FIRST CONTACT AT
CABO ROJO
The Cetacean Rebellion
Preview of a novel by David Thorndill
The President of the United States, an eccentric biology professor, the Secretary of State, a missing yacht, a marshy island in the Chesapeake Bay, South African whalers, navy divers, military trained dolphins, attacks by eco-terrorists, stolen FBI wiretaps, destruction of an Ecuadorian tuna boat, a marine mammal treaty, an Inuit whale hunt, and the scenic shores of Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico, all contribute to a novel of intrigue, suspense, conflict and respect in which a new military power forces a new world order.
Chapter 1
The presidential yacht floated alone in the dark in a remote bay on the north coast of Puerto Rico. President Steven Palmer was sleeping in the stateroom while his aide, Robert Townsend, wrote a speech for tomorrow’s dedication at the El Yunque Forest. The President had dismissed the other aides and secret service guards as part of a stress reduction treatment recommended by his personal physician. His mood, temperament, and blood pressure improved when he spent time alone. The secret service chief waited nervously in a nearby ship and directed land based security posts.
A wave of sherry rolled over the rim of the crystal stem glass and flowed onto the linen table cloth. Robert Townsend picked up the glass of sherry, turned off his reading light, and walked out onto the deck of the presidential yacht.
The full moon reflected off the still waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Robert walked around the deck and looked into the water. The anchor line seemed secure.
He stared at the escort ship a quarter mile away and wondered what the men were doing. How many were sleeping, how many playing cards, how many on watch, how many monitoring electronic security equipment? There were always a few threats to the president—Puerto Rican nationalists, Cuban loyalists, POWER ecoterrorists, Al Qaida agents. The lights of the three surveillance posts on the nearby cliff gave him complete confidence in the security arrangements for this trip.
Robert leaned against the railing and took a sip of sherry. Two years ago he was a political nobody when he joined the presidential campaign of Steven Palmer. Hard work, dedication, and a keen knowledge of history, geography, and current event brought him to the candidate Palmer’s attention. Now he was with the President on a yacht off the northern coast of Puerto Rico. He had prayed that he would find a place in national politics, but he hadn’t expected his prayers to be answered so soon, just three years after Harvard Law.
Robert lost his balance. He dropped his glass overboard as he grabbed the rail for support. A sharp chill of fright surged through his body.
He steadied himself and looked out to sea. Everything was calm. Everything was okay.
Maybe it was just a wave. Maybe it was the sherry.
He thought about waking the President and calling the security chief. But he was a landlubber and was too embarrassed to make a big deal about such a minor disturbance.
Then he heard splashing on the Atlantic side of the yacht. Noisy fish. He squinted in the moonlight. Then he smiled. Dolphins! How delightful!
Hundreds of dolphins dug up the bottom with their snouts and tails. Strange behavior. They pushed the sand up to make a long dike that emerged out of the water. The dike extended towards the shore in both directions. Now the yacht was within an artificial lagoon: a diked lagoon with no opening to the sea.
But the dike was getting farther away. The yacht was being towed towards the rocky cliff!
Robert turned towards the cliff. He could not see the security posts. The stars and moon disappeared, and the hiss of running water echoed off the rocky walls. The yacht had been pulled into a cave beneath the shoreline cliff.
Robert dashed for the cabin but stumbled as the yacht rocked. In the glow of the yacht’s running lights he could see the water level lowering in the cave. Water rushed around him and the boat descended as if in an aquatic elevator. Coral and shells and seaweed clung to the rocky shaft that surrounded the yacht. The yacht dropped deeper and deeper as the water level fell. Then there was the dark outline of a subterranean opening. A submerged cave within a cave.
Then silence… The yacht steadied… He felt the yacht moving into the opening. Water dripped on him. Snails fell from the walls above and crashed onto the deck. He prayed as he waited in darkness. The yacht had been pulled into a cavern, somewhere inside the rocky cliff.
Robert tensed—his ears alert, trying to make sense of the strange sounds. He could see little in the darkness, yet he strained to see the dimmest object.
He groped along the deck for the diffy box. He lifted the lid and blindly searched through the box: ropes, life jackets, first aid kit. Then he felt the flashlight.
He pointed the light overhead. High above was a ceiling decorated with stalactites. The opening to the shaft they had just descended down was on the north face. Rocky walls covered two sides of the cavern and there were three large openings high up the fourth side. Openings blocked with logs and boards—like dams made by giant beavers.
Suddenly one dam ruptured. Logs cascaded from the top and water surged through the opening.
The yacht tilted as it was hit by a wave and several logs. Robert slipped and fell and was nearly washed off the deck, but he grabbed the rail and held tightly and prayed. The wave bounced off the cavern wall and jolted the yacht the other direction.
