Game of Stealth

By Robert William Hult

A future President of the United States is paralyzed by the
errant bullet from the gun of a drug and gun smuggler. Frank
Dewey Ryder, still partially disabled, and his Secret Service
bodyguards are nearly killed by a top secret surveillance
dolphin while diving in Hawaiian waters thirty years later.
Why? Internation

• Language: English
• Publisher: LitFire Publishing
• Release date: Nov 7, 2019
• ISBN: 9781643984254

Robert William Hult

Robert William Hult has lived a long life filled with many different kinds of adventures. He has been a scholar, an explorer, a marine animal and bird trainer, an accomplished novelist, a retailer, and a submariner. Many of his exploits are the subjects of his novels. Robert believes not only in faith, but in total preparation, and if not for both, and an intervention here and there, some of his adventures surely would have ended in death. In fact, he has already survived a dozen near death experiences.

Book preview

1

The edge of the night was cold, hard as steel. University of Washington students, Frank Ryder—tall, dark and stout—and Joseph Rundstrum—tall, blonde and lean, rounded the corner of a two-story brick building in downtown Seattle. Their overcoats were just the ticket to protect them against the chilly fog drifting in from Pug et Sound.

Hours before, the lifelong friends had been enjoying an action film at the Coliseum, a favorite movie house they frequently attended. Long lines for another spy thriller had not deterred them. The theater was close to their favorite watering hole—Murphy’s. Murphy himself had chased them out promptly at 2 AM, and the two young men were on their way home to the university dormitory where they resided, one room apart.

They were nearly at Frank’s parked BMW when, suddenly, the fury of automatic machine gunfire split the night into a thousand chaotic pieces. A bullet ricocheted off a monorail support and crashed squarely into the back of Frank’s spine.

Ah! he moaned, immediately collapsing halfway on the concrete sidewalk, halfway on the paved street. Heat and then severe, thobbing pain raced up and down his spinal cord; uncontrollable tears sprang to his eyes.

In a pitiful whisper, Frank managed, Someone’s shot me, Joseph. Help me.

Methodically, but with lightning-quick speed, Joseph assessed the situation. Dropping to his knees near Frank’s head, Joseph looked for the source of the gunfire. He saw a huge man down the street then looked down into Frank’s desperate eyes.

Joseph had seen a fireman pull someone out of a burning building. He knew what to do. He took Frank’s hands, intertwined his fingers, and Joseph wrapped them around the back of his own neck.

Hold onto me, Frank. We need cover. I’m going to move you. If the pain’s too much, where we stop is where we’ll end up. The guy who apparently shot you is coming our way. He looked up at the still distant man.

There’s a van a couple of meters ahead. We’ll get under it. Hang on, buddy.

While pulling along Frank in a firefighter carry toward the van, Joseph kept watchful eyes on the figure coming closer. The man looked around, but not in their direction, as if he was expecting more trouble. Down the badly lit street in the thickening fog, Joseph continued to pull Frank toward the white van close to the curb. A gutter between the car and the curb looked to be a spot to temporaily park Frank. When they arrived, Joseph found that the channel was clean, except for cigarette butts and some crumpled newspaper with Seattle Post Intelligencer bylines.

Frank’s breathing was labored, as if he’d been climbing Mt. Rainier, something the pair had done twice when they were nineteen and twenty. Frank’s grip on his protector’s neck continued to hold as Joseph crawled with him the last meter into the gutter between the car and the concrete curb.

There’s room enough for you, buddy, but I’m not sure where I’m going to be, said Joseph in a low voice. Maybe under the van. I’ll try it.

Joseph lowered his head, releasing Franks hands, sinking him into the gutter. As he rolled Frank over on his stomach, Joseph saw the big blood spot on Frank’s back where the bullet had entered. At the moment, only a trickle of blood exited the wound. Frank was silent. Joseph realized his friend was unconscious.

Joseph wiggled his way to the other side of Frank. Joseph’s brown, wavy hair brushed the underside of the van as he realized he had a view, limited as it was, of the street beyond. He saw the big man approaching closer. The footsteps eventually stopped.

So, I did get you, the gunman said, looking at the dark silhouette and the bloody hole in intruder’s back. Well, good riddance. This is my territory. Keep your filthy friends out of it.

Frank saw the tip of the machine gun shoved into the open wound. When the body didn’t move, the big man raised his machine gun into the air and pulled the trigger as an act of victory. A burst of loud, prolonged Rat-a-tat-tat split the fog as the gunman moved down the street.

