Invasion USA 3 - The Battle for Survival (39 page)

This was fun. He was now searching for secret compartments and he studied the wooden floor of the bridge. Mo knelt down and tapped the wood, which looked like teak, the dark wood sounded thick, strong and heavy. He tapped the side walls of the bridge and they sounded hollow. There was nothing to tell that there was anything behind the hollow-sounding walls until he pushed a certain section. The wall behind his hand separated itself and was pushed inwards and moved sideways to show three shelves, six inches deep and high, behind the opened panel. The sliding panel had disappeared behind the rest of the wall and inside the wall below the side windows were more boxes of ammunition.

The starboard wall was exactly the same

Then he checked the front wall underneath the control center and a four-foot long panel slid open in the middle of the bridge underneath the console; this one was full of what looked like hand grenades. Touching each one, he counted 90 hand grenades in three rows of thirty. The two corner areas of the lowest shelf had pieces of glass, like mirrors.

“That is odd,” he thought until he suddenly realized that he was looking at two female sleeping forms in the left-hand front cabin. He quickly looked at the other mirror on the other side and saw two more sleeping forms in the right-hand cabin. He backed away and closed the doors. They were spy windows into the two cabins and he would check them out from the other side later.

Mo returned and sat back on the rear couch. It was a nice sitting area where the captain and/or crew could plot maps, or just hang out and chat. The leather he was sitting on was soft, like a luxury car’s and his foot slipped and tapped against the wood below the couch. It sounded hollow.

“Of course!” he stated aloud to himself. He stood up, turned and looked at the seat. He gently tried to pull it open, but it would not budge. He looked carefully and found a tiny, closed door latch at either end. They wouldn’t be easily noticed. The couch was about two and a half feet high and once he opened the latches, the seat itself easily opened up on rear hinges.

Inside were the guns Pedro must have meant. There was a lot of firepower in there, half a dozen brand new American M-16s with dozens of magazines already filled, as well as a couple of rifle grenades for the M-16s. He had seen more of the rifle grenade cases downstairs. There were also several pistols in wooden racks, even a set of two .44 Magnums, cowboy style, on a belt and ringed with bullets. The amount took his breath away.

“We are a floating armory,” he said to himself. “If we get hit by somebody or something explosive, it’s all over for us, and anybody within a hundred mile radius with all this!”

He felt like he was safe with all the weaponry, but at the same time, he felt totally vulnerable to total disintegration from an attack. He returned the leather seat to its original position, closed the latches, poured himself a cup of coffee, and wondered whether he was lucky to be living in an armory, or maybe not so lucky! Then he remembered to check for the cat. It still hadn’t shown itself.

The ship’s autopilot had done what Marie had said it would. With the radar showing the last bit of land and the very tip of the whole island, the ship turned northwards slowly, one mile of shallow water passed between the ship and the shoreline. He was still a little worried about the depth; it was going to be close. They still moved forward at six knots on the new heading, still five miles south and one mile east of the island’s eastern shore; the depth slowly decreased from 197 feet to 20 feet as they passed the island, and Mo realized that the sea maps were very accurate.

It was still dark outside with a sliver of moon which had been up since before midnight. There were no roads to this part of the island and he could see no lights on the land at all.

The depth held at less than 30 feet for twenty minutes and slowly it began to climb again as the ship left the land behind. He had turned out all unnecessary lights and was using the night binoculars through the side windows, which actually could slide open. There was nothing apart from rocks and shrubs he could see.

An hour later he was again seven miles north of the island and the depth at 97 feet when he relaxed back into the captain’s chair, the island’s shape disappearing over the horizon. He wanted to get over the horizon before dawn and before he would turn northwest to look for Pedro.

Twenty minutes before Beatrice arrived, they were nine miles out and he turned the ship to the northeast. He had changed Marie’s plots to his own, first heading north and then turning slightly to the northeast. He had just turned the lights back on and sat back when he heard movement from the stairs.

Beatrice crept up at five-thirty dressed in her robe, looking sleepy with her hair disheveled. Mo was close to nodding off and he was still sitting in the comfortable captain’s chair looking out at the beginnings of a new dawn.

