Posted: 6/28/2011 4:09:28 PM EDT
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Hi everyone. I don't know if you all remember me, but about two years ago I posted a few chapters of a story I decided to write on here. If any of you want to, you should be able to find the old thread somewhere.
Anyway, I thought that I might start posting a story again. This time however I have redone the story and started from the beginning. I dont know if I am explaining or just jabber-jawing. Those of you who know the old story, know I needed to start over, so here it is. I am just posting the first part of chapter 1 today. I will write the next part as soon as I sort out my ideas. ETA: apologies if this first part is a little dry. I don't know much about writing, just felt like sharing a story. I will attempt to get part 2 up tomorrow. ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––- Running Scared Rev. 2
The morning rays of October 19, 2010 found Air Force Second Lieutenant Gregory Lewis conducting the preflight checks of his C-130 Hercules at the end of a runway at Hickam Air Force Base in Honalulu, Hawaii. With his copilot calling out gauges, switches, and control levers, Second Lieutenant Lewis sips at a battered, blue Air Force thermos of coffee while scribbling checks on a clipboard. This pre-flight system overview had become routine after two years, and Lewis found his attention drifting from the calls for checks back to the twenty-three year old Hawaiian co-ed he had left in his bed that morning. After a moment, Second Lieutenant Lewis had finished scribbling onto the clipboard, setting it and the small thermos aside and picking up the aircraft’s intercom. “Good morning everyone, this is your captain speaking,” he called to the crew in his best airline pilot imitation while the crew began manning their positions in preparation for take-off. “Today’s flight will be a seven hour hop over to the mainland, with a stopover at the Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base in Fort Worth. We will be dropping off Captain Evans and his men for maneuvers. We will then top off the tanks and head to New York’s JFK International Airport where we will be transferring cargo to an Army supply truck. Due to the length of our assigned runway today, we have reduced fuel, so we will be conducting a mid-air refueling after initial takeoff.” With that Second Lieutenant Lewis keyed off the mic and pushed the throttle levers forward. The plane lurched forward and began gaining speed. “At this time I ask that all of your trays and seatbacks are in their upright and locked positions. Please let your stewardess know if at any point you become nauseous, that way we can all make fun of you, thank you,” Second Lieutenant Lewis chuckled into the mic as the plane became airborne and began gaining altitude. Refueling would begin in fifteen minutes. The nose of the C-130 broke through the cloud cover over Hawaii. Second Lieutenant Lewis leveled out the plane’s wings at an altitude of 31,000 feet. Lewis searched the sky for the refueling plane that was in a holding pattern awaiting the Hercules’ arrival. To his front and about 1000 feet above him Second Lieutenant Lewis spotted the refueling plane. He keyed his helmet mic and hailed the other planes pilot. “Whiskey-3 to Whiskey-9, over.” Lewis called over the Air Force radio wave. “Whiskey-9 reads, over.” The pilot of the refueling plane returned. “I read altitude of 32, 530 feet for refuel, maintaining airspeed of 278 knots, over.” Second Lieutenant Lewis called off his gauge readings. “Affirmative Whiskey-3. Refueling boom’s ready Second Lieutenant Lewis. Time for refueling should be 15 minutes. Good Luck.” The other pilot called, as the refueling boom began to snake out from under the plane’s open rear hatch. After missing the boom on the first attempt, Second Lieutenant Lewis managed to make contact between the refueling boom and the fuel port above the cockpit. Setting the cruise, Lewis grabbed a tattered Reader’s Digest magazine from beside his chair and began the wait for refueling. He could hear the fuel pumping through the pipes above him as he started an article about the advantages of LED TVs to that of LCD TVs. Five minutes into refueling a warning indicator light kicked on and started buzzing. Second Lieutenant Lewis keyed his mic again, “Lieutenant Schultz, are you reading any indicators?” He asked the other pilot. “Yes, there’s a small electrical storm forming off the coast of California over San Francisco. Should head east with the winds. I shouldn’t be much of a problem. We will top you off with enough fuel to skirt the storm.” Second Lieutenant heard through the mic’s speaker. “Affirmative, thanks for the heads up Doctor.” Lewis said as he returned the mic. Doctor was Lieutenant Shultz call sign, referencing Dr. Scholl’s medical foot pads. After separating from the refueling plane, Second Lieutenant Lewis adjusted his flight plan to avoid the electrical storm forming on the western seaboard of the United States, by pushing further south, running nearly parallel to the southern coastal boarder of the United States. The new flight plan would take him through Mexican controlled waters and airspace, but only for about