E.E.Z.

By Cliff Hedley

New Zealand has the fourth-largest exclusive economic zone in the world, a vast ocean often exploited by those ruthless enough to venture into largely unguarded waters. Now with the discovery of valuable resources on the ocean floor by a marine research vessel, the race is on to capitalise on them before anyone else does. Jones - a former military officer, living off the grid and grudgingly pulled back to active duty, must return to his shadowy past life in order to stop the secret getting out… and he is not alone in the hunt for what lies beneath the ocean surface.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Apr 16, 2012
• ISBN: 9781620957639

Book preview

Prologue

PACIFIC OCEAN: Somewhere off the east coast of Auckland, New Zealand.

4th November, 1982.

The Royal New Zealand Air Force Orion swooped low and fast over the heavy sea. On board, its crew was tense and intently alert. Corporal Trevor Ears Henderson sat at his console, his stomach twisted in a knot of caffeine and adrenaline. His eyes were fixed dead ahead on his screen and his mind fought to process the avalanche of information coming at him.

The Orion crew had detected multiple submarine contacts after dropping a series of sonar buoys, confusing their efforts to triangulate the location of the sub they were hunting. The sub’s captain was good, and obviously didn’t want to make their job too easy. Harvey, hunched over the console next to Henderson, could clearly make out the distinctive swish of a screw over his head-phones. It was bearing away from their current position, heading North-West at 21 knots.

The two men fed their information as a combined summary through to the Tactical Coordinator’s screen. It was Flight Lieutenant Will Roberts on that day, an experienced maritime aviator and Tactical Coordinator, or "TACCO". He quickly made a decision and was about to give the pilot a new course heading based on the information in front of him, when something jigged in Henderson’s mind.

It was like a light bulb flicking on in his head. He had read the specs on the Oberon-class submarine they were hunting. What was that top speed again? Then he remembered, and had literally shouted; ‘Wait! TACCO, twenty one knots is too fast!’

Henderson grabbed a nautical map and studied the prevailing local currents for a moment. There was no way, even with the current, that an Oberon-class sub could move that fast submerged – it could only do around 18 knots, and the current was moving against the contact, not with it. He’s leading us away, but he’s screwed up the speed on the decoy, thought Henderson. He showed the other two Air Electronics Operators and they quickly agreed. Roberts gave a nod of approval and ordered a new course heading, to sweep around in the opposite direction between the two buoys they had dropped earlier behind them.

Then Henderson heard it. A faint, irregular-sounding screw, bearing away to port. The Air Electronics Officer standing next to Harvey and Henderson advised the TACCO to drop another sonar buoy. This one picked up a screw much closer. The Orion banked away for another sweep, its four turbo-prop Allison engines whining as it did so. In the mid-section of the craft, the navigator worked feverishly to triangulate the source of the screw while they still had sonar contact. Then they got it. Roberts picked it up and barked a new heading to the pilot.

‘Come about, heading one-eight-five. Contact confirmed, range two-thousand’.

The Orion banked again, this time lining up over the sub’s location. Its distinct tail stinger, known as the MAD Boom, earned its name by housing a Magnetic Anomaly Detector. It could pick up the anomaly in the Earth’s magnetic field generated by a submarine, but only from a short range – either from close-by or directly overhead. Roberts had them right on top. The MAD showed a spike as they passed over the sub, and he immediately hit a button next to him.

Two canisters known as retros dropped from the Orion and landed right above the sub, each sending a plume of smoke that the crew could see as the aircraft banked away. The retros also produced a small explosion - below them in the sub, two loud BOOMs reverberated through the hull, and its occupants knew they had been killed.

As a sonar operator, Henderson had just earned himself a little more prestige. On their last sub-hunting exercise the young Corporal had picked up a contact that the other AEOps couldn’t even hear over the general noise picked up by their sonar. He smiled to himself as the knot in his stomach unwound half a turn, his job now done. Another notch in the belt. Henderson wondered if they would promote him for this one. He’d been eyeing up a classic Norton motorcycle, and the extra pay from a promotion just might help him get it.

As an Air Electronics Operator, or AEOp for short, he was a crucial part of the Orion crew. It was his team’s job to pick up radar and sonar contacts – ships and submarines - in the vast waters of New Zealand. His particular skill was as a sonar operator. His rather acute sense of hearing could distinguish between marine mammals and different types of submarines in the vast tract of ocean they patrolled.

