

SOUL CANDY

By: B.S. Adkison

Copywrite 2019

Another deposition (just the facts) story designed to tell what happened and not waste your time with unnecessary prose and fluff. Some things are dramatic enough and can stand alone on their own merit. Many readers and most writers may disagree with this approach but there is a reason that only 5% of people read regularly and that may be, in part, because of lack of time.

SOUL CANDY

It is a ridiculous expression- soul candy, it just came to me one day as I tried to understand why I do this. It is a definition of what I seek as I stand around with these others, these treasure seekers, these 'business people' many of whom are probably just like me- bored. There is something about the thrill of the unknown, the satisfaction of a curiosity that must be common among these people. Sure, they all tell themselves it's about scoring a deal and that is a large a part of it, but it is more- at least for me. It has become a hobby of sorts, a goofy way to kill time as I have become older. Something to do that fires my imagination, a harmless form of curiosity that fills the voids that were once occupied by getting loaded, chasing girls and other pass-times that are increasingly reserved for younger men. Oh, don't get me wrong, those thoughts still fill my mind more than I should admit, in fact I still think much like I always have- like I did when I was about fifteen-years-old and I believe that is the case with most people, but it is a fact that it is time to act my age. I know others who refuse to see this, they dress too young, they act and speak too young and that may impress some people, but for most, it seems to be a waste of time. Who are they fooling? They are fooling themselves, that's who. Just think back to when you were young. What did you think of oldsters holding on to their youth? Oh, sometimes I'm sure it was refreshing, maybe even cute, but mostly (especially when their unwanted attentions and affections were directed towards you) it all could be summed up in a single word- gross! So, this pass-time, this treasure seeking, this apparently appropriate use of my time with many of the others involved also being my age, is a safe, respectable way to satisfy my curiosity- or so I thought.

'Curiosity killed the cat' is an expression that comes to mind and as this story will prove, this 'harmless hobby' can be far from completely safe.

"Hey-bout'a-bout'a-hundred? Can'a-can'a-get'a-hundred? How'a-bout'a-hundred? Can'a-can'a-get'a-hundred?" The racing voice of the auctioneer is like a blur, a hard to follow monotone cadence that must date back a thousand years or more, a practiced skill reserved for only a few, and is of a questionable viability that perhaps should have outlived its usefulness long ago, but it lives on and on. A behavior that defies logic, but it is the way it is done and probably the way it will always be done, for some reason.

The voice finally pauses as the faces of the bidders of this particular lot might as well be made of stone, which judging from what we can see should be no surprise. The public is only allowed to view the contents of each, payment defaulted, mini-storage unit from the open, roll-up door and unless items of value are plainly evident, bids fall far below what it will cost to dispose of the items at the local landfill, especially when one factors in the time and effort it will take to load it all into a truck. Sometimes a unit will receive no bid at all which leaves the facility owner with the burden of disposal.

"Come on people, there has got to be something good in there!" pleads the fast-talking wares hawker.

But all we can see are old clothes, stacks of books and out-of-style furniture, all of which lofts a strong, musty, molded odor which almost guarantees that all that is in there is a trip straight to the dump.

"How-ba-how-ba-bout'a-sixty? Fifty? Forty?"

I raise my hand.

"Forty goin' once-twice..., SOLD!"

What the hell. I can see that some of the books are quite old and if some are not too moldy, I might find something interesting.

I did notice something way in the back, or at least the edge of something that the others might have missed, an old steamer trunk, or as I would like to imagine, a treasure chest. But what I have really bought is something to occupy my time for the next few days, and as a bonus, (except for the steamer trunk) everything is small enough that I can load it all on my truck myself. I get some passers-bye to help throw the trunk in the bed of my pick-up truck and it is quite heavy- a good sign, it means it is more than just more old clothing, (usually worthless) but it is probably more books. (Also, usually worthless, but something, as I said before, that I might find interesting.)

I spend the rest of the afternoon unloading everything in the 'staging area.' (My garage.) I use a pair of old tires to break the fall of the steamer chest as I slide it out of the truck bed. Sometimes I recruit my neighbor to help me with some of the bigger items, but he tends to drink up all my beer and overstay his welcome. The fact is, I like this alone time when I first have the opportunity to see what I have bought. It is a kind of giddy excitement where my mind wanders selfishly and this way, I am under no obligation to share the spoils. In fact, I enjoy this so much that if I happen to have company, I often make an excuse to go through the stuff later when I can be alone. It might be a strange quirk, but I would rather present any treasure that I may want to share with my friends and family at my leisure, I just find it more fun that way, also, if there is nothing of note, (which is often) I make a dump-run and I can forget about the whole affair.

Enjoyable hobby or not, I work fast and systemically. (After I crack open a beer.) First, I drag the furniture off to the side after a once over. An antique chair and settee make the cut as they are both of high quality, although both will require new upholstery. I'll bring them, and the results of my clothing sorting, to my friend Jim and his wife, who run an upholstery shop and do tailoring on the side. I barter these kinds of things (unless it is something of real value) and these kinds of arrangements have got the seat of my truck recovered, as well as other things done. These items may put me close to getting the sagging headliner of my Buick Regal redone. (A collector/muscle car that I own.)

Old clothing can be so disgusting from mold and mildew that I wear a respirator mask and latex exam gloves as I handle those items. I put any military uniforms and old dress clothes that contain fancy buttons, and anything with usable silk, (Jim's wife uses silks, velvets and shimmery fabrics for quilting) in one pile and the rest go straight into trash bags. After a couple of hours, I have a bundle for Jim and his wife and three trash bags full for the dump.

Next, I sort the household items. I don't mess around with pots and pans, (except for an occasional cast iron frying pan or maybe large stewing pots, which might be useful in my kitchen) so those items usually go straight into my scrap metal bins. Knickknacks, such as porcelain and crystal can be interesting and I keep some of those things for my house, if they are in my style, or I give them away as gifts to my friends and their wives, but most of it goes straight to the Goodwill or if rare or high quality, they might earn me a few bucks at the Pawnshop. This lot yields virtually nothing in this respect, except for a gold tinted ashtray with some Japanese script on it, which is all I save and that goes straight to the work bench beside me and I put it to use immediately with a lit cigarette as I work.

The lack of knickknacks and woman's clothing points to the fact that this storage unit must have been the product of a bachelor, who, like most of the renters of these units auctioned because of deficient payments, has probably died. Units with lots of baby stuff are usually the result of divorce and units with tools, shop and weight training equipment, as well as men's clothing, tend to result from incarceration, at least that is my theory.

Next, I go through the books. I like books. I've been an avid reader since my childhood. The stacks of paperbacks and outdated textbooks point to the typical interests of an ex-navy man. Pocket novels of adventures on the high seas, coffee table picture books of ships, both old and newer, (up till the seventies anyway, which is probable when this stuff was put in storage) tech books covering seamanship and navigation, (outdated in today's GPS world) a series of volumes related to a merchant marine correspondence course, and dozens, maybe hundreds of stapled together pamphlets from the Department of Commerce, Government Services Association (GSA). These spark my interest as this might be something right down my ally and I spend some time going through these. They seem to be lists of items and equipment going up for auction, all dated from the late fifties through the early seventies. I do find this interesting and using this information and the stacks of business records also included, I deduce that the former owner of this pile of crap was some kind of wheeler-dealer and the owner of a petroleum depot on the outskirts of Bremerton, Washington near the small, bayside town of Brownsville. The receipts mostly cover bulk oil deliveries for tugs, fishing boats and other commercial crafts. (Including vessels contracted for the Navy.) The name of the Company was Olympic Oil, and the owner was a man by the name of Leroy Briggs.

I find all this interesting, but as I scan the books for first additions and/or author signed examples, it is clear that due to the molded condition and lack of anything rare or even interesting, (to anyone 'normal' at least) most, if not all of this will be heading to the landfill. Last, I open the steamer trunk, perhaps my luck will change with this.

"Here we go!" I say to myself as right on top is a pristine Navy uniform of a Chief Petty officer. Under that, are the boxed medals for good conduct, and campaign badges for service in Korea. While these items certainly look like a treasure, the fact is that they are probable barely worth the drive over to Federal Way where a pawnshop that specializes in military memorabilia is located. If there were awards for bravery such as a silver or even a bronze star, that might be a different story. So, I put these things aside, along with Mr. Brigg's military separation paperwork, and a basic training photo album, for a possible donation to the local Navel museum.

Next in the chest is something unusual and perhaps even rare. The large, fine leather-bound book that has a title in oriental script that is in a vertical row down one side of the cover and a large, embossed identifier; "I-41." Both are in gold leaf. This could be something. I open the book and on the first page is a photograph portrait of what I assume is a high-ranking Japanese Naval officer. (Admiral?) The opposite page showcases another portrait of another officer, (Captain?) but I can only guess as to their actual significance because all the text is in Japanese (I guess) script. The next two pages shed some light on the mystery that is this book as it is a wide-angle photograph of the entire crew standing at attention in front of a docked, WWII era Japanese submarine. I scan the image that captures the men in a serious and determined pose and can't help but wonder what was their ultimate fate. I take a pull from my beer as if in honor of these men as I study each face, lingering far longer than I have reason as a personal tribute because ether by combat or old age, they are probably all dead by now. Strange.

The next pages have the names and ranks as well as other information, (home towns?) or that is what I assume because Japanese script might as well be a secret code to me. After that, is a detailed cut-away drawing of the I-41, with more Japanese script pointing out details and compartments of the craft, followed by page after page of script apparently keyed to the drawing and explaining the workings of much of the submarine's sub-assemblies. Next, are pages of maps charting routes and ports of call with icons that seemed to correlate with the fuzzy pictures that follow of cargo and warships that comprised the rest of the book which gave me the impression that this information is the combat record of the I-41, and that this book may not be for general information or for the public and could be of a classified nature- perhaps not meant to leave the ship. I found myself suddenly very pleased with my forty-dollar purchase, even if it just satisfies my own curiosity.

I finally put the book aside with the thought of finding a book (or someone) to help me translate the Japanese script to English. The next item I pulled out of the chest I found just plain baffling. What the hell could this be? The beet red, heavy cardboard folder had been at one time sealed with a very official looking wax seal and after I unwound the string holding the flap closed, a pile of documents two inches thick was revealed. The cover page is stamped multiple times with a large, red script symbol and something I do understand- an exclamation point. There is no mistaking the urgency of the mark and its importance, which makes me almost completely sure of its meaning- TOP SECRET!

The next page is certainly a list of names with each followed by a blank space in which different, unique, handwritten signatures have been added in each space. The following page is again stamped with that red script and exclamation point, with row after row of vertical script text broken up several times with the English letters "VX." I flip page after page and find hand written notes in the margins and parts of the text highlighted and/or scratched out. Those English letters, VX, keep popping up throughout the text. About forty pages in, there are several pages of charts, tables and graphs. English numbers are affixed to many of these visual aids and those letters, "VX," continue to be intermixed with script that appear to title much of the text. Many more pages of text follow before there is a technical drawing that even I, at least partly, can understand.

The drawing uses a full page. At the bottom is a simplified depiction of a seafloor, complete with rocks and a few leafy plants drawn here and there. A depiction of a submarine, broken open with jagged edges is pictured among those rocks and plants. At those jagged breaches of the broken submarine are the drawings of wavy 'stink-lines' that emit from the inside of the opened hull and numbers mark the imaginary path of the 'stink' up to the wave-drawn 'surface' of the water at the top of the page. Proceeding pages are keyed with those numbers that seem to correlate with more charts and graphs. It all seems to be demonstrating some kind of dispersal regarding the sinking of a submarine. Dispersal of what? Fuel oil? Battery acid? The answer comes in the form of another technical drawing later in the packet and I don't need an interpreter to at least partially understand this one.

A typical Japanese sailor is drawn standing beside a cylinder of about one foot in diameter and about four-foot-tall, but what grabs my attention is what is stenciled on the cylinder itself, the universal icon of danger- the skull and cross bones. Under that is a short, vertical script, and contained among that Japanese script are those English letters- "VX."

The packet appears to be technical information involving some apparently dangerous chemical, somehow associated with submarine operations. My theory is somewhat confirmed because near the end of the papers in the packet is a list of over a dozen submarine hull numbers including the I-41. I feel some pride in my amateur sleuthing abilities but also some disappointment because other than some limited historical value (to whom, I have no idea) the packet will provide zero profit. Nevertheless, I will keep it and I put it all with the I-41 table book.

Next in the chest are folder after folder and three ring binders making a pile totaling well over a foot and half high. Oh great! I crack open a second beer and light up another smoke and because you never know what I might find, I start going through the stack.

At least these are in English.

More business records involving Olympic Oil, copies of contracts, licenses and permits. Purchase orders from multiple companies mostly involving piping, pumps, tanks and their associated equipment. Records of inspections from electrical contractors and the fire department. Receipts from several excavating and trucking companies. I'm finding going through this stuff boring to the point of mind-numbing, in fact, the main reason I continue is the distant hope of finding some cash in between the endless pages. (It's happened before) Then I stumble across something interesting.

I open yet another folder and right on top is a crude, almost child-like drawing and something on it immediately catches my eye: A oval shaped depiction with the letters I-141 penciled within its crude outline. What do we have here?

Hand written at the top of the page are the words- Olympic Oil, Brownsville. Under that are rectangles and circles labeled in sloppy hand writing. The rectangles are identified with words such as office, shop, pump room, electrical room, storage, etc. The circles are listed as tank 1, tank 2, tank 3, and so forth. Lines connect these circles to the 'pump room' and are listed as line A, line B, line C, etc. But also, lines go down the page, towards the oval I-141 depiction and beyond, over something marked 'sheet piles' and finally to something labeled 'valve-head main,' that is part of the 'dock-pier.' Wavy lines complete the drawing and that area is simply marked 'bay.' A comical depiction of a cargo ship is drawn out in this 'water.' Around the oval that is I-141, there are lines drawn in at a forty-five-degree angle covering the area between the 'sheet piles' and the water's edge with the words 'back-fill' penciled in.

Certainly, this is some unofficial site map or perhaps a doodle representing nothing more than a daydream, but on the back is a work of mathematics converting square footage to gallons with the answer underlined twice- 477,867 gallons U.S.

Without much further thought, I give up going through the stuff for the evening. I've had a roast stewing in the crock-pot all day and after I bake a potato, I have a fine meal while watching the ballgame on TV.

Later, after I have laid down to sleep, I find myself mentally going back through that chest in an attempt to add-up and make some sense from the contents. It feels like I'm missing something, like something important and obvious has passed me by. The feeling is probably just wishful thinking, a wish to make something out of nothing in an effort to justify wasting my time. Still, I look forward to going through what is left in that chest in the morning. I have nothing better to do.

The next morning after coffee, I shower and shave and put on decent clothes because after I load the furniture and bundled clothing back in my truck for Jim and his wife, I plan on grabbing lunch at the local diner. I know it is a silly fantasy but nevertheless, Clair will be there, and I know she probably calls everyone honey and sweetie, but she also has on occasion called me "babe." Twenty years or more my junior, to make something out of that quip is nothing but pure fantasy on my part, and a blatant and successful attempt on her part to extract a large tip, but still I find my mind drifting and daydreaming in all kinds of ridiculous thoughts and scenarios of which she is the star. Some of which go so far that if she could read my mind, I'm sure she would slap my face.

