Operation Malacca (10 page)

When Keilty returned, he found Rawingson on the phone again. Finally, he hung up and swung around. 'That was Honolulu. They said, move immediately.' He swore loudly, then calmed himself with visible effort. 'They want the sub found yesterday. But while finding it, we aren't supposed to let it know it's being hunted.'

'When you do find it, then what?'

`Correction, when you find it . . . remember that two hundred thousand. They say, destroy it immediately.'

Keilty grinned. 'In that case relax. Charlie already knows where it is.'

Rawingson was quiet for a long minute, then: 'I should expect anything else?' he said in a tired voice.

CHAPTER TEN

It was close to 3 a.m. when the five-ton truck wheeled up to the cargo stage, dimly lit by lights from the Vigilant's bridge. Keilty came around to the gate just as the new steel semi-tank that had been built for Charlie was unloaded by a forklift. Keilty climbed onto the running board and directed the driver to the stage.

Keilty hooked the slings himself and patted Charlie's broad back. He climbed onto the tank step and shouted for the operator to lift them onto the ship. The slings came up taut and the tank lifted off the pier, swung free, and moved upwards slowly. The gray steel hull of the cruiser slipped past and they were level with, then above the rail. From his vantage point, Keilty could see the ring of marines in position at the end of and along the pier. A hastily mounted machine-gun emplacement faced the dock area at the end of the pier, and two large searchlights, dismounted from Vigilant's bridge, illuminated the area with stark, white light. He ran his hand over Charlie's rough hide again to calm him. The dolphin lay half supported by the shallow water of the tank.

The winch moved them over the deck, past the battery of missiles, shrouded in canvas but pointing angrily to the sky as if straining at their mooring damps to be released. The.

No. 2 ammunition hold yawned under them and they began the descent into the black maw. As they passed the hatch edge, several batteries of lamps flashed on, and the tank settled gently to the rubber-tired truck. Keilty jumped off and unfastened the chain with the aid of two ratings, and the slings were pulled out of the hold and the clamshell doors boomed shut above them. The hold was a large rectangular area, two decks deep, and was directly over the main magazine.

An electric tractor backed up; the hitch of the truck was snapped tight and it was towed away toward the hospital. Rawingson and Keilty had deemed this the safest place for the dolphin, deep in the interior of the ship, and Captain Whittlson had readily agreed. Keilty rode along as they passed down the wide steel corridors with their maze of brightly colored overhead pipes. The Vigilant was a fairly new ship, converted to missiles. She had been one of the last built in the Clyde ship-yards in the early fifties, and she was built well. She was more spacious, faster, and better armored than her World War II predecessors. The hospital was a large double cabin amidship, below the water line, and extremely well equipped.

Keilty settled Charlie into one of the medical bays in the office and filled the tank, taking the strain off the dolphin's internal organs. He had already explained the situation to Charlie before taking him from the Military Mission pool. Charlie's first question had been about the gunfire he had heard. He didn't know what it was, but had guessed that it was something that might possibly harm him.

Keilty had patiently explained what had happened since he had left earlier that evening.

He went into detail over the reasons for the kidnapping and told Charlie point-blank that it appeared that the Vietnamese had mounted the attack in an effort to kill him. He pointed out the desperation behind the attack – a handful of agents against a U.S. military post.

Charlie had slipped off the board without a word and had slowly coursed up and down the pool for several minutes before coming back to it.

`Why do they want to destroy me?' he had asked, puzzlement and hurt in his mechanical voice.

'Because they are scared,' Keilty answered point-blank. 'This whole business is as old as mankind. One group trying to force another to believe and act as they believe, and the other group resisting. Human history is composed of these ridiculous counter-marchings to and fro. And we are as guilty as the Communists. Less than thirty years ago, it was the Germans and the Japanese. The Germans, under the guise of National Socialism, trying to force other people in their part of the world to believe as they believed. They were so adamant about others accepting their beliefs that close to ten million people died. In this part of the world, the Japanese did it for the sake of Japanese aggrandizement and again millions more died. Now, they are our best allies.

