Fury Over Nuke Plant Plan

It had been a great evening. He assumed the naval boat would be okay if it had watertight compartments because the top of Taylor Mistake's Reef was relatively flat and he hadn't seen distress flares go up. The boat was probably jammed into a crevice and the crew were lining up at the toilets.

Jennifer was a great organizer. Kitty was waiting for Gus near the mainland end of the sandbar.

She kissed him, tears streaming, and said many people were up and looking at the island, guessing the Phantom Action Hero had blown up the drilling rig.

"Yeah that figures."

"Darling," she sniffed. "I'm sorry but you are done for. Everyone I talk to seems to think it's you."

"Well someone had to do it. The Government accepted recommendations that a power plant go there and that was that, to hell with community opinion. I can understand that thinking because if it's not put here it goes somewhere else and meets just the same objections."

They drove out to Kitty's aunt and uncle's retirement home on a headline overlooking the island. The lights were on when they arrived although it was gone 3:00.

"There's been a big explosion at the drilling site," said Aunt Jo who invited Gus to call her Aunt Jo. "I learnt tonight we were to harbor a fugitive and will love to do that as our contribution to the opposition to the nuclear power plant that will totally destroy the natural beauty of that beautiful part of the island. Many of us had assumed Mr Good Fellow was you. Kitty told us when we first met you that you'd been employed in special services intelligence work in Eastern Europe."

"Ready for a beer son?" Uncle Bob asked and smiled when Gus' eyes lit up.

"There's going to be hell to play over this. We didn't see the explosion but saw the aftermath fire that only extinguished half an hour ago. You have committed a major criminal act that could see you incarcerated for perhaps twenty years, perhaps less."

"Which is worse, blowing up a drilling rig or causing a naval patrol vessel chasing me to ram rocks and be put out of action?"

"Omigod," Kitty said. "You didn't?"

"I bet he did," Aunt Jo said in obvious delight. "Well Bob and I know practically everyone on the island and in town through having owned and operated the supermarket in Townsend for eighteen years until we sold it three years ago. We spoke this evening to Roderick Black who has a holiday home just along from here. He's one of the best legal brains in the country and has agree to represent your legally without charge as his contribution to opposing the proposed power plant being built on our beautiful island."

"Thanks, that's lovely. It could lead to my sentence being reduced by say five years and that would be something. I should talk to him about facing the court, receiving my sentence and then seeking an appeal and while waiting for that to be granted to seek a pardon from Parliament on the grounds that I acted under extreme provocation in the interest of the wider community. There might be precedents relating to that sort of pardon in respect to motivations behind civil disobedience."

"Well I don't know," Aunt Jo said doubtfully. "Perhaps you should flee the country."

"I think it's worth Gus discussing options before surrendering to the law or disappearing overseas," Kitty said.

Bob said yeah, that made sense. "If he vanished you'd lose your lover."

Kitty flushed and eyed the floor.

Gus had watched that reaction and said, "Are you pregnant?"

Kitty hesitated and colored again. "Yes I was waiting till you settled before telling you. For obvious reasons you are tightly wound."

Gus held and hugged Kitty and kissed her neck. "Well that's it; I'm not running."

Fifteen minutes later they went to bed. Aunt Jo had already put the young couple in the guest room as she'd done when they'd stayed on previous visits.

As Bob was grunting bending down to remove socks Aunt Jo said, "We'll have to call a public meeting."

"I've already decided we should do that. How about telling me what next for our hero apart from keeping his head down in the meantime?"

In the guestroom Gus emerged from the bathroom and Kitty spread her legs wide in eager anticipation.

"What's this about a baby then?"

She explained at this stage it was only early days in conception. However she was hoping for a girl.

Gus came closer, eyeing intently as she stroked a breast and bent over the proud nipple.

"Well we best get deep into it and try for twins. I won't mind if they're both girls."

She giggled and said it didn't work like that and pulled him down eagerly because she'd been without sex for a long time and thought probably he had gone without as well unless he'd managed to get lucky.

Later when Kitty was asleep, held in his drying sweaty embrace, Gus was anxious that his feeling about himself hadn't change. Although a kid was probably on the way, er his and Kitty's baby, he didn't appear to have changed. He was surprised he wasn't feeling he was a father and heading toward becoming a family man.

He worried and wondered whether he ought to nudge Kitty awake to discuss this abnormality in his make up. He was very tempted but she was sleeping so peacefully and in fact appeared to be right where she wanted to be, in his arms.

Gus began to smile thinking this situation was no different to when he had his thirteenth birthday. He'd awoken that morning expecting everything to be different now that he was a teenager when it fact nothing had changed. It was perhaps a month later when he called a 12-year old a kid that he remembered smiling and thinking yes he was thinking like a guy who was no longer a kid. Unhurriedly and in fact unaware of the gradual metamorphosis, he'd changed from kid to teenager. Probably when he first saw his baby he'd change into being a dad. Gee that was really cool.

