“Why,
you may take the most gallant sailor, the most intrepid airman or the most
audacious soldier, put them at a table together - what do you get? The sum of
their fears”
- Winston Churchill
EVER since high school, he was
already called The Chameleon for no apparent reason. The moniker stuck through
his college days as a BS in Marine Transportation student at Capitol
University. Graduating at the top of his class in 1999, The Chameleon easily
got a job and worked his way up at WG&A, serving ports of call in various places
in the country. He was there when SuperFerry 14 was bombed by the Abu Sayyaf in
February 2004. His heroism in the rescue efforts promoted him to second mate
and he was assigned at SuperFerry 12. When Negros Navigation purchased WG&A
in 2010, The Chameleon was rewarded the post of captain and he was by then in
command of St. Joseph the Worker plying the Cebu-Cagayan de Oro-Manila route.
It was at this time that The Chameleon married his long-time love Icy.
In 2012, an opportunity knocked on
The Chameleon's door – he was being offered to captain Pioneer Knutsen, a
liquefied natural gas (LNG) tanker plying the Norwegian coast. The Chameleon
had to kiss his wife goodbye, embarking on a lonely tour in a cold
Scandinavian country. Of course, the couple bore no children because of this
long-distance situation and The Chameleon had to contend himself with daily
Skype chats with his wife to cope with the loneliness.
But that was a long time ago. Today
as The Chameleon watched the Siquijor skyline on this cold February dawn of
2016 puffing a stick of Marlboro Lights, his facial expression was that of
indifference...and apprehension of things to come. Today would be the day when
he would change history.
_ _ _
BACKGROUND
United
States
In the early 2000s, the American
Chemical Society sponsored a consortium of scientists and engineers around the
globe and commissioned them to focus studying in one field only – is it
possible to power up an electricity plant running on natural gas in its liquid
form? Until then, natural gas-powered plants had to connect hundreds of
kilometers of pipes offshore through the oil fields so they could boot up. By
late 2014, they had the breakthrough answer. Yes, that can be done, using a mix
of little propane and a lot of liquefied methane. With this, construction of
costly pipelines is eliminated and LNG-fired power plants can now be
constructed in any coastal region. As long as an LNG tanker can deliver the gas
in its liquefied state, then the power plant can always fire up.
_ _ _
Misamis
Oriental
In 2014, there was a heated legal
dispute involving the construction of a new coal-fired power plant in
Villanueva town. Local environmentalists successfully convinced the Supreme
Court to issue an injunction against the continuing construction of Filinvest's
405-MW plant. Filinvest's executives were panicking while the greens
celebrated.
Because of the new technology with
the use of liquefied natural gas, a new player came in – San Miguel
Corporation. The conglomerate offered an ambitious plan – construct a 600-MW
LNG-powered plant at Phividec, ship the liquefied gas from Shell's Malampaya
processing plant in Batangas and download the cargo to the power generating
plant. Until then, there were only three natural gas-powered plants in the
Philippines – all located in Luzon and all serviced by Malampaya. But they were
powered by natural gas…in its gaseous state of course. This one would be
different. It would be the first natural gas-fired power plant in the country
using natural gas in its liquid form. Or to cut it short, an LNG-fired power
plant. It would be one of only 20 to be constructed in the world since the
technology as discovered by the American Chemical Society consortium came into
light in 2014.
Mindanao LNG-fired power plant broke
ground in January 2015 and construction went into full swing. San Miguel
Corporation executives pushed the target date of opening to Sunday, February
14, 2016. Meanwhile, the company contracted Knutsen OAS Shipping of Norway to
provide the LNG tanker to transport the natural gas from Batangas to Phividec.
The reason was two-fold: first, Knutsen had an almost 100-year reputation in
tanker shipping; second, most of the crew in Knutsen's vessels were Filipinos.
Capt.
Mark Francisco aka The Chameleon received a directive to start steaming Pioneer Knutsen towards
Manila. The bulky 817-ton vessel, the flagship pride of Knutsen OAS Shipping, could only make it to 14 knots yet The
Chameleon was happy. He could see his wife again soon.
_ _ _
STARTING
HERE AND NOW
Friday
January 1, 2016 9:08 p.m.
