Tropical North, Australia -- The orange and red tongues of the bonfire rose many feet into the air. About fifty platypus commandos, red bandannas tied around their diminutive heads, formed a circle around the bonfire, each commando placing his upper-right webbed-foot on the right shoulder of the commando in front of him. The commandos marched around the fire with a kind of shimmy, almost as if it were a conga line. They chanted: Ooooh yawh! Ooooh yawh! in unison. There was a thud and a bam followed by another bam, which repeated over and over. Leonard was intently pounding on a set of conga drums. He wore a green bandanna on his head and around his neck was a string of natural black pearls of all sizes and shapes, just like the ones worn by Seaman Stan.
The hardwoods of the bonfire crackled amidst hundreds of fallen eucalyptus branches, which had been gathered from the tropical rain forest floor by the commandos. Orange flakes of fire rose into the air along with white smoke and the aseptic smell of the eucalyptus, creating the illusion that we were all visiting a fancy health spa in some place like Arizona.
But here we were a few miles north of Cairns, Queensland in Australia, Leonard's true home. Wydell had on a khaki uniform of the style worn by British officers in India before the Britons were forced out of that country. The bodice was short-sleeved and had fabric straps on top of each shoulder which sported gleaming gold six-pointed stars, three on each shoulder. The left pocket flap was festooned with various medals, all with pale blue and yellow striped fabric attached to small figurines that looked like something my grandmother would have wor
n on a charm bracelet. He had on short breeches with knee-high khaki socks adorn
ed with pale blue and yellow tassels.
Wydell was staring at the creature who stood by Leonard, a grey-headed flying fox named Miniver. Clearly, Wydell had his suspicions about Miniver, but Leonard insisted the fruitbat was an old and true friend. Yes, a flying fox is a bat native only to Australia, just like the platypus. This fox, however, has a six-foot wingspan. Wow! No kidding. Miniver was from Fox Island, just south of here near where Leonard was hatched and suckled his mother. Fox Island supports a colony of grey-headed flying foxes numbering in the tens of thousands. Miniver, with his natural orange fluffy fur feathers around his neck, stood tapping his left foot watching Leonard at work on the skins of the drums, surrounded by hundreds of banana trees and a smattering of palms.
Oh, and standing next to Wydell was Seaman Stan, the most famous pearl diver and boat captain in the history of Queensland. Seaman Stan had long since retired from gathering nacre (pearls) from mollusks and the beautiful shells of the great sea snail, the trochus. Oddly enough, he wrote aboriginal romance novels on the side. Seaman Stan is a native Torres Strait Islander, an indigenous people native to the islands of the Torres Strait, from the northern most tip of Queensland to Papua New Guinea. He still worked on charters now and then but his real job was to ferry around the platypus dignitaries and military as needed.
The platypus owned a large fishing vessel that used to be a tuna purser, which they had modified. There were two large refrigerated tanks in the boat, which the fishermen fille
d with brine so that the tuna they caught could be preserved for quite some time. Now the tanks were refitted to become freshwater
ponds with native plants and soil all around. The platypuses now use the tanks to frolic in on long voyages. The biggest change was made to the engines. They were replaced with two 3,600 horsepower Wartsila engines. In other words, the S.S. Morning Spur could match many large vessels for speed, reaching speeds up to 24 knots (that's fast!). What I didn't now about were the guns. Lots of guns.Last night we had stayed in the luxurious ecotourism hotel, the Thala Beach Lodge. Most of the structure was made of rare hardwoods, which had been "rescued" from their mara
uders. It was simply one of the very best hotels I had ever stayed in. Tonight, however, was going to be a very long night. This ceremony was to last till dawn and then we were to board the Morning Spur in serious chase.
The enemies who had exploded the stun grenades in the Sydney Opera House intending to murder Leonard, Wydell and myself, had escaped to Carins Seaport in Trinity Inlet and jetted away in a very large yacht that had been moored beside a cruise ship from Captain Cook Cruises. We were only about a dozen hours behind, plenty of time to catch up with them, so said Wydell. I had congratulated Wydell on being made General in the Platypus Defence Force (PDF), bestowing him with a Kershaw Blackout knife with a camo decorated handle, consisting of images of brown, gold and green leaves.
