by Chuck Dixon
The rest of the day was spent greasing palms and hustling dock workers and officials along to make things happen. A pilot was hired at ten times the going rate, and he warped the container ship along a pier, where it was moored down, and a gangway rolled up to it for boarding. It was a long day of soothing egos, making payoffs and shouting from Boats, who spoke Arabic like a native, peppered with the deepest profanity in English.
Dwayne observed Boats at work and parceled out the cash when it was called for. He wondered at the lethargic pace of it all. Despite the snail’s pace, he was exhausted. He was also drenched in sweat from the furnace-like heat.
The only real bright spot of the day was discovering the name given Boats by his parents. Randall Francis Crumb. He might be the only SEAL who ever got an upgrade on names.
They left the pier area for a taxi they’d paid for with a pair of hundreds torn in half. This gave them full use for the day. A jabbering man in a tropical suit and bow tie met them at the gate to the parking area. He was some kind of middle management in the cargo area and was waving a sheaf of paperwork at them and glaring through sweat smeared sunglasses. He had forty containers ready for loading and needed them removed from his lot today.
Dwayne explained through Boats that they had to hold off on loading those containers as their holds needed to be arranged in a very particular order and they were awaiting delivery on a half dozen priority containers that needed to be loaded first. The jabbering man could not be calmed until Dwayne pressed a sweat-sodden envelope stuffed with twenties into his hand. The man was all smiles then and trotted away, waving assurances to them.
“Wonder what he would have wanted if he knew one of the boxes we’re waiting on, had a nuclear reactor inside?” Boats said as they walked to the taxi idling in the lot.
THE REACTOR ARRIVED the following week without Parviz and Quebat. The two Iranians, who maintained the generation four mini-reactor, were a no-show. Some cryptic emails phrased to escape NSA monitoring explained that they would join the excursion en route. No one was sure what that meant. And no one knew where on the planet the pair had been, since the night they departed from the compound in Nevada with the reactor strapped down inside the trailer of a semi. When you’re a former Iranian nuke engineer on the terror watch list as well as carrying a fatwa from Tehran for being gay, you learn how to lay low or die.
With the reactor’s arrival, they could begin loading the Raj. Most of the crew recruited by Boats had shown up and were living in quarters on board. They worked by day preparing the Raj for launch by cleaning and oiling and doing repairs on the plumbing and electrics. They were Ethiopians primarily and, according to Boats, all first and second cousins. He’d captained many of them before on various vessels much like the Raj. They were “good Muslims,” he assured Dwayne and Jimbo. No drinkers or fighters. All Sufis.
And thus, the whole vessel thrummed with the hard-driving beat of their brand of pop music pounding through the ship’s PA system as the crew scraped and painted and lubricated.
The containers had to be loaded in a particular order worked up into a graphic by the Taubers. There was a lot of shouting, cursing and pleading in Arabic, Amharic, and American obscenities from Boats directed at the crane operators and his crew to get the big Conex boxes arranged properly according to the schematic.
The reactor was loaded forward athwart three containers filled with sacks of Saharan sand. More containers of sand sacks were loaded around and atop it to provide further shielding for the nuke. The reactor was plenty shielded as it was, but there was no sense tempting fate. Then came a dozen containers that held the components for the new Tauber Tube and related equipment like transformers, miles of cable and an IBM T-Rex mainframe computer. These were laid on the floor of the hold in a certain order. Lightly packed containers were loaded atop them to a height that exceeded the level of the main deck and then covered over with tarps dogged down taut.
There were modifications that would be required to the Raj, but those would be performed when they were at sea in international waters and away from curious eyes.
Dwayne, Jimbo, and the Taubers moved into their quarters on board. The cabins were spacious enough and newly covered with a bright coat of white paint. Fresh linens were laid on. The galley was stocked with food for its pantries and refrigerators. The tanks were filled with diesel and the reservoirs with filtered water. All was set for departure except for the delivery of a half-dozen crates containing equipment that Morris Tauber had fabricated in Germany. Waiting for that to arrive delayed them another week.
