The Monkey Handlers

by G Gordon Liddy

  “Glory be ta God!” said Sullivan. “I’d better be gettin’ that out right away. God bless ya!” He walked rapidly back to his car and got back in. The worried expression on his face drew a “What is it? What’s going on?” from Stephanie Hannigan.

  Sullivan didn’t answer her. He backed the car a bit too fast for Stephanie’s comfort and headed to bypass the Riegar plant, then tried to regain his composure. His cheer sounded forced as he said, “Fire at the plant. No need to interrupt our plans fer breakfast.” He turned down a heavily timbered wooden ramp to the dock and parked in the lee of the Aka Maru. “An’ here we are!” he said.

  “Here?” said Stephanie, remaining in her seat. “We’re going to have breakfast here?”

  Sullivan got out, took a briefcase from the backseat, and opened Stephanie’s door. “Y’can’t see it from inside there, lass.”

  Reluctantly, Stephanie got out of the car. Sullivan pointed up in the air, and Stephanie followed his finger up to the bridge of the Aka Maru, towering above them. The ship was moored fore and aft to the dock, with her stern directly opposite Sullivan’s automobile. With the exception of two loading cranes, her entire superstructure was aft.

  “There?” Stephanie asked. “That’s where we’re having breakfast?”

  “Well, not on the bridge, although we’ll visit there.” Sullivan walked Stephanie toward the stairs erected to lead up the gangplank to the weather deck. “I’ll introduce you to the captain, then I have to interview some scientists ab’ard, then we have breakfast with the captain and the other officers. As you can imagine, from that height the view downriver is glorious.”

  “We have to climb all the way up there?”

  “That we do.”

  “Oh, God,” said Stephanie, “I’ve got absolutely the wrong shoes!” She reached back and slipped her heels off one at a time and carried them with her purse. “Men,” she said with a vehemence that startled Brian Sullivan, “know absolutely nothing!”

  Jan van Loon, the third mate, was waiting for them as they stepped aboard off the gangplank. He saluted casually and logged them in, then walked them around to what he called the main ladder off the weather deck, to the fore and center of the superstructure, then apologized for not being able to accompany them farther, as he had to return to his post.

  “Ladder?” said Stephanie in exasperation. “I’m wearing a skirt. I’m not going up any ladder!”

  Van Loon laughed. “It’s just a nautical expression, ma’am. It’s really a stairway, and you’ll be quite comfortable. We do have real ladders throughout the ship, but the main ladder is something you’ll find familiar. Bit of a hike, though, it’s five flights up to the bridge deck.”

  “Hence the view,” Sullivan offered cheerfully.

  “How’s the food on this boat?” Stephanie asked.

  “Ship, ma’am,” van Loon corrected. “The rule of thumb is, if it’s small enough to be taken aboard another vessel, it’s a boat. If not, it’s a ship.”

  “You still haven’t answered my question,” said Stephanie in her best lawyerlike tone. “The food, remember?”

  Van Loon smiled and in his British accent said, “The only American aboard besides the pilot is the cook, ma’am. The coffee’s an acceptable substitute for a triple bypass, and you can’t go wrong on the bacon and eggs.”

  “Fine,” said Stephanie as she started up the stairs, “I can spend the day listening to my caffeine-fueled heart trying to slam blood through my cholesterol-plugged arteries.”

  Five flights later, flushed and breathless, Stephanie was introduced to Isu Horoko, captain of the Aka Maru. The captain bowed, and Stephanie wasn’t sure what to do in response, curtsy? Bow? She settled for putting out her right hand and, to her relief, as the captain straightened up, he took it and gave it a polite shake. She was then introduced to Arthur Cole, the first mate, whose unmistakable Australian accent explained his breezy personality. Sullivan excused himself to confer with Captain Horoko, who instructed Cole to show Stephanie around the bridge. She moved immediately to the great glass windows, which, she had to admit to herself, did indeed give a magnificent view south, down the Hudson River.

  “It’s beautiful,” Stephanie said finally, turning away from the view and toward Cole.