More gunfire, but from another direction. The big man oriented toward the sounds and ran toward them.

It was clear to Joseph that drug dealers were firing at each other and that he and Frank were in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was not at all clear if Frank was still alive. How Joseph wished he had something his life-long friend called a cell-phone, a piece of Dick Tracy-like technology the techno-wizard insisted would be available within the next thirty years. At this moment, Joseph’s only hope was that city police would arrive and call an ambulance.

On his stomach, Joseph moved his right hand to Frank’s back. He now felt a flow of blood coming through the overcoat and placed a finger over the wound, hoping to halt more outflow. In the thick night air, he could smell the blood.

Unexpectedly, Frank stirred. He tried to lift his head and said weakly, Joseph, are you here?

I am, buddy.

I’m scared, Joseph. I can’t move my legs.

The friend revealed, You have a bullet in your back. That’s the bad news. The good news is that the gunman is gone. The police should get here anytime and then an ambulance. Hang in here. If you can, keep talking.

In the distance, another hail of bullets pockmarked the night.

Frank’s teeth began to chatter.

You’re going into shock, Frank. I’ve got to keep you warmer.

Struggling beneath the van, Joseph managed to take off his overcoat. He draped it over his friend. Beneath the coat, he placed his finger as a plug in the wound. Frank stirred to the touch.

I’ve done as much as I can for you until the cops arrive, Frank. Now you’ve got to do whatever you can to keep yourself in check. Mind over matter. Remember? Mind over matter.

These drug dealers—these gang people—are going to kill us all, Joseph, said Frank, more weakly still. Someone’s got to stop them. Frank’s next cold shudder ended at Joseph’s fingertip.

A few minutes later, the blessed sound of a police siren sliced through the misty fog.

Finally, said Joseph with tense anticipation. It’ll run these guys off.

A few more shots rang out before the police car screeched to a halt. Joseph saw the law-enforcement officer exit beneath the pulsating lights of his vehicle. Dressed in blue, a shiny silver badge over his heart, the cop hunched over the roof of his car, laying low for protection, making himself as small a target as possible. Through his radio, he heard warnings about the raging gun battle he determined to break up. He unholstered his firearm. Through the still thickening fog, the police officer spied a large person dressed in black, harboring a machine gun.

The police officer aimed his semi-automatic pistol in the big man’s direction and yelled, Stop! Police! Surrender!

The large, confident man took a step forward, aimed his machine gun at the officer, and nearly emptied his weapon. The practiced aim came into effect. Some of the bullets burned holes in the side of the car, others ricocheted off it, and still others penetrated the body of the officer. The cop sank to the pavement behind his open door. Blood spurted out in all directions. Cries of anguish filled the night.

Through his police radio, his last feeble words were, Officer down. Backup—

That bastard shot the cop, too, Joseph whispered to Frank.

All was quiet for a few minutes as Joseph tried to follow the next actions of the killer, the bystander effect controlling Joseph’s every eye movement. Not to know what was happening now could be critical for survival.

Someone with a high voice yelled, Pallaccio! You psycho! You wasted a cop!"

A small, slim figure, also clothed in black, ran toward the downed law-enforcement officer and made a quick stop. He leaned over the dead man.

Another series of shots rang out. Then the small person toppled atop the police officer’s corpse.

So right! a deep voice echoed through the steely mist as he continued toward the dead pair. And now I’ve got you, too! Dead men don’t witness.

As the mist continued to thicken, Joseph saw the big man kick both corpses with his foot. The killer took the machine gun the smaller man had grasped in one hand. Pallaccio looked for the pistol the law-enforcement officer had been holding. When he found it, he placed it in his thick black waist belt. With machine guns in both hands, the drug merchant quickly surveyed the area for signs of life. When he saw no-one, he turned away.

Joseph watched as the murderer rushed down the street to another van, this one black, opened its driver’s side door and climbed inside. Joseph strained to see the rear license plate, but it was too far away to make out its letters and numbers.

The black van drove off out of sight.

A few precious minutes later, a bevy of police cars pulled into the area and surrounded the first police car. Several men got out to examine the dead bodies.

Joseph heard one of the men say, Jesus, they got Ralph, one of our best. Who’s the guy on top of him? Joseph eased from beneath the white van.

Please! yelled Joseph. Over here! My buddy’s shot in the spine. He needs an ambulance.

The men oriented in the white van’s direction and saw Joseph frantically waving his hands in the air. Three men approached rapidly. A police officer stayed behind to call the ambulance.

