"A Ship Run Aground" is Robert S. Miller's submission to the 2018 short story anthology The Event: Iron Bay. Writers were given the premise of a huge, empty container ship running aground near a sleepy California fishing community. Past that, they were encouraged to write whatever their hearts desired. This is the first chapter of Bob's entry ...
A SHIP RUN AGROUND
Los que descienden á la mar en navíos, Y hacen negocio en las muchas aguas,
Ellos han visto las obras de Jehová, Y sus maravillas en el profundo.
El dijo, é hizo saltar el viento de la tempestad, Que levanta sus ondas.
Las Libro de los Salmos, Capítulo 107: 23-25
I. The Village of Iron Bay
It was quite the sight. A stranded ship named the Khan Hao was setting in the bay only about one-hundred feet from the sandy shores late on a sunny September afternoon. There were no signs of life on the ship and how it came to Iron Bay was a mystery. It appeared like everyone from the tiny fishing village got up from their naps to see what was happening. Within a half hour officials began arriving – including the newly elected congressional representative from this particular California district.
His name was Harold Smith. Short and pudgy, he was red in the face upon arriving at the beach. The simple exertion of walking a couple of hundred yards from his car was almost too much for him. And seeing this ship aground appeared to make his blood pressure go even higher. “How did this happen, Mike?” he said to me. I had no answer. Harold was the impressionable type of person who thought there were easy explanations to everything. “How did this happen?” he said again to anyone who would listen. “I’m going to find everyone responsible and make sure they lose their heads!”
A coast guard chief present didn’t like such talk. “Listen you stupid bastard! We’re supposed to patrol the whole Pacific Ocean? You’re the one in Congress telling everyone who gets what. There wasn’t enough money for anyone to watch that far out or man the radar to see what was coming in. And you’re hurling allegations?”
As a politician voted in during the November 2016 elections, Harold was not about to take the blame for this. “The ship is big enough to have a full football field on deck!” he replied. “How can anyone miss that, with or without resources?”
Tempers flared, and soon they were throwing punches at each other. It was not something I saw every day in my duties as a member of the federal emergency response team. Not one of the punches landed. Fortunately, my barrel-chested security lead, Tommy Burns, stepped in between them before anyone did get hurt. Tommy was a former prison guard who at around six feet tall weighed about 300 pounds. And behind the girth was a lot of muscle. He pushed the coast guard chief back with his left arm and the representative back with his right arm simultaneously. If either wanted to continue the fight, they had second thoughts after Tommy looked at both of them.
“Come on Tommy,” I said. “We have more important things to do. We need to make certain to anchor the boat securely to keep it from drifting away before anyone tries to board that ship. It doesn’t look like there’s any danger of it tipping anyway.”
“No, it’s sunk in pretty deep. I think it caught up on a sand reef. I doubt it’s going to go anywhere, either.”
“And that would be our famous final words when we find the boat drifting up the coast tomorrow. We probably do need a crew in there to attach mooring or guide or fire wires – whatever you want to call them – to make certain the boat is secured and doesn’t tip.”
Tommy nodded his head and we walked down upon the beach to take a closer look.
It would take at least two or three hours before any trustworthy crew arrived that could do this job right. I wanted to make certain that whoever arrived knew what they were doing. I could just see the lawsuits if something went wrong. In the meantime, we needed to keep bystanders away – including these blowhard officials.
Once we had the barricades in place and everyone at a distance, Tommy and I went into town and made our way towards the overlook where we could view the bay from up above. The boat somehow miraculously avoided crashing into the rocks that were just north and south of the beach. I took out my binoculars and was studying the stenciled lettering on the ship. “The Khan Hao,” I said to Tommy. “Where did that name come from?”
“I called into the office to see if they could locate anything. It seems that no record of the ship’s manufacture, launch or rechristening exist. However, there apparently is someone named Khan Ho who is an alleged North Korean spy.”
“Are you kidding?” I said putting down the binoculars and looking at Tommy. “Well don’t tell Smith that. This will become an international crisis.”
We watched as the crew arrived to secure the ship. I was on my cellphone for the rest of the afternoon to supervise and get updates. By the time they lowered the anchor and we verified the ship would not go anywhere, it was getting to be too close to dusk to go on board and explore the wreckage. Since there were no signs of life on board the ship, I figured there was no hurry. It just seemed odd a ship this size could come into the harbor in such a manner without crashing into the rocks.
When something out of the ordinary happened, it was my job to respond. My actual job title was too long and complicated to mean anything to anyone. And my title in no way explained my job duties or how I even came to have this position. I just called myself a coordinator because it made it easier to explain my job to family members. My main duties were to investigate any manmade disasters, to find out who was responsible, and to make certain that no bad people had entered the country.
