The Doomsday Organism: Another Susan Dax Adventure

By Stevenson Mukoro

The Doomsday Organism Is a lethal organism that destroys petroleum at a molecular level in the most unusual manner. It becomes a paralysing threat to the worlds oil producing nations in the hands of a grieving genius who developed it for Americas germ warfare division. It leads Susan Dax to an international chase on the heels of an elite terrorist organisation whose sole purpose is to see the west falla group she must seek and destroy before the release of the bacterium. Can Susan Dax stop The Doomsday Organism in time and save the world?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Mar 3, 2011
• ISBN: 9781456859145

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The Doomsday Organism

Another Susan Dax Adventure

Stevenson Mukoro

Copyright © 2011 by Stevenson Mukoro.

ISBN:          Softcover                                 978-1-4568-5913-8

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4568-5914-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

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Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Epilogue

Prologue

Almost a century ago, the first President Roosevelt established the Tongrass National Forest as a nature reserve, sixty-five years later the then chief of Army intelligence during the Vietnam War wrote a memo for the creation of high secret research facilities aimed at researching biological weapons. President Johnson eager to get back on his campaign schedule signed the proposal without much ado. In 2002, one of those research facilities was unwisely converted to a storage facility and turned over to civilian research scientists with military overseers. On the west shore of the Prince of Wales Island near Klawock the Seabrook Research Foundation and Storage Facility shone down between the valleys of two snow peaked mountain. It was here that the spiralling puzzle of killing started on a showery but calm Saturday afternoon in the rocky plains of Alaska. In the middle of the white snowy plains stood a two story flat topped silver asbestos building with a green roof hidden partially by the heavy snow of the previous days and trees surrounded by barbed wire. From the look of the two covered parked black Land Rover jeeps with chains on the tyres and the odd barrel littered here and there, no one would be wrong to assume that this was a just an innocuous building. The sign on the front read Department of Fish, Game & Wildlife Reserve.

What no one knew, except for a select few, was that before it was a privately run research station it was a research establishment run under the asperses of an secret intelligence branch of United States government.

On that particular afternoon though, Mr Jeffery Mackintosh, the chief of security walked towards two of his security guards sitting behind a desk next to a grey doorway. He had already gone through the outer security checkpoint and had playfully reprimanded one of the guards for sneaking a cigarette while on duty. Most of the guards in the facility felt that there was always a particular ordinariness of comforting hardness to their Chief of Security. The two by the desk propped themselves up to an attention and nodded brusquely to him as he came up to the door. They noticed that he was a bit distance in his present train of thoughts to be bothered with a salutation. Even then lost as he was in thought he absently returned a briskly nod in their direction as he took out his security card and inserted it into the card reader next to the door. No need to be insensitive to my subordinates he thought to himself.

Saturday and Sunday were always quiet days, in fact, it was a bore to run his security checks, but he was a professional and to him running the odd impromptu checks kept his men on their toes. He had the Saturday morning paper crammed under his arm as he opened the door and went through.

As was his habit Jeffery Mackintosh looked round the room and could not quite take in the stillness, he saw whenever he went through the door. For a man who drinks light-Bud, hopes he would be transferred out of this godforsaken place soon and done two tours of duty in the Gulf he was aware of his limits, he felt a sudden shiver go through him. I must be damned. This is punishment

Although Jeffery Mackintosh knew that it would be unlikely for him to return to a war zone any time soon, he wished for it several times a day. In comparism with this out of way research facility, which he never in a million years would wish to return to, it was Disneyland. He didn’t care for the money because he was more than satisfied with what he was earning, what he did care for was action and that little hint of danger in the air.

That was what he believed he would be getting when that security executive in the fancy suit was drafting him. Unfortunately, his luck erred on the side of bad.