  “It is,” said Cole. Then, pointing with a sweeping gesture to an array of radar repeaters, loran controls, annunciators, binnacle, and telephones, he said, “I don’t know how much interest you have in all this, but I can take you through it one at a time, if you like.”

  Brian Sullivan, Stephanie saw from the corner of her eye, was gesturing with a nod of his head toward the Riegar plant in his conversation with the ship’s captain. He started back toward them, and Stephanie said, “No, no, I think we’re going to have breakfast soon.”

  Sullivan corrected her, “In a few minutes, we’ll join the officers in the wardroom, but I’m off first to interview the scientists. Won’t be long. Hold my place at the table.” He turned away without waiting for a reply and went back down the main ladder. Stephanie returned to the broad glass and the view.

  One of the most impressive sights, Stephanie thought, was not of the river but the broad weather deck of the vessel that spread out beneath her gaze, five decks below, like a football field viewed from a skybox high up above the end zone. It was broad and flat. Its plane was interrupted only by two huge cargo-loading cranes, now quiet. She looked straight down and saw four men emerge from the area near the main ladder and move to a watertight door. Two by two, they appeared to be having difficulty carrying two metal cylinders through the door and downward. She turned to Cole. “Could you tell me what those men are doing?” she asked.

  Cole looked downward in the direction Stephanie pointed and said, “It appears our scientist passengers are moving some of their equipment—scuba gear, I think—down the ladder into area 1-Alpha starboard. That’s the first three cargo bays forward of the superstructure on the right side of the ship. I caught a glimpse of them once when they were collecting their meals. Strange lot.” He paused. “Speaking of meals, I’m to have the honor of escorting you into the wardroom for breakfast. Unfortunately, the seat next to you is reserved for your friend the reporter.”

  Stephanie smiled at Cole. “Well, there’s always the seat on the other side of me.”

  “Alas,” said Cole as they moved through the passageway, “that one’s reserved for the captain.”

  Stephanie giggled lightheartedly. She was enjoying the unaccustomed attention of a number of attractive males at the same time.

  “What’s so funny?” Cole asked her.

  “Oh, it just came to me. That huge flat deck. Take away the cranes, and it could be an aircraft carrier in an old black and white war movie. I can just hear Captain Horoko saying, ‘Ah, so, Yankee pirot. You terr us where Amelican pranes com flom.’”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Forget it,” said Stephanie, “you hadda see the picture.”

  * * *

  At 0606 Michael Stone slid the Mustang up to the superunleaded pump at Buckley’s Texaco, pushed the button for Cash, lifted the lever, and inserted the nozzle into his filler pipe. He set the trigger for slow delivery and, knowing the gasoline delivery would shut off automatically, went to the trunk and pulled out a two-tank scuba backpack. He carried it into the garage area, found the proprietor, and said, “Buck, can you spare some acetylene and oxygen?”

  “Everything in the joint’s for sale except the missus,” said Buckley. “You want me to put it into that thing?”

  “Yeah, and I’m going to need a torch head and some hose clamps.”

  “How ’bout some weldin’ rods.”

  “Won’t need them.”

  “Uh-huh. How much gas you want in them tanks? What’ll they hold?”

  “Just fill them until the pressure gauges are against the stops.”

  Michael Stone watched as Buckley filled the scuba tanks from large, heavy tanks he kept in his garage for welding and cutting metal
.

  “So, how’s it going?” Stone asked to forestall any more questions about his curious request.

  “Gettin’ harder all the time,” said Buckley. “I’m about the only real mechanic’s garage left in town, and still the company wants to turn this place into a gas ’n’ go joint like all the rest. I make my real living as a mechanic, not on the gas. As it is, I gotta be here six A.M. every day. With a gas ’n’ go, have to man the place twenty-four hours. It’s a bitch.”

  Stone watched carefully as the left tank gauge went to the stop from the acetylene tank. He picked up a piece of chalk that Buckley used to mark tire perforations with and used it to write C2H2 on it. Buckley unhooked the tank of acetylene and attached the tank of oxygen to the other scuba tank and filled it. Stone marked it O2 with the chalk.

  “How many clamps you need?” Buckley asked.

  “Give me four and throw in a two-into-one hose splitter.”

