would be crucial in moving everyone in the direction of freedom, and their physical strength would be sorely tested if they made it beyond the fence line into the bush.
Therefore, he was trying to negotiate with the seeming leader of these pirates, a skinny twenty-two-year-old kid who never separated from his AK-47, even when he prayed five times a day. The bone of contention was the quality of the food, which was disgusting and laced with various insects. Although the pirates didn’t eat much better, he staged the mild protest for his crew’s benefit. He had to keep them hopeful, disciplined and regarding him as still in command.
After much hand gesturing and trying to translate Japanese to Sudanese with some English and French thrown in, the kid was nodding, but Kasogi didn’t know what that meant. Two hours later, the slop they called a meal was delivered. However, a separate plate was handed to him. To his surprise, there was a higher quality of a food-like substance on his plate than on the tin plates of the others. So the kid thought I was lobbying for myself, Kasogi thought as he looked down at this relative feast and saw a way to keep the unity of the group even tighter.
He rose and went over to a group of oilers and engine mechanics. One of them, Oshi, had kept doing jumping jacks after he had called rest. He took the obscene plate from Oshi’s hands and replaced it with his. “You have shown great respect for me and our men. You deserve this today.”
The men quickly got the notion.
As he walked away, he felt that the pirate kid had handed him the key to ensuring that all his men would survive this ordeal. He looked up at the night sky and from the three dots of stars that make up Orion’s Belt he “dead reckoned” he was in mid- to southern Africa.
∞§∞
“As-salaam-alaikum,” the nomadic tribesman said to the official, who was inspecting his documents as if he had never seen papers before. He watched the twitching of the official’s nose as the man stepped away from the vehicle, putting more distance between himself and the huge stinking pile of dung in the bed of the rusted truck. Meanwhile, the driver, a shabby denizen of the desert, whose olfactory senses had been already bludgeoned by the reeking pile in his truck, looked up. Here, at an outpost in the middle of nowhere, the night sky was un-obliterated by man-made light, allowing him to imagine the shepherds of legend who created astronomy by connecting those dots in the sky into pictures of archers, crabs, lions, and water carriers. He mentally tried to connect those pinholes in the deep black blanket into what a modern day shepherd such as himself might imagine; a coffee cup, an iPad, and a Prius, if you left off the right wheel. He mused about these things because, as he had found in the past, getting your mind off your actual mission during intense moments like this was the best way to not unconsciously tip off your enemy, who might not even know he was your enemy.
“Where are you headed?” the uniformed man asked.
The nomad’s hand cleared the way to the belt-slung knife under his overcoat as he answered in the dialect of the Bedouin, “Wherever the next flock is in need of shepherding or shearing. I work for ranchers and those who live off the animals. I follow the animals.”
“Well, you have a problem.”
His right hand was an inch from the handle of the knife. “What could that be?” He shifted his weight to give him more leverage with which to slash the throat and stab the heart of this checkpoint jackal.
“There are no goats within a hundred miles of this place.”
“That is Allah’s will, praise unto him.”
The sweaty cop looked into the Bedouin’s eyes. The silence lasted past the point of comfort.
“You may go.”
“His blessings upon you.” With that, the herder got back into his dilapidated Daihatsu Grand Max pickup and rumbled off in a cloud of dust and sand.
At a distance of three miles beyond the checkpoint, the pickup made a hard left and rumbled on the uneven desert surface. Twenty minutes later, with the lights off, the herder left the vehicle and walked to the top of a rise. Peering over the top, he produced a
night vision scope. He panned the valley down below until he spied the outline of a makeshift camp. He noted a few guards and something a little odd. About twenty men were out in the night air, exercising! They couldn’t be other guards or soldiers — in that they were shabbily dressed and somewhat emaciated, they must be the crew. Sgt. Bridgestone calculated that the chances of his plan succeeding had just increased 200 percent.
X. STRANGERS ON A TRAM
Raffael was doing his best to handle his nerves each day knowing that his sister and her daughter were in the hands of these evil people. He knew he was being watched around the clock and he heeded the warning not to contact any authority. However, the pressure was taking its toll. He understood that what the kidnappers wanted him to do would destroy the super hadron collider, a multi-billion dollar project that was the pride of the European Union and the premiere example of international cooperation in big science. Yet, how could any price be put on the lives of his innocent niece and sister?
Upon returning home to his empty house in the evening, his hand shook as he fumbled to get the key into the lock. With his overcoat still on, he poured wine into a glass. Every night now he drank to calm his nerves. He had shunned all his friends, shutdown and erased all trace of his Facebook and Twitter accounts, and avoided any contact with anybody, as instructed. Whenever the kidnappers were going to have him do their bidding, he hoped it was soon; he couldn’t take this much longer. The cell phone they had given him rang.
“You took the tram today,” Maya’s flat voice stated.
“Yes, I hadn’t slept at all last night; I didn’t want to drive and have an accident.”
“There was a man in a brown coat; was he a policeman?”
The God Particle Page 11
