GRANT'S PET SHOP
by
Ron S. Nolan, Ph.D.
© 2008
Chapter 4
Pratt Houston could imbibe a phenomenal amount of
alcohol and show no
outward effect. Tonight was an exception. His cheeks and nose were
flushed and his forehead glowed with a slick sheen. He was in very
good spirits. That very afternoon the successful bidders on several
billion dollars worth of high tech military systems software and
hardware had been announced. Tonight the joyful recipients joined in
a time honored ritual—a wild series of concurrent Georgetown
parties hosted by the ranking senators of the Armed Services
Committee and General Houston. Defense contractors were notoriously
heavy party givers—they were living particularly high thanks to
the President's commitment to royally outfit Saudi and Israeli
forces. Plus Houston had his own reasons to celebrate—the
messy situation in Hawaii that he had inherited from the Navy would
soon be resolved. Dr. Sandra Grant would see to that. She would
take the smartass dolphins off his hands and get the public off his
back.
Houston stood gazing into the fireplace, leaning
forward braced
with his shoulder against the mantle. The maid came by with a tray
of drinks and was surprised when the General made no move for a fresh
martini. He seemed lost in thought and she left shaking her head. Ten
years in the household and she never knew what to expect from her
touchy boss..
Houston reflected about the strange circumstances
which led him to be
concerned about the protection of a pair of marine mammals. The
dolphin story was really strange—and one he wished he had no
part of.
Sally and Tom, Pacific bottlenose dolphins, were the
property of the
United States Navy—the Naval Undersea Research Center (NUC) on
the windward side of Oahu to be precise. Until recently, they had
excelled in their training as underwater saboteurs and had reached
the top of the ladder with a rating of Level Five. The dolphins had
also demonstrated a very high innate intelligence which at first
surprised, then elated, then challenged their trainers. Then they
had gone on strike.
Sally and Tom were siblings—if they had been humans
they would
have been termed identical twins. They were born secretly in
captivity at the NUC in 1985. The serial numbers branded on their
backs just ahead of their dorsal fins designated them as D109 and
D110. Their parents had also been property of the United States Navy
(D099 and D078). They had the distinction of serving as the original
components of the Military Application of Marine Mammals Program
(MAMMP)—that is until a demolition sea trial ran afoul in the
summer of 1987. MAMMP was a top-secret project loosely designated as
"wet-black technology," therefore it had ultimately fallen
under Houston's jurisdiction upon the formation of the new Office of
Technology. The program consisted of an arsenal of twenty six
painstakingly trained animals housed covertly at Navy bases in Hawaii
and Florida. Of this cadre, only D109 and D110 had ever posed a
problem to the General. But within just a few weeks they had
threatened the very survival of the entire MAMMP operation.
Sally and Tom seemed to have extraordinary
capabilities. The first
indication that something was amiss occurred during a routine
training exercise. The handlers were using traditional methods, like
those used at Sea World to make the dolphins perform tricks. But
Sally and Tom startled their trainers by performing the designated
acts before the hand signal was delivered. At first the
trainers supposed that it was just a game. The dolphins were merely
showing off and guessing what the next command would be. So the
trainers mixed up the order of commands to throw them off. Still the
dolphins performed the correct maneuver before the signal was given.
The trainers rationalized that somehow they were giving some sort of
subtle cue that was being picked up the dolphins. However, ten days
later during the next suite of exercises in which the human trainers
were replaced by a bank of underwater signal lights, Sally and Tom
continued to provide the correct behavioral response before the
lights blinked their message not just once, but on every test.
Eventually the trainers became convinced that events out of the
ordinary were indeed occurring. Following standard military
practice, they carefully drafted reports documenting their
observations and filed them with their superior officers who rubber
stamped then without notice and routinely advanced the dolphins to
the final stage of training.
Level 5 was the most involved and complex stage in
MAMMP. At this
stage, the dolphins were trained to conduct simulated strikes against
enemy ships. The dolphins constituted the Navy's low-tech version of
the stealth bomber. As living tissue, they would be invisible to
enemy sonar and could closely approach the target. In time of war,
the sand bags harnessed to their backs would be replaced with pouches
containing plastique high explosive. The dolphin was trained to ram
against the side of the vessel. The impact would activate a plunger
that would not only destroy the ship, but extinguish the living
torpedo as well.
Sally and Tom quit performing during the second day of
Level 5
training. They stubbornly refused to obey commands delivered in any
form. Their trainers commented that the pair were protesting the
Navy's lack of ethics. But after thousands of hours of training
valued in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, the striking dolphins
were not viewed lightly by the program administrators. After a month
or persistent non-compliance, the NUC gave up. Sally and Tom had
simply chosen to no longer participate.
It was a strange coincidence that during Tom and
Sally's apparent
protest, the details of MAMMP operations were somehow leaked to the
press. They were revealed in a series of blistering editorials in
the Honolulu Advertiser. The public was outraged and animal
rights leaders infuriated. Students at the University of Hawaii
Manoa Campus organized a massive demonstration at the Main Gate of
the Kaneohe Naval Air Station. Much to the delight of the local
newscasters and reporters, who seemed to relish any controversy
regarding the military in the islands because it always boosted
viewers and readers, the weekend student demonstration turned into a
long-term vigil. Activists from the mainland offices of Greenpeace,
PETA, and the Sierra Club became involved. Senator Daniel Inouye
called for a Senate investigation. The Humane Society filed suit and
the number of protestors carrying signs and chanting "Save the
Dolphins" swelled into the thousands. In a related incident,
two UH students were jailed for breaking into the National Marine
Fisheries Service Lab at Kewalo Basin and freeing a dolphin being
studied by marine biologists. The ensuing trial pitted animal rights
activists against university scientists concerned that they might
lose access to their experimental subjects. Several thousand
protestors launched an impromptu siege of courthouse and broke
windows in the federal building the afternoon that the students were
sentenced to a year in the state penitentiary.