At 30, Atty. Isabella Czarina Yvanka
Soriano-Francisco or Icy was one of the most envied young professionals by her
female colleagues. Not only was she a hotshot corporate lawyer, she was also a
certified public accountant. But beyond that was her lovable personality. The
moniker Icy itself is deceiving. She’s a bubbly smiling person and not an icy
cold one. And then there was her age. Because she could still pass for a
20-year-old, Icy did a modeling career on the side. Earlier this evening, she
attended a New Year gathering of Glitterati at designer Gil Macaibay's crib
along Bolonsiri Road in Camaman-an. Icy was the only married woman in the
group. She had made it to the party simply because her husband wasn't yet
around. The last time she Skyped with Mark on New Year's Eve, Pioneer Knutsen
was still somewhere between Hong Kong and Manila.
At 9:00 p.m., Icy excused herself
from the party. Though her face looked flawlessly younger than her age, gone
were those teen dance-and-drink-all-night-long soirees. She wanted to go back
home, in the privacy of her room, waiting for Mark's call. They're expecting to
dock at Manila North Harbor tonight.
With her white Ford Escape parked
outside Gil's studio, Icy was about to open the SUV door when two strong hands
yanked her away while another put an odor-emanating cloth on her nose. With no
time to scream, Icy soon passed out. Icy was dragged into a black van; the partygoers
inside oblivious to what went on.
_ _
True to Icy's expectation, Mark did
call 30 minutes later. He was surprised that Icy didn't pick up but didn't
mind, surmising his wife might have been asleep already. After all, waiting for
your love to arrive was somewhat a bit strenuous too, Mark smiled. He didn't
mind. Besides, Capt. Francisco had a lot to cover – the papers and all. The
ship would be steaming to Batangas in a month or so as the schedule for the San
Miguel LNG-fired power plant inauguration neared. For the moment though, Mark
had to fly to CDO and be with his wife whom he missed so much.
_ _
Saturday,
January 2, 2016 10:15 a.m.
Fifty-one-year old Leonardo Bautista
was a habal-habal driver from Laguindingan crossing to the 4-km
highway towards the airport. Nope, he doesn't transport airline passengers, he
instead picks up airport employees from Laguindingan poblacion to the airport
and back. It was his fifth round trip for the day.
Enhanced by almost three decades of
experience as a habal-habal driver, Leonardo's assets were his ears. Thus,
despite the drizzle this morning and the sound of his own Honda motorcycle,
Leonardo was still able to pick up the excited voice of a dog howling in a
grassy area far off the road. Leonardo dismounted and was shocked at what he
saw – the body of a beautiful woman slit in the throat.
_ _
In his excitement, Mark dozed off at
his captain's quarters at the Pioneer Knutsen without charging his cell phone.
The next morning, he yanked into the shower practically with plane ticket in
hand, then dashed off to NAIA. CAAP already allowed the use of cellphones
inside commercial planes in the Philippines but Mark cursed upon learning that
his phone was dead. Never mind, it was just a one-hour flight to CDO. The ride
was bumpy and there was heavy rainfall at the Laguindingan approach. But with
the acquisition of new instrument navigation facilities, the landing was
uneventful.
Mark immediately rode on the Magnum
Express coaster. At the road leading to the highway crossing, traffic crawled.
Mark craned his neck to watch a body being loaded to an unmarked vehicle
belonging to Bollozos while a SOCO team watched. “Crime must still be pretty
awful in the Philippines. In Norway, it's practically zero,” he muttered.
He put the thought aside, now eager
to meet Icy. Downtown, he changed cabs to the direction of their plush home at
Xavier Estates. It was only when he charged his phone that Mark's world went
upside down.
_ _
Icy's last text message was, “Upat
sila hon....anak ni Chan...anak ni Lim...anak ni Delgado...anak ni Muñoz.”
Mark could only shake his head in tears as he showed the text message to
police, recalling in disbelief that it was his wife's body who was mounted in
the Bollozos L300.
_ _
This was the fourth known crime of
the Black Van Gang, the first three occurred in early 2014. For almost three
years, they became cold cases. With no complainants, police had given up,
surmising that the perps were either terrified to commit another crime or they
simply dissolved off. Now the Black Van Gang resurfaced. But this time, it was
different. For the earlier crimes, the victims were raped and then freed. This
was their first murder.
It was not until this rainy morning
of January 2016 that their identities were unmasked by the victim. Icy had bled
out slowly. In these agonizing minutes, she had managed to sneak that text
message to her husband.
All four suspects were scions of
businessmen in the city. In less than 24 hours, police swooped in their homes.
But not one of the suspects was caught. All had already fled.
