The Maltese Incident Read online

  ***

  For the shore party I picked six men, beside myself, out of 50 volunteers. I chose them for their outdoor experience, including hunting, military background, and the ability to handle a gun. We would go ashore using one of our 25-foot excursion boats. I tapped Dominic Maslow as my second in command. When back on the job, Dominic was the vice president in charge of IT, but he had a lot of experience as a sportsman as well as some solid military background where he saw combat as an Army Ranger.

  We were surprised—surprised and happy—to see the island bathed in sunshine, a nice break from the dreary weather at sea.

  “Don’t forget to make room for me,” Meg said, as we entered the meeting room.

  “You’re not coming, honey. We have no idea what we’re going to encounter. I want you here where you’re safe.”

  “Harry, are you telling me I’m not in good physical shape?”

  “God no,” I had to admit. “You’re in wonderful shape. But you’re not cut out to be stomping through a jungle.”

  “And you are? I bet the closest you ever came to a jungle was gardening.”

  Not even that, actually. I live in a high-rise condo. I was getting an annoying feeling that I was losing the argument to Meg. I can’t just give her an order. Well, maybe I can, but she wouldn’t obey it so why bother. I tried for one last debate point.

  “Hon, we’re all going to be heavily armed. It’s anybody’s guess what kind of animals we’ll bump into. We’ve got to be ready to open fire at a moment’s notice to protect ourselves.”

  Meg reached onto the table and picked up an AR-15, the kind of semi-automatic rifle the ship carries. Without taking her eyes off mine, she pressed the release button and popped the magazine out, which she caught in her left hand. She cradled the rifle under her right arm, inserted a dummy round into the magazine, rammed it back into the rifle, secured it, and chambered the dummy round. The whole process took about 15 seconds. She looked at me the entire time and didn’t blink once.

  Having lost the argument, I was about to deliver my concession statement when Meg smiled and said,

  “Remember, honey, my father was a Marine. He taught his daughter how to handle a gun. Dad wasn’t satisfied until I could shoot the balls off a gnat at 30 yards.”

  I married well.

  The rest of the shore party came into the room, led by Randy Borg, who would not be going ashore.

  “Captain Harry, I’ll let you handle this,” Randy said.

  “We all thank you for volunteering to go ashore,” I said, “including Meg, who’s more than good with a firearm. I’ll be leading our party and Dom Maslow will be second in command. If I sound military, it isn’t just my background speaking, it’s because I want to emphasize that discipline will be necessary on this trip. I guess that when you joined Malta Investments, you didn’t expect to go exploring islands in search of food. As you all know, the provisions aboard the Maltese are limited, and that’s why we’re going to explore the land. We don’t want to take risks, because we don’t know what we’ll find ashore. Chef Carlos has given us a shopping list of food that we need. If we discover food in large amounts, we’ll launch other boats to help bring the stuff aboard. Among the many things we don’t know about this land is what kind of animals inhabit the place. We hope they’ll be edible, but they may also be dangerous. You have plenty of guns and ammo. Don’t be afraid to use them—for food or for protection. Keep in mind that the Maltese was bumped by a huge animal, bigger than any shark we’ve ever seen. Do we expect to find anything as large on land? We have no idea. Just keep your powder dry.”

  “Keep your powder dry? You sound just like John Wayne, sweetie. Why don’t you start calling me ‘little lady.’ ”

  The group cracked up at Meg’s comments. She has a way of lightening things up.

  “Okay, any questions? Any comments, Dom?”

  “I’ve had a lot of training in searching for food when I was in the Army,” Dom Maslow said. “I suggest that you show it to me before you drag anything back to the ship. I’m pretty good at distinguishing between what’s edible and what’s fatal.”

  “Good. Speaking of food, we’re going to take some of the little remaining meat we have aboard. We’ll need it for energy. Chef Carlos put together a few ham and turkey sandwiches. Okay, folks, let’s see what’s happening ashore.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to say, ‘Move Out’ or something like that?” my wiseass wife said to her wiseass husband.

  ***

  Dom Maslow took over the controls of the motor launch. I assigned two men to jump off the bow when we hit the beach.

