I was running only on conjecture and suspicion as I walked up the angled cargo hatch of the Starlifter. Trying to accommodate such an abrupt change in my life and direction was proving more mentally taxing than I’d ever imagined. My wife had been surprisingly excited about leaving for Hawaii with almost no notice. Both Julie and Michael were delighted too, as missing school for at least a week didn’t seem to bother them at all, nor their teachers.
My parents had decided to retire in Hawaii and gotten a place up in Aiea Heights, which looked right down on Pearl Harbor. My father had gotten hold of the largest catamarans in the world, at eighty feet in length, and had also received a contract from the Hilton Hawaiian Village to use its Waikiki Pier and sail passengers on dinner, drinks, and Pearl Harbor cruises. Mary and I decided ot keep them in the dark about our trip, as the details of my work out there had to be kept totally under wraps. I wasn’t comfortable with that arrangement, but initially, at least, I would stick to that agreement. I had long wanted to share what happened to me in Vietnam with my parents, but had never visited or taken the opportunity to do so. It was like I’d never gone, never been shot or spent years recovering, and that never felt right.

The ramp went up on the Starlifter almost before I was seated and belted in. Mac sat down next to me and smiled.

“You cause me to be involved in stuff that I love, even though I have no clue as to what you or I are really doing.”

The four turbines of the Starlifter spooled up to full power. I felt the body of the plane vibrate and understood that the pilot was standing on the brakes, waiting for the rubber to lose adhesion to the concrete before letting off and going into a maximum takeoff and climb to altitude. There was no possibility that Mac and I could have any more conversation until we hit our target altitude. The plane jerked forward and then began an amazingly fast thrust forward directly down the runway, without taxi or anything else. I was astonished at how much acceleration pushed me sideways in my web seat.

“We can beat an F-4 Phantom to ten thousand feet in this thing when empty,” Mac said, cupping one hand to my ear.

I smiled back at him but didn’t really share his enthusiasm. Running into reserve fuel to make Hawaii a non-stop flight wasn’t my idea of adventure, and the full thrust take off to altitude had to burn fuel like there was no tomorrow. I wanted to ask him if the Starlifter would float, but neither the sound of the engines nor good sense would allow it.

When we got to altitude, Mac and I were able to speak to one another without screaming or cupping hands to each other’s ears.

“So, you finally get a vacation,” Mac began, but my expression and the wave of my right hand stopped him from going in.

“UDT training,” I said, not knowing if there were elements of the mission that might be given away by such an admission by someone so new to the game as I was.

I was coming to realize that most of what I considered the mistakes I was making were fixable by following Tom Thorkelson’s, Chuck Bartok’s and my wife’s advice which was nothing more than shut up.

“That’s a tough course,” Mac said, his brow wrinkled in seeming concern. “You know they dive right there in the harbor with boats and ships running around all over the place, and the water’s pretty dense and muddy, as well. They say it’s because they never expect to do their work at places like Waikiki or Bellows Beach.”

I didn’t like learning the small tidbits I was getting from Mac, as I envisioned diving at some idyllic, totally clear water place like Hanauma Bay. Or even the waters of the North Shore, although I knew without checking or seeing the water there that the North Shore waves would be pounding that side of the island all winter long. Even with the huge waves breaking on all the reefs that impeded their progress onto the beaches, there was no chance that SCUBA divers, or any other kind, would want to be exposed to such roiled and tossed waters. I’d already figured out that a mission that caused my injury or death was something that could only be considered a success, depending on the outcome, if I was uninjured and still alive. The A Shau Valley had been an excellent ‘classroom exercise’ when it came to that.

I leaned back and rested my head against the slight padding between me and the aluminum bulkhead of cabin structure, never being able to forget being stapled to it in a sort of clear plastic bag when they’d brought a planeload of the badly injured but recovering veterans into Travis Air Force Base just above San Francisco. The initial Marine OCS training at Quantico had been one of the most brutal physical experiences of my life, so I knew I had to prepare myself for more of the same. The elite military forces of the world all invested much more in physical rather than mental conditioning.

I slept deeply, with Mac finally shaking me back to consciousness.

“What time is it?” I asked, looking at my watch. It showed 1:30 in the afternoon. The only windows on a Starlifter were in the crew cabin I knew, so looking outside wasn’t possible to check for light conditions.

“You’re looking at New Mexico time, so subtract three hours at this time of year,” Mac said. “Hawaii doesn’t use daylight saving time.”.

