As the harpoon line spun out to its end and snapped taught to its mooring, Jamesbonds ran to the stern of the boat to counter the weight of the impending heave on the bow. At the same time, the rowers had spun around in their seats and heaved back on the oars. The bow of the boat pulled down into a crossing wave, sending six inches of water across the deck and over their feet. The skiff moved forward as though on its own for a hundred yards or so and then slowly came to rest.
The second skiff attempted, but failed to spear another Right and the pod dove out of sight.
Long seconds ticked by as the schooner jibed about and with the wind now behind her, she came back for her skiffs. Jamesbonds and the rowers remained braced for another yank. Instead, a great dark gray mass broke the surface to their left. The cetacean’s tail gave one last jerk and then it laid still. A large oily blood bloom covered the water around its once graceful head. The harpoon flopped over as the whale rolled onto its side.
The men on the schooner cheered with the men on the skiffs. The oarsmen patted Jamesbonds on the back then rowed to take charge of the kill. In the distance to the North, a high speed Coast Guard interceptor was coming directly toward them. By the time the schooner had stopped alongside the dead whale the interceptor was hailing via radio and a loudspeaker. “This is the USCGC Vigil. Keep your bow pointed to the wind!”
Captain Dean turned to Sanders with a one-sided smile, “Guess we crossed.”
“Guess so.”
Dean turned to Burrows, “Continue maintaining point to wind as the Coast Guard suggests.”
“Aye, Cap.”
Dean called down to the recovery crew who where using gaffes and rope to tie the whale along side. “Quickstep it people. They’re going to tell us to go home. We want to keep our prize.”
In moments, the Coast Guard boat came to a halt approximately fifty yards off the Ginger Girl’s port stern. A sailor stood on her bow aiming a deck mounted fifty-caliber machine gun while several others leveled assault rifles at the schooner. Her captain lifted the loudspeaker mic to his lips, “Our radio interceptors identify this ship and her crew as infected persons living on the isle of Nantucket. You have crossed the boundary allowed for your vessel. You are fishing illegally in U.S. waters. You will release the catch and return across the boundary forthwith.”
Dean called out to his crew, “Keep working everyone.” He picked up a cone shaped hailer that was mounted behind the helmsman and stepped to the stern. “Good morning. Nearly finished here. On our way as soon as we’ve recovered our boats.”
“You will recover your boats, Captain, and release the whale.”
“Thank you, but we need to keep the whale.”
A sailor handed the Coast Guard captain a note. He paused a moment to read it and then spoke back into the mic, “Captain Dean. You are in violation of the quarantine agreement between infected persons and the United States of America. By rights, we can sink your ship with all aboard. You have one minute to release your catch and be on your way.”
Dean crossed his hands behind his back, letting the hailer hang from his wrist. He turned to Sanders, “What do you think? You’re good judge of a sailor’s tone. Is he bluffing?”
“No, sir.”
“No.” Dean paused and scratched his beard. “They’re scared of us and rightly so. Please ask Mister Kneedham and Mister Kile to prepare the persuaders.”
Sanders got on a walkie-talkie and spoke to someone below decks. Some of the crew had stopped working and looked to Dean for guidance. He smiled at them, saying, “Don’t stop, people. We need that whale much more than they do.” He turned and raised the hailer back to his lips. “We’ve got folks starving and in need of lamp oil. You’ll please excuse the crossing of the line. Thrill of the hunt caused us to lose our bearings.”
The Coast Guard captain stepped out from behind his windscreen, still holding the mic. “You have ten seconds to cut that whale loose Captain or we open fire.” He started counting down.
Dean sighed. “All right, Mister Sanders.”
Sanders spoke into the radio again. Suddenly the windows opened on the lower stern revealing a M242 Bushmaster chain gun. Mr. Kneedham trained the heavy weapon on the interceptor while Crewman Kile revealed a second gun at center deck. Rather than for threatening the Federal Government, the guns were meant as a deterrent to pirates. Desperate times equaled desperate gambles and even the uninfected might attack a Halflie ship to kill her crew.