Did you see what happened here? asked a black detective in a brown suit. He holstered his pistol.

Every detail. I couldn’t help it. I had a front row seat. I’ll tell you all about it after my buddy gets to a hospital. But the guy drove off in a black van toward the south.

Okay, son. Don’t worry. You’re in good hands. We can see you both have survived a hell of an ordeal.

"The detective circled the van to see Frank lying in the gutter, face down, an overcoat over him. The other law-enforcement officer went back to his car to radio in the latest information.

He has a hole in his back. He’s in shock, Joseph reiterated. I put my coat on him to help keep him warm. I stuck my finger in the hole to keep his blood from dripping out.

Good thinking, son. You may have saved his life, said the detective.

The killer of both your officer and the smaller man was a big guy named Pallaccio. I’m betting that’s his last name. Sounds Mediterranean—The little guy called him a psycho. Both of them had machine guns. The thug took the other machine gun and the pistol the officer was holding. God, both of them were so outmatched.

We see more and more high-powered weapons on the street, said Detective McKeever—average height, overweight, thirtyish.

The flashing lights and sirens of another police vehicle brightened the night. It was looking and feeling more like the Fourth of July when an ambulance also pulled up, its siren blaring away. Two paramedics rolled out a portable gurney.

Joseph stepped over toward the ambulance, prepared to get inside.

No, McKeever said sternly. You’ll be no help to him now. He’s going to Swedish Hospital. You’re going with me to the station to fill out a report. Then, if you wish, I’ll drive you to Swedish.

We have a BMW, said Joseph, pointing in a northly direction.

"You can pick it up later, said McKeever.

Okay, sure, replied Joseph. The near-death experience was wearing off. He was freezing; he complained about it.

As the EMTs took Frank away on the gurney, McKeever hustled Joseph Rundstum to the detective’s car. As Joseph slid into the passenger seat, McKeever said to him, You’ll warm up pretty fast in here.

The name Pallaccio kept ringing like a bell in the back of Joseph’s brain as the detective drove him to the police station. On the way, Joseph quizzed the driver about what it took to become a police officer and a detective. Right then and there, the survivor made a life-changing decision. From this day forward, Joseph would dedicate his life to law enforcement in whatever capacity he could be most useful. He felt he owed it to his best friend, being driven away in the ambulance.

For the next two hours, McKeever and another officer bombarded Joseph with questions. All the while he thought of Frank’s almost lifeless body laying in the gutter, and what more would have been possible to do for him.

What a waste, said Joseph to the officers. And all because two drug dealers were having a territorial dispute, something so primitive that it should be relegated to animals.

They are animals, said Detective McKeever, just highly territorial animals.

2

Ten Years Later

In formerly communist Sofia, Bulgaria, Craig Pallaccio was doing one of the two things he did best—gun running. He had been able to remain one step ahead of European authorities because he possessed an uncanny knack of knowing when to vary his plans, changing them at any hint of trouble; consequently, he had been impossible to catch. Associates had come to nickname him, The Raccoon since they knew him only to work at night. He could also effectively backtrack his steps to evade police like a wily raccoon backtracks hounds on h is trail.

But to those who thought they knew him, there was nothing lovable or even mischievous about his behavior. Always dangerous and a threat, he wasn’t someone to hang out with, to cross the path of, or even someone with whom to joke around. Some claimed Pallaccio would shoot you as soon as look at you.

Now, thirty years old and in the prime of health, Pallaccio was a hulk of a man. Taller than two and a half meters, he weighed three hundred pounds. His massive frame was, by itself, enough intimidation for most of his associates. Add to this thick wrists that extended into powerfully built hands, suggesting he was capable of physical violence, and Craig Pallaccio personified danger.

Pallaccio had proved his intelligence. The Pacific Northwest and Los Angeles drug wars had taught him the art of the urban guerilla—hit and run. One was wise not to stand in his way. Associates said he had no scruples about using weapons to get what he wanted. Before plastic surgery, his face had been craggy as a mountain peak, pock-marked with a severe case of childhood measles, which had not only scared his face, but some said warped his personality. Now his face was as smooth as a baby’s butt. He was confident that the plastic surgery would make it difficult for the law to find him. His practiced habit of remaining in the shadows had helped him to avoid being seen in the last decade, although he had already murdered a dozen law enforcement professionals. He was not yet one of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted, though the law enforcement community of Europe was already after him. The printed police description of him was vague—tall, robust, psychotic, lethal with a machine gun." Craig Pallaccio was a man forever on the move, trustful of few, suspicious of all.

