by Paul G White
Montez called his crew together and gave each a document provided by the European, but signed by Montez, granting four weeks’ leave. Each crewmember was handed an envelope containing six months’ wages and the captain bade them farewell as they trooped down the narrow gangplank, torn between conflicting emotions of bemusement and elation. When the last of the crew had disappeared around the corner of a distant warehouse, several men headed towards the Spirit of the Caribbean alongside a small tractor, which was hauling two trailers behind it. With calm efficiency, the team loaded the crates onto the coaster and anchored them to the deck. Montez noticed that the crates were all stencilled with the legend: PETROLEUM SPARES – HANDLE WITH CARE, followed by each crate’s sequential number from one to eight. If the Captain had suspected the true nature of the cargo, his thoughts of a comfortable retirement would have vanished into a haze of self-recrimination and terror.
He watched with interest as the squat man took his team out of earshot and issued a series of instructions, although Montez harboured little doubt that every one of them was already extremely well drilled. Moments later, the man was standing beside him, offering his hand.
They shook, and the stranger said, “Permission to leave the ship, Captain?”
“You are not staying on board with your valuable cargo, Señor?”
“No, my team know what to do, Captain. They will defer to you in everything except where the safety of the cargo is concerned. In that respect, I must ask you to accept that they know best. Is that agreeable to you?”
Montez nodded. It seemed a small price to pay against the prospect of a further three-quarters of a million dollars.
“In that case, until we meet again.” The stranger waved farewell and descended the gangway to the dock. Within seconds, a black four-wheel drive hissed up beside him. The driver got out and opened a door, and he stepped aboard. The doors clunked shut and moments later, the vehicle disappeared around the corner of a warehouse heading for the exit to the docking area.
The captain reflected on the fact that at no time had the squat man mentioned his own name; but he had heard over the years of such unusual events, although he had never experienced them at first hand. He hawked and spat over the side. Not his business, he thought, if a person wished to remain anonymous. And if his employer paid the balance of the retainer promptly, he would be happy to let it remain that way.
*
That was four days ago. Now the Pride of the Caribbean was riding at anchor under a cloudless sky, while his makeshift crew opened the crates to check that the contents had come to no harm up to this point in their mysterious journey. Montez had readily agreed to dropping anchor for a little while. Although the Caribbean was a busy region for shipping, this particular area was away from the main shipping lanes. He set his radar and settled down on the bridge to await developments. He was not prepared for two men, armed with automatic weapons, calmly entering his domain and ordering him to lie on the floor with his hands behind his back. He assessed his options: the only one offering a chance of staying alive was to obey. He lay down as ordered and felt a pair of handcuffs snap onto his wrists.
“This is piracy,” Montez warned, “you could all be killed or sent to prison.”
“Shut your trap!” one of the men growled, kicking the captain in the ribs for good measure to illustrate that he was no longer in command.
Montez grunted in pain and demanded, “What are you going to do with me?”
“I told you to shut up.” Another kick in the ribs reinforced the statement. “We’re not going to kill you if that’s what’s bothering you. We’re not murderers. Just stay quiet until we’ve done what we came to do, and then we’ll take you back home, OK?
Montez said nothing. The only avenue open to him was to learn as much as he could about the pirates. Up until this point, he had had very little conversation with any of them; they had kept to themselves since coming aboard. He had to admit that the cook was spectacularly talented, and in other circumstances, Montez would have been happy to have him aboard. The fare so far on the journey had been delicious. So, what else did he know? Most of them were probably European, although some of the accents might have originated further east. Not much to go on so far. Montez settled down to think, whilst sounds of activity on the deck resonated through the plates of the ship.
After four hours, his captors were relieved of their duty and Montez was helped into a chair by one of his new guards. The industry on deck continued unabated.
“What are you doing on deck?”
“Don’t worry your head about it, Captain. When everything’s ready, you’ll have a grandstand seat.”
“Grandstand seat for what?”