Beyond the unmarked door was another unattractive door that linked this part of the building with the rest. He pressed the panelled button next to the numbered keypad on the wall and waited for the recognised bleep before he punched in his access code. The door slid open and he stepped into a clean antiseptic white interior with various passages leading off from the main vestibule. Taking out his office keys, he walked through the door on the left, down three flights of stairs and half the length of the building before turning to the left towards his office. Before he turned he glanced at the faces of the two stony green khaki wearing security guards with polished AK47’s in their hands posted in front of a steel door on the other side of the entrance marked with a round red and white no entry sign with the words—ABSOLUTELY NO ADMITTANCE—RESTRICTED TO AUTHOURISED PERSONELL ONLY. He didn’t need to say anything to them least of all to tell Lance Corporal Kevin Walker or Sergeant Leonard Gates, the two uniformed guards on duty to be on their on the alert. Although they knew him by sight and knew he approved their paychecks, they did not return his glance. It was as if they saw right through him. He was proud of their reaction; these men were the elite, trained by the professionals who would not budge for anyone. Not even the Commander-in-Chief unless authorised.

He turned, inserted his key into the keyhole, opened the door and went into his office. He went behind his desk and sat down. Switching on his computer, he began pulling out several files from the inbox tray and started to read. After several minutes, he tossed some of the files into his out tray, typed his password on the keyboard in front of him and watched as the computer screen changed from a whirl of screensavers into the noticeable insignia of the DOD also known as the Department of Defence symbol. For two and a half hours, he worked on the databases and reports before he set the computer on hibernate. He spread the newspaper on the desk, ignoring the lead caption on front of the paper and began the brainteaser word workout. His lips tightened as he started working out the puzzle. His mind wandered to one of the passages in one of the Top Security reports he had just read;

"There has been increased rumours of the creation and maintenance of harmful warfare micro-organisms which man has failed to find a resistance for. It is only a matter of time before such an infectious viral agent is let loose onto the world, inviting a recipe for disaster. Preventive measures that are presumably in effect, to make secure or destroy viruses that have no antidote, are not sufficient"

His smile broadened at the words destroy. What baloney if they only knew. They might as well cut their arm off than destroy any of the viruses stored here in his facility.

Outside the Lance Corporal and Sergeant showed no reaction to the two men and two women that were approaching them. They both knew one of the men by sight but the others were strangers. Nevertheless, they did not think they were much of a threat because they had to have at least passed three security checks before they had gotten this far, though the final one was to be conducted by them. A normal ordinary ID check, which shouldn’t be a problem for either of the men.

Beside the man with the acerbic thin face they knew, walked a gangling looking person that walked like a puppet or some wryly-fleshless person. The Lance Corporal guessed his original ethnicity was somewhere in the South Americas. Behind them were two women slender built but full of beefiness, their hands were clasped behind them. On a second look, he could see that they were alike in height, weight and statue. A closer look and he could swear that he was looking at twins. Despite the glasses, they wore which intended to make them look like female nerds Sergeant Gates thought otherwise. There was something about the women he recognised. They looked unnaturally ecstatic because of the smile on their face.

‘Good morning sergeant these are visiting guests from the home office that need to tour the facilities’

‘You know the procedure Doctor? Clearances please’

The Lance Corporal reached forward to take the access card of Doctor Lewis Hawkins, who offered without reservation. He took it from his hand and slotted it into Card Reader.

‘They have general security clearance that should suffice’ Doctor Hawkins said smiling gesturing to the men to produce their passes.

Sergeant Gates held out his free hand for the card of the man beside the doctor. Scrutinising it, he looked at the man who had handed him the card. There was something odd about this, but he still couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Doctor Hawkins knew very well that any authorised personnel or valid visiting guest would need proper authorisation papers or card even if they were here for even one day. And in spite two of them being attractive women, he still could not afford to bend the rules.

He made a gentle noise, resembling a clearing of his throat.

‘Doctor, you know that this isn’t enough, we would have to check this out’ He reached for the telephone. Before he could lay a finger on the dialling pad in front of him, one of the women casually stepped over to him and without uttering a sound, she plunged a spear-like knife into his chest, under and upwards through his ribs and into his heart until the tip of the blade hit bone. The sergeant did not immediately fall he was in such a shock that he could not open his mouth, the dribble of blood that burst from between his lips was a surprise to him. The last thing Sergeant Gates eyes gazed upon was the replica of the same weapon that had extinguished his life being plunged into his partner. It only took a matter of seconds between the knife entering him and Corporal Walker who tried to say something but the words never came out, only a sickening gurgling kind of cough that turned his lips and chin red.