The attitude of the Coast Guard crew changed dramatically.
Dean spoke again through the hailer, “We’ll be on our way in just a moment. Again, I apologize for missing the line. We will endeavor to not let it happen again.”
The Coast guard captain could be seen consulting with a few of his crew before speaking into his mic, “We can have a Navy destroyer intercept you within the hour. You will follow my order.”
“Again, I apologize Captain. We both know that the U.S. government doesn’t have the fuel for such fool errands. You’re bluffing. Now please leave us be. We’ll be on our way in five minutes.”
The Coast Guard captain smartly chose to argue no further. Instead, they stayed on station until the Ginger Girl got back under way and followed her to the invisible boundary that separated the healthy from the Halflie and kept watch until the schooner’s hull dropped below the horizon line.
Back at Nantucket Harbor, a celebration was waiting for Dean and his crew. Great cauldrons were set to fire for rendering the blubber. Butchers waited with sword sized knives at the landing, ready to receive the beast that would provide them all with food and oil for a little while longer. Nantucket had one fortunate aspect to offer its exiles: In the years prior to Omega, the island’s residents had privately invested heavily in offshore wind turbines. Though several of the great machines had stopped working due to storm damage and a dearth of parts, there was still plenty of electrical generation to keep the island working and warm. Light bulbs, on the other hand, were a luxury and difficult to come by. With the limited trade allowed between the colony and the mainland, more often than not, whale oil was used in traditional kerosene style lamps. With the bright burning oil, a home was warmly lit at night and often during the day as a counter to the ceaseless overcast.
With oil being so precious and chances good that the Rights would still be in the neighborhood, Dean planned to have his ship back out on the hunt the following morning.
CHAPTER THREE
The Ultimatum
Captain Dean could smell it as the Ginger Girl moved quietly on a light breeze through a dense fog over calm water. He’d always had it: a nose for trouble. As a young Seal, he had been promoted quickly during combat tours. His keen senses and consistent ability to make rapid and smart decisions had gained him great trust. This was no less true on his schooner; where even at a relatively young age for a captain, he received deep respect and unwavering faith from his crew. The sound of multiple approaching engines confirmed his intuition and he found himself hating his proverbial nose. The omni-directional nature of sound in fog made it nearly impossible to detect which direction the boats were coming from. The near idle setting of their RPMs told him that they were closing in on his ship and that whomever was driving didn’t want to smack into the heavy planking on its sides. The engine noise was deep and as he and helmsman Burrows turned their heads, listening in opposite directions, the sound moved through the air like an old hi-fi stereo recording: first left, then right, then both left and right as the sound split onto both sides of the Ginger Girl.
“Hold steady, Mr. Burrows. The Navy is about to pull up nice and close.” Dean looked over to his first mate. “Rest easy if you please, Mr. Sanders.”
“Pissed them off I guess. So much for not wasting oil.” Sanders raised his voice just above the level of the approaching engines. “No silliness, lads. Professional seamen.”
Two high-walled battleship gray Navy frigates appeared through the gloom. Steel canyon walls gen
tly closed in on either side, cutting off the light breeze that had been carrying the schooner forward. The sails fell slack and the old wood of her hull creaked with the gentle swell. Several officers backed by armored up Marines leaned over the port rail of the starboard frigate. A Naval commander, spoke up. “Permission to tie up to you Captain Stewart.” It was a purely rhetorical request.
Dean smiled grimly. “Granted.” He turned to Sanders and nodded.
Sanders called out. “Right. Look lively. Stow the sails. Boonmee, Cinders, be ready to receive lines and raft up.”
As the crew got busy an Army colonel spoke from between the Marines. “Colonel MacAfee, Captain Stewart. Permission to come aboard?”
“We are a Halflie crew, Colonel. Not mad, but highly infectious.”
“Understood. I’ll take the proper precautions. I’m sure none of your crew intends to bite me.” The man was covered from feet to neck in heavy camouflage leather and wore a battle helmet. He snapped on a surgical mask. He would be pretty safe.
