Predator Island

by Douglas Cameron

  Then he heard the splash and felt the front of the dozer hit something and then the rear and the green light came on. BAM the chutes were gone and in a moment the shadow was replaced with the warm glow of the sun. He looked around and saw the waterfall on his right. Turning left he saw the river and on the bank behind him a crowd of men standing and cheering and then one of them stepped forward and entered the stream. He walked over to the dozer and looked up at Jason. It was Toby giving him a thumbs up. He yelled at the men and they immediately entered the water. With Toby pointing and yelling directions they formed two lines in front of the dozer extending it toward the lowest part of the bank. The bank was barely wide enough to get the dozer on it sideways. Jason could tell by the depth of the water on the men that it got deeper closer to the shore. Crossing his fingers, he put the dozer in gear and began moving slowly between the two lines of men. He was moving about three miles an hour when he reached the bank and the dozer didn’t pause but climbed the bank slewing left as it clawed its way upward and was soon out of the water and headed downstream. He continued on until he was past the rock mountain before stopping and then he was out and knelt down and kissed the ground. Those of the crowd who were following him yelled their approval. Then he stood up and started to remove his pants.

  “Hold on,” Toby said in a surprised tone of voice, “What are you doing?”

  “After what I’ve been through, wouldn’t you have a load in your pants also?”

  The crowd laughed and Jason rebuckled his belt.

  “Tell me,” Jason said. “What was that last maneuver for?”

  “The way the dozer was oriented, the front was going to be over the pool and the back in the riverbed. We would never have gotten the dozer out of the pool but stood a chance in the riverbed. I knew that part of the river was probably bedrock like the hill and took the chance.”

  “Well, I’m glad it was you and not me because the dozer would be at the bottom of the pool,” Toby said. “In a way you’re lucky you could get out. That area of the bank is the only one you could crawl up. To get the dozer back to the dock area, you are going to have to go all the way around Colina da Rocha.”

  He pointed at it to let him know what he was talking about.

  “You’ll leave the dozer here and work on this side. I keep my dozer on the other side and work there until the bridge is made. That will be our first concern. Let’s get you back to Rochelle Town. Tomorrow we begin some serious work.”

  At this prophetic point, there came a pulsing roar from the direction of Colina da Rocha, faint at first but increasing in volume. The men looked around wildly. Some cried “Earthquake,” but, if it was, the ground wasn’t shaking at all. They could see and feel nothing and after about two minutes, the sound died completely as suddenly as it had begun.

  “What the hell was that?” Jason asked.

  “Don’t have the faintest,” Toby answered. “But we had best report it when we get back to base.”

  Chapter 7

  Horus continued the discussion about the construction of the island’s infrastructure, “After getting the living quarters set up, one of the first items of importance was to rid the site of the need for fossil fuel as much as possible.”

  The dump trucks and pickup trucks that were brought ashore by the helicopter from the anchored container ship were designed and made by Waldo Emerson and ran on electricity. The heavy-duty machines, like the two bulldozers and the six backhoes, ran on diesel. They had the one diesel tank and there was a second on the ship but those were not going to be enough to fuel the machines and the generators to recharge the trucks. Until another source was installed, these vehicles would be charged by diesel powered generators. So two of the primary installations were solar panel farms on the southeast and southwest sides of volcano. These would not only take care of the current need for the vehicles but provide the source of power for the Bundle’s headquarters when it was built. The volcanic mountain had already been renamed Vulcan’s Forge and the headquarters to be built inside was Vulcan’s Roost. The latter’s name was not in great keeping with the idea of the Roman god of fire which included both volcanic fire and the fire of forges, but it was apropos. Other solar panel farms were set up on the south end of the island and would provide power to the village as well as to vehicles.

