by Bobby Akart
He swung at the lock in an attempt to break it, but he was unsuccessful. He tried wrapping the handle of the axe through the chain and twisting it, hoping the steel links would give way, but that didn’t work either.
Muffled voices could be heard through the doorway, convincing Jake he’d come across the boys and possibly more hostages.
Then he took notice of the pipe the chain was wrapped around. It was loose. Jake began to pound away at it with the axe. With each successive swing, the pipe buckled, but began to hiss. It contained some type of high-pressure gas or fluid inside, but he couldn’t smell anything.
He swung one final time and the pipe broke loose, hissing hot steam into the air and immediately forming condensation on the ceiling. Being careful not to slip on the moisture-soaked floor, he pulled the chain away from the pipe and cranked open the wheel that sealed the door shut.
With a clank, the door opened and people poured out of the darkened space. Two girls and a young man pushed past Jake as they ran for the stairwell. The man was halfway up the flight of steps when a shotgun blast echoed through the opening. The man’s chest had been torn apart, and his bloody corpse fell backwards on top of the women who were right behind him.
“Hide!” screamed Jake before he stuck his head into the darkened crew’s quarters. He searched for a light switch and then thought better of it. Instead, he whispered into the room, using Spanish words that would’ve ordinarily made no sense, “Um, bambinos. Amigos. I am Miguel’s amigo. Shhh. Comprende?”
A quiet voice responded from the dimly lit recesses of the crew’s quarters. “Sí, señor.”
Jake swung around and thought of his options. He had found the boys and three female hostages. Unfortunately, they were trapped.
Chapter 50
The Pacific Ocean
Aboard the Nautilus Under Sea
Off the coast of Isla Socorro
The other female hostages had entered the first stateroom and untied the third woman. As Jake was contemplating his options, one of them stuck her head out to sneak a peek. Jake put his finger to his lips and motioned for them to come out and go to the stateroom at the end of the hall. He knew his .45-caliber bullets would penetrate the thin walls that separated the cabins, and he wanted them out of the line of fire.
The three women immediately responded and followed one another to the last stateroom near the stern of the ship. Jake glanced back to where the boys were hiding. He stuck his head into the room and whispered, “It’s okay. Bueno. Sí?”
“Sí,” the boys responded in unison.
Jake pushed the steel door closed but not all the way, allowing light to filter in the room and not further frighten the kids. Now that everyone was protected as much as possible, he’d deal with the man wielding a shotgun.
He’d already fired three times. Unless he had the presence of mind to reload, which for an untrained gunman in the heat of battle wasn’t likely, he only had four or five shots left. Jake decided to test his nerves as well as reduce the man’s ammunition levels.
He slipped his tee shirt off and draped it over the axe so it looked like a broad-shouldered man. Extending the axe handle outward from his body, he quietly moved along the wall until he was in a position to thrust the tee shirt into the shooter’s view.
Slowly, Jake inched toward the opening and the position where the dead young man bled out on the floor. When he was ready, he shoved the axe handle into the opening, revealing the tee shirt to the shooter. The response was immediate.
The man fired one blast into the shirt, quickly racked another round, and fired again.
Jake smiled. “Nice shot, captain!” he yelled in a deliberate attempt to taunt the man.
“Shut up!” the man shouted back and then fired another round down the steps.
Good. Anger. That was six rounds spent.
“Give it up, captain! Your crew is dead. Your play toys are taken away. And now it’s you and me. Trust me, you don’t wanna tangle with me. I’ve killed a lot of people lately. You’ll just be another notch on the belt.”
The man started cackling in laughter. “You’re trapped down there. You aren’t going anywhere.”
Jake slid his hand down to his pocket and considered his secret weapon as an option. There were eight steps from the lower level, up the ladder, and to the salon. If he blew the C-4, he’d only have a few seconds to make his move.
The bigger problem he had was the position of the three women. He’d moved them to the back of the ship to get them out of harm’s way. But they were now sitting on top of the engine compartment and the propellers. The C-4 blast would come through the floor.
