{{{“That Night” is the first Act of Fire on the Mountain. This is Scene 4. In the previous scenes we were introduced to three groups of overlapping characters. A tavern full of immigrants, criminals and subversives. A band of revolutionaries called the Z.O.B. Also a giant submarine carrying a small cell of mercenaries toward the United States. }}}  In Scene 4 we return to the Seas of the Carribean.

 

 

Scene 4

Caribbean Sea

 

 

For many years there has been a persistent conspiracy theory about boats and planes going missing in the North Caribbean within an area called the Bermuda Triangle. While a range of legends both mysterious and scientific have been laid out in varying circles, to date no real valid objective theory has been substantiated.

It is towards this Triangle from an approach between Dominican Republic and the U.S. Colony Puerto Rico that the submersible will make its determined approach toward the eastern coast of the United States after dropping its precious cargo in Port of Spain, Trinidad.

The black freighter is nearly two Manhattan city blocks long. One of the largest submersibles constructed in the period of the Pax Americana between Cold War One and Two, loosely 1989 to 2001. No one is sure what the Chinese have developed since then, but surely large, deadly impressive Chinese things. The Black Mermaid, the new name of this submarine since its purchase/capture, is hidden by virtually all conventional forms of technological detection by the depths it can descend. Because of its reactor, air recycling purifiers, heavy stores of food and fresh water it can remain undetected indefinitely able to deliver a payload of intercontinental ballistic missiles, that no one of the rebel alliance ever intends to use. Via hope, you feign intention.

The ship is rumored to have only five functional warheads. But, that is five more than anyone needs to reduce major cities to ashes. More importantly than missiles is that right now this ship is hosting about half of the rebel government in exile of Israel, Palestine and Kurdistan. Some forty co-chairs, political heads and their immediate families. Most of those families are somewhat smaller now, many lives reduced by the hasty exodus after the battle of Madeira. Waves of killing machines had just one month before surprised the hidden rebel bases. Except for the Kurds which have families larger than most of the crew of the ship. All members of those families could fire Kalashnikovs, but everyone lost someone. It amounts to just under two thousand high value persons they were moving from Sakhalin to Trinidad & Tobago. Very important persons. Before the strike team is loosed off the Eastern American coast most of the rebel government will be brought to the relative safety of Port of Spain, Trinidad.

 

Yulia Romanova, Adelina, Kudzai and Oleg the Bear have been confined democratically and by an armed Ethiopian Israeli sentry to a small bunk room on a lower deck. The size of the vessel is sprawling. No one trusts the three Russians. There is a spartan, wood plated and red rust room with two bunk beds for each gender and a small common room for playing cards and drinking. They are coldly and politely given three meals a day in this room since they were taken on board in Sakhalin; a Russian island north of Japan.

 

Oleg the Bear is imposing while remaining intellectual.

 

“No, I’ve never read a thing, he’s written; though I’m told I’m depicted as some real shtarker. A brutal tough guy who loves taking women’s clothes off with my hands and camera. We met in some other life, but he doesn’t remember. When we met again he’ll look to me as some another older brother he never had.  I will only just encourage him to write,” states Oleg the Bear and all nod in agreement. Yulia Romanova, a tall Slavic pixy shaped conventionally like a Barbie modal doesn’t even enjoy reading. In Russian or Angliski. Hasn’t read a book since she was forced to attend High school. She has dark brown hair and doesn’t appear very crucial to the operation. But, she is actually the bomb maker. She’s not paid to look pretty, but she is. She’s not paid to fuck men on demand, which she won’t. She isn’t a subject matter expert on American affairs. But, she can build and place satchel bombs in expensive hand bags, simple enough, the extent of her patriotism.

 

On the monstrous underwater vessel called the Black Mermaid; traveling propelled by its nuclear reactor towards the United States; the extraction and intervention squad sits for black bread, herring, tea and Compot, sweet berry punch and some Russian Standard Vodka.

 

The Chinese had finished a canal across quietly Socialist Nicaragua that was three times the size of the US controlled one in Panama. But, for some reason very few people in the USA even knew the thing was operational. It was through this cognitively non-existent mega water way the Black Mermaid nuclear submarine had passed with prior authorization on its run into American waters after it’s off load of high level rebel leadership in Trinidad.