I woke up with a start as Leonard was shaking my shoulders saying, "We must go now. We must go now." I could smell smoldering wood, the smoke irritating my eyes that were i
nstantly subjected to the giant Australian sun. Soon we were on the tuna ship and the massive engines kicked in with a smooth purr. Seaman Stan was standing at the helm in front
of the control panel that had been replaced with a state-of-the-art digital panel board, hiding a supercomputer, no less. Word had it that the two national leaders, or "generals," in charge of the poaching and selling of platypus eggs were on the yacht, the S.S. White Dragon, the two mercenary generals being from Thailand and South Africa. (Find the helicopter in the picture above)."Like hell," Wydell protested. "We're go
nna catch up with them and eliminate the threat. How about that?" he huffed, staring at anybody who might be listening. We were standing on the bridge, sailing past Seaman Stan's birthplace, Thursday Island. According to Leonard's calculations we were only a few nautical miles behind the White Dragon.
The red and green lights on the directional panel shown in Leonard's golden eyes. "We must be
careful to choose the right place to attack," Leonard said to Wydell. "And remember, we must have the two mercenary generals alive."
"And it must be a surprise," Miniver chimed in, fluttering his wings only slightly. "
That gives us a great advantage."
"Yes, but we must not delay," Leonard sounded. "Time is of the essence. If we lose them now, we may never find them again in one place." Leonard adjusted his glasses with the sleek, wraparound Versace frames. He had recently purchased them in Sydney, finally admitting that he couldn't see past his right arm (which is quite short, naturally). Gliding down the side aisle of the Opera House a few days ago Leonard had walked straight into a pillar and knocked himself out.
Wydell, dressed in a royal blue naval jacket with a hood and gold braid, said, "We must all get some rest. It's been a couple of days since we have slept much at all." With that we all turned in. All except Seaman Stan. He was up all night singing ancient and beautiful melodies under the stars.
Sneak Attack
I awoke in luxurious bed linens to a piercing siren and the sounds of tiny webbed fee on metal stairs. Suddenly, I remembered with the siren meant. "Oh, God! We were under attack!" I screamed at myself. I ran up the cold stairs quickly, not realizing that I had not put on my clothes. I was in my white Jockey shorts. "Oh well, to hell with it!" I marched on deck and no one even noticed my brief attire.
It was very dark, but there were bright floodlights pointed at the silvery helicopter with red stripes. As I noticed it, the helicopter launched two missiles. I could see their trail as they raced for the bridge when all of a sudden two interceptor missiles tore out of a new hole in the deck in front of the brine tanks. The enemy missiles, together with ours, burst into flame and sparks, sounding like the collapse of a skyscraper after a deliberate implosion. It was like New Year's Eve in Piccadilly. There were bright flashes of light and bursts of multicolored sparks that lit up our entire ship, all 250 feet of it.
Various gunnery sites popped up onto the deck and there were commandos manning each of them. They were firing on the helicopter heavy artillery. I wondered why our intelligence service had failed to warn us of the helicopter on board the White Dragon. Or perhaps I had not been briefed about this threat. Amidst all of the flashes of light and deafening noise, I caught a glimpse of Leonard. He was dressed in a long green nightshirt, but he was shouldering something far more menacing. The bazooka let out a short burp as the round soared into the air, did a kind of figure eight like an infinity symbol, and then slammed into the cockpit of the sleek helicopter erupting into a giant fireball with glittery confetti falling all around us. When the bazooka shell hit the helicopter I was knocked to the ground by a giant wall of energy and heat which travelled with great speed near and far.
When the smoke settled the siren went silent and Leonard, in his nightdress, bowed to all of us raising his short arms into the air, balling them into webbed fists, punching the predawn sky, which was looking similar to the dark blue face of the Australian national flag, Leonard sprinkling it with sparkling stars.
There was little damage to the ship, but the death toll was high, as was the wounded list. There was a small hospital on the ship and the injured platypuses were taken there to be treated. Everyone was accounted for except Miniver. Could he have been shot and fallen overboard? Just as I had this thought I acquired a chill and the sky seemed to become darker instead of lighter. Then, Miniver landed in front of me, fluttering his giant leathery wings to and fro as he righted himself on deck; he then swung his clawed feet forward and up and hung himself upside down on a tension rod. Leonard, lighting one of his gold-tipped hot pink cigarettes, and Wydell joined me and we were all curious as to what Miniver had been up to. Wydell was dressed in his naval uniform, this time with a gold ascot around his neck. He must have slept in it.