His current trip to Sofia took him to the Euro-Asiatic headquarters of KINTREX (Kartel International, Narcotics Trafficking, Research, Exchange & Xploration). Since the fall of the communist block, The Alliance, as members called it, had become the major underground trafficking network of the world, funded mostly by wealthy industrialists, intent on bringing to its knees western socialist countries. KINTREX welcomed opportunists like Pallaccio.

KINTREX had long-range goals; their exploits were only beginning to be felt by various countries. While the United States and its allies focused on degrading Al-Queda and ISIS, KINTREX associates kept a low profile to succeed in their worldwide Muslim caliphate. Their strength in numbers had expanded exponentially through the use of computer social networking and the near complete disruption of normal social life in the Middle East. For more than a generation, soldiering and guerilla warfare was the only job most young adult Muslim men knew.

Active dictators like the Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Assad in Syria had once been able to keep Sunni and Shites from annihilating one another. But after Saddam Hussein was put to death after his trial, chaos in the form of what became known as the Polymorphic Arab Spring reined supreme, allowing The Alliance to fill some of the economic voids in third world countries. Craig Pallaccio was there to help it along. KINTREX continued gathering strength. By not showing its phantom side, its nefarious business practices kept expanding.

But there were other forces at work that were also accelerating KINTREX membership. Economists wrote that the changing millennium was being marked by four well-understood co-dependent economies—Eurasia, the European Union, The South American Union, and the North American Union. Africa and the Middle East, however, had developed a fifth co-dependent economy around KINTREX. It was succeeding as an international underground black market whose agents were everywhere and could be anyone from any country. Countries poor in resources and business acumen turned to KINTREX while still accepting handouts from the major unions.

Smart hackers, stealing passwords from sophisticated international multi-level computer systems of capitalist country members, had allowed leading KINTREX members to accumulate bank accounts greater than that of small countries. With such reserves, they could wheel and deal with independents like Craig Pallaccio. The World Bank had practically made money laundering a relic of the past. However, the currency of the black market was mainly guns and drugs, much to Pallaccio’s favor.

In the New World economy, ferocious personal economic problems had become so overwhelming for average citizens, especially from third world countries, that what clandestine KINTREX contacts offered seemed to be the perfect panacea. No country had the resources to build endless prisons. Police were, in every civilized nation, trying to stem illegal trafficking in both drugs and guns, although it seemed to be a losing cause. For the majority and the minority, never was there so little faith in the prospects for advancing humanity.

Deep among KINTREX operatives, Craig Pallaccio always found those willing to sell him narcotics, and just as importantly, buy his weapons. Over a score of years, he had established a lucrative black market revolving-door business. Pallaccio was but one of tens of thousands of independent contractors allowed access to the KINTREX’s wide-spread contacts. In allowing him access, however, he was required to reciprocate. From time to time, KINTREX leaders called upon him for some covert favor. Because the Sicilian ex-patriot was still mostly unknown to western intelligence—Interpol, the FBI, MI-6, the CIA, and Scotland Yard, among others—and so far unable to be captured, he was a most valuable asset.

Frequently, Pallacio bought drugs from the Sofia branch of KINTREX, which offered the lowest wholesale prices since they were closest to the eastern sources of production. On rare occasions when the alliance temporarily dried up, he took a boat to Sicily where mafia relatives stocked him with their sources.

Today, there was another reason Pallaccio visited KINTREX-SOFIA. In the deep basement of the sprawling office building was one of the world’s most sophisticated firing ranges, utilized by international terrorists and drug merchants alike to perfect their deadly arts. It had become far too dangerous for KINTREX to train anybody anywhere on the surface of the Earth. Several countries owned and operated cheap drones with satellite capability, allowing pinpoint targeting accuracy.

Pallaccio, a weapons marksman at an early age, believed in the importance of practice, whenever the occasion arose. At any time, the police pistol he had stolen a decade earlier, and now carried in a concealed shoulder holster, he might need. He’d had many close calls with foreign police officers, who he knew to be as greedy as the common crook, and who were not above stealing a shipment of munitions, easily turning them into hard cash in the underground economy, no questions asked. Regardless of who was buying or who was selling, KINTREX always made a profit.

Today was proving to be Craig Pallaccio’s worst. The gun range he visited was closed for extensive remodeling. When he ordered his favorite Sofia breakfast, the cook hard-fried the yolks of his eggs and burnt his sausages and toast. On top of that, the beer the restaurant served was warm and flat. And who should be sitting in the booth behind his, also having breakfast, listening to his complaints? Interpol agents.

