Frank Schatzing - The Swarm

Anawak could feel his stomach cramping.

'The same thing happened at the end of the eighties in Bahrain,' Greywolf continued. 'That was my first time on front-line duty. My system did exactly what was expected of it, and I still knew nothing about MKO. I had no idea that they were parachuting dolphins into enemy territory. Some were dropped from a height of three kilometres, and not all survived. Others were pushed out of helicopters without a parachute from a height of twenty metres. Dolphins were being used to attach mines to enemy warships and subs. If things looked risky, the charges would be detonated as soon as the creatures were in range. I should have quit when they told me all about it but the navy was my home. I was happy there. I'm not asking you to understand, but it's the truth.'

Anawak was silent. He understood only too well.

'So I took comfort in the fact that I was one of the good guys. But the men at the top had made up their minds that my talents could be put to better use on MKO. According to the bad guys, I was pretty damn good at handling animals,' Greywolf spat. 'And the son-of-a-bitches were right. I was good. Good, but stupid. Instead of telling them where they could stick their MKO, I said I'd help out. War was like that, I told myself. People are always dying in combat – they tread on a mine, get shot or burnt to death – so why make a fuss about a few dead dolphins? They sent me to San Diego where they were researching ways to make orcas carry nuclear weapons…'

'Carry what ?

'I stopped being surprised by this stuff a long time ago. They wanted whales to carry nuclear warheads. The weapons weigh up to seven tonnes, but you can train a fully grown orca to drag them for miles, right into enemy waters. Stopping a nuclear orca is virtually impossible. I don't know what stage they're at now, but I figure they must have got it licked – back then they were still running tests. And that was how I came to witness another kind of experiment. The navy likes to show reporters video clips of dolphins: the dolphin swims off with a live mine, but instead of dumping it on the Russians and blowing the hell out of them, it comes back smiling with the mine between its teeth. The footage is designed to dispel any rumours that killer dolphins exist. Dolphins have been known to return with live mines, but it's practically unheard of. Besides, if it all goes wrong, it only costs the navy one vessel and three men, and that's a risk they're willing to take. They kept experimenting.' Greywolf paused. 'The trouble comes if you lose a nuclear whale. If one of those babies comes back with a primed bomb in its jaws, you're in trouble. The navy can send out as many orcas as it likes, but it needs to be sure that they won't get any funny ideas. And the best way to avoid that is to ban ideas altogether.'

'John Lilly,' muttered Anawak.

'What?'

'He was a scientist. Carried out brain experiments on dolphins in the sixties.'

'Yeah, I remember they talked about it,' Greywolf said. 'In any case, it was in San Diego that I saw them cracking open dolphins' skulls. That was in 1989. They used a hammer and chisel to make holes in the top of their heads. The animals were fully conscious, so it took a gang of strong guys to pin them down. They kept trying to leap off the table. It wasn't because of the pain, they kept telling me – the dolphins just didn't like the sound of hammering in their ears. The procedure was supposedly much less traumatic than it seemed. At any rate, they shoved electrodes through the holes to stimulate the brain using currents.'

'That's exactly what Lilly did,' Anawak interrupted in excitement. 'He was trying to create a map of the brain.'

'The navy has plenty of those, believe you me,' Greywolf said bitterly. 'It made me sick, but I kept my mouth shut. Next they showed me a dolphin. It was swimming in a tank with a kind of harness round its neck. The contraption was fitted with electrodes that pushed through the flesh. They'd found a way of steering the dolphin via electric signals. I mean, it was pretty amazing, to give them their due. They had it swimming left, right, then leaping clean out of the water. They could switch on its aggression and make it attack. They could even trigger its flight mechanism or induce calm. It didn't matter whether the animal would have wanted to participate. It was robbed of its will. It may as well have been a remote-controlled car or a wind-up toy. Well, they were excited, of course. It looked as though they'd made a breakthrough. So while the research team in San Diego continued to work on nuclear whales, we set off to the Gulf in 1991 with two dozen clockwork dolphins. I just went along with it. I'm not the quiet sort by nature, but for once I kept my mouth shut. It was none of my business, I kept telling myself. In the meantime, my dolphins looked for mines and were rewarded with food and attention. Then they started pressurising me to get actively involved in MKO. Somehow I managed to buy myself some thinking time – unpopular in the navy because you're not supposed to think. By that time we were in the Strait of Gibraltar, and we'd started to trial the technology at sea. At first it all went smoothly, but then we ran into problems. The control harnesses had worked perfectly in the laboratories and tanks, but in the open water the dolphins were subject to all kinds of stimuli. We started to get more misses than hits. It was obvious that it didn't work in the wild – or not in the way they'd expected. By now the dolphins were compromising our safety, and it was too late to take them back to the States. On the other hand, no one liked the idea of them swimming around in the Gulf so in the end we stopped off in France. The idea was to consult a French institute where experts were working on MKO. We don't usually get too friendly with the French, but they know a lot about the oceans so an alliance had been formed. We thought maybe they could help us. A man called Rene Guy Busnel was introduced to us as the head of the venerable Laboratoire d'Acoustique Animale. He promised to look into the problem, and took us on a tour of his splendid facility. First stop was a mutilated dolphin wedged into a vice. There was a knife the size of my arm sticking out of its back. I never did ask why. They gave us a card from the institute with their names signed in dolphin blood. To them it was all a big joke.'

Greywolf sighed.

'Busnel gave a long spiel about neural research and came to the conclusion that the procedure was flawed. There was evidently some critical factor that had been overlooked or misjudged. Back on board we held council and the decision was taken to get rid of the animals. We released them into the water. Then, when they were a few hundred metres away from the boat, someone pushed the button. The electrode-harness contained explosives to stop the technology falling into the wrong hands. The charge was only small, but it was enough to blast away the equipment. The animals died. We continued on our way.'

Greywolf chewed his lip. Then he looked up at Anawak. 'So there you have it: your Earth Island dolphins. The animals that washed up in France.'

'And after that you…'

'I told them I'd had enough. They tried talking me round, but I'd made up my mind. Of course, they didn't like the idea of one of their best dolphin-handlers quitting for undisclosed reasons – that kind of thing always attracts the attention of the press. So we talked, and in the end we came to an agreement. I got some cash, and they discharged me on the grounds of ill-health. I was a combat diver, you see, and you can't do that with a heart defect. No one asks awkward questions if they think there's something wrong with you. So they let me go.'

Anawak was gazing out across the bay.

'I'm not a scientist like you,' Greywolf said softly, 'I understand a bit about dolphins and how to handle them, but neurology means nothing to me. I can't stand to see anyone getting too interested in whales or dolphins. It winds me up just to see them taking photos. I can't help it.'