What the hell happened? I used to be such a player. So many women have come and gone. I always had something going on, sometimes several things at once, but one by one, and little by little, things slowed and then one day- nothing. I was suddenly alone, and it has stayed that way. I could, if I wanted to (and I do) expand my social circles but for some reason clubs, church and bars don't appeal to me. Those places expect that I limit my expectations to those of my age group. Have you really looked at women my age? While conversation and companionship can be nice, the lack of 'heat in the sheets' is a deal breaker. With that mindset, I must accept and deserve to be alone. The problem is that I have managed to grow old and although I have had many chances, I failed to persuade someone to join me in that reality. Let that be a lesson for you youngsters, but don't bother feeling sorry for me, I am what I am. I enjoy my solitude, at least I tell myself that.

Too early for a beer, I light up a smoke and let it burn in my 'new' old ashtray as I reach in the chest and pull out the last of the papers and folders that make a final pile of about a foot in thickness. More GSA bulletins concerning surplus equipment with a good portion of it concerning an auction located in a place called Chon Bun, Thailand.

"The Matishiao Support Co. recently dissolved and directed by the parent company, The Nataga Holding Group, announces the liquidation of the following lots in an effort to satisfy creditors..." Is how the lengthy and stuffy cover page begins. Following that are dozens of pages but it is the first page that stops me cold. Here, a third of the way down the page, and highlighted in fading yellow marker, among other hull numbers is this description: I-141, Type B, Junsen class submarine, decommissioned 1947, scrap value- 5,380 tons.

The wheels of my mind start turning. The hand-drawn depiction of the 'Brownsville Tank farm' comes to mind. What the hell? I pull the page and put it with the drawing in my 'keep' pile. I can tell that this page means something. But what? I continue going through page after page of the GSA listings. Deep in them is another yellow highlighted item- "H1A-80 Start-Cart support kit. Keith Black Foundry Co. Inc., USA. 16 count, 2 item per count." I've heard of Keith Black before, but where? I pull that page and put it with the others in my keep pile.

The next folder contains paperwork that explains a lot. Receipts and bills of sale from the GSA to the Olympic Oil Co. describing the sale and delivery, for the express purpose of scrapping and the mandatory disposal of one Junsen class submarine, hull number I-141. Price? $6456 U.S. one dollar and thirty cents per ton.

After those pages there is a packet of documents detailing what appears to be to my untrained eyes- a waiver from an "Office of Strategic Development," a one-time trip/transport permit from the U.S. Coast Guard, a thick packet from the office of the United States Customs Service in which the hull number I-141 is mentioned several times, receipts for checks from the Olympic Oil Co. to a Higasaka Shipping Co. and a "Route and Course" plan filed with the Coast Guard that terminates in the Straights of Juan de Fuca, United States, to be continued after transfer to the Foss Shipping Service for inland transport and "final staging" at Clam Bay to the "prepped site," Olympic Oil Co. tank farm, Brownsville, Washington.

I'm starting to understand. Leroy Briggs, owner of the Olympic Oil Co. and international 'wheeler-dealer' bought a surplus, scrap, Japanese submarine, paid to have it shipped across the ocean, (at far greater expense than the purchase price) had it docked and apparently buried at the shore of the Olympic Oil tank farm in the summer of 1973.

Why, for what reason?

Even though I'm getting hungrier by the minute, my sleuthing is providing me a form of entertainment and a satisfaction that I find myself enjoying. My 'lunch date' can wait. I dig deeper into the section of papers. More receipts and a copy of a contract with a Taki Industries Co, for the "prep and fabrication as directed" and the "pressure testing prior to shipment" at the sight of pier No. 4, Chon Bun shipyards in the country of Thailand. I pause at this information. I light up a smoke and let it burn in the gold, Japanese scripted ashtray. Then, after a fulfilling moment, it dawns on me and I realize what this is all about. I pull the hand-drawn 'sight map' from my keep pile and look it over.

Of course! The submarine was to be used as an oil storage tank! The realization gives me a smug satisfaction, a mystery solved. I leave the rest of the papers for after lunch.

Clair isn't at the diner this day, which is just as well, both because I shouldn't be day dreaming like a school boy about her and also because I am still finding myself thinking about Mr. Briggs and his 'oil tank.' Two things are on my mind. One thing is that Briggs seems to have gone to great expense to procure his 'oil tank,' even for a tank of nearly half a million gallons, it appears that he could have had one built for far less than the money he spent. (Very strange.) I'll see what I can dig up on the internet about that. Perhaps it all was a scam for some kind of kick-back from the government. My experience makes that thought seem as likely as any. The paperwork from the Office of Strategic Development may shed some light on that possibility. I'll review those and do some digging on the internet about that as well.

The second thought is really starting to fire my imagination. Is the submarine still there? Buried and forgotten? Would it have been completely stripped inside of equipment? Or would 1940's equipment been so worthless by 1973 standards that the cost to remove it might not have been worth it? And, if all that machinery and controls had spent all these decades covered in bulk crude oil, wouldn't it all still be in pristine condition? The thought that there could be treasure in there, if not monetary, at least historical, has part of my brain running around nearly giddy. The definition and the perfect example of what I have dubbed, 'Soul Candy.'

I have become so engrossed that I find myself wolfing down my burger and fries because I have decided something- I'm going there, to Brownsville, to see if I can find that place.

I cruise the Brownsville highway. It is a stretch of only a couple miles. It must be around here somewhere among the crumbling wooden docks and sagging old buildings of an area passed by long ago of any use to the modern, centralized industrial world of today. Luxury homes fill the waterfront now and threaten to squeeze out what is left of any industry that may have been important once before. Yachts bob at anchor as a ferry boat glides by out in the bay. I slow my truck as I come upon an overgrown, rusty chain-link fence.

This must be it.

An old, heavy-duty truck with a load of muddy, rusted scrap metal that is strapped down in such a way that it all looks like a dirty, huge, wheeled porcupine. "Hughes Scrap and Demolition" and a phone number is lettered on the side of the truck. I write that information down as a big, burly, balding, pot-bellied man chomping a nub of a cigar walks back to that truck after locking the iron gate behind him.

I watch as the man jumps-up into the cab and drives away. If I had my boots on and weren't in my good clothes, I would consider walking into the site despite the numerous "NO TRESPASSING" signs. I suddenly realize I'm acting foolish and start my truck and head for home.

Silly me. Buried submarines, flirty waitresses, treasure hunting, I really shouldn't be wasting my time. Oh well, like I have something better to do.

Back home, I plant myself on the couch and as the television plays, I drift-off in an afternoon nap. (Something that has become a regular part of my routine more and more.) I wake feeling refreshed but also a little guilty about wasting my time. To make up for it, I fire-up the computer and Google "Leroy Briggs." I sort through dozens of postings and Face Book invitations, I clarify by adding "Olympic Oil" And hit on part of a story from the Bremerton Sun. I click on that and read an obituary dated August 16th, 1973 about the local business man and Korean War veteran's funeral service that was performed after an exhaustive and extensive search for the chartered plane that he was a passenger on that was finally called off and officially declared lost over the Pacific Ocean. Seems he never returned from Thailand.

A search of Olympic Oil, Brownsville hits on newspaper stories chronicling the closing of the facility in the mid 1990's and its designation as an EPA "Super-Fund" site due to toxic contamination after its closing.

The query for "Hughes Scrap and Demolition" leads to a simple posting of what appears to be a small-time, probably one-man operation that will "disassemble and remove your junk promptly for a fair price." A "Gene Anderson" is listed as the owner/operator. After surfing Face Book, I find his picture (or a picture of at least several decades ago) and it seems to be the man I spotted at the Brownsville site. I print this out and add his picture to my 'keep pile.'

Next, I punch-in "I-41/I-141 Junsen Class submarine and sift through pages of data (mostly from Wikipedia) concerning WWII Japanese submarine operations. I find out that hull number I-41, (later recommissioned I-141 for some reason) was among a list of submarines seized after the war and sent to Hawaii for inspection in something called "Operation Roads End." The hull number appears again among vessels to be scuttled after the Soviet Union demanded to have access to Imperial Japanese Navy captured and seized ships in 1946.

How hull number I-141 escaped being scuttled is a mystery and why it sat in the breaking yard in Chon Bun, Thailand for almost thirty years is just as odd but according to records, that is what happened. Perhaps the fact that it seems to have been constructed form a special "High-Tension" steel might have had some relevance.

While I found all of this interesting reading, and the fact that this decommissioned submarine might still exist not far from my home is even more interesting, the usefulness of any of that was fading fast. Just a footnote of history that was probably long ago stripped of anything valuable. Still I found it all firing my imagination and that may have some value. I can't believe I drove out there. What was I thinking?

I was just about to log-off when I remembered something. I dug back through my 'keep pile' and retrieved a page. I almost forgot. I typed in H1A-80 Start Cart and hit enter. Up came various postings including "Pictures of H1A-80" and the preview included a shot (courtesy of the Boeing Museum of Flight) of the legendary SR-71 Blackbird spy plane. What the hell? I clicked on the web site and after the picture of that sleek, speed record setting aircraft were shots of a piece of runway support equipment, a wheeled box about the size of a van with screens and louvers covering much of its exterior that obviously vented the mechanical components inside. Other pictures show it parked beside the SR-71 with flexible hoses and electrical cables connecting them both together. The text read that the machine was used to provide compressed air at a high rate and electrical power to start the engines of the aircraft.

But it was the pictures and the text of the rest of the posting that stopped me in my tracks. Here were shots of the machine with the covers open and inside is something that looked vaguely familiar. Two somethings actually. The text explains:

"Special, highly-modified, high-performance Chrysler Hemi automotive engines, cast in aluminum by the foundries of the Keith Black Corporation were used to power the turbine compressor..." I recalled the highlighted items of Leroy's GSA auction list. I had a gut feeling, something important, almost urgent. I nearly ran back to the garage and found that list, "sixteen items, two boxes per item, support equipment." "Support equipment," that meant "spare parts." That could mean "spare engines." Suddenly the remaining folders and envelopes in the chest took on special importance. If I could break the story of what happened to a stash of special, 'racing' engines, it could take the automotive world by storm. The car magazines and gear-head TV shows would fight for such a story. I would be a featured guest and that kind of exposure would jump-start my 'career.' It could be the start of financial success. Fame that would impress people- people like Clair.

My initial excitement proved to be short lived. The remaining paperwork was mostly forms and documents, filled out and signed by third party business partners, bankers and mortgage brokers involving the demise of Mr. Briggs and his insurance and the distribution of his estate to his heirs. A large part involved the fact that because his body was never recovered, probates and trusts were necessary until finally a "Post Corpus" death certificate was issued and signed by the County Corner of which a photo-copy of that is included in this stack of papers.

I was feeling silly that I had the ridiculous thought that I had stumbled on anything noteworthy or even more ridiculous- valuable. As I crack open a cold beer, it is obvious what I have here; the content of the business office of Mr. Leroy Briggs, thrown in this chest thoughtlessly by his staff and forgotten by his heirs. There was no record that he bid on that "support equipment," which could have been anything from touch-up paint to wheel chocks, which made my initial reaction nothing but a case of runaway imagination. What was I thinking? To think that I went as far as to think that I had something that would impress Clair proved that I still think like a fifteen-year-old. I haven't learned a damn thing!

But then everything changed.

There was still one more item in the chest that I hadn't gone through. The manila envelope that was sealed tight and judging by the way the old, dried-out paper tore as I opened it, it had been a long-long time since someone licked that glue. Inside was a copy of a GSA bill of sale, not to the Olympic Oil Company or even to Mr. Leroy Briggs, but to a person who used oriental script in the "sold to" line. Strangely, this person used cash, $3670 American for the purchase. That was the only 'official' document in the envelope. The rest were hand written notes, receipts actually, recording payments- cash payments. No names were recorded for these payments, just descriptions such as "dock workers" and "laborers" and "crane operator" and "welder" and last there was the record of a rather large sum earmarked "Thailand Customs." What was the item described on the GSA bill of sale? Sixteen crates, two boxes per crate- H1A-80 support equipment. The hand writing matched the writing on the Olympic Oil site map, presumably from the hand of Mr. Briggs himself.

I take a pull from my beer. I light-up a smoke. Why would he do that that way? Probable answers begin to flood in. Number one being to keep it hidden from his legal partners and from U.S. Customs. I dig back through the stacks until I find the paperwork regarding the I-141 and I comb through the Customs agreement. I find a prevision concerning the content of the I-141 itself. The signed and initialized statement of a U.S. Customs Officer certifies that the "hull and compartments" of the I-141 are "empty and bare" of "cargo and contraband." It is dated before the GSA auction sale and well before these hand-written records.

Things are starting to fall into place. Looking back at the hand-written records, I see what may have happened. The "Thailand Customs" payment was what is more commonly known as a bribe. With officials looking the other way, the "support equipment" (which really could be anything- guns, drugs, who knows) was loaded and then, the hull was resealed. (Welded shut.) Back in the U.S.A., Mr. Briggs and his cronies would open the I-141 and the booty would be theirs, tax and duty free. But what exactly was this "support equipment?" Could it really be spare Keith Black aluminum racing engines? But there is more, and this something is exciting. Due to the fact that Mr. Briggs failed to return, and especially if all this was kept hidden from his partners, is it still in there?

It stands to reason that Mr. Briggs, returned or not, with contracts signed and permits issued and a need for half a million gallons of oil storage, wouldn't the plan be exercised? Would there be a need to look inside? Or after it was docked and secured, would they just attach the pipes and fill her up?

If this "support equipment" was guns or drugs or some other smuggled contraband, that would mean there were others involved and that the deed has long since been done and over with. But, if it was indeed spare engines and their associated parts, and if only Mr. Briggs and the dock workers in Thailand knew of the scam, what are the chances that it has all been forgotten? Chances are that the workers in Thailand (with exception of the bribed "Customs Official") didn't even have a clue they were involved in anything wrong. Especially if it was really engines and equipment. They wouldn't know a Chrysler Hemi from a bilge pump, and they wouldn't give a rat's ass ether way.

But why go to all this trouble for an auction lot of engines? Why not just apply for legal customs clearance? After more digging on the Internet, I may have found an answer. The key is the year 1973, the year that a whole slew of new laws took effect originating from the EPA. Laws that forbid the importation of "non-compliant" engines of any type. So maybe Leroy Briggs thought he could make a big profit or maybe he was just a gear-head automotive enthusiast or maybe it is a combination of both things. Who knows and who cares!?! All I know is I've got to find out if that damn submarine is really still there!

After a few days of thought, I decide to take the ferry to Seattle for a visit to the Boeing Museum of Flight. This appealed to me as an excellent first step for a couple of reasons. First, is the fact that the museum's web site features a cover picture highlighting their SR-71 on display and with what next to it? A H1A-80 Start-Cart. Second, the Seattle ferry runs through Calm Bay and past Brownsville. I take my binoculars, the big ones.

It is a beautiful, clear, sunny day as I stand at the rail of the ferry with my binoculars and I have the perfect cover as a pod of Orcas frolic off in the distance. I am the most popular man on deck as I pass my binoculars around among some teenagers and some Korean tourists as they oow and awe to the playful leaping and crashing down of the majestic sea mammals. I keep to myself that their 'frolicking' is really a hunting technique used to corral a family of seals into shallow water where if you look closely, you could see them being ripped to shreds in a bloody feeding frenzy.

Across from Brownsville, I search out the old crumbling docks of the sight of the Olympic Oil depot and have no trouble reading the large signs posted towards the water; STAY BACK! 500 FEET MINUMIN. POLLUTED AREA! NO SWIMMING OR FISHING. DO NOT HARVEST SHELLFISH. The land behind the docks is over grown and with the exception of one large shop-type building, the entire area is void of any other structures. There are several large piles of what appear to be the same twisted metal that appeared on the back of Mr. Anderson's truck. A tracked excavator sits idle and there is no sign of any work being performed on this day.