He sagged and bumped backward against the prohibited door before sliding down. The last thought that went through his head as he hit the floor was Red high heels. The shoes that was it. They were the wrong colour for a nerd

In less than two minutes, the doctor had opened the steel door and with his companions walked through it, kicking aside the slumped dead bodies of the soldiers. They found themselves in a repository area as the door shut behind them at once in a silent hissing sound. The Doctor knew exactly what he was looking for and where he had to go. He led the way down a passageway that went round a turning and into another section of the building. Doctor Hawkins inputted a nine-digit number into an access pad beside another fortified door that had no doorknob, spy-hole or keyhole access point. Then a palm-print pad slid open and he placed his hand on top of it. The door whirled and opened with a smooth hiss. The room was a climatic-controlled vault made up of large heavy-gauge steel boxes lined in four rows tightly latched against one other. On each, one of them was a series of barcode numbers listing the contents reference number.

‘I’m about to perform a minor miracle’ he said turning to the man behind him ‘Remove an item that doesn’t exist from a high security base without orders from any Generals on the joint ruling staff or the secretary general or the almighty president of the United States’ He bellowed out a laugh.

The others joined him.

Without reading any of the numbers, he walked purposely to one of the steel containers and sprayed a gel substance against the steel door. He waited for two minutes as the steel compartment in front of him melted outwardly. He put on a pair of gloves and yanked the flap off its melted points. With a smile on his lips and an unusually bright expression of accomplishment, he pulled out the box. Inside was a silver flask-like container suspended in a forty-six degree Fahrenheit thermal box that was locked tightly in place against breakage or unusual accident. He nodded his head to one of the women beside him and they all started to retrieved something from their inside jackets. In a matter of minutes, they had assembled a small makeshift bomb. Doctor Hawkins retrieved the flask, it was unusually warm. He stuck it into the inside of his coat and followed his companions out. Just as he passed the last guards, he pulled out a mobile phone. Doctor Lewis Hawkins dialled a number that was received by a fax machine in a small mining town called Windermere in the south of South Dakota and hung up. As they made their way out the man set the timer to the assembled bomb for five minutes and stuck on the underside of the second security check point desk.

Later on Private Nash, one of the guards at the front gate said that he last saw the doctor approaching him casually in the company of his friends, he didn’t have the opportunity to talk to him neither did he see any reason to, before the explosion ripped the building in half. Sending him grabbing the ground with his face. When he raised his head, he saw the desolation before him and the characters that were walking towards him before the explosion, where nowhere to be seen. Pain or fear did not register until he saw the slumped charred body of his boss Major Mackintosh across the bonnet of one of the jeeps.

A bang was the first signal that illustrated how the world was going to meet its slow death. And here in this remote outpost was where the world would feel the first pinch of how it was going to begin.

II

Exactly three hours later Freeborn Hamilton, Deputy Director and chief of operations for the Central Intelligence Agency heard the phone ring in his bedroom. The only phone that rang in his bedroom was the emergency one and only one person has that number. He put down the garden pump he had been spraying onto his pride and joys, in his small green house near the conservative door of his modest New England home outside the single most historically architectural capital of the western world. Being a Saturday, his wife had already left for pottery classes or was it lamas’ classes with her friends, giving him the time to dedicate to his orchids. These orchids where a soothing weekend ritual for him and he looked forward to spending time with them. A little bit of sun, water and care each weekend and they blossomed, unlike other hobbies he might indulge in. It was much better than accepting the services of a psychoanalyst. For a man in his position a pshycartrist was a very very bad idea.

The ring of the phone though was about to destroy any illusions he might have had to relax on this day. He took off his garden gloves and apron. Rushing into the bedroom, he paused briefly before picking up the phone. The voice on the other side was unmistakable. He answered and listened to the velvety smooth voice for perhaps three minutes then said ‘It’s a surprise to me too sir’

He listened again for another five minutes to the voice on the other side and said into the receiver ‘Yes sir, I believe the Prime Minister will be able to contact her’ There was a brief chatter on the other side as he sat down on the side of his bed.