  The boat came to a stop on a smooth, sandy bottom, with little wave activity behind us to cause problems. After the two men wrapped a line around a tree, we all dragged the bow onto dry sand. I raised my hand to signal for silence. All we could hear were jungle sounds like a Hollywood adventure movie.

  “Sounds pretty harmless to me,” I said. “Okay, let’s move out.”

  “Well said, captain,” Meg said, slapping me on the shoulder.

  “This place looks safe enough,” I said, “but let’s be careful. Make sure your guns are loaded and be ready to flip off the safety at a moment’s notice. Okay, let’s walk slowly, look from side to side, and stay alert.”

  “What you said about that gigantic fish got me thinking, captain,” said Rick Ramos. “We should be ready to shoot first and take pictures later.”

  Ramos worked in the engine room on the Maltese. I picked him because he served in the Army. He’s a tough little guy who never shuts up.

  “Besides photos, we should take notes,” I said. “Jot down your impressions and don’t worry about editing the content. We can sort it all out later.”

  “Hey, people,” Dom said, “doesn’t this ground look amazingly flat. It looks like it was tamped down by a steamroller flattening a path through tall grass.”

  “Yeah, but it’s not uniform like you would expect of something that was flattened,” Frank Murphy said. “It looks like uneven footprints and something being dragged.”

  “Wait, stop,” I shouted. “Look ahead of you. Murphy’s right, the shapes in the grass look like footprints of an animal—a big animal. Let’s keep going. The trail, if that’s what you want to call it, bends up ahead.”

  “Holy shit,” yelled one of the men. “What the hell is that?”

  “Everybody drop down and speak in a low voice,” I said. “Does anybody know what that thing is?”

  “That’s a Brachiosaurus,” Frank Murphy said, “Didn’t you guys see Jurassic Park?”

  I pointed my camera at Meg’s face and snapped a photo.

  “I got a perfect ‘Laura Dern’ moment,” I said.

  “You got a what?” Meg asked.

  “You know, like in the movie when Laura Dern, playing a paleontologist, got her first glimpse of a Brachiosaurus.”

  “Jurassic Park was a movie,” Maslow said, “this is reality—I think. Hey, Murph, you seem to know a lot about dinosaurs.”

  “Yeah, it’s a sort of hobby of mine. I picked it up from my son.”

  “So, tell us, Murph, does that big fucker eat people?” Ramos asked.

  “No, it’s strictly a vegetarian.”

  “I thought vegetarians were slim,” Meg said.

  “Murph, call out the name of these critters as we see them,” I said, “and don’t forget to take pictures.”

  “Why don’t we just send the pics to the ship, captain?” Ramos asked.

  “Show me a cell tower and I’ll agree with you. For now, just keep the pictures on your phones. We’ll download them to the file server when we get back to the ship. Hey, what’s that rumbling?”

  “Looks like our Brachiosaurus friend is being joined by some pals for lunch,” Murphy said.

  Four gigantic Brachiosaurs stomped into view, eating the leaves off tall trees as they walked. One of them stood on its hind legs to reach a high branch, just like in the movie. It must have been 100 feet to th
e top of its head.

  We heard a loud roar in the distance. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing and hearing

  “Sounds like a bunch of tigers practicing harmony,” Rick Ramos said.

  “Very funny, Rick,” I said. “Whatever sent out that noise was one big animal—with a bad attitude. Hey, everybody crouch down behind this bush.”

  As we hid ourselves, the animal came into view about 300 feet ahead of us.

  “Frank, what is that thing?” Meg said to Murphy in a whisper.

  “That, my friends, is a Tyrannosaurus Rex, the meanest carnivore that ever existed. He’s not coming this way but stay down while he’s in view.”

  “Okay, everybody listen up,” I said. “Part of our job is to evaluate this land as a place to live if necessary. From what I see, the vegetation indicates a decent climate, and a lot of those things hanging from trees look edible. The land looks flat enough for building, and we can cut down some of those tall trees for lumber. I see this island as a definite possibility if we need to move off the Maltese. I could get used to this place.”