Back in my truck as the ferry docks at Seattle, I disembark, and it is only a short drive to the museum. I find plenty of parking and when I go inside, the place is nearly deserted. I find it a little sad that there is so little interest in technology from the general public these days. In the main hall I circle the SR-71 and a lone worker makes eye contact with me and he is there in a second, ready to answer any questions and/or to provide any assistance possible. I get the feeling he hasn't had any need for his services in hours, maybe even days. I let him drone on about the SR-71 and its many speed records, many of which still stand today. Finally, I test his knowledge by asking about the Dash Eighty. (That's Air Force slang for the Start-Cart that I picked up off the internet.)

"What do you want to know?" The man says this as if he is dying to share his knowledge or maybe he just can't hide his boredom.

Is it true that those have a Hemi engine?" I ask as if a 'Hemi' means the world to me.

"Not just one but two Hemi engines!" he says that as if it is the most important question he has ever heard.

"Really! Can I see them? You know up close?"

"Why certainly Sir! It would be my pleasure!" And he lifts the velvet rope as if I am a visiting dignitary.

Up close, it is apparent that this example of Dash eighty is in supreme condition. It has either been completely restored, including a professional paint job, or more likely, it was a unit that had never seen any use on the flight-line. Ordered, (your tax dollars at work) but had spent its life stashed away in some hanger or warehouse. My tour guide points out fittings and receptacles on the exterior that correspond with similar equipment on the plane itself. He seems glad that he can explain things using plain language as I have the feeling that most of his tours involve grade school children. He drones on, pointing out feature after feature and explaining the entire preparation and starting procedure. He points to the fuel filling cap and I notice that it is sealed with a metal band- for fire safety, required for inside the building display, the man explained- and I read the decal which exclaims, "HIGH-TEST, 110 OCTAIN ONLY!" "That is due to the high compression of the engines, twelve and a half to one" he says as he snaps open fasteners that secure the covers that reveal the two Hemi engines underneath.

We stare at the engines in silence for a long moment, as if their mere presences has something to say. They are clean enough to eat off of, more proof that this example of a Dash Eighty had never seen service. Each engine is fitted with dual, four-barrel carburetors that are plated with some kind of military grade, olive drab protective coating. Elaborate tubing connects these to a large drum that must house a cartridge-type air filter. I notice each engine is fitted with two magnetos, sticking out of roughly the same place where the ignition distributor would normally be, and two sets of spark plugs for each cylinder are plainly evident as they are centrally located above each piston in the cylinder heads.

"Are these the same as engine used in cars?" I ask.

"Production cars, no. Racing cars, particularity Top-Fuel drag racing cars, yes. It is a common misconception that among the few who know of such things, that racing engines were used by the military, but the fact is that it is the other way around. Automotive designs were the basis here because of the urgency involved in getting these systems up and running in the shortest time possible, but they had to be built to military specifications. Weight was a major concern because even ground equipment was meant to be flown around the world and as air cargo, every pound mattered, so that is why they had to be cast out of aluminum. Two magnetos are used for redundancy and added reliability because they contain fewer moving parts compared to normal ignition systems. Also, they are shielded to resist damage from the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) of a nuclear explosion. The reliability of redundancy is why there are also two spark plugs per cylinder as is the case with most piston aircraft engines. They also differ from automotive engines as they are fitted with a dry-sump oiling system in which oil is pumped from a central tank with external oil pumps instead of using an oil pan." He points out these features as he speaks. "The starters use compressed air that is recharged during operation from this tank." He says that as he points to the said component. "The tank can be recharged manually if it loses pressure with this handle." He says this as he removes what looks like a piece of pipe with a bicycle hand grip attached to it from a compartment and inserts it into a hinged gismo residing in the same compartment. "It takes quite an effort to pump it up, but a non-start from a dead battery was unacceptable." He points out many other features and controls, most of which are clearly labeled in eye-catching decals that describe what fluid, how full or empty and other warnings that are relevant to each system. Finally, he gets back to my original question: "What happened was after the original production run for the government, racers discovered that the engines would be perfect for use with nitromethane fuel, so the manufacture just kept making them and except for small changes and constant improvements, they are still in production today." Fascinating. But I have one, all-important question left to ask:

"How much is an engine like that worth?"

"Oh, I'm not sure exactly, but I imagine somewhere between fifty and a hundred thousand dollars."

"Each?"

"Each."

I thank him for the exclusive tour and his extensive insight and after a hardy handshake, I make a beeline towards the exit. The rest of the museum will have to wait for another day because I have decided that there is enough daylight left for me to do a little beach combing.

After disembarking the ferry at the Bremerton terminal, I head home to change into some work clothes and trade my street shoes for work boots. Back at Brownsville, I park at the boat launch and start my leisurely afternoon walk on the beach. It is only about a mile to the site of the former Olympic Oil depot and as the tide is going out, I can stay far away from any nosy, waterfront property owners. As I approach the warning signs, it is clear from the dozens of foot print trails in the rocky sand that the locals put little weight behind the stern warnings. Several small creeks and streams flow from the sight down across the beach and into the bay and their banks are stained black and shine like rainbows due to the sheen of oil. I can see why this is a super-fund sight. About halfway across the "Restricted Area," is a place where an oily creek has eroded part of the remains of what was once a dock that has collapsed, making a gentle rise from the beach up into the former depot site and after a quick look around, I pass the NO TRESPASSING signs and make my way in.

Up higher now and well off the beach, I am certain that I am in the area that is marked "back fill" on Mr. Briggs's doodled map, I start to poke around in the thick, overgrown brush in earnest. I keep an eye towards the outbuilding (which, now that I'm closer, reveals itself to be in poor and decrypted condition) for any sign of Mr. Anderson or anyone who might be under his employ. It is as quiet as church at the moment, and I decide that I will be able to hear if any vehicle starts to come down the access road, and due to the fact that I am close to the beach, I have no worries that I can't get back before anyone would take any notice of my trespassing.

Finally, as I push through the brush, I find what I think I'm looking for. A thick, rust stained concrete pad some ten by twenty feet in size. Dozens of rusted remnants that once were the attachments for long-gone equipment protrude from the crumbling concrete, each was cut off flush with a torch and judging from the rust and mossy growths, that happened decades ago. Only one part of the former "Valve-Head Main" is still intact, a single, six-inch diameter, iron pipe with a threaded cap that protrudes vertically through the concrete. Could this be it? I take a nearby stone and give the capped pipe end a solid rap. It gives off a hollow report, as if there is a vast space inside, much larger than just a section of pipe. I think this is it! I look to the left and to the right, and although it may only be my imagination, there seems to be some difference, an un-natural flatness, a subtle change in the vegetation that extends some hundred feet in each direction. Does this guy, Gene Anderson, does he even know that this is here? There is no evidence that anyone has come near this particular part of the depot in years, decades even. The ruts and tracks from the excavator circle the piles of scrap metal but end far from this area. Not even a foot path ventures this way. What to do?

Weeks pass, and this could very well be the end of the story until one day at the local Chinese Buffet, I ran into a friend of mine, Bill Baker, and as we caught up on things, I mention that I came across some paper work about the Olympic Oil Company and to my surprise he says:

"I used to work there, when they were closing it down, with Gene Anderson's Dad. Did you know that there is a Japanese sub buried there?"

I act surprised.

"Really? No kidding?"

"Ya. They used to use it as an oil tank."

So much for nobody knowing about it. But I see no harm in probing Bill for more information. He wouldn't have brought it up if it was some kind of secret. It must be just an interesting footnote, a bit of local trivia for Bill to spout off about it just to make conversation. It was said in an effort to fire my imagination and to show that it had worked, I pepper him with questions:

"Does it still have equipment inside? You know like engines or batteries or controls or whatever?"

"No. I don't think so. All the hatches and vents were welded up at the shipyard before it was shipped over here. In fact, Gene, holds the rights for the scrapping of the site but the sub is off-limits because it is believed to be so rusty and leaky that any disturbance could cause even more pollution, so it is on a list for future action by the EPA."

"When will that happen?" I ask.

"Probably not any time soon" Bill says with a laugh.

"An operation like that will cost millions. I doubt anyone working there now [The EPA] would want to touch a job like that with a ten-foot pole. I bet it's so far on the back burner that it has been basically forgotten. They'll probably wait till the damned thing cracks wide open and causes a major oil spill before any action is taken."

That sounds about right to me. I would like to have a more optimistic view of the powers that be, but foot-dragging and buck passing, seem to rule the day when it comes to projects that won't help make a name for a bureaucrat or enhance a career. In fact, after it has become an emergency, it will probably become more lucrative in that respect. But I have more questions, beginning with;

"How well do you know this guy, Gene?"

"We used to party, since high school, drinking buddy I guess."

I thought to myself, I got to start somewhere. What the hell.

"Bill, I like to show you something back at my place, to see what you think, something that you might find interesting, that is if you have any interest in racing engines."

That is how it started. A couple of old codgers, drinking beer and pouring through a dead man's legacy. After the first evening and after introductions and handshakes, a third man, Mr. Anderson, was brought in. Again, papers were read through and photos and print-outs from the internet were passed around, and new information was added as Gene told me what he knew:

"I basically inherited the contract from my Dad. I bring a load of scrap to the mill when the prices rise or when I get low on spending money, but the arrangement is open ended. It could go on forever or it could end tomorrow, and in that case, I'll be lucky to get time to move my equipment out of there. But as far as the sub is concerned, what is inside could be anyone's guess. We always operated as if it was empty, stripped out long ago back at the breaker's yard but this," he holds up the hand written 'receipts' from the manila envelope, "could mean something. But I hold no legal rights to the sub and it is clear that my contract states that any salvage of the sub is strictly forbidden. But because it has been certified to be empty of 'cargo or contraband,' that leaves a gray area. The government has declared that it is empty so anything inside officially does not exist and import laws and tariffs cannot apply to items made in the USA regardless of what route they might have taking to get here. And you, (Gene is speaking directly to me now) you hold a bill of sale, legally obtained through public auction, and that might be all that is needed for ownership and sale of the said items."

Bill, Gene and I all look at each other in a serious way, in a way that tries to gauge each other's intentions and establish a level of commitment and most importantly- trust, before Gene continues:

"So, speaking purely hypothetically, if three old duffers colluded in a conspiracy in which only one has anything really to lose, that being the termination of a salvage contract under 'suspicious circumstances,' would the three tentatively agree that the biggest risk taker may be entitled to a larger share?"

Bill and I seem to agree with this on principle but make no commitments. I, on-the-other-hand, have something to add:

"But the holder of the bill of sale, the 'deed' as it were, might also have a right to a greater portion, especially if that proves invaluable for a legal sale of said property."

"Oh, for Christ sake! If you two are through jackin' your jaws with the 'legalese' might I point out that I have agreed to nothing!" Said Bill and he continued, "And if some guys happen to look inside a forgotten piece of scrap it wouldn't mean a damn thing, especially if no one knew about it, if ya catch my drift. So, if you two can keep your mouths shut, maybe we have a little look-see before ya all lawyer-up!"

It might not have been the best 'business sense' but without further agreement, three guys find themselves a few days later standing in deep brush gathered around a capped-upped iron pipe, drinking beer.

"That's gunna be tuff ta git off a dare, rusted all to hell like that" Gene says with a disappointed scowl on his face.

"Don't matter. We won't see nothin' through that. That's the fill/drain, it goes right down to the bilge, stops about a foot from the bottom. We gotta go in from one of the vent fittings" Bill said as he scrapes away moss and accumulated leaves with his boot a couple of feet to the side of the capped off pipe and quickly uncovers a two-inch diameter, capped off stub of a pipe.

"Is that the vent?" I ask somewhat robot-like, trying to sound helpful.

"No. This is the water drain, it goes down to about an inch from the bottom. We've gotta open this one first, there might be pressure" says Bill, showing off his experience from his past work here and perhaps even building up his personal value as a partner. He has Gene produce a spray can of penetrating oil and a large pipe wrench from his service truck, and after Bill sprays the pipe cap thoroughly, he carries the can and moves to the edge of the concrete pad and exposes a similar, small capped-up pipe stub and sprays that one down as well.

"That ought to help, ya might as well get your bore-scope ready as that soaks in."

Gene drags a scraped-up but expensive looking, yellow colored, plastic hard case from one of the many compartments of his service truck (a portable machine shop and extensive tool kit, on wheels) and brings that and a box of cleaning rags back to the slab and begins unpacking the device which consists of a rolled-up cord and a small video screen. He connects the components together and after removing a protective cap from the cord's end, he tests it out and I see the image of a bush that its bright, LED has illuminated.

Bill is tilting the last of his beer down his throat (it is only just after nine in the morning) and tosses the empty bottle into the nearby brush.

"OK boys, let's see what we got here" and he adjusts and fits the pipe wrench to the cap of the 'water drain' and starts shoving.

"Why do we got to open that? I thought you said we have to go in through the vent" I ask unwittingly showing my lack of knowledge and experience in this type of work.

Bill ignores what to him must be a prattling, dumb question and only after a massive and grunting final shove that makes the cap yield slightly and that has reddened his face a bit, he takes a break and turns to me and politely begins to answer my question with what proves to be a rather long story.

"Well, it's like this, when we were preparing to shut this place down, the bulk fuel oil in here was pumped away till the tank [submarine] was as empty as it could be, but the tanks of the tank farm," he motions towards the brush covered field behind them as if it was still what it was decades ago, "had to have the residual content, the 'tank slime' scraped towards the drains and it had to go somewhere. After that, the tanks needed to be pressure washed so that the metal would be clean enough for cutting and scrapping, so it would be acceptable for the mill. But that pressure washing water couldn't just spill out on the ground, so it too had to go somewhere" and Bill's eyes roll towards the submarine. "It is impossible to know exactly what that 'tank slime' really was. Decades of chemical reactions caused by the 'out-gassing' of biological elements and chemical conversions could have changed what is in here" again his eyes roll towards the sub "into a highly poisonous and potentially explosive mixture, or certainly something highly flammable."

They both look at me as if to gauge my outrage, or maybe to measure my reaction to what I might be getting myself into. I poker face a silence that I hope conveys that I have heard worse and as if satisfied, Bill has more to say:

"But there is the other thing," and he looks at Gene as if asking some kind of permission and his lack of reaction seems to grant it.

"Years of running this type of operation tends to accumulate a back log of, how should I put this, unused 'cleaners and solvents' and when this place was nearing shut-down, that stuff had to disappear." Once again Bill's eyes roll toward the sub. "But the fact is that Gene Anderson senior, was a well-connected business man and other companies also had chemical 'back-logs' so there might have been some, 'additions' to the content of this submarine."

That triggered a hearty laugh from Gene as he added, "'Additions, shit! My Dad and his buddies were rolling in here day and night with trucks full of who knows what! Navy guys too! I'm sure they made it worth my Dad's while and I knew enough to keep my mouth shut or he would have kicked my ass!"

A few moments of silence followed as the three of us sized each other up once again to measure each other's commitment or potential outrage. No one ventured any verbal comment, but I believe we all had a similar thought- Who gives a shit!

Bill had used the pause to don a breathing respirator and thick, long, rubber gloves that reached nearly to his armpits that were provided by Gene from his service truck and as Bill approached the 'water drain,' he pulled the mask from his face saying, "You all might want to stay back, and no smoking please!"

Gene and I watched from about fifteen feet away as Bill turned the cap with the pipe wrench one noisy 'creak' at a time. Finally, it was loose enough that a hiss of 'air' whistled past the lose threads that caused Bill to scramble backward.

"Pressure is a good sign" Gene said to me as if attempting to ease any worry I might have.

"That means the hull still has integrity."