The cook arrived carrying a tray of food and laid it down on a table. Montez suddenly realised how much time had passed since he had eaten breakfast. “Is that for me?” He nodded in the direction of the tray.
“We’re not barbarians,” one of the men told him. “Of course it’s for you.”
“Then how—?” Montez moved his handcuffed wrists behind his back.
One of the men stepped aside and levelled his automatic rifle at the Captain. “We’ll release you for as long as it takes you to clean your plates. Try anything, and you’ll be dead before you know it. Understand?”
Montez nodded. Now would not be the time for pointless heroics. That time would almost certainly come later; no one could remain vigilant for ever. Meanwhile, food was his first priority. He submitted meekly to the unlocking and refastening of the handcuffs
It was another five hours before his next meal arrived, and all the while his captors carried out the same procedure to enable him to eat, Montez noticed a distinct change in their manner. They were clearly excited, he decided. So, in all likelihood the grandstand event was close to taking place. When he had consumed the meal, he was led out onto the deck, with his guards out of his field of view behind him, both with their weapons trained on him. Still not the time, he thought.
He looked down at the foredeck from his raised viewpoint and his mind reeled – so violently that he almost fell forward over the rail onto the deck four metres below. There was no mistaking the shape of the object on the deck of the Spirit of the Caribbean: it was an eight metre long cruise missile, resting in the bottom half of a prefabricated cylindrical launch tube. A technician was busy fitting a section of the top half of the tube, and afterwards there would be one further part necessary to complete the assembly. This, he thought miserably, is what can happen when one succumbs to the lure of money. Of course the squat man had laughed when he’d asked if the cargo involved drugs. Why wouldn’t he laugh? Because this was infinitely worse than drugs.
“What are you going to do?” Montez asked meekly, all thoughts of resistance leached out of him by the enormity of the evil about to be perpetrated on some unsuspecting city. “Where are you sending this . . . this . . . thing?”
One of his guards replied, “To kill the alien abomination, of course, where else? We told you we weren’t murderers, and we meant it. It’s not murder if you rid the world of Satan’s spawn. How can it be? These things,” he almost spat out the word, “are not human, and should never have come to Earth. And as for those so-called humans who have prostituted their science and betrayed their god to help them, they have abdicated all right to life. It will be a new start for mankind when the nuclear fires consume them all.”
Montez almost collapsed. “A nuclear weapon?” he managed to say. “What in the name of Mary, mother of God are you thinking of? You’re insane, all of you.”
He sensed, rather than saw the rifle butt as it crunched against his temple, and this time he was unconscious before he cannoned off the railing and onto the hard metal of the landing at the head of the companionway. Mercifully, he would never get to witness the grandstand event promised by the fanatical followers of John Craithie.
In the encroaching dusk, the countdown to the launch had begun and now stood at fifty-five seconds, reducing at five
second intervals towards the critical final ten seconds. The controller announced, “All systems nominal, ten, nine, eight—” Everyone held their breath – no one was prepared to contemplate failure, for Craithie would be certain to call down the wrath of God upon them. “Six, five, four, three—” The seconds seemed to stretch towards eternity “—two, one, zero.”
With a roar, the solid fuel booster ignited and the three thousand seven hundred kilogram cruise missile powered out of the inclined launch tube at a rapidly increasing velocity. At a range of five hundred metres and an elevation of no more than a hundred, the booster fell away and the missile’s turbofan jet engine howled into life. Five seconds later, the on-board guidance system fed in its first navigation changes and the missile lost height until it was no more than fifteen metres above the blue Caribbean. The cruise missile was on its way, and all that remained was to wait for the news of the successful destruction of the alien evil and their human converts. The wait would not be a long one: at more than seven hundred kilometres an hour, the missile would reach its target in the Maya Mountains in approximately thirty minutes.