‘No sir, I haven’t met her’

A pause and a nod later ‘I’ll contact my opposite number sir’

Another few moments he said ‘Yes sir Mr President. I understand’

When he hung up the phone, he sighed and whispered to himself ‘It definitely is going to be a long night’

As he left the room, he wondered ‘Do they offer knighthoods to foreigners?’

Chapter One

The events of that quiet but deadly Saturday afternoon where to catch up to me, only how was I to know it from the chill of the morning Mediterranean Sea. How did I find myself here? Well lately, I had been feeling a bit burnt out recently. As a means to an end, I went looking for some recuperation and since I had resources, I thought a visit to an old friend for some honest to God manual labour while voyaging would be ideal. Hence, I found myself doing my own petty exploration on a ship called the Phoenix’s Ashes sailing through the Mediterranean as a favour to a friend of mine who was in need of a navigator. As a fair navigator, I offered my services thereby combining both my interests. Relieving my boredom and making good use of myself.

The summer holidays were almost at an end when I decided to break out of the weariness of my responsibilities and dare the seas. In the space of a month, I was atrociously glad that I could double up as a deck hand and navigator while taking in the delights of aquatic scenery.

This I could do because I was not exactly your average typical woman. I for one did not have the somewhat unfortunate burden to wake up early up in the morning in my less than comfortable bed with the snooze button alarm dreadfully going off for the third or fourth time. Throw on some daintily little dress, go to an office and work hard every day hoping I don’t involve myself with mundane office politics or hope to get that promotion because I have bills to pay and literally relive the experience day after day like a drone. I did not have the good or bad luck depending on the nature of my mood or the woman, to be on the dole or perhaps shoplifting, that costly cheap designer knock-off or maybe being pimped to the ugliest bastard one could possibly set eyes upon. No, I was none of these. I was billionairess. I had by all measure of account inherited a fortune, a couple of billion pounds when I was young. And though, I was a bit constrained by being born probably the richest female in the world with a mixed heritage, I did however sometimes resent the fact that I have the time, resource and finances to waste on anything. However, by my nature I tend to behave and act quiet differently than most young heiresses my age. Hence my wilful if not brazen holiday choices.

My other vacation options ranged from going to Cairo to see a Professor Zameer Al-Majid, the retired museum curator of the Egyptian Museum who could teach me the finer points of hieroglyphics, the one language I’ve always wanted to learn but couldn’t just master, for some reason. Alternatively, perhaps I could have gone to Paris and practice my quintessential ballet moves at Vyroubova’s ballet school. Instead of my varied choices, I choose the most ingratiating choice, which was here on a boat in the Med.

Beside myself and the second engineer there were seven or so partially groomed men of the crew who did not exactly look their best on the upper deck of the Phoenix’s Ashes and three of them were in their thirties. In a dimly lit cabin below, we all could hear the voices of two children nagging each other. Those were kids of the first mate Dan Patterson, who had pestered their father for weeks on end for a weekend on the boat with their father and crew. Most of the crew, apart from the kids had been aboard for several months and consisted of Italians, Portuguese and Spanish speaking anglers. It was the Captains policy to hire, and integrate as many foreign speaking, down on their luck men who could be trusted to join his ship and become a sort of an extended family. The Phoenix’s Ashes was an average sized fishing boat that I had invested in for the sole purpose of friendship. And while I owned more than half the value of it, I did not govern nor take stock of its movements, but I did know if I ever needed Phoenix’s Ashes, it would be there. My dear old pal Hal, who needed the favour of a navigator because his regular one had an unexpected family emergency captained and owned it. And as such, for this excursion, I was merely a deck hand with no rights past my appointed duties as a freelance navigator cum passenger and that was about it. I have been that for the past month angling with the crew and learning their ways. Apart from Halim, no one knew my status or my relationship with him and I was grateful for it because I wanted the crew to treat me first and foremost as the female newcomer who knew nothing about fishing to becoming as time went by the novice who was now one of their own. A step up, for anyone if they knew this crew.