But before he had even finished those words, the hissing ceased and was replaced by a flow of rust colored 'water' and a strong odor the likes of which I had never smelled before. A unique mix of the smells of sulfur, old gear oil, sour varnish and spoiled lacquers, paint thinner, gasoline and stranger, exotic things that reminded me of the smell of honey and birthday cake of all things.

The fluid didn't seem to be being pushed out with any great pressure, so Bill returned and continued unscrewing the cap until at the last bit of thread, it jumped straight up about a foot and fell to the concrete with a clang. Now we looked upon a fountain of gray/rust liquid that gurgled up and out of the pipe and it contained various clumps and particles, most of which were white and resembled cottage cheese. We stared at the spectacle and after quite a while, there seemed to be no let-up of the flow and Bill ended up removing his gloves and respirator and joining Gene and I a short distance away.

"If the flow turns black, we have to be ready to cap it back up, an oil spill would be hard to hide.

We don't need any environmental 'do-gooders' pokin' around" declared Gene.

After about an hour, there was no sign of the flow letting up, and by then we had quite a row of empty beer bottles lined up. At the end of the second hour, we had moved to a position downstream from the flow and with sticks, we had scraped trenches so that the flow merged with one of the dirty streams as by now the 'water' was making its way all the way down to the beach and on into the bay. Our new vantage point allowed us to monitor the beach while we remained hidden in the brush so that if any beach combers stumbled upon our stinky stream, we might be able to take some action, but as it was a rather cloudy and cold day, no one ventured by.

By the third hour, I had gone back to my truck and got the I-41 table book and the three of us studied the cut-away drawing and we made some insightful observations:

"The main fill pipe seems to occupy the area that once was where the periscope had resided" Observed Bill and he added,

"The vents, one forward and one towards the rear, seem to be where these antenna looking things once were." (The details of the drawing, pointed out in Japanese script, which of course we could not read, made for a lot of guess work on our part.) But the important part of our study of the drawing was to decide where we might actually enter the hull with enough room to make an opening big enough to extract a crate large enough to hold an engine, if they are indeed even in there, which was a long shot to say the least.

The logical choice seemed to be the main hatch located some forty feet forward of the periscope but as Gene summarized:

"That's no good. That pressure door is probable the strongest part of the ship and with so many angles and intricacy's, it would take a month of Sundays to cut through it all. And besides, we got to use a water-cooled diamond saw. With all those fumes, if we try to use a torch, the whole thing would likely explode, and even with the diamond saw, it will be dangerous." Gene has had a lifetime of this kind of work, so he knows what he is talking about.

"Here's where we go in." Gene says as he taps his finger to the drawing.

"The place before the double walls of the hull start, where the conning tower used to be" We had determined from Gene's memory and from some photographs he had dug up from when the I-141 was beached and buried, that the conning tower had been removed as part of the transformation from submarine to oil tank back at the shipyard in Thailand. But an obvious problem was the fact that the place Gene pointed, about ten feet forward of the periscope, is well under the concrete slab. I point this out and Gene has a ready answer:

"That's the beauty of it, we tunnel under there and everything we do is hidden from prying eyes, even from aircraft with thermal imaging. Hell, we could build a door with some live plants on top and even some nosy trespasser might walk right over it and not be the wiser." I thought of my own trespassing and was inclined to agree. In fact, it was dawning on me that we couldn't leave a big work site, especially one without posted permits with an exposed submarine out in the open. The more I thought about it, Gene's idea and this slab made the entire salvage operation seem possible. Soul candy!

Three and a half hours after it started, the flow from the water drain finally stopped. We piled in my truck and drove to have lunch at the Pizza Joint back in Brownsville before we start 'phase two.'

Upon our return, Bill has his respirator and chemical gloves back on as he attacks the forward vent with the pipe wrench. Four plus hours of soaking with penetrating oil had made a difference and it breaks lose without the drama of the one before. Bill had a plastic garbage bag stuffed into his coat pocket and I was baffled as to the reason, but as he screwed the cap off it became clear. He captured the bags opening around the pipe nipple and it quickly started to inflate. He kept his choke-hold around the bag and when full, he carried it over to Gene and transferred it to him as they both took turns waving the bag around and as it stayed flopped over to the side, Bill said, and Gene agreed:

"Mostly methane."

Next, while Gene held the bag closed, Bill lit a hand-held propane torch and set it on the ground. Bill dug around in the bushes and after breaking some branches, he came out dragging a curved stick about nine feet in length. He brought it back to Gene and together they tied the bags flappy opening to the stick without letting its content escape. A quick swing over to the lit propane torch and "WHOMPH!" it explodes in a violent blue fireball.

"Well that makes it official, NO SMOKING!" Gene says as he is subtlety but increasingly taking the lead on this project, so far under no protest or objections from Bill or me.

Now comes the fun part, what we have been working for all day. Bill, with his respirator and gloves, feeds the lensed end with the bright LED of the coiled cable of the bore-scope into the vent pipe and after only a couple of feet Gene yells "STOP" as he fixates on the monitor.

"You guys have got to see this!"

We gather around Gene and as he shades the screen, we see a sight unseen for at least forty plus years. Gene operates the joy stick of this device, which is something usually used to find clogs in septic systems, and as he pans up and down and right to left, we see something that strikes us as fantastic.

Largely open inside with bulkheads, pipes, conduits and valve stations removed, but with many thickly oil coated wires and jagged attachments still remaining, is the cylindrical shape of a submarines' interior. Up ahead in the distance is the six-inch pipe, paralleled by the two-inch water drain pipe. Both disappear into the still, mirror-like liquid that displaces approximately a third of the sub's interior. On that perfectly still surface is a variety of flotsam much of which appears to be heavily oil-coated pieces of broken wood and what might be random pieces of paper or cloth. We stare at the screen in childish silence for long moments, as we feed on the soul candy that we have discovered.

"OK, time to move on" and at Gene's order, Bill returns to the cable and as Gene directs, Bill lowers away.

"Crap! I was afraid of that" Gene says as the lens hits the liquid surface and all transmission to the monitor went black. He hits a button repeatedly that operates the 'wipe' function but to no avail.

"Keep lowering Bill, maybe we will pass through the oil and when we hit the water, we will get something."

After about twenty feet of cable are in the sub, Gene yells "STOP" once again. I crowd-in beside him as there is a return of an image on the screen but it is hopeless. The lens has indeed passed through the oil and has entered the gray/rust 'water,' but no amount of wiping can clear the blurred image. This equipment simply can't cope with the thick, black crude crud and the wipe system just spreads the muck and seems to make the image even worse. Even after Bill pulled it back up and the lens is above the liquid, it is so fouled that the image that is there is nothing discernible regardless of how much wiping is tried. So, the cable is extracted from the sub and what's this? Something has come up with the cable, a piece of paper, black and fragile. Bill carefully lays it down on the concrete as it is still clinging to the bore-scope lens cable. We gather round as Bill takes the aerosol can of penetrating oil and in a brilliant but desperate act, he aims the tiny red plastic hose and shoots.

"Did you see that?"

"Did you fucking see that!"

Seconds later we are arm in arm, dancing a jig and whooping and hollering like children, even more then children, more like mental patents that have completely lost their minds.

"Did you fucking see that?"

"YES! I fucking saw that!"

And round and round we go.

Now we sing as we dance in the tune of a nursery rhyme:

Did you fucking see that?

Yes, I fucking saw that!

Did I fucking see that?

Yes, you fucking saw that!

What we had seen really didn't mean much. It was an infusion of hope more than anything. It was really only a suggestion that we might be on the right track. A hint that we are not wasting our time. All it really proved is that we had been drinking all day. What did we see? When Bill sprayed that penetrating oil, it acted as a solvent and revealed the printing on the top of that piece of paper before the paper disintegrated right before our very eyes. It said:

U.S. Air force- H1A-80 support equipment inventory list

Only the header was legible and that because it was in bold face. The rest, a column starting below that was too blurred and the 'paper' too tattered, and all of it seemed to disappear and turn into goo in just seconds, but we saw it. We all saw it!

The next morning the weather is just as we had hoped, perfect, raining cats and dogs. We meet at the sub all wearing our rain gear. All three of us are natives of the Pacific Northwest and as such, we share an unspoken bond regarding the rain. There is something about the rain around here for a native. Something that keeps you focused. It is perhaps the fact that out in the 'fun' world, when the weather is like this, you are not missing a fucking thing. Nobody is having any fun today so you may as well get that work done. When you have to keep moving to keep warm, and conversation is kept to a minimum because you want to get this done and because you just can't hear because of the crashing of the rain drops on your hat and hood, you tend to naturally avoid wasted steps and action, and it is the sweet appreciation only earned from this miserable effort for the warm and the dry that will come when this day's work is finished, and that will keep one motivated. That said, it should be no surprise that we are in high spirits. But today, our friend, the rain, will help in a way that is simple. The plan for today is to drain the gray water out of the I-141, hopefully lowering the level inside enough to reveal what we hope might be inside.

Bill and Gene have assembled a fitting that will connect the air compressor in his service truck to the vent fitting of the sub. A section of hose will be connected to the water drain and as the air pressure is applied to the vent fitting, the gray water will be forced out of the water drain and thanks to the rain and the swollen creek, and the lack of beach combers, all of this 'water' will pass with no one the wiser. All we have to do is stop when the gray water is gone and the oil begins to flow, after that, Gene will use his cleaned up bore scope and with some luck, the treasure will have emerged from the gooey muck and we will set our sights on the next phase- extraction.

But what we didn't factor in was just how much water was actually in there. Even after we added a second compressor, doubling the head pressure, it took four full days and nights before the out-flow turned black. Some ball-park guessing and some off-the-cuff math put the total amount extracted somewhere near the 80,000-gallon mark.

And let me tell you, any B.S. about working in the rain ended well before that first day was over. It was miserable, it rained day and night which is not uncommon in this neck of the woods and that provided cover for our operation as we had hoped, but when we were through, it was an easy decision to wait a few days for better weather before we scoped-out the inside of sub again.

So later, here we were again, after the weather changed for the better, we are in good spirits and ready to reap our harvest and bask in our well-earned rewards. To feast on our soul candy.

Bill, with his gloves and respirator, uncaps the vent and Gene and I focus on the monitor as Bill inserts the cable.

"Hold up" orders Gene and he and I take in the view.

"Crap!"

Nothing has changed, except that there is an old level line on the inside of the sub and everything else that was under the liquid, and the new level is lower, but only by about a foot. Fuck me!

"OK, let's see how deep this shit is. Use the bore scope as a dip-stick and let's see what we have here" Gene says and Bill does just that and with about twenty feet of cable in the sub, it hits the bottom, or at least we hit something, a bulkhead, a floor plate, a crated racing engine- who knows. But the fact is that after the cable is brought back up through the hole, it is clear that we are dealing with about five feet of liquid 'something,' which is good news because that is enough to hide the cargo that we hope is there, but bad news because to go through all the hassle and legal risk of cutting open the hull without some kind of proof, is pure folly. Even with the piece of paper that got us so excited when we were drunk, it only suggested the cargo may have been transported in there and the chances are it was retrieved long ago, regardless if Mr. Briggs lived to see it or not. We all begin to feel as if we have been acting foolishly, chasing rainbows.

"If only we could see through that murk" Bill says as a last gasp of hope before we all give up.

"Could a sonar see through oil?" I ask in a flash of brilliance.

"Well, maybe" says Gene as if grabbing at straws but he quickly turns back to the pessimistic and declares, "But what of it? It's not like you can rent one of those at the Home Depot."

"A fish finder is a sonar" pipes up Bill.

"I have a fish finder."

We look at Bill as if he is Albert Einstein.

We check out Bill's fish finder and several others but all of them have a sounder too large to fit down our vent pipe. We decide we can rent a core drill, a water-cooled diamond edged drill press unit used cut holes through the concrete and steel of building foundations for the addition of pipes and conduit. We can rent one of those and we decide that we can uncover the part of the sub closest to the forward vent pipe, core the hole, use the fish finder, and bury it all back up in just one day so there is no risk that someone might stumble on what we are doing.

It will take hours for the core-drill to chew through what we estimate to be about an inch and an eighth of solid steel. We meet at the crack of dawn to get an early start and brown bag our lunches. We start by digging out a large area for a sump, in the closest of the streams to put the electric pump in for the core drill's water supply and string cords for that and the drill's power to Gene's service truck's welder/generator.

By six AM, the machine is set up churning away at the bottom of the four-foot-deep hole that we have dug that has uncovered the rusty hull, just at the end of the concrete slab. Gene's job is to assist Bill with the coring operation and keep watch for anyone up above, but as the gate is locked, we don't expect anyone from that direction.

My job is to watch the beach. Under no circumstances am I to allow anyone past me and up the hill. I have an aerosol boat horn and three short blasts is our signal to fill in the hole- core drill and all, if someone, anyone, even the police, (especially the police) happen to start up the hill.

Of course, nothing like that is going to happen and in all the hours I spend hiding in the bushes, only two beach walkers stroll by and even though the coring machine makes a strange growling noise that can be heard faintly even down here, they seem to take no notice. All that happens to me is a case of crushing boredom. Why didn't I bring a book?

Finally, as I'm fighting to stay awake, I notice that the noise has stopped. A half an hour after that, I hear Gene coming down the path and when I see him, he has a big grin on his face.

"Go up there and take a look, I'll keep watch down here for a while" he said and I hurry up there, both dying with curiosity and dying for a change of scenery.

As I approach Bill and the operation, I can see him smiling as he studies the fish finder screen. He has the sounder suspended from a fishing float and is using the view from the bore scope to help guide it.

"Look at this" and I see a strange image, with the distance ridiculously out of proportion as if the 'water' is only inches deep.

"That is because of the oil's viscosity, it fools the equipment" Bill says but the image is promising. I see rectangles, crates, two, side by side and as Bill pushes his floating sounder forward with a fishing pole, working from the eight-inch opening, I can see two more and then two more after that but that is all the range we can get with just a fishing pole for motivation.

"Empty of cargo and contraband my ass!" He says and I feel a rush of giddiness as we laugh our asses off. But I see something else, something that stops my laughter cold. The crates seem to be on a floor of expanded metal, and something is under that, something that I have seen before or more accurately, something I have seen a picture of before. There are dozens of them, haphazardly laying loose in no particular order, under the crates and poking out here and there. Suddenly I have a strong desire to stay as far as possible from the strange, strong odor coming from the hole and I encourage Bill to wrap it up and fill in the hole.

Gene and Bill weld an edge to the piece of metal that was stuck in the coring bit and after using calking, they seal up the eight-inch hole with the very piece of steel that came out of it. We load the equipment, fill in the hole, including replanting the bushes and weeds that were there originally. We fill in the sump that we had dug in the creek and place logs and rocks there in a way that looks natural, all while Gene and Bill have shit-eating-grins plastered on their faces. I play along and share in the joy, but I have bigger worries that I keep hidden- for now. My thoughts are of skulls and cross bones and 'stink lines' and of Japanese script with exclamation points and something labeled "VX"- whatever that is, and somehow, I know it is bad.