The week was spent by the Taubers working on computer models for the modified Tauber Tube. They started at a makeshift work-station set up in the chart room of the Raj. The air conditioning went, and the interior of the superstructure became an oven. The brother and sister moved to the open deck under a tarp awning set up by the crew. The siblings’ arguments over the construction of the new Tube were interrupted by long, icy silences, to the amusement of the crew, who could not understand one word.
To Dwayne, who had never seen the pair in the process of their research, it was a revelation. He leaned on the rail of the weather deck watching Caroline storm aft with Morris chasing after her. Both were shouting loud enough to be heard even over the pulse of Sufi percussion blasting from the speakers all over the Raj.
“Having second thoughts, brother?” Jimbo said to him.
“I think I need a drink,” Dwayne said.
“She needs a drink.” Jimbo nodded toward Caroline, who was waving her arms and shouting a string of Einsteinian gibberish.
“Well, she’s passionate.” Dwayne shrugged.
All was eventually ready to up anchor and make way out into the Med. Parviz and Quebat had still not shown up, but the pair assured Caroline that they would be along somewhere between Alexandria and their destination in the Aegean.
Two weeks behind schedule, Dwayne and Boats made a final round to deliver the payoffs needed to see them away. Customs were cleared and their course logged, and the tugs and pilot were hired to see them to open water. It took most of the day but finally they bade farewell to the pilot and Boats took the helm and steered them north for the Cyclades to intercept the odyssey of Praxus of Thrace.
19
Alabama
CHARLES PIERCE RALEIGH was feeling good.
He was dripping with sweat in the Alabama heat. His knees hurt. The backs of his calves were on fire. But he was past the wall of pain. He knew he was hurting, but he didn’t feel it anymore.
Chaz was at the halfway point of the ten-mile circuit he’d devised. It went from his Uncle Red’s farmhouse along the half-mile gravel drive to Indian Ford Road to County Line to a fire road cut through the woods by the forest service that joined Indian Ford again and back to Uncle Red’s.
His uncle’s place was home for now. He had no desire to start spreading that tax-free cash around. The sweet relief of knowing it was there in the safe deposit box in Huntsville was enough. Laying up at Red’s kept him off the grid and focused on staying in shape. Fuck Jimbo. That Indian’s jokes about golf were bullshit. Chaz was sworn to stay hard.
Uncle Red liked the company. He was the only person on Earth who still called Chaz by his childhood name of “Chip.” What kind of name was that for a black man? “Chip.” Sounded like some redneck used-car salesman or somebody’s spotted dog. But Uncle Red was Old School, a broke-up ’Nam vet who still got up before dawn and tended to his truck garden and his hogs. An old Marine, he was down with Chaz doing PT and long runs. But Red thought a man should have a J-O-B.
He realized his nephew had plenty of cash. Chaz bought him a brand-new F-150 in exchange for staying in the back bedroom awhile. But a man needed something to do; needed a purpose to keep his spirit together. Chaz promised Red he would look into, some kind of work when the time came.
He ran in the evenings when it was cooler. The air was still damp with humidity. Sometimes it felt like he was breathing through a straw. His t-shir
t and shorts were soaked through within a quarter mile. By the mile mark, even his socks were squishy. When he got back to Red’s, he’d throw the socks in the trash on his way to the shower. It was a little luxury the cash allowed him. He’d never again wear anything but new socks as long as he lived.
The waxing and waning buzz of cicadas was joined by the sound of a car engine. A vehicle had turned onto the fire road behind Chaz. It was making its way through the pitch-black toward him. The high beams limned him. It wasn’t hoopies looking to jacklight deer in the off-season. They’d ride dark and slow. He stopped to watch the lights approach. A mud-spattered SUV with Idaho plates pulled even with him and drew to a stop.
“You lost?” Lee Hammond said from behind the wheel.