'In the history of my country, the United States, it has happened four times in less than two hundred years – the War of Independence that "freed" us from England, the same country we are helping today; the Civil War, between two sections of our country; the Spanish-American War, because we believed that the people of a small island, Cuba, should be free to decide their own fate; and South Vietnam where we thought we were helping and stayed long past the time we were doing any good.'

Keilty paused and gazed morosely at his big hands. 'It all seems futile in the light of later events. Now we are dealing with weapons that can kill a million people at one relatively inexpensive blow. We've come a long ways, haven't we?

`But I believe that we are fighting for something that perhaps will make all this worthwhile – the idea that anyone is free to come and go, to earn his living and be happy without a collective government telling him what to do. Government is the worst and the best invention of man. It depends on how it is used. The Communists, broadly, want to use it to force people to live in a way that is completely unnatural to human beings. In a word, they actually believe in the innate goodness of human beings, which in a way is true. But humans are also very opportunistic and will take advantage of any situation that they can. Communism just will not work. But they believe it will. They believe they are right and we believe we are right. Trouble is,' he finished, 'I believe we are a little righter than they.'

When he finished, Charlie was silent, looking up at the hunched figure with troubled eyes. Keilty was again struck by the dolphin's humanness. The intelligence lying behind the black pupils. Charlie could feel the emotions that vied for expression, for mastery of the man, and suddenly he realized that Keilty was just as troubled, just as uncertain as he was. When he had realized this, he began to look at the man with new eyes. Keilty did not any more know for sure what was right than he did, but he was doing a job he felt had to be done. He fumbled for a moment for something that Jack had once told him. He hadn't understood then, but it was clear now. Jack had said that nothing was ever clearly black and white, that there were innumerable shades of gray between the extremes, and it was each man's own fate to decide which shade of gray he would adopt for his own.

Some would believe they had picked the right hue: others would never be sure. The latter were the great ones, Jack had said. They did what they had to, never knowing if they were right or wrong, but doing it because they had made the choice.

And of a sudden, it was clear to him that earth was a very small planet. For thousands of years, man had been the dominant life form, only because he had intelligence and had no intelligent competition. But now, Charlie realized, his people were shortly to take their place, hopefully beside man, at man's insistence. They had to, or they would perish.

Man was also moving into the sea. For a moment, pure terror washed through him at the thought. And for the rest of his life, this terror was never completely to leave him. Man could either be an enemy or a friend. But how to be a friend, unless they met man with a force equal to his? For man had always to dominate. It was engrained in his genes. Again the question: degenerate or advance? He knew that the answer must not be degenerate. He had already taken one step; he must take another.

Somewhere in the infinity of mirror images was the answer he would need, he or another of his kind.

Ì'll go,' he said simply.

Keilty nodded, rubbed his hand on Charlie's head, and then left. Ten minutes later in Rawingson's quarters, he was writing out a detailed message to Jack Weston, the gist of which was to gather up certain equipment and get over to Patrick Air Force Base as quick as he could.

At the same time, Rawingson was speaking urgently into a phone with a scrambled connection to Washington and Canberra and London.

Only Charlie felt the ship get under way. He lay in his tank, his great eyes unblinking.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The helicopter carrying Jack Weston and the special equipment that Keilty had ordered rendezvoused with the cruiser north of Natuna Island. As the helicopter hovered over the square landing area on the afterdeck and settled down ponderously, the cruiser was already swinging around south in a tight circle that would bring them back to the Riouw Islands in a little over eighteen hours at thirty knots. The wake, Keilty noted, was already churning out swiftly behind them.

Jack jumped from the helicopter, and clutching his hat and ducking low, he scuttled to meet Keilty before the rotors had stopped. He carried a duffel bag in one hand, a heavy suitcase in the other.

