As he watched the soldiers effortlessly perform synchronized push-ups, he thought how surprising it was that attacks on car carriers were as rare as they were, especially a ship configured like his — RORO, or Roll On Roll Off. It was a ship type that required no loading and unloading equipment or any special port. All that was needed, other than the metal ramps that were part of the ship’s equipment, were drivers.
An entire boat could be unloaded in a matter of hours. The Marine detachment was on his ship because the remnants of SEATO, the South East Asian Treaty Organization, the counterpart of NATO, had determined that this particular cargo of pick-up trucks had a paramilitary value, it being the platform of choice for insurgents and rebels. These amateurs cobbled Russian and Chinese missile launchers and anti-aircraft guns to the truck beds. The world’s TV news reports were peppered with these hastily assembled weapon systems, which prominently displayed the large red Toyota logo across their tailgates.
Kasogi’s grandfather had sailed these waters for the Imperial Navy during the war against American and English imperialists. He was the commander of the great battleship Musashi, a Yamamoto-class battlewagon that was the sister ship to the glorious Yamamoto. It was a somewhat more esthetic improvement in terms of her sleeker lines and more proportioned profile, which made her name Musashi, meaning elegant or splendid, a fitting touch. Now, because his grandfather and the Empire had lost that war, the Navy was reduced to a coastal defense role, and Kasogi was shuttling cars to America instead of following in the path that surely would have led to command of an aircraft carrier or fleet, if Japan had been allowed to have offensive weapons.
“Captain, contact five thousand yards astern.”
Kasogi quickly snapped out of his retrospective frame of mind. “Commercial traffic?”
“Small signature, wait, three targets closing at thirty knots,” the radar operator twenty feet to right in the wheelhouse reported. Before the natural acoustic echo of the seaman’s voice faded off in the cavernous bridge, Kasogi hit the recently installed large red button, which sounded a klaxon. The Marines immediately broke their pace and scrambled at a flat-out run to their weapons lockers. The muted sound of all watertight doors being closed and sealed followed. The radio shack started transmitting an advisory back to the shipping company that a potential attack was under way.
From over the mast atop the bridge, the best weapon Kasogi had was buffeted by the air as the American-made Cobra attack helicopter roared into a big loop and tilted its main rotor in a beeline to the three blips now forty-five hundred yards in his wake. This additional weapon was a part of the aviation branch of the Japan Air Self-Defense Forces. Even though he was merchant marine, he was at least in ceremonial command of the kai (sea) and kuu (air) troops. Kasogi took a position on the starboard thruster control station right off the bridge, where he could see the stern of his ship. The Marines had taken up positions aft, training their Squad Automatic Weapons and one portable Gatling gun at a target they couldn’t yet see. Only four times before, twice without the Marines and armaments, had his ship prepared for an attack. Luckily, each time it had been a false alarm. Even so, on one of those very days, a Greek freighter, not ten miles from his ship, had been taken and her cargo and crew held for nearly a year until a ransom was negotiated and paid.
Kasogi thought of his son’s tenth birthday, now six weeks away. He was planning to be at the celebration, not held in a makeshift prison in some God-awful desert prison camp. He found himself urging the copter to get there already and report. A few seconds later, the radio crackled, “Fishing boats, changing course to the west. Repeat — fishing boats, changing course to the west.”
Kasogi took his first deep breath since the initial report of the targets seven minutes ago. It was like a shot of whiskey finding its way to every nerve ending in his body. His shoulders resumed the erect posture of an officer befitting his rank and his next breaths were deeper and sweeter than any he could remember that week.
On the way back to the hulking car carrier’s improvised helipad, Lieutenant Pilot Koji Takahashi smiled as from his noisy perch two hundred feet above the calm Pacific Ocean he saw the dark grey outline of a huge whale underwater, right behind the Shobi Maru, probably feasting on plankton stirred up by the huge props of the forty-two hundred metric ton displaced hole in the ocean. He snapped a picture with his iPhone and then keyed his mic to inform the captain of the good luck omen that was playing and feasting off the tail of his ship.
IX. THESE BOOTS ARE MADE FOR TALKING
Nine hundred euro is only one thousand three hundred fifty dollars, and they were the best Louboutin boots she had ever seen. She’d cut down on the Starbucks and skip a few dinners out, and in four months or so, she wouldn’t even feel the pinch in her pocketbook — the new one — the French one, the four-hundred-euro one, that anybody who had seen both would agree, went perfectly with the coveted red-soled, knee-high snake-skin-print boots that were actually her size! The normally twenty-five hundred-dollar boots were a deal and a steal. Maybe seven months, Brooke thought as she turned the corner toward her hotel. Her phone rang.
“Brooke, its Bill; are you near a computer?”
“Two minutes away from the embassy.”
“Get on SCIAD and call me once you are on.”
“Bill, what’s up?”
“Not over the phone.”
When Brooke got to the conference room, Joey was already there. The TV was on and CNN international was showing file footage of a big cargo ship. Superimposed on the screen was a still of a reporter relaying information over a phone to the CNN anchor. The lower third title on the screen read, “Toyota ship attacked.”
Bill was on the speakerphone as Brooke used her portable retinal scan device to log on to Bill’s private super-encrypted SCIAD network.
“Okay, I’m on.”
“Good, Brooke. Joey, I think this has a connection to what happened to Brooke in the Indian Ocean and what you are tracking down now.”
“Bill, the news is saying the pirates somehow got a bomb aboard the ship.” Joey said.
“I just sent you a video that the State Department, at my request, has asked the Japanese Defense Forces to hold tight.”
Brooke hit the video icon and a QuickTime movie popped on the screen. It was a voice print pattern that wiggled and modulated as the sound of a voice in Japanese was dialed down low in the background. A zipper of English words traveled past as an interpreter voiced them in synchronization. The voice being heard was identified in a graphic as: JDF PILOT. “Captain Toshihira, you have luck on your aft quarter. There is a magnificent whale surfing in your wake.”
The graphic identifying the speaker changed from JDF PILOT to: SHIP CAPTAIN, “May he stay clear of those commercial fishermen.”
The video ended. Brooke looked back at the TV. “So the media doesn’t have this?”
“No, and we are going to keep it that way,” Bill said.
“You’re thinking this is Brooke’s whale?”