  “Harry, behind you!” Meg screamed as she raised her rifle, dropped to a knee, and fired three rounds into the torso of a six-foot monster that was charging us.

  “What the fuck is that thing?” I yelled to Frank Murphy.

  “It’s a Velociraptor, one of the fiercest dinosaurs that ever lived. They often travel in packs so keep your weapons ready. Just a thought, guys, because there’s a lady with us, I suggest that we don’t precede every question with ‘what the fuck.’”

  “Don’t worry about it, Murph,” Meg said, laughing. “I’ve heard a lot worse on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange.”

  “Hey, Captain Harry, do you still like it here?” Ramos asked.

  “I like it here as long as we’ve got plenty of ammunition,” I said. “Hey, Murph, the animals seem to be skittish around gunfire. Is that my imagination?”

  “I have no answer for that other than what we’ve observed, but it seems logical that animals would be afraid of strange loud sounds. Hey, around loud noises they’re no different from a dog, a cat, or a human being for that matter.”

  As we walked, Meg kept pointing to vegetation that appeared to be edible and asked Dom Maslow for his opinion. She’d then take a photo of the item and make notes on her pad.

  “Murph, you’re our resident dinosaur maven,” I said. “Can you summarize your thoughts for us?”

  “Well, captain, besides the obvious fact that we’re millions of years in the past, I think we’ve seen a rewriting of what we know about geologic time. Until today I thought that the Brachiosaurus and the Pterodactyl coexisted in the late Jurassic period, anywhere from 148 to 154 million years ago. I also know, or I thought I knew, that the T-Rex and the Velociraptor lived in the late Cretaceous period, from 66 to 75 million years ago. And our giant shark friend, the Megalodon, lived in the early Miocene period, and lasted through the end of the Pliocene era, about 2.6 to 23 million years ago. So, we’ve time travelled anywhere from 2.6 million years to 154 million years. Our scientific studies of the age of the dinosaurs will need to be rewritten.”

  “Maybe we should call a press conference,” Meg said, always the wiseass.

  “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m willing to call our visit with the monsters a day,” I said. “Meg has a list of edible vegetation which we’ll gather on our next trip. The boat is only a couple of hundred feet behind us.”

  “Would that be the boat that’s loaded with cartons of meat sandwiches?” Murphy asked.

  “Oh shit, I should have thought of that. Let’s go. Safeties off your guns.”

  As we approached the berm over which our boat was located, we heard a riotous commotion of apparently small animals. When we reached the top of the berm we saw about 20 small dinosaurs fighting over the sandwich cartons.

  “Looks like we have company for lunch,” I said. “What are they, Murph, besides hungry?”

  “Some kind of small raptor. They’re no bigger than chickens but a lot nastier, and from the way they’re chowing down on our sandwiches they know how to bite.”

  “Okay, everybody. Shoot to kill and be careful not to hit the boat.”

  We all opened fire at the hungry little dinosaurs. Meg casually picked off five of them. The forest behind us erupted with the sound of birds taking flight. Three giant Pterodactyls flew down the beach.

  “Cease fire,” I shouted. “Let’s climb aboard and get the hell out of here.”

  Ramos reached into the boat to retrieve the carcass of what he thought was a dead dinosaur, when it suddenly turned on him and bit his arm. He flung the little animal across the sand, and Meg blasted its head off with one shot.

  “Peter, get a tourniquet around that wound,” I said to Peter Thompson, who was a medical corpsman when he was in the Marines.

  “I want everybody to keep your guns ready as we head to the ship,” I said.

  I squeezed Meg’s knee and leaned over so she could hear me over the roar of the boat engine.

  “The next time we’re involved in a situation that requires gunfire, I want you at my side.”

  “I’m always at your side, honey,” she said. “Hey, you’ve got a round chambered and your safety’s off. I recommend pointing your barrel into the air, captain.”

  “Aye, aye, sweetheart.”

  We pulled up to the Maltese 20 minutes later.

  “Theresa,” Meg yelled to Dr. Theresa Rosario, the only physician on the ship. “We have a man who was bitten by an unknown animal. Use whatever antibiotic you think is appropriate.”