I had never liked time zones as I’d been raised in Hawaii. As a kid out there before statehood, I’d thought that time zones made it difficult to call anyone back in the states, and now that I was starting to travel the world, it was even more problematic. China covered a geographic land area that would normally require six time zones, but that country only had one time zone. The right time, as the people there called it. It was coming up on midday, which meant I’d be reporting in without any break at all, if things ran the way with UDT special operations training, the way it did with my experience with Marine training.

The plane came down normally, or at least as normal as I’d become accustomed to riding in the big powerful transport. I grabbed my bag, which was simply one of the general athletic bags that didn’t hold much. I knew from the past that rigorous training would provide its own attire and the only need I would have would be toiletries and what I was currently wearing plus some extra underwear and socks.

When do you report in?” Mac asked, ushering me toward the small crew door instead of lowering the big ramp at the back of the plane.

I hadn’t missed the fact that all four turbines were still spinning on the Starlifter. It was going to take off, I knew right after it refueled. Nothing had been said about that, but I felt it with the immediacy of everything going on around me.

I stepped through the door and ambled down the few stairs to the tarmac, where there was a Jeep waiting, parked just off the tip of the port wing. It was light blue and marked U.S. Navy across the exposed right side of its hood. There would only be one reason it was allowed out on the runway and my presence had to be the only reason.

“See you on the flip side,” I murmured to Mac, walked over, and climbed into the open passenger seat. The driver took off without even looking at me, much less commenting. That the Jeep was powered by a V8 engine became evident as the vehicle accelerated dramatically to get on the H-1 freeway for the short trip to Pearl Harbor. The trip would have taken longer but remained on the Hickam/Pearl Harbor military complex if the back roads had been used connecting the bases, but everyone even marginally involved with the mission seemed to want to move at maximum speeds without regard to cost or equipment and personnel usage.

With the wind blasting across me from the sides and over the windshield, I tried to be meditative and think things through. I had an insurance operation I needed to make money from, agents to train, and policies to get in force. I had two companions that had been left in the dust back in Albuquerque, I had to get hold of as they deserved better, and they needed some kind of capital too…Although I also knew they’d never inquire about that. I was in a college Ph.D. direct program that was going to demand near full-time to complete. I had a family that needed my presence, and not just left on its own on a distant island that might or might not be hit with a blast-induced tsunami if things did not go as planned. Kauai’s Princeville resort was at least on the other side of the island if such an event were to occur off the Waikiki coast of Oahu.

The Jeep pulled up in front of a wharf where a few of what looked like old-fashioned Captain’s gigs were tied up. A big sign indicated that a schedule for transport to and from Ford Island was available inside the office. The Jeep took off, the driver and I never having spoken a word to one another. The lack of sociability added to the oddness of the whole experience, or whatever that experience was going to be.

I stood by the side of the empty wharf with my bag lying on the concrete next to me. The harbor had changed dramatically since I was a kid paddling around the island in a rowboat with my high school friends. Dorrenbacher had died falling off the top of Diamond Head, and Alan not long after of a rare cancer. It was still inwardly shocking to me how such alive and vibrant creatures, like my Marines in the Nam, could be there in full bloom one moment and then unmoving, unfeeling, and uncaringly dead the next. That I cared so deeply and could not forget them, I considered a secret, unshakeable reservoir of hidden pain. The shipwrecks of my childhood were all gone, the shores of what I could see of the harbor, including across the short distance of water to Ford Island, were filled with docks, wharfs, and active service ships and subs by the dozens.

Another Jeep drove toward me from the busy road nearby, leading in and out of the main gate. Two men got out, leaving the driver sitting there he was. Both men wore Navy ‘sailor’ uniforms, looking like they were straight off of posing for recruiting posters. Both walked over to where I stood waiting. Both taller, broader, and physically more muscular than I.

“Gentlemen,” I said, although the stripes on their upper arms indicated that they were enlisted. I didn’t want to start on the wrong foot.

“The chief here will serve as coxswain on the boat,” the taller of the two men said, neither of them wearing name tags, which I knew were normally required in training and peacetime base operations commands.

“I need a secure phone,” I replied, not moving to pick up my bag.

“Look,” the assumed coxswain replied. “You are here to be part of a UDT training class in underwater explosives and warfare, not train anyone yourself, no matter who or what you are. Just get on the boat there, and everything will be explained at the center.” The man pointed at the long white boat sitting at the front of the line.

I breathed in and out deeply for a few seconds. There was no respect, no recognition of who I was, or any kind of introduction to the center training. If I had not been met the same way when I showed up at Quantico to attend OCS directly from a college classroom, I would not have been able to accommodate the situation as gently. I picked up my bag without saying another word, walked to the edge of the wharf, and then out the single two-by-twelve that was laid down to rest on the transom of the longboat. I knew that somewhere there had to be a regular, safer, and wiser choice for civilians of all kinds and positions to board the boats, but I wasn’t getting that treatment.