 

There were all these people that no one trusted the Russians to be around. Not to meet and not to see. They were taken in hoods from a safe house in Sakhalin, de-hooded in this very bunk room and the only person they had even ever met was this nameless Ethiopian sentry in a grey uniform holding an Uzi. Adelina had been taken to her own room just up the hall and was visited twice by the infamous Emma Solomon. But, none of the others in the unit had left the room. Which was vaguely confining but no one was particularly claustrophobic. Oleg and Yulia mostly played cards. Kudzai mostly read the Jesus books, or engaged in quiet mediation. The only time the four of them talked was during daily meals. Thankfully no one was a smoker.

 

 

Kudzai is very muscular from years of hiking, swimming and combat. Big in all four ways that matter. His biochemist brain, his black noble soul, his empathetic heart and his Shona warrior hands. Oleg Medved, otherwise known as Oleg the Bear is perhaps physically larger without being obese, but they are big in different ways. Oleg is simply physically imposing, but his brain, heart and hands; they are smaller. He’s the unit’s intelligence officer, so all hope he is as clever as he appears to be. Kudzai is a holder of a Trinidadian passport. He is dark as night. Black even for the eyes of white men that turn many shades of not Caucasian into racist enemy others. Kudzai stands nearly six feet tall. He is by far the most trusted person in the unit that was being briefed just one hour before deployment, as he is a member of the revolutionary army while these three Russians are all under contract.

 

Kudzai and Oleg are both witty conversationalists and do their best to engage the two women they will be working with. Kudzai is here primarily to protect Adelina, since the other two Russians Oleg and Yulia are expendable. He will break the back of any person who might lay their hands on the candidates Emma and Adelina. He has taken a blood oath to protect the chosen; his main task on this mission will be to protect Ms. Adelina while she attempts to enter the dreams of Sebastian Adon, and keep him from unleashing his fighters in ways that might trigger a bloody, bloody bloodbath and catastrophe. In fact, their unit, now in massive black nuclear submarine once owned by the State of Israel is hurtling toward the international maritime border.

 

They will let most of these very important passengers off in Port of Spain, but this unit will remain below decks until they get to American waters.

 

Oleg Medved will be quick to tell you that “Oleg the Bear” is certainly not the nice Ukrainian Jewish or later Israeli name his mother gave him. But, it will be his name for now.

He is very likable. Gregarious in the right word. He goes nowhere without a camera and takes a lot of pictures some arty, some naughty, some of assets to note all of them quite professional. He even has a good one of Ms. Adelina giggling on the first time they met; which was a few weeks ago in Sakhalin, that cold vile place.

 

Oleg is the Communications Officer for their little squad, which is nice way of saying the intelligence man. It is his responsibility to work with his partner Ms. Yulia Romanova, to whom he sometimes calls “his muse”. They knew each other from before. Yulia alongside being a slender and sensuous dark brundinite she was very good at building little bombs. And also good for social engineering.

 

“Every artist ultimately dreams of fucking their muse,” Oleg said over dinner one night in the lower depths cabin.

 

“Don’t dream too hard. I have a boyfriend,” Yulia replied.

 

If it was the duty of Adelina Blazhennaya to enter the mind of Sebastian Adon and take control of the resistance apparatus working towards a vast national uprising set for an upcoming hidden date; no longer hidden to the National Security Agency and also the Department of Homeland Security’s secret police forces. It was the duty of Kudzai to use his training to help her enter that glorious but treacherous rebel of mind of Adon’s. See what was actually happening in America Babylon. See if the resistance was really able to pull this off. Then it was Oleg Medved’s job to teach the resistance how to use the special new tools of technology and magic developed in the Sharashka in Hong Kong. Or, if things were quite fubar and infiltrated; they would just mop up anyone who might be able to identify Solomon or any of the other candidates.

 

“What’s a candidate?” Yulia asks finally.

 

“People descended from the bloodlines of the seven original prophets,” Kudzai replies.

 

“Does that mean?” Yulia exclaims pointing at Adelina.

 

“Yes, she’s related to Jesus or somebody, pass the potatoes,” mutters Oleg.

 

“That’s not substantiated,” Adelina replies.