Below, in the cruiser's wardroom, Weston sank gratefully into a padded armchair and abandoned himself to the bliss of air conditioning after the over 1000 heat and 95 per cent humidity outside.

`Christ,' he said mildly, thought I was never going to get here.'

'Fast trip?' Keilty inquired innocently.

Weston grunted. 'Fast! They had an F4F at Patrick AFB waiting to take me to Edwards and a RB-76 from there to Hawaii. Mid-air refueling over Guam and a destroyer at Singapore. The destroyer left Singapore like its tail was on fire just a few hours after you. A hundred miles or so southwest of here, they threw me into the helicopter and kicked us off. Twenty-eight hours and I lost track of the time changes.' He slumped wearily, utter dejection written all over his face.

Rawingson and Captain Whittlson came in to join them and shook hands with Weston.

`What's in the duffel bag?' Keilty asked.

'Ha. It's just chock-full of goodies. There's a crate on the helicopter that has your and Charlie's diving gear plus the other stuff you wanted.

`Hey, wait . . Rawingson interrupted, 'yours and whose diving gear?' He looked from one to the other as if unable to decide whether or not his leg was being pulled.

Keilty grinned at Jack. 'Charlie's gear,' he chuckled. Rawingson took out his pipe and stared abstractly into the

bowl. 'Okay, I give up. What you two birds pull no longer surprises me.' He looked up at Keilty patiently. Now, would you mind explaining to an old and very tired man exactly why that crazy fish ... ah,' he held up a hand, I know, dolphin. Why that Charlie character should need breathing gear.'

The steward interrupted to wheel in a tray of drinks. Before the captain could finish explaining that he had ordered them because he felt their American visitor would need one, Jack was already thirstily coaching the British seaman on making his own version of the gin and tonic. The steward was aghast that Jack insisted he make it with lemon rather than lime.

Keilty turned back to Rawingson.

'How long can you stay underwater?' he asked.

Àbsolute maximum?' Rawingson picked up his drink and sat down. 'Four minutes, I guess. Why?'

`Well,' Keilty answered, 'a dolphin can't stay under a heck of a lot longer — maybe ten minutes by stretching it. Don't forget, he's an air-breather and a mammal, just like you.'

'How could I forget it, for God's sake, you bring it up every chance you get. Anyway, how come?'

Keilty chuckled and went on. 'A dolphin's lungs are really not much bigger than yours, maybe a third or so. Charlie is nine and a half feet long and weighs three hundred and seventy-five pounds. His lung is a bit more efficient, although relatively it is about the same size. So he has maybe a three- to five-minute edge on you. Dolphins are coastal-water animals, rarely straying beyond the limits of the continental shelf. There isn't much in the open ocean in the way of food or in the deeper waters several miles off the edge of the shelf, except for bottom-dwelling animals and those in the upper currents.

The mid-oceans are almost deserts, with the exception of the arctic and antarctic waters where temperature is a factor.

'Anyway, what I'm getting at is that Charlie needs air to stay underwater longer than ten minutes. So Jack and I rigged up a special self-contained underwater apparatus for him.'

'Why special? Can't he use the same type that a man uses, with maybe a different kind of mouthpiece?'

Jack finished mixing a second drink and brought it over to Rawingson.

Not really, Admiral. Dolphins don't breathe through their mouths. There is no connection at the back of the throat to the trachea as in man. Otherwise, every time he opened his mouth, he'd get a lung full or stomach full of water.

'Dolphins breathe through the blowhole located on top and towards the back of their heads. So we had to come up with a special gadget that would seal him off without limiting his breathing while on the surface.'

'Which brings us to the next item of discussion,' Keilty interposed. 'Just how do you expect us to go about this business of finding one little dinky sub somewhere in the South China Sea?'

`You said that Charlie knew where it was,' Rawingson said accusingly.

Keilty snorted. 'I said that he said he saw something, and that that something looked like a submarine. Neither one of us can or will guarantee the validity of that statement.'

