Sea Station Umbra

by JOHN PAUL CATER

“Yes think I will,” Greenfield replied. “Those fighter maneuvers combat or not are hell on my bladder. Mr. Cross, your trip on the Osprey will be much shorter. Come if you’d like.”

  I stayed behind to thank my boss for his confidence in my work. He wished me well and stood silently waiting for the Admiral to return. I couldn’t help but notice the twinkle in his eyes and broad smile that had fallen over his face since the contract was signed. For the first time in my six-year career at MBORC, I felt important and needed. I knew I would prove him right for promoting me to VP.

  “Ready, Mr. Cross?”

  “Yes, Admiral, but you can call me Matt.”

  “Fine, Matt, and you can still call me Admiral.”

  I laughed at his wit as we descended the steps from the entrance leaving Carlos waving alone in the doorway.

  Chapter 5. Trip to Nowhere

  Our emergence from the building triggered the Osprey’s engines into action. Looking over at the whining turbines, I saw Harper gazing out of his cockpit window give us a thumbs-up and return to the controls. Seconds later the twin upright rotors began to spin accompanied by a low rumble from the Osprey’s turbines. Then the eucalyptus trees began a frenzied cyclonic swaying surrounded by swirling dust.

  Moving double-time we crossed the grassy field to the waiting aircraft in no time. There at the top of the stairway Harper motioned us in, helped us up the steps, and then slammed the door behind us with a solid kerchunk. Bending over to catch my breath I realized I needed more exercise.

  “Welcome back aboard, Matt. Long time no fly huh?” he said laughing at my condition.

  “Not long enough,” I panted watching the Admiral buckle himself into the front jump seat of the otherwise empty cabin.

  “Where are you taking me today, Bill? Back to the Trident Tine?”

  “I’m still based out of there, Matt, but that’s not where you’re headed. You’ll have to ask the Admiral for that information. I’ll talk with you after we land.”

  “May I sit by you, sir?”

  “Yes, young man, and please give me your cell phone,” he answered holding out his hand.

  I glared at him.

  “What? You want my cell phone? Nobody takes that. It’s my lifeline.”

  “Sorry, Matt. Tracking apps can give your position away. I need to seal it off in a Faraday cage until your mission is completed and you’re back home. Then you’ll have it back.”

  I looked at his hand insisting waiting for my phone.

  “I won’t lose any contacts in it will I?”

  “No, Matt, it’ll just go off the grid so to speak while you’re away. No harm will come to it. Besides it won’t work at a thousand meters down will it?”

  He was right but turning over my phone was like cutting off an arm. Reluctantly, I reached into my pocket, turned it off, and gave it to him.

  “Take care of it please,” I said.

  Chuckling, he took it and looked up at me.

  “You kids are really obsessed with your phones aren’t you?”

  “No offense meant, sir, but I noticed the first thing you did when you landed was check the messages on your phone. Seems like we’re all addicted to the real-time communications they afford us with the world.”

  Smiling he replied, “I suppose you’re right, Matt. But since I keep mine locked away in a Faraday shield in my briefcase it only comes online when it’s removed. And then it gives away my location so I still have to be careful when and where I use it.”

  I nodded agreement and realized my world was changing to one of spies, espionage, and mystery. That made me feel a little queasy but a job was a job no matter the surroundings.

  Interrupting our conversation Harper’s voice boomed over the intercom.

  “Welcome aboard my ship, gentlemen. Your flight today will be smooth as we’ll be traveling at ten-thousand feet through calm air with a light breeze off the ocean. Our first stop is scheduled in fifty-seven minutes. Please fasten your seat belts and acquaint yourself with our emergency procedures in your seat.”

  After his message ended, the Admiral smiled and nodded forward.

  “You know him pretty well, Mr. Cross?”

  “Yes, sir, we worked together for a few weeks months ago. Why do you ask?”

  Smiling he replied, “Just wondering if he’s a wannabe commercial airline pilot. Sounds like it. I think he missed his calling.”