At Governor Frank Fasi's insistence, General Houston
had flown to the
islands in his department Cessna Citation to meet with concerned
officials. Houston took out several full page advertisements in the Honolulu
Bulletin and Advertiser and
appeared on
several local newscasts to insist that the Navy dolphin project was a
humanely conducted operation that employed dolphins only to rescue
trapped submariners. When questioned by reporters, he specifically
denied that Navy animals were trained or ever would be trained for
any kind of offensive maneuver. Houston cited security protocol as
the reason that tours of the NUC were prohibited and even went so far
as to categorically deny the very existence of any program called
MAMMP. The General always felt that it was a privilege of his rank
and position to never reveal the truth about any sensitive military
affairs. "Fucking civilians should mind their own damn business
and leave the defense of the nation to us professionals,"
Houston had barked to his aide Commander Cummings after one of the
more heated sessions with the governor.
The General made arrangements to relocate MAMMP at the
Naval Air
Station at Key West, Florida. All records and the entire dolphin
arsenal would be airlifted to the east coast by the end of the month.
But Tom and Sally remained a problem. He was reluctant to set free
animals in which such a large investment had been made—just on
principle, but these dolphins were no longer of any use to the
program. And that's where Dr. Sandra Grant came into the picture.
Robert McCord, who made a nice living as private
consultant to
defense contractors, had approached him at one of the plastic parties
on the DC cocktail circuit with a brilliant and timely solution to
the dolphin dilemma. A Berkeley scientist whom Robert knew needed a
dolphin on which to perform behavioral studies. She had a proposal
drawn up and it was stuck somewhere in the bureaucratic milieu. "Some
kind of new behavioral studies that might have military
significance, " Robert had added.
At Houston's order, Commander Cummings had tracked the
proposal to a
thick pile of unread submissions on an under directorate's desk at
the National Science Foundation. Houston, after cursorily scanning
its contents, decided that he would be damn willing to finance the
project out of his discretionary budget. He would be able to
comfortably rid NUC of the dolphins—Professor Grant would have
to take them both—meanwhile score points with the activists and
get Inouye and Fasi, who demanded to know what the final disposition
of the animals would be, off his back. He would emphasize the
humanitarian aspects of Navy operations and capitalize fully upon the
government's supportive collaboration with academia.
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Sliding deep into the khaki green leather upholstery
of his
customized limo, the General lit a Cuban cigar and smiled. He ran
his fingers lightly through the soft brown, neatly trimmed hair of
the young, tipsy girl he had stolen from his party only minutes
before. She caught on right away and made no protest as he unzipped
his pants and pulled her face into his lap.
"Here honey, it's a twenty minute ride to Senator
Phillip's
party. Plenty of time, let's have some fun why don't we?"
He was very pleased. A hot, slick new chick and
the damn dolphin
problem is solved...thanks to good ole Robert McCord. What an
incredible coincidence that was anyway! Him knowing someone looking
for a damn dolphin and me happening to have a couple to spare.
"Easy girl, watch your teeth...that's right sensitive
there
darlin'."
What the hell, maybe there is something to this
ESP crap
anyway. If
there is, I want to own it before the Russians get it for
themselves. Yes one million dollars is a cheap price to pay for this
neat package...and McCord says this gal Grant is a knockout too. Well
if she wants an isolated site for her research project, I have
just the right spot in mind. It's located 2,400 miles out of
Honolulu...due west. It's called Eniwetok, baby, and its all yours.
Eniwetok was a coral atoll in that part of the
tropics once known
as the Pacific Proving Ground. Now it was a radar tracking station
and a home for the University of Hawaii's marine lab. It was also a
perfect place for dolphin studies according to the director of UH's
Institute of Marine Science—a bureaucrat savvy to the political
process and a close friend of Daniel Inouye. One long afternoon the
General had gotten an earful from both the director and senator on
how important the lab was to the field of marine biology and the
state of Hawaii. In the end, making a contribution to support the UH
marine station had seemed the only reasonable means of getting the
senator off his back and killing Inouye's investigation of MAMMP.
Houston was not unaccustomed to blackmail disguised in the form of
pork barrel politics and agreed to a substantial endowment to the
university. A telephone call was made and Houston was off the hook.
"Heh...let me breathe, will ya?" choked the girl in a
surprisingly shrill Bronx accent just as the General spurted his
climax.
"Sure honey. Just a little bit more...ah...there! You
did
just fine."
Houston punched the intercom as he carefully zipped up
his pants. "Here
Commander...pull over. The girl wants out here."
As the silver limo pulled away from the girl sobbing
mascara down her
cheeks and clutching the front of her torn silk blouse, the General
poured a stiff scotch from the recessed walnut bar and hit the
intercom button, "Commander, this must be my night. Maybe next
time the sweet little Professor Grant will do the honors. Head on
over to Jason's house and let's check out the action."
It was after two in the morning when the General
careened into the
bedroom and collapsed next to his graying, soft, and featureless
wife. During their three decades of marriage, Anne had been a useful
hostess. Her family name and fortune had opened doors for him that
otherwise would have remained impenetrable. He swallowed down the
squirt of bile that flooded his throat as a blurry vision of his
wife's coagulated cold cream, hair net and rollers swam nauseatingly
in front of his eyes. He abruptly cut off her tentative attempt at
conversation by snapping off the bedside lamp.
Houston smiled as he drifted away into dreams
featuring the cold
blooded execution of Viet Cong insurgents...first one, then
another...then another until the barrel of his M-16 glowed a dull
red.
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