  It had been decided that Toby’s bulldozer would work on the road up Vulcan’s Forge to the Northeast Olympus Solar Farm and then on past the plateau where the entrance to Vulcan’s Roost would be dug and finally on to the site of the Northwest Olympus Solar Farm. Jason would make the road south from the proposed pier site near the mouth of the River Styx (which had been called Rio da Fonte or Fountain River) to the Southeast Hades Solar Farm, across the south end to the site of the Southwest Hades Solar Farm and up the west side past Prometheus’s Aerie (which Colina da Rocha or Boulder Hill was renamed) and back through the former farm area to the proposed pier site.

  “What’s the significance of Prometheus?” Monica asked. “I’m not much into Greek gods.”

  “He was a Titan, a second-generation divine being and ancestor of the gods on Olympus,” explained Issaack. “He is credited with the creation of humans from clay…”

  “You mean like the Christian God created Adam?”

  “Yes, but the Christian God is also the Jewish God, so let us not forget that,” Waldo injected.

  “Always have to be politically correct, don’t we,” Phil countered and received a glare from Waldo.

  “Back to Prometheus,” Issaack said giving both men a warning glance. “Yes, what he did is like the biblical god. There are many instances within modern religions of events from the Greek (and by assimilation the Roman) Gods. What Prometheus is best known for is giving fire to people he created. As punishment for his crime, Zeus sentenced Prometheus …”

  “Wait a moment,” Monica interrupted. “You just said ‘Zeus sentenced Prometheus.’ A moment ago you said that Prometheus was second generation and an ‘ancestor of the gods on Olympus.’ Zeus is one of those and he sentenced one of his ancestors?”

  “They were all basically immortal,” Gloria explained. “The Olympian gods ruled them all.”

  “Oh, I see,” Monica said. But I don’t, she thought.

  “I’ll recommend some reading for you,” Issaack said, little knowing that he was inspiring her next hit Titans, Olympians and Fire.

  “But continuing, Zeus sentenced Prometheus to eternal torture for his crime by binding him to a rock and every day an eagle (which is the emblem of Zeus) would feed upon the liver of Prometheus and every night the liver would grow back.”

  “Gross,” Monica said. “That’s like the guy Sisyphus who had to push a rock up a hill and when it got near the top it would roll back down.”

  “Exactly,” Gloria said. “That was a favorite method of punishment. There was a guy named Tantalus who – for a crime I will not go into – was sentenced by Zeus to stand in a pool of water under a grapevine. Whenever he would reach for the grapes to eat, they would rise out of reach and when he bent to drink, the pool would recede.”

  “Evil people those Greek Gods,” Phil said.

  Issaack continued, “The names Styx and Hades were chosen because Vulcan’s Forge was more like Olympus and it only made sense that the river should be the River Styx and beyond it must be Hades.”

  But of course with Jason’s dozer across the river, what was planned was not going to happened so Jason would start on the road from the River Styx and Toby would begin with the road south to the River Styx. When the road reached the River Styx, the bridge was brought by the Super Stallion. At the time it arrived it was just pieces of metal and nuts and bolts.

  Cleve R. Barker, from New Jersey, had one job to do on São Rochelle’s new infrastructure – supervise the construction of the Charon Bridge. He would never use that name, and, in fact, it would not have a name other than “The Bridge” during the construction phase. Although at times, it was called the “Off Balance Bridge�
� but only when Jerónimo Romero was around, but we’re not ready for that yet. To explain the name of the bridge, how did one cross the River Styx? In a boat propelled by Charon, the ferryman of Hades.

  Cleve preferred to be called Ron after his middle name Ronald because Cleve Barker seemed so much like Clive Barker, the British writer known for his horror stories. But when people learned his first name was really Cleve, that was what he was called. The bridge that Cleve was here to build was to be positioned just before the River Styx made a turn north before a turn east to empty into the Atlantic Ocean and help provide the only reasonable harbor for the small island.