Òkay, okay,' Rawingson held up a hand. 'Anyway, I realize that there is no way of being sure it's still there. We haven't tried using any anti-submarine warfare techniques in case they would spot us and hightail it for home. Nobody knows that we know, except the four of us,' and he waved a hand to take them all in, 'Charlie, and the people you met in Singapore, and the general staff.'

`What about the kidnappers?' Keilty asked.

'Our people picked up the taxi driver and he turned out to be a member of the Singapore Communist Party — distinct Peking leanings. From documents found at their headquarters, the word to pick you up seemed to have come from Peking rather than from Moscow. The CIA claims it was just another one of their tries to get more information. Even if you had been taken, on which they only laid a fifty-fifty chance of success, you probably would have been dropped back at your hotel rooms the next night with no memory of anything except one hell of a good time in a brothel. Yet they would have picked your skull clean, then replaced the incident with happy thoughts.'

'They can do that?' Jack asked, his voice showing disbelief.

Rawingson nodded soberly. 'They can, and do.

'Hell!' Rawingson stood up and began pacing up and down the wardroom. 'People think that just because we don't fight a hot war, that everything is confined to words and oh-so-proper diplomatic meetings. Well it's not,' he said, swinging around to face Jack. 'Let me tell you.

Jack grinned. 'I'm no military man. The Coast Guard is just glorified civil service. No one ever tells us anything. And you think you got problems.'

'Okay, okay, you two simmer down,' Keilty growled. 'I suspected it was something like that. If they had known what we

were up to, they'd have gone after you as well, Admiral. The only thing that puzzles me is why they attacked the Mission building.'

`Same reason they went after you,' Rawingson replied. 'They had a truck and hoist around the corner. Our boys got there in time to see it disappear down the street. They never did catch it. They couldn't kill the dolphin by shooting it, because the first thing he would have done would be to go to the bottom. They could have poisoned him, but they didn't have any poison. Or they could have tossed some high explosive into the pool. But the only explosives they had, they used to blow down the gates. Like I said, they were paid by Peking, not Moscow.

Keilty snorted. `Don't you know that the Russians have been interested in dolphins for years. And anything the Russians are interested in, the Red Chinese are too. They probably wanted to compare notes, Soviet-American notes, that is. It wasn't just plain old curiosity.'

Keilty slammed a meaty fist against the tabletop. `For God's sake, what kind of intelligence system do you birds have? If I'd of known that you guys were such rank amateurs, we would have never signed to play on your team.'

`Well, we knew that the Russians were interested in dolphin studies, but not that much interested.' Rawingson looked sheepily at Keilty and Jack standing together.

'Look, Admiral . . Jack began, his face angry. He took a step towards Rawingson.

`Forget it, Jack.' Keilty said warily, and put a restraining hand on his shoulder. It's done now, and he's only one man. And if he has to depend on idiots like Redgrave and the rest of those characters, I can see some of his problems.'

Rawingson jumped up, anger beginning to show in his eyes. `Look, you two young idiots ...'

Ì said, forget it,' Keilty interrupted sharply. 'Let's quit fighting among ourselves.' He glanced at the two Australian officers who had witnessed the enmity between the three Americans. They stood up and excused themselves hastily and left.

After they were gone, Keilty kicked the duffel bag before he spoke again. 'Admiral, Jack is upset and so am I about your acknowledged ignorance of the Soviet dolphin research.

In nineteen sixty-six the Soviets made it illegal to hunt dolphins or other Cetacea in Soviet waters, except for certain kinds of whales that traditionally were taken by the whaling fleets.

They did this on the off chance that something would come of the dolphin research, most of which was being done in the U.S. by Lilly and Norris. That little item was carried by British and American newspapers. Shortly thereafter, they classified all dolphin research being done in the U.S.S.R. and you couldn't get boo out of them.

Ànd now you tell us,' he said quietly, 'that your office doesn't even know that they are engaged in this kind of research.'

`Wait a minute,' Rawingson yelped. Ì didn't say that. We know they are, we just do not know to what extent.'