He had just helped his crew win Fincastle, a two-week tournament first held in 1961 between Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Britain. Originally a bombing competition for maritime aviators, the competition had been extended to test a range of anti-submarine warfare skills, by locating, tracking and attacking a submerged submarine. This years’ competition had been held on home turf, with a submarine supplied by the Australian Navy; a diesel-and-battery Oberon-class vessel, the HMAS Otama. New Zealand, with its significantly smaller military arsenal, had yet to acquire a submarine. It did however patrol the fourth-largest Exclusive Economic Zone in the world, New Zealand’s territorial waters. At 4.46 million square kilometres, it was smaller in size only to the EEZs of Australia, Indonesia and the USA.

The aerial side of this mammoth task was left largely to Henderson’s 5-Squadron, based at Whenuapai, north of Auckland. While some of the area was also covered by the Navy, 5-Squadron’s P3B Orions played a key role in maritime patrol, and search-and-rescue. Much faster than a surface vessel, the Orions were often sent to find lost or endangered boats as well as locating fishing vessels illegally entering New Zealand’s bountiful waters. The P3 would establish the position of a vessel so it could be located by a rescue craft, or as necessary in some cases, be seized and have its crew arrested. The P3s were not usually armed, but Henderson had heard stories of a 75-Squadron Skyhawk firing across the bow of an illegal fishing vessel running for international waters, to ‘encourage’ it to stop. Their job was to find the target.

Henderson was looking forward now to a well-earned beer at the mess, a hot shower, and the welcome comfort of his bunk. He sat back in his seat and felt the tension drain from his shoulders as the Orion headed for home.

***

It seemed like moments after Henderson’s head hit the pillow that there was noise and movement all around him. He squinted in the bright artificial light and checked the clock on the opposite wall, an unwelcome sight as its hands stretched towards the small hours of the morning. He figured he must have had about four hours of sleep. Flight Lieutenant Roberts, the crew’s Air Electronics Officer and Henderson’s team leader, along with their captain, Flight Lieutenant Northwood, had just come to rouse him and the rest of his crew. Roberts was not a man to argue with, so Henderson donned his flight suit and headed for their waiting aircraft as ordered. He strode across the tarmac, the smell of aviation fuel thick in the air as the engines hummed. There was apparently no time for a briefing. Must be a rescue call, thought Henderson.

Once the Orion had lifted off and levelled out, it banked roughly South-East, and Roberts’ voice came over the headphones of everyone on board.

‘Gentleman, some of you may have assumed that this is a rescue mission. It is not. We are to rendezvous with a Hercules out of Wigram off the Kaikoura coast to investigate an unidentified flying object reported twenty minutes ago. It was described as fast-moving, highly-manoeuvrable and well-lit. Three Skyhawks have also been despatched ahead of us for advanced reconnaissance. Personally I do not believe in the existence of little green men, but we are to identify what it was that people saw out there. Questions?’

There were none.

***

Bob Coutts had been living on the Kaikoura coast as long as he could remember. He often used to have the stretch of rugged shoreline and ocean entirely to himself. Those days were gone, and the area was becoming more popular due to the abundance of marine life nearby. He was, for now however, alone. The whale-watching and commercial fishing vessels had long since headed for port. He looked up at the still night, the moon brightly lit and covered only by the odd wisp of cloud. The stars stretched out for an eternity above him. He stopped to admire the view, then decided to up-anchor and cut short his so-far unsuccessful night-fishing expedition.

‘Buggers aren’t biting anyway’, he mumbled to himself as he stowed his gear and flicked the few remaining chunks of fish off his bait board into the ink-black water. In truth, he knew, he enjoyed the tranquillity of the sea on a clear night and it didn’t bother him if he caught a fish or not. He stopped cleaning up his bait to take in the view around him. The night sky was mirroring on the ocean the vast array of stars that is the Milky Way. He’d seen it all a hundred times before, but never got tired of it.

There was one bright star in particular he noticed. He’d never seen anything quite like it before. It was moving. Maybe a satellite, he thought. He watched it idly for a while as it moved across the horizon. Then it did something he wasn’t expecting. It began to zig-zag at amazing speed, and turned right toward him. It grew close in an instant and shot right above and across the stern of his boat, the Mermaid. The force was like nothing Coutts had ever felt, and it knocked him, blew him, right back towards the cabin and onto the deck with a bone-jarring thud. Concussed, winded and seeing a few more stars than before, he eventually overcame his initial shock and picked up his marine radio.