“We don’t bite visitors, sir. However, I can’t guarantee that someone won’t accidentally sneeze. Infection can enter through the eye.”
“I’ll take the risk.”
Dean thought the man either overly brave or a fool, the two positions being roughly the same. A grappling net was hung from the side of the frigate and the Colonel quickly scrambled down onto the Ginger Girl’s deck walking straight up to Dean. He held out a gloved hand. “Stewart Dean, Dusty MacAfee. I’m an admirer of yours. Is there somewhere that we can speak in private?”
Dean settled them into the cozy but cramped navigation/officer’s room. “I’d offer you a brandy, but I only have some island bathtub gin. I can’t guarantee that there isn’t a trace of Cain’s on the glassware.”
Colonel MacAfee removed his mask and smiled. “Captain Dean, I’m not here to empathize with your plight or talk of rogue behavior from a ship full of cast outs. I’ve come on behalf of our government. I have a mission for you.”
Dean looked at the man for a moment with an arched eyebrow then cleared his throat. “Colonel, I am no longer a citizen of the United States.”
“Nonsense. You’re just an American who has ended up with one of life’s shittier deals. You have never been anything but an exemplary soldier. Your country needs you, your crew as well.”
“I don’t speak for my crew - outside of their duty as members of this whale hunting operation. When back on shore they are their own man or woman.”
MacAfee leaned back in his chair, letting the anxiety that he rightly felt, loosen from his neck and shoulders. “How is Nantucket doing with electricity?”
“I’m sure you know we get by.”
“My intel says you’ve got a lot of idle wind turbines. Here’s what I need. I need a group of volunteers who happen to be immune to or in you and your crew’s case, infected with Cain’s, to travel across the country and bring back a shipload of new wind turbines and parts. The mainland, like your island, is running out of juice. In exchange for this, the United States Government will install one new high-efficiency wind turbine on Nantucket along with the spare parts necessary to maintain it for ten years.”
Dean looked at the Colonel carefully and decided that despite the ridiculousness of the request that this wasn’t a joke. Before he could respond, MacAfee continued, “I’m also required to inform you that if you and your crew don’t volunteer for this mission, your ship will be impounded for its many boundary violations. Your crew, while awaiting prosecution, will be disallowed from any further work on any other vessel and potentially subject to solitary imprisonment.” MacAfee cleared his throat again. “Those are the secretary of the interior’s words, not mine, but they have the backing of the president.”
“I see.” Dean smiled and quietly stared into MacAfee’s eyes until the man uncomfortably shifted his gaze to glance about the room. Dean finally said, “Though you have yet to impart the details, and I think the likelihood of your mission succeeding is preposterously low, should we actually succeed, in exchange for near certain death for me and my crew, you will give Nantucket two wind turbines. Option two is that I let my bosun, Ensign Palmer, who is standing on the other side of that door, spit in your eye while I send my crew to climb up that net and take that frigate. The rest I’ll improvise afterward.”
Ensign Palmer made an earnest hungry sound on the other side of the door.
MacAfee laughed. “I do admire you. You’re perfect for this thing. I can’t guarantee the second wind turbine, but I figure if you can get the things all the way back here, we can drop one off on Nantucket on the sly before we cruise back up to Boston. Oh, and yes, I’m going with you.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Plum Island
Wenfrin Blakely was a very black man. Whereas most African Americans looked like they had at least a splash of cream in their coffee, Wen was a dark roast, so dark that he could be legitimately called black. At the height of his law enforcement career he had been known as Black Blake, but he preferred to be called Wen; as in Wen is he going to come get me? He had thick, pockmarked, leathery skin on his face, offset by an intense winning smile and eyes that seemed bright enough to illuminate a train tunnel. The image was capped off with a crown of thick silver hair that beautifully contrasted with his dark chocolate coating. He was a semi-retired U.S. Marshall and trains were his passion.