 

“She’s descended from either Krishna, Buddha, Zoroaster, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Muhammed or some hidden line they haven’t figured out yet,” Kudzai interjects, “both Adelina and certainly Commander Solomon are both candidates.

“Interesting,’ smirks Oleg who doesn’t believe in any of the God delusions, “pass the Vodka please.”

 

These were upside down cake times, you didn’t know what to believe as the world kept unraveling. Were Adelina really a powerful sorcerous shaman and considered a candidate since birth; well hopefully that meant this would go more smoothly. If not, well she looked too hippy to pull her weight as death squad member. Which is what was going to happen to Sebastian and the rest of the American rebel leaders if this thing was compromised. So basically Adelina and Kudzai as believers were here to make the uprising work. Oleg and Yulia were here to liquidate the American’s if things had gotten fucked up. Life was to have balance even in insurgency and murder.

 

Adelina was to lead quietly the unit and ensure the outcome of prophesy foretold in a little book called the New Social Gospel revealed by some magnimonious higher power to Emma Solomon in the year 2001. Which was the same year that she was captured by the secret police, tortured repeatedly, brutally raped, then crucified and left to die in the Negev Desert.

 

What politicians said on the international circus stage were hardly what their populations connected via the inter-web were ready to agree to, not a single year longer.

 

December 21^st, 2012 was to be the year according to the Mayan calendar that a great shift would occur in Humanity. Well that was not the exact date of the American uprising. But those great spiritual cosmic forces were being factored in. It had taken over twenty years to coordinate a military insurrection in the belly of the empire.

 

Oleg and Yulia had worked together before. Adelina and Kudzai had just met and the unit was assembled about a week ago. They were all now confined in this cabin and to break the ice over vodka, Oleg the Bear got them playing a famous game of gradual interrogation called “Three Thing to Know about me.”

 

“Let me tell you three some things about me,” Oleg said to them. They were drinking vodka and eating black bread with caviar and herring, onions and salted tomatoes, goose paty, salo and strange orange vegetable that only grows below the soil of Russia.

 

“I am not a creature that will live vicariously!” he declared in English out of respect for Kudzai who spoke no Russian.

 

“I am not any kind of believer like you two in some vast invisible forces that I cannot measure hold and see. I am not here there therefore as a fact of faith in your Comrade Solomon. I am here because I have money and orders and a contract to be here. And that is simple enough.”

He continues, “I was told to come and evaluate these Americans. See if they are finally coming to the table of struggle. The story of their uprising most precisely is interesting to the person who pays me. I was told to set up these communication lines so Americans can join the global revolution underway for over two hundred years. I was told to help murder every single one of them that might have gone over to the enemy.”

 

“You have no enemies’ friend, you are only here for money!” Kudzai proclaims, “What does it really matter if Sebastian is hero, a hooligan or a traitor to us all. You will be paid the same amount.”

“I am actually paid more to not kill anyone,” Oleg replies.

“Yes, it’s clearly in the contract we get less the more people who die,” Yulia says.

“Why are you really here,” Kudzai questions, “Doesn’t the enemy have a bigger bank account?”

“Listen. We do professional work. That’s what we’re being paid for,” Yulia declares.

“What are you all here for, really? If you don’t believe in miracles and prophesy,” Kudzai says, calmly without any accusation in his tone.

 

“I am here too to enjoy myself, make money and take some pictures!” Oleg declares, “All the most reputable of foreign analysts, journalists, pundit and economists have declared an American uprising as literally impossible. Like you’d have to be working with God and Magic! Which you all seem to think you are. That nation on the mount would sooner watch sports than tune into see the world burning. This is just a fact! As long as they keep the flights to Europe running, as long as they have their beer, football and porn, hookers for those who can afford them then they will be the grinning bastards, the opulent retards, their cities blue grounds for the world elite to harvest more women and treasure!”

Then Oleg continues, “I’m going as a highly paid adventure tourist. I will take a million pictures; I will leave behind more than I take away. Save me your magic! This is a revolution that will be wiped from the history books in treachery and gore. They will all be killed. The only question is, will they be killed from incompetence that comes with their privilege, or because their top leadership was infiltrated long ago” declares Oleg Medved.

 

“Have you any faith in the prophesy?” Yulia sarcastically asks him in Russian.