“I was about to ask you the same question,” Chaz said.
“Why don’t you let me give you a lift back to your uncle’s?”
“I’m committed now. You drive on. I’ll meet you there.”
“Fine with me. I’d never get your funk out of my interior anyway.”
“Go to hell,” Chaz said and resumed his pace as Lee pulled away down the fire road. The red lights grew smaller and smaller, and soon Chaz was alone again in his own universe.
The SUV from Idaho was pulled up in front of the feed shed between Chaz’ Explorer and Uncle Red’s shiny new pickup. Hammond sat in the shadows on the porch of the dark farmhouse. He had a pitcher of sweet tea by him. Red made it for him before heading to bed.
“You drove here,” Chaz said. He leaned on a peeling porch post, cooling down.
“Yeah. I had some trouble. Had to get away.” Lee tinkled ice in his tumbler.
“This have anything to do with me and the other guys? This about Nevada?”
“All about that. You hear from Dwayne?”
“Yeah. I lamped the cash. Found a few inked stacks. Sent ’em on,” Chaz said.
“Well, I’m the only contact they have. Turns out Russians bought our gold. They gave up my guy, and he gave me up.”
“What they do to your guy?”
“Same thing they were going to do to me, I guess. He turned up dead in a canal.”
Lee didn’t feel it necessary to tell his friend the condition that Don Brinkley’s body was found in. The man had held out as long as any man could.
“What’s next?” Chaz said.
“I was hoping I could shack up here and keep my head down,” Lee said. He set the empty tumbler on the table by the pitcher.
“You have to ask my uncle.”
“I can pay my way.”
“Shit,” Chaz snorted. “You better not let him know how much you can pay.”
20
Ship Shape
DWAYNE AND CAROLINE gave up all pretenses and moved into the largest of the passenger cabins together.
“If I’d known, I would have brought a date,” Jimbo said.
It was no honeymoon cruise. They all worked sixteen-hour days on board the Ocean Raj, preparing for what was ahead. Boats anchored the ship well off the southern coast of Crete where he knew the sea to be generally calm in the summer months. They were far from the sight of land there and away from the seasonal fishing grounds as well as the shipping and cruise lanes. The work began in earnest.
The crewmen with welding skills recruited by Boats set about cutting through the walls of the Conex containers on the floor of the hold. They worked from a schematic printed up by Morris Tauber. Doorways were cut between containers to make for free passage between each. Floors and walls were removed, and the resulting space shored up with I-beams welded in place as a frame.
This large central chamber was four containers high and wide and ten containers in length. New entry hatches were bolted in place. This would be the secure room where they would construct the Tauber Tube 2. From the exterior of the ship, no one would suspect that the hold contained anything other than the usual cargo of coffee or hemp or scrap metal.
Morris gave Jimbo and Dwayne directions, and they bolted aluminum sheeting to the ceiling and bulkheads of the bridge and radio room. They laid copper mesh down on the deck and placed rubber-backed carpeting atop it. They did the same in the engine room with copper mesh laid under the duckboards that ran around the monster Daewoo fuel oil engine. Extra care was taken to make sure any electrical cables were clad in aluminum sheeting covered in copper mesh.
All of the parts of the ship that would be most affected by the electromagnetic field necessary to power the tube were now shielded. Essentially, they created an enormous Faraday Box to enclose the superstructure and engine decks so the Raj would not become dead in the water, its electronic controls fried, in the EMP wave to come. The Tube chamber and computer station container were both shielded as well.
The work in the sun was hot and hotter still below decks where the welding torches worked. Fans were set up as well as air exchange vents, but they did little to reduce the inferno. The welding crew took breaks to leap into the sea to cool off. The scientists, Rangers, and crew consumed astonishing amounts of beer, but no one got drunk. The brew came out through their pores as fast it went down their gullets. The pile of Luxor Nubia cases stacked in the reefer shrank each day from a mountain to a hill. Every night found Caroline, Dwayne, Jimbo and Morris racked out on lawn chaises set up on the aft deck where they hoped for cool ocean breezes to wash over them while they waited for the dinner gong. A boom box pulsing with a Sufi beat was competing with the thrum of the idling engine below decks.