Aunt Jo brought in coffee in the morning and opened both widows wide without saying anything embarrassing about the room air quality. She handed him the newspaper and said, "Read all about yourself my hero. Kitty you'll have to be out for breakfast in fifteen minutes to be off in time for school."

"Yeah okay," she said, reaching under the bedclothes to see if she could find a boner.

"I apologize for the coffee stains on the newspaper Gus. Bob kept splattering coffee when reading he was laughing so much. The way the articles are written are not very sympathetic, in fact they appear quite anti-drilling company and anti-Government. If that slant reflects public thinking then we really could have a flow of solid support to get something going to keep you out of jail."

Gus thanked Aunt Jo, she left, and Kitty found something sticky and flaccid that she dropped rather hastily.

They both read the front page of the newspaper.

The heading read, 'Drilling Rig 'Nuked', Newest Naval Ship a Casualty in Chase'.

The reporter wrote that after blowing up the investigatory drilling rig on the proposed site of a nuclear power plant on Okahu Island, north of Auckland City, the so-called Ghostly Action Hero almost got away undetected.

He wrote, "But the New Zealand Navy's newest inshore patrol boat, the 180 ft 340-ton HMZS Raglan picked up the suspected Ghostly Action Hero fleeing and gave chase. The 36-member crew knew it was only a matter of time before the bomber was apprehended or ripped to shreds by 12.75 mm machine-gun fire if he failed to stop."

"The sole occupant of the RIB, making a determined effort to outrun the heavier vessel that was making 25 knots. It was caught in the beam of one of the Raglan's searchlights and as the RIB abruptly changed course and pushed out to sea, warning shots were fired well above it. And then without warning HMNZS Raglan hit a presumably uncharted reef and came to an abrupt stopped. Crew members were thrown about in the impact and all suffered slight to moderate inquiries."

"A gaping hole was torn underwater in the bow of the patrol boat but closed bulkheads prevented water flowing aft and sinking the $36 million vessel. She was wedged in the reef and her night was over. Commander James Richmond, in pain with a huge gash to his face and several teeth missing, gave orders for everyone to put on lifejackets and go to their emergency stations on deck. He then gave the order to call for a naval tugboat."

"Meanwhile the Ghostly Action Hero, who couldn't be held to blame for incompetent navigation by trained officers in the naval patrol boat, zoomed away in the RIB of the type many of us own to go out fishing at weekends, possibly a 3.2 m craft with a 15 hp outboard motor and costing us under $15,000 new. A bigger RIB with a larger motor would have out-run the patrol boat, no problem."

"This incident will be of huge embarrassment to the Navy and the Government."

Another story quoted the head of the drilling project bemoaning the loss of a $750,000 drilling rig and saying seven of his 22-man crew on the drilling project had resigned and walked off the job.

Reporter: How is the drilling project going Mr Bridger?

Mr Bridger: Terribly because we are behind schedule and unexpected costs have blown the project budget sky high.

Reporter: Costs incurred as a result of the harassment of opponents to building a nuclear power plant on their pristine island?

Mr Bridger: Partly and those costs have now become enormous with the loss of the rig. But they are not the main contributor to escalating costs.

Reporter: Oh and what is behind those escalating costs?

Mr Bridger: I'm not a liberty to say. Now you must excuse me. I have a crisis to deal with.

The newspaper also reported police from other centers were being rushed in to help cordon off the northern end of the island where the drilling had been disrupted.

Another story said a man James Richard Jones had been arrested after claiming he was the Ghostly Action Hero. But he was charged for drunkenness and wasting the resources of the police when four regulars at that bar gave signed statements that Jim Jones was in the bar drunk at the time of the massive explosion on the island.

Meanwhile, journalists from around the world began arriving to cover a story that was deemed to have more readership appeal than the current crop of stories about opposing forces slaughtering one another in countries experiencing civil unrest, beauty contestants falsely claiming their breasts were 100% God-given, ten former motor racing champions announcing successively their comeback to the sport and dire warnings that mankind activity was accelerating Global Warming, such tub-thumping being accompanied by the dismissive claim that the current rash of blizzards should be ignored as being an aberration of nature.

The incoming foreign journalists became rather rude to the police who were unable to give a description of the Ghostly Action Hero. They were frustrated beyond belief when learning they could not interview the chairman of the Committing Opposing the Nuclear Power Plant on Okahu Island because no such committee existed and indeed no other form of organized protest, passive or otherwise, existed.

Those journalist where highly agitated they were barred from going to the drilling site, that the authorities were incompetent and local people were exalting a hero that none of them had witnessed in action or knew of his or her identify. But true professionals will follow up on any lead, however slender.

