Starfish

By Tom Sutton Jr.

A U.S. naval base is hidden among the few hundred islands of the Bahamas.

Base Commander Jason Roberts relies on an old friends son, Lieutenant Billy Anderson, for answers to their incredible discovery. Andersons research team tries to locate, track, and calculate the alien crafts final underwater destination.

Tracking the craft had been difficult until Andersons team installed upgrades to their current technology. Depth of the ocean offshore from the Atlantic Undersea Test and Evaluation Center added to the difficulty in acquiring and tracking of the unidentified craft.

The terminal flight of Starfish is salvaged under the cloak of darkness by the USS Grapple. The transfer of the craft to the base had to be conducted underwater, preventing Russian satellite coverage from viewing their newly acquired treasure.

Lieutenant Anderson leads his team to complete the salvage operation, dissecting its technology. During the initial inspection of the alien ship, he found something that would change his life and career path.

Why a deceptive colleague revealing secret technology to the Russians may change industries on Earth. Could he be caught?

What meaning could the artifact found on the lunar surface have? What secret would lead to murder on the ISS? How could a murder look like an accident and be kept secret?

The lunar mining facility is now operational. The interim docking facility can now handle the transfer of lunar materials back to Earth. Expansion for further mining and exploration outweighs the cost of supporting the aging ISS.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 8, 2008
• ISBN: 9781469102269

Tom Sutton Jr.

Tom resides in Florida with his wife Lynne and their two dogs. They have three children. He’s a carpenter by trade, loves golf and flying. He is a brain-injury survivor after a plane accident in 2006, nearly taking his and his wife’s lives. To help his recovery, he started writing what he could remember of his past. The results were his first book, a biography, It’s Been a Great Ride. Writing is an escape from daily life, which led him to write his first fiction novel, Starfish.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

2014

The four crewmen on the nuclear submarine USS Virginia would often get together up on deck at night, enjoying each other’s company with a breath of fresh air staring at the moonlit waters. They looked forward to this time after a busy day of their ship being an elusive target while being hunted by helicopters dropping sonar buoys trying to track their position. The captain decided to give them some downtime that evening before another busy day. It gave them a chance to enjoy some time topside in the warm breezes of these Bahamian waters. They would sit topside for hours stargazing. They challenged each other by naming star systems while spotting planets after educating themselves studying astronomy while out at sea.

That evening a mile to their north, a couple of locals had decided to go mutton snapper fishing after drinking gin and coconut water at the local bar. Stumbling into their boat, they made their way in the darkness to their favorite fishing spot. In a short time they were landing a few big snappers.

Leroy and Marcus loved fishing together, especially at night. They were able to tie one on knowing that their wives would be sleeping when they finally made it home with their catch.

Marcus was using a hand line when he felt the hard tug from the depths below. This snapper was a big one as he strained to haul it up. That’s when something, a half mile to their south, caught their eyes at the same moment.

Out of the black void of sky, a faint flash of light with an ominous glow appeared about a half mile to the south. Within that dim light was the figure of something resembling a ship neither had ever seen. For a few seconds it seemed to be gliding until it entered the water with a splash like a giant fish that had jumped out of the water.

Scared half to death from this unnerving encounter, they started screaming at each other. Let’s get outta here, start dat damn engine! Marcus dropped his catch as the line kept peeling off the spool lying on the deck of the small boat. Leroy was pulling on the engine cord as fast as he could. The engine finally started. Marcus fell back on the deck as Leroy held the throttle open. They headed for the beach. Their eyes still focused on the spot where they had seen the ship go in the water.

Four crewmen of the USS Virginia were on deck searching the sky, looking at the stars. To the north they noticed a flashbulb-type light in the sky and the figure of something appearing within it. It only took seconds before they saw the splash in the water. Petty Officers Arpin and Wood looked into each other’s eyes in disbelief. Seaman Burns and Miller kept yelling in excitement, Man, did you see that! Did you see that? What the hell was that!