Before Omega and the whole world getting fucked up, Wen chased bad guys across rail yards and little side towns from Seattle to Tijuana. His prey was a gang of killers known as the Freight Train Riders of America: an anonymous group of shadowy men and women who first became known for going after transients, but who later became drug runners. They were an odd assortment of train freaks; folks who literally loved everything about trains and wanted to keep the world of freight trains free of those who didn’t. Their original crime was hobo killing, “cleaning up” anyone unfortunate enough to be hitching a free ride without the say so of the FTRA. That’s when Wen Blakely got involved – simple homicide. But it wasn’t simple. The killers were smart and they left almost nothing that could be called evidence. It was an adventure for Blakely. He got to work with trains and do some sleuthing. Then the game changed when a search for a ringleader nicknamed Downtown Crossing turned into a major manhunt. Several college students who had been hopping trains for fun were brutally murdered; an X like rail-crossing sign carved into their foreheads. A year of hard police work had ended with Crossing and several of his followers trapped at the top of a water tower. A sniper bullet to Crossing’s head finally ended the stand off. Drugs came into the picture and things got sloppy. The members of Wen’s taskforce found themselves dragged into the world of the DEA and the madness that was the war on drugs. For Wen it was a morale-crushing spiral into fruitlessness as they swept up one homeless person after another and jailed them for addictions that they would never really get help with. The ringleaders were all south of the border and very much free of any consequences; running the government there in all but name. Wen wasn’t a fan of the effects of drugs, but he was less of a fan of how the black market destroyed more life than the simple use of the stuff. When he loudly advocated for the Federal legalization of most narcotics, he was gently pushed into retirement.
Boredom had him founding a tourist-based program for faux train hopping. With the blessing of the Burlington North Santa Fe Railroad, he took people on paid trips hopping freight trains across the country. When the Cain’s pandemic happened, it was his knowledge of the nation’s rail system that had allowed him to shepherd perhaps a hundred people to safety, getting them to New England. With law enforcement decimated by the plague, Wen was asked to come out of retirement and work for the Feds in Boston. Surprisingly perhaps, his assignments were few. In a society suddenly united against turbulence and disorder, he found himself spending long days at his local pub. His life took a celebrity turn when a martini lunching literary agent overheard him telling his escape story. The Adventure
s of Black Blake had been turned into a book, a children’s book and a Virtutrip that was growing in popularity.
Decades before, Plum Island off the eastern tip of Long Island, had been shut down as a research facility and the Federal government had tried to sell it for private development. Unfortunately for the U.S. taxpayer at the time, a horrible economy mixed with rampant stories of an island covered in diseased animals and God only knew what kind of human experimentation, killed the idea of a new Shangri-La for the rich and famous. Abandonment had allowed nature (even in perpetual winter) to survive and thrive. The former laboratories had been converted to a museum, which, post Omega, had been restored to their original purpose: the study of the most virulent animal borne diseases to befall mankind. Cain’s disease or FNDz (frontal negation dementia) as it was scientifically termed by one Dr. Andre Zachariah, was the primary (actually the only) subject.
It was bitterly cold but dry as the Navy patrol boat carrying Wen Blakely approached the island. The location of the Sun could almost be made out through the uninterrupted cloud layer. Despite this heroic back-story and his sort of job as a U.S. Marshall, he was at a loss as to why he had been summoned to an island that had once held the U.S. research labs for the most virulent animal diseases in the world.
A large schooner, outfitted for whaling, lay at anchor two hundred yards off shore. A thin trail of smoke trickled out of one of the deck cabins. A cheerful looking passenger dock, clearly built for when the island was for sale, greeted him with a brightly painted sign: Welcome to Plum Island. Where Nature’s Bounty Meets The Sea, USAMRIID. A machine-gun emplacement was built into the hillside above the dock with two very alert soldiers occupying the post. Wen noted that the gun appeared to be aimed toward the anchored schooner. A squad of Army regulars greeted him as he stepped ashore, and he waived at the sign snickering, “Really?”
Children Of Fiends: Book 2 of the Of Sudden Origin saga Page 4