As John Steinbeck once wrote: Some days are born ugly.

One of the agents—sandy-haired and short—looked barely old enough to dry himself behind the ears. The other—dark-haired and taller—looked as though he should be residing in a nursing home. Pallaccio’s brusque manner tipped them off. After checking with their supervisor over their car computer, they discovered that Pallaccio’s black van might be the one an undercover agent saw loaded with suspicious cargo outside a notorious downtown location. After Pallaccio angrily left the restaurant without paying the bill, the mismatched agents followed his van in their car around busy morning streets.

Although the tail was easy for Pallaccio to spot, it was impossible for him to shake; his van was too difficult to hide. The tail wouldn’t have bothered the Sicilian so much, except that today it was nearly full of weapons and ammo.

He had always hated the live-and-let-live attitude between Sofia’s police and western agents, who had come to an early agreement. Interpol was allowed to stop and arrest anyone suspected of smuggling illegal drugs or munitions. Sofia police immediately seized the evidence. In the future, the evidence would be sold at auction to replenish the overspent coffers. An American law enforcement practice, it had quickly caught on in Europe. Pallaccio had no intention of being caught in such a trap, but neither could he arrive again on KINTREX’s doorstep with Interpol agents on his heels.

Then it happened, the third, and most critical of the events that turned Pallaccio’s morning wretched. A big, loose nail fallen off a carpenter’s truck embedded itself in the left rear tire of Pallaccio’s van. Soon the tire was running flat.

It was then that the sandy-haired agent saw the opportunity to make a move. He sounded his siren. At first, Pallaccio tried to ignore the alarm, pretending it was for someone else. He continued to drive on the rim, but the rolling wheel rim, meeting the pavement, created sparks. The agents’ car quickly caught up with him and the driver motioned Pallaccio to stop at the nearby curb. He held his temper in check and obeyed.

When the sandy-haired agent approached the driver’s side window, Pallaccio considered shooting him point blank. He fingered the pistol in its holster, but he knew that if there was anything that angered Sofia police, it was murder on a busy avenue in broad daylight. Such events blemished their cherished reputations. When the police caught such a murderer, immediate jail time and a criminal record resulted.

The sandy-haired agent showed his badge and insisted that he help to change the flat tire. Pallaccio knew his spare was affixed above the rear wheel well, in the back of his load of guns. There was no way he could get to it without at least partially unloading the van’s contents.

Pallaccio berated himself with a silent, Shitty planning. Unforeseen problems such as this had ruined previous plans, but then he considered life a crap shoot. Anything wrong or bad could happen to anybody at any time. No use dwelling on back luck when I can do something about it.

He lied in broken Bulgarian. I don’t have a spare. He knew Sofia well enough to know that there was a service station a few blocks away that repaired tires.

Could you please take me down the street where I can get my tired fixed or buy a new one?

Do you have, at least, a tire iron and jack? asked the agent curtly.

A good judge of behavior, the look on the young officer’s face suggested to Pallaccio that the Interpol man was weighing options. Pallaccio placed himself in the agent’s position. It was either arrest a suspect on the spot or arrest him later when the officer could minimize citizen involvement. Traffic was heavy on the street. The smuggler judged the situation correctly. The agent would wait to arrest him when there was more back-up and less chance for a battle.

Yes, I do have a tire iron and jack, Pallaccio politely replied.

The old-looking agent made his way slowly to the passenger-side window. Pallaccio knew the man had drawn him into a no-win situation. Burying his anger in a smile, he asked again for the young agent to take him to the nearest service station. When the officer consented, Pallaccio reached for the jack and tire iron beneath his seat and got out of the van. The old agent came around the front of the vehicle and stood well away from Pallaccio.

Both officials kept four meters apart, making it impractical for the big man to use either article as a weapon. Pallaccio began loosening the nuts on the tire, then jacked up the van and loosened all five nuts until the tire disengaged. The younger agent immediately snatched the tire iron from the ground and stood back out of throwing range should Pallaccio decide to use the tire itself as a weapon. You can place the tire in the back seat of our Renault, said the sandy-haired agent, handing the tire jack to his associate. He added, We won’t need this until we get back.

Pallaccio nodded. Your partner will stay here to guard my van, won’t he?

The sandy-haired agent nodded. My passenger seat is most comfortable, said the young officer with a hesitant smile, pointing to it.