  His comment sparked anger in me as I remembered Harper’s heroic actions: hauling two ready-to-explode nuclear warheads to the edge of international waters then dropping the last one, only minutes before it would explode.

  “No sir. I think he’s one of the Navy’s bravest and finest fliers. If I remember right he just received the Presidential Medal of Honor for his bravery. Quite a guy.”

  “Oh? Sorry. Then I must get to know him better. We can always use men like that on our ops teams. What is his name again?”

  “Harper, Bill Harper, Lieutenant Commander, U.S. Navy. He flies off the R/VX Trident Tine under the command of Captain Broward. You spoke of him earlier.”

  “Oh, but of course. He and his ship have been of great help on many of our missions. In fact some of them would have most certainly failed without his assistance.”

  “Is Captain Broward involved in this mission? I’d like to see him again.”

  “No, Matt, not that he knows. He does have an ancillary function but you’ll never see him or the Tine. We often use his AUVs, ROVs and other assets to assist our underwater teams but he doesn’t know who he’s helping; he just follows orders. Just like Harper’s involvement today. He’s an air-taxi because he was available and in your area.”

  “Too bad,” I said. “I really like the Captain.”

  “Oh, for your information he just made Rear Admiral in April. Saved our coast from a crazed terrorist in a secret undersea operation of some sort.”

  “Yeah, I know of that. Felt like I was there.” I could have told him more but instead kept it short; we were about to take off.

  While we spoke, outside our windows the rotors spun up to full speed, the turbines’ rumble increased to an ear-piercing whine and we lifted off. Minutes later when we reached altitude the rotors tilted forward and we headed south with the Pacific out our right windows. I had yet to learn my destination but I was guessing somewhere south of us about an hour away. And knowing the Osprey’s operational flying speed was three-hundred miles per hour it sounded near the NAS Point Mugu area. But I brushed that off as highly improbable; the Point Mugu Naval Air Station had been decommissioned long ago.

  There had been no further conversation between us since the Admiral opened his briefcase and started reviewing paperwork but I could see the words Operation Deep Force at the top of each page. As my eye caught a few words of the smaller print below the heading, my curiosity drew me closer wanting to read more until he caught me looking over his shoulder.

  “Well, Mr. Cross, you may be better at this job than we originally thought. What did you just gain from your visual eavesdropping on my papers?”

  I blushed at being discovered; I could feel it in my face. Not expecting a confrontation from my wandering gaze, I sputtered and stammered trying to give him the answer he wanted.

  Then realizing it was a leading question I finally answered, “I- I didn’t see much, sir, but enough to know it’s time for my security briefing on what I’m about to see and hear. And you’re going to give it to me now.”

  He backed off smiling apparently surprised and said, “Well done, Matt. You’re very good. That will make it easier for me. Let’s do it.”

  For the next fifteen minutes of my trip to nowhere, the Admiral read rules and related anecdotes and caveats from the black ops security world. I had been granted a Secret clearance a year after joining MBORC and that was adequate for the jobs I did then but this was different. I was moving into Top Secret Codeword work and the codeword was Umbra. My ultimate destination was a government facility known as Sea Station Umbra, a thousand
meters below the North Pacific’s surface. I was about to embark on a journey traveling on a path that didn’t exist working for people without names and if they were ever asked about me I didn’t exist. In my past jobs, my wife Lindy always called me Mr. Bond, James Bond because of my love for mystery and intrigue. If only she could see me now.

  “We’ll be landing in a few minutes at NAS Point Mugu,” he said. “Your indoctrination and update on our problem will occur there before I depart for Florida.”

  A cold fear washed over me.

  “Naval Air Station Point Mugu?” I asked. “I thought that place was deactivated years ago.”

  “Matt, you’re now joining that one-hundred person group on earth that knows of its existence. In a short while, you’ll be a member of the elite thirty-six; you’ll make it thirty-seven who know the rest of the story. Remember this is the black world nothing is as it seems.”

  I must have turned white as a ghost but there was no mirror available to check. His disclosure whisked me back seven years to the SeaCrawler chapter of my life. Could it be the same group still exists? Why would they need my help? At that time, they were the best divers and DSV experts in the Navy. What changed?