twenty minutes. After correcting his direction, Second Lieutenant Lewis set the cruise, and sat back to relax for the remainder of the six and a half hour flight. The Mexican mainland was cresting the horizon when warning indicators once again lit up and began buzzing. Second Lieutenant Gregory Lewis looked out of his port side window for the storm that had set off the indicators before. A wide, dark cloud lingered in the stratosphere nearly one hundred miles to port of the C-130. The cloud appeared to be much larger than the usual electrical storms encountered at this height, and it was on an intercept with the Second Lieutenants flight path. “Where the hell did she come from?” The Second Lieutenant’s copilot asked as he jabbed a finger towards the large dark splotch that intermittently glowed around the edges from the internally raging static storm. “I dunno. Must have drifted into the slipstream and been pushed out to sea,” the Second Lieutenant stated as he began quickly flipping switches and pulling levers, dropping the big bird out of cruise, and back into manual control. Lewis grabbed for the airplane intercom and keyed the mic, “Attention crew, we will be dropping in altitude shortly to avoid a large electrical storm. There may be some turbulence so I ask that everyone buckle up and prepare for a bumpy ride.” Second Lieutenant Lewis returned the handset to its holder just in time to catch the yoke as the heavy Hercules class plane shook under the influence of turbulence. The Second Lieutenant pushed the yoke forward, fighting the bounce of turbulence, and forcing the plane to drop in altitude. The plane shuddered hard, and then smoothed as it dropped the twenty-five-hundred feet necessary to place the plane under the cloud bank. Lewis pushed the throttle levers all the way forward, allowing the engines to exercise their full power and speed. He was hoping to beat the cloud to their intercept point, and pass it, leaving it safely behind. ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––- The yoke in his hands shook violently again, signaling another heavy dose of turbulence. Green and yellow indicator lights were flashing inside the cabin, and warning buzzers were sounding from speakers at the back of the cockpit. They had fought to outrun the storm for almost an hour, but in the thicker air of the lower atmosphere, the plane was not able to keep up with the storm and it had finally overtaken them and intercepted their flight path. The sky had darkened as the storm passed overhead, occasionally lighting up the sky with its internal lighting. The C-130 was less than two hundred miles from the California/ Mexico Peninsula when a bolt of static induced lighting streaked from above, and struck the number three engine, causing it to burst into flames and disintegrate as its fuel rich lines were breached. The plane lurched hard under the impact, losing altitude immediately. “Shit! Activate fire control; we have a fire in three.” Lewis called to his copilot, as he throttled back on the engines hoping to reduce speed and prevent the wing from shearing off. His co-pilot reached to a console on the ceiling between them and pulled down the grey fuel shutoff lever for the number three engine, simultaneously thumbing the red extinguish button for the same engine. Second Lieutenant Lewis’ copilot grabbed for the handset of the center mounted radio, switching the dial from the Air Force band to the 243MHz Emergency broadcast band. Keying the button, the copilot called into the microphone, “Mayday, Mayday. Craft in distress. Whiskey-3 to Maritime Rescue. Coordinates to follow, over” Second Lieutenant Lewis fumbled with his own intercom handset as he attempted to straighten out the aircraft while it rocked through the storm. “Prepare for a water landing. I don’t think we are going to make it to the mainla-“ The second lieutenants handset went dead as a second bolt of electrical energy smashed into the plane. All of the flashing indicator lights abruptly stopped as the electrical surge tripped the plane breakers, shutting of all electrical equipment. The plane’s engines stuttered, no longer being provided fuel by the electric pumps, and the plane began losing altitude at an alarming rate. The plane accelerated toward the water, refusing to respond to the yokes commands and the cursing of Lewis and his copilot. Realizing that trying to work the controls was useless, Lewis’ copilot jumped from his seat and attempted to pull open the breaker box at the back of the cabin. If the breakers could be tripped again, they would be able to regain control of the aircraft. The plane continued accelerating towards the water in an almost vertical line. There was a shudder as the plane accelerated past what the damaged wing could handle. Pieces of damaged wing began to break away, and the interior support beams began twisting under the extreme forces being applied to them. The copilot, First Lieutenant Benjamin Murphy, wrestled with the switches of the breaker box, desperately attempting to power the aircraft again. On the third attempt of flipping the main breaker, lights flickered in the cabin as power returned to the controls. “Get those engines started,” Second Lieutenant Lewis called