Weston covered his face with his hands and a steady but muffled cursing filled the room.

Keilty waited politely for him to stop, then inquired solicitously: 'Do you feel better now?'

`Some. But at this point, I'm damned glad I resigned my commission before I left. Hey,'

he said, turning to Keilty, `do you know what we can do with all that money now?'

`Yeah, give it to the admiral so he can hire a kindergarten class to do his intelligence work.' Laughing, he held up his hand. 'No offense, Admiral, but I would suggest you have your people do whatever it is they are supposed to do and have them check into the status of current Soviet work.'

Àdmiral,' Jack put in, 'you said they could snatch somebody, wring his brains out, then put him back with phony memories. That sounds a bit far-fetched.'

Rawingson snorted. 'We're not so dumb as you two seem to think. And neither are the Reds. The technique, while fairly complicated in setup, is easy enough to use. All you need are one strait jacket, a couple of hypodermics, one full of amphetamine and the other full of some tranquillizer, an oculometer, electroencephalograph and a microvibration gauge and a galvanic skin-response recorder. Plug the electronics into a computer, hook up a tape recorder, and leave subject alone for six to eight hours. He spills his guts automatically.'

`Heh, wha ?'

'Look, it's simple,' Rawingson went on patiently. 'Strap subject into specially modified strait jacket that fits from head to foot so he can't wiggle a muscle. He is completely, and I emphasize, completely immobile. Attach the electronics. Then feed the stimulant and depressant to him at the same time.

Èver drink a cup of strong, black coffee, then immediately smoke a cigarette — all when you are dead tired?'

`Don't smoke,' Weston snorted.

The first part of Rawingson's answer was limited to four-

letter words. 'Take my word for it, numbskull, you can feel your nerves and muscles fighting both commands from your brain. Relax . . . get set . . . relax . . . get set. Your hands will shake, your muscles twitch — actually a minor convulsion — your eyes will refuse to focus, your head will swim, and your thoughts will become jumbled.

Òf course, all this is very minor with just cigarettes and coffee, but it is there. Now imagine what good strong doses of a tranquillizer and pick-me-up will do, especially when you can't move a muscle. Your body has to slowly work off the effects and you damn near go crazy.

`Now, with a properly programmed computer to sort out the noise and correlate muscle and nerve signals made visible through the EEG, oculometer, microvibrations, and skin response ...'

`What's a microvibration?' Jack inquired.

Rawingson looked at him stonily to decide whether his question was serious or not. He decided it was.

`Microvibrations are very small, almost invisible muscular movements. Hold up your hand and point your index finger,' he commanded.

Jack did so.

`Now, see the tiny movements. No matter how hard you try, you can't hold that finger perfectly still. You have a servomechanism feedback system controlling two sets of opposing muscles. One set is a tensor; the other, a flexor. A muscle can only work by tensing itself and that moves the limb one way. To go back to the original or another position, another muscle, an opposing muscle, has to pull. It's like that throughout your body. Of course the movements you see in your finger are pretty gross, but they are classified as microvibrations. In other words, every muscle in your body "vibrates". The nerve impulses that control muscles are electrical and they can be measured.

ÈEG, or electroencephalograph, is a device for measuring the electrical activity generated in the brain. In a sense, these so-called electrical impulses are the by-products of thinking, because they control your body. So far, the state of the art has not progressed to the point where each minute charge of electricity can be measured, so again we are measuring relatively gross changes. In these signals are thought patterns, but on a level so low we just do not have anything sensitive enough to measure them.'

'I see,' Weston said slowly. 'What about the skin response and "ocomotor" thing?'

Òculometer. That's a gadget for measuring eye movements.' Àh, the dream thing,'

Weston said.

Ìn a way. Thought patterns are in some way related to eye movements, or probably, more properly, the other way around. The galvanic skin-response recorder measures the electrical conductivity of the skin, which changes with emotional, mental, and physical patterns.