They couldn’t see any debris in the water though it was faintly illuminated by the half-moon. No explosion, just a loud thud as it hit the water. It looked like it had flipped over when it entered the water or went over on what could have been its back before disappearing beneath the surface. All that remained was the white foam on the water’s surface. They stood talking with excitement about the possibilities of the rumors they had heard. They might be true. Petty Officer Wood said, Look, we better get our stories straight before we go below to report this. What do you think, Tad? How big was it and what do we say it looked like? Arpin said, Look, let’s report exactly what we had seen. That the ship was of tubular design, the approximate size at least ten meters in length, three to five meters wide as best as he could remember. With that said, all were in agreement on the basic design of what they had seen for a few seconds. They made their way to the ladder, climbing up the conning tower to get back below. They’d report this to the chief of the watch. When they were below, Wood whispered to Arpin, Let’s see if anything had been picked up on radar or sonar. They would quickly ask around if Buddy had heard anything on sonar tonight. If he did, is he tracking any targets? Petty Officer Bud Jinks had exceptional hearing. He could hear a crab walking on the sand. He was one of the best. They would need to have some proof before becoming the laughingstock of the crew for having such an imagination.

The short ride Commander Jason Roberts was taking gave him some time to review the events of the morning in his head. Jason was getting close to turning fifty years old. His hair, what was left of it, had all turned silver. His face showed the years of being out to sea. His thoughts at the moment were that a civilian would have thought this was all science fiction if told of the present situation. This small top-secret facility imbedded on a tropical island only a hundred miles from South Florida was more of a job than he had expected.

Andros, the biggest island in the Bahamas, had the smallest population per square mile than any other island. There are a few small mom-and-pop hotels scattered on the island with cottages for bone fisherman. A small dive operator located a few miles north of the base existed, taking a few tourists out to the shallow reefs. The only complaints about Atlantic Undersea Test and Evaluation Center (AUTEC) that drew any attention came from divers was when the ships were using their sonar equipment during an exercise. The pinging from the destroyers could be heard by the divers, annoying them and ruining their time underwater.

This place was surely hidden out in plain site from the public. Let the public’s focus stay on Roswell or Wright Patterson Air force Base in Ohio, Roberts thought.

He left the base heading north. He passed through small settlements along the coastline road. Some of these small island homes were built on the waters edge. He thought to himself, What a life, waking up to the beautiful turquoise water outside of your back door. He had visions of sitting on a porch, sipping his coffee in the morning sun. Most of these folks either made a living fishing or working at the base, which employed three hundred of the three thousand residents that were scattered throughout the 2,300 square miles of this island.

Approaching a small settlement, he decided to turn around heading back to the base. A half-hour break to clear his thoughts was all he needed. After passing Sammy’s conch shack, he wished he could find the time to sit under the thatched hut to have a bowl of his conch salad. Some of the enlisted men raved about it. There were not too many options for the men to go here if they decided to leave base for a few hours.

Roberts approached the front gate, receiving a salute from the MP. Entry at this point was casual to give the appearance of easy in easy out. This was the thought process proven over the last twenty years. It was meant to seem like the base was unimportant other than the torpedo testing that went on.

The base was leased from the English in the early 1960s. Time was shared between the British and American navies, both countries taking part in the cat and mouse exercise of hunting submarines. The Tongue of the Ocean between Andros west to Nassau is twenty-six miles wide. To the south, it stretched for a hundred miles by fifty miles wide. The reason it was so inviting to the navy was its depth of six thousand feet. No commercial boat or freighter traffic passed because of the shallow waters to the west and south of Andros Island. This cut off the direct shipping to Cuba or the Caribbean.

AUTEC was the focus of torpedo testing on the base until the late 1990s.

The Bahamas broke away from English rule in the early 1970s. The United States agreed to increase the lease payments of the base facility to three million dollars a year to secure the base for years to come. Over the years, it had climbed to over twelve million a year. With all the investment the navy had been making in this base, that lease payment was a steal for this property location.

