ABOUT THIS WORK
These words were originally written as a prose exercise after I had read several exciting tomes by our beloved action-thriller author, Tom Clancy. This is an unfinished story. I invite you to finish it, and provide some instructions for doing this on the last page…
PROLOGUE ON THE CASPIAN SEA MONSTER
The following words are a fictional rendering of the true story about the Ekranoplan. The Ekranoplan was a secret Soviet-era transport craft that some say was designed to carry thousands of troops, undetected by US defense radar, to deliver a crushing military invasion to America’s shores.
Perhaps not surprisingly, this cold-war military transport craft is being refined and tested to this day. See a secret movie taken by the Soviet State Media of the original Ekranoplan transport in flight by clicking here.
Through the modern miracle of modern photo mapping, you have the ability to see literally everything on the earth through the internet. IMAGE 3 captured from Google Earth shows a modern 280-ton rendition of the original flying behemoth – also known as… The Caspian Sea Monster…
1964: PEACE AT A RUSSIAN LAKESIDE
Piotr Tarasov considered himself lucky.
His father and his whole family had barely eluded expulsion by the Bolsheviks, and only so at the cost of the family’s entire fortune and a binding agreement to “disappear” forever to a faraway place where their name was not known.
Many of Russia’s elite had left decades ago, only to die penniless and wracked with malnutrition on the dark streets of faraway places such as Shanghai. Rather than face such a gloomy fate, the ancestral inheritance had bought his family their “freedom” – safe passage to this nether region where the Volga River meets this great sea. This sea was called Khvalynian in olden times. In the West it was more commonly called the Caspian Sea.
But it was actually a lake, the largest lake in the world.
Yes, life was poor here, but at least the family remained together in the beloved motherland. Piotr’s father died long ago but had left him well enough off: he was a shift manager at a modest state-operated textile mill. His three sons had grown up strong, and all of them joined the military and its promise for a future. His son, Aleksey, had done well in the Navy.
Since childhood, Aleksey had heard his father tell him stories of a nameless great-uncle who was a fisherman. The fisherman stories were so fantastic as to be unbelievable. Aleksey often mused that his father had made them up.
He had thought his father foolish when he first asked him the favor. But after many rounds of pestering, Aleksey finally gave in. After all, his father was an old man. An old man was allowed to have such foolish dreams, perhaps to bolster his inspiration until the last breath came. His father’s dream? His father longed secretly to be a fisherman, and to live the same adventurous life as the family’s nameless uncle.
Thanks to Aleksey’s connections, for the first time his father Piotr now stood on the shores of the Great Khvalynian, fishing rod in hand, a pipe jutting from his mouth.
Before he left for the lake that morning, Aleksey had warned his father about something. Something strange was going on there. Something secret, forbidden, unspeakable. But Piotr waved it off as the well-wishings with which any good son should see his father off. Aleksey had bid him a safe trip. What a good son he had.
Later Piotr Tarasov would say he wished he had listened to his son.
THE MONSTER
Piotr cast his line out once again. Damnable fish! They weren’t biting. He had done everything he was supposed to have done. He had sharpened the hook, baited the line. Damn his aristocratic ancestry! Why couldn’t his forebears have been poor fishermen? That way they would be living by a fertile ocean, making an honest living as the simpler fisher-folk did?
Here his pipe issued no smoke, for no pipe tobacco was available. Pipe tobacco was considered a non-essential. Oddly enough cigarettes were available on ration, or for trade. Transportation was relegated to carrying other essentials such as food. But even then, food rations were meager. This constituted Piotr’s official “reason” for coming to these shores: he was fishing for extra food for his family.
Yet finally here, his rod yielded no fish. The water was too salty.
Ah! But that didn’t matter, he reflected. He was a fisherman finally! By standing here, he had achieved a lifelong dream. He was alone! He was – heaven forbid the word – free. Yes, free. Who could ask for more? Piotr Tarasov smiled at his good fortune, and basked in this new-found feeling of comforting solitude.
But suddenly he frowned.
He craned his neck, stretching his ear to the open sea. What was it? A strange sound? After a moment… No, nothing. The sound of a smallish surf in a smallish sea. The wind was playing tricks with the water. Yes. He had heard from the uncle’s stories that the sea was mysterious, hid many secrets. And…
That sound again!
He turned his head once more. This time it didn’t go away. At first it rose upward like a moan, followed by a strange whoosh. What was that? The sky was overcast with chilly clouds. An equally chilly breeze licked his face. Piotr Tarasov squinted, trying to pierce the light haze that bedecked the water. The distant moan rose again and became a soft wail. It rose once again, steadily becoming louder.