Pallaccio took the undisguised hint and lobbed the tire over the passenger seat into the back seat. He squeezed his large frame into the small passenger seat. As the vehicle rolled down the avenue, Pallaccio peered into the passenger side mirror. He saw another Interpol Renault park beside his van, glad now that he hadn’t attacked the officers outright. He watched four men get out. With the sharp end of the tire jack, one man jimmied open the van’s rear cargo door. As the car in which Pallaccio and the young agent turned a corner, Pallaccio saw many of his rifles spill onto the city street. Imperceptibly, the smuggler turned his head in anger and slowly withdrew his pistol. When it was aimed squarely at the unsuspecting driver’s head, the gun runner said slowly, Stop around the next corner in the alley.

The driver, feeling icy steel, looked in his rearview mirror, saw the weapon, and turned and braked in the alley as instructed.

In a sharp, blunt staccato, Pallaccio ordered, Get out.

The agent exited stiffly, placing his hands at his side. He fully expected his passenger to steal his wallet and the vehicle. It had happened once before; the crook had been apprehended further down the road as planned.

Turn around! commanded Pallaccio in a cold, savage voice. He slid across the narrow seat and rose in a single motion from the small car, looming behind the short agent. With a single, practiced twist of his pistol, Pallaccio struck the officer a vicious blow against the side of his head. Stunned and quivering, the young man sank to the alley pavement. Methodically, Pallaccio snapped a silencer onto the barrel of his gun, giving it a clockwise turn.

In rich baritone English, he muttered, Not a good trade, your life for my fifty thousand worth of guns. He shot the agent in the side of the head above the ear. He shot twice more in the same location, driving the first bullet and then the second bullet deeper into the brain case and nearly out the other side.

Back at the van, the agents agreed that some of their numbers should go looking for their partner and his guilty passenger. When they tried to call him by police radio, they received no reply. Worried, two officers immediately got into the second Renault and went searching. The others remained to protect the discovered weaponry from curious citizens, gathering in numbers.

By the time the Interpol agents found their slain associate, he lay in a puddle of his own dark blood.

Craig Pallaccio was soon on a plane headed to New York City, USA.

3

Twenty Years Later

The slate gray-colored dolphin cut the waters like a knife. He could hear the mechanically-assisted breathing of human divers through the snapping of countless, noisy shrimps. Eager to get back home and be fed, he turned toward the divers, expecting they might escort him as divers had done many times in the past. As the sleek cetacean fine-tuned his sensitive hearing, he swam faster, positioning his long oil-filled jawbones in the sound waves bearing the men’s respirations. The water became shallower the closer to them he traveled.

In the watery blue distance of the Auau Channel, Frank Dewey Ryder, a snorkeler now fifty-one-years-old, tanned but still a bit stout, was sports diving, hunting spiny lobsters in the four-meter-deep crystalline blue waters of offshore Maui, his favorite Hawaiian vacation spot. Alert, brown eyes scanned a large coral outcropping.

A bodyguard flanked Ryder on each side. Each man wore special scuba gear and was armed with a new, high-tech speargun designed by the CIA. Both men were capable of destroying any potential underwater threat to their boss.

The dolphin’s gray falcate fin split the surface, unseen, unheard by the bodyguards. He approached the men.

From the deck of a nearby yacht, Joseph Rundstrum, sharpshooter, watched as the dorsal fin raced toward the divers. His only job—protect the snorkelers and his bodyguards from would-be predators, human or animal.

I think it’s a dolphin, but if it’s a shark, I’ll blow it clean out of the water, Joseph said to the snorkeler’s concerned wife, Linda Caldwell Ryder, standing nearby, also watching. Joseph again peered through the rifle’s high-powered scope. He studied the way the creature moved. It might be a shark. To be on the safe side, he’d better kill it before it came too close to the divers when he couldn’t fire for fear of hitting one of them.

Of course, that might draw other sharks, thought the sharpshooter. He eased his finger around the stiff trigger.

The fin sank beneath the waterline. Straining his vision through the scope and relaxing his grip, Joseph sought some sign on the glassy smooth surface, some breaking up of the water’s surface tension, some evidence that the sleek animal continued its course nearer the divers. To his consternation, the animal had disappeared.

Calm prevailed below the surface three hundred meters away. The water is pleasantly warm, Ryder decided. On the surface, he expelled another breath of salt-laden air. It isn’t bathtub tepid as it is in summer; but, at least, it’s as comfortably warm as the air. When he arched into a graceful dive, pressure swelled his sinuses; he swallowed to relieve it as he descended ten meters to the ocean bottom.