as Murphy returned to his seat and began pumping the fuel levers that primed the plane’s engines. The plane’s engines turned over and roared to life, just as Second Lieutenant Lewis began to pull back hard on the yoke, breaking the plane out of its free fall. Both men were pushed back hard into their seats, the affects of positive gravity forces being felt by both men. As the G forces increased from the climb in altitude, the Yoke in Lewis’ hand wrenched violently to the side. The damaged wing was unable to handle the change in air pressure and direction, and the support structure ripped away violently, sending the big wing spinning into the planes wash, nearly striking the tail of the aircraft. A jagged stub of torn metal, ten feet in length, was all that remained attached to the fuselage. The rich mixture of aircraft fuel poured from the torn fuel lines, like blood pumping from severed arteries. Without the ability to distribute the cargo weight, and acceleration forces of the engines across both sides of the aircraft, the plane listed to the side and once again began its acceleration towards the water. The pilots struggled against their yokes, attempting to recover from the plane’s death roll. Cursing and crying, the men cut the power to the engines, hoping to slow their descent. It was useless however; the plane had already lost too much altitude from the power failure. “Oh God!” was all Second Lieutenant Gregory Lewis could whisper as the nose of the big aircraft struck the waves, blasting a torrent of water through the shattered windscreen of the cockpit. ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––- Diego Lopez, Captain of the Mexican Trawler “Cristobel”, sat in a worn lawn chair on the deck of his ship. The ship wasn’t much, an old rust bucket that had been handed down to him by his father over twenty years ago. Although the seaweed green paint was flaking away, giving in to the salty sea air, Diego took pride in his vessel and enjoyed throwing parties for his man at port when they were not trawling for fish. His men were collecting the afternoon’s catch from this morning’s castings. Captain Lopez’s vessel sat sixty-five miles off the coast of Mexico, nearest to the town of Tortugas. Captain Lopez stood from his lawn chair and moved inside to his office to grab a bottle of cheap tequila, returning to his lawn chair. Diego poured himself a small glass of the drink as he sat back in his lawn chair. An enormous roar erupted overhead, causing Diego to flail backwards in fright, collapsing his lawn chair, and splashing his drink in his face. “Fóllame!” Diego yelled to himself as he shot up off the deck of his boat. A flash of light in his peripheral vision caught his attention and Diego turned in time to see a massive splash and wall of water erupt from around a fireball in the water a few hundred yards from the bow of his boat. The water dissipated some in the air and Captain Diego Lopez could make out the broken grey fuselage of a large aircraft smoldering in the water. |
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Quoted:
Looks good so far. My only corrections are grammatical, but I wont beat you down for that when your ballsy enough to post your own work. I like the story please do. I would enjoy hearing anything that will improve the story. By the way, it might take me an extra day to get part 2 of chapter 1 up. It is longer than the previous, and I am writing off the top of my head lol |
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Quoted:
Anyone have any constructive criticisms? I am going to try to get part two of chapter one up tonight. The only criticism I'd make is that the lead character is a 2nd Lt and the command pilot. This is highly unlikely. He'd probably already be a 1st Lt by the time he was out of flight school and then HE would be the co-pilot. |
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CHAPTER 1 PART 2
Diego’s men clambered around the Pilot House in order to see the cause of the roar moments before. Curses and calls to the Lady Guadalupe were issued by the first few men to arrive at the captain’s side and view the wreckage. Captain Diego Lopez turned to the men at his side and began to yell orders in Spanish, sending the entire crew into a flurry of activity after a frightful moment. “Cut those trawling lines!” “Get those nets stowed and off the deck!” “The Lady Guadalupe curse your family if you don’t stow that gear.” Captain Lopez yelled to his men as he rounded the side of the Pilot House, entering through the scrap of lacquered particle board serving as the door at the rear of the structure. Diego rushed to the table holding his communication equipment, and quickly snatched the CB handset, simultaneously twisting the frequency dial to the maritime rescue channel. Diego began calling his GPS location into the handset as he throttled up the diesel engine powering his vessel and began maneuvering towards the smoldering wreckage that lay a few hundred yards ahead of him. The horror of the crash was not lost on Diego. The large grey aircraft, which had American Air Force markings on it, bobbed on top of the water. A large hole had opened up in the fuselage behind the metallic stump of what remained from a