Mark mourned for days. He had no
family left in CDO. His dad and mom had already passed away during his college
days and he had no sibling. But there was still a ship to steer. And to load
the first shipment of liquefied gas to the first LNG-driven power plant in the
Philippines. Mark had to be strong. He reverted to The Chameleon persona. It
was at this time that The Plan was hatched.
_ _
She's huge. And ugly if you look at
it from above with those humongous bulbous tanks. Yet Pioneer Knutsen is
carrying precious...and potentially hazardous cargo. Had she carried LNG in her
four spherical tanks while steaming into Manila North Harbor, half a mile
diameter would have been cleared by Philippine Coast Guard tugboats for her. In
full, she could carry 143,000 cubic meters of natural gas.
As The Chameleon watched from the
pier, he asked himself, “Could firecrackers do the trick?”
_ _
Thursday,
February 11, 2016 6:05 a.m.
Shell's
Malampaya Receiving Facility
Tabangao,
Batangas
Malampaya has been operating since
2001. From a deep sea field off Palawan, raw methane and other gases go 30
kilometers upward towards a platform where condensates are separated. From
there, they travel 504 more kilometers to Shell's liquefaction plant in
Tabangao, Batangas. This is where Pioneer Knutsen was currently moored.
Inside the natural gas receiving
facility, various things were happening all at once. The raw natural gas was
stripped of water, acid and heavy hydrocarbons. To liquify the methane,
temperature was lowered to -165 degrees Celsius.
At about the same time, the crew of
Pionner Knutsen were busy, too. They were excited and honored to be part of
such a historic project – delivering fuel to the first LNG-powered plant in
Asia, whose contractors were now in celebratory mood in Phividec, Misamis
Oriental. Little did they know that their captain had a nasty and nefarious
surprise for them all.
And so the ship's crew began doing
their routine. To prepare receiving the LNG, they must execute three
procedures: cool down the pipes leading to the tank, purge the air from the
loading arms of the crane, and cool down the loading arms. In his three years
experience in the ship, The Chameleon knew that LNG inside a tank could only
explode when it is mixed with air in concentrations of 5 to 15%. So The
Chameleon ordered to skip the second procedure - the removing of air from the
loading arms. The crew looked at each other in slight puzzlement. But they knew
their co-Filipino captain knew what he was doing so they obeyed him. This would
be the first step leading to the imminent disaster.
After the pre-loading procedures
were done, the loading of the LNG itself was now underway. It took five hours
to fill the four brightly-colored orange tanks to the brim. (The San Miguel
executives were explicit in their instructions: Fill 'em to the brim.) Because
oxygen wasn’t removed at the crane’s loading arms during the process, some of
it seeped into the pipes going all the way into the four tanks. What was
supposed to be harmless electricity-inducing LNG was now lethal cargo.
By evening of February 11, 2016,
Pioneer Knutsen steamed to CDO. Nobody from the crew except The Chameleon knew
it would be their last journey with the 12-year-old doomed ship.
_ _
SUNDAY
FEBRUARY 14, 2016 VALENTINE'S DAY
2:02 a.m.
3 miles
off Siquijor
This is it, The Chameleon muttered.
There’s no turning back. “A lot of poor innocent people may die but their
misery in this wretched city will also be relieved. All of them. There’s
definitely no turning back.”
Every soul in the 28-manned ship was
asleep except the helmsman above and the engine room folks below. The Chameleon
had finished installing a combination of five star, kwitis, bawang,
daylight and trompillo (which he had purchased earlier in Bocaue) below each of
the four huge LNG tanks in the superstructure. All of these he rigged in remote
detonation, a craft he learned while in advanced ROTC at CU. After all, he had
one full month to prepare for this after Icy's death.
By 5:00 a.m., The Chameleon woke up
his crew and made a short pep talk. “A few hours from now, we will make
history. Villanueva and the SMC folks will be proud of us. Let's not disappoint
them. Let's get to work,” he said. As Pioneer Knutsen neared the vicinity of
Laguindingan, The Chameleon uttered a silent prayer for Icy's soul and ordered
the -165 C temp at all four tanks to increase at 20 degrees below the danger
level. Again, the crew did not dare question the wisdom of their skipper and
dutifully complied. Without them knowing, Pioneer Knutsen had now become the
sum of all fears – a mass-murder weapon.
_ _ _
8:02
a.m.
Macabalan-Agora-Lapasan-Gusa
approach
Macajalar
Bay
The Chameleon was alone at the
bridge, staring at the approaching PCG tugboats. He looked one last time on
Icy's picture on his left hand. Then he pressed the detonator on his right.