Ryder watched, fascinated as always, as beams of yellow light penetrated the blue-green sea, casting everchanging patterns on the sandy bottom. He could hear the slowly rotating propellers of his cabin cruiser. Sharks and javelin-quick barracudas traveled these waters, sometimes in large numbers.

Knowing his bodyguards were close abreast, and the yacht and Joseph were nearby, comforted him. Ryder noticed a small cave-like opening in the coral outcropping. From it, two waving feelers extended. My quarry at last. Quickly, Frank rose to the surface, attended by the bodyguards, and hyperventilated so he could remain down longer on his subsequent submergence. Frank motioned to Henry, his closest bodyguard, that one of the elusive lobsters hid in a small cave. Ryder decided to spear it. He motioned to Henry for a speargun. By the time Ryder got back down, the lobster had backed into the reaches of the burrow.

Bending at the waist, Ryder arched and dove like a seal. Poised on the bottom sand in front of the cave. The diver could see only the ends of the wary lobster’s feelers, but, that was enough. Steadying the speargun, Ryder fired point blank. A flurry of crushed coral shot from the cave. The snorkeler kicked up more sand while reeling in the struggling crustacean.

As they were rising toward the surface, the lobster following on the spear, Frank motioned his two aides to swim back to the cabin cruiser. Frank handed the desperate arthropod and the speargun to the nearest bodyguard.

In the meantime, hearing the high-pitched screams of a dying lobster, the excited dolphin picked up speed and cleared the water, broad-jumping a full six meters before re-entering. Joseph caught sight of the animal mid-flight, relaxing when he recognized it as a bottlenose dolphin, bolting from the ocean like a common flying fish.

It’s only a dolphin! He laughed and wiped away the telling beads of perspiration from his brow. I didn’t think I could have mistaken its curved fin for a shark’s fin, he said reassuring Mrs. Ryder. You know, we’ve both seen lots of dolphins migrating on the East Coast. They’re gentle creatures, fond of human companionship. They’d never molest a diver. In fact, you’ve probably heard they’re known to keep sharks away from swimmers.

Mrs. Ryder shook her head knowingly.

When Frank Ryder and his aides were within twenty meters of the yacht, he witnessed a foreign underwater presence stationing in a vertical attitude. As the shape moved a little, Ryder saw it was white from one angle, gray from another. The funny tricks light in water plays on things, thought Ryder. It’s probably only a waterlogged timber.

Roger, the other bodyguard, knew the thing in the water wasn’t a vertically-floating log. He leveled his speargun at it, trained to consider anything unusual suspect and a threat.

All of a sudden, the sea all around filled with an ear-piercing shout. It became suddenly too intense, passing through each man as disorienting waves. The divers were stunned still and turned in circles, trying to avoid the painful sounds. They noise rose in pitch, becoming extremely powerful, deafening, penetrating through muscle into bone. The pain became so great, it felt to each man as if a thousand of needles were jabbing him. As the threshold became unbearable, the divers experienced powerful jolts, as if they had held onto an electric fence. Daggers of energy penetrated every sinew; torturous burning rushed unchecked. Moments seemed hours, expanded in time and space, each interminably long and dreadful.

Ryder realized whatever was causing him such agony was coming from the alien form. Something told him if there was any escape, it was above water. Surfacing, he waved both hands frantically, trying at the same time to remain above water, where the sounds diminished but still rattled around his torso, ears and brain. His legs were still not working. His waving caused his body to submerge.

Joseph’s sharp eyes caught the first frantic waves. Then he saw Frank’s contorted facial expression through his rifle scope. His boss sank. The marksman realized Frank was as desperate as he had been three decades earlier; another unforeseen catastrophe had befallen him. Joseph gasped when next Henry appeared on the surface, convulsing, rolling over and over again, all self-control lost.

To the yacht’s deckhands, Joseph shouted, We have an emergency!. Lower the dinghy! Now!

From their places near the railing, two Marines in white tropical uniforms rushed to the small boat, pulled holding straps, and released the dinghy until it rested upon the Auau Channel’s surface. They unharnessed the oars and with the sureness of Olympic athletes rowed rapidly toward the divers.

Forgotten, dying at the bottom of the channel, the luckless lobster scattered coral sand while it died, still attached to the whiplashing line and the discarded speargun. More fortunate was the snorkeler. Amid frantic thrashing, matched by frantic paddling, the dinghy and the pale body of Frank Ryder met. One oarsman steadied the boat while the other pulled the snorkeler aboard. There was no sign of either bodyguard.