severed wing. This part of the plane looked as if it had blown outwards at the time of impact. Water was flowing into the cavity beyond the gash. The rear hatch of the craft which was facing Diego’s ship had been wrenched open on one side and water and debris were beginning to flow out of the narrow opening. From his vantage point at the rear of the plane, Diego could only barely make out that the nose of the craft was crumpled and pushed in several feet. Diego realized that there was no possible way that the pilot of the craft could have survived if they were in the cockpit, and sent a silent prayer to the lady Guadalupe that they would be able to find someone alive from this horrific accident. Already, Diego could see debris and bodies floating in the water surrounding the aircraft, as well as others beginning to flow out with the escaping water as the plane’s fuselage filled with the seawater. The battered bodies of several men floated amongst the wreckage of shorn metal, papers, and still sparking cables. Most wore the fatigues of America’s Army, but others wore dark blue jumpsuits. A jet of water was kicking up on the other side of the craft, and the sound of the plane’s engine turning the water could be heard over the sound of Diego’s own engine, which he cut power to, floating his vessel to within yards of the horrific attempted landing. Captain Diego Lopez’s men threw out rescue lines to some of the bodies floating in the wreckage, but soon realized many of the bodies were terribly broken from various impacts at the time of the crash. One of Diego’s men grabbed a gaffing hook from the outside wall of the rusted pilot house, and then moved to the edge of the boat’s slippery wooden deck, attempting to pull a shattered body wearing Army fatigues onto the deck. Another man grabbed the hook, and helped hoist the soaking body from the debris. Men on the other side of the boat began doing the same, hoisting the soaked bodies out of the water as men rushed below deck to grab first aid kits and supplies. One man from Diego’s crew began calling out to the water for survivors. In choppy English, the man called to the craft “yell to help, yell to help”. There were no sounds on the air other than those coming from the still smoldering fires within the plane’s fuselage, and the more distant roar of the working engine’s churning propeller. The deck of Diego’s ship was full of frantic activity for several minutes as men pulled bodies out of the water, some attempted first aid, and others dove into the wreckage to ascertain the fate of further out victims, pulling other bodies closer to the boat. The men had collected thirteen bodies, laying them out on the deck before they began hearing the sound of approaching helicopters. Diego had moved from the pilot house and down to the deck with his men, helping them where he could. He shielded his eyes as he looked up into the afternoon sky, spotting two dark marks in the sky approaching the crash from the north-west. Also approaching from the north-west, several large vessels had already crested the horizon, speeding across the ocean’s surface. Diego turned back towards his men to inform them of the incoming craft, when he spotted more vessels approaching from the west side of the crash. Diego thought he could make out the insignia of the Mexican Navy, but the ships were still too far out to discern. The roaring engine that had been running since Diego and his men arrived at the wreckage of the crashed airplane cut out suddenly, and Diego saw the torrent of water that had been shooting into the sky begin to mist and diminish. The plane’s remaining structural supports began to let out subtle moans as the weight of the water filling the fuselage overtook the craft. The plane began listing to the side without the engine’s force to counterbalance the wreckage. As the wreck nosed down into the water it rolled over dragging the heavier remaining wing into the water, some of the interior contents of the plane shook loose from the inside due to the rush of escaping air bubbles, and small black cases and containers began to float through the gash in the plane’s fuselage, and up to the ocean’s surface. The cases bobbed on the surface, the roiling water from the escaping air pushing the containers closer to Diego’s boat. One of the last remaining items to surface before the aircraft plunged below the ocean’s surface was a white case. It floated to the surface along with another body, this one dressed in dark blue fatigues. The body of the airman was handcuffed to the handle of the case, which bore the international coding insignia for extreme biological contaminates. Diego and his men could not discern these details yet from their vantage point several yards away. Upon seeing the body surface, one of Diego’s men dove into the water and swam towards it, pushing the floating black containers out of his way as he did so. Upon rolling the body over in the water, it was immediately apparent the man was deceased, as a shard of charred steel was jutting out of the man’s ribcage. Once more the fisherman began to drag the lifeless body towards the boat. Diego Lopez stepped out of the rusted and mottled brown pilot house, stepping to the edge of the deck