After a month or so, the men still on occasion pick on me and joke about my feministic style of coping but I tolerated it to the point that I enjoyed it. Because here on this ship there were no complications, no violence, no dealing with figures or corporate decisions I may have to deal with. Here with the wind blowing through my hair, the sea mist and clouds just for company, this to me was truly heavenly freedom.

It was almost eight in the morning. The ship had briefly heaved-to off the coast of the Strait of Gibraltar just after nine the previous evening to take supplies aboard. The bulk of the supplies were perishable items. Both the Spanish and Portugal coastlines lay sixty-five miles to the northeast now. Furthermore, at this time of the morning, it was very much likely that most of the crew would be making their way up to the deck for that salty seawater air. Inside the Phoenix’s Ashes’ wheel house the first officer Dan Patterson, a seasoned and prematurely old red haired Irish happy go lucky sea adventurer stared vacantly through one of the square ports. A true seafarer, who loved the quietness of the sea dawn, had been manning the graveyard shift, twelve a.m. to eight a.m. The coffee beside him had long gone cold and he had lost taste in it. At this time of the morning, operating the graveyard shift, it was all anyone could do to stay awake operating the wheel and yet Patterson was able to traverse Phoenix’s Ashes" safely through the ever-expanding swells. I had noticed that it was one of the things he enjoyed doing besides having fun with his kids.

On the deck this early morning, it was foggy but one or two fathom visible on all compass bearings and all was near silent. The ship had been nudged, by a friendly warm current during the night, which had eased her three quarters fully loaded bosom along the Mediterranean. From the gantry above, four braided nylon cables spread from a central point, the ends secured to small steel hoops set into the wooden hull of her mast. In the clearing fog, I could make out across the deck three-clamshell buckets awaiting its use when and if rough weather came. Above us, two of my shipmates were sluggishly busy securing the rope assemblies to the mast.

I finished brushing my teeth with my toothbrush that stood beside my cabin bed every morning. I had just finished rinsing and in the process of taking in vast lungful of the salty sea air when I caught glimpse of the second engineer, a Spanish-speaking bloke ogling the pages of a girlie magazine beside me. Leaning over the deck railing slightly, he looked up from the pages of the magazine at me with an alluring smile. He held up the centre pages of the magazine, stuck out his tongue and flicked them several times at me. Being a woman of some innovative beauty I knew that illicit invitation like this one was going to be the norm especially on a boat, however I couldn’t precisely understand why this Spanish engineer with a scraggy beard, three missing molars and clad only in shabby sneakers, cut-off dirty white jeans and plain striped T-Shirt will constantly berate me with such lurid yucky displays whenever he saw me.

Was it just hormones on his part or what? From where he stood, he could of course see plenty of my legs. Perhaps I do encourage him I thought to myself.

‘We could do with a lap dance later on’ he said in Spanish

‘Lap dancing isn’t my thing’ I replied ‘perhaps your mammon is great at it’

It was not quite an insult but the Spanish are quite sensitive to mother jokes. In an old boy gesture, he grabbed his groin and made a soundless gesture of pride before turning and walking away. I desperately didn’t want to have to watch the crack of skin between his hump squeeze against his pants as he made his way aft. He noticed the sail cable that ran the pulley and auxiliary equipment were scraping loosely more than normal against the bulwarks as the ship rose and fell with the long slow swell of the ship and so like a good sailor he went over to tighten the knots before proceeding below.

My gloomy reverie was shattered by a soft voice from behind me ‘Morning Susan, How are you this morning?’ I turned and was welcomed with the frosty looking figure of Captain Halim Hal Hobble rolling a cigarette in the morning air.

‘Captain’ I replied ‘I’m fine sir. Lovely morning isn’t it?’

Captain Hobble thirty-eight years of age was a huge but timid man, who had much as I had when it came to parentage. We both had a mixed heritage. His was a combination of Arab Moroccan and French. While mine was that of Britain and I think one of the West African countries, Seymour has never really explained where my father came from.

