The Taking of K-129 by Josh Dean

Author:Josh Dean [Dean, Josh]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2017-09-05T00:00:00+00:00

39

We Need a Crew

Secret agents, undercover Navy captains, and mechanical engineers would comprise just part of the Glomar Explorer’s population. They were actually the minority. The majority of the men on the crew would be manual laborers who made the ship and its mechanical systems work. These were blue-collar men, mostly from the South and lower Midwest, where the American oil industry was based—roughnecks and good ol’ boys who worked months at a time on drill rigs or at remote oil fields and began to show up at the Tishman Building in the spring of 1974 to apply for exotic, high-paying work on a mysterious mining ship that was the worst-kept secret in the industry.

GMDI’s primary recruiter for the crew was Wayne Collier, better known as Cotton. A former undercover narcotics officer for the Justice Department in the Deep South, Cotton had also worked as an oil field roughneck and a steelworker. He arrived in LA in early 1974 and spent the first month absorbing what he could about the mining project while often wondering why so many of the engineers acted as if they were protecting a state secret—as well as why the office’s cabinets were all secured with heavy-duty locks and meetings were often held behind closed doors.

Six weeks into his new job, Cotton was called to the Hughes building, where he was led into the office of Paul Ito.

Cotton knew Ito only by voice, as the man who approved all personnel decisions for the mining project. He was a stylish, stone-faced Japanese American with a pressed suit and hair the color of fresh tarmac. Ito didn’t smile as he shook Cotton’s hand and pointed him to a chair opposite his desk. He then sat down himself and beckoned his secretary on the intercom.

“Bring me six cups of coffee, please, and hold all calls,” he said. Ito told Cotton he was about to receive a detailed briefing on the secretive Hughes operation and asked him to save his questions until he was finished. “All will be answered,” Ito said.

Ito talked for hours, or that’s how it felt, pausing only to swig coffee. He laid out the history of the Hughes company’s interests in mining, as well as the structure and detailed roll-out plans for this experimental and speculative venture, which would establish an entirely new industry. He explained why Global Marine, the world’s leader in deep-water drilling, had been chosen to build the mining ship, and showed Collier samples of the manganese nodules that would be suctioned from the seafloor and processed to access the rare valuable metals inside. Samples of these oblong black rocks, the size of fingerling potatoes, sat on his desk. He handed one to Cotton, who passed it from one hand to the other. It looked and felt like volcanic basalt, only lighter.

Cotton’s eyes were about to cross from the deluge of detail when Ito stopped and fixed his gaze on the man who would recruit the men who would run the mining machines.

“Have you been paying attention?” he asked.

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