I noted that there were no seats, just padded benches. I sat on one near the stern. I faced the bow as the engine started and the coxswain eased the boat away from the wharf while the other man quickly and expertly slipped the lines from the two shore bollards they’d been thrown over. The waters of the harbor were smooth, and there was only a gentle breeze of the trade winds blowing. The trip was going to be short, I knew, so I held everything inside me while I tried to remain expressionless. The two sailors evidently did not know who I was or my background, and quite possibly my affiliation, or they would have added the word sir to their comments, like Marines would have done automatically anyway. But I was not among the Marines. Both men remained standing, facing the bow, for the ten minutes it took to round the island and dock again on another smaller wharf on the side of the island that faces outward toward the port’s opening to the ocean. The old ramp for seaplanes that had been there for so many years before was gone, as seaplanes had disappeared from all military marine inventories around the world.

I looked over the stern toward the harbor entrance, and a shiver went through me. A large catamaran with sails furled was easing into the passage, and that meant it could only be operated by Captain Bill, my father. I instinctively hunched down to avoid being seen, although the distance was too great for anyone to recognize me without some sort of optical aids. The luncheon Pearl Harbor tour that climaxed at the Arizona Memorial. Dad’s cat would then circle Ford Island and depart the harbor. I knew then, in hiding out from Dad’s view, that I would have to confront my parents while I was on Oahu at some point.

A Navy Commander stood waiting just beyond where the longboat pulled in. I climbed out, grabbing my bag and stepping around the two men who’d brought me so unceremoniously to the island.

“I need a secure line, sir,” I said, coming to a position of attention before him.

“Stand at ease, and yes, I’ve heard a bit about you and the entirely strange service we’re to perform with and for you.”

I relaxed a bit, the man’s wide smile being the first welcoming of any warmth that I’d received.

“Follow me into the center and I’ll get you on that line,” the commander said, before leading me toward a set of low-lying single-story concrete structures. I hadn’t failed to read the nametag prominently displayed on the right side of his upper chest. The man’s last name being Doris, must have caused him a bit of discomfort, particularly since it appeared, with his relatively high rank, that he was likely the leader of the Frogmen assembled at the center.
I noted that the door into the closest building was made of thick steel or iron, or very likely armor plate.

‘Bunkers built late in the war to protect the sea plane crews in case of another attack, which of course didn’t happen,” Commander Doris intoned, without me having to ask anything about the massiveness of the structure.

I was led down a short, narrow hall to an office. Doris opened the door and ushered me inside, before closing it and leaving me alone without further comment.

A regular push-button phone sat on the single desk. I dropped my bag and sat in the swivel chair, noting that there were no other chairs in the small room which meant that the office was the commander’s. People coming into the office stood, as they were not likely to be in the office for very long and also it gave the seated commander a measure of automatic power and leadership effect.

I called Herbert, punching in the CIA number in D.C. The call was answered on the first ring. I read my identification code and was immediately connected.

“Is this a mission or training?” I asked him as soon as I recognized him, beginning to identify himself.

“So, you’re there and ready?” he replied, ignoring my question, which I then repeated without answering his.

I wasn’t angry, and in a suspended sort of shock at the speed things were happening, at the juvenile macho treatment by the men I’d met at the boat, and my father appearing on his boat in the distance, coming in through the harbor entrance so coincidentally.

“Mission, with a training and test element,” Herbert replied, “and your family will be ensconced at the resort by tomorrow afternoon. If you have a pen, I’ll give you the number and the suite they’re in. The North Shore of Kauai is directly opposite the south shore, which will be that exposed to any effects emanating from Oahu.”

I wanted to ask ‘what effects’ or go into why he was telling me what he was telling me, but the back of my mind had already concluded that there was only one thing he could be referring to. I breathed deeply in and out. I hadn’t considered a catastrophic failure and the potential of such a monstrous event happening. I regretted having allowed my family to be involved at all, even if they were on a protected shoe a hundred eight miles distant.

“Fine, it’s a mission. I want Nguyen and Kingsley here as soon as transport can be arranged. Why I need them nearby is immaterial, by definition,” I said, wondering as I waited for his response just how far I was allowed to go as the agent leaving the field mission, even though the mission was inside the borders of the USA and certainly not dealing with the only CIA exception to rather rigid geographic limitations. The rules about everything in the Agency, rigidly advertised inside, were much more fluidly applied than I would ever have believed before I became one with it.

“They’ve been contacted and are en route on commercial air,” Herbert replied, surprising the hell out of me.

Whatever was going on had a priority that I was not used to, yet it was like nobody I was so far encountering had any idea about what it really was.