Anyway, the Captain stood at six feet two with thinning brown hair, a finely cut brown beard who had been brought up by conservative English foster parents from the age of eleven and at the time we met he was running the family owned wine distillery. We met on a makeshift cricket playing field in Blackheath, England about ten years ago. I was visiting some friends, who invited me to a game of cricket. Halim was chiding his opponents, my friends for having a woman on the team. He considered it prudish and unnatural for a woman to play cricket. Despite being brought up by English values, he considered himself more of a Moroccan than a Brit, and in cultural Morocco, women were not precisely regarded with such high regard as to play men’s games with men. At the time, I was young, impulsive and rebellious and so resenting his implication, my teammates concurred. At the start of the game, I made it my mission to drum some sense into him. I found his pomposity was dubious and patronising, so I had of course had to oppose him, together with my male teammates challenged him and his team. By the end of the game, we stood victorious but only just barely, an argument that is still sometimes a sore reminder of our then dispute. He had then, like me, made it his business to get to know me and I had in turn educated him in the ways of womanliness, since then a sort of cultural friendship had grown between us. One thing I found endearing in him, was his desire to put others first before himself. He had too much compassion in his heart, a fact that did not bode well with any academic profession, or his parents, who had hoped for him when he graduated to inherit the family business. Unfortunately, though he did have a strict side to him that encouraged anarchy and disruption, which as luck would have it didn’t apply to his own chosen love, working near water especially in the sea.

Despite his degrees in Business Administration and Architecture, he also had received honours in Economics from the London School of Economics. When he graduated instead of continuing to run his parents business or taking advantage of his scholastic achievements, he journeyed to the warmest coast possible, sought a job as a deck hand on the first ship he could find and set sail at the earliest opportunity. It was not long thereafter that he graduated from working on the decks in Vigo, Spain, to working as a navigator on a tugboat then bigger boats until he had the fortunate sense to mention to me on one of my visits that he would love to captain his own boat. I did not think much about it until two years later when I needed to convey someone from Southampton to Greece without certain people noticing. I invited him on a shopping spree. A spree that was for a fishing boat. The Phoenix’s Ashes was a rickety old boat, which he fell in love with at first sight and at the time, was named Blue Dove. She was an average sized ship with an overall length of 490 feet and a 55-foot beam. Built in Liverpool in the 70’s she had five spacious holds that could handled more that five thousand kilos of fish. Since her hull first berth deep off the harbour coast in Liverpool she had enjoyed an ancestry of being mostly a fishing vessel.

After a captious journey to Greece and some modest work, he put to sea and since then had made a reasonable living as an Atlantic cod and hake fisherman off the coast of the Mediterranean.

We both had come a long way since that cricket pitch, as we now looked round at the deck of his boat. Confident that he wasn’t quite within earshot of the crew he lit the cigarette and said

‘Yes it is’ he replied answering my polite observation. Looking upwards into the sky he said in that deep accented voice of his ‘Looks like the weather will be good and hold for the next day or so’

‘Aye Captain, with luck the catch will be just as good’

‘I love the calm of the sea before the hubbub of the day, waves just look different’ he said dragging on his lit cigarette.

‘It seems flat as desert sand to me sir’

He started to say something then stopped to listen. After a few moments he said

‘We shall be passing within spitting distance of Capo Trafalgar in a couple of hours, lets hope we don’t catch much hell passing it’ he said more amused than concerned

‘Capo Trafalgar Captain?’

‘Nothing for you to get your knickers in a twist about sailor’

‘I don’t wear knickers sir’

He turned towards me exhaling a long puff of smoke and peered at me ‘Suzy must you be so formal even when we are alone?’

‘Aye sir’ glancing at him ‘habits do tend to die hard Captain’

‘Well cut it out and relax. It is damn frustrating you know. Need I remind you that you own a big part of this boat, besides I thought you wanted a holiday?’

‘Captain, I am a member of your crew why must you be so informal?’

Shaking his head he took in a drag from the cigarette smiled and said ‘Damn. You are just as big-headed as the day we met. Very well then Crewman Dax, how are you this morning?’