I had to separate legitimate threats and criminal conspiracies from mere rumors. In the age of social media, it was not always easy to discover what was really going on. Everyone had their theories on Twitter and Facebook. Because I was good at separating truth from fiction, I was also good at my job. I was so good that I became head of the response team concerning all matters in my region. And while not yet ever having to use them, I had access to an infinite supply of guns, ammunition, medical supplies and state secrets. I also had a staff who would have limited access to the same items.
It’s hard to explain how I ended up in California. As a child, I lived close to the North Dakota Badlands. I grew up with nine-man football and playing hockey outdoors when it was twenty below. I joined the marines in 2005 and ended serving two tours of duty in Fallujah. Nothing happened to me there that didn’t happen to the others I served with. But after that, most of life’s foibles seemed pretty insignificant. I served well and my background got me my current position when I turned thirty. I was now thirty-seven.
When first applying for my position, I was also in consideration to be a special agent for the FBI, CIA and a member of the secret service. They were looking for someone with a military background and spotless record. I underwent tests to show I was physically fit, intelligent to do the job and not mentally unstable. Among over one-hundred candidates, I somehow came out on top. I was young and supposedly had no ties to anyone who could compromise my judgment.
I hired my staff as best I could. All my hires had government experience, strong academic backgrounds, and no criminal records. Because of a limited budget, most of them were young with little work experience. The one exception was Tommy Burns. He had no college degree, but had worked a wide variety of jobs. He also was not compliant and had spent quite a few weekends in the local jails for causing disturbances.
Tommy disliked the rest of the staff and none were comfortable with him. The staff probably resented that I didn’t hold him to the same set of standards as they had to follow. It was good they usually kept the resentment to themselves, however. Tommy was easy to underestimate. He was brash and loud, and a lot of his best arguments he heard from someone else. But if he did catch on that someone was talking down to him — and eventually he did catch on, he could make life miserable for that person. With his shaved head and goatee, Tommy was intimidating. And nobody wanted to be on the wrong side of one of his tantrums.
Probably no one understood why I hired him. I needed Tommy around. The things he had that others on my crew lacked were courage, which came in useful during raids, and contempt for protocol, which allowed him to speak his mind both wisely and unwisely.
Tommy was good as a friend and provided lots of entertainment. He liked me, probably because I was a veteran who did not have a college degree. He had the utmost respect for all veterans due to his own father serving in Vietnam. And while working for me, there was only one time he ever asked to not participate in a raid and that involved the arrest of a veteran. As I gave Tommy lots of leeway, I gave him permission to sit that one out.
This was my first visit to Iron Bay since becoming a coordinator – though I had often visited Carmel. With a population of less than three hundred people, Iron Bay consisted mostly of elderly fishermen. Like Carmel, all the houses were extremely small. Unlike Carmel, the people living there had little or no money. Zoning laws made it next to impossible for anyone not involved in the local economy to stay there. That probably was a good thing for those in Iron Bay. At least they wouldn’t have to cater to everyone driving through with a brand new Mercedes.
There was only one hotel in town, though the accommodations at that hotel were adequate. The room I stayed in had one twin bed and a balcony looking out at the ocean. I didn’t need anything else. I wasn’t sure where Tommy was staying. Once the workday was over, he disappeared by riding away on his motorcycle. He probably was out looking for some place to drink. While it took a lot to get him drunk, he usually discovered a way to accomplish it. Still, I couldn’t complain. He always showed up at work on time and he had the right to live his life. As a biker, he spent as much time as he could on his motorcycle riding the eight-hundred-mile stretch of California coastline.
Back in my hotel room, I sat out on the balcony after the sun set. I listened to the ocean and felt the breeze. I must have dozed off a while when my phone alerted me that I was receiving a text. The text message was from Tommy and said: “Heard a rumor about the ship. Will talk tomorrow.”
I thought about giving him a call right away, but it was late. I didn’t get much sleep after that – maybe an hour or two during the early morning hours. It was part of the job. Unanswered questions always kept me awake. I spent much of my life like that — alone in hotel rooms thinking what to do next.
Around six-thirty that morning, I went to a local café called the Serendipity. I sat at a counter that was outside and under a canopy. There were six or seven local residents having coffee at the counter. Most of them had lived in Iron Bay for twenty years or more. The topic of conversation was the ship. I asked them if there was anyone in the community who was an expert on ships. Someone yelled out that I should talk to Winthrop and I then heard laughter. Winthrop, I was told, worked in shipyards most of his life in San Francisco before moving down the coast. They told me I’d find him studying our beached ship. He wouldn’t be anyplace else.