Commander Roberts parked his car in front of building 6. He prepared himself mentally for a busy afternoon. He entered the front of the building with the security cameras tracking him since his arrival at the gate. He was checked again by security officers as he entered his office in building 6.

He made his way down the corridor to the elevator going down to the tech room or the root cellar as the men called it. He wondered how the latest development was going to work out.

Four hours earlier, he had received word from the tech-room officer that the fixed-position sonar buoys out in the Tongue of the Ocean had gone active.

It was not long after this they got a call from the USS Virginia sitting just offshore with confirmation of a visual sighting. Something in the water may be a security-risk object. They themselves had not been able to get a return from their sonar.

The sonar buoys in the Tongue had been reset to the depth of 5,600 feet. The techs had rebuilt them so that the stealth technology the Starfish seemed to be fitted with could possibly be tracked now.

They knew the UFOs had been coming in from the east at night from visual sightings from the crewmen on the USS Virginia as well as other previous reports. She was the lead sub of the Virginia class. It had surfaced for the crew to take a break. Some of the men could go topside for rest, getting some fresh air. It had been a long day for the crew. The exercise had been successful using old equipment on AUTEC that had been updated. It was working better than anticipated now being able to track the USS Virginia during the exercise.

Sonar buoys were able to locate the target’s position after it entered the Tongue of the Ocean. Before it entered the sea, it was code-named Starfish. The Starfish was on the move toward the west headed for the island while descending rapidly. The passive sonar never picked up a thing that resembled engine or propeller noise. The active sonar was showing faint returns, which were more than they have been able to get earlier.

A mile from shore is where the shallow water of the reefs abruptly dropped off, exposing a shear wall that descended a mile into the abyss.

Something must have gone wrong. It seemed as though the object disappeared. Lieutenant Anderson with his team started to recheck their equipment. They were looking to see if the new sonar buoys were operating properly fitted with new designs.

Months before, the navy had moved their sonar buoys from their depth of 1,900 feet to over 5,000 feet. Their passive sonar was not able to hear anything at that depth. The active sonar buoys were coming up empty as well.

There were reports from pilots over the years of seeing a craft come out of seemingly nowhere and descending into the sea. Lacking evidence, the sightings were dismissed. Some people who witnessed the sightings thought to themselves, I couldn’t have seen what had just happened. Over a period of years some of the pilots stationed at the base reported these sightings. Finally, these reports sent up warning flags up the chain of command, reaching the ears of the right people.

The island’s history of cave systems were scattered like spider webs beneath the surface. The possibility of a cave system that deep and that big may exist without being known, is a possibility.

Commander Roberts headed for the tech room to see if there was any new information Lieutenant Anderson had found since he took his break to get some fresh air.

Anderson was the son of Chief Petty Officer Billy Anderson who had served with Roberts some years ago when they left Norfolk for carrier qualifications. Anderson’s father died suddenly of a heart attack while on the carrier. Saddened by the loss of a friend, he promised himself he would keep an eye on Anderson’s son, hoping his son would enjoy the same career choice his father had made.

It had been an exciting time for the two of them. The aircraft carrier USS America had just been outfitted with an overhauled catapult system. It was using electromagnets to accelerate faster and shorter launches as well as new sonar gear. After leaving Port Everglades, they headed for the Mediterranean for a NATO exercise. Roberts had lost all his enthusiasm for the remainder of the cruise after his friend’s untimely death.

Lt. Billy Anderson had been a graduate of MIT, wanting to continue his family’s tradition in the navy. Roberts was lucky to have a kid with his smarts for what was about to take place. New technology was coming faster than he could comprehend it. This left him feeling a little uncomfortable. He always thought of himself as old school. He could always have Lieutenant Anderson stay after the morning briefing to explain things in detail. In this way, his staff would not know how much he had fallen behind with technology’s rapid advancements.

He walked into the room seeing the lieutenant sitting behind his computer, tapping furiously on the keyboard. His team was as focused as he was at their stations.