He closed his eyes to focus when he felt a slight sway of the ship. It wasn’t much, just an imperceptible wiggle. He trained his senses on the stern and the dive deck. Heel, toe. Heel, toe. Bare feet walking along the deck.
“Arrrgghh!” a voice screamed before crashing into the man at the top of the stairs. His itchy trigger fingers fired off another round, but it shot into the ceiling above the steps, indicating the man had been attacked.
Jake raced up the steps, crawling on all fours to maintain his balance and keeping his body low. When he arrived in the salon, he saw Pedro, his shoulder covered in blood, but well enough to pummel the gunman with one punch to the face after another.
Jake yelled to him as he slid on his knees to Pedro’s side, “Pedro, no más. No más!”
Pedro took one more massive swing with his right fist, breaking the man’s nose and hurling blood mixed with mucus across the floor. The man was unconscious, but not dead.
“Come here,” said Jake as he comforted the brave young man. Jake gently wiped the blood away and looked at Pedro’s shoulder, which had at least three rounds of buckshot embedded in it.
Jake helped him off the floor and set him on a bench in the salon. Then he retrieved the man’s shotgun and handed it to Pedro with instructions to shoot him if he tried to get up. Pedro managed an evil smile and a nod. Without saying a word, he expressed his hearty no problemo.
Jake made his way into the lower deck and dragged the dead man into one of the staterooms and closed the door. He then called for the girls to come on out.
“It’s over, everyone. Come on out.” Jake moved to the crew’s quarters and called for the boys to come out as well. They quickly followed his orders and ran to Jake, crying and thanking him in Spanish.
When the girls saw the blood, they shrieked, but quickly recovered as they confirmed their ordeal was over. They ran up the stairs and onto the dive deck, where they broke down and cried. The young boys, tired from their captivity, made their way into the salon and immediately rushed to Pedro’s side. A familiar face lifted their spirits considerably.
Jake gathered up everyone and removed them to the dive deck. He located a dock line and cut it into a smaller piece with his knife. While the others waited, Jake tied up the still passed-out gunman so he couldn’t get away.
He then helped everyone to the stern, where he loaded them into the inflatable. He waved the other boats over, and the two oarsmen drove them back to the island, towing one of the fishing boats behind the inflatable. This left Jake his own fishing boat and the Nautilus, with some unfinished business to attend to.
With the man still unconscious, Jake explored the ship, looking for things of value. Useful items of electronics, weapons, and food were loaded into the fishing boat. He added some dive equipment and tanks, as well as two wetsuits he found in a closet. There were also a couple of harpoons.
The eighteen-foot-long fishing boat was getting full, and therefore heavy, which would make it difficult for Jake to row back to shore. But he was full of adrenaline and thankful for a successful rescue. He also knew Ashby would welcome him with open arms.
Jake determined the man’s name was Walter Sota by rummaging through his gear in the premium stateroom. He was not, however, the captain of the Nautilus. The picture Jake found was of an older man, dressed in proper dress whites, and his smiling
wife next to him. He suspected Sota and his thug buddies had killed the couple and overtaken the boat.
“Karma’s a bitch, Walter,” said Jake as he grabbed the man by the ankles and dragged his unconscious body along the aft side of the ship toward the bow. Using the excess dock line he’d used to tie Walter up, Jake wrapped the man’s ankles and tied off a series of knots that would only become more difficult to release if he squirmed. Then Jake tied the other end of the line to the cleats located at the bow of the Nautilus and gave the line a firm tug to set the knot.
“Okay, Walter, here ya go,” snarled Jake as he hoisted the man’s badly beaten body up and over the rail. Had the rope been tied around the man’s neck, it would’ve snapped like a good old-fashioned hanging. Instead, Jake wanted the man to awaken with his face mere inches from the ocean surface with no way to escape.
After one final look around, Jake was ready to leave. The sun was rising as Jake untied the wooden fishing boat and prepared for his return to the island. He thought of what the passengers and other crew members had been through at the hands of these thugs.
He’d only rowed a hundred yards when he stopped. He’d planned on keeping the vessel for its limited remaining supplies and another means of leaving the island when the time came. Jake mumbled to himself as he decided to do something impetuous.