  Meg and I stood next to the gurney that Ramos was on and I said, “How do you feel, Rick?”

  “Great,” said Ramos as he winced in pain. “I think I’m the only living person who’s been bitten by a dinosaur.”

  “Dinosaur?” yelled Dr. Rosario and a few others who were close by.

  Randy walked into the room.

  “We’ll explain it all to you at our meeting later, including photos,” I said. “It’s 2 p.m. by my watch. Can you guys be good to go for a meeting in one hour?”

  “I just need to powder my nose,” Meg said.

  “And clean your gun and count your ammo, if I know the new you,” I said.

  “Hey, once a Marine brat always a Marine brat.”

  “Captain Harry, we’re all hungry. Could the chef put something together for us?” Murphy said.

  “Didn’t you guys eat the sandwiches that Chef Carlos prepared for you?” Randy said.

  We all laughed.

  “We shared our lunch with some uninvited guests, Randy. We’ll tell you and everybody about it at the meeting. We’re ready to put on a photography show like you’ve never seen, including our little lunch guests who ate our sandwiches. Please ask the audio/video people to put a big screen in place. We have a lot of pics to show.”

  ***

  After we all showered and changed into fresh clothes, we met in the ship’s theater to prepare the slide show. I wanted to put things into perspective for the crowd that would soon fill the theater.

  “Okay, guys, we’re going to hear a lot of questions,” I said. “I want you to be wide open and answer honestly. Don’t worry about scaring people. We all need to adjust to our new reality.”

  At 3 p.m. the crowd began to fill up the theater. I walked to the front.

  “Good afternoon, everybody,” I said. “I’m pleased to introduce our shore excursion team that arrived back aboard an hour ago. By now you’ve heard all the gossip. What you’re about to see and hear will beat the rumors. In the past few weeks we realized that something strange happened to our ship and to us. You’re about to find out how strange it is. Before I begin our slide presentation and our narrative, I’d like to introduce Frank Murphy, a securities analyst by day and a strange-animal aficionado after hours. Frank will begin our talk by giving everybody some perspective on the huge fish that’s been trying to hump the ship.”

  “Goo
d afternoon,” Murphy said. “Yes, it’s true that my hobby is strange animals, specifically dinosaurs. My son got me involved while I led a school trip of his, and I’ve been a dinosaur nut ever since. From my studies of geologic time, I estimate that we’ve travelled into the past over 100 million years. From what we saw ashore, I can now tell you that the big fish that seems to have fallen in love with the Maltese is a Megalodon, a prehistoric shark. You heard me right—I said prehistoric. As I recall from class trips to the Museum of Natural History, the Megalodon grew to a size over 60 feet. From the photographs that our people have taken, our visitor was big, even for a Megalodon. I suggest that you keep your fingers out of the water.”

  Nobody laughed.

  “I’m now going to ask our excursion leader, Captain Harry, to tell you all about our trip ashore. I’ll stand by to help with any dinosaur questions,” Murphy said.

  Using photographs taken by the group, I told the tale of the Brachiosaurus, the Tyrannosaurus rex, the Velociraptor that charged us, and the nasty little sandwich-eating raptors. I described the rumbling earth caused by the Brachiosaurs, the fierce roar of the T-rex, and the viciousness of the small raptors.

  “We all had to fire our weapons. I’m happy that my wife Meg convinced me to include her in the excursion. She’s so accurate with a gun I think the dinosaurs will scatter the next time they see her.”

  Still no laughs. Everybody seemed stunned by our presentation.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” I concluded, “we find ourselves in a different world.”

  The room was silent.

  Meg leaned over and whispered in my ear, “I’m amazed that there are so few questions.”

  “I think these people are scared, Meg.”

  “Aren’t you?” she said. “It’s only been a few hours, and I still can’t believe that we were walking among dinosaurs—friggin dinosaurs.”

  “I’ve got a question,” Randy said. “Harry, our major objective in sending you brave folks ashore was to find additional food sources. Now we find that the land is inhabited by prehistoric monsters. Is there anything we can do to kill those bastards so we can gather some food?”