His head was ringing, and he began to notice a dull roar growing. It wasn’t from hitting his head, he realised, and it was coming towards him. There were more lights approaching his boat directly, appearing from the coast and heading in the direction of the first object out to sea. Soon, the noise and lights were almost on top of him, and he could feel the vibrations through to his knees. Then it was right above him. Out of the darkness, an Air Force P3 Orion emerged, its underbelly eerily lit by its own navigation lights. All four Allison turbo-prop engines were being pushed to their limit as it screeched past into the night sky like a hawk after its prey.

***

Ron Hastings was the local harbour master, well-known and liked by every sea-fairing local. He had been summoned from his office by a transmission from old Bob Coutts crackling across the marine VHF unit in the main watch room overlooking the small marina. It was home to a few local yachts, some whale-watching tour boats and several locally-based fishing trawlers. They now lay silent, except for the lapping of water on hulls, bobbing in the slight swell that found its way past the break-water and made them strain against their moorings. Bob usually didn’t sound this excited.

Hastings keyed the mic.

‘Mermaid, this is Kaikoura Harbour Master. What’s happening out there Bob, you catch a shark?’ Ron grinned. The old-timer had been out at least once a week in his old plywood-and-glass twenty-footer for a night-fish as long as he could remember. Hastings could see the old boat vividly in his mind, its peeling and faded paint as well-presented as its dishevelled skipper. The response from Coutts made him sit down - fast.

‘Ron…Ron, I saw… there were lights in the sky. Knocked me to the deck…never seen anythin’ like it. Fast as hell they were’.

Bob’s message was panicked. He sounded out of breath, and Ron sat and tried to fathom what he was saying. It was more extraordinary than anything he had ever heard on his radio.

‘Say again Mermaid, and try to catch your breath Bob’. The last thing Ron wanted was to have the old guy die of a heart attack out there. Bob said roughly the same thing again. ‘Dammit Ron. Never seen anythin’ like it in all me years. This light, I thought it was a star, then it got close real fast, went right over me. Knocked me to the deck as it went by. Force of the wind or somethin’ but it was movin’. Then I think it must’ve headed right out to sea’.

Ron keyed his mic. ‘You think there’s a lost aircraft out there Bob? Maybe a whale-watcher off course, or…’

Bob cut him off. ‘No way. Hell, none of the locals can fly like that. And the damn thing never made a sound!’

Ron sat stunned, then finally keyed the mic again. There were a few cowboy pilots in the area, but they would know better than to fly so close to a surface vessel - or so low at all. An old mantra entered Hasting’s head; There’s old pilots, and there’s bold pilots, but there’s no old bold pilots. He once had to assist in the recovery of a bold pilot who was trying to get his wealthy tourist passengers too close to the whale-watching action. That pilot would not be growing old.

‘One other thing Ron. The Air Force search and rescue boys were right on its heels!’

Hastings took a breath. ‘Bob, time for you to come home. You OK to make it?’

‘Sure as hell Ron, don’t think I’ll be sticking around here anyway. Shit!’

Coutts turned the ignition key as he swung the wheel around into the swell. The old Mercury engine spluttered into life and he turned for home. He just hoped he’d get to see it again. He looked around him, but saw no more lights. The contents of his frozen bait container were now strewn all over the deck, frozen pilchards and squid tumbling across the floor as the boat lumbered its way around in a tight arc. The mess was the least of his concerns now. The gulls would probably clean that up for him in the morning. Sea-spray and wind bathed his weathered face as he headed for the harbour markers he knew so well. He forced the throttle all the way forward, pushing the Mermaid as fast as she would carry him.

Ron Hastings made his way to the phone, and checked the regional Coastguard number off the list on the wall next to it. He dialled, and a duty officer picked up.

Andrew Rogers was glad he had something to do. Being the rookie, he pulled all the shifts nobody else wanted, and he was on the graveyard. He picked up the phone, and heard the voice of a man he’d met before.

‘That you Andy?’ asked Ron Hastings. Ron had aided the Coastguard in search and rescue efforts numerous times over the years. Rogers helped to co-ordinate the last couple himself. The local fishermen knew the area well, as did the charter operators. Then there were the tourists, who flocked to the area to view up-close the plethora of marine life. Some of them were inexperienced and had a tendency to get into trouble – the kind that usually involved swimming around in life jackets until someone picked them up.

‘You got another lost boat for me Ron?’