It's been a couple of weeks. Gene and Bill have both been calling but I've made excuses as to why I've been unable to join them at the submarine. Instead, I have bought books such as "Learning Beginning Japanese" and I have spent days with those books and the contents of that red colored folder open in front of me. I have learned a great deal, but unfortunately, mostly I have learned that Japanese is mind-bendingly impossible to comprehend. (For me at least.) I learn that Japanese is a combination of symbols, each representing complete words (well over four thousand of them) and other symbols representing vowels, verbs, nouns and other 'sounds' in what is called the "Kana" portion of the language. I have managed to translate only a few words here and there from the information of that folder and I'm no closer to understanding any of it then I was before I started. The books I have obtained mostly deal with how to order a meal or hail a taxi and other information that a tourist would need. It doesn't help that what I need to know (among other things) is what this "VX" could mean, which seems to be the only English used in these documents. I have gone through these papers a hundred times by now. I have even examined the trunk carefully, desperately, in an attempt to unravel any of this. I can tell by the symbols stamped in the hinge hardware that the trunk is Japanese and due to its condition I believe that is from the era of WWII, but as for real information, only the picture of the cylinder with the sailor standing beside it has any meaning to me, and that only because of the skull and cross bones depicted in that image. I want to ignore all this and forget about it, but I can't- I'm not stupid.

The phone rings, it's Bill:

"Hey, you got to get over here, we've made some real progress and were gunna' need your help before we cut this thing open."

"No! Don't you dare open that damn thing! You hear me?"

"Now look, don't get sore just because we've been busy! The world don't revolve around your ass! You think we're going wait around for you to clear your schedule? Times' a wasting buddy!"

"It's not that Bill, it's something else."

"What then?"

"I don't know... I mean I can't explain... But it's important... I think."

"What the hell are ya talkin' about?"

"I don't know... I mean I..., well I'm not sure, but you and Gene need to come over right away."

There was a pause on the line, but my tone seems to have conveyed the urgency of my concern and Bill answers as if Gene is with him and they must have had a quick conference:

"Well OK, we'll be right over but you sound like a little bitch right now, so this better be good."

Within the hour, we are sitting around the card table in my garage and I have the papers from the red folder spread out and they have studied them paying close attention to the picture of the cylinder with the sailor standing beside it.

"You saw them, dozens of them, under the crates, spilled out without rhyme or reason."

"Well ya, maybe, but so what? Don't mean nothin' they're probably empty."

"But what if they're not?"

Bill and Gene want to ignore it, they want to believe that I am over reacting, but as they study the picture and especially the skull and cross bones, my concerns invade their mindsets.

"Well fuck..., fuck me to tears!" Gene says with a sour expression.

"We have to find out what this means, what all this is" I say as I pound my finger tips on the papers.

"How the fuck are we gunna do that!"

"We have got to find someone to translate this, someone we can trust, someone who can keep their mouth shut!"

Gene stares at me. He still can't believe it. He doesn't want to believe it but as he looks at the picture and looks back at me and looks over at Bill, his expression turns to anger.

"This is nothin' but a load of crap! It's a bunch of bullshit! And I think y'all are being a big cry baby but if ya think it's important, well find someone who can read this shit and then you'll see what a pussy you're being."

Gene used this insult to hide the fact that he sees the concern. I let it slide, after all, insult or not, technically he is agreeing with me, it's just that he doesn't like it and I can understand that, but before I can think of an appropriate response, Bill speaks up:

"I know someone."

"Know someone what?" Gene asks, still sounding pissy, and it doesn't sound like a question.

"I know someone who can read Japanese, you dick" Says Bill as calmly as can be.

"Can he be trusted?"

"I don't know..., maybe..., but it might not matter, he so damn old that chances are he'll die before he tells anyone."

The man used to play chess with Bill's father years ago but as he is well into his nineties now, he had long outlived Bill's dad. Bill explained that Japanese people of his generation are likely to be very formal and are bound by a level of tradition that we would find extreme, so to seek his assistance, especially arriving unannounced, (we could not find his phone number and so were unable to call ahead) will require a certain measure of diplomacy, good manners and our best behavior.

We all have on our best clothes, Gene and I with business suits and even Bill wears slacks and a vast under his best leather jacket. At Bill's insistence we have a large bottle of sake' with us that the man at BevMo said was among the best in the world. (We should hope so as it cost over two hundred dollars!) We have an envelope with five hundred dollars cash as well- just in case. We file out of the truck and straighten our clothes before we walk up the spotless walking path past impeccable and lovingly maintained rose bushes and other flower beds before we ring the doorbell.

A gorgeous, young (under forty anyway, which is young to us) oriental woman answers the door. She is wearing a conservative house dress cut off a little past the knees. She wears little make up and a fresh, real flower is in her hair. She looks us over in a stone faced, business-like manner, and as she sees the bottle of sake' in Bill's hands, a slight but unmistakable frown crosses her pretty face.

"Yes, may I help you?" she says in a flat, helpful tone that is even more business-like than her demeanor.

Bill bows deeply, in a manner that would make Gene and I laugh under any circumstance other than this and he says:

"I am William Baker, Jake Baker's son, Mr. Yoritomo and my father used to be friends and I deeply apologize for coming unannounced, but we have an urgent matter that Mr. Yoritomo may be able to help us with, is he in?"

The young woman does not seem impressed with Bill's impeccable but belabored manors and does not return his bow. She takes a moment to gather her thoughts and then in perfect English and without any hint of accent, she begins to speak:

"Look, Mr. Yoritomo is resting, and frankly at his age, the last thing he needs is rounds of drinks, so I think you had better relay your 'urgent matter' to me before I even think of disturbing him."

She is one tough cookie!

But before Bill can explain further, the old man comes to the door and his eyes seem to light-up as he sees the sake'. He eyes us as the girl gives him and us a cross look. She begins to say something, but the old man cuts her off with a half wave of his hand.

"Little Billy Baker! Is that bottle for me to make up for you being such a hoodlum?" Gene and I begin to laugh but the old man shot us a look that stops us in our tracks.

"It is a gift, from all of us Sir."

"Oh! Then you are all hoodlums? Yes?" He says as he takes the bottle and with a squint, he reads the label.

"To bring such a fine spirit, you and your friends must have much to repent" he says with a sly smile, but that smile is quickly erased as the young woman snatches the bottle from his grasp as she says:

"Grampa! You know you can't be drinking!" She looks at us as if we had brought him poison.

"Ha-ha-ha!" Erupts the old man and it is clear that the serious 'business like' demeanor of the girl is perfectly offset by the playfulness of the Grandfather.

Bill briefly explains our wish to have some translation performed for a matter of "historical importance" and he invites us in, but the girl announces that the meeting will be "over tea" which prompts the old man to shoot her a playful, exaggerated frown.

The old man leads us to the living room and even though there is a couch and chairs, he sits us down around a low coffee table on cushions. The girl has disappeared into the kitchen and the sound of banging cabinets and slamming drawers expresses perfectly her attitude towards our invasion of their privacy.

"Don't let my Granddaughter's annoyance bother you gentlemen, she has problems with changes in her routines, which might explain her failure to marry."

"Slam!" as in the kitchen a cabinet door is nearly relived of its hinges.

"I heard that!" booms a voice through the wall that seems much bigger than the petite, young woman that is on the other side.

The old man lets a childish giggle escape his lips as his eyes flash bright as if he has 'still got it.' We remain silent, not daring to express the slightest comment.

I have placed the faded, red folder on the table but the old man ignores it completely until his Granddaughter arrives carrying a tray made of the finest porcelain with matching cups and saucers, where a steaming teapot and bowls of sugar, honey, milk and cream are all delicately arranged in striking contrast to what we thought to be her current mood. Adding to that contrast, she sets the tray down on the table with a gentle precision and after adjusting her skirt, she drops to her knees on a pillow with her bare feet off to one side in a manner that radiates the deepest femininity, and she begins poring our tea one by one, starting with the guests (us) and ending with the old man. Next, she repeats the circle with the offer and additions of condiments, all with the coolest of manner and precision in a show that makes me think that perhaps her trouble with routines may have something to do with her lack of a husband, but little else that I could see would be a problem. She does not pour herself any tea, and with a circling hand gesture that both invites us to help ourselves to more and excuses herself, she raises up and glides to a spot on the couch where she sits in the most elegant posture with one shapely leg crossed over the other and with her skirt now just exposed over her knees, she sits like a beautiful statue and watches us as if she might be watching television. It is a situation that she appears ready to be helpful and protective both at the same time. We are spellbound and the woman has just become amazing, and we stare at her with a certain disbelief. She looks back at us and her eyes betray a certain smugness that seems to say: "Go ahead with your 'meeting' but let it be known that you won't be getting away with anything, not a fucking thing!" It was the most powerful statement I think I have ever heard, and it was said in complete silence. Fascinating!

The old man lifts his cup and takes a big slurp and we all follow his lead.

"Now than, just what have we got here?" he says and as if we have been granted some sort of permission, I reach for the folder and pull out the content and arrange the documents in front of him.

"It has been a long time..." He says as he unfolds thick glasses that he has retrieved from his shirt pocket and puts them on. He picks up the cover page almost lovingly, as if greeting an old friend but that look only lasts a fraction of a second. His brow furls and his playful demeanor instantly disappears. Now he flips pages with an urgency of a man well below his golden years, only pausing to look up at us from time to time, to look up into our eyes, to glare at us. His face has hardened in a mixture of shame, pity and anger. He barks out something in Japanese to his Granddaughter and she springs to his side and they pass the papers back and forth between them while discussing back and forth in Japanese using urgent, short, sharp tones. Unable to follow the foreign tongue, my ears fill with the sound of their mantle clock ticking. It seems to tick louder and louder and is drowning out the rustling paper and the now heated conversation. It is like a time bomb nearing zero and as the old man slams the papers down on the table, it has gone off.

Gene, Bill and I nearly jump from our skins at that abrupt act as we reluctantly meet the old man's gaze.

"Where did you get this?" The old man demands but before we can reply, he seems to have a change of heart and his eyes soften as he seems to be searching for his next words. We remain silent. No one would dare to interrupt his next words.

"These..., these things are of a time when evil ruled the hearts of men." He says in a gentle tone as he spreads the papers around in front of him almost unconsciously as one might spread jelly on toast, as if the papers are already dead to him.

"There is no reason I can see where these things could be of any value. It is all in the distant past and I recommend you forget whatever interest you may have in them, nothing good will come of this." He said that as the Granddaughter is already gathering the papers together and as she taps them even and puts them back in the folder, she hands them back to us as we just gape in confusion. The Granddaughter, has more to say, and in a manner that contrast her Grandfather's tact, she bluntly declares:

"I don't know what book you wish to write, or what movie you research, I don't know, and I don't want to know, but what I do know is that we will be NO part of it! So, I say to you gentlemen, good day."

"But..., we...,"

"I said good day!"

I take the folder and Gene and Bill start to move as if ready to stand up and leave but I make one last plea:

"Please Sir..., Madam..., it is not that simple. We are in the salvage business, and in a job under our charter, we have run across something we believe may have been abandoned since WWII, something that might be dangerous..." I hurriedly open the folder and bring out the picture of the cylinder with the sailor standing next to it. "This..., dozens of them... We need to know what they are."

Mr. Yoritomo flashes a piercing look to all of us and abruptly grabs the folder from my hands and dumps its content back on the table. He flips and sorts until he pauses at one of the charts just past the hand drawn picture of the broken submarine with the 'stink lines.' He studies the chart and the graphs as his Granddaughter says something soothing in Japanese and tries to intervene in his study of the papers in his hand. He bats her hand away and snarls something to her that leaves a look of shock on her face. He picks up more pages of the charts and graphs and gives them great scrutiny as well. He hands some to the Granddaughter and with his finger under a line of symbols, he relays something in a calm tone. She studies what he has highlighted, and they begin conversing back and forth calmly but with growing seriousness. Finally, he asks a question:

"These things you find..., these cylinders...," He struggled some pronouncing the word. "Are they in a place of remoteness?"

"No Sir, quite the opposite, homes and families encroach the very boarders of their location."

The old man and the young woman look at each other with eyes wide, she cannot hide a look of shock on her pretty face. After a moment, a long moment of no sound but that ticking clock, Mr. Yoritomo declares:

"We will open that sake' now."

He looks to his Granddaughter and he adds:

"You will join us." It was not a suggestion, but a demand and she does not protest.

"Operation Susanono" was the code name of the operation that the bulk of the papers referred to.

"What is that?" I asked.

"Susanono, the storm God, was birthed from the nose of Tsukiyomi, the Moon Deity. Susanono was an unruly fellow, constantly making trouble, guilty of many heinous crimes and deliberate acts of lawlessness and ritual defilement. He was banished to the nether regions. This was part of the Shinto legends, the primitive nature worship of long ago as outlined in the Kojiki, the record of ancient things."

The old man paused, letting that sink in.

"Most of this is the work of Dr. Masahiro, attached to the Kwantung Army in Manchuria. It appears that 'Operation Susanono' was a secret disposal plan assessing the feasibility of including large amounts of VX in the holds of ships destined to be scuttled by the U.S. Navy after the war."

"VX?"

"Nerve gas."

"And this 'nerve gas,' it could still be dangerous?"

"The data here describes the substance in its final, most concentrated form. The result of years of refinement and development. The charts and graphs are quite clear as to the effectiveness when combined with oxygen, of being lethal in a range of one part in ten thousand, or of a gram for each fifty square meters."

"The canisters, they contain how much?"

"If you have indeed stumbled across cylinders described in this report, they have a tare of sixty kilos each."

"And if one broke open, that is became exposed to oxygen, that could poison an area how large?"

"Small to medium city..., each."

The old man's words invaded our slightly sake' numbed brains as if delivered from a shotgun. To think we were working from that hole we cut, smelling those strange smells, drinking and playing and goofing off like children, what if some of those old cylinders were compromised? We would be dead, but we weren't, so that is a good sign. But there are many questions, and I start with an obvious one:

"How could have this happened? Why would these cylinders have escaped destruction?"

"Operation Susanono may have been interrupted. When I first read the name of Dr. Masahiro, I thought it sounded familiar. It took me awhile, but I think I remember where I heard that name before. After the war, certain aspects of it were considerably hyped by the occupation-controlled media to teach the people a lesson."

"The research of Dr. Masahiro used entire Chinese cities as his test beds, including teams of doctors standing by to assess the results, but the only aid to the victims that was administrated was instant, on-the-spot, live viva-sections to record and monitor the progression of the poisoning and death."

The horror described was profound, but still Bill just had to ask;

"What is viva-section?"

The Granddaughter fielded this one, in fact she seemed to take some pleasure as she looked Bill square in his stupid face and 'enlightened' him with some new knowledge:

"A viva-section is an autopsy performed while the 'patient' is still alive and being held down by soldiers."

"My God!" squeaked Bill.

"The 'interruption' might have been due to the fact that Dr. Masahiro was put on trial for war crimes and publicly hung after his conviction," said Mr. Yoritomo, completing his theory.

The interview with Mr. Yoritomo and his Granddaughter ended cordially enough despite the chilling subject matter. We thanked them both profusely and made no small matter of the fact that they may have headed-off a disaster and with their important input, the matter could now be handled by the proper authorities, but still we added that perhaps they should keep quiet about the whole affair to prevent any panic. But what did they really know? We didn't mention the site location, or that what we found was even in a submarine. In fact, we had not shown, and they did not ask to see any identification. We certainly didn't mention our hope of recovering possible crated 'racing engines' but still we had to decide our next move. What that would be exactly was anyone's guess, but one thing for sure is that the 'soul candy' may have gone sour.

Back at the former Olympic Oil site, I was updated on the progress made by Gene and Bill. Brush had been cleared and a new, permitted, "burn site" had been established right to the edge of the slab above the U-141. This was done as cover for vehicle traffic right to the edge of the slab for our operations. Now, also at the edge of that slab is an earth covered door complete with bushes and moss planted on top concealing an excavated area under the slab that includes a home-brewed, track-crane wedge-anchored to the underside of the concrete. It was quite a chore excavating that area because the concrete 'slab' was much more crude on the bottom side as the steel rebar stuck straight out of the concrete and used the hull of the sub itself as a base and the many lengths of metal that were welded to it had to be cut away and much concrete had to be busted-out to clear-out a space big enough to work in. They had even buried underground electric cables to power lighting and equipment, but I would have to take their word on all that because after what we had learned of what also might be in that submarine hull, we are all afraid now to get near it. In fact, when we sat down a hundred feet away to polish off a case of beer and think this all through, we made sure that we were well up wind from the site.