  My thoughts were interrupted by the turbines’ lowering pitch. Out my window was the familiar sight of the long Point Mugu Runway 3/21 almost touching the ocean. At the far end, a Navy F4 Phantom jet waited on the tarmac just off the taxiway.

  “That must be your ride home off Runway 21,” I said.

  He peered out the window.

  “Yes, that would be Captain Minor and his F4 waiting to fly me back to Florida. I told him I’d be ready for takeoff about one p.m. That gives us only an hour to wrap things up.”

  My heart raced anticipating sights that would bring fond memories of my time in the Navy back to life.

  Searching the terrain below I immediately recognized my old SeaCrawler hangout but it was dark and deserted. The parking lot adjacent to the building once filled with sports cars of all types: Corvettes, Ferraris, Porsches and Mercedes roadsters stood empty devoid of life. I remembered back when the contents of our parking lot was said to be more expensive than many buildings on base. And thinking back that may have been true. We were a wild bunch that worked hard partied even harder and bought expensive sports cars living life to the fullest like there was no tomorrow. And since nobody on base knew what we did we became known as the Ghost Squadron; we were never there but always searching under the sea for our next catch.

  “If you look over there, Matt, you’ll see an old rundown tin-roof Quonset hut. That’s where we’re going.”

  Following his finger pointing to a building that belonged in the front of a junk yard I tried to act impressed.

  “Oh that’s interesting,” I said. I did notice a number of strange antenna structures and dishes surrounding it but they seemed to blend in with the scrap material surrounding the building.

  He laughed.

  “Don’t be so gullible, Matt. It looks like shit and that’s the way it’s supposed to look. Is that what you would expect to be the headquarters of one of the most advanced undersea endeavors in our Navy?”

  Bewildered but catching on I shook my head.

  “No sir. I would probably think that was an old maintenance shed or even lawnmower storage facility… except for all the antennas.”

  “Good. The building’s cover works well. Inside is a wonderland of electronic storage and decoding equipment and some of the most powerful computers in existence. We’re rather proud of it; you’ll see why in a few moments. It doesn’t even have a name it’s just called the ‘building.’ Now remember this is all under the Top Secret Umbra cloak; never speak of it outside our circles.”

  Just then, from the cockpit came Harper’s voice.

  “Mugu tower, Osprey N0099 on approach. I’m a VTOL so I don’t need much room. Please assign landing pad. Touchdown expected in two minutes.”

  The radio crackled, “Osprey N99, Mugu tower, please proceed to the same helipad you used this morning. No traffic expected there for two hours. Tell the Admiral a Navy Staff car will pick him up.”

  “Roger tower. Just dropping him off. I’ll be flying out in ten minutes. We’re on final approach now. Hold onto your hats. N99 out.”

  Having flown on the Osprey numerous times, I was prepared for the turbines’ rotation to vertical producing a weird braking sensation in midair but the Admiral wasn’t. Only his second landing, he told me, he wasn’t yet accustomed to flying in a ‘Transformer’ aircraft as he called it. Being old school, he preferred the Huey and Sikorsky fixed-rotor craft. “There is nothing stranger than riding for an hour on a plane at three-hundred miles per hour,” he had said, “and then have it change shape and just stop in midair hovering on a giant cushion of air.”

  “I’ll never get used to this,” he muttered. “It’s not Navy, just PFM. That’s what it is.”

  “PFM?” I asked expecting another black world reference.

  He looked at me frowning.

  “You haven’t heard of PFM before?”

  “No sir. Can’t say that I have. I’m guessing it’s a highly classified acronym. True?”

  Guffawing he answered.

  “No it’s not, Mr. Cross, although you may run across it in your new Black Ops mission with us. An important term for your vocabulary it’s ‘Pure Fricking Magic’ and that’s the R rated version. It’s when some effect, action, or process is seemingly inexplicable.”

  I felt like an idiot not knowing that.

  “Oh yeah. That PFM. Thought there might be another one.”

  His obvious eye roll and smirk told me that he didn’t buy it.

