Selkie

Selkie - working title

Forward

Midcoast Maine, April 2016

As my head broke the surface of the water, the first thing I noticed was the group of people standing along the shore wearing what, to some people, might look like olive drab space suits with fully encapsulated helmets and oxygen packs. But I'm not "some people" and immediately felt a cold chill run throughout me and it wasn't from the temperature of the water. Along with the chill was the thought "what wasn't I told about this operation?" The people on the shore were dressed in what is called Personal Protective Equipment: Bio Level 4. That frightened me because I was not so dressed - and I appeared to be the focus of their rapt attention. So, to be certain, I checked left, and I checked right. Then, I checked before me and behind me. Yep, I was the focus of their attention, all right. Uh oh...

The area up and down the shoreline, on both sides of the river for as far as I could see, was empty of civilians. Instead, I saw several Humvees, armored personnel carriers and lots of military personnel wearing MOPP 4 (Mission Oriented Protective Posture, Level Four). They were spaced roughly every ten yards and they were carrying XM8 Lightweight Assault Rifles with 100 round detachable drum magazines. I felt a tiny amount of reassurance in the observation that the weapons were facing outward to form a perimeter around me, instead of pointing at me.

My greeting party, looking like either an alien invasion or Comic Con convention of the 'Stay Puff' marshmallow men, was waiting for me to give them the canister that I had brought up from the riverbed silt where it had, fortunately, rested unmolested for the past thirty-one years. The reason why it was there, and what the canister contained, necessitated a protective military presence - but I hadn't expected this number of military personnel. I had expected, and hoped for, a much more subtle, low-key response for a clandestine recovery. Regardless, I carefully and gingerly handed over the canister to the leader of the joint CDC-USAMRIID team. And then let go a breath I wasn't aware that I had been holding as they marched off to somewhere where they would, hopefully, burn the contents of the damned canister. Damned in the very classical, religious sense of the word.

- - - - Ohm - - - -

A research scientist in the Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravlenie or, the old Soviet Army, the GRU, had been involved in scientific research that yielded astounding advances in the disciplines of genetics and microbiology that had been applied to biological warfare some thirty or so years ago. Those revolutionary advances produced diseases so deadly that he had ultimately defected to the United States and shared his knowledge so that there would be awareness and counter measures to the biological weaponry developed for the sake of humankind.

The particular disease sample in the canister was a binary or, two-part seed stock. A 'chimera' that, similar to anthrax spores, could endure for decades in stasis, a 'suspended' state until combined and activated. The sample represented the worst of the diseases that an evil, perverse application of science had created, and it was in the canister I had held. If those two components were combined, they would produce a disease that had no cure. So it was no surprise that, although a political enemy at the time, Soviet Captain Third Rank Oleg Vladimirovich Perchenko had jettisoned such a work of evil into the silt at the bottom of the Penobscot River, hoping and praying that it would never be recovered or, if it was, it would be recovered by the United States for disposal. But he was politically nae in his hope.

The container had been jettisoned from a Soviet submarine by Perchenko when the advanced Akula class boat had been brought through the mouth of the Penobscot River. Perchenko, however, had not mentioned this action to the man who had helped arrange the Captain First Rank's defection and subsequent acquisition of the submarine by the United States. The official story was that the submarine, after being reverse engineered, was scuttled and all weaponry denatured and removed. But then, that was just part of the official story, as the man had found out to his great dread.

It was not until after the Captain's death in November of the past year, that former President of The United States, Robert James Wade, received a letter that had been written by Captain Third Rank Perchenko. The letter had been in Perchenko's safety deposit box along with a note that the letter was to be securely couriered directly into the hands of now-retired President Wade upon his death. In the letter he wrote, Perchenko revealed to the President that he had jettisoned something very important and very deadly not far from the mouth of the Penobscot River at Searsport, Maine.

Perchenko revealed in the letter that it was a bioweapon of terrible power.

The political officer, a KGB apparatchik, had revealed that he was going to activate the weapon and contaminate the submarine along with any who later entered it, leaving Perchenko no alternative but to kill the KGB political officer. From the Akula class submarine that he had helped his superiors surrender to the U.S Navy some thirty years earlier would otherwise have emerged a weapon capable of ending humankind, had Perchenko not taken the actions that he had never before revealed.

The letter went on and Captain Third Rank Perchenko told President Wade that before the submarine had been scuttled and after killing the KGB apparatchik, he had jettisoned the canister. He wrote that it would be found in the silt on the port side of the submarine, or, southwest side of the river exactly one kilometer from the mouth of the river. He wrote that the bioweapon's existence was such a terrible thing that he had been compelled to keep the existence of it a secret for the rest of his life and up to his death from surprisingly natural causes.

Perchenko had written in his letter that he believed that no government could be entrusted with the contents of the container as it contained the most lethal disease ever known to mankind. He further stated in his letter that he believed the former President to be the most moral, God-fearing leader that he had ever met or known of and, for this reason, he was entrusting recovery and the destruction of the canister's contents to President Wade.

Perchenko wrote that only the President could be entrusted to "take care of that infernal, damned box." He went on in his letter to apologize to the President for not having told him about the container sooner. He had feared that others, less scrupulous than President Wade, might gain possession of the container, develop the contents, and unleash a chimeric super-virus that could conceivably lead to the very end of humankind. It was for that reason, he had written, that he had allowed so many years to pass between having jettisoned the container and passing the knowledge of it on to the President.

President Wade, having received and read, then re-read the Captain's letter several times and then thought about the situation for several days before he could come to any decision. He deliberated on what his options might lead to before taking any action that he prayed to God was the right decision. He considered the probable chain of events that would follow his contact. He knew he would have to speak with the current President and this caused no small amount of concern as he regarded the man as both a self-serving, narcissistic scoundrel and a pathological liar whose motivation was unknown and whose very allegiance was suspect. Nonetheless, The Man was in The Office and therefore had to be notified in keeping with the situation and protocol.

Two weeks after having contacted the White House and predictably having received no response, the retired President telephoned the Commandant at the U. S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, otherwise known as USAMRIID at Fort Detrick. They spoke on the telephone via a secure line, a "perc" that every living retired President has, due to their knowledge of national and international events and the role the former Presidents and the United States have played in those events. They spoke for nearly two hours about the contents of the letter the President had received.

As the two men had served together in combat, decades before in a place named Loc Ninh, their trust in each other remained absolute and allowed them to be candid. And candid they were as they discussed the potential health, political and military ramifications of bringing the container up and what to do with it once they had it in their possession. The President said that he knew of someone with 'special attributes,' as he put, it that could do things quietly, if the White House could be kept out of the loop until the recovery had been made. The General said not only did he think the approach doable but, given the political atmosphere, a quiet recovery was preferable - otherwise it would wind up leaked and the story on the next nightly network news. And the weapon somehow winding up in the hands of any one of several nations hostile to The United States.

----Ohm----

And this brings us up to my current quandary. Because I'm not quite human, I have certain capabilities that have been useful to the government on a few occasions in the past. But others, and by that I mean humankind in general, typically need a while to become accustomed to my augmented nature, if they find out. As I might have mentioned in passing without elaborating, I'm a Selkie.

Copyright 2014 Hyril Rombes All Rights Reserved

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