James Ottar Grundvig
Dolphin Drone
Dedicated to:
my father
Ottar Grundvig
(1913–2009)
my sister
Anne Renette Markham
(1948–2009)
Remembering their deep affinity for the oceans.
Author Acknowledgments
I want to express thanks and deep gratitude to Skyhorse Publishing’s founder and President, Tony Lyons, the preeminent risk-taker in the hyper-competitive book market of New York City; to my editor Alexandra “Alex” Hess and her latent passion for the military thriller genre and her “humanizing” the story even more; to the book’s copy editor Mark Amundsen for asking the right questions; and to Louis Conte, a consultant to Skyhorse Publishing, for making the introduction to the publisher on a different book.
I also want to thank my literary agent, Greg Aunapu of Salkind Literary Agency, for his insights as freelance journalist and agent of the publishing industry and his knowledge of the US Navy Marine Mammal Program (NMMP) and its trained dolphins, which is quite impressive for anyone inside or outside the publishing world.
I would also like to thank the US Navy Marine Mammal Program, former NMMP spokesman Tom LaPuzza, one of the 1961 program’s founders Dr. Sam Ridgway, and since 2007 is the president of the board and paid director of MMSC, Robert C. Schoelkoph for their help and guidance on the training, feeding, and health care monitoring of the navy dolphins.
Finally, for writers who take up this “lonely profession” — from which the author is rarely ever alone — and who follow those who lit the beacons through the darkness to the dawn of a completed work, I am eternally grateful to the late literary agent Jack Scovil; the late writer, novelist and professor Richard Elman at Bennington Writers Workshop, who told me to “write with force”; and to my lifelong writing pal and creative “sounding board,” Reverend Sherry Blackman.
Chapter One
A chill bit Merk Toten’s neck and shot down his left arm under the wet suit sleeve. It tingled, igniting a swarm of tremors in his wrist. He snapped his hand to shake it off, but couldn’t. The shaking arose at the worst possible time; and his timing, he knew from the past, was piss-poor.
He wondered, why the weakness had appeared then? At that exact moment? Why at dusk? Why on a mission, kneeling in a two-man rubber boat in the Strait of Hormuz with no arms, exit strategy, or backup plan? Three CIA drones had been retasked to Yemen, while the SEALs deployed two Mark V assault boats in a defensive posture several klicks back outside the ports of Oman. That bothered him.
Irritated, Merk stilled his hand strumming his fingers on the gunwale. The RHIB — rigid-hulled inflatable boat — painted black like the accessories on board, sat camouflaged in the charcoal waters. What light remained came from the laptop. He peered out into the darkness, adjusting his eyes.
Farther up the strait, Merk saw a seam where the black water fused with the darker sky. He fixed his eyes on that seam and waited, thinking about the underwater survey he had planned for months: A pair of elite navy dolphins that he had trained for a year, dove down in the strait mapping Iran’s new subsea pipeline. When built, the oil conduit would stretch across the thirty-five-mile-wide strait to Khasab Port in Oman.
What concerned him was being exposed in the dark sea. Any glint of light would become a liability for the US Navy “dolphin whisperer.” So Merk closed the laptop. In doing so, he broke off his ability to communicate with the dolphins roaming the seafloor. Sure, he could recall them by dipping a sonar-whistle in the water to summon them by their birth names — whistles given to a calf rising to the surface to breathe its first breath — but that wasn’t the same as having an open two-way channel to com with them.
Just as quickly as the tremors weakened his wrist, his senses flooded with dread: the chugging of a motor alerted him to the presence of another vessel — garrulous and throaty at first, then growing louder… until a green and white fishing trawler breached the black veil of night. The bow lurched forward, slicing the sea open like a zipper. The sight of the vessel punched Merk in the gut. He wondered why a trawler cruised through the strait at that late hour. He glanced at his teammate, Morgan Azar, an African American Special Forces biologist and veterinarian. Azar mouthed, What’s that doing here? Merk shrugged. Lt. Azar swiped through intel reports on a tablet, trying to figure out how the trawler managed to evade the Office of Naval Intelligence’s surveillance net. “Nothing comes up,” he whispered.
“Must be Iranian. It’s the same green and white as their flag,” Merk said.
Azar read an ONI note: “Satellites tracked two fleets of fishing boats leaving port at 1400 and 1600 zulu. The last fleet passed through more than three hours ago.”
“At sea?” Merk looked down the strait, scratching the greasepaint on his cheek. Miffed, he turned to the trawler, trying to figure out how it became a straggler. Was it delayed because of a crew issue? Did it have engine trouble? Whatever the reason, Merk and Azar crouched behind the gunwale, holding fast as the ship’s waves rolled toward them, watching the fishermen start to unfold piles of nets across the deck.
Merk dialed into a mental checklist, ticking off items he had prepared for the mission. He had painted or taped all of the accessories in the RHIB black. Or did he? He ran through the list: plastic-clad laptop, beacons, flashlights, scuba gear, flare gun, and first aid kit. Check. He had smeared his face with black greasepaint. Check. He wiggled his digits in the fingerless gloves and pressed them against the inflated bow. In darkness, he and Azar should be invisible.
The first wave surged the rubber boat. The second wave bobbed it up and down. A third swell rocked the RHIB sideways. Merk eyed Azar, who pointed with his eyes back to the trawler. Merk looked over. The fishing ship slowed down hard, plowing bow waves as it lurched into a drift. Did the crew spot them? Did they sense something?
“Why are they slowing down right over my fins?” Merk clenched his hands into fists.
“Did they pick up a stray acoustical signal?” Morgan Azar asked.
“How could they? The laptop is closed.” He tapped the device.
“What about a fishfinder?” Azar queried, watching the trawler.
“Something’s not right.” Merk flashed two and then five fingers, signaling Lt. Azar that the Pacific bottlenose dolphins would stay underwater longer without coming up for air. The hand-sign meant another five to seven minutes, or twice the normal dive time for the sea mammals to surface and breathe.
Eyeing the trawler, Merk recalled that kind of long, tense wait from before — exposed in enemy territory with no exit. Only the last time, it was off the coast of China a decade ago. That neuro-association prickled his fingertips; he felt his heartbeat pulse in his wet suit.
Scanning the bottom of the seafloor a half-klick south, the navy dolphins swam down to a depth of thirty meters. They were contouring the layout of the gas pipeline that would one day deliver crude oil from Iran’s South Pars Phase-12 offshore platform to Oman’s refineries.
As the trawler drifted away, Merk opened the laptop and swiped the glidepad. The laptop cam biometrically scanned the whites of his eyes to access the software. He looked up at the ship, drifting, slowing; his fingers hovered above the color-coded keyboard. The yellow key sent a signal packet in the cetaceans’ language up to a military satellite that beamed the data back down to a DPod — a dolphin communication pod — bobbing on the surface.