Opening Scene From Screenplay, "Hunt of the Sea Wolves"

I'm including the opening scene from my screenplay, Hunt of the Sea Wolves, so you can compare it to Chapter One of the novel. Two entirely different writing disciplines. I don't know if I did either well enough, since the script is not produced and the book has not sold--yet.

FADE IN:

EXT. CARGO SHIP — NIGHT
Super: Strait of Malacca

A pitched battle is underway aboard a small cargo ship sailing near an island off the coast of Indonesia. The ship is on fire from end to end.

A determined, ragged-looking Asian gang of killers armed with old weapons, ranging from shotguns to lever-action rifles, and even a Thompson submachine gun, pull back while firing at Marine special forces.

Some of the Marines are already on the ship firing at the Gang, while others fast rope down from a hovering helicopter with India markings.

A Man with a shotgun shoots at one of the Marines coming down a rope, hitting him. The Marine falls hard to the deck. The Man staggers as an arrow hits him in his chest.
A Marine with a high-tech crossbow shoots another Gang Member in the back as he flees up a ladder.

The Guy with the Thompson fires up at the helo.

PLUNK! PLUNK! PLUNK!

Holes stitch along the side of the helo. It banks hard left a flies away.A tall, lanky Marine (CAPTAIN ANUMITA ROY FAJPAYEE) leads the way through the flames, firing his automatic weapon, killing two men. He and three others sprint up the ladder to the next deck.

CUT TO:

INT. PASSAGEWAY — MOMENTS LATER
A Marine kicks in a wooden door. He steps through…

CUT TO:

INT. MESS DECKS — CONTINUOUS
A crazed-looking Man with an ancient, rusted saber swings at the young Marine. Captain Vajpayee shoves the Marine aside and shoots the Man twice in the heart and once between the eyes.

The Man drops.

Another Marine (SERGEANT BHUPAD ALI) steps in behind the Captain and they see two more Gang Members standing over the ship’s Crew who are laying face down on the deck.
Before the Marines can react, one of the Gangsters with a shotgun turns it on the hostages. He shoots one point blank in the back. The other Gangster is just about to do the same when a bullet takes off part of his head.

The other Gangster looks at his Friend in surprise, then glances at a porthole to his right. There is a neat bullet hole in it.

HIS P.O.V.
Through the porthole. In the distance is a Marine sniper (CORPORAL ABDUL-BARRI SINGH). The Gangster starts to cry out when another bullet shatters the porthole and hits him through the mouth.

CUT TO:

EXT. CARGO SHIP — CONTINUOUS
Corporal Singh chambers another round and looks satisfied with his work.

CUT TO:

EXT. STRAIT OF MALACCA — DAY
A BBC news helicopter hovers near the smoldering cargo ship. A Cameraman leans out of the open door, taping the scene as the Crew is being taken off the ship to waiting police boats.

BBC ANCHOR
Indian anti-terrorist special forces were able to art the efforts of a reputed Aceh rebel cell that has been terrorizing shipping lanes in the area, stealing entire cargos, killing the crews or setting them adrift.

DISSOLVE TO:

INT. TELEVISION STUDIO — CONTINUOUS
The BBC logo appears in the right hand corner of a television set. The BBC Anchor continues to read the story:

ANGLE ON BBC ANCHOR

BBC ANCHOR
The International Maritime Organization reports that there has been a steady rise in maritime piracy worldwide, but particularly in Southeast Asia.

ANGLE ON TELEVISION
as a pre-recorded sound bite comes on. A stately British official is on screen. He is identified as: SIR THOMAS BURKENSHIRE.

BURKENSHIRE
Last year, attacks rose 60 percent. We estimate losses in cargo and ships to be over sixteen billion. More than 300 ships were taken last year alone. For the most part, the culprits are local thugs and gangs, but ever since the attack on the World Trade Center in the U.S., all governments have stepped up their efforts to stop possible terrorist threat attacks by employing the use of ships, particularly those that are hauling potentially dangerous cargos, such as liquid natural gas container ships. Regrettably, little has been accomplish to prevent such an event from happening. Modern piracy as a terrorist weapon has been neglected too long and it will come back to haunt every civilized nation.

The Evolution of Hunt of the Sea Wolves

"Hunt of the Sea Wolves" is my unproduced screenplay and unpublished novel about pirate-terrorists who hijack two huge ships carrying millions of gallons of liquefied natural gas to use as weapons of mass destruction.