where the young man had grabbed a hold and was attempting to push the body out of the water and onto the boat deck. Diego grabbed at the wet, dark blue jumpsuit, and hoisted the body onto the deck. A silver chain extended from the partially severed right wrist of the limp body, extending to a white case in the water. As Diego began to pull the body away from the edge of the deck, the wrist tore, completely severing the waterlogged hand, from the rest of its body. The white case and attached wrist began to float away from the boat, but Diego’s man in the water quickly snatched it up and placed it on the boat’s deck as he raised himself out of the water exhausted. The remaining seven men of Diego’s fishing crew were divided into two groups. One group of four men was busy shifting bodies on the deck, placing the oily tarps from the net’s wench equipment over the pale, lifeless bodies. The other men had just finished pulling a body from the water, and were attempting to administer CPR, the body exhibiting phantom movements, a result of the brain attempting to operate a dead body. The fingers twitched, and the glossy eyes were shifting slowly, but the body was undoubtedly dead; the neck was elongated and twisted at an odd angle, shattered from an impact with the cargo area’s bulkhead. The man’s left leg, attired in the fatigues of America’s Army, began a subtle tremor as the last remaining synapses fired within the man’s mind, attempting futilely to move. The body ceased its movements as the last synapse fired and the man’s essence left his mortal constraints. An older man on Diego’s crew closed the soldier’s glazed eyes with a rough hand, and whispered a prayer to the Lady Guadalupe. Diego’s men instinctively ducked as another roar erupted overhead, this time accompanying an orange and white helicopter as it banked in a tight arc just past Diego’s vessel. It came to hover behind Diego’s boat as another orange and white helicopter banked and began hovering above where the crashed airplane sank below the water. “This is the United States Coast Guard, Hailing maritime vessel on channel 33. Stand down and prepare for boarding.” A voice called through the outboard speakers of the helicopter to Diego’s rear. Diego did not understand the voice, having never completely learned the English language, but he did understand the actions that followed the voice. As the voice called out the series of commands again, a man in a dark jumpsuit began pulling open a side door from within the helicopter, and Diego saw a mounted machine gun being pushed out from the open door. The man pulled a lever on the side of the gun, and leveled the barrel at the deck of the “Cristobel”. Diego instinctively began to turn away and move towards the doorway that would lead him below decks to relative safety, when he saw the second helicopter begin to move from the bow of the ship, and hover closer to the starboard side, a massive grey rifle hanging out of the open doorway, swaying on a rope draped across the door frame as the gunner setting behind the rifle adjusted his position and aimed the rifle directly at Diego Lopez. Diego dropped to the deck and laid his hands out in front of him, his men beginning to do the same. “This is the United States Coast Guard. I repeat, stand down and prepare to be boarded.” The Coast Guard pilot called again on the loud speaker. He repeated the commands a second time in Spanish, and Diego finally understood. Another sliding side door on the rearmost aircraft opened, and a man attired in rescue swim gear sat down on the floor of the aircraft, swinging his black finned legs over the edge. The man pushed off from the aircraft and fell the twenty or so feet into the wind-whipped surface of the water. When his head resurfaced, he began swimming towards the deck of the boat. Similarly, the second rescue aircraft completed the same procedure, and another rescue swimmer surfaced in his crafts rotor wash. As the two men began to climb the side of the boat, onto the deck of the Cristobel, one of Diego’s men rose and began moving towards the rescue swimmers. His movement was immediately stopped as machine gun fire from one of the helicopters cut through the choppy waters ten feet away from the boat. Diego’s man slowly backed away from the decks edge with his hands raised above his shoulders. The two men stood on the deck and began barking orders and pointing towards the opposite side of the deck. Diego did not understand the men, but called for his crew to move to where they were pointing, hoping the hovering craft would not cut them down in a hail of gunfire for helping another vessel during an emergency. “Stand down. You are in foreign airspace” a booming loud speaker called from the water. In the excitement caused by the two helicopter’s arrival, Diego and his men had not seen the Mexican Navy vessel begin to pull up alongside of the crash site. Diego understood little of the helicopters response as he stood out on the edge of his deck along with his men and the tattered bodies they had pulled from the wreckage moments before. The two swimmers at the other side of the deck turned to look at the approaching Mexican Navy vessels. There were three of the large craft beginning to circle