After finishing breakfast, I went back to the hotel to get ready for the workday. I then drove down to the beach and found Tommy already there, waiting for me. “They said we can go aboard anytime you give the go-ahead.”
I looked out at the boat. The coastguard had a small cruiser anchored next to it, and the crew had jimmy rigged a makeshift ramp from the cruiser up to the ship’s deck. “So where did you end up last night?” I asked.
“I went up to Carmel to stay because I wanted to see the Tor House.” I must have looked puzzled. “It’s a stone house that was built by the poet, Robinson Jeffers. He apparently built it by hand.”
I’d never heard of the Tor House or Robinson Jeffers. “Do you read poetry?”
Tommy didn’t answer my question. “While in Carmel, I heard from an acquaintance named Dorothy Mallory,” he instead replied. “Dorothy is a nun and she told me she knew something about the ship, though she wouldn’t tell me much. She said she wanted me to drive up the coast to a monastery near Monterey to meet her. I told her I was busy, but she insisted what she had to say was worth hearing.”
I was trying to figure out how Tommy and a nun ever met. “How did you happen to know a nun?”
“I met her years ago. I used to give her rides on the back of my bike. I haven’t seen her in at least five or six years, but she somehow knew I was in the area.” Tommy seemed uncomfortable. “Dorothy has a past,” Tommy explained. “She’s had some issues with drugs that almost got her forced out of the church and the nursing profession. But she’s talented and intelligent. Knows something like five or more languages. She’s someone you do not forget.”
I wanted to learn more about the nun, but an ancient-looking man came up beside me and began poking me in the shoulder with the persistence of a woodpecker. As members of my crew were approaching the dock in the dinghy, Tommy said he’d find out from the crew whether it was safe for other government agents to go on board as well. I think Tommy was looking for an excuse to duck out of our conversation. So I turned to the old man. He told me he was Winthrop, and heard that I was looking for him. He was gray-haired and wearing a sailor cap. His one good eye was as bright a shade of blue as possible. His left eye was totally missing.
Winthrop’s face told me that he was a sturdy soul in his younger days. But whatever he may have looked like then, he was now so thin that a stiff breeze could practically knock him over. If someone had told me he was born in the 19th Century, I would not have been surprised. There was no way I was going to be responsible for him coming on board.
Before I could even stop him, he began telling me the boat in the harbor was not a handysize carrier. He called it a “tween-decker” cargo ship that can carry around five thousand tons deadweight and was less than half the length of a football field. This meeting with Winthrop proved to me that the residents of Iron Bay had a sense of humor. All I wanted was someone to come on board and maybe point out a few details about the ship. I didn’t need an encyclopedia or someone who would never make it up the ramp of the ship. As the crew was now at the dock, I tried to excuse myself. Instead, Winthrop began following me across the sand.
One of the crew carried something down the dock to the beach. I didn’t recognize right away what he was carrying, but by the time he reached the sand I realized it was a kennel. Inside of it was a dog. The crewman set the kennel down and for some reason opened the gate to it. When the dog had the opportunity, it bolted and ran towards Winthrop and myself. The dog was partly black lab, but mostly a mutt. Winthrop and the dog behaved like they already knew each other. “Hello there, Sonny Boy,” Winthrop said and patted the dog on the head. “What brought you here?”
There was also a second kennel containing a calico cat. “And look what came in with the wind,” Winthrop said. “I’m guessing this one’s name is Gale.”
Since there was no way he had ever seen this dog or cat before, I took Winthrop to be a genuine eccentric. Fortunately, the dog and cat kept Winthrop so preoccupied that I managed to escape from his presence. I talked to the crewmen as Winthrop continued his conversation with the dog and cat. The crewmen said the dog and cat appeared to be in good condition and well fed. “No signs of anybody on board?”
“Nobody on board,” one of the crewmen stated. “But we found some bloody gauze and bed sheets in what appeared to be the sickbay. I think they were smuggling people in and something happened.”
Tommy came over and joined the conversation. During the time I was speaking to Winthrop, Tommy already had been up on deck before returning to shore. “Hey Mike, I think it’s safe,” he remarked. “I also just got a call that there were about a half-dozen Mexicans on a small ocean cruiser detained by the Coast Guard while trying to enter San Francisco. They were carrying guns, drugs and cash. One of them appeared to be suffering from a knife wound to the arm. It looks like they came from our boat.”