  The two men walked back to the Mustang, where Stone put the scuba tanks back in the trunk and paid his bill, then drove the short distance back to Garden Street.

  “Get the tanks filled?” asked Pappy.

  “Yep,” Stone answered.

  “What’s the plan?” Wings asked.

  “I’m going for the fairwater,” said Stone. “She won’t get far with that gone.”

  “What’s a fairwater?” Saul asked.

  “Propeller-shaft support,” Wings answered for Stone. “With that gone, when the screw starts to turn, the shaft’ll bend. She’ll tear herself up.”

  “You’ll need HE for that,” said Arno. “Don’t tell me you’ve got some C-Four and detonators out in that damn garden shed of yours.”

  Stone laughed. “No, that’s the problem. I’ve got no more explosive, high or low, and no detonators. I’m going to cut through it with an oxyacetylene torch.” He turned over the scuba tanks and went to work, using narrow-gauge plastic garden hose, pruning shears, the splitter, and the hose clamps. “See,” he said, “I can breathe pure oxygen for the time it’ll take for this op. The splitter lets me bleed off as much oh-two as I need to feed the torch head here. The acetylene in the other tank feeds the torch directly.”

  “How you gonna light her off?” asked Pappy.

  “I’ll have to surface and use a waterproof match from my camping kit. It’s light out now, and I’ll only be on the surface for a moment, in the shadow of the hull. She’s not that big a vessel. I’ll cut through that son of a bitch in about fifteen minutes and haul ass.”

  “You want us for backup?”

  “Thanks, Pappy, but this is the only scuba gear I’ve got. You guys all stay here until I get back and can figure how to get the authorities involved without getting us all twenty-five to life. If Aunt May comes down, tell her I’m off swimming.” Stone completed his jury-rigging of the scuba tanks and took out a waterproof match. He turned the valves on the two tanks, lit a match, then touched off the torch. The flame was long and yellow. Stone adjusted the oxygen valve until the flame grew short and blue, then diamond small and white. Satisfied, he backed off until the flame was a bit larger and blue again for ease of relighting. “Take care of this for me, will you?” Stone said to Arno Bitt, and handed him his .45 Colt. He checked to see that his Gerber was still secure, picked up his wet suit, tanks, mask, and flippers, then said, “Saul, we’ll be less conspicuous in the van. You drive. Bring the Browning, just in case.”

  Minutes later, Saul turned the van onto the ramp over the railroad tracks along the river and headed toward the Riegar dock. “Stop here,” Stone said, surveying the scene through the windshield. He estimated the distance to the pier, then from there to the stern of Aka Maru, and did some mental arithmetic. One of the most important things he had learned in his training as a SEAL was the distance underwater each kick of his legs would propel him, and how to count those kicks to know when he had arrived at a predetermined place, guided by a compass-equipped navigation board. Stone had no board with him and, because of the daylight and relatively short distances involved, didn’t need one.

  “Park over there,” Stone said, “in between those trucks. You’ll blend right in. Keep your nose out a bit so you can see the area. That’ll also give me a place behind you masked from all sides but the river. I’ll go in from there and meet you back here.”

  As Saul backed the van into place, Stone donned his wet suit, flippers, and tanks, then belted on his Gerber and taped it securely. He picked up his mask and left by the rear door of the van. Saul waved to him and gave him the old intelligence-community sendoff line: “Have a good trip.”

  Minutes later, Michael Stone was kicking his way steadily six feet underwater and counting. Just where he expected to see it, the end of the Riegar pier appeared, first as a dark shadow, then, as he closed in on it, the individual timbers. He paused, then, using the pier end as a bearing, moved deeper under the water and started to count his kicks as he headed for the stern of the Aka Maru. There, above the water in the forest of timber supports of the dock, concealed in the gloom, Helmar Metz, black wet-suited and finned, black Draeger unit belted to him, waited like a moray eel in a coral hole for his prey.

  Because of his low angle, Metz didn’t spot Stone’s telltale bubble trail until it was closing on the stern of the ship. Silently, he slipped under the dirty water to intercept it, his path free of any bubbles because of the Draeger rebreather unit that absorbed waste his lungs exhaled and fed him purified air through chemical action.