Under powerful arc lamps Craithie’s men began dismantling the launch pad and throwing it overboard into the depths of the Caribbean. In a remarkably short time, the only evidence that the tube had ever existed was now sinking piecemeal to the dark sea bottom more than two kilometres below. For those on board the Spirit of the Caribbean, with the exception of Captain Josef Montez, the burgeoning stars held a certain promise of salvation.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The radar operator on board the British Naval vessel, Forthright stared incredulously at the bank of instruments in front of him in the darkened Operations Room. He saw the tell-tale signature of the launch at sea of a cruise missile no more than thirty kilometres away.
“Sir,” he called urgently, “you need to see this. A cruise missile has just been launched at bearing one-seven-eight degrees, and it’s headed for landfall somewhere in Belize.”
“Check your readings,” the Principal War Officer, Lieutenant Commander Alex Drummond ordered, “and give me a more accurate estimate than ‘somewhere in Belize’”. The PWO was already reaching for the intercom to the frigate’s skipper, Commander Lionel Fenwright.
Seconds later, the operator confirmed, “It’s headed for Belmopan, Sir, ninety-eight per cent probability.”
Drummond acknowledged, although he was already speaking to Commander Fenwright. He said, “Yes, Sir, Belmopan.” He listened again and said, “Aye, aye Sir.”
He tapped the intercom and relayed the Captain’s order, “Change our heading to three-four-three degrees. The Captain will be with you in one minute.” He regarded the intercom quizzically for a moment and then racked it.
“Any change in the missile’s bearing, Radar?”
“No, Sir. She’s holding a steady course.”
Commander Fenwright’s clipped tones echoed through the cramped space, “I have informed Belmopan of the threat, though at this late stage there seems little they can do. Tell Radar ‘well done’”
Aye, aye Sir.” The wait was going to be a painful one, especially if the missile carried a nuclear warhead. What they could do, however, was search out the launch vessel. There were no other naval vessels within three-hundred kilometres, so the indications were that terrorists had somehow got hold of a nuclear missile and done the unthinkable.
*
The panicky plea for assistance from the government of Belize to the US government was passed to the Pentagon faster than any message in history. Within three minutes, satellite tracking had locked onto the missile and it had been identified as an SSC-N-21 ‘Slingshot’ cruise missile, most likely carrying a two-hundred kiloton nuclear warhead. As far as members of the Nuclear disarmament treaties were aware, all such missiles had been destroyed between 1989 and 1992. But it appeared that, somehow, one had escaped the net and been spirited away to end its existence by being fired at a peaceful Caribbean country. The question regarding the missile’s most likely ground zero was passed to the CIA, and they immediately indicated a target: the alien spacecraft.
For several months a number of agencies had been following the activities of one John Craithie, and one thread ran like a fiery river through all the separate investigations: his unremitting hatred of everything that did not originate on Earth. He was on record on countless occasions as promising his followers that he would destroy the aliens, along with their starship. There could be no more likely suspect as originator of the missile and no more likely target . . . nor a more emphatic means of achieving his avowed aim of wiping the aliens from the face of the Earth.
The head of the CIA contacted the Prime Minister of Belize without delay, and James Harding immediately tried to contact Juan Hernandez at the site. Hela, the AI intercepted the call and relayed the message to the minister.
“The time has come for your defences to prove themselves,” Hernandez told the AI. “Our xenophobic friend, John Craithie has launched a cruise missile at us, and it is armed with a nuclear warhead. It is less than five minutes from impact, so we have very little time.”
Hela conversed in the Sha’lee language with Shenna, and then said to Phil Makeman, “Shenna requests that you stay with her until the crisis is past. Will you do that?”
“Of course, I’ll be glad to.” He grinned at Shenna, “We’re becoming the best of friends, aren’t we?”
The astronomer grasped part of Makeman’s meaning and said quietly, “An-shay.” The accompanying images left Makeman in no doubt that she understood.
