He put away the transcription paper he read from and said as he shrugged his shoulders, “I don’t know.… We don’t know. There’s no question in my mind that something has happened to him now, but I don’t exactly know what.… He didn’t say. We don’t know what he means by ‘his brothers’ had found him. I don’t think the navy ever found him, and there’s no food or any other things inside the boat to indicate he encountered another vessel or anyone else out there.”
“Yeah, that was my next comment.… What if someone else found him? Someone non-navy? He was in international waters; anyone could have found him.… Maybe a cruise ship or something,” I said.
“Everything is possible; but if anyone found him … why not rescue him altogether? Why not take Brian with them? Or maybe send a Mayday out to the navy, telling us where we could find him…? Or at the very least, leave food and water for him?” Jerry said.
It made sense.
“So, what then?” I asked.
“Let’s watch the next segment; this gets more interesting….”
I turned to look at the TV.
The screen was still black from Brian’s last transmission. The next episode was a very short take; it lasted only a few seconds. It was dusk again and we saw Brian’s face.… He was laughing to the camera while holding it with his right hand. He looked like a madman as he pointed out with his left thumb at something behind him. He then moved the camera to record what he was looking at: there was a very strange light all across the horizon, right on the line that divides the sky from the ocean. It was some sort of artificial light that made the sea look black while that light expanded into a half circle over the sky.… It was as if an atomic bomb had just exploded somewhere in the distance and radiation had been released.
The transmission cut off after that.
Jerry paused the tape and rewound it. We saw the whole episode again and he paused the tape once more.
I turned to look at Jerry.
“I don’t know what to say about that,” he said.
“Jerry, what’s going on?” I asked, still amazed.
“I don’t know, Adrian. We have no idea what that was all about…,” he said, looking at me.
He was telling me the truth. I could see it in his eyes.
“That looked like some sort of atomic bomb explosion,” I said, standing up and beginning to pace.
“That’s what we think, too. The take is too short for me to make anything out of it,” he said.
“Have you told me the whole truth about Brian’s mission, Jerry?” I asked suspiciously.
He looked at me and said, “Yes. What’s on your mind?”
“Tell me the truth, Jerry.… Was the navy experimenting with nuclear bombs at sea? Was that Brian’s real mission?”
“No, not at all. I know that small segment looks like a nuclear explosion, but it wasn’t us.… It was not the navy or the United States of America.… We are not sure of his location after he drifted away from the Persian Gulf, but I can tell you for sure he wasn’t anywhere close to China, South Korea, or Russia.… Those are the only countries that might have had that kind of technology back then….”
“That light looked like the Hiroshima explosion, Jerry.… What the hell was my brother doing and where?”
“I know what you mean. It sure looks like a nuclear explosion of some sort, but trust me; your brother and the boat he was on would have simply disintegrated with the shock wave. It looks like nuclear energy, but it sure wasn’t. There’s more on the tape that you haven’t seen…,” Jerry said.
I turned to him and asked, “Do you think he was crazy?” I asked.
“I believe his state of mind was very questionable after fifty-six days drifting into open sea. God knows if a few more days went by between the last segment and this one. Brian does not show us his day count, but it’s clear to me he wanted to show us something in that particular take…. His ‘new friends’ perhaps…,” Jerry said.
I stopped pacing and turned around to look at him.
“What do you mean by that?” I frowned, thinking Jerry was trying to be funny. By the look on his face I realized he was not.
“Let’s watch the next segment,” he said.
He waited for me to go back to sit down on the bed, in front of the TV.
He let the tape roll again.
In the next segment we saw the face of the madman my brother had become by now; he laughed and gestured to the camera. He kept on pointing at the same spot, over and over, while he laughed. Brian now moved to the side and filmed what was behind him: there was a cargo ship, slowly going by, a few miles away from him.
My heart skipped a beat. I knew he had been saved.