Ron wasn’t in his usual mood for idle conversation. He was full of sea stories, but not tonight. He got right to the point.

‘No, Andy. One of the locals just reported something flying low over his boat from down the coast, then it headed out to sea.’

‘Any idea what it was, Ron?’

Ron paused, wondering exactly what to say.

‘You there Ron?’ Rogers queried after the long silence.

Ron Hastings sighed, and told Andy everything he’d just heard.

‘A P3 was after it?’ Rogers asked in surprise. ‘They aren’t supposed to be out here as far as I know. Sounds like the lights are back.’

Hastings remembered a few years earlier, when unidentified lights in the sky had been seen by a cargo plane nearby. A TV crew had taken to the air and managed to film them, so the Kaikoura Lights as they became known had created quite a media stir for a while. He wondered what the papers would say tomorrow.

***

Somewhere out to sea, Corporal Henderson swivelled away from his scope in disgust and stared in vain out of a nearby window in the Orion’s narrow cabin. He had no radar contacts, other than other Air Force craft, and one small surface vessel. Low on fuel, the Orion banked back towards the mainland with the familiar whine of its turbo-prop engines working to slice through the air. The unidentified lights in the sky that had been reported, and they had scrambled to find, had disappeared into the night.

***

Several aircraft were in the area that night. One Air Force Hercules reported distant lights for a period, and is rumoured to have even filmed them out of its rear cargo door. However, no aircraft were able to get close enough to identify or make contact with the object.

Bob Coutts told his story to the local media, and for a while people came back to the Kaikoura coast hoping to see more than whales. Over the next two or three years, a number of reported ‘UFO’ sightings occurred in the Kaikoura region. Then, around the late 80’s, the sightings stopped altogether and became a distant memory.

***

ALASKA, TODAY

Jones didn’t much like company, or surprises. It was for this reason that he had chosen a quiet isolated valley in the most remote corner of the United States to lay low for a while. He had a cabin near an idyllic picture-postcard lake, bordered by tall pines which swayed in the chill breeze. He had built himself a small landing area with a tiny jetty, and canoed out every couple of weeks to a small settlement to the south where he could get his supplies. He had even tried fishing, as much as it bored him, and met with limited success. Around him were mountains and wilderness, and not a neighbour for miles, other than the occasional bear. One such neighbour was in his sights. He lay prone on a small rock outcrop, which gave him a good view over his patch of valley, and out across the lake. He sometimes hiked up to the spot just for the view, or to think. He watched the animal through the scope mounted on his rifle, the black crosshairs trained on its side as it ambled along the lake edge.

He had been especially careful about putting his food and what minimal garbage he created away, so as not to attract grizzlies like this one. It looked to be of average size, but more than capable of tearing him apart. Jones occasionally lost the beast as it passed behind the trees along the water’s edge, finding the brown furry hide again as is lumbered back into view. It was moving away, and hadn’t seemed to have noticed his cabin. He breathed a sigh of relief. He didn’t like to kill, and had seen more than enough violence for one lifetime. Live and let live he thought, as his finger eased away from the rifle’s trigger. The grizzly seemed to be doing just that, and he would return the favour. He would always be careful though, just in case they should cross paths at much closer quarters.

Darkness was beginning to fall and Jones made his way down from the ridge, back through the looming twilight beneath the towering trees. He retreated to the comfort of his small but cosy log cabin, its open fire soon roaring in the solid brick fireplace. He couldn’t believe his luck when he had found the cabin – it was peaceful, a place where he could clear his head, and eerily similar to the way he had pictured it when he first ventured into Alaska in search of a private retreat. He sat in a worn but comfortable leather armchair and watched the flames in the fireplace dance, mesmerising in their movements. An occasional spark exploded out onto the hearth. He felt almost relaxed for the first time in what seemed like an eternity, and before long began to drift towards sleep. His head relaxed against the soft back of the chair and he fought to keep his heavy eyelids open.

A beep and flashing light stirred him, and he shifted his stare from the fire to a panel beside him. There was no TV, telephone or internet here. Jones kept only basic equipment for survival, plus a few extra gadgets to make sure he wasn’t disturbed. This was one of them. He flicked a switch next to the flashing light, and an image appeared on his old computer monitor. At first he saw nothing, but as his eyes adjusted, he could just make out a faint degree of movement. It was a blur of bright green being fed from his night-vision camera mounted outside. There were two figures moving slowly towards him. He followed their movements as they approached the edge of the camera‘s view. They were most certainly not bears. He frowned as they passed out of range of the first camera and he flicked to another, this one infrared and providing a tighter-angle view from the cabin. The figures were human, and moving towards him. The bulky apparatus he could make out on their heads was obviously night-vision gear. He grinned to himself and whispered in a low tone; ‘I can see you too.’