It was fortunate that the medical teams had already changed into Sha’lee clothing, because they would have found movement sluggish in the bio-hazard suits. Hela directed the observation drone to climb a further hundred metres and then announced, “I see the missile. It is approaching along the course of a small river and will veer towards the site in approximately ninety seconds. It will then be fifty-three seconds from impact. Please evacuate all buildings along this path—” An intensely bright light picked out the apex of a hut just beyond the rim of the vast bowl of the excavation, and several of the younger members of the group raced full tilt up the slope to do the AI’s bidding. Less than a minute later, they yelled out one after the other that everywhere was clear.
Hela’s voice boomed out, “Move aside as quickly as possible!”
Everyone fled as the sound of an approaching jet engine rumbled over the jungle. The air around the Comora vibrated, and where they had been standing moments before, a three-metre wide black tunnel appeared in the slope of the bowl-shaped excavation. The nearest hut vanished from just beyond the rim as if it had never existed. The overlying ground collapsed into the tunnel and instantly vanished, leaving a neat trough of semi-circular section. The molecular disrupter beam cut a neat hole through the end walls of a large wooden structure in its path and shaved the roof from a smaller building behind it. Then there was silence, broken only by the collapse of wooden structures into the deep trough blazed through the ground by the Comora’s unimaginably potent asteroid defences.
At seven-hundred kilometres per hour the missile entered the expanding cone of destruction, and the howl of its jet engine ceased; the plutonium hemispheres of the nuclear warhead encountered the disrupter beam, to be instantly disassembled into their elemental particles; any incidental radiation released by the radioactive material was utterly annihilated by a controlled force even more powerful than the chain reaction of the intended nuclear detonation; and the sub-microscopic remnants of the missile drifted harmlessly onto the low jungle below. The threat to the Comora and everyone at the site had been eliminated in the most emphatic manner possible.
Several people began to cry in relief, and Makeman noticed that Shenna was becoming distressed. He tried to ask why, but could not frame the thought. Hela came to his rescue.
“The attack is now over, Philip Makeman, and Shenna is experiencing the pain and relief of her new friends. You should comfort one anoth
er, because the Sha’lee and humans are alike in so many ways.”
Ninety kilometres north, a Gulfstream G550 jet, carrying eight high-powered businessmen, lost a one-metre section of its port wing as the pilot prepared to bank into his final approach into Goldson International airport at Belize City. The pilot, displaying consummate skill, with no small amount of assistance from the advanced systems built into the plane, brought it into land without further incident. Fortunately for the peace of mind of the occupants of the plane, no one would ever be aware of how close they had come to vanishing without trace.
*
Commander Fenwright’s precise tones issued from the intercom, “Lieutenant Commander Drummond, has there been any change in our objective’s status?”
“Yes, Sir. She’s just come about and is now heading due east at eight knots and increasing. Bearing dead ahead, range twelve kilometres and closing. Estimated time to interception at our current speed, fifteen minutes.”
“Good!” Fenwright’s lips thinned into a facsimile of a smile. “Let’s give them a surprise. Lieutenant Raines!”
The junior officer came smartly to attention. “Aye, aye Sir.”
“Sound ‘battle stations’ and break out small arms for twelve marines. This is not an exercise, and we don’t know what we’re going to find or what sort of a reception we’re going to get.”
“Aye, aye Sir.” Lieutenant Raines pressed the warning, and whilst ‘battle stations’ was resounding through all sections of the vessel, he hurried off to carry out the captain’s orders.
Within two minutes the forward gun and missile stations were manned and operational, and the pilot and navigator were standing beside their Merlin helicopter on the helipad at the stern, awaiting their orders. Fenwright experienced a feeling of deep pride in the efficiency of his crew, from the marines through to his senior officers. From his elevated position on the bridge he saw Lieutenant Raines appear on deck leading a dozen marines, armed with automatic weapons. He watched as Raines broke out flak jackets and helmets for the marines and oversaw their deployment. So far, so good. Ten minutes to interception.