  The first items that had to be built were the abutments on both sides of the river and that required concrete and a fair amount of it. Therefore, the Super Stallion brought in a concrete truck and lots of bags of concrete. There was going be a plant made which would be able to fill the trucks with water and concrete for later projects, but that wasn’t ready yet. When it was ready, it would make concrete railroads ties that were needed for the railroad to get the tunnel digger up to the plateau and also to move the concrete pieces made by the concrete plant up to the tunnel but that was still in the distant future. Water was put into the concrete truck by a hose set in the river and a gasoline powered pump. For this project the truck didn’t need to move and could pour the concrete into the form on the north side of the river without moving the truck. To get the concrete into the form on the other side of the river, required brute force and a line of men standing in the water passing five gallon buckets half full of concrete from the north side to the south side and another line passing the buckets back. This took thirty men, the entire labor force at the time, an entire day. Every half hour, the two lines changed duties because two and a half gallons of concrete weighs fifty pounds. Slowing the whole thing down was the fact that they only had ten empty five gallon pails. Fortunately for the men standing in the water, it wasn't cold, and the temperature was something that they couldn’t explain but would be discovered later. Needless to say, at the end of the day everyone was tired and ready for bed after a big steak dinner. This was a small glitch in the program not because Issaack neglected to look closely at the river, but he figured that the concrete truck would be able to drive around Colina de Rocha although it might take a while. The motorcycle surveyor team had come back with a negative on that point – at least until the road was made and that was going to take a while.

  While they waited the two days for the abutment forms to be built and the reinforcing rods put into position inside the forms and the two days for the concrete to cure, ten men who were basically laborers – but well-paid laborers – were being taught how to put the parts of the bridge together. The bridge was the Mabey Compact 200 HS25, a one lane bridge designed to carry ninety thousand pound three-axle vehicles which was enough for a conventional loaded concrete truck. It was akin to a bridge built from erector set pieces. When Issaack and Siegfried went looking for a bridge, Paul Orr, an engineering friend, suggested that they consult the Mabey Company.

  In 1923, Guy Mabey registered Mabey & Johnson Ltd as a general building supplies business servicing new construction in South East England. In 1940, Donald Bailey designed an alternative to the Inglis Bridge system which was considered to be overly complicated and expensive. When the full prototype of the Inglis Mark III Bridge failed during testing, Bailey was given the go-ahead to develop his new bridging concept. The first prototype Bailey Bridge was successfully load tested and delivered to troops in the field during December 1941. The Mabey Super Bailey Panel was launched in 1967 when Thomas Storey’s sole rights to manufacture panel bridging using the Bailey concept expired. It quickly proved to enable construction of stronger bridges to carry bigger earth moving equipment. In the mid-seventies, development of the Mabey Universal Bridging System began and in 1988 the Compact 200 system was introduced. Mabey bridges were used world-wide and the U.S. military used them in Iraq and other Middle East countries.

  Chapter 8

  The galvanized steel parts for the bridge were brought to the Plains of Olympus side of the River Styx by the Super Stallion helicopter. Cleve Barker had gone over the plans with Walt Jefferies, the construction project supervisor. It was easy enough. The parts were put together with nuts and bolts using pneumatic powered hammer drills. In a way it was like assembling a child’s toy on Christmas Eve:

  Tab A goes into slot BB on part CC. Remember to insert the peg into the hole in tab A after it is through slot BB.

  As you probably remember, if you (or whoever put the toy together) perform that step improperly and no matter if you do all the rest of the procedures exactly right, the toy won’t work the way it was supposed to.

  What the workmen had to do was to construct nine rectangular boxes called bays, each ten feet long by seven feet high by ten feet wide. The second ten feet was the width of the bridge and was made by two ten-foot transoms between two ten-foot long by seven-foot high preformed panels. There are other pieces but with unfamiliar and possibly strange names: raker, bracing frame, vertical frame, end post, chord reinforcement, etc. But they are all attached together with nuts on bolts. Oh, yes, there are male and female ends of the box, and the first one made – pointing south across the River Styx – has to have the male eye on both sides pointing across the river. South is what was called the “Direction of Launch” because the Mabey 200 bridge is shoved out in stages over the river from the launch side to the other side. That’s the job of Toby Tyler’s D9T Caterpillar bulldozer on the north (Plains of Olympus) side. So the ten-man bridge crew spent four days practicing putting rectangular boxes together: First one and then the one connecting to it. And then taking them apart because they couldn’t be moved as they weighed eight tons each. Because of the weight of the pieces (the panels weighed 1,600 pounds each and the transoms 950 pounds each) two backhoes were used to assist in moving the parts.