Under his chair, he brushed his hand across an automatic pistol and slowly wrapped his fingers around the grip. It slid cleanly out of the holster affixed to the bottom of the chair. He slipped the pistol into the pocket of his well-worn camouflage hunting jacket, and reached for the rifle he had returned earlier to its mount above the fireplace. He slid back the perfectly oiled bolt to chamber a round, and entered some numbers into a keypad mounted on the wall. Taking a last look at the dark figures on the monitor and sure of their position, he slipped out the back door without making a sound.

Outside, the two figures had emerged into a small clearing in front of the cabin, cautiously moving towards either side of the door. Jones crouched in the undergrowth to the side of them, having crept silently and undetected from the cabin. He had his rifle trained on the first shape as it emerged from the tree-line, all the way up to his front porch. The thick aroma of pine forest and damp earth wafted into his nostrils as he took steady, controlled breaths. In his head, he counted down as the timer he had set on the wall in the cabin did the same.

Three… two…He squinted his eyes. One…

As he reached zero, blazing halogen lights flicked on from the cabin porch, illuminating the two figures and the clearing in front of the building. They were both men, and they were both now cursing at being temporarily blinded as they fought to remove their night vision goggles.

He had a clear shot at both of them. Jones’ finger found the trigger and through the sights he followed the chest of the closest man. His target was fighting to adjust after the near-blinding flash the porch lights had generated in the goggles, designed to work only in very low-light conditions. Only a built-in safety mechanism had stopped the dramatic burst of light from burning his retinas. As the nearest man staggered upright, he yelled at the cabin with an Australian twang, ‘Jones, you bastard!’

Jones’s finger came off the rifle trigger as he realised who his visitors were. He stood, to their surprise, from a small hollow forty feet to their left, with his own night-vision goggles already flipped up so as to rest on his head above his eyes. He nodded to them with a wry grin, and added in mock surprise: ‘Commander Smith, Major Black. You know, I wasn’t expecting company.’

***

The same Australian spoke into the radio microphone on his collar.

‘Eagle one, ready for extraction. Make room for three.’

Jones knew his much needed vacation had come to an end, and reluctantly moved his way around the cabin, locking up as he went and securing his weapons and electronics. There was no point in running, there would be a team of well-armed crack commandos on the black hawk helicopter that would land on the flat stony lakeside in a matter of minutes. He could already hear the familiar whap-whap of rotor blades echoing through the neighbouring valleys as it drew near.

As he went about his tasks, finally stopping to pack a few items of clothing, the other of the two men watched him from the doorway.

The other man, with what sounded like an American accent, gave him a hollow, yet slightly sympathetic smile.

‘Sorry to ruin your holiday but you know we need you on this.’

Down by the lakeside, the big black helicopter touched down, whipping up a frenzy of dust and circular ripples in the water where the rotor blades overhung the edge.

Jones zipped his small pack and swung it over his shoulder, looking the American in the eye.

‘Let’s go… Sir.’

***

WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND.

Karl Harris gazed out over the Wellington waterfront from his small hotel room balcony. Karl wasn’t his real name, but as far as New Zealand customs were concerned, he was Karl Harris, here in the capital on business from Canada. That business, officially, was market research. New Zealand after all was an ideal research country used by a number of companies. Its isolation but similarity to US, British and Australian markets allowed products to be tested on a populace large enough to provide accurate data without risking huge exposure in the event of a failure. He had to know all this and a lot more to provide a believable cover. He had memorised data on product lifecycle curves, market saturation reports and brand packaging… all for corn chips. He packed away an open passport, the sandy-blonde hair and chiselled features of Karl Harris’s passport photo staring back at him like a mirror. This passport was one of many bearing his likeness, though each one carried a different name and nationality.

The people he would really be working for knew him only as Jones.

Having been in Wellington previously, he knew that the calm cloudless sunset he was viewing was a rarity in the often-blustery city. He turned away from the glassy harbour view as he heard a familiar beep from his open laptop. A new message had arrived for him – not via modem, but by a faster and more secure method – a small receiver