While various literary agents have decided not to get involved in helping me publish the book, I feel both the topic and writing are worthy of consideration by the reading public, so I’ve established this blog to both inform people about the possibility of terrorists hijacking these ships and the danger they present, while shamelessly promoting the book and screenplay.

My professional background includes 20 years in the Navy. I served three tours to Viet Nam from 1965-1968 as a radioman aboard USS Estes (AGC-12). I got into broadcasting as a copywriter and announcer in 1970. In 1973, I reenlisted in the navy, this time as a journalist. For six years, I served at the Atlantic Fleet Audiovisual Command, where I had the good fortune to be a part of Combat Camera Group One and had an opportunity to work on a few projects with the elite SEAL Team Six. Thus my interest in special forces began.

During this time, the Navy sent me to USC to study film production and I was hooked on film. I began writing screenplays, a number of which featured SEALS and other Special Forces units. My first effort was a script called, The Gettysberg Incident, about the hijacking of an Aegis cruiser by South American terrorists (If this sounds familiar, Under Seige with Steven Seagal had many of the same elements and came out after I wrote my script. There’s a whole story behind this Hollywood moment that may be told in a different setting).

Over the years after leaving the Navy in 1989, I’ve written over 20 scripts. Only one has been produced. Needless to say, I’ve not been all that successful at making a living writing scripts. Fortunately, I’ve had more luck as a freelance journalist and copywriter. So, I continue to write copy for advertising and PR agencies, articles for newspapers and magazines while cranking out a script every now and then (you can’t give up the dream). And I've recently joined a Kansas-based newspaper as a reporter on the West Coast.

A couple years ago, I came across information about LNG ships and the danger they present and came up with the screenplay, "Hunt of the Sea Wolves." As a big budget epic that takes place mostly at sea, it’s a hard sell. So, last year I decided to use the script as an outline for my first novel.

Having submitted the book manuscript to numberous agents without success, I decided that a blog just might be my creative outlet, as well as an information conduit about the very real danger of terrorist one day hijacking an LNG ship, sailing it into a port city and blowing it up.

Chapter One from my novel, "Hunt of the Sea Wolves"

“With such insufficient maritime power, it is clear that Indonesia simply cannot secure the 600-mile Strait of Malacca alone, but its fear of any perceived challenge to its sovereignty, as well as its concern of American imperialism, apparently overrides military logic.” - Washington-based Institute for the Analysis of Global Security (IAGS)

Greek astronomer, mathematician, and geographer, Claudius Ptolemaeus (87 – 150 AD), made one of the earliest references to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which were inhabited for centuries primarily by the Great Andamanese, who collectively represented the various tribes: Jarawa, Jangil, Onge, and the Sentinelese.

The island chain first fell under European rule when the Danish East India Company arrived in the 1750s. For more than three centuries, pirates have plied the waters around these islands mainly because of their proximity to the northern entrance of the Strait of Malacca, the main trade route to the Far East.

Today was no different, but this time the pirates were in a fight for their lives as a pitched battle raged aboard the small inter-island freighter. The ship drifted dead in the water within sight of a small island, one of the five hundred seventy-two-islands in the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago, a territory of India. The rusting freighter was on fire from stem to stern. A ragged-looking gang of thirty Asian marauders fought determinedly against the eighteen Indian Marine Commando Force, or MARCOS, operators.

The pirates, armed with ancient weapons, ranging from shotguns to a Thompson submachine gun, left behind by some nameless American soldier in an equally nameless conflict somewhere in Southeast Asia, to an assortment of machetes and spears, were being forced across the burning decks toward the bow.

As the operators who were already aboard the ship pushed relentlessly forward, others fast- roped down to the deck from a hovering Sea King Mk 42C helicopter. The pirate with the shotgun fired up at one of the operators as he slid down the heavy rope, holding on with one hand and his legs, and firing his Sterling MP-4 sub-machine gun.

The heavy shotgun slugs hit the operator below his armored vest, cutting him in half. His upper torso hit the deck, while his legs fell into the sea. His last fleeting thought was to kill the man who killed him. But his strength quickly waned and his vision dimmed as his blood flowed across a cargo hold hatch.

The weapon slipped from his fingers as another operator hit the deck and pulled his dying comrade’s body behind a winch motor. With one last look and a squeeze on the dying man’s shoulder, the operator eased his friend into death.

He stood and steadied himself against a cargo boom mast. In a single effortless motion, he slipped off a sleek, high-tech carbon compound bow, pulled an aluminum arrow with a razor-edged, cyanide-tipped head, and sent it streaking across the ship into the chest of the man who had killed his friend.