“What do you think the crew makes of all this?” Morris said.
“They aren’t saying much. But they’re not missing a move we make,” Jimbo said. “You know they’re curious even though they’re paid not to be.”
“They trust Boats,” Dwayne said from beneath a damp rag draped on his face. Caroline was asleep by him, softly snoring. “They know it’s not guns or dope or anything that will get them in trouble. He wouldn’t do that to them.”
“I just hope they don’t lose their mud when things start going bang,” Jimbo said.
“Speaking of bang, where are our Iranian friends?” Dwayne said.
“They’ll be along. Caroline’s been getting daily updates via some cryptic emails,” Morris said. “I hope it’s soon. The framing work is done and the transformers are wired. We finish assembling the Tube module and we’ll be ready to fire up their little baby.”
“Little baby,” Jimbo said, half-asleep.
GOOD AS THEIR word, Quebat and Parviz arrived the following day. A deep-sea fishing charter brought them out to meet the Raj at anchorage. The Greek Cypriote crew on the fifty-foot craft was busy on deck. They slung tire fenders along the gunwale as the smaller boat drew alongside the towering hull.
The two Iranians stood huddled on board with their stack of trunks and bags. They were nothing like able seamen and refused to use the ladder that swayed from the mid-ships hatch. The Med was gently swelling with not a white cap in sight. Even so, the cable ladder looked to them like a trapeze line wildly swinging back and forth over the deck of the little charter. The skipper of the charter spat Greek at them and gestured in a shooing motion. He wanted these passengers off his tub and now. He had his money, and he wanted the hell out of here.
A transfer chair was rigged up and slung out over the Raj’s starboard by a crane. First Quebat, then Parviz, and then their luggage was hauled up and aboard on a line. The charter motored away swiftly and was out of sight within an hour. The Iranians’ troubles did not end there. Both were prone to violent seasickness that was not improved even by transferring from the little charter boat to the steadier platform of the Raj. Most of the crew was up on deck to watch their arrival. They found the dry-heaving Iranians the height of comedy.
“We are not used to ocean travel,” Parviz offered as an apology for the mess he’d made on the deck after climbing down from the transfer chair.
“Try not to look at the horizon,” Boats offered. “That is most helpful advice,” Quebat said from on his knees with his forehead re
sting on his arms.
THE IRANIANS TOOK to their bunks after taking fistfuls of Marezine and Xanax. They had a couple of days to get themselves seaworthy before their expertise was needed to hook up the cold reactor.
The rest of what Dwayne took to calling Team Tube began assembling the transitioning module under Morris’ direction. The new array was fabricated and designed like a giant model kit with numbered parts and boxes of hardware to bolt the ramp, walkway and conductive rings together. It reminded Caroline of some Ikea furniture she had in college. Morris did not appreciate the comparison.
Cables were laid from the reactor room to a junction box mounted on the deck at the bow and back to the transformer pod and the Tube itself. The computer station was booted up, and diagnostics run. They were wired and ready.
Quebat and Parviz mostly recovered from their seasickness and were managing to keep down crackers and weak tea. They ran through the protocols and pre-tests for the reactor. They were still a bit off and drowsy from the meds. And so, the pair checked and rechecked each other’s figures. Morris was asked to look over their settings and compare them to the handwritten directions in the notebooks the pair smuggled out of Iran with them. Once it all looked right, the nuke was powered up and brought online.
The generation four reactor was a little workhorse, and safe as houses. Its shielding allowed for zero increases in the surrounding background radiation and was safe for use in military naval vessels. Still, one did not mess with the vengeful gods at the heart of the atom. A truck-sized hole burnt through the keel of the Raj was not a risk worth taking for the sake of a missed calculation or meter reading.