"This is bullshit!" said Gene as a rabbit hops by, there has been an infestation of the critters this year.

"There's nothing wrong with that air, if there was, we would be dead already, or at least we would have gotten sick" he said as he continued with his ill-refutable drunken logic.

"Well let's find out for sure" said Bill who had been quiet for some time now, just watching the rabbits hop by. We perk-up, ready for him to elaborate further.

"You still got those animal traps Gene? You know, when those raccoons were stealing your dog's food?"

"Ya, I had to take em' away to shoot them, I told the neighbor lady that they would be released back into the wild. That was true, only they didn't get far, ha-ha."

"Suppose we put a canary in our coal mine."

Now we had a plan. After a trip to Genes and some digging in his garage, we were back setting up three traps, each with a bundle of immature carrots from Bill's garden.

The next morning- success! All three traps contained a brown bunny, one had two! We opened the cages with only one and placed them near the woods so they could escape. We kept the cage with the pair and added a bowl of water and more carrots and a head of lettuce from my fridge.

It was quick work to uncover the caulked-up hole that we had cored, and it yielded easily to the prying of a crow bar. The sickly-sweet odor lofted up once again but as we all wore respirators, we hardly noticed. We suspended the cage trap with bailing wire from a couple of branches that we had gathered, hanging our cage to a point inches away from the opening and used more branches and bushes to conceal our 'canaries' but we arranged it all so that there would be plenty of air flow. Now there was nothing to do but wait until morning.

***

Miyadia Yoshiaki, worked as a translator for five years with Alaska Airlines after graduating from the University of Washington with a minor degree in psychology. At first, she felt the corporate world, with the travel, good salary and what she thought would be interesting people would be the living end. What she found was that Japanese business men, or more precisely, all business men, maybe all men in general, when far from their homes and families turn into something else. She is sure that back home, these men are good and caring and loving but when she must deal with them, they are definitely something else and it slowly became clear that her job was more than translation, it was to accommodate that change.

Arms around her shoulders, slaps on her rear and the blatant staring at her breasts quickly lost its flattery and as she slowly started to dress plainer and act less open, all it did was raise the ire of her bosses, both male and female.

"You should smile more Miya."

"You have such a nice figure, why not show it off?"

"You could go a long way with the 'right' attitude."

For years, her Mother suggested that she consider caring for her father, especially if she was determined to "waste her life" and not marry, which is all she tried to arrange whenever she was back home in remote Hokkaido, Japan. Finally, a pass-over for promotion and a love affair with a man who turned out to be married, provided the final motivation and she found herself taking care of the home of her Grandfather.

This wasn't a new or strange situation. She had stayed summers here ever since she was a little girl. In fact, she was one of the few who seemed to be able to get along with the old man. Most were off-put by his vast knowledge of the 'old ways' but Miya found that interesting, often even fascinating. With his guidance, she learned the 'proper' ways to serve tea and sake', to serve and eat meals, to stand and to sit and why these things are important and what people see and think when these things are done correctly. But what made all these lessons interesting and tolerable was that she was under no obligation what so ever to use any of it. If she was interested, the old man would teach. She was free to do with it what she pleased.

Life lessons or not, her life here is far from complete. She had thought she might write a book and a dozen starts are on her hard drive and she feels she will return to them, someday. Then one day, these three idiots showed up at the door. They brought a fine bottle of sake' and a strange story that after some time, started to fire her imagination. She knew one of them from when she was a little girl. His father used to play chess and drink with her Grandfather. She recognized him instantly, Billy Baker, but he didn't recognize her which she found kind of fun for some reason. After only a few nights of searching on the internet and after talking to a waitress named Clair at the local diner, she had details on all three of these guys. She was surprised as anyone of her snooping and sleuthing capabilities and how it seemed to fill a void that she didn't know she even had. Although she had never heard the term, and if she had, she might agree- she had found her 'soul candy.'

Several trips to the Bremerton Navel Museum, hours of pouring over micro-phish at the library and endless internet quarries have over the course of these last few weeks turned her into perhaps the world's leading (living anyway) expert on Dr. Masahiro and Japan's WWII nerve gas program. So much so that she believes that digging any deeper may trigger the attention of homeland security. (If it hadn't already.)

Why has she done all this? It could be a result of her training in psychology, but from the moment that Billy Baker and his friends opened that folder, she could tell they were up to something. For everything they told her and her Grandfather, she felt, knew, that there was something they were keeping hidden. She wanted, needed, even to the point of becoming obsessed, to find out what they are up to. Her mind wandered dangerously. If they had really found a cache of chemical weapons, are they planning on selling them to a terrorist group? If so, could she stop them? Could she be putting herself or has she already put herself in danger? That last thought brought a chill to her spine, but also made her feel more alive than she has ever felt. She will do it! Start the second phase. She needs too, she must, the security and the future of the nation might be on the line. I hope I haven't started too late!

***

The next morning when we took the brush and branches off the top of our caged 'canary' rabbits, they must have been fine as one had mounted the other and was pumping away like well..., bunnies.

"Well, they're certainly not dead" Bill said.

"Didn't lose their appetite ether" I added as almost all the food we left with them was gone.

Satisfied that the salvage sight was probably safe, we decided to go ahead with our plans without further delay. In fact, we reasoned that the bulk oil had preserved the cylinders from corrosion and our lowering of the water level had increased the margin of safety by distancing the cylinders from the water's (and its potential oxygen content) level. But we would not take any chances. Gene would run the diamond saw while wearing an air-fed helmet and protective suit, normally used for sand blasting operations and easily rented without questions. Bill would chop scrap steel with the incredibly noisy chop saw to mask the noise that the nearly equally noisy diamond saw makes, and I would assist in both operations and keep the look out.

After the opening had been made in the hull, we would use a special cable 'lasso' that we came up with to hook the 'crate' directly below the opening and winch it up. If successful, we will transport it to the work shed and see what we have. After that, we should be able to hook the remaining crates (at least the ones close to the opening) and winch them up and out.

We met before sunrise and within a few hours we had everything set up. It was perfect weather, for us anyway, light rain, heavy fog, a dreary gray day, perfect for keeping beach combers and others away. Our biggest fear was catching the bulk oil on fire from the sparks of the diamond saw blade. Even with the blade flooded constantly with water, there was still a chance of fire, so we had been flooding the hull with CO2 (welding gas) through the vent tubes for two days. Our low-tech safety test was to trap the out-flow gas in a balloon (trash bag) and carry it off to the side and if the gasses couldn't be lit with the propane torch, all was safe.

By noon, we were sliding the four by five-foot heavy steel plate off to the side. By three, we had the first crate up and on timber skids where we found the three of us could push the oily wooden box right into my pick-up truck for the short trip across the yard to the shed. We loaded the diamond saw back into Gene's truck for the return to the rental store and after he left, Bill and I policed the area including wrapping up the welding gas hoses, pump and water lines and last, we closed up the 'cammo' door and raked up our tracks and filled and smoothed the edges of the dirt that covered door itself. Gene had called with his cell phone and was on his way back with some pizza. We waited for him so we could all open the crate together.

Bill and I slammed a well-deserved beer as we looked over our prize. There was no doubt that what we have is what we thought it might be. We had wiped the oil off the sides and there, printed just as plain as could be were the words:

FRAGILE- DO NOT DROP! ENGINE PARTS

KIETH BLACK FOUNDRY-DETROIT MICHIGAN USA

MIL-A-80-5691162 SUPPORT KIT INCLUDED

Miya has been diligent. She had tracked down a man who, if a local disaster involving nerve gas had occurred, would be the man in charge or who would be at least high on the list of those involved- Dr. Bradly Torginger of the EPA.

She had E-mailed and sent written requests to his Seattle office regarding a request for technical information involving official government reactions to a 'fictional' emergency for a novel she is writing, but she had received no reply for her requests until she had visited his office personally, wearing high heels and a mini skirt. Now suddenly, he enthusiastically responded, gladly ready to discuss anything he can, and he offered to meet her at Cosmos, one of Kitsap Counties best (and most expensive) restaurants.

She wears a strapless, shimmery dress under a long coat to the dinner date and as he takes that coat when she arrived at his table, he fumbles and stumbles in a way that she might have found cute if he weren't so disgusting in virtually every way. She already knows he is married, and the white line of his finger in his otherwise tanned hand doesn't in any way hide that fact.

He pulls out the chair for her and as she sits, she nearly gags at his cheap cologne that has already mixed horribly with his body odor from his excessive nervous perspiration. She looks him over as he takes his chair; greased-over thinning hair, poorly shaved, disgusting abundance of nose hair, wrinkled dress shirt that is already pit stained, but she could let all that slide if it weren't for his domineering attitude. Those Japanese business travelers, professors from college and a hundred or more unpleasant memories of other encounters come flooding back as he shamelessly takes a walk over her body with his eyes. She is not surprised. In fact, she expected this, she even chose this dress to encourage such a reaction. Miya's motives require that she be in-charge of this meeting. It is important that she gauges the reactions of the man who would be in-charge of a biological disaster and this will be a test as to his level of commitment and to the depth of his knowledge and his preparedness, but mostly it is to find out what he may have already heard about 'something.' She will run this meeting as she sees fit.

"So, you are writing a novel?"

"Yes, and it is important that certain aspects of it are realistic. Very important" she says with a wink as if she is willing to 'go the extra mile' so to speak. Dr. Torginger swallows hard as if there is lump in his throat and his brow begins to sweat.

"I have some questions about what processes a certain 'situation' might involve regarding the government's response. Some of my concerns border on the realm of national security but I assure you, I can be extremely..., discrete" again she flashes a look that hints of something more in store.

Torginger smells a trap. This could be a test from higher up. His focus turns to how he can 'profit' from this without disclosing any secrets that could affect his job. He weighs the pros and cons in a simplistic fashion and quickly decides that if he can be 'paid' up front, he will risk the repercussions. In fact, he is already forming a scenario where he must pursue this 'encounter' as an effort to glean as much information as possible. It is his duty, she could be part of an international conspiracy and he must be willing to do whatever it takes to get to the bottom of it, even face danger. His mouth waters as he thinks of the 'danger' and especially what his 'pay' might be.

He decides it would be alright to probe deeper, it may even be necessary, a matter of national security, he would be taking one for the team. Already he has decided that an indiscretion would be a small price to pay if a terrorist plot could be exposed and avoided.

"Yes, yes Miss..., I'm sorry I don't believe I've caught your name."

"Susan Partridge."

"And you are writing a book?"

"That's right."

"And understanding certain government 'procedures' would be helpful, for your book?"

"Very."

"These 'procedures,' would be of great 'value' to you?"

"Oh yes," and she leans closer and adds, "A value that I would be willing to show great 'appreciation' for."

"So..., OK..., I think we are on the same page. I came across the bay on my yacht, perhaps we should discuss any 'intimate details' there, after cocktails" he says, throwing his cards on the table.

"Perhaps..., but I must be sure I have the right man. I have some names of military men who might serve my purposes."

"NO!... I mean no..., Miss Partridge, any environmental disaster in this area, weather military, civil, commercial or terrorist, would be channeled directly through my office, I am the top man, I assure you."

"So, if anything happened, anything strange or unusual, you would have word of it?"

"I am the word, and you can take that to the bank!"

Miya has set it up. The next thing she says is why she is here. She will use all of her powers of psychology to search his dumb, sweaty, horn-dog face for a 'tell' and a clue for the answer to her 'real' question. She will probe and search that face for her answer, no matter what he actually says.

"In my book, some men find a cache of WWII Japanese nerve gas in a salvage job. They want to do the right thing and they call the authorities. What would happen next is what I want to know."

The look of surprise and disappointment Torginger could not hide. Miya's question has been answered to her satisfaction. She could tell that this was the first he had heard of anything like this, and that, and really only that, was why she is here. She waits with a quizzical look on her face for his answer.

"That..., that is your question? This is on the level? That is all you want to know?"

Miya drops the sexy looks and laughs in his face.

"Look..., I have been seeking an interview with you or your office for weeks. I have been digging on this subject for months and I have a good idea how something like that might go down but a confirmation from you would be most helpful. I really am writing a book and I am not seeking any secrets. If you would have a conversation with me about it, I would be grateful, but I'll tell you right now, there would be no reason to have that conversation on your yacht and my 'gratefulness' will end in a handshake and only a handshake."

A strange look of disappointment and a certain relief cross his face. He studies her pretty face for a moment before he begins to speak.

"You really had me going for a second."

"More than a second I think" she adds.

They share a laugh, a hearty laugh.

Dr. Bradly Torginger isn't really such a bad guy. Now that he has relaxed, Miya can see that. They share a pleasant meal and a productive conversation. Miya, or Susan in this case. (She stays with the fake name just to be safe and decides if she is caught later about that, she will explain it away as her pen name) They share what she has learned about VX nerve gas and Brad sees no harm in describing what typical government responses might be under a host of conditions and circumstances, all under a condition of unanimity of course. They end the evening later with that handshake.

After Gene's return, we wolfed-down the pizza with beer to wash it down so we could quickly stand by the crate as Bill uses a crow bar to pry off the lid. Under the bright work lights of the work bench, more wooden boxes appear inside, all covered in crude oil and black as if painted with the stinky stuff. Slowly and methodically, Bill, wearing latex gloves, pulls each box out one by one and they open each one in a slow, Christmas morning like fashion, savoring each discovery, feeding their soul-candy appetite.

The largest separate box contains two large (Holley 4500 series) carburetors with that green, corrosion preventing coating showing plainly through the black ooze. Bill wipes them down and places them carefully on the work bench, far up in the corner leaving plenty of room for more treasure. Next a flat, cardboard package, swelled and fragile to the point of disintegrating. It is carefully brought out and unfolded on the work bench revealing a gasket set so soaked in oil that it is certainly unusable. Regardless, Bill uses clean rags to soak up the excess black goo and they too are placed on the bench up next to the carburetors. Under that, a wooden tray is lifted out of the crate and small, individual, swelled, rotten and disintegrating cardboard boxes are exposed, and Bill opens one and a single, spare replacement engine valve is revealed. He wipes it clean with a rag and it is in perfect, pristine condition. We respond with childish grins as he passes it around for our inspection. Hours pass in what seems to be only minutes as this process is repeated over and over with piston rings, bearing shells and other parts, each ending lined-up on the bench as if they were jewelry in a display case.

Finally, sockets and wrenches are required to break down the brackets and supports used to prevent the main treasure, the 'mother lode' from damage during shipment and storage. One by one the oil drenched plywood sides of the crate are removed until the black, dripping treasure is exposed in all of its glory, supported on the timber of the pallet that was the bottom of the now disassembled packing crate. The only sound is the buzzing of the ballasts of the work lights as we marvel at the fruits of our labors. Not a word is spoken as Bill begins spraying the remaining treasure down with 'Brake Clean' and wiping it with rags. Slowly, lovingly, Bill's labor produces square inch after square inch of bright, shiny aluminum all in perfect, like-new condition, and when most of the oil is wiped away, he steps back and says:

"Soaked in oil for fifty years has prevented any corrosion, just as we'd hoped."