“Would you like a fresh cup of coffee?” Mo asked Beatrice as she walked in front of him to see if he was awake. She nodded her head and sleepily looked around the bridge. “I’m getting the hang of driving the ship,” Mo stated.

“Sailing the ship,” responded Beatrice slumping into the warm captain’s chair vacated by Mo to put on a fresh cup of coffee.

“How can I sail the ship without sails up?” asked Mo.

“I agree,” replied Beatrice. “English is a very stupid language, that’s why I’m French. The dawn is very beautiful this morning. I got up at the right time,” she added looking out at the brightening morning.

“I think that we should let the rest sleep until about eight,” stated Mo. “There is nothing to do for the next few hours.”

“That’s fine. Don’t you want to take a few hours of sleep, Mo? You must be tired.”

“Not in a million years,” he replied happily. “I haven’t had so much fun in years and I can sleep once we have found Pedro and are driving, sorry sailing for Mexico.” He handed her a mug of coffee.

She got up out of the captain’s chair and told him to sit down. She sat down on his lap and curled herself tight, sipping her brew.

“I think you are making passes at me. Do you want me to throw you overboard for insubordination to the ship’s captain?” Mo stated, frozen.

She smiled at him and they sat together, each enjoying their mug of coffee and watching the dawn rise and the calm sea spread farther and farther out. Mo was the happiest he had been for a long, long time and forgot about the clock.

At six thirty he suddenly remembered to call Pedro.

“Señor Wang, I was getting worried. I was thinking something had happened to you,” stated Pedro a split second after the phone started ringing.

“Pedro, we are now north of the island and I think about thirty to forty miles behind you, and about thirty miles east of you,” Mo stated. “Don’t slow down or you could use up your fuel. I can start the big engines once everybody wakes up and easily catch up.”

“It is very calm out here, Señor,” Pedro replied. “We haven’t seen any other boats. It is like we are the only people out here. We can see no land and I’m keeping the compass at the same place as I told you at midnight. We have used a little fuel and the gauge is showing a little below a quarter.” Mo looked at his own gauges and for the first time he noticed that one had moved ever so slightly off absolute full. Mo told Pedro to keep going and that he should be with him by midday.

Two hours later, Beatrice who was dozing in his lap stretched and told him that she would wake everybody, get dressed, get shipshape, and make breakfast. She kissed him lightly on his cheek and left the bridge. Mo felt all rosy. He checked the gauges. The depth was over 200 feet and he noticed slightly bigger swells coming at them from the northwest. The eighty-foot ship just glided through them. He switched the radar onto thirty mile range and saw land was now twenty miles behind them and that they were four miles in from the eastern tip.

He waited until Beatrice returned with breakfast. Lu was with her as well as her kids. They hadn’t seen the bridge yet and they all sat on the couch enjoying a breakfast of fruit and yogurt.

At nine, Marie told him that they were shipshape everywhere and he switched on the two generators to kickstart the big diesels. He had been waiting for this moment for hours now and was very excited.

Once the diesels had warmed up for a couple of minutes, he checked the fuel flow and made sure that fuel was flowing to both engines from the unused tanks. He then closed down the small engine to give it a rest, closed its fuel flow and, as Marie had shown him, gently pushed the two controllers into gear and slowly increased the engine revs to 1,500 rpm, half power.

Now the ship wasn’t a smooth vibration-free luxury yacht anymore. The deck below him rumbled as the diesels increased in revs and he could feel the increasing vibrations through the structure. It wasn’t loud, but this time he could hear the throaty exhausts through the open bridge side-windows.

The ship was still on autopilot and he watched as the speed increased from five knots to seven, then eight and slowly rise through nine knots. He now could feel and hear the bow biting through the water and the increasing speed halted at ten knots. The bridge had everybody squeezed into it; the couch could fit all the younger people and Marie and Beatrice stood on each side of him enjoying the moment.

“Take the ship off autopilot,” suggested Marie. Mo disengaged the autopilot switch and took hold of the wheel. He could feel the engines through the wooden wheel and he slowly began to turn the vessel from left to right in slow movements. She was heavy and felt strong and sturdy in the water and for the first time the ship began to dip slightly through the swells. He felt the smile on his face growing.

