Richard Johnson - Deadly Cargo - A Chilling Naval Terrorism Thriller

Josh looked up from the monitor “What took eleven hours and eighteen minutes?”

A weary look crossed Pfister’s face. “Yolanda is what took eleven hours and eighteen minutes, Mr Adams. We don’t send SAR teams into the teeth of a hurricane to chase an EPIRB signal, which may or may not have been set off accidentally. We wait until conditions allow us to initiate the search without undue risk to our personnel or equipment. The patterns of search are designed to give us optimum visual coverage of the ocean surface, but I’ve got to tell you that the sea state is still very boisterous and it doesn’t take much of a wave pattern to hide stuff.”

“Stuff as big as a container ship?”

“Mr Adams, did you ever hear of the Edmund Fitzgerald ?”

“Of course,” Josh said. “A big ore-carrying ship that went down in a storm on Lake Superior back in the 70s.”

“Tenth of November 1975. She was 726 feet overall. Almost as big as Desdemonda. Up until 1971 it was the largest carrier on the Great Lakes. The storm that killed her brought winds that were relatively mild. Averaged 42 knots with gusts a few knots higher. Seas were eight to fifteen feet. Nothing a ship like the Fitzgerald should have been concerned about.”

“So, how did it happen?”

“There are a couple of theories. The most accepted one is that some deck hatches were either damaged or left unsecure and they allowed boarding waves to flood the cargo bays. When she got low in the water, she plunged headlong into the trough of a large wave, and as the water came over her decks she couldn’t recover. It took her down in just a matter of a few seconds. Nobody had a chance to escape. All twenty-nine of her crew perished in a heartbeat. Nothing was ever seen of her on the surface, even though there was another ship close by and a search was conducted almost immediately after losing communications.”

“So what’s the other theory?”

“It’s somewhat speculative, but research into the cause of catastrophic shipwrecks involving large ships has led to a line of thinking that sometimes a ship can be too big to handle the conditions of a storm. The Edmund Fitzgerald, it is thought by some, had such a long hull that as the waves built up, her bow and stern might have been supported by crests while her midsection span was left insufficiently supported over troughs, and she broke her back.”

“Just curious, but is there any evidence to support that one?”

“Since there were no survivors or eyewitnesses, those who believe the broken hull theory cite evidence on the bottom of the lake. Divers eventually went down on the wreck and found that the mid-ship structure had disintegrated and that the stern section came to rest upside down on top of the disintegrated middle portion of the ship. Now, some say that could happen as the bow plunged into the floor of the lake and the cargo shifted forward, shearing off the stern section. But I don’t know. I’m just telling you that strange things can happen in a bad storm, and being in a huge ship does not necessarily guarantee your safety. And that was not an ocean and a relatively small storm, nothing near the strength of a hurricane the size of Yolanda.”

Josh sat back, having seen enough of the computer monitor. “So what you’re telling me is that we might never find anything of the Desdemonda ?”

The Captain nodded. “Might not. Then again, we might. We wouldn’t have search planes out there if we believed that there was nothing to look for. Perhaps some of the containers on the cargo deck broke free and we can find them.”

Josh’s eyes brightened. “That’s exactly what we’re looking for. I can’t explain everything, but the container we are after was loaded last, so it was atop the stack on the cargo deck.”

“Well, there’s certainly a better chance that a container on the cargo deck would be recoverable than one that was in the hold. If the ship broke up and went down fast, she would take to the bottom everything that was inside. But don’t get your hopes up. Some containers float around for years without being located. Others sink, and some lie just below the surface and present a hazard to navigation. There have been tragic accidents in which boats have struck semi-submerged containers and sunk.”

Josh stood and extended his hand. “Thanks. Please let me know if anything is found. And I need you to keep this quiet. It is a matter of utmost national security.”

“I understand, Mr Adams,” Pfister shook Josh’s hand and then sat back down as Josh let himself out of the office.

November 1st – San Blas Islands

Cadee walked slowly, her feet dragging on the soft sand as the idle wavelets danced around her ankles. Maria Elena chatted brightly, trying to cheer her friend. “Don’t worry, Cadee, we will see each other again. I know we will.”

Cadee broke into a sob, “I don’t know how that will ever happen. When we sail away from a place, we don’t ever seem to go back again.”

“Maybe this time it will be different. Maybe your parents will want to come back here sometime.”

“I don’t think so,” Cadee moaned. “They keep talking about all the places they want to go, but they never talk about going back to places they’ve been.”

“Well, you must honor your parents. I remember the time my mother and I were sent to get drinking water from the river. I was little, then, and the water was so heavy. My mother never complained about the burden, but I did. We stopped along the trail and she tried to cheer me up. I didn’t want to be cheerful, and I asked her how she could be happy about having to carry such a heavy burden.”

Cadee stopped walking, wiped her cheeks and looked at Maria Elena curiously. “What did she tell you?”

A smile crossed Maria Elena’s brown face. “I will never forget it. She told me that each morning when she arose, she decided that she was going to be happy.”

“Yeah, but what if you’re not happy?” Cadee whined.

“She told me that being happy is something that comes from inside, not from outside. If we let outside things control our happiness, then we are slaves to those things.”

“But I don’t want to be happy right now.”

The little Cuna girl put her arm around her friend’s shoulder. “Then that is your decision?”

“No. It’s my parents’ fault.”

“How do you want them to make you happy?”

“Stay here, so I can be friends with you.”

“Can we not be friends if we are apart?”

“Well, sure, but I’ll miss you.”

“And I will miss you. After you are gone, I will think of the things we did together, and it will bring a smile to my heart.”

Cadee threw her arms around her friend and sobbed. “Oh, how can you be so strong?”

Maria Elena hugged Cadee and whispered, “If we are not strong, we do not survive.” She stepped back and held Cadee at arm’s length by the shoulders, and looked at her with moist black eyes. “Let us make a promise that we will be together again someday.”

“Okay,” Cadee whimpered. “When?”

“I want to go to college in the United States. I read about the college named Stanford, and that is where I want to go. Maybe we can be room-mates.”

Cadee wiped her face. “It’ll be ten years before we’re ready for college.”

“So, in ten years we will be together again. From now until then, we will be friends in our hearts, no matter where we are. We will be bigger then, and more beautiful. The boys will chase us, and maybe we’ll let some of them catch us.”

The thought made Cadee laugh. “Yeah, that will be fun. By then maybe I’ll be ready to let a boy catch me.”

“It is good to hear you laugh. There will always be time enough for tears, so we must cherish our moments of laughter.”