Commander Roberts walked toward Lieutenant Anderson. Billy looked up momentarily to acknowledge his presence while asking Petty Officer Blake, to his right, if he had any other insight to what had happened to their target. Blake responded that it seemed like the Starfish was headed east on its last bearing toward the wall, and that they lost what little sonar contact they had.

The passive sonar still had not picked up a thing. Commander Roberts turned to Anderson, saying, Look, this thing can’t just disappear, find out where it is. Blake spoke up, saying, My guess is that there is the possibility that the Starfish has a den somewhere in the wall that we are unaware of, sir. Roberts shot back, If we are unaware of it, you need to make me aware of where the hell it is! He walked toward his office shaking his head and mumbling obscenities.

All the work of the last four years would have to pay off. He was still in command of this base with some years left. After all, he was involved with the planning and building of the tunnel.

CHAPTER 2

2010

Roberts was sitting in his office thinking about what the navy had in mind. If there ever was a salvage operation conducted for a UFO anywhere in the Caribbean, they wanted to be able to conduct it with the utmost of secrecy.

AUTEC would be the logical place to conduct the investigation not only because of its close proximity to the States but because of the unloading of the materials recovered would not cause any concern being invisible to the public.

To ensure its secrecy, it would have to be underground. This led to the plan to excavate a tunnel with the diversion of another building, an office building, and new mess hall. Misdirection was always the mission.

The plan was given the approval due to national security. They would start the project as if it was just another building. The new building was to be located as far away from building 6 as possible, with the real work underneath building 6 and the chopper hangar attached to it.

Since there was a daily flight from West Palm Beach, the workers could be shuttled in on the flight as consultants, accountants, and architects.

The real boring equipment for the tunnel along with technicians could come on board some of the supply ships that docked there. This was routine so as not to be seen doing anything out of the ordinary.

The new building for the mess hall would have a piece of equipment called a pile driver at the start of the project, to drive the pilings to support the footings of the new building.

The constant noise of the pile driver was to cover the noise that was being made by the equipment used to start the tunnel.

The mapping and exploring the navy divers had done along the Tongue of the Ocean had shown that there were crevices with huge cave systems that made their way back toward the island. With the right equipment, they could locate a fracture or cave system that would get them closest to building 6.

The best possible entrance was at a depth of 190 feet on the face of the wall. Above this particular point, the top of the wall started at a depth of seventy-five feet. It happened to be the closest point to the base where the wall took a natural turn inland.

The overhanging rock along the wall covering the entrance that looked as though it had been scooped out was recessed in a hundred feet, about eighty feet wide. This was a primary aggregation sight for the Nassau grouper that spawned here once a year. There might be as many as fifty thousand fish at this sight spawning. They were accompanied by as many as twenty reef sharks patrolling the outer limits of the group looking and waiting for the weaker fish.

What the army corps of engineers had come up with was to drill out a hole ten meters in diameter in the basement of building 6 to a depth of fifty feet. From there they would have connected with the cave system that led out to the Tongue of the Ocean. The information the divers had collected, with the precise mapping of the cave system, was invaluable. They should have no problem working with the opening of the cave system out to the wall.

The cave had opened up to include some big rooms along the route the divers had taken. It would need little work to enlarge some of the tight areas along the way. Some work may be needed at the entrance to build a staging area for any materials that may be recovered. Lift bags of all shapes and sizes would be used to bring the materials in through the cave system along with electric scooters the divers would use to move the materials inland to the root cellar.

The lift bags could be used to lower or raise the objects by adding compressed air or pulling on the relief valves to lower an object while transporting recovered materials through the cave system. This was a skilled job that only select navy divers could perform with accuracy and teamwork.

From all the information that could be brought together about the size of some of these crafts, the navy felt that ten meters in diameter would be sufficient to recover something if they were to be that lucky.

The building materials and equipment started to arrive only three months after approval of the plans.

The new mess hall and offices were to be started first. The news and excitement of the building among the civilian and military population on the base was evident in all the morning conversations in the coffee room.

