Sea of Fire

Chapter Five

Fifty-two-year-old Warrant Officer George Wellington Jelbart had seen and experienced many extraordinary things in his thirty-two years of service in the Royal Australian Navy.

Jelbart spent his first twelve years of military service with the Hydrographic Force. Based in Wollongong, just south of Sydney, he and his team constantly updated charts of the 30,000 kilometers of Australia's coastline as well as adjoining waters. He loved being out in ships and planes, producing maps that covered nearly one sixth of the world's surface. Even when his team was caught in a tropical cyclone, a category five hurricane, or a tsunami, he relished the work he was doing. As his naval officer father once described it, "The Navy puts muscle in your back. Danger keeps it strong."

The next nine years were radically different and much less muscular. Because Jelbart was so familiar with the geography surrounding Australia, Deputy Chief of Navy Jonathan Smith moved him to the Directorate of Naval Intelligence. That was during the 1980s, when the influx of Japanese businessmen and investors brought an influx of Japanese criminals. There, in a windowless office, Jelbart helped signal personnel pinpoint the direction and location of broadcasts coming from local waters and surrounding nations. He did that out of duty, not love. Finally, on his fortieth birthday, Jelbart requested a transfer. He needed to be back on the sea or at least in the sunlight. Smith agreed to a compromise. He gave Jelbart a promotion and shifted him to the Maritime Intelligence Centre. There, the newly minted warrant officer would be out-of-doors and dealing with a wider range of illegal activities than he had in his previous posts.

That was where Jelbart encountered the unexpected on a weekly basis. Some of it was heartbreaking. There were the Malaysian slavers who abducted Aborigine children via cargo plane. There were refugees from war-ravaged East Timor who were dropped offshore using World War II-surplus parachutes. Most of them were young. All of them were inexperienced jumpers. Fifty of the sixty-seven of them drowned. There were the Australian drug traffickers who used surfboards with high-tech listening devices to spy on MIC aircraft. Jelbart had even investigated sea-monster sightings in the Gulf of Carpentaria. Those turned out to be Chinese submarines conducting maneuvers.

But in all his years in the Royal Australian Navy, the sandy-haired, six-foot-four-inch Brisbane native had never heard anything like this. The implications were chilling.

Jelbart had arrived at his office in the Australian Central Credit Union Building, 36 Mitchell Street, at seven A.M. Throughout the early 1990s he had arrived early to hear phone messages and go through the mail. Since the late 1990s he had to come to the office early to slog through E-mails. If he could eliminate the E-mails from fellow officers who were compelled to forward bad jokes, he could do the job in an hour. Unfortunately, he had to open every correspondence on the off chance it had something to do with naval matters.

Shortly after Jelbart arrived, the phone beeped. His aide, Junior Seaman Brendan Murphy, answered. Murphy forwarded the call. It was from Captain Ronald Trainor of the Freemantle-class patrol boat Suffolk. They had found a man floating in the Banda Sea twelve miles east of Celebes.

"The fellow was barely conscious and clinging to a section of waterlogged pine," Trainor reported. "He's dehydrated and lost a lot of blood. He had been shot twice in the lower legs and managed to rig some crude bandages from his shirt. We assume he's a pirate whose mission ended badly."

"That's a possibility," Jelbart said.

Jelbart was confused. This was a routine rescue on international waters. It did not require the ship's captain to report to him personally.

"But what drew us to him was extremely unusual," the captain went on.

Jelbart grew concerned as Trainor explained. What they found was not only unusual, it was inexplicable. The warrant officer wanted a complete investigation. Trainor told him that they would search for the rest of the vessel and crew, as well as whoever attacked them. In the meantime, the injured man was going to be airlifted to the Royal Darwin Hospital along with the remnants of his vessel. Jelbart said that he would meet the helicopter there to take charge of the evidence and arrange for security. When he hung up, Jelbart realized that he would also have to notify Chief Solicitor Brian Ellsworth. Ostensibly, the Banda Sea castaway was being brought to Darwin for medical care. But Captain Trainor's other discovery made that a secondary issue from the MIC's point of view. The man had to be questioned. There were complex legal issues surrounding the interrogation of a foreign national recovered in international waters.

Ellsworth was in the shower when Jelbart called. The civilian official lived with his newscaster wife in the exclusive La Grande Residence on Knuckey Street.

At the warrant officer's insistence, Mrs. Ellsworth summoned him to the phone. Jelbart explained the situation as it had been explained to him. The forty-three-year-old solicitor thought for a minute before replying.

"I will meet you at the hospital," Ellsworth replied. "But there is someone else I would like you to call."

"Who?"

"A gentleman named Lowell Coffey," Ellsworth said. "He is in Sydney for a conference on international civil rights."

"That's the ARRO symposium?"

"Yes," Ellsworth said. "Mr. Coffey works for the National Crisis Management Center in Washington."

"Op-Center? Do we really want a foreign intelligence service involved in this?" Jelbart asked.

"We want the NCMC for three reasons," Ellsworth told him. "First, we'll want to get a very quick read on this situation. The NCMC can help us. Second, one of their best people is already in Australia. I don't agree with his politics, but he is smart and well-informed. Finally, holding this shipwrecked alien could backfire. Especially if the explanation turns out to be something very innocent. If that happens, we have someone to share the blame."

That last was not entirely honorable, Jelbart thought, but the solicitor did have a point.

Ellsworth had told Jelbart how to get in touch with Lowell Coffey. He was to call Penny Masterson, who was Mr. Coffey's host for the ARRO conference. The warrant officer passed the information to Brendan Murphy. Jelbart also told Murphy to dispatch a plane to Sydney. If the American agreed to come, Jelbart did not want to waste any time.

While the junior seaman made the calls, Jelbart composed an E-mail explaining the situation. He sent the message coded Level Alpha to Rear Admiral Ian Carrick at Royal Australian Navy headquarters in Canberra. The Level Alpha clearance guaranteed that only the rear admiral would see it. When that was finished, Jelbart checked his computer to see what appointments he would have to cancel today. And possibly tomorrow. He hoped this took no longer.

If it did, what Jelbart hoped was just an incident could turn out to be a crisis.