From the looks of him, we’d better get Ryder back to the yacht. Pronto! said the senior Marine. Row like hell!

The other nodded. What happened? He neither expected nor got an answer. A few more minutes ticked by as they approached the boat. Once there, the oarsmen hoisted up the swimmer. Able hands positioned him in a lounge chair. The rescued diver moaned painfully. Joseph could wait no longer. He forced, Mr. President—Mr. President. What’s wrong. What happened out there? The sharp-featured man laboriously opened one eye, then the other. Thin, dry lips parted and the angular face drew a labored breath. In an agonized voice, Ryder whispered, I don’t know, and he drifted into unconsciousness.

4

The senior oarsman shouted, My God! There’s Henry!

The motionless body floated on the channel, the orange band around his breathing tube barely poking above the sea, a dolphin fin at his side.

But where’s Roger?

The dolphin rescue achieved for one man, the cetacean disappeared beneath the waterline. He had been distracted from his mission by the entrancing moans of a male humpback whale whose melodious mating calls were coming from Penguin Bank near the leeward Hawaiian Island of Molokai. The whale’s long, winding, haunting sounds twined through the channels separating the islands.

While wandering off course, the dolphin had then heard the diesel hum from the yacht and later the breathing of three men in the water. The lobster’s death cries were coming from that direction. A lobster was good eating for a bottlenose dolphin, and the hungry cetacean’s natural curiousity had gotten the best of him. He had swerved in the direction of trouble.

Typically, the dolphin would not have thought much about men in the water; he was used to them. But, inspecting the lobster, he witnessed that it connected to a person by a length of line, and it attached to a long cylindrical object. His visual inspection of it revealed that the object might be a weapon. He had aimed a finely projected beam of sound at it to be sure. A more detailed investigation revealed a peculiar arrangement of aluminum, brass and iron. This object wasn’t one with which he was familiar; it was like no weapon he had scanned before.

As he had been trained to do, the dolphin began an intense sound investigation of the two diver-held objects. He had vertically stationed several meters from the men and bombarded them with train after train of powerful computer-enhanced sonar. There was no way for the animal to know he was slowly killing the men.

Ironically, the protective ring the aides had formed around their boss was partially the cause of his suffering since each terrible sound burst struck both bodyguards and Frank Ryder, between them. Each super-powerful echolocation wave bombarded the men, bounced from them and returned to the dolphin spy, who faithfully processed the echoes in a brain as complicated as many human’s.

After a minute of encasing the divers with his ultrasonar, he sensed something different in what he knew to be normal human behavior. He cut off his investigation of the spearguns. By that time, the divers were floundering. He broke off off contact with them. As they surfaced, he dived to sever the lobster’s tail from its body and ate the tail. He hadn’t had such an excellent meal in quite some time.Because he still had air in his lungs, he remained submerged until he saw a small boat approach and hands take one man aboard. As the small boat left for the much larger boat, the dolphin pushed a second diver to the surface, remaining with him for a time, keeping him buoyed up as he had been trained to do. When the rescued dolphin saw the small boat approaching again, he heard the faint calling beacon from home and turned toward it; it was time for him to return.

The dolphin’s military mission had been a practice surveillance of the U.S.S. Bluegill, a U.S. decommissioned submarine deliberately sunk in the 1970s as a sonar target, still resting peacefully in about forty fathoms of clear water, a mile from Lahaina Harbor in the Auau Channel. This practice was to hone the dolphin’s use of hs computer-assisted supersonar so that he would more effectively communicate the images he perceived.

As a matter of record, these pictures of cetacean perception were systematically relayed to a sophisticated translator-recorder aboard the research submaine, U.S.S. Salmon (SSR-573). The dolphin had been trained to remain within a ten-kilometer radius of his home sub so that the signals he relayed were received with enough power to be recorded and stored. The Salmon had been launched in 1956, decommissioned in 1971, and recommissioned in 2012 for special intelligence operations.

Ten kilometers would also be the maximum distance the dolphin could hear the ultrasonic homing signal that rang intermittently from the Salmon, enabling him to find his way back home. But this day, he had wandered. A small school of flying fish teased him into chasing them. Then the sound of the humpback whale had enchanted him, drawing him away from his Bluegill target. In the dolphin’s renewed freedom to explore, he was easily distracted despite his rigorous training to proceed directly to a target, investigate it and return to his home base.

For the cetacean, there were so many new experiences, so many different things to see, hear, taste and feel in the