It was a statement of the obvious of course, but we didn't mind. We just grinned and got up for a close inspection. We gathered around it and touched, fondled really, as our minds spun with possibilities. It wasn't that it was just valuable, (It is) but is was a satisfaction that we had been bold, that we had formed a plan and stuck with it, that we had played the hand we were dealt and won the pot. We spent hours drinking the rest of the beer and smoking cigars as we mused and discussed our next moves.

In the next few days we researched what we really had here. We down-loaded pages of information from the internet and completely disassembled Six Two, (that is what we 'named' the engine referring to the last digits of its serial number) and found differences from automotive versions of the engine besides the all-aluminum construction. The biggest difference was the timing chain cover that featured a built-in, gear-driven, dry-sump, multistage oil pump, but to our great relief we found that after all of that was removed, the bolt spacing supported a conventional timing gear set and cover which is vital for automotive use. (The timing gears and the gear-driven oil pump that it came with were only suitable for governed, constant and rather low speed use that was required for ground service supporting jet-engine starting and aircraft electrical power requirements.) Another concern was the output (crankshaft) coupler but to our relief after it was removed, the bolt circle and spacing was the same as conventional, automotive applications. Other 'problems' included the fact that the magnetos provided no spark advance so if the engine was to be used for anything but constant speed, they would have to be replaced with conventional ignition distributors. Luckily, we were able to locate aftermarket automotive versions with the correct cam shaft gears. Speaking of cam shafts, we found that the one originally installed was completely unsuited for automotive use, (again a constant speed, rather low RPM design) as well as the valve springs, and while we were at it, we decided the stamped-steel rocker arms would be unsuitable so they were replaced with forged aluminum, roller bearing racing types and we included guide plates and oversize, adjustable screw-in adjuster studs. The oil soaked, swelled and rotten gaskets that came in the spare parts kit were useless but luckily, we were able to match everything up with conventional parts and seals. We decided to leave the pressed-in steel cylinder liners alone believing their rubber O-rings should still be OK. (We hope.) We fitted a conventional, wet-sump oil pan and pump and found an automotive electric starter bolted on in place of the air starter (which was not included with the engine for some reason) and an SFI rated flywheel finished our engine, all of which set us back nearly two thousand dollars so far, and we still had the matter of the carburetors to deal with which cost a minimum of nearly a thousand dollars apiece. (Two required.) The carburetors that came with the engine, although in perfect condition, were equipped with an elaborate mechanical linkage system for use with the constant speed governor system and unsuitable fuel pipe attachments as well as jetting for constant speed use and the lack of stepped fuel metering that is required for road use. Some digging on the internet located a racer with what we needed, and we picked up the pair for six hundred dollars, but they ended up requiring rebuild kits (just under a hundred bucks a piece) before they could be used.

It had been over a month by the time we had Six Two set up on a run stand with the exhaust pipes exiting through the shop buildings' wall. With the valves adjusted and our test gauges hooked up and our jury-rigged, oversized radiator full of coolant, it was an exciting day when Bill pressed the starter button. It was an exciting day that unknown to us, we were sharing with a fourth person.

Miss Yoshiaki, growing bolder as the weeks went by, started by watching us at a distance with binoculars. First from the ferry, just as I first did, but later while hiding in the brushes. She had purchased a whole wardrobe of Carhart overalls, flannel shirts and Doc Martins. She had been watching us come and go and happened to be there as Six Two was brought into the shop. That was also the day that we forgot to lock the door and Miya let herself in after we had left.

She was baffled as to our interest in the greasy engine, but she was relieved to find that our operations seemed to revolve around it and her fears of a terrorist plot seemed to be waning. No, these goofs seemed to be focused on this engine. Miya saw the black, stained plywood sides of the crate stacked up in a corner and from that odor, she deduced that it had come from that..., that, whatever it was under that old concrete and behind our hidden door. (Miya failed to realize that it was a buried submarine.) She took pictures of everything with her phone.

It only took minutes to find pictures that matched when she Goggled "racing engines" and after some Wikipedia reading, she decided that our intentions were probably harmless. Still, she had a lot of questions.

What would an engine be doing down there?

Why would they go to such lengths to hide their operations?

What did WWII nerve gas have to do with any of this?

Why did she even care?

The truth is she didn't care that much. This had become an unhealthy obsession that she couldn't explain. She would wake up in morning convinced that she would stop this behavior, but after her Grandfather and the house was squared away, off she would go only to find herself standing in the dark staring at three goof balls through the window, obsessed with an engine.

Why do they do it?

Men are so weird!

Why am I standing here?

I am so weird!

It all came to a head when Billy Boy hit that starter button.

With the carburetors float bowls filled with 110 octane racing gas from the barrel that we had purchased and with the ignition 'on,' Six Two came to life with a roar. We all watched the oil pressure gauge jump up to over eighty pounds and we knew that it was safe to run the engine at two thousand RPM to break-in the camshaft. Even with the mufflers that we had rigged up, the noise was deafening, but to us it was beautiful music. We checked for leaks and watched the temperature gauge like a hawk. After a few moments, it was clear that all is well which prompted Gene and I to dance a little jig. Round and round we traded off locking arms in the fashion of a square dance as Bill laughed his ass off. This was too much for Miya.

There is a party and she was missing out. She couldn't stand it. As if in a trance, she left her hiding place and walked to the door. She knocked, but the engine noise drowned out her rap. She opened the door and entered. The men are hunched over their mechanical noise maker so focused on its gauges and its operation that they remained oblivious to her presence or anything else. Only when Bill looked up grinning and saw Miya standing behind Gene and I, that he reacted with a look of shock and hit the kill switch.

"What's wrong? Is something wrong?" Gene said as he moved forward double checking the gauges and the hose connections. I joined him bending over to look underneath for leakage or spills. We both looked at Bill and we could see that the 'trouble' must be where he was looking, and that was where Gene and I were just before standing.

"What are you doing here?" Demanded Bill as Gene and I turned and saw her, muddy work boots, overalls and her hair pulled back tight in a pony tail. Surprised as I was, I found myself pleased because it was sort of a party and every party needs a pretty girl.

"I knocked but you must not have been able to hear me" she said just as calm and cool as could be.

"Look Lady, this is private property, posted NO TRESSPASING, clearly posted" snapped Gene.

"I must have missed that, you know, being dark out and all," she said in an overly innocent voice.

"What do you want? Asked Gene in less demanding tone.

"I..., I don't know." Miya looked perplexed.

"How did you find us here?"

"That's..., that's, complicated."

"Look, I think you had better turn right around go back the way you came or I'm calling the police."

"No..., no you won't be doing that, that is for sure. No one would go to all the trouble of hiding your ..., your, secret stink-hole if they wanted the police around. No, you boys are up to something." She said this as she moved closer to Six Two and held her hands up to it as if warming her hands near a camp fire.

"Well..., it is none of your business." Gene looks like he has more to say but Miya cuts him off saying in a new and forceful tone;

"None of my BUSINESS! Enough nerve gas to poison a city? What plot are you masterminding while you play with your machinery? Is it death you want, or do you just want money?"

"No, you got it all wrong..."

"Shut up Billy Boy! You were a Dumb Ass when you were a teenager and you're still a Dumb Ass now."

Bill finally places her, and at that time, she couldn't speak hardly a word of English. But he and Gene and I are speechless. I could feel the color leave my face and could see the same thing in the others, except for Miya. She drags a finger across the valve cover of Six Two as if she is stroking a kitten.

"What is this thing, and why do you love it so?"

We are still tongue-tied.

"Is it valuable?"

"What's it to you!?" Barks Bill, clearly upset about being called a Dumb Ass.

"Maybe I WANT it! Maybe you have prepared it..., just for me! Is that what you have done?"

"Look lady, what would you want an engine for? Do you want money? Maybe we can make a deal."

"Money! HA! You don't love money! Not like you love this..., this thing here. I've been watching you guys and how you worship this. No. This, this is the thing that brings you joy, and that is why I want it. Because it will break your heart!"

And that is what started it, the mother of all awkward silences. A Mexican stand-off of silence. Three befuddled goof-balls and a chick with more balls then a bearing factory. Miya stands tall and proud. She is as still as a statue as her eyes move from man to sweating man. I, we, have never been in such a situation. What could possibly be her game? It is like something from a movie. Something that just doesn't happen everybody, or anybody for that matter.

"Ok, you can have it. Well load it in my truck and I'll drive it where ever you want" I say this, and Bill and Gene offer no objections.

Miya looks shocked and she loses it. Her laugh starts with a snort through her nose and in a second, she is holding her sides and she can barely remain standing. It is like she tried to stay in control at first, trying to keep her laugh sweet and respectable but soon she is snorting and gasping like an animal and with every look back at us, it only increases. But we do not join her. We don't think it is funny, not at all. She finally starts to gather herself up and she has three men scowling at her.

"Oh, lighten up! Don't you see how lucky you are? Don't you see the..., the holes in your schemes that I have exposed? Do you not know how easy it was to infiltrate your operations? Don't you see how important I will be as your new..., partner? I say we all have a beer and drink to this new arraignment."

What the hell are you doing girl? Miya thought as the beers were passed around. She had turned into a mad woman, a lunatic. Why? She had never acted this way before, even at her dinner date with Torginger, compared to this, that wasn't even close. She has had her daydreams, her fantasies, but never had she acted on them like this. Her mouth is dry, and she is nearly shaking as the beer goes down so good, but it is not the beer that is her soul candy, it is everything else.

And that was that. Back to work we go. Not a word was spoken about what might have been Miya's reasons or motivations. Never a prying question was asked. Miya worked hard to pull her weight and to gain our trust and in a matter of weeks, maybe even days, there was this forth person, who was as able on a shovel as any of us and far advanced at anything that concerned paper work and a host of other chores. The fact that she is a stone fox may have been titillating for a bunch of old duffers, but it was not the measure of her worth, not by a long shot.

Six One, Six Three and Eight Seven (apparently the order of the serial numbers didn't match the way they were loaded) were hooked and raised up without too much trouble because of their proximity to the opening, but the rest would require some elaborate equipment and precise procedures to be salvaged safely.

Back in the shop, Six Two had been removed from the run stand and was installed on a wheeled engine stand and had been pushed out of the way and covered with a blue plastic tarp. Six One, Six Three and Eight Seven remained in their oil-blackened plywood crates and had been lined-up against the wall for storage. Miya and the men, all with dirty hands and dirty work clothes tilted back cold beers as they looked at Gene's sketch.

"We'll build the rig here in the shop, disassemble it, and build it back up inside the sub while in the dry-suit. Then, we will be able to lift the crates over the floor (and the cylinders) until they can be hooked-up to the track crane. It will take a couple of weeks to set all that up but if it all goes well, we may be able to retrieve at least two more each day after it is set up..." He pauses as Miya's phone starts ringing.

Gene is describing a rather elaborate plan we (mostly Bill and Gene) had came up with involving building a temporary lifting rig and track crane system inside the sub built by someone (Bill probably) wearing a used, dry-suit scuba suit that we had bought on Ebay. Fed with breathing air from outside, it should make it safe to work in the toxic fumes even if one of the VX cylinders is breached. (Hopefully!) To keep costs down, we had gathered up most of the steel for this project from the scrap salvaged from the tank farm itself. The only real problem is the fact that Gene and Bill had to work around their real, paying work which had been piling up while they goofed-off mining their soul candy. But our planning was put on hold as it was clear that Miya must have been receiving some difficult news judging from the pained expression on her face.

"Yes, thank you sir, thanks for calling, I'll be there in half an hour..., Yes, that's right..., I'll meet you there sir, thank you..., good bye." She ended the call and turned to us and said, "My Grandfather has passed away."

It was my pleasure to help Miya over the next several weeks as she got settled in an apartment and we prepared the small house for sale. The house was left to Miya and was paid off, but it held too many memories and frankly, the gardening required to maintain the grounds did not appeal to Miya. That worked-out well as Gene and Bill had time to get caught up in their 'real' work and after all of that, we were all eager to finish our secret salvage operation. But as I was bringing the last boxes into Miya's new digs, I got a call from Gene.

"We got trouble buddy, real trouble!"

Miya insisted that she come along, and we met Gene and Bill at the Brownsville Tavern.

"When I got the call, they were already waiting at the gate [at the Olympic Oil facility] wanting me to meet them there and unlock it" said a frustrated and exhausted Gene. "Lucky for us, they were ready to call it a day after they got their equipment in and me and Bill had time to seal up the sub and tear down the track crane."

"We welded-up the opening using scrap metal bracing than sacked-up everything (used ready-mix concrete from the hardware store) to seal it and hide what we had been doing," added Bill.

"So that's it? It's over? Asked Miya whose concern for the over-all project had grown more than genuine.

"We'll be lucky if we get away with what we've done already" proclaimed Gene and he continued, I'm meeting the boss tomorrow, some guy named Torginger, Dr. Torginger.

"What?" gasped Miya.

"Ya, he's gunna anchor his Chris-Craft out in the bay during the duration, as some kind of base of operations."

"What kind of operations?" I asked.

"Beats me! I guess I'll find out tomorrow."

"Oh shit! This is bad!" Was the consensus after Miya spilled her guts about what she new about Dr. Torginger and why he might be coming.

"How could he have known? There's no way he could have known" mused Miya out loud.

"He don't know. No one knows. If anyone knew, it would have been my Dad, and he didn't know" said Gene.

"How do you know that?" I asked.

"All that thing was to him was a bunker for waste. Engines? Nerve gas? No way! It just don't add up. Besides, that Torginger, he didn't seem very serious or alarmed, I mean why would he anchor his boat right next to a potential disaster anyway? No, somethings up, something, but no danger or catastrophe. The thing's a superfund site, it must be time that it is dealt with, their probably gunna pump it out and then scrap it. Maybe I'll get to bid on it, then we'll finish what we started. I'll find out in the morning and keep you posted." But we weren't going to wait to be "posted." Just after sun rise, we were all standing there at the Olympic Oil site as the madness began.

First, the Port-a-John guy came and delivered two portable toilets, one regular and one big, wheelchair accessible type. Next, a FEMA trailer rolled in followed by a caravan of college kids. A professor Willison of the History and Industry Museum was introducing his undergrads and explaining what a "great honor" (?) all this is and was quite concerned that the arraignments would be made for the "special guests" (??) and asked when the reporters would be here. (???) But we couldn't spare him much time as the track excavator and backhoe operators had just arrived. But all that was just as well as that is when a Ms. Jacobs, assistant dean from the University of Washington arrived in her BMW (which she immediately managed to get stuck in the mud) and took control.

She quickly gathered together Gene, Bill, Miya and I, Professor Willison, the undergrads and even the operators of the equipment and had her assistant take a quick group portrait. With apparently no time to lose, Ms. Jacobs soon had the excavator and the backhoe moving towards the submarine when she finally approached Gene and with a hardy handshake, she quickly introduced herself:

"Mr. Anderson? Gene Anderson?"

"Yes."

"Jill Jacobs here. Sorry for all the rush but we are already behind schedule and with the weather moving in, we would really like to expose the I-41 before the veterans arrive with the news reporters."

"News reporters?"

"Yes, and the veterans, the last living crew members..., didn't Torginger brief you?"

"What? Expose the submarine? What?" Gene stammered as he spun his head towards the machines as the excavator and backhoe had already started digging away.

"Oh yes, Mr. Anderson, This was the submarine of Premier Yamashiro's father."

"Premier Yam-a-shy-rows...?"

"Oh, I know he isn't a big name here, but his son wrote the critically acclaimed novel that became a hit movie in Japan. Can you imagine their excitement when was discovered that the ship still existed?"

"Novel..., movie?"

"Yes! Silent Fear. It's a masterpiece, or so I've heard. I've never seen it but there will be a screening Saturday night after the formal diner. Look, I might be able to get you and your friends some tickets, but no promises! Ha-ha."