_ _ _
“It's
one fine day in the Philippines after those series of typhoons there. I hope
they have a lovely Valentine's Day ahead,” remarked cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin
of Expedition 54 to the International Space Station which was currently passing
380 kilometers above Macajalar Bay. This was his second tour to the ISS, the
last one was in 2014. Yet it continued to amaze him.
Then a second later, “Whoa...was
that a fireball?”
_ _
The Chameleon had achieved exactly
what he planned. What was supposed to be refrigerated LNG at -165 C
tipped to its boiling point, thanks to The Chameleon’s order to increase the
tanks’ temperature while they were passing by the Laguindingan shoreline. Some
of the liquid methane-propane inside the tank transformed into vapors. Add to
that the sufficient amount of oxygen inside coming from the loading arms when
the gas was still being transferred. Less than 5 percent of oxygen could not
sustain a combustion, more than 15 percent dilutes the gas. It had to be the
right amount. Capping the deadly combination were the firecrackers. Upon
detonation, the firecrackers exploded, penetrated the aluminum tanks and
triggered the combustion inside.
LNG does not explode in open air but
trapped inside those four tanks, it did. Flames shot through the air half a
kilometer high, transforming the 143,000 cubic meters of liquid
methane-propane...all of it...into a lethal inferno.
_ _
Rose Pimentel, 17, was with her
boyfriend, Sajid Gilroy, 20, in the latter's open-air red BMW Z4 for an early
Valentine's date at the top of Capistrano Complex where a commanding view of
Macajalar Bay could be had when they heard a loud boom. To their shock, they
saw a fireball emanating from that ugly-looking container ship. Then the
shockwave came. Even at a height of 200 meters above sea level, the convertible was
still moving on the ground like a silly toy car. The young lovebirds hung on for
dear life.
_ _
For fisherman Vicente Paez, 60,
death came at a painful 40 seconds. It was his routine to fish during the day
in Gusa. This Valentine's Day was no different. Then he heard the boom. A split
second later, the sea became one huge fiery wave. Vicente was exposed to the
gaseous flame. For less than a minute, he cried out in unbearable pain, the sea
around him in hellish orange. Then he collapsed to death.
_ _
What was once the east side of
Cagayan River from Puntod to Consolacion to Macabalan to Agora and portions of
Lapasan and Gusa were decimated. The famous Limketkai Luxe Hotel
was still standing but had the look of a sickeningly charred black. More than
a hundred souls dining at KaVe Bar and another 50 who were in their rooms died
in the attack.
_ _
Outside was an eerie silence. In
fact, the whole Ketkai-Lapasan area stood still. Nope, there were no groaning
of wounded. There was only the chilling quietness for 10 full minutes. And then
a distinctive sound soon began. At first, it was soft like that of a bell. Then
it grew louder. Clang.....clang.....clang.....clang.....
_ _ _
TUESDAY,
FEBRUARY 14, 1995 9:05 a.m.
PRESENT
DAY
Clang....clang.....clang.....
O larga
na....larga na...sunod alley...sunod alley.....
Sixteen-year-old Mark Francisco woke
up from his slumber in a hammock inside the waiting shed of Terryhills
Subdivision's jeepney loading terminal. He must have slept in 15 minutes, he
thought. Still shuddering from his nightmarish flash-forward of a dream, Mark
looked down and saw that he was clutching a pencil and a notebook. He was
earlier doodling about the men playing basketball at the nearby court. Below
the drawing, he signed “The Chameleon.”
Mark began to ponder his dream. Why
did I become a seaman? I was supposed to take up Masscomm. And what the heck is
Skype where you talk to a handheld gadget? As he began shaking his head, he now
remembered why he ended up sleeping in this jeepney terminal in his MOGCHS
uniform. He didn't continue to school because he had no date this evening. They
had a dare among his barkadas the night before that whoever had no date this
Valentine must wind up absent.
Still in deep thought, a girl not
more than ten came up and tapped him, “Kuya...kuya...”
“Huh
kuya ka dyan....kuyawan man sad ta nimo. Unsa man?”
“Kanang
katultol ka sa tindahan dari kuya?”
“Hmmm...n'a
ra o imo giatubang.”
“Sensya
na gud kuya bag-o pa man gud mi namalhin.”
“Ah
diay? Unsa diay imo name?”
“Icy!”
 |
| The real life MARK FRANCISCO and the real life "Icy"...her real name is Aicy Soriano. Nope, they don't have a real story to tell. Everything you read above is fiction. |
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