บท 2: People in The Shadow
#Movement in the shadows at the docks of Port Emerald
Port Emerald - cargo terminal. One hour before dawn. Denzel Takahashi was doing his round to check if everything was okay in the cargo holding area.
There would be an inspection first thing in the morning. It was the usual round. Nothing special. In his twenty-five years of service, he had never had an incident worth mentioning.
He stopped to light a cigarette. He carefully looked around as he took a cigarette out and bit it with his lips. In order to prevent the wind from extinguishing the lighter's fire, he slightly bowed his head downward.
Once the cigarette was on fire, he took a puff and casually held the cigarette in his right hand, lifted the torch with his left, and kept moving through the cargo containers stacked up one on top of the other.
Suddenly, a gust of wind almost blew his uniform hat away. He struggled to keep the hat on by putting his right hand on it. "What kind of wind all of a sudden!" he was a bit annoyed. His cigarette almost flew with the wind. He did not like any anomalies during his rounds.
"What bad luck!" he said. The wind that suddenly blew in from the sea smelled like something rotten. He wrinkled his nose. "Ptui!" as if he tried to spit out the smell. "Disgusting!"
The disagreeable smell of dimethyl sulfide almost put a permanent frown on his forehead. As he tried to gather himself up, he suddenly felt some movement in the shadows of the towering pile of cargo containers. He lit up the shadow with his powerful torchlight. Nothing!
"Am I seeing things now? After all these years? What a night!"
A large oil tanker, 'Liquid Gold', was approaching the docks for crude oil discharge. Massive crude holding tanks were standing in the oil terminal at the docks.
Liquid Gold was an ULCC with a capacity of sixteen million barrels of crude oil. This was a mammoth of an oil tanker and the first of its kind. The usual capacity of the ULCC would be around five million barrels. The colossal silhouette of Liquid Gold inspired awe.
"What a monster!" Denzel looked away from the shadows and to the tanker. "How can they make such a thing? Is that even allowed?" The jaw-dropping scene made him forget to breathe. He was so preoccupied that he did not notice the suspicious movement behind him.
The tanker sent a whistle out and a honk of its foghorn. And that was when Denzel felt a needle in his neck. A set of strong and trained hands put him into a chokehold like a massive boa constrictor.
Denzel could only flail for a few moments before losing consciousness. He was dragged, gagged, and tied in the shadows, and he was put into one of the containers where the shadowy figure emerged from.
As he was carefully laid down, eleven men in tactical garb and gear came out from hiding. They did not speak. They all wore black, were painted black, and carried suppressed M4 carbines and FNX-45 tactical sidearms.
They moved into three teams of four. Each of the teams had a particular task to do. They moved like black jaguars on a hunt without wasting the darkness and vanished into the shadows again.
#Day break at Port Emerald
The crew from NBS, the national TV channel, was at the port setting up their shop at a safe distance from the ULCC Liquid Gold. The seniors were reviewing the scripts the rookies had prepared.
The sun was almost up. A fine line of light was slowly painting the eastern horizon in saffron-yellow. The wind blew very strongly, as if a storm were about to come. Legions of cumulonimbus clouds moved in unison and gradually overshadowed the rising glory of the sun.
"Was there supposed to be rain?" Anne, a rookie, seemed confused.
"I haven't heard anything!" Aliyah, one of the seniors, said
They anxiously looked at the sky. It was getting darker with every passing minute. Dominykas, the other senior, looked at his smartwatch. Although he seemed calm, the watch showed an elevated heartbeat. "Damn! All these years of experience, yet every time I get nervous!" he thought.
When the clock hit seven, the rain began. It did not take even a minute before everything was soaking wet and drenched in the morning shower. Everybody ran for cover with crews and gears.
The day was supposed to be brighter. No weather station had this rain registered in their scheduled forecasts! The rain started right when they had their scripts in their hands.
All the graphics designed to go with the script had been done. Right at that moment, nature decided to overtrump human forecasts.
In the midst of this chaos, a few men quickly blended into the crowd and crew. They were dressed in casual dresses but significantly different from each other. They were moving either alone or in a group of two or three.
If there was someone with experience in covert operations, their disguise would have been blown. Fortunately for them, there was none, and nobody had the time to notice anyway. The camera crew, the rookies, seniors, port officials, and other employees—the inside of the office turned into a chaotic madhouse.
One camera was running and filming. Usually, one camera records everything in case anything important could be recorded when everyone looks away. The cameraman kept looking at the tanker from a distance. The footage was recorded on the central server at the NBS HQ.
The tanker was still unloading. Everyone was watching the process through the heavy rain. The rookies were also on their smartphones capturing the chaos. They mainly focused on selfie videos and the crowd. One of those men dialed a number and started talking to someone in a low voice.
Suddenly, a massive explosion shook the terminal. The monstrous tanker suddenly became a gigantic ball of fire. The sight sent a chill down everyone's spine.
The only thing that came to their mind was, "RUN!" None could even move an inch when another series of explosions took place. The heavy rain continued on the exposed belly of Hellfire.
As the pandemonium broke out, the men also disappeared one by one with the scared and fleeing crowd.
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