  Soon clouds of dust and debris rushed over us as we touched down and Harper killed the engines.

  “Harper, let’s wait inside until the dust settles,” he called to the front.

  “Yes sir,” the voice from the cockpit answered barely audible over the rotors’ spin-down.

  Outside on the tarmac a dark blue sedan with a U.S. Navy insignia on the door awaited our arrival. Nearby a uniformed driver standing in the bright noonday sun waited, holding his cap with one hand and inspecting his cell phone with the other.

  Moments later Harper unlatched and opened the door then dropped the steps to the tarmac.

  “Ready for some fun, Mr. Cross?” Greenfield asked.

  He unbuckled his harness, grabbed his briefcase, and started for the door. I was right behind him feeling like a stranger in a strange land but since it had been my home for four years, I thought I might still recognize a few landmarks.

  As I exited the plane stepping down onto the top step, I felt Harper’s hand on my shoulder and stopped.

  “I don’t know where you’re going,” he said, “or what you’ll be doing, Marker, but knock ‘em dead. I’ll be heading out now back to the Tine. Take care.”

  I hadn’t been called that nickname since March when I had the pleasure of working with him and my old Navy diving instructor Chief Briscoe. The Chief always called me that. Must have rubbed off on Harper but since we had risked our lives together and we became brothers in arms doing so he had a right to call me that.

  “Thanks for the ride, Bill,” I said saluting him. Even though I wasn’t in uniform or the Navy for that matter I had such great respect for him that I thought it appropriate. He must have thought the same: he returned my salute.

  Greenfield waiting at the bottom of the stairs yelled back to me.

  “Come on, Cross, we’ve got work to do. Important work.” Then I saw him glance at his watch and head toward the waiting staff car.

  His orders were sharp and compelling. Not sure if it was the tone of his voice or his way with words that intimidated me but I quick-stepped down the stairs and joined him just as the driver opened the doors for our entry.

  He fell into the seat beside me, looked at the driver, and then barked:

  “Hangar 405. Drop us in back.”

  I glanced over at him curious about our n
ew destination. It was not the ‘building’ because I knew where 405 was: across the main drag from the ‘building.’ Wanting to comment on his mistake my filter finally kicked in. Instead, I sat quietly waiting to see what would happen next remembering his words: “Nothing is as it seems.”

  Now during my tour on the Navy Hangar 405 was a semi-active hangar, used for sheltering and maintaining the few aircraft that still used the active runways. It was a type II hangar roughly a football field wide and a hundred feet deep. Two main rail-mounted doors each eighty feet across opened in the middle yielding a gaping one-hundred-sixty-foot entryway large enough for a C-130. An average Navy hangar; there was nothing spooky going on inside to my knowledge.

  The trip from our landing pad to the rear of Hangar 405 took only a few minutes but in that time I saw many familiar buildings mostly boarded up or barricaded. Exactly what I expected but depressing as hell. So was the rear of Hangar 405.

  Chapter 6. Hangar 405

  I found it strange that we had stopped at a small man-sized door at the rear of the hangar. A red sign on the door read: DANGER: ELECTRICAL ROOM - KEEP OUT!. As we stepped from the car, Greenfield motioned the driver to drive away leaving us standing alone in the dingy littered alleyway behind the hangar. He led me to the door and stopped.

  Behind it was a room slightly larger than a telephone booth extending out from the hangar’s rear wall. It had never caught my attention in my four years on station but then I never used the alleys for travel. Off to the side of the door at shoulder level was a gray Cutler-Hammer breaker box looking weathered by years of salt sea air exposure. My eyes went wide when Greenfield quickly surveyed our surroundings and pulled open the cover revealing a sleek black numerical keypad. Then quickly he punched in a few numbers and closed the cover. After a soft buzz from the box, he hefted open the door.

  “After you,” he said.

  Inside, gray electrical panels surrounded us from floor to ceiling crowding us together. The warm air smelled of ozone and sintered metal. In the silence, I could hear buzzes and clicks behind the banks of breaker and relay boxes.