I was trembling pretty badly and I couldn't figure out exactly why when Leonard asked drolly, letting out a big puff of blue tobacco smoke, "Shall we send someone to fetch your britches, playboy?" pointing at my Jockey shorts. They all laughed except for Miniver who was still upside down whispering under his breath, "Tsk, tsk."
"Looks like you've got a gun in your pocket," Wydell called, slapping his hand on his knee and erupting into even more laughter, his white head bobbing up and down.
I stood my ground, pretending everything was normal. "I think I'll go have some bacon and eggs," I stated calmly. As I walked toward the galley, I slowly gyrated my hips for the further amusement of my fellows who reduced themselves to cat-calling. I was thinking, "What about Miniver? What was he up to?" I was infected with doubt.
I sat at the captain's table in my skimpy underwear and a rather rotund platypus placed a plate in front of me. It was fish stew poured over some biscuits made of a green grain. The server, dressed in a dingy chef's outfit, gave me the once over and averted his eyes when he noticed my white briefs. He was muttering something under his breath when Leonard walked in and sat across from me at the steel-topped table. He was still smoking the Sherman and blew a few blue and grey smoke rings my way.
"We don't know how they located us so quickly," Leonard offered. "But they do have the latest in technology, as do we and then some. We have a secret weapon that they do not have." He sat down across from me, staring at my plate of stew.
I slid my plate over to him, "I'm no longer hungry," I said. "What's the plan?"
Leonard crossed his tiny legs and put his short elbows on the table, sniffing the fish and glancing at me furtively. "We're afraid that they may dock at Singapore so we have decided that we need to ambush them as they approach Malaysia from Indonesia. That would be tomorrow," he said, putting his pink and gold cigarette out in the plate of steaming fish stew. "I'm not hungry either," he explained. "We've got a lot to do to prepare."
We could see an electronic image of their yacht on the main LCD panel on the bridge. Seaman Stan said that he knew the boat. "It's a big one," Stan said. "It's 300 feet long. It's got three 10,000 horsepower MTU 20-cylinder engines with three propellers. Believe it or not, it cannot go any faster than we can."
Leonard was furrowing his big brow, a hood they called it. "They haven't been trying to outrun us," he said. "They want to destroy us. Thanks to Wydell's military planning, we were able to avert that." I couldn't see Wydell's facial expression because he was wearing Ray Ban mirrored aviator glasses.
"If we can get close enough," Miniver wheezed, "we can hijack them and their boat."
Wydell had a kind of half smile on his face as Miniver offered his opinion. "There's something about this guy that I just can't figure out," I was thinking of Miniver. For one thing he emitted an odor that made me wince. I tried to stay down wind of him. I decided to put on some clothes. I was too old to be a go-go boy!
We shadowed the White Dragon for some time and it was decided that we would attack after the sun went down under the cover of darkness. And, what a beautiful sunset it was. Oranges, violets and golds all around, like maple leaves in Maine on a cool October evening.
The Spur Strikes Back
At midnight, we gathered on the bridge, everyone in combat gear, including me. We all wore black jumpsuits and I had on a Kevlar vest underneath, chicken that I am. It was as light as a feather. Leonard and Wydell had on night vision goggles and I could almost see the green glow around their heads. We were only a few kilometers from the harbor at Singapore.
Leonard went over to the control panel and punched a bunch of buttons that lit up in red. A gold knob on a gold shaft appeared from within the panel that was attached to a kind of gyroscope. "No one in the world has this but us," he boasted, his eyes twinkling gold. I had no idea what he was talking about.
As he pushed the knob in a pattern representing an infinity symbol, a green glow arose around the ship. As he continued maneuvering the gold stick through the gyroscope, the glow completely encapsulated the Morning Spur like a protective shield. Miniver's beady black eyes grew as large as saucers, rimmed by a white milky glow. His weird beak opened and he let out a shrill cry as if he were in distress, and I could see his short, plump tongue flailing around in his grey mouth.