The pirate with the Thompson fired up at the helicopter. Three holes stitched the side just below the pilot. He jerked the controls, causing the chopper to bank sharply and disappeared into the night sky.

At six feet two, Captain Anumita Roy Vajpayee led a corporal and a sergeant through the flames, as he fired his MP-5 sub-machine gun, killing two of the pirates as he sprinted up the starboard ladder to the next deck.

They spread out inside the starboard passageway. The corporal kicked in a wooden door, stepped into the mess decks, and was nearly decapitated as a crazed-looking Chinese pirate swung a rusted saber at him. The young operator froze, just as Captain Vajpayee shoved him aside and shot the man twice through the heart and once between the eyes. The old pirate dropped at the corporal’s feet.

Sergeant Bhupad Ali stepped into the room behind Captain Vajpayee. At the opposite end of the room, two more pirates stood over a huddled group of the ship’s terrified crew, who were sprawled face down on the deck. Before the two operators could react, one of the pirates calmly shot the man at his feet in the back. The other pirate touched the muzzle of his weapon against a boy’s neck. His finger started to squeeze the trigger then his hand jerked spasmodically and the rifle clattered to the floor as a hollow-point bullet ripped into his face.

For the fraction of a second that he had left to live, the other pirate did not comprehend why his friend was on his back staring up at him without a face. Then he turned and glanced at a porthole to his right. He saw the neat, round bullet hole. He squinted focusing on the small hole, then as his eyes opened wider and refocused, he saw the sniper outside standing on a small helo-landing platform on the stern of the ship.

The pirate knew he was a dead man before the sniper took his second shot. He started to cry out to the God who he had cursed his entire life as the heavy round shattered the porthole and then struck him in the mouth. The sniper, Corporal Abdul-Baari Singh, chambered another round with satisfaction.

Not inclined to taking prisoners, the operators had dispatched all of the pirates before the sun’s first rays appeared over the horizon. As the last marine operative stepped aboard the hovering helo, a small boat out of the capital city of Port Blair heaved to and froe in the swells just beyond the cordon of police patrol boats.

One of the scuba divers vacationing from Australia struggled to keep his footing while aiming his Sony camcorder, capturing the Sea King as it departed from the smoldering hulk.

In a world of instant linkups and wireless networks, it was only a matter of racing back to Port Blair and the Sainik Vishram Ghar hotel, where he could call the local BBC News outlet and stream the video to them in New Delhi.

Within an hour after receiving the amateur footage, the BBC affiliate was airing it throughout the Asia Pacific, Australasia, and South Asia Middle East. A BBC newsman’s voice over declared, “Indian anti-terrorist Special Forces were able to thwart the efforts of a reputed Aceh rebel cell that has been terrorizing shipping lanes in the area, stealing entire cargos, killing the crews, and setting the ships adrift.”

The dizzying footage was replaced by the image of a stately British official, identified as Sir Thomas Burkenshire, whose sound bite forewarned, “Modern piracy as a terrorist weapon has been neglected far too long and it will come back to haunt every civilized nation.”

Real Terrorist Organizations Found in "Hunt of the Sea Wolves"

Abu Sayyaf Group

The Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) is the most violent of the Islamic separatist groups operating in the southern Philippines. In Hunt of the Sea Wolves, members of Abu Sayyaf are the main antagonists who team up with Aceh rebels to hijack ships in order to use them as weapons of mass destruction.

Some ASG leaders have studied or worked in the Middle East and reportedly fought in Afghanistan during the Soviet war. The group split from the Moro National Liberation Front in the early 1990s under the leadership of Abdurajak Abubakar Janjalani, who was killed in a clash with Philippine police on 18 December, 1998. His younger brother, Khadaffy Janjalani, has replaced him as the nominal leader of the group, which is composed of several semi-autonomous factions.

Organization activities. The ASG engages in kidnappings for ransom, bombings, assassinations, and extortion. Although from time to time it claims that its motivation is to promote an independent Islamic state in western Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago, areas in the southern Philippines heavily populated by Muslims, the ASG now appears to use terror mainly for financial profit. The group's first large-scale action was a raid on the town of Ipil in Mindanao in April 1995. In April of 2000, an ASG faction kidnapped 21 persons, including 10 foreign tourists, from a resort in Malaysia.