‘Fine sir, just fine, but I think I’m coming down with a cold’

‘Then you better wear something warm then. The men all appreciate your body but it plays hell with them getting things done’

‘I know Captain’

‘Then do as you are told, seaman’ he said again with a smile

‘Aye sir’

A little while later and a mile or so to the southwest of the Phoenix’s Ashes I could see a motor fishing vessel keeping station as it had done so several hours earlier. Its port and starboard running lights where on. It drifted sluggishly away over the smooth surface under the salubrious cold of the trade winds. Within two hours, I figured it would disappear under the horizon.

Three hours later, it was still on the edge of our horizontal lock. Nevertheless, as I made my way back into the rear of the cabin to put away my stuff, I didn’t consider its motives towards us nor did I think there was a need. Not out here, not in the wilderness of water. What I wondered was what the day would be like.

Under the soft tone of the Spanish speaking radio news announcer voice that was mellowing in the corner, I couldn’t hear the rush of water hitting the keel hard neither did I hear the whoops of excitement of the crew on top of the deck, what I did feel was the boat keeling abruptly to port. Not soon after did I hear a strange humming sound. Very much, like weight of a heavy turbine churning water. Not unlike the distance drone of a zeppelin. As Phoenix’s Ashes steadied her weighty butt back to her former position, the kids and one or two seamen below with me rushed past me in a scramble to get on top deck to see what the commotion was about. I listened for a few moments as the sound increased in magnitude and magnified by the density of water. An underwater sound was changing into a surface sound. I hurried up behind and met a sight that if I was wearing my stockings, would have knocked them off.

The sight of an American Los Angeles class attack submarine rising four hundred yards on our starboard was indeed a remarkable sight. It came out of the ocean like a big black sea monster, kissing the water with an ungainly finesse of an unbridled whale. We all heard the supplement explosive sound of water being expelled by compressed air from its ballast tanks to attain buoyancy and sit there amidships on the sea seemingly to be rising and dropping in unison with the swells crashing against its body.

‘Wow’ I heard in Spanish from the children

The sun glinted of dark aquamarine colour scheme over the cries of uneasiness and wonder of my fellow crewmember. We heard the clang of metal scrapping against metal and a head appeared, then a second one and then a third after a while there was quite a group of men in the traditional American navy sea personnel uniform standing on top of the submarine. One of them had a binocular slung over his neck, which he looked through once, consulted a piece of paper from his pocket, before issuing some instructions. After a while, an inflatable Marine type Special Forces dinghy was thrown over the side. Four officers got into the boat started the engine and made it across the distance towards the Phoenix’s Ashes.

Two of the sailors requested to be let onto the Phoenix’s Ashes and boarded.

Two introductions and a tiresome pompous short conversation after their initial introduction to Captain Hobble and First mate Dan, the senior officer, who was by his insignia, a lieutenant requested access to one of his crewmembers.

‘Which one of you is Lieutenant Dax?’ The senior officer demanded without preamble

‘May I ask why you want him?’ The Captain asked

‘It’s none of your concern sir’

The rugged first mate did not appreciate the lieutenants’ reply. He stepped forward with a mischievous smile on his face cradling his children, pointing out into the open sea.

‘I think you’ll find him down there’

They both turned. Their eyes following his protruding finger. Smiling he took the hands of his gaping kids and sauntered across the deck.

‘I see’ the lieutenant said. The lieutenant pondered for a moment. We all could see his thought process. He turned to the petty officer as if to ask how they were going to find the crewmember without the crews’ co-operation.

The Lieutenant broke into a friendly smile and turned back to Halim Hobble

‘Perhaps I started on the wrong foot, Captain Sir. I have an urgent message to convey to Lieutenant Dax and I would appreciate some cooperation’

‘Much better. I don’t stake much stock in attitude on my ship’

‘Pardon sir, attitude?’

‘Tell me what does an American submarine want with this lieutenant?’

‘Sorry sir, but it’s still none of your business or mine sir but for co-operation I can only say it’s a matter of National Security’ I leaned back against the railing on the far side of the deck listening to the Captain deny once again the presence of a Lieutenant Dax aboard his ship. The Lieutenant and Petty Officer did not buy it. They knew that this crewperson was on board and it was imperative that they speak to him. Looking round the deck and glancing at something in their hands, which I figured was a snapshot of my passport photograph they began strolling round the deck, checking the faces