The green glow grew stronger and stronger until the ship was actually suspended in a luminescent sphere, like a planet circling a dark sun, puffs of fog drifting about. Apparently, the green sphere was perfect, surrounding the entire boat including the hull. "You know about the platypus ability to use electroreceptive forces, right?" Leonard asked, sneezing as he said this. Leonard had developed a head cold. His duckbill had turned pink from its usual yellow.
"Yes," I answered. "I have seen you use this gift quite well, although it kind of puts you through the wringer."
"Well," Leonard continued, "our top scientists have found a way to reverse the electronic net that we use to detect living creatures in our midst. They call it electrodeception. It's not only a means to use stealth, but it is also a weapon in itself. Watch as we continue to feed it."
A few minutes later we were alongside the White Dragon, the noise of our engines muffled by the shield. We were running silent. All of a sudden six small, round doors opened on the starboard side of the deck, the green navigation light disappearing in the chartreuse haze of the shield.
What popped out of the floor I have never seen before. I later learned that they were
small-scale trebuchets, a kind of catapult. They were designed and built by platypuses. These were made of carbon fiber and titanium. They were about three feet tall. They worked
almost like an ancient catapult, except instead of just flinging a device like a slingshot, it
flung its weapon forward and then a kind of piston shot it forward with great accuracy.
In this case, the platybuchets were to deliver silver spheres that had a ring of green LED lights around the equators. When they strike their targets they release a kind of energy that is intended to disable all electronics but preserve computer programs and files.
As the devices arched and neared the White Dragon the enemy ship raised a series of nets that caught the devices, preventing them from exploding. Leonard and Wydell were astonished. How did the enemy know that the devices were going to be delivered? How did they even know we were next to them, as our cloaking device was operational? Miniver stood near the bridge as if nothing had gone wrong and we all hung our heads low.
Minutes later the White Dragon started its giant engines and its three propellers pushed it out of our grasp. Seaman Stan punched a bunch of buttons on the control panel and our engines started. We looked up with hope, but as we did so, one of the two engines shut down with a strange whining sound.
One of the engineers showed up on the deck carrying a blackened fuel pump. It had been sabotaged. Wydell whispered, "It's beginning to become clear to me. We have had a saboteur on board for the entire voyage. Someone has been delivering messages to the enemy with our every move."
Leonard sneezed and his spectacles fell from his face. He warned, "Whoever it is, they will be dealt with swiftly and severely. The have compromised our entire Oceania plan."
The Temple of Doom
I woke up to the sun streaming through the windows of my room on the 88th floor of the Baiyoke Sky Hotel nestled in the middle of Bangkok, Thailand. It was a narrow skyscraper covered on the outside with mirrored panels, shining like a needle in a colorful pin cushion. Bangkok is a huge city and we had tracked the mercenary generals to this place. Apparently, they were holed up in a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of the city. The temple was the home of a giant statue of Green Tara, a female bodhisattva who is supposed to make everything right with the world. She is the Goddess of Action and can cross over from danger to safety with ease.
Leonard assured me that everything was under control. That evening we had reservations at the Crystal Grill, a seafood restaurant on the 82nd floor. After enjoying a very well prepared lobster dinner, we headed up to the 83rd floor, the Roof Top Bar & Music. We slid into a curve shaped booth. I immediately noticed the party across the way, two Asian men dressed in all black accompanied by, coincidentally, a grey-headed flying fox. Miniver, sitting on my right, did not acknowledge the other bat.
The Melody Band started playing and we all ordered Mai Thais, colorful umbrellas and all.
The Melody Band was churning out a rendition of Peggy Lee's Fever. Presently, two more flying foxes entered the bar and walked over to the table across the room. They stood over the trio I was eyeing and raised their wings, so they could obscure what was going on. After some time, the two bats turned around lowering their giant wings. They had the fruitbat who had been sitting at the table trapped between them; they each held one of his wings and escorted him out with no fuss.
I kept my eye on the two men across the way and eventually the waitress went up to them. She let out a shrill, paralyzing scream, one that would keep me up that night.
They were both dead and the singing stopped. There was a fever about, all right.