 

Yulia was prim. Oleg had never known her to loyal to her boyfriend patron back in somewhere, but Oleg had come to see women as accessories for men, adjuncts and muse for the doing of big things or even just fun sweaty thrusting things. What he noticed since the Romanoff Bratva took over his other contract was that he had more time to pursue his art. Money absolutely brought options.

 

Oleg had a long running morally ambiguous relationship with Yulia founded on the principle that her partner back in Russia was not her boyfriend or her husband, just some patron paying for a flat in Moscow and an Amex. The world was burning. They made money wherever they could. These were times of fun and games with papers and loyalties. They took a lot of pictures together; he of her and she and he from his hip. His burly part beard and broad shoulders were quite the opposite of her elegant spindle form, her fake but convincing to touch tits, her black brown hair falling back and forth over shoulders as she let him capture her.

 

“No faith at all in anything, or anyone, certainly not the fat Americans,” Oleg declares.

 

Yulia feigns a small, false pout. Then immediately grins. While her beauty was not a question, her eyes lacked what the parapsychologists called the Old Soul depth of Comrade Blazhennaya.

 

“And you little Mosquito,” exclaimed Yulia referring to the American translation of Blazhennaya’s fictionist passport name, “Do you really believe? Do you really think you’re some chosen child of God?”

 

Adelina makes no motion to respond.

 

The conversation goes back to three things to know about each other. In the cultural context of Russia and Ukraine Oleg & Yulia make a lot of toasts and knock down their shots in celebration of the supposedly impossible; the hopeful success of their mission. Kudzai and Adelina stick to tea and water. But, then Yulia provokes the subject again. Emboldened by the drink.

 

“But really Mosquito! Do you believe in this blatnoy? Or are you being well paid too?”

 

Before Adelina answers Yulia Romanova’s inquiry, her face grimaces with a hard and quiet smile. Now into the thirteenth shot of Russian Standard Vodka Yulia has never seen such a sinister grin. Oleg was drunk but wholly functional. Yulia was probably able to drive a car or mix some chemicals into an improvised explosive device, but now though she was seeing things.

Drunk was the only way to even take in or put up with this rhetoric. The theories of mostly nonviolent resistance to oligarchy, codified by Emma Solomon, Avinadav DeBuitléir and of course; Comrade Sebastian Adon. The likelihood of death in taking this assignment.

Drunk Yulia now jerked to attention and carried out a most dramatic reading!

 

 

Adelina’s eyes began glowing a brown into eerie green on gray. Yulia jumped in her seat, then Adelina’s eyes went grey on grey and Oleg arched his back contorting into a Bhutto type posture, spasmodically twitching and frozen. Grinning obscenely. Oleg too lurched out of his seat but then by the force of her mind and found himself saluting her.

 

And now, Emma Solomon in husky, but authoritative voice of a warrior queen spoke out the mouths of Adelina and Kudzai perfectly synchronized, and that was then Yulia and Oleg realized that neither the Romanoff Bratva nor the Israeli resistance forces were in charge of this mission at all.

 

The pair then both exclaimed possessed in the voice of Solomon, lips moving in unison:

 

 

“Welcome to the world to come. Open your eyes wide. By the time we are done here there will be no more safety for those men in high towers. Perched atop the mountains d in their gilded bunkers. No faction will be left standing. We were all born serfs or various types of half casted slave, but our unborn children have been assured their emancipation via deeds to come.”

 

 

 

Everyone dropped back into their seats postictal from possession, post coitus almost with no warm fluids. Oleg simply kept grinning refusing inside himself to believe. They had drugged him, it was simple as that. Kudzai smiled too, but it was the smile of happy belief. Yulia looked truly scared, emotions breaking through her year’s crafted control of countenance. And Adelina Blazhennaya in all her petit and unassuming compact grace then uttered, “Trust that among the Americans are many who have cried out over what happened in the killing fields and their sprawling slum cities and prison camps. They have more going on than dancing, fornicating and erection of taller towers and bigger, brighter stadiums. Have a little fucking hope,” she tells them.

 

“Don’t overestimate the prophesy or underestimate the cowboy libertarianism of the American resistance,” Adelina tells them, and pours them their next round of slightly poisoned shots.

 

“America, fuck yeah,” exclaims Oleg.