Fear of the unknown

I just got off the phone with Officer Rey. I almost did not answer the phone because I was waiting for his call and the call ID said it was from a different number than the last one. The area code was right, however, so I decided to take a chance.

Officer Rey did not sound himself for two reasons. One, his voice was low and hoarse and two, there was background noise that sounded like the ambient noise one might hear if the person on the other end was walking a gravel path between a beach and a highway.

He quickly and somewhat mutedly explained that he wanted to call because I deserved an update, but that he had been given strict instructions not to leak the information he had helped to gather. He made me swear not to alert the press or even repeat what he was going to tell me to a friend or he would be in danger of court-martial, among other, less pleasant things. I told him that I had to share information with Eugene's wife and he relented on the condition that I give her the same admonishment. I promised.

Here is the story as Rey related it to me. A cutter was dispatched to intercept the ship as it passed the southernmost portion of Nova Scotia, about 30 miles from land. The captain of the cutter, Benjamin Thomas, is an experienced and reliable man.

The cutter approached Eugene's ship from the rear, continuing to hail by the radio and then by bullhorn when it pulled within distance. Thomas reported concern that there was not a single light on aboard. Had the propellors not been spinning, he would have thought it to be a derelict, dead in the water. The cutter pulled alongside and illuminated the hull with its two massive searchlights. At first the cutter's crew saw nobody, which they thought odd as a ship that size generally has somebody on deck at all times in any weather. Stranger yet, there appeared to be a blue mist hovering on the deck, about two feet deep. The mist appeared to be contained within the boundaries of the deck, and though the wind was light, it should have been enough to blow any airborne matter into a trail behind the ship.

At this point in the story I thought of the mist cloud that parted from Eugene's initial discovery. I did not mention it to Rey because I did not want to waste his time and because it most likely came up in the work he had been doing since we last spoke.

Rey continued to explain that the cutter continued to try to communicate with someone on the freighter by bullhorn but had no success. After 15 minutes of this, Thomas was in the middle of calling the base for permission to board when a single person approached the rail of the freighter.

The man approached in a slow, limping shuffle. He was shirtless and covered in a number of gory but not life-threatening wounds. He walked right to the rail and appeared to continue walking even after it stopped his progress as if he did not have the presence of mind to stop.

Thomas called to the man through the bullhorn and he did not respond and his expression did not change. Thomas returned to his call to base and asked how to proceed. He was told to put 200 yards between the ships and continue along with it until the senior officers at the base could consult (presumably with The Pentagon or at least the admiralty of the Navy) and respond with a course of action. Again I asked him if this was normal procedure. He said that since 9/11 a more aggressive response was normal to things that seemed unusual and that this was about a 9.5 or the unusual scale.

Rey said that was where it still stood when he called. He was not privy to the discussions going on, but he did say that the highest-ranked officers of the base were called into a meeting that had lasted through the night and that the rumor going around was that the Pentagon and The President were in on the meeting via conference call. He doubted that he would be able to call again, but suggested that I would probably be able to get news from other sources soon since Eugene's ship had already received press coverage once, so that whatever was done would have to be public.

I thanked Officer Rey for his help and his information, to which he replied "Don't mention it...really, don't mention it to anybody or it's my ass." I assured him his secret was safe.

I could get into a long monologue about how this is making me feel, but this entry is already too long, and I do not think it would be too hard for any person with a soul to figure out what emotions are involved. At this moment all I feel is dread. I have to call Amanda.