the Cristobel, and the two Coast Guard helicopters flanking her. A bright light to the north caught Diego’s attention. The white vessels that were approaching with the helicopters had sent up a signal flare. Diego counted two large White ships and a number of smaller “cutter” ships approaching. The cutter ships were making a bee-line towards the Cristobel, but the other two vessels had stopped several hundred yards away from the sunken wreckage and other boats. The two craft captain’s that had been shouting in loudspeakers alternately, must have turned their attention to the approaching vessels because the airwaves were once again quiet except for the churning rotors, and the sound of rotor wash lapping against Diego’s boat. After several minutes of inactivity, the Mexican Navy vessel once again began calling over the loud speaker. “United States Coast Guard swimmers are to abandon ship immediately.” The two rescue swimmers on board the Cristobel looked up towards the closest helicopter, its pilot motioning towards the men to return to the water. As the two men lowered themselves back into the water, their respective aircraft slowly banked and began to move away from the Cristobel, returning to their hover when they had returned to the large white vessels. One of the smaller cutter ships retrieved the two swimmers, and turned back towards the larger ships as well, the remaining cutters following. As the United States vessels turned and began traveling back towards the waters and airspace that they had jurisdiction of, one of the Mexican Navy vessels pulled up port side of the Cristobel, and tossed down an anchoring rope. One of Diego’s men hastily grabbed the rope and tied it off. “Prepare to be boarded” a young Navy sailor cried down in Spanish to the Cristobel as he tossed a rope ladder over the Navy Vessels rail. Men in camouflage jumpsuits began climbing down the ladder, assault rifles slung across their backs. Six of them gathered under the ladder and began securing the boat. “Who is the Captain of this vessel?” the last man off the ladder asked. He looked at Diego as he raised his trembling hand. The man grabbed Diego Lopez’s sleeve and pulled him towards the pilot house, questioning him as they went. Diego told him everything about seeing the crash, and looking for survivors then sorting out the dead. He told them of the plane sinking, and then the arrival of the other ships. The other man nodded his understanding and turned back towards the rope ladder. Diego conveniently left out mentioning the white case handcuffed to one of the bodies. “You will come with us” the pudgy Navy man called over his shoulder as he ascended the ladder, his men following closely behind. Diego turned to one of his crew and motioned towards the pilot house, a weary look on his face. The man walked inside and began moving levers, the twin diesel engines wheezing to life. Diego looked up to the decks of the other ships checking to see if anyone was watching as he gently shoved the white case behind him, and down the three steps to the hallway below decks. He looked around the deck as two of the Navy ships moved alongside him, escorting him back towards the coast. The third vessel stayed behind collecting the black cases and any other debris that hadn’t sunk below the ocean’s surface. After an hour Diego stepped below deck and retrieved the white case that he had concealed as his boat was escorted along the coast by Mexican Navy vessels. After cutting the handcuffs from the handle, Diego opened the case. Inside, three vials were fitted into the foam, as well a multiple notebooks and loose papers. Diego was disappointed to see that the case held water as well, no doubt due to a crack sustained in the crash. The captain removed the soggy paperwork from the case and laid it out on the table. Diego did not understand the characters on the vials, or the language that the notebooks were written in, but he did understand the significance of the Nazi swastika that burnished the covers of the leather bound notebooks. Setting aside the notebooks, Diego then picked up one of the vials. Flipping the vial over in his hand to examine it, he noticed a small crack at the base of the container. A drop of the black ichor contained inside was beginning to form outside of the vial, and Diego quickly returned the vial to its secured foam case, snapping it closed. He ran to the sink in the dining area and began to scrub his hands, all the while praying to the lady Guadalupe that he had not been contaminated by the contents of the vials. Two of Diego’s men stepped through the hallway with a tarp covered body swinging between them on an improvised stretcher. The men walked through the door to the fish freezer, placing the body with the other fourteen bodies they had managed to recover. As the men pulled the stretcher from under the body, an arm severed at the wrist swung out from under the tarp. All of the bodies had been stowed below deck in the freezer so that they would not bake in the heat above deck, and so that Diego’s men would not have to look upon the horrific injuries displayed by most of the bodies. ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––- Professor Julian Martinez sat at a large mahogany desk within a windowed room at the Puerto Cortés Airstrip looking out of a window at the pier where a small rusted fishing vessel sat. The crew of the vessel had been detained after a search of their vessel yielded contraband stolen from an American military aircraft that had crashed off the coast of Mexico. Across the mahogany desk from her sat a military man with said contraband displayed on the table before him. Julian Martinez was a micro-biology professor at the local college, and had been brought to the facility by men stating “national security” concerns. She questioned the men along the drive to the airstrip, but received no further information. Before she was even allowed in the room which she currently sat, she had to sign a waiver of non-disclosure, promising not to speak a word of anything she learned. This piqued her interest. Professor Martinez turned from the window and stood, walking to the far side of the table where a white case and stack of documents stood. The military officer handed her a leather bound notebook which she flipped through briefly. Although Julian had studied German extensively in the pursuit of her degree which she had been informed was a partial reason her being brought to the airstrip, that was many years ago, and she had not kept up on her studies. The handwriting in the notebooks was scrawled unevenly in hurried notes. Only a few words jumped out at Julian, but one phrase caught her eye, “The Final Solution”. Professor Julian Martinez reached for several more notebooks and documents, flipping through each more quickly than the last. She stopped suddenly on one document that had chemical compositions scrawled across it, with notes scribbled in the margins of the text. She set the papers back on the table and looked directly at the military officer sitting in front of her. “It’s a plague” she said in Spanish. The man looked at her a moment, a look of fear flashed in his eyes as he looked to the vials that sat in the open case. He quickly rose from his chair and stepped out of the room. Julian returned to the papers, attempting to decipher the writing. After several minutes of studying, Julian raised up to look out the window towards the docks. The tight scrawl of the handwriting was beginning to give her a headache. As she looked out of the window, she saw several soldiers pointing firearms at a group of nine men, as they were escorted to the pier and back onto the rusted fisherman’s trawler. As the trawler backed off of the pier and proceeded back out to sea, a small Navy vessel followed closely behind. Julian watched for several minutes as the two vessels moved out to the deeper waters. Suddenly a ripple of bright lights erupted from the bow of the Navy vessels. From her vantage point Julian could just barely make out the futile flailing of the fishermen as they attempted to escape the machine gun fire that ripped through their bodies. The Navy vessel moved closer momentarily, and Julian saw a large dark container being thrown onto the deck of the trawler. The Navy vessel moved towards the pier quickly as an explosion tore through the deck of the fishing trawler, the vessel quickly being engulfed in flames. Within moments the waters had swallowed much of the boat, and then it was completely below the water, the only indication it had ever been there being a plume of black smoke that rose off of the water. A chill ran down Professor Julian Martinez’s back. The door behind her opened and the same military officer that left walked back inside. He looked into her eyes as he sat down at the mahogany table, this time further away from the vials than before. “They were infected” was all he said after several long seconds. “You don’t know that” Julian said as fear began to course through her. “We could not take that chance. Please follow me, we have much to discuss.” The man said as he rose out of the chair and moved towards the door, holding it open for the professor. Julian gathered up her belongings and walked through the doorway, fear still coursing through her. ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––- It had been hours since the murder of Diego and his crew. The sun had fallen, and darkness claimed the water out past the Puerto Cortés Airstrip. Men moved in and out of buildings, and smaller boats came and went from the pier near the military instillation. A few hundred yards away from the pier, sitting in seventy feet of water rested an old rusted trawling vessel, its deck and hull broken from an explosion. Deep inside of the hull sat a once watertight compartment, at one time used for chilling fish after the catch. Inside lay the remains of fourteen American Military men. The bodies had shifted in the ships descent under the waves and lay piled against each other at the back of the room. The bodies dripping coagulated blood from various wounds, except for one. This one, wearing a dark blue jumpsuit had black streaks running along its face and exposed flesh, the black blood dripping from the nub of a severed wrist, mixing with the coagulated blood of the others. Twelve hours after the death of the airman, his eyes opened. Although no one was around to hear it, moans began coming from that room under the waves. |