He wedged himself into the corner on the deck as the water level rose. He covered his ears against the painful roar of rushing water echoing in the subterranean chamber. Logs crashed against each other, against the stone walls, and against the yacht.
Then the roar stopped. The waters calmed. The yacht steadied.
Robert stood up and pointed the light towards the water. Logs and debris floated everywhere.
The he saw them—five smiling faces.
The cabin door opened and President Palmer staggered out. He was groggy and inebriated. “What the hell is going on Robert? I was nearly shaken out of bed. Why’s it so dark? Where’s the fleet? Where’s our security team?”
“Sir, we’ve been captured.”
“Captured?”
“Captured and pulled into an underground cavern.”
“Where’s our security force? I don’t see any of our ships. Captured by whom?”
Robert pointed his light at the smiling faces in the water. “By them, sir. We’ve been captured by dolphins.”
Chapter 28 - abridged
Sunday - Day 12
Tony and Adam glared at each other in the munitions storage room of the Guerrico.
“What the hell are you looking for?” Adam asked.
“Sonofabitch!” Tony whined. “I don’t understand you, man. They were on the requisitions. I went through a lotta shit to steal that stuff. Why the hell don’t we have any shells? And where are those fuckin’ Exocet missiles?”
“What are you deaf, man? I told you the press and the old man wouldn’t come if we’re armed.”
“Fuck the old man!”
“We need the old man! He knows these waters. John’s the only person on this boat that knows anything about whaling in the South Atlantic.”
“You didn’t have to tell him! Just keep the shit hidden away, just in case.”
“Look, Tony,” Adam said calmly. “This is a peaceful voyage. We’ve got civilians—the press. We agreed. No shooting. No violence.”
“But we’re goddamned sitting ducks. We’ve got a fuckin’ South African patrol boat following us like a shadow. Their missile tubes sure ain’t empty.”
“And they don’t know that our tubes are empty. It’s all part of the game, man. One kidnapping, one bombing and people all over the world listen, and shake in their shoes when they hear our name. They fear and respect POWER. So we’ve got no weapons? Doesn’t matter. The whalers don’t know that and they’re just as intimidated as if we had the armed Exocets.”
“Man, I would just feel better if we had them.”
Adam put his arm over Tony’s shoulder and said, “Hey, man! We’ll use those Exocets on some assholes. Just be patient. Just one mission at a time.” Adam stepped back and laughed. “Hey, man, we must be getting pretty close. I can smell them whalers! Let’s go to the bridge and see what’s happening.”
Tony nodded. “Okay, man.”
The first mate of the South African attack ship Kobie Coetsee handed the Captain the binoculars and pointed. “Sir! There it is. Thirty degrees.”
“Any radio contact?”
“None, sir. They haven’t responded.”
The captain scanned the foggy horizon with the binoculars. “After three hours of chasing radar spots, I’d like to see who the hell we’ve been following….There she is….I can’t make her out in the fog. If she’d just turn a little to starboard.”
“Is it a merchant ship, sir?”
“Son of a bitch!” The Captain put down the binoculars and shouted to the helmsman, “Twenty degrees right, full.” He picked up the intercom microphone and said, “Stations. Code three.”
“Sir?”
“It’s those POWER bastards,” The captain shouted, “and they’ve got the Guerrico!…What bloody irony. I was assigned as its first mate, back in ’77. then it was the Transvaal and was being built in a French boat yard. But the bloody U.N. declared a boycott against us, and the French sold it to Argentina.”
“How did POWER get it?”
“I don’t know. It’s a tough frigate, though. The British shot it up when they invaded South Georgia in ’82. But now the bloody terrorists have it!”
“What are we going to do, sir?”
“Stay on alert and shadow it. They’ll harass the whale catchers, take some pictures, then go home and claim a partial victory.”
“Partial victory?”
“Just enough to satisfy their supporters that they’ve won a battle, but not the bloody war. Then they’ll plead for more money for the next expedition.”
“Sounds like a game, sir.”
“A game, a business deal, military strategy. Not much difference in the tactics, except in this game we could all be bloody dead.”
“What’s her armament, sir?
“She’s twice our weight and carries Exocet missiles. There’s a 100 millimeter gun, and anti-aircraft canons. I remember inspecting her missile tubes when she was still in dry dock.”
“Sounds like she could blow us away, sir.”
“And we her. Our Skerpion missiles could deep six her too, the fine ship she is. It’s the old mutual annihilation game. We’ll both have men aiming the guns and missiles—like a bunch of macho bullshit—all ready to shit their britches if either side fires.”
“What’s the ETA for their missiles, sir?”
“At this range, from the moment we see exhaust smoke from their missiles, we have about ten seconds before impact. No time for evasive maneuvers. We shoot our chaff and decoys, fire our missiles, and pray that our missiles hit and theirs miss.”