It took away the focus on what was now being done at the hangar on the other side of the base. Some of the equipment had come in by ship at night. It was hauled up to the hangar along the 260-foot-long dock that ran out to the bay.

The local airport was located a mile west from the base. With the national airline doing daily flights to Nassau along with some small private planes, few aircraft would fly over the base. The airspace was not shutoff to the public like other military operating areas or MOAs. It was important to contain the work being done on building 6. The work being done under the roof would not attract attention from the air. This hidden-in-plain-site tactic had worked so well it was being thought about for other sensitive projects in Upstate New York.

The drilling team started to assemble the equipment with the small tower crane in place in the hangar. In a short time they would start the boring process. The noise from the pile driver, which could be heard from a half mile away, would surely cover the noise of the massive drill down in building 6.

Within two weeks the drillers were at work already down a few meters. With the soft limestone it would take longer to set up the equipment than to actually drill the hole. The slurry that was created by the drilling was a mixture of water and limestone, which looked like milky water. It was pumped back out to the beach through a two-foot pipe for drainage that already existed.

This would be perceived as runoff from the pile-driving equipment and the excavation at the new mess hall building. The locals would be the one’s to complain about the milky water along the shoreline to the local authorities. They would be told of the runoff from the construction of the new building, which by the way was going to employ more of the local population when completed. This positive perception always stopped the complaining and interest in the past.

Almost perfect to the depth the engineers planned, the drill broke through to the cave system. The hole filled with clean freshwater within hours. There was a tidal flow in the system although it was very slow moving. This island was filled with cracks and fractures that linked all the surface blue holes that dotted the island. As predicted, this led to the Tongue of the Ocean on the wall.

During the last Ice Age, the shallow bank that surrounded the island was void of water with the surface of the ocean receded a few hundred feet. This was confirmed by discoveries of the divers.

With the drilling now finished and the equipment was loaded and shipped off the island, the concrete work could now start. A temporary concrete plant was set up for the mess hall building, and a truck could be brought over to the hangar to pour concrete without seemingly being noticed. The next eight weeks, the concrete walls and floors were poured in the root cellar surrounding the hole leading to the cave system.

The overhead hydraulic crane could be installed over the opening to enable the transfer of anything brought in through the cave system from the ocean. In the months ahead, the lab could be set up with everything they might need for the engineers to examine materials plus the clean room for biological testing and containment.

The divers had been able to survey the caverns along the route to the wall with the help of mixed-gas diving equipment supplied by the USS Grapple, which was able to dock at AUTEC since it only drew fifteen feet of water. The length of the caverns and tunnels were 2,450 feet. It decreased in depth along the way inland, sometimes in steps of thirty feet. This would make it easier for transporting materials from the depth of 190 feet on the wall to the fifty foot depth at the bottom of the hole in building 6. All of this would be completed with the office and mess hall building. When construction ceased on the far side of the base, the root cellar would be complete as well.

The USS Grapple was brought in because of its expertise in all types of diving and salvage operations it had done. The ship had an experienced dive team that had worked on some high-profile recoveries of commercial passenger aircraft. They carried remote operated vehicles that could reach depths of three thousand feet. The Deep Drone Remotely Operated Vehicle could reach a maximum depth of eight thousand feet.

The placement of the work platform at the 190-foot level near the entrance to the tunnel was now entrusted to this crew of hardened underwater hard hats.

With underwater laser topography mapping completed by the divers, the platform could be prefabricated in Norfolk to fit the entrance. It would be delivered to the site by the USS Grapple.

In one night it could be set in place. At any time, the equipment could be set up to retrieve or accept any materials or objects that meet the tunnels opening restrictions.

The possibility that the day would come when we may actually need a site for vehicular retrieval, was now a fact. The thought was that if the Russians had satellite coverage monitoring the cat-and-mouse games that the navy was playing off the coast of Andros, it would not seem out of the ordinary to view ships in or out of AUTEC. If we had a recovered vehicle, we’d want to transfer it under the water to the facility of building 6 without being