Well that solved part of the mystery. The handy-size carrier, as Winthrop called it, was hauling drug smugglers. But the boat still seemed far too big to bring in just a half-dozen individuals. A much smaller boat would have been less conspicuous. I asked Tommy how they managed to be on a different boat on their way to San Francisco, but he said he didn’t know. “Were there still lifeboats on board?” I asked one of the crewmen.
He nodded his head. “It looks like every single one is still in place.”
I turned toward Tommy. “What the hell?” I said. Mysteries I couldn’t solve always bothered me. “Let’s go up and take a real look around.”
I then turned to our local ship expert. Winthrop was busy petting the dog. He had even opened up the kennel holding the cat and the cat was curling up against Winthrop’s leg. I decided to let Winthrop stay where he was, so Tommy and I took a ride out to the boat and made our way up the ramp.
It was eerie how little we found on the deck. We went down to the hull and found it littered with around twenty-five sleeping bags or blankets. Tommy and I looked through the blankets but found virtually nothing to indicate who had been there.
Then we went to the sickbay and it looked precisely like the crewman described. However, there was only one set of bloody sheets. I figured it must have been the drug smuggler Tommy mentioned with the knife wound. I asked Tommy if there was any mention regarding the severity of the wounds of this individual. Tommy looked around the room when he answered. “They really didn’t say much of anything,” he replied. I tried to locate a medical log, but I could not find anything.
Tommy and I next went to the helm of the ship. I couldn’t find any navigational readings, but I did find a small notebook that had some instructions in English. It looked like it concerned directions regarding ordering of food and supplies. It was baffling how little information I could locate. Whoever was in charge of the boat had put together some sort of strategy to get rid of any revealing documentation. And outside of what we found in sickbay and in the hull, everything looked to be in order with no signs of any damage to the ship. “I’m willing to bet this boat is navigable,” I remarked.
Tommy nodded his head.
“So presuming that to be true, what is the soonest a boat can arrive to attach the tow cables?”
“The crew could be here by noon if you want. If everything went well, it would only be a few days before we have it out of here.”
“After we have inspectors give the okay and check everything thoroughly. I’m in no rush on this. Tell the boat crew to wait for my orders.”
“Okay.”
Tommy wasn’t being talkative and for some reason that made me suspicious. I began wondering about this conversation he had with his wayward nun. In the years we worked together, he always came to me first with useful information. Now I felt like he was holding back on something. “I’ve seen what I need to see,” I told him. “So what time are you running up to that monastery?”
“There’s no time set. As soon as we can get out of here. I think you should probably come along as well.”
“Why do you need me?” I replied.
Tommy looked uncomfortable. “Because she wouldn’t be volunteering any information to us if it wasn’t really important. And I don’t want to be the go-between on something like this.”
I didn’t feel like interrogating him further. “All right,” I replied, “after we get out of here.”
Throughout the day, I had to communicate with and coordinate the actions of a number of agencies so that they could work together in response to the disaster. I felt like I was learning the letters of the alphabet all over again. The federal agencies arriving included officials from the EPA due to monitor any possible oil leakage and other environmental concerns; agents of the FBI and DEA to discover if there had been any drug trafficking; ICE authorities due to the possibility of illegal immigrants being aboard; HSEM or homeland security employees because of a possible North Korean connection; navy and coast guard and maritime authorities because of the incident occurring in navigable waters; and a letter carrier from the UPS to deliver Winthrop his mail.
Outside of the letter carrier, they all wanted to tell me how to do my job. No one was interested in my opinion, but I was used to that. It was just as well. Nothing they had to say was of any particular use, and I wanted to hold off on taking any sort of action until I knew all of the facts. Something just did not make sense.
I rode across on the dinghy several times while escorting the officials onto the boat. I wanted to make sure they did not injure themselves. It took several hours going back and forth and probably it was a great waste of my time, but most of the officials appeared to have not been to the gym in a long while. I could foresee any one of them tripping on the ramp or falling down a passageway.
Winthrop never did make it out to the boat. He was too preoccupied with care of the dog and cat to want to see what was on board. While Winthrop remained on the beach to watch what was going on, he kept the dog and cat in the shade. Probably, the creatures were the first real friends he had in a number of years.
As I had to keep bystanders away, I set up observers to watch the boat around the clock. I also made certain everyone was off the ship by sunset, which was around seven o’clock. I decided to wait a few more days before having the boat crew come to tow the boat out of the harbor. As long as the boat was still in Iron Bay, I could inspect the interior ship as I saw fit. Once towed away, this would be more difficult.
**
"A Ship Run Aground" can be read in its entirety in The Event: Iron Bay, available from Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/Event-Iron-Bay-Steve-Metcalf/dp/1719024286
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