Separately in 2000, the group abducted several foreign journalists, three Malaysians, and a United States citizen. On 27 May 2001, the ASG kidnapped three U.S. citizens and 17 Filipinos from a tourist resort in Palawan, Philippines. Several of the hostages, including one U.S. citizen, were murdered. A few hundred ASG fighters make up the core group, but at least 1000 individuals motivated by the prospect of receiving ransom payments for foreign hostages allegedly joined the group in 2000–2001.

The ASG was founded in Basilan Province, and mainly operates there and in the neighboring provinces of Sulu and Tawi-Tawi in the Sulu Archipelago. It also operates in the Zamboanga peninsula, and members occasionally travel to Manila and other parts of the country. The group expanded its operations to Malaysia in 2000 when it abducted foreigners from a tourist resort. The ASG is largely self-financed through ransom and extortion, but they may also receive support from Islamic extremists in the Middle East and South Asia. Libya publicly paid millions of dollars for the release of the foreign hostages seized from Malaysia in 2000.

Al-Qaida

Al-Qa’ida was established by Usama Bin Ladin in 1988 with Arabs who fought in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union. Helped finance, recruit, transport, and train Sunni Islamic extremists for the Afghan resistance. Goal is to unite Muslims to fight the United States as a means of defeating Israel, overthrowing regimes it deems "non-Is-lamic," and expelling Westerners and non-Muslims from Muslim countries. Eventual goal would be establishment of a pan-Islamic caliphate throughout the world. Issued statement in February 1998 under the banner of "The World Islamic Front for Jihad Against the Jews and Crusaders" saying it was the duty of all Muslims to kill US citizens, civilian and military, and their allies everywhere. Merged with al-Jihad (Egyptian Islamic Jihad) in June 2001, renaming itself "Qa’idat al-Jihad." Merged with Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi’s organization in Iraq in late 2004, with al-Zarqawi’s group changing its name to "Qa’idat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn" (al-Qa’ida in the Land of the Two Rivers).
Al-Qa’ida’s organizational strength is difficult to determine in the aftermath of extensive counterterrorist efforts since 9/11. However, the group probably has several thousand extremists and associates worldwide inspired by the group’s ideology. The arrest and deaths of mid-level and senior al-Qa’ida operatives have disrupted some communication, financial, and facilitation nodes and interrupted some terrorist plots. Al-Qa’ida also serves as a focal point or umbrella organization for a worldwide network that includes many Sunni Islamic extremist groups, including some members of Gama’a al-Islamiyya, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, and the Harakat ul-Mujahidin.

Al-Qa’ida has cells worldwide and is reinforced by its ties to Sunni extremist networks. It was based in Afghanistan until Coalition forces removed the Taliban from power in late 2001. Al-Qa’ida has dispersed in small groups across South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa, and probably will attempt to carry out future attacks against US interests.

Welcome To Hunt of the Sea Wolves

I'm John Chadwell and I'd like to take this opportunity to welcome you to my blog. I'm new at this, so it may take some time to get things rolling. The purpose of this blog is two fold. The first is a bit self serving and that is to promote my novel "Hunt of the Sea Wolves," as well as the screenplay of the same name. I've gone this route because as many new writers discover very quickly, it is extremely difficult to get published.

The second reason for the blog, while definitely related to the first reason, is also meant to educate folks about modern-day pirates, who are, in fact, often terrorists that are busily hijacking ships around the world to finance their activities.

On average, 300-400 ships are attacked every year. The pirates often plunder the cargoes, rob the crews and have killed or set them adrift on the high seas. The ships are sometimes taken to ports in Viet Nam or China where the cargoes are sold, the ships are renamed (transforming them into what are known as ghost ships) and sailed to ports where unsuspecting manufacturers and shippers will load their wares aboard the ships only to have them and the cargoes disappear yet again.

There is one type of ship that anti-terrorist organizations and pirates alike have their eyes on. These are gigantic LNG (liquefied natural gas). Some are as long as three football fields and carry over 30 million gallons of fuel, with an explosive power of more than 50 atomic bombs used to defeat Japan during World War II.

The premise of "Hunt of the Sea Wolves" is that a determined band of terrorists do succeed in hijacking not one, but two LNG ships for the purpose of using them as weapons of mass destruction.

The novel and screenplay, to paraphrase a line from television, are not ripped from the headlines, but may one day be the headlines. So, as this blog grows and expands, I hope to pique your interest in the book by supporting the premise with news and bits of information from around the world to support the story.

I hope to make the novel available here either in part or total, depending on how successful I am in adapting to this new mode of communication, for me. I welcome comments and any information you may have on modern-day pirates/terrorists and their plots to use ships against their enemies.