Phoenix

24.

Eugene Decker, the Commanding Officer of the U.S Coast Guard's Deep Sea Patrol Ship Newburgh was an honest guy. He smiles often and restrains himself to speak rudely to his subordinates even if they are guilty. He keeps a smile on his face even with a hundred problems. ships...be it of government or privately owned...this much genuine softness isn't good for any captains in the sea. Sailors are a restless and chaotic group of people. To keep them under control, the leader has to be tough.
Despite being a soft-spoken and genuinely good man, Commander Decker never got into trouble with handling his people till now. And the credit fully goes to his second-in-command or executive officers.
Fortunately, he always received skilled and qualified people in X.O. positions. They can easily keep everyone under control with strictness to keep the balance of the tenderness of the captain. for this reason, Decker doesn't have to worry about power control and easily can keep a smile on his face.

Today, after a long time, the smile on his face faded, and a few worry lines were seen on his forehead. This incident was so unusual that it affected the whole ship. Seeing the change in the captain's behavior, everyone was surprised. What happened? Why the sudden change?

This change of Commander Decker's behavior changed two and a half hours ago when a priority message was relayed to him from the Coast Guard's Los Angeles base.
The first part of the instruction wasn't too unusual-
"change the course of the ship 'Newberg' and go to Montego Ice Shelf. There was one American scientist named Dr. Stanley Donnen in a private research facility of Brighton Technology. Take him aboard and waiting for further instructions."

That's it.
The instruction wasn't anything suspicious- so far so good. But Decker's concern was the second part. The message said,
"The authority of the facility might not be agreed voluntarily let the scientist go; but any kind of their objections shouldn't be accepted, and force should be applied if it is necessary to secure Dr. Donnen."

It was this last sentence that robbed him of his peace.

He was a peace-loving person who keeps good relations with everyone. And now he was asked to force their way into a private research facility and kidnap a person?

He tried to talk to higher authorities. Decker asked for an explanation of the order, to which he was replied in short, "Don't ask questions, quietly follow orders."
That instruction included a much-used phrase- "with this- state security is involved. So better don't budge into the state mater."

Adding to the captain's concern two black-and-white photographs of two foreigners were added. The names stated were Kim Seokjin and Araya Akaishi. Decker did not know who they were. The message described them as dangerous characters who were engaged in activities against US interests. They warned him that they might be present on the ice shelf in disguise and ordered him to arrest them on sight.

That's all for the message. No reason was explained, there was also no rationale behind the order.

The whole situation was a mystery.
Yes, no doubt, but what was the inconvenience to tell him?

Commander Decker's twenty-eight years of service have passed on this ship. Yet he was ordered around without explanation and expected not to question anything like junior boys. It was clearly an insult.

So naturally, Decker was enraged. Apart from that, they contacted the research facility after the instruction came.
From there they made it clear that
they couldn't let go of their scientist under any circumstances.

Commander Decker got the instruction from a higher official, so he was out of options too.

Decker was sitting in the captain's chair on the bridge, deep in thought- Newburgh was just three miles away from its destination, but still, he couldn't come up with any solution.
There was not much time at hand to make a quick decision about what to do.