“The senator will have to kill me first to get his ship back,” Mo said to the two women.

“I think we will have to as well,” smiled Marie.

It was a beautiful day, they were away from their island prison and Marie noticed Beatrice’s hand in the nook of Mo’s arm. Her woman’s intuition suggested something was happening to her friend and she smiled.

Mo increased the engine controls to three quarters and the ship responded, increasing her speed to 13 knots, then 14. He again increased the power to a mark which stated High Cruise and the revs increased to 2,700 and the speed hovered at 16 knots, nearly hitting 17. At full power, Marie was surprised to see the speed increase to 21 knots, over five knots faster than she had earlier predicted.

“The engines must be modified,” she said to Mo who had a face of wonderment. “I think fuel usage is very bad at full speed, but we do have that extra fuel aboard, and I think you should keep her at High Cruise for an hour or two, Mo. That should almost catch us up to Pedro.” Mo reduced the speed down to 16 knots and they all looked towards the radar. Beatrice turned it down to fifteen miles and at that range they should see Pedro’s small boat as a blip on the screen in an hour.

They were wrong; it took two hours before a small blip appeared on the edge of the screen and to the northwest of them. Mo reduced the speed down to three-quarter, noticing that the two gauges were now showing less fuel than the gauge he had fed into the small engine. The three hours had sped by, the excitement was wonderful and now he knew why men joined the navy. At 14 knots it would take another two hours to catch Pedro as the smaller fishing boat still moving forward at five knots.

Mo called up Pedro and told him that they had him on radar, were fifteen miles behind and that they would be with him by midday.

The sun was getting hot as Mo headed down the stairs to get three hours of sleep. Marie and Beatrice were in command.

When Mo was awakened he went out on deck to see an extremely happy Pedro waving at them from a few hundred yards away. The noise and vibrations of the big engines were gone and Marie had turned on the smaller engine and six knots to conserve fuel.

Mo could see several people in the boat. Pedro’s father was waving with Pedro as they came within fifty feet of them, and Marie expertly turned the larger ship to sail on the same course and speed as the smaller, old and dilapidated fishing boat. She wouldn’t have paid a thousand dollars for that boat, but, who cared? Money didn’t mean anything anymore.

“Señor Wang! Señor Wang! That old boat of yours is very slow. It took forever for you to catch up to us in our fancy ship!” Pedro laughed, shouting over the distance. He was still at his five knots and they were over seventy miles from Roatán, in the middle of the ocean where nobody could find them. The only thing on the radar screen was Pedro’s boat.

Mo shouted over, asking if they needed anything and Pedro showed him a decent-sized fish he had caught. It was a yellow skipjack and Mo noticed that the fishing boat had two fishing lines running out the back of the boat. Pedro shouted back that they had everything for now and that apart from the heat everything was OK. They had twenty gallons of water on board and that would last them a day.

Marie was in the bridge and Mo was free to check out the outsides. Mo pulled out the fishing chair stored in a locker at the rear of the boat and positioned it in a round steel hole and locked it down with a pin and wire.

It was comfortable and knowing a reasonable amount about fishing, he prepared two deep-sea rods and, using rubberized surface bait that looked like silver fish, he played them out and left the rods in two shiny steel rod holders molded on the top railing running around the boat.

Mo sat down, waved at Pedro who was checking his line; his father was checking the other and sat back. At five knots they were at a fast, but still good, trawling speed.

For two hours Mo enjoyed the fishing chair. It was hot and Beatrice had brought him out a hat she had found. Pedro’s father got another skipjack and soon after that Mo fell asleep.

He had been asleep for over an hour when one of his rods woke up and buzzed loudly, its line playing out at a fast rate. He fumbled for the rod and got it in control before stopping the line feed. He looked over to Pedro and saw that both his rods were doing the same. He let the line feed out again, reeled in the other rod so that it wouldn’t get tangled and went back to the first rod. Most of the line was gone and again he shut off the outgoing feed, now much slower. He pulled back slowly and felt the weight at the other end.