The Kingdom in the Sky
The next morning, gliding along the smooth, shiny tracks of the Bangkok Sky Train, we were deposited at the Don Muang Airport. Leonard explained that the men who were executed were the mercenary general of Thailand and his number one man. Changing the conversation, he related that he and Miniver had once been on the rowing team for the Oceania Olympic Team when they were both young and fit. Leonard was entertaining dark thoughts he would never allow to be revealed, not even to me or Wydell.
On board South African Airways, Leonard told me more about his history. We were headed to the Kingdom in the Sky, he said. Apparently, this kingdom was the secret headquarters of the Confederation of Platypus States; the military, the intelligence service, research and military manufacturing and the home of the super-secret special forces, the KALI. They were all based there. In addition, it was the winter home of Leonard of Queensland, many of his ancestors and friends.
We landed at the Moshoeshoe Airport a few kilometers outside of the capital of the Kingdom of Lesotho, Maseru, completely surrounded by South Africa. Leonard let it be known that the merenary general of South Africa was his Number One enemy. Two uniformed men met us at the gate and directed us to a police car, a very old Mercedes Benz that had originally been manufactured to be just what it was, a police car. It looked sort of like a panel truck. Leonard, Miniver and I scrunched into the vehicle. I held my handkerchief to my nose as I was sitting next to Miniver in the back seat. Wydell and Seaman Stan had left ahead of us and were already ensconced at Algae Bloom. Algae Bloom was a 144-room castle built at the behest of Leonard's great-grandfather before World War II. It stood tall in all its grandeur at the base of the snow-covered Maluti Mountains.
Lesotho, a commonwealth country like Australia, wasn't called the Kingdom in the Sky for nothing. The lowest point in Lesotho is over 4,500 feet high. The kingdom has many special relationships with its surrounding neighbor South Africa, the most importnt being that it sells tons (literally) of water to South Africa, Lesotho's biggest export and business, the business of water, the giver of life.
Algae Bloom is surrounded by numerous natural and Platypus-made lakes and ponds over thousands of acres. Leonard's maternal grandfather, Garland, a scientist and farmer, installed over a hundred protected "ponds" or tanks. He filled them with wastewater from the surrounding villages and grew a special kind of algae which he created himself through hybridization. The end result: biodiesel. Biodiesel produced here since the late 1940s.
"He was a clever man," Leonard stated. "I worshiped him as a child. Still do. Of course he's dead now. He's gone over to the other side. To Platymus, where we all hope to go someday after we have lived enough lifetimes."
I never knew Leonard to be religious. The platypus practice a religion called Emorpheus, similar to our Hinduism.
"Be that as it may," Leonard said, breaking the reverie. "Let's go find Wydell. I think he is in the Great Hall."
As we came to be in the Great Foyer, there was a 1964 Pontiac GTO displayed on a kind of dais. It was bright purple and it was pristine. Miniver shivered as he minced a few steps behind us. Flags and banners hung from the lofty ceiling; all of them seemed to be from countries important to the Platypus Confederate States.
I asked Leonard about the magnificent car. "Mr. Jack, you know about my rebuilt 1964 Chevy Nova, you've ridden it. I inherited my love of cars, especially American muscle cars, from my grandfather and great-grandfather. My grandfather had a collection of 14 classic cars, all of which are now mine. He started out with a car my great-grandfather left him, a 1926 Ferrari racecar with an in-line 8-cylinder engine and a 5-speed transaxle. It's in the garage right now. But it was the GTO that captured Garland. America's first muscle car and my grandfather's last car. It's my favourite, too."
We passed through a very large room that glowed blue. Shadows surrounded by blue and white clouds flickered over the ancient stone walls. It was filled with huge glass tanks full of crayfish. I was curious.
"My grandfather was a farmer as well as a scientist. As you know, our favourite food is the crayfish. Those native to Australia, the marron and the yabbies, can't survive here, he learned through trial and error. This species comes from Madagascar off the southeastern coast of Africa. They thrive here because of my grandfather."
Wydell stood in front of a great fireplace, its proscenium standing 9 feet tall. He looked as if he were engulfed in flames. Miniver swooped up to the top of the 20-foot ceiling and circled as if we were his prey. Plans were made and those involved were alerted. Soon, we were on our way again.