“I thought this was going to be a routine patrol when I signed on, sir.”
“I’m sure it will be. We’ve got ten knots on the Guerrico, and together with the Hendrik Mentz we have formidable firepower. No, lad, they won’t try anything serious against us….And we won’t do anything to them either.”
“Then why are we out here, sir? If we aren’t going to do anything.”
“It’s just a standoff, lad. Last year the bloody bastards sank a whale catcher. But this year with the Coetsee and the Mentz guarding the fleet they won’t dare attack.”
Water crashed over the deck and salty spray pelted the bridge window as the wipers swept back and forth. Captain Simon Mthimuluk strained to see the furious sea as the bow of the 130-foot-long buoy boat dipped between waves. She towed a large sperm whale and a young blue whale. The thrashing seas and the drag of the whales slowed the boat to ten knots.
The South African whaling fleet was a collection of ships that had been salvaged from the great whaling fleets of the twentieth century. The flagship was the Balaena, a 535-foot-long pelagic factory ship built in Belfast right after the Second World War. Thirteen whale catchers and two buoy boats chased whales. They had once belonged to Norwegian, Japanese, and Russian fleets and ranged from 150 to 200 feet long. They were diesel-engined speedboats that were capable of 18 knots and could chase the largest and fastest of the whales in the world’s most inhospitable seas. Many of these ships had played a role in the near extermination of the largest animals that have ever lived—the mammoth rorqual whales: the Blue, the Fin, the Sei, and the Humpback.
The speed and thrashing power of these whales had made them near impossible prey from the wooden whaling vessels, the ships that made the ports of New Bedford and Nantucket famous in the nineteenth century. And dead rorquals sank. Instead, the wooden whalers chased the smaller but buoyant and catchable Right and Sperm whales, still formidable foes for men with hand held harpoons in small wooden launches.
Each South African whale catcher had a cannon that shot a two-hundred-pound explosive harpoon. The Norwegian whaler Sven Foyn developed the explosive harpoon gun in 1868. When he added this gun to his new steam-driven whale catcher he revolutionized the chase, and he pulled Norway into the forefront of whaling. When they wiped out the whales in the North Atlantic, fellow Norwegian Carl Larsen founded the whaling station at Grytviken in South Georgia in 1904.
The buoy boats were smaller whale catchers whose primary task was to transport the dead whales. Each buoy boat also carried a Sven Foyn harpoon gun and could hunt whales.
“Thar she is, Captain.”
Captain Simon Mthimuluk saw the Balaena come out of the mist. “See, you wise guy!” he gloated to his young deck hand. “This old man still knows his way around the South Atlantic.”
Simon was a professional seaman and whaler. The kind of man who develops clinical depression if the air in his nostrils lacks moisture and salt. This was his first whaling trip in ten years and the sight and sound and smell of whales and whaling ships brought new vitality to his ancient, aging body.
The Balaena, the factory ship, was 535 feet long and 74 feet wide. The bow and stern have three-story-tall towers with a 300-foot-long butchering deck in the center. The Balaena has a crew of 500 men and carries fuel and supplies for the entire fleet for a six-month voyage.
The stern tower has two large smoke funnels that rise thirty feet above the tower. The funnels are connected to the boilers, but the funnels are not end-to-end as on most ships, but are side-to-side. Between the funnels is the slipway, a twenty-foot-wide tunnel that starts at the waterline and slants up through the lower decks and the stern tower to the main butchering deck. Whales are brought in by buoy boats and dragged up the slipway to the butchering deck.
Nestled in the stern tower and decks below it are the crew’s quarters, a recreation room, a helicopter hanger and repair shop, the doctor’s cabin, a small hospital, a laboratory, the engine room and boiler room, generators, and fuel tanks.
The bow tower is crowned by revolving radar dishes and a tall mast with a crow’s nest and radio antennae. The decks contain the bridge and navigational rooms, the captain’s cabin, the officers’ cabins, the crew’s mess, a bakery, the pantry, the laundry, fresh water tanks, and the meat freezer.
Between the bow and stern towers are the butchering decks with a blacksmith’s shop and a carpenter’s shop in the center. These shops are connected by a rooftop deck filled with winches and motors and derricks. “Hell’s Gates”, a wide opening between the shops, connects the two butchering decks. Each deck can hold two blue whales.
The slipway leads from the water to the afterdeck, the flensing deck, where flensers strip the blubber from the whales and drop pieces through openings to the factory deck below.
The carcass is then dragged through “Hell’s Gates” to the foredeck where the lemmers slice the meat and drop it to the freezing plant below. Bones and entrails are sawed or cut and dropped to a processing area below.