Three reporters, veterans of attending many international hot news outbreaks, thought they were on to the first real news story when they learned in a bar that a Mary Smith was claiming to have come up with the name, Ghostly Action Hero. They grabbed a cab and went to the address and found it was a private nursing home. The person in charge refused them entry and said Mary Smith was always coming up with fanciful ideas and didn't have much idea of what she was talking about because she was in an advanced state of dementia.

Down but not defeated, the three journalists got drunk and then dressed in black track suits they crossed to the island on the 9:30 pm ferry. When leaving the illuminated landing area for the test drilling site, planning to slip through the police cordon, they put on black hoods and three hours later realized they'd lost their way and stumbled into Artisan's Village. They were promptly attacked by dogs trained to deal with night intruders and were treed. Armed residents ordered the guys down from the trees and when finding they were foreign journalists made then buy paintings, silverware and pottery at greatly inflated prices in return for being ferried back to the mainland. Later that day those three journalists boarded aircraft to Auckland and that evening took flights home empty-handed, presumably assuming in that country of morons that Ghostly Action Hero, possessing such finesse and guile to cause such mayhem single-handedly, had to be a foreigner possibly a Russian Mafia hit-man.

That day Prime Minister Tom Ascot called an emergency Cabinet meeting where he ripped a strip off his daughter-in-law, the Hon Pansy Scott who, as Minister of Energy, carried the can for the Government being ridiculed nationally and now inter-nationally because a Los Angeles newspaper was claiming the Ghostly Action Hero was not ever a New Zealand but rather a Russian Mafia hit-man.

"Right guys," said the PM. "We cut our losses. Any ideas?"

The Minister of Women's Affairs sent everyone into near hysterics when she suggested, "Jail that bastard who's running around attempting to ape Rambo... if you can find who he is."

Late afternoon all TV channels began advertising the Prime Minister would be making a State of the Nation address at 7:00 pm from Parliament on the troubles on Okahu Island.

Tom Ascot spoke gravely in making the very short announcement.

"The Government has abandoned plans to build a nuclear power plant on Okahu Island. We emphasis it was only a proposal but there's been a right cock-up and heads will roll over this. The first point is initial results from the continuously disrupted test drilling program show the ground strata on that end of the island is totally unsuitable to carry the weight of any heavy construction. The land is honeycombed with caves and fissures and soft layers of ancient sediment are likely to liquefy in the event of an earthquake. The second and most disturbing reason behind abandoning this proposed plan to underpin the future integrity of our national electricity supply is the following alarming late finding. The proposed site is only on average six feet above mean high water mark, easily accessible by only a moderate tsunami triggered by submarine earthquake occurring anywhere in the Pacific Ocean. We regret the anxiety this extremely tentative proposal has brought on the people of Okahu Island and the town of Townsend."

"It is now proposed we delay building this country's first nuclear power plant. Instead we are authorizing electricity generation companies to build hydroelectric dams on any waterway with minimal restrictions. Rights of appeal and application of the Resource Management Act will be suspended in relation to such proposals. The State Electricity Commission will have the sole authority to approve or reject applications for new hydro schemes subject to any veto by the Minister of Energy. Those damn self-appointed forest and bird and national park conservation groups have gained too much say over the past 100 years and in many respects have held back development in this country by 110 years. That is all. Thank you."

Bob and Jo and their two guests cheered and Bob said, "Come on let's go to Townsend. There will be dancing in the town square and a big party will develop."

That was true. The party was already in full swing by the time Bob and his group arrived in town.

People saw Gus was with them and he was mobbed, the townspeople were chanting, "Hero, hero."

"What for you now Gus, a knighthood?" someone shouted.

"Perhaps in 30 years when he's released from jail," called Sergeant Plank pushing thought the crowd with two constables at his side.

"Guthrie Marks, I am arresting you on the charge of disturbing the public peace. More serious charges will follow."

"Oh come on Jack, be reasonable. Don't be an idiot and be bawled out by the Crown Prosecutor for indulging in wrongful arrest. Name your evidence that shows I have been a bad, bad boy?"

"Everyone knows you were the Ghostly Action Hero."

"Oh is that so Jack. Name me just one witness who can identify me as the Ghostly Action Hero or who has seen my indulging in any criminal act."

"We are still gathering evidence."

"The good women of Okahu Island and the town of Townsend, where was I at the times of those dastardly criminal acts?"

A huge roar went up, causing dogs to bark up to sixty miles away.

"You were with me," chorused about 7000 women.''

"I rest my case Sergeant Jack Plant."

"Oh I do declare I possess overwhelming evidence the Ghostly Action Hero could not have been you Guthrie Marks, also known as Gus Marks. All these fair ladies here tonight appear willing to vouch for that. You are free to go about your business. My boat is one of those awaiting your attention. Carry on everyone and enjoy your evening. Tonight has been a momentous occasion for the people of this county."

"What will you do now Gus?" someone asked.

"Oh return to my boat repair business and marry Kitty. She's pregnant."

"Oh god," Kitty said, deeply embarrassed.

THE END