The moan then turned to a whine, and then the whine grew to a screech. It was coming closer… Piotr bent forward. Where was it? The sound was coming out of that thick haze to the left. Piotr shuddered. In the old stories, he had heard about great monsters creeping out of the sea, only to devour hapless fishermen such as he.
What was it his son had warned him of?
The scream suddenly grew to an agonizing crescendo that struck him to his core. He bit down upon his pipe. It broke and fell from his lips. His heart then skipped a beat, and then he froze in fear.
He saw it finally.
A… something… an infernal thing had emerged from the bank of fog. It was huge. It was gray. It had the head of hydra, and its long gray body snaked back to a wickedly forked tail.
A devil!
It sailed… No, it flew above the water! A halo of soot-black smoke belched from behind its neck. It turned slowly and it was now heading straight for him!
His knuckles turned a deathly white as he clutched the thick fishing rod still in his hand. Piotr spat out the stub of his pipe. No longer able to stand the sight of the wicked monster, Piotr turned and ran.
He ran for his very life…
Hours later, when Aleksey saw his father – still terribly shaken – he looked down regretfully at his poor father. After some time, Aleksey spoke softly.
“Father, I am so sorry. I tried to tell you. You have seen it, haven’t you?You have seenthe monster!”
HOURS LATER, IN A GRAY BUILDING IN VIRGINIA
Like Piotr Tarasov, Chad Sorenson considered himself a lucky man also. He was doing some special work that only a very few would have ever thought existed. He was a photo-ops analyst for the US Central Intelligence Agency.
Chad reflected on a curious series of events that led to his employment here.
For some years the “Cold War” had been in full swing already. Tensions mounted and then escalated. The US and Soviet Russia scrutinized each other through ever-darkening clouds of suspicion. Amidst the most daunting of America’s concerns were Russia’s vast resources – industry, technology and a people tempered by a recent war with Germany and a harsh climate where only the tough could survive. All were resources which could be drawn upon to Soviet Russia’s military advantage.
Equally daunting was the vast land from which the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) could draw these resources. This land, among other things, had to be watched. To this aim, the US developed, tested, and deployed large-scale spy technologies. Even then, Russia was too large – so large as to confound any monitoring apparatus, no matter how large or powerful its watchful eye. To the United States CIA, this posed deepening questions: How closely should Russia’s soil be watched? What parts of this soil to watch?
After several meetings were held to discuss whether the Caspian Sea should be monitored, a secret committee’s consensus led to deadlock. Dissatisfied with this lack of progress, the committee chairman determined that everyone should re-evaluate the relative benefits of monitoring the Caspian. The committee adjourned, met later to determine what facts they would require, met yet again to determine that a report would be written on all these, thereafter meeting to commission the report, followed by several other meetings to discuss the report’s progress, thereafter meeting to discuss the final draft, whereupon they met again and came once again to similar impasse.
A DEAD SEA
Not everyone agreed whether monitoring such a remote patch of dead, salty water was worth it. The next meeting led to an agreement to pass the decision on to another committee.
Soon after this, a respected desk-bound analyst who fed information to the new committee adopted a perspective based on sheer paranoia. The very fact that it did not make sense to build new technology here meant that the US should in fact keep a close eye on the Caspian! As a preface to the old report, this analyst wrote a convincing executive summary to this effect, distributed it to her committee, and their unanimous and immediate vote put the wheels in motion: the Caspian would be monitored.
Chad Sorenson’s job – analyzing photos of the Caspian – arose from this decision.
So here he was. Aching from hours of concentration while bent over his light table, Chad stood up straight, stretched and then yawned. He took a few swallows from the mug standing on the corner of a nearby work bench strewn with charts and photos. He had worked a long shift yesterday, and then another shift tonight to cover for a colleague who called in sick. His back was stiff, and the coffee they made here stank.
But at least the stuff he got to look at was interesting. Well… sometimes.
His task tonight was to skim through a series of folders filled with before-and-after photographs of “targets of interest” from various parts of the world. These photos were taken over a series of several days by an SR-71 Blackbird, a photo-recon spy plane that flew so fast that it glowed red-hot, and depended upon sheer speed to escape the hail of deadly enemy missiles provoked by its approach.
While flights over Soviet territories were technically illegal, there was nothing to stop the high flying Blackbird from skimming just outside sovereign borders while aiming powerful camera lenses sideways. The black spy plane snapped photos and film from askance, exposing entire drums filled with reel after reel of hi-resolution film.