“There is no budget for this mission. The only test part is to assure that you are not allergic to extreme oxygenation or fluorocarbons.”

“I don’t want to stay on site here at night unless night diving is involved. I want to stay at the Royal Hawaiian. The attitude of these men is similar to that of our friend Marcinko, and that’s not healthy for them or me to stay around in off-duty hours.”

“Just tell the commander of the outfit what you want, and he’ll deliver. His team knows nothing other than that you are getting a compressed training regimen and then will be out of their control, or anything else. They’re a training center of the highest regard, no doubt to be assumed into the SEAL program, so they take a superior role. Let them. It’s part of what they do, and you need what they do very badly right now, and so do the rest of us.”

“Are they going to evacuate the shoreline of Honolulu?” I asked.

Herbert went silent, as if he were talking to someone else in the background on his end.

“That’s not possible, either physically nor politically, or in any other way. The results of this mission will determine everything from the time you get them. There is no team you are training with, there’s just you, and that raises suspicions all by itself, so don’t feed it. You have three days to get ready before getting in the water. Once you graduate from the school, you’ll be aboard a Coast Guard vessel offshore, and those men and women will not know what’s going on either. This is all beyond Top Secret.”

“Like the artifact,” I said, saying the phrase without making it a question.

“Yes, like that, but way too believable. Nobody, except those who handle it, will believe it exists, and there’s inherent safety in that. Not so with this.”

“Why me?” I asked, my frustration and lack of understanding packed into the words.

“It was not my choice, nor was that data given to me. You would never have been my choice. You’re still physically recovering. Your mental state is, well, rather undetermined at this point. You are way overutilized in every area, and expectations of your performanceare  well beyond of what you’ve proven so far.”

I waited, thinking, but the line did not go dead as I expected.

“Would you perform this mission if assigned?” I asked, not expecting an answer.

“No,” Herbert quickly replied before hanging up.

As the phone hit the cradle, the office door opened, and Doris walked in. He closed the door carefully behind him.

“UDT training normally lasts 16 days and nights, but that won’t be the case here since you are mission-specific. The men you have encountered so far seem to feel that you might be resistant to the normal training delivery, and I’m asking you to go along instead of resisting. Normally, they don’t train officers, and certainly not whatever the hell you are. They are effective, and I also don’t want any of them hurt, physically or career-wise.”

“Agreed on all points,” I replied, understanding the difficult position both the commander and the UDT center itself had been put in. “I have two men coming in, not for training but just to be with me. I expect they’ll arrive tomorrow. Will their presence be a problem?”

“Thank you,” Doris said, his expression one of relief. “That won’t be a problem as long as they are non-systemic to the training, and a gentleman is waiting to talk to you from the NRC, shall I send him before you get started with the special program we’ve put together to provide you with what you will need to accomplish what is you are supposed to accomplish?”

“Show him in, sir,” I replied, hoping to finally get the details of what the mission part of the program was all about.

A man of about five feet five came through the door as Doris exited. He was dressed in what looked like a Brooks Brother’s suit and wearing well polished black shoes and classy eyeglasses, but not showy in any way.

“You’re the one,” he said simply as I got up to move around the desk and shake his hand.

I didn’t reply, there once again being no question asked. My presence, no doubt was all the answer necessary.

“As you no doubt have come to understand,” he began, leaning with his left hand resting atop the empty desk, “we have an errant weapon of some sizable throwput on the floor of the ocean about three miles off the coast of Waikiki itself. How it came to be there is of no consequence. Our underwater ROV has examined the body of the weapon, but cannot detect what it needs to detect in terms of either arming or explosive potential data. Visuals indicate that there was considerable damage to the container of the vessel when the event that happened occurred. What is needed is direct physical intervention with the device and placement of certain devices against its outer metal housing. Our visuals prove this to be possible. Readings can then be taken from the internal arming and explosive safety’s inherent to this class of weapon. The weapon should not be considered to be armed nor likely to explode from your work, if the condition of it is as we believe it is.”

“Who are you?” I asked, although thinking about memorizing every word the man said.

“I report to the director directly, and he’s Nunzio J. Palladino, but my identity isn’t important. The data is important for you to know. For your safety and understanding, a file of still photos of the device will be provided before you make your attempt, as well as sensory data indicating that to date there have been no emissions noted.”

“Are you open to answering any questions?” I asked, preparing to grill the man for more detail.

“No,” I’m done here, the smaller man said, standing up straight and obviously preparing to leave.

“Are you staying to enjoy the island?” I asked, truly curious.

“Absolutely not, your mission is, as you might have said during your war experience, ‘danger close’.”