  Stone slowed as he approached the dark mass of Aka Maru’s hull, then followed its receding swell toward the huge, looming propeller, projecting out from the stern hull on its shaft. He looked upward and, outlined in the light filtering from above, could see the fairwater, at the far outboard end of the propeller shaft, where it met at a right angle and rose vertically to join the hull.

  Helmar Metz, lower down in the water, used the same filtered daylight to spot Stone. As an experienced frogman, he knew his enemy would seek to cripple the ship by attacking the propeller-shaft support. It was a standard procedure. A modest amount of high-explosive plastique—Semtex, for example—attached with any one of a number of different time-delayed detonators, and poof! the job was done. His course of attack was obvious. He would stay beneath his enemy’s depth so he could see him but not vice versa. At the moment the enemy frogman arrived at the underwater intersection of the propeller shaft and its support, he would pause to let him begin to get busy with his explosive. Using that distraction, Metz would come up from beneath him unbetrayed by any bubbles, and, with his knife, disembowel his opponent and leave him to the fish.

  Michael Stone arrived at the intersection of the fairwater and propeller shaft and paused to untape his torch head and retrieve a waterproof match. Seeing Stone engaged with what he believed to be his explosive in the dirty water, Metz launched himself forward and upward, knife out before him, for the kill. At that moment, the unsuspecting Michael Stone propelled himself to the surface to light his torch. By a factor of seconds and several feet, Metz’s knife missed its target, and his body passed under Stone. Stone saw its shadow beneath him, dropped the torch head, which stayed hanging on its hoses, and drew the Gerber. At the same time, he executed a racing flip turn off the side of the hull of the Aka Maru and came up to Metz just as the German was turning himself. For a moment, both men sized each other up, Metz noting the torch head hanging from its hoses, a vulnerability in combat. Stone recognized the Draeger unit and recalled its own danger to a user.

  Metz feinted with his empty hand as if to grasp the torch head. Stone counterfeinted as if he was going to block the move, and Metz, drawn in, struck forward with his knife. Stone moved his body slightly aside and trapped Metz’s knife arm under his own. The powerful German flipped them both upside down in the swirling water but was unable to free his arm from under Stone’s. They spun again, like two alligators fighting over a carcass. Then both men got the same idea at the same time and went for each other’s air hoses. Both were successful
in ripping the hose from the other’s mouth. However, now Stone had a deadly advantage. Metz tried desperately to get his air hose back in place in his mouth before it could take in any water. To go for the surface was to open himself to death from Stone’s knife. If he could continue to use the rebreather, he might be able to kill his opponent while the man was trying to get his own mouthpiece back in. He gambled.

  Metz got his mouthpiece back in place before Stone replaced his, but some water had gotten into the Draeger unit. It turned what was sent back for Metz to breathe from life-giving air to a deadly caustic cocktail. As Metz clutched at his throat and kicked for the surface, Stone put him out of his agony by plunging the blade of the Gerber upward in the hollow underneath Metz’s chin. The long, slender blade went through the base of the tongue, then upward through the soft palate and directly into the brain. When Stone felt the resistance of the blade striking the inside of the top of Metz’s skull, he wiggled it around as would a biology student a needle in the brain of a frog.

  Stone towed Metz’s body underwater back under the dock and wedged it between two timbers. As he was doing so, he was shoved forcefully into the timbers himself by a massive pulse of water. As he recovered, he was hit by another, then another. The waves were coming with increasing frequency but with diminishing force.

  Stone knew the cause immediately. It was the propeller of the Aka Maru. She was under way!

  19

  “What’s happening? What’s going on?” Stephanie Hannigan asked van Loon as the deck beneath her feet started to tremble from the vibration of the powerful, railroad-car-sized diesel engine buried seven flights beneath her in the bowels of the Aka Maru.

  “Ship’s engine, ma’am,” van Loon answered. “One gets used to it after a while. Hard to sleep without it.”

  Stephanie checked her watch: 6:49. She ran to the great glass expanse of the bridge deck. The horizon was swinging left. “We’re moving!” she cried. “We’re going! What’s going on? Where’s Mr. Sullivan?”