Suddenly, there is a disturbing scraping sound followed by a ground-shaking vibration emanating from underground as one of the machines hooked on to something as they flailed away, and the fog of confusion starts to vanish as Gene finally comes to his senses.

"Hey! What the hell do you think you are doing? You can't just go digging at that thing willy-nilly! You'll crack that rusty hulk wide open and cause a disaster, an oil-spill!"

"Oh relax! We just need to expose enough so it looks like a submarine, for the photo shoot. Maybe just the front part, the bow I guess they call it, ha-ha."

"You don't know what's under there! There could be underground piping, shoring or bracing, there used to be a dock out there. Who knows what kind of pilings or bulkheads are under there? No body, that's who!"

"Mr. Anderson please. This is a matter of historical preservation and my agency takes full responsibility, besides, all this stuff must go eventually so we can tow this thing out. It is going on display at Gasworks Park, the project is already funded, privately funded."

Bill, Miya and I watch as Gene and Ms. What's-Her-Butt argue, but we can't hear much of what is being said over the machinery, but Bill can guess it's about the heavy-handed way the operators of the equipment are performing.

"There gunna fuck something up and crack that rusty egg wide open."

"Is it safe to be even standing here?" Asks Miya.

"Well, as long as we stay up wind, we'll be alright" sums up Bill.

We stayed that afternoon about as long as we could stand, but when the rain started, that was it, we cleared out. We didn't miss much, it was all on the evening news.

"Tonight, sailors are reunited with their World War Two submarine after over seventy years, after it was recently discovered buried at a local beach! But first, a building storm bringing high wind and driving rain is moving into the area..."

Miya is sitting in her new apartment watching this on TV when her phone rings:

"Miss Partridge? Susan? This is Dr. Torginger, Brad Torginger..., Look I hope I'm not bothering you, but I was hoping you might do me a favor. I remembered that you live over on this side of the bay and, well, it's a long story but I need a ride from this place, Brownsville, to the Navy motor pool on the base to pick up a car to use while I'm stationed over here for an operation that I'm running. It would be worth a dinner at any place you want, my treat."

Oh please! This is the most obvious...

"Sure Brad, it would be my pleasure."

"I'm at a place called the Brownsville Tavern."

"I know right where it is. I'll be there in twenty minutes."

Miya had already eaten so her and Brad stayed and had drinks, several drinks. Actually, Brad had several drinks while Miya 'pretended' to drink. She slammed several iced colas as Brad's were mostly rum as per a prior arraignment with the bartender. As Miya predicted, Brad was not much of a drinker and soon he was blurting-out all kinds of inappropriate and even potentially damaging information.

"So, as the divorce came rather sudden, I found myself living on my boat. But after spending so much money on repairs, and with the alimony coming due, the fact that I could anchor out here and even collect a stipend, became a godsend, as I could cancel my berth at the Seattle Yacht Club saving some twelve hundred a month."

Miya didn't know if she was supposed to be impressed with his thriftiness or if it was a ploy to announce that he was now single, but the truth is that she was finding Dr. Torginger more tedious and boring the drunker he got.

"What are you going to do with your boat after this?"

"I'm going to milk this arraignment as long as I can. I'll use my skiff to go from the boat to the car that I will leave parked at the shore. That reminds me, I've got to get a key to that gate. Then I'll berth her [his yacht] over on this side where the moorage fee is only half of what it is on the Seattle side."

"Sounds like a good plan Brad." What a cheapskate!

"It couldn't have come at a better time, you know, with the divorce and all."

Yes, I heard you. I got it! How pathetic!

As Miya tried hard to keep her eyes from rolling right out of her skull, she considered how she would drive Dr. Drunky-flirt to the local Motor Inn by the highway, as he had drank his way into no condition to sign for a car on the base at the motor pool, and as a glance at the growing, stormy weather out of the bar window showed that motoring his skiff back to his yacht was out of the question as well.

The T.V. news had been reporting for days that a storm was moving in and it had arrived with a vengeance. It was quite a coincidence that Gene, Bill and I all arrived at the gate (which had been left wide-open) at the same time. But with the wind howling and the rain falling sideways, we knew that the college kids and their professor would be in a jam. Boy, we're we right!

We, in our rain gear, work boots and sporting Mag-lights, (a heavy-duty, all-weather flashlight that anyone who works for a living knows very well) could instantly see clearly the disgraceful, shameful situation. Both Porta-Potties had blown over with the large one broken apart as well. The power to the over-crowded FEMA trailer was out, and a look inside reveled soaking-wet college kids shivering around a propane heater that they couldn't get lit. (Just as well because that particular heater, is meant to heat a construction site and would have probably killed them all with fumes if used indoors as they were trying to do.) Gene and I just laughed as Bill went down towards the water's edge.

Headlights flashed through the rain squalls as another vehicle joins us at the trailer. It proves to be Miya's little SUV and she joins us, as her passenger, after looking as if he might just be spinning in circles, heads towards the beach.

"I'm driving Torginger to the Motel, but he said he needed his gear out of his dingy," said Miya over the noise of the growing storm to Gene and I, even though we hadn't asked. A quick head-count and an abundance of vehicles made the motel sound like a good plan for Willison and his students as well and I had out my cell phone to make reservations, but I couldn't get a signal.

"Phones are down, we'll just have to go there and hope for the best," but the situation changed quickly for the worst. Bill came running up and between gasping breaths he reported:

"The storms' brought the tide high, really high and that yacht has dragged its anchor and well..., you got a John Deere key and that two-inch poly?" He asked Gene.

Oh fuck! Shit-fuck-crap!

Two-inch poly refers to about a hundred feet of very strong rope that Gene had in the shop. A 'John Deere' key refers to a little-known fact that nearly all heavy equipment uses the same kind of ignition key. Oh fuck, shit-fuck-crap, refers to the madness and the extreme effort of the next few, short hours.

Ms. What's-Her-Face [Jill Jacobs] may have taken responsibility, but she isn't here now. But her hole exposing the bow and a large portion of the side of the I-41 couldn't have came at a worse time. The high tide (still rising, by the way) coupled with the storm-surge have brought the sea-water up against the hull of the I-41 for the first time since the nineteen seventies. Already the ship has proved to be floating slightly as it has rocked and wiggled so that the earth that had locked it in safely for so long has started to crumble and fall away. With every motion, the big steel hull is closer to being free of its long, safe entombment and will soon be free to be pounded by the surf against anything and anywhere that God sees fit. Even without the potential of the deadly cargo, that action could be deadly enough considering the level of development along the shore around here these days, especially if it drifts to the Seattle side of the bay. But people (heroes really) have frantically jumped-in to prevent that.

Gene, Bill and I, and some of the stronger, young students, with the help of the excavator with Gene at the controls, have dragged the heavy rope right to the edge of the dangerously, moving submarine hull and we watch breathlessly as Gene reaches the bucket out with Bill inside holding a loop of the thick rope as he tries to hook it on a exposed, mooring cleat on the very tip of the ever increasingly exposed submarine. The rain and wind are raging, and a good portion of earth falls away in the direction of the tracks of the large machine. If Bill can't secure the line with the next few thrusts, the next section of earth to fall away will bring the huge machine with Bill in the bucket, crashing into the growing, boiling, raging mud hole that surrounds the old ship.

Meanwhile, a second group, led by a quickly sobered and surprisingly brave Dr. Torginger, who had donned rain gear from his skiff, followed by the pretty, but soaked to the skin Miya and the remaining students, struggle to drag the other end of the thick rope down to the water's edge. Professor Willison braves the biting cold and soaking rain to hold a light as the group pauses to assess the situation for a short moment. Torginger's yacht is run aground bow first against on the beach. With each breaking wave, it is clear that it is not held fast and could float away at any second. Only the off-shore wind holds it to the shore. After a quick, shouting conference, Dr. Torginger and the strongest, young student lock the fingers of their hands together and Miya, with a head of steam from a few quick steps, plants her foot in their hands and they fling her headlong over the rail and into the boat. She crashes in a heap on the deck of the wildly rocking craft, apparently painfully smashing her forearm and knee in the process. No time to dwell on that, she springs to the rail and reaches down for Torginger to grab her hand and hoist himself in, which nearly pulls her right back out. Miya pushes through her pain and finding strength she didn't know she had, Torginger comes flopping in. The remaining students pass the rope as Gene and Bill come running up and with Torginger's help, they also make it over the side. I assist Professor Willison as we gather-up the students, who by now are suffering from exposure and shivering to the point of being unable to talk more than a few gasping words at a time, and as we run towards the shelter of the cars and trucks parked at the trailer, we witness an unforgettable sight.

The gigantic tracked excavator machine, abandoned at the edge of the hole the second that Bill was put on the ground after he finally, successfully secured the line on the bow of the I-41, with the water and waves chewing at the earth right up to and under the tracks of the machine itself, the soil gave way and the giant machine tilted and crashed down into the muddy surf, disappearing almost completely. But it was that action, that disturbance that triggered the real drama. With a commotion accompanied by a strange rumbling, grinding sound that stood out above the howling wind and the driving rain, the I-41 moved-out.

The motion was far from graceful and anything but predicable, in fact the movement reminded me of an alligator that had just been roped, the way the sub immediately rolled-over because of the weight of the concrete slab that used to be the foundation of the valve station that was still firmly attached to the top of the submarine and now was the bottom of this floating (for now at least) monstrosity. I could hear the sounds of things (Rare racing engines and deadly nerve gas cylinders) crashing about inside as it turned over and settled with its heavily rusted keel now high and (for all intents and purposes) dry.

The twin V-8 engines of Torginger's yacht started, first one and then the other, and as its electric lights began to shine through the foggy rain and wind, we watched the line tighten and with great strain, the upside-down I-41 began to slowly creep away from the shore and disappear into the darkness.

***

In the next few hours and for the remainder of the night, the wind shifted, and the remaining windstorm blew towards the west. This fact might be as important as anything as to what exactly happened. All I know for sure is that it took me several years to face the facts and come to grips with my fears and sadness. Certainly, with all the side-scan sonar work, and with the exhaustive investigation, (of which I spent hours going over everything I knew with several different investigators over and over and over again) you would think that I would have at least come to terms with it all. No. In fact, it is all I could do to sit down and write this feeble account of what happened. I figured I owed it to Gene, Bill, Dr. Torginger and the lovely Miya to do this in their honor. But the fact is that they just disappeared into the night. Well not exactly, they were sighted with the I-41 in tow west of Whidbey Island at day break the next morning, and later that afternoon well into the Straights of Juan de Fuca but without a mayday or any other communication, no escort or assistance or any other contact was initiated. The fact of the matter was that with the storm, the Navy, the Coast Guard, police and fire units, all were busy and by the time any attention was paid (professor Willison and I pleaded right away that there might be a disastrous accident but it was relegated to a 'missing person' case which delayed any real action even further) they had vanished without a trace.

So, all I can do is relate my opinion based on the facts as I see them.

It is logical to think that Dr. Torginger would have wanted to cut the I-41 loose and let it beach itself at the first safe location away from any development and infrastructure. That is where Gene, Bill and especially Miya would have objected. Highly trained, Torginger would have instantly recognized the danger nerve gas could pose so a quick beaching would be out of the question if it were anywhere near any populated areas.

But why didn't they send a message? The answer may very well be because of the storm itself due to the numerous power outages, and because most cell phone coverage was down, and even if it wasn't, all four of them were so soaking wet that their cell phones were probably also soaked. With no time (or rice) to dry them, they may have been out of order if they hadn't just plain lost them in all the action of that night. (The phones of all four were not located in their cars, or on the grounds of the Olympic Oil facility or in the recovered excavator.)

What about the Chris-Craft's ship to shore radio? This is a somewhat of a sore spot. Dr. Torginger's yacht was more of a house boat to him than a pleasure craft. He had a ton of work done to the engines, fuel tanks and other systems but no receipts for any radios or even navigation upgrades were ever found. The facts seem to point out and many agree, that his radio may not have been operational.

The overwhelming 'X' factor may have been the people, the crew itself. None of them had any real exposure to a life at sea. After many long discussions with people who know much more than I do about these things, there is endless speculation of any one of dozens of scenarios that might have been at play. But the most compelling (in my opinion anyway) has to do with the wind and the general weather.

With the wind at their back, they would have been making good time. In fact, it would have been all they could do keep the rope tight and maintain steerage. Any deviation from a course other than with the wind directly behind them could have pushed them against the shore, so they would been glad of their good fortune, but they would have had to run the engines near peak power for an extended amount of time. A recent receipt for fuel showed that Torginger had nearly full tanks. That, and the swift progress they were making may have enticed them to believe that they could exit the straights and clear the coast to make it to deep water where it would be safe to scuttle the I-41. I believe that may have been their plan, and due to the nature of the mission, they may have even decided to maintain radio silence just to prevent any interference with anyone who could delay them.

But after talking extensively with those in the know, it would be the conditions out in the Straights of Juan de Fuca that would have been the most severe problem. Out in those Straights, you might as well be in the middle of the ocean as you lose all sight of all land, and due to the weather, they had probably lost sight of land long before that even. But in the straights as in the ocean, you encounter swells. And reports that day record swells of about forty feet. As I understand it, these swells come on extremely fast. One minute you're in choppy waves, the next you're riding up and down these enormous swells. On the down leg of such a swell, the I-41 would have came charging at them. The instinct would be to gun the engines to prevent a ramming. Unfortunately, that would have set up the next disaster, the slacking of the tow rope followed by the whip of the sudden take-up. Again and again the small yacht would have been hammered and pounded. There is a good chance that depending on where exactly the line was attached, it may have torn the craft in two before they would have even been able to cut the rope.

Also, there is the possibility that during this phase or really at any point of the trip, the I-41 may have suddenly just sank, pulling the Chris-Craft down with it. Test show that even burly men using sharp axes, the cutting through of a two-inch poly line was not instantaneous, far from it.

Last, there is another scenario, though probably unlikely, and that is the fact that they were down wind from the I-41 and its potentially deadly cargo. There is a chance that a breech in a cylinder might have drifted forward to poison the crew, but I believe that is highly unlikely. Mainly because the boat would have been found still afloat, unless the I-41 sank after the breech, pulling the yacht down with it. When you think about it, a breech that would allow the exiting of gas could have also sank the ship, I guess.

What became of all this? I was informed when all was said and done that I did indeed hold ownership rights to the recovered four engines due to my receipt of the original purchase of the content of the mini storage and the fact that the U.S. government had officially declared the I-41 'clear of cargo or contraband,' and I did toy with the idea of using Six-Two as an engine for some kind of 'tribute car,' after all, as Miya pointed out so clearly, we did love that engine. But the thought (and the complex difficulty) of explaining the reason for the tribute would be just too painful to constantly relive. Also, I'm just to dammed old to start such an involved project.

So, I contacted Gene, Bill, Brad and Miya's closest living relatives with a plan to sell (anonymously, I didn't want anyone's dream car to be tainted in anyway) Six-Two and the other three crated engine kits and give the money to them, but when it was discovered that Bill had a daughter from an early marriage, everyone involved insisted that all the money be set up in a trust fund for her education.

What happened to me? Well, I guess I lost interest in looking for treasure. The truth is that I found treasure, and it was the love that I shared with my mates, and with them gone, well maybe it just scared me. It is my opinion that my friends were the last casualties of WWII. The last human casualties at least. As the cylinders corrode and lose their structural integrity, there will be a trail of marine death marking their final location and providing the absolute last WWII casualties. Whatever the truth is, the fact is that I seemed to have lost the desire to poke around in other people's lives. Instead, I think I might start writing, perhaps finding a new form of soul candy.

The End, for now.