While not being able to provide shots from directly overhead, photos from the side do lend the benefit of an angular perspective. Nevertheless, this method came with its severe limitations. Most notable of these was the obvious lower yield in detail. These shots were necessarily made farther away than were direct shots from above. Also these photos were taken through a greater mass of air filled with a matching greater quantity of airborne dirt and pollution. Additionally, long photo shots through the air lent itself to distortion by thermal disturbances rising from the ground or brought in by weather or from the ground heated up by the sun.
At best, one could analyze a collage of the object at hand and assemble the best portions of it into a relatively good overall picture. Chad’s former profession as a photographer and graphics artist led him to be hired as an analyst who could provide interpretation in spite of such difficult conditions.
Finished with making notes on the first folder, Chad stretched again, took another swig of stale coffee, and then grabbed the next folder. The photos in this folder were of nowhere special, except for that it was located at the Russian edge of the Caspian Sea.
Previous composite photos of the Caspian from the last several months showed no special activity. Unfortunately this made for somewhat boring work. But it was work in any case. Chad’s task tonight was to assemble an updated eagle’s eye view of this “sea”, and to report anything seeming out of the ordinary.
He was getting good at this. Chad could generate a full composite from a jigsaw of other photo snaps in less than 15 minutes. This left him with ample time to provide detailed composites showing ships afloat, or the dockyards spanning the Russian edge of the Caspian’s shores.
Just now Chad had finished assembling the high altitude composite of the Caspian. He laid it on the table and stood back to take it all in.
“What have we here?” Chad chimed quietly with a furrow on his brow.
ANOMOLY ON THE DEAD SEA
He grabbed a magnifier monocle and leaned over the composite. A small and almost unnoticeable wisp of a line showed in the water some miles off the Russian docks. It could have been a line of white-capped swells whipped up by the cold winds that frequently swept over the Caspian. But as a rule whitecaps appeared among other whitecaps, and they were never this long.
No, this is a singular anomaly, Chad thought to himself. He should look into it.
He started through the laborious task of ordering and retrieving the other spools of film shot simultaneously from the Blackbird’s underbelly.
While one lens of the Blackbird spy plane was configured to shoot images for the eagle’s eye composite Chad just assembled, an array of other lenses simultaneously shot into this field of view at greater magnification. When possible, these divisions were further divided, and shot again at even greater magnification. The resultant thousands of feet of film comprised a record of a location shot from far away, yet allowed one to “zoom in” on images at a greater magnification.
Chad hefted another reel of film into the viewer and spooled through it until he arrived at the area in question. At this magnification the wisp took on greater detail. That it was on the water meant it was a water craft of some kind. Hmmm… But at this great height it was an unusually long and narrow wake.
Chad had seen plenty of ocean-bound ships in other photos. For the most part, ships able to make a wake this large were able to displace the water so visibly due to their sheer mass. Weighing upwards of several thousand tons, larger ships such as tankers or military destroyers made a wake whose signature appeared as a broad “V” which swept behind them for miles before disappearing. Depending on how fast these ships steamed along, the wake would be wide or narrow. A wide V mean a slower ship, and narrower one was from faster ships. The depth of the wake also lent some meaning to the weight of the ship at hand.
Chad stopped to ponder what he saw here within the context of its surroundings. The Caspian – like its middle-eastern counterpart, the Dead Sea – was salty, and thus bore no fish. It was large, flat, cold, and the surrounding geography offered no extraordinary features. At most it only offered something by which someone could float a boat. But lacking any commercial viable reasons, why even do such a thing?
Most importantly, the Caspian was a landlocked sea. It offered no trade routes to the outer world. It was literally locked up.
Locked up… Chad thought. He looked again at the large streaming wake in the photo.
Locked up…
Why would someone float a large, fast ship on a body of water that was locked up?
A glimmer of suspicion sparked within Chad’s eyes.
He spun around and shot over to his desk telephone, picked up the receiver and asked for a connection to his department director’s home. He heard a few rings and was answered by a gruff voice laden with the early morning hours of sleep.
“Hello?”
“Yes, Director? Sorenson here at the photo lab. Sir, I’m sorry to wake you. I have something I think should be brought to your attention. Can I bring it to your home? Yes? I will be there in a few minutes.”
EPILOGUE
See a formerly secret movie taken by the Soviet State Media of one of the original Ekranoplan transport craft in flight by clicking here.
FINISH THIS STORY
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