The Patrick Bowers Files - 05 - The Queen (27 page)

Saturday, January 10

US Naval Forces Central Command

Bahrain, Persian Gulf

12:21 p.m. GMT

Allighiero Avellino took a step forward in line and showed his ID to the Master-at-Arms, the United States Navy's version of military police, standing sentry at the end of the gangplank to the USS
Louisiana
, then waited while the man used a handheld scanner to run his name through DBIDS, the Defense Biometric Identification Data System, to verify his identity.

It was the fourth and final security checkpoint that he and the fellow members of his cleaning party had to pass through before they would be allowed onto the sub to clean the urine-stained floors of the heads before setting things up to pump the solid waste receptacles into the tanker truck that was still being inspected at the entrance to the base.

Although today he had another small task to complete in addition to his official duties.

For years Allighiero had believed that the environmental activist groups that sprang up in the twentieth century—Greenpeace, Earth First!, and the rest—hadn't taken things far enough: small demonstrations, people chaining themselves to trees or railroad tracks, cutting down a few telephone poles, spiking old forest growth, unfurling banners on bridges or boats. Yes, all of it was good for a few minutes of publicity, but in the end it almost never swayed public opinion or changed the minds of policy makers. It mostly just made the activists feel good, as if they were doing
something.

The MA studied Allighiero's identification card one last time, then handed it back to him and waved him through.

He pushed his cart of cleaning supplies forward onto the gangplank leading to the sub's conning tower.

Media flash points.

That was about it.

You get a little coverage, maybe you get arrested to make a statement, but then the next soccer game or celebrity publicity stunt or political scandal takes over the news cycle, and nothing important ever changes.

A few days later you're out of jail and no one hears your name again.

But with the present worldwide irreversible environmental devastation, the time for procrastination was over. The time for protests was over. The time for real action was here. For the sake of the planet, for the sake of the future.

The world needed a wake-up call that could not be ignored.

And that was why he'd joined Eco-Tech in the first place last year. But, of course, because of his job cleaning nuclear submarines, he'd always been careful to keep his involvement with the organization quiet.

One at a time his co-workers disappeared with their military chaperones into the sub. Descending into the ship with the carts wasn't as tricky as it might look since the carts had retractable wheels and specially designed handles to slide down the ladder's handrails. At last, Allighiero met his escort at the conning tower, and the man assisted him in getting his supplies down the ladder.

“Glad I don't have your job,” the petty officer told him.

“Grazie,” Allighiero said, thanking him generically in Italian rather than letting on that he knew English.

“Right.” The seaman sounded slightly judgmental. “Follow me.”

Allighiero trekked behind the petty officer across the steel mesh floor of the walkway. Surrounding them in the cramped corridor: caged-in lightbulbs and valves and gauges, rivets and swarms of cables and wires. And deep beneath them, twenty-four Trident ballistic missiles. A great steel beast carrying oblivion in its belly.

A beast that not only did not belong in the ocean but did not belong on the planet.

American weapons of mass destruction were forcing the world to bow to the whims of capitalism, industrial commercialism, and the free market exploitation of the poor and marginalized around the globe.

Put simply, the neoliberal economic ideology of the US and the UK subjugated developing nations and devastated the rest of the world's natural resources.

Humans are destined for so much more than consumption, materialism, and self-absorption. How could a world in which products that poison the environment and take centuries to deteriorate are endlessly produced, consumed, and discarded with no aim toward sustainability of the world's ecosystems, how could that kind of civilization, by any stretch of the imagination, be called advanced? How could it even be called sane?

Nearly 28 percent of the world's energy is consumed by Americans, who subsequently refuse to pay a fair climate debt to the rest of the world, while 30 percent of the people on the planet have no access to clean water, let alone electricity, medical care, or adequate housing. More than 79 percent of the world's population lives on less than $10 a day; 1.4 billion people are forced to survive on less than $1.25 a day. All this, while Americans complain that there isn't enough whipped cream on their mochas or enough leg room in their SUVs.

As philosopher Peter Kreeft wrote, and Allighiero had long ago memorized in the original English, “Anyone whose common sense has not been dulled by familiarity should be able to see the blindingly obvious truth that there is something radically wrong with a civilization in which millions devote their lives to pointless luxuries that do not even make them happy, while millions of others are starving; a civilization where no hand, voluntary or involuntary, moves money from luxury yachts to starving babies fast enough to save the babies.”

A world of people pursuing yachts and ignoring the babies.

The fruit of corporate greed and imperialism run wild.

And perhaps most disturbing of all: the proliferation of nuclear weapons that would eventually and inevitably fall into the wrong hands and create an unprecedented environmental catastrophe that would exacerbate the effects of global climate change and potentially wipe out billions of earth's creatures—humans and other precious species alike.

Allighiero followed his escort toward the galley. Maneuvering the cart of cleaning supplies through the narrow corridors was not easy, but he had been doing this for two years and managed with little trouble.

He palmed the USB memory stick.

Today he would help clean each of the eight heads on the submarine. But now on the way to the first one he would pass through the galley.

Which was where he was going to place the device.

Allighiero's task was simple—just insert a USB 3.0 jump drive into the back of the computer in the galley, a place no one would ever notice, would never even think to check for foreign devices. He had not been told exactly what the software he was uploading would do, but he knew that the drive contained some type of code that would spread through the sub to help accomplish Eco-Tech's goal of disabling the submarine's capability of firing its nuclear warheads.

He was a small cog in a much bigger plan. He knew that as well, but he had a part to play and he was going to play it.

When the world saw what a small group of environmentalists could do—the annihilation they could have caused if they'd had another agenda—the governments of the world would see the dangers of nuclear weapons for what they truly were, with eyes unclouded by political agendas and posturing.

Turning the tide of history would begin by first turning the tide of public sentiment.

A move toward peace.

A move toward a nuke-free world.

While his escort was distracted for a moment unlocking a door in front of them, Allighiero slid the device into the back of the computer console on the galley counter.

And just that quickly, his job was done.

In a little over fourteen hours and thirty minutes the world would wake up once and for all to the dangers of inadequately secured ballistic missiles.