After a long drive, we arrived in Cape Town in Leonard's 1951 Mercedes Benz 170 SB convertible, a fine touring car if there ever was one. Garland had replaced the engine in the car with a 1936 Cadillac V-16. Talk about throaty: it roared like a lion, not an unusual sound to be heard outside of Cape Town, South Africa, one of the most beautiful cities in the world nestled in a bowl surrounded by Table Mountain and, yes, the sea.
We stayed at the Protea Fire & Ice Hotel, the most modern and arguably the most beautiful hotel in Cape Town. There was an outdoor climbing wall and the hotel's fancy restaurant had a long glass wall that overlooked the large outdoor pool.
White Death
After some much needed rest, we took a taxi through the colorful streets of the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront and at False Bay we were welcomed aboard a research vessel that the platypuses had purchased from National Geographic some years ago. Seaman Stan stood at the helm along with Chris and Monique Fallows, friends of Leonard's and the most experienced and famous hunters of the Great White Shark in the world. Of course they don't kill them. They study them, financed by research institutes, the sale of photographs of the sha
rks, and by offering the public a unique experience: cage diving which puts the diver as close to a great white shark as anyone would ever want to get.
Seal Island, a tiny island in False Bay inhabited by hundreds of seals, is their territory. Here is the only place in the world where the great white shark breaches the surface of the sea to snatch a seal in its great mouth, a scrumptuous lunch or supper. It's called the Polaris Attack.
I noticed that Wydell was not on the ship, but there was a strange man standing next to the Fallows who was speaking Afrikaans, or African Dutch. Leonard shook the man's hand and introduced him to me as Frederick. The ship launched.
We were lining the starboard side of the ship watching as a great white jettisoned himself out of the sea -- he must of been 20 feet long! It grasped the seal in middair, his colossal ring of giant teeth clamping down. Then the sea beast shook his head violently, laterally, completing the surface grab. The shark did a side roll on the surface and disappeared beneath the endless sea. Miniver gasped, hiding his head in his open left wing.
The man called Frederick clapped his hands, smiling. Leonard walked up to him quickly and stung him with his venomous spur, the man shrinking in pain. "And that's what's going to happen to you!" Leonard barked. Miniver uncovered part of his head, one eye staring at Leonard.
Leonard said to the shrinking man, "I know who you are. I, personally, have been looking for you for the past three years. We never had a photo of you, but one of yours has given you up!" Miniver gasped again, rubbing his head with the spine of his right wing, his beady eyes moving quickly back and forth, his orange necklace fluttering in the wind.
Several commandos appeared and grasped the man's limbs. Leonard shrieked, "We're going to throw you into the sea where a noble beast will make you his just desserts."
As the commandos began to lift Frederick over the railing, the sky went inexplicably dark. A second later we watched as Miniver carried Frederick away to safety using his talons. Leonard looked bewildered and betrayed as he studied his old friend Miniver. He shook his head in sorrow and confusion.
All of a sudden there was a loud pop! followed by another pop! The reports were loud and confusing. Where did they come from? No one looked to be doing anything that would make such a loud noise. As I was trying to get my head about me, I noticed that Miniver dropped Frederick into the bay and a shark barely breached the surface and swallowed the man whole.
Standing in a dinghy was Wydell, the barrel of his rifle still smoking. He was a ways out from us, but I could tell he was smiling. I knew what the gun was too. It was his prize posession: a combat model Browning 3-inch Magnum 10 gauge shotgun which propelled polymer slugs instead of birdshot, plastic slugs which contained smaller lead slugs. They cold go the distance, that's for sure.
We all smiled back at Wydell and watched curiously as Miniver did a final flyby. As he neared our boat a giant grey and white head thrust itself out of the murky sea and Miniver was nevermore. A few orange feathers floated on the surface, the only testament to Miniver's ultimate treachery. I wondered if Leonard would survive it. Then, the most beautiful sound I have ever heard enveloped us in its warmth. We looked up to see Seaman Stan standing on the roof of the bridge blowing his sweet music through a giant trochus shell.
It was June 9th. The Queen's Birthday in Australia, the Dragon Boat Festival in Hong Kong, Shavuot in Israel. What was to celebrate in South Africa on this day?