  Finally the morning was here for construction to begin.

  The first four bays that were built were part of the “launch nose.” The method of getting the bridge across the river is called “the cantilever launch.” When the bridge is ready to be launched (be pushed by the dozer), the first of the bays is lifted at an angle and held in place on either side with a piece of metal and two pins called a launch link. This is to enable the nose to hit the landing rollers a little low. The landing rollers tilt (the launch rollers don’t) because the metal bridge is heavy and there will be a little give and the front will sag. The launching rollers were placed first and then the landing rollers were positioned on the south side using laser range finders.

  The first four bays have one panel on each side because they are only temporary and will be removed when the bridge is in place. The launch nose is normally two-thirds of the length of the bridge so that the nose hits the landing rollers with just a third of the weight of the bridge over the river. However, with a forty plus foot span requiring five bays, two-thirds is between three and four bays, thus four nose launch bays were used. After the four nose launch bays, five bridge bays were made with two panels on each side with bracing frames top and bottom. No decking was installed at this time because it would only add to the weight.

  Because the construction crew was untrained, and the pneumatic tools being used were to be powered by only one air tank, the decision was made to move the equipment a minimum number of times, so they started making three bays and would launch one bay out over the river at a time until necessary to move and have more on land. The first bay started on the launch rollers, its female end on two timber cribbing towers shared with the male end of the second bay. The female end of the second bay was on rollers atop two other timber cribbing towers and this process continued during the construction. When the first three nose launch bays were completed, it was time for the first launch. Recall that this necessitated the first being raised at an angle of six degrees with a launch link holding it in place and then the assemblage was pushed ten feet by Toby’s dozer, and the fourth no
se launch bay constructed. And then another push and two bays were over the river and two bays on land. All this was to be carefully done because the center of gravity had to be kept behind the leading edge of the launch rollers or the bridge would tilt and end up in the river.

  But this was the time – before construction could start on the first bridge bay the next day – when Jerónimo Romero earned his claim to fame or notoriety – your choice. To be totally truthful, it wasn’t all his fault because the second push of the nose launch had gone just a bit awry – by six inches. However that caused the center of gravity of the build to be six inches in front of the edge of the launch roller. That’s one twentieth of the length of the bay but left the transom just in front of the launch rollers and the transom weighed nine hundred fifty pounds. That’s more than one tenth of the weight of the entire bay in one twentieth of the space. That gave the over-the-water portion of the nose launch section that much more weight and moved the center of gravity forward of the balance point, the forward edge of the launch roller. You couldn’t tell, but the nose launch was “thinking” about moving.

  It had been a long hot day and the water in the river looked so inviting to Jerónimo Romero that when Cleve Barker called an end to work, Jerónimo Romero quickly removed his boots, socks, pants and shirt and climbed up onto the abutment, onto the side of the second section of the nose launch build and started making his way out over the river. He was quite agile despite his size (five foot ten but two hundred thirty pounds) and he quickly moved to the front of second bay and was ready to move up the slight incline of the first nose launch bay. His intent was to get to the front transom and jump into the river. The river wasn’t really deep here – eight feet – and he probably would have been okay with a drop of about ten feet, but he never got to find out that day. As he moved out over the river, his weight kept moving the center of gravity a little bit further toward the river and away from the fulcrum (the front of the launch roller.) He was receiving cheers from his compadres and Cleve Barker was standing there laughing when suddenly … the nose launch structure started moving down.