“Ah, screw it. A boat’s just something you sink your money into anyway. Why would anyone want two of them?”
He pressed the detonator and the stern exploded, throwing dive equipment in all directions and creating a gaping hole in the back that immediately flooded the lower deck.
The explosion must have awakened Walter Sota from his beating. He could be heard screaming as he wiggled like a worm on the end of a fishing line.
“Hey! Cut me loose! You can’t leave me like this! I’ll drown!”
He continued to yell and Jake sat rocking in the small fishing boat as he watched the Nautilus slowly sink into the Pacific. The stern was completely submerged and the ship tilted upward so that the bow was sticking nearly straight out of the water. Walter was being hoisted higher into the air before he would be dragged to the bottom of the Pacific.
Then it happened. It was so sudden that Jake almost missed it.
As the boat reached its final moments above water, Sota continued to swing wildly on the rope in an attempt to work himself free. In his frenzy to gain safety, he never saw the jaws emerge from the depth of the dark ocean, opening wide before clamping down on his torso, leaving nothing behind but his tied-up legs and what was left of his intestines.
Chapter 51
The Pacific Ocean
Off the coast of Isla Socorro
After sitting in the boat for several more minutes, fatigue swept over Jake’s body. He turned sideways on the bench and tried to determine where the cove was located. Like good soldiers, Miguel and his men were practicing proper light discipline, leaving a pitch-black shoreline and no discernible target for Jake to row towards.
Jake could make out the silhouette of the cliffs against the midnight blue sky. The island seemed almost as dark as the ocean. All that separated the Pacific from the rocky cliffs formed by volcanic eruptions of the past was a short stretch of beach tucked away in a cove that Jake couldn’t see.
He thought of Ashby waiting for him back at the compound, and then he laughed out loud. He knew her well and loved her headstrong nature. He thought to himself that most likely she’d waited at the compound for maybe fifteen minutes before taking the golf cart and following the pickup to the edge of the cliff. In fact, he’d be shocked if she wasn’t standing barefoot in the cold sand of the cove, waiting for him to return.
He grabbed the oars, gripped them firmly, and dipped them into the water. The gentle, rhythmic splashing that followed put him into a trance. Stroke after stroke, the oars propelled him a little closer to the shore that was a mile away.
The great white shark, one of several that devoured the remains of Walter Sota, swam away from the sinking dive ship and sought out the rhythmic sound. The combination of the splash and the motion piqued the eighteen-foot killer’s attention.
It moved quietly through the darkness of the ocean, propelled by short, but powerful thrusts of its crescent-shaped tail fin. Its mouth was open slightly, allowing a rush of water over its gills, and the bloody remains of Sota to ooze out.
The great white was a freak of nature. A finely tuned machine that could ease through the water at a high speed if it wanted to. Otherwise, its motion was imperceptible, aimlessly moving forward with an occasional course correction by slightly raising its dark gray pectoral fin, which broke the surface of the Pacific.
Like a bird adjusting its wings in flight by dipping one wing and lifting another, the great white eased through the water effortlessly, seeking out its prey. In the darkness of the ocean that night, the great white was blind to an extent, although his other senses transmitted information to the creature’s simplistic brain. A brain that didn’t need to retain information or knowledge. A brain that was only required to act upon instinct dictated by millions of years of evolution.
From a hundred yards away, the shark sensed a change in its surroundings. The rhythmic sounds of the oars hitting the ocean’s surface continued. Running throughout the great white, from nose to crescent fin, were a series of tiny crevices, filled with mucus and replete with nerve endings. The nerve endings detected the vibrations caused by the oars and signaled the brain of the menacing killer—food was nearby.
Jake continued to row, taking his time to conserve energy. No rush, no worries, he thought to himself, a phrase used often by Dusty and repeated by Ashby recently. His mind wandered to think about their future. They had finally found a home, although it might be temporary, as in just a few years.
Miguel and the other villagers had welcomed them with open arms. Jake had learned never to underestimate the depravity of man. Walter Sota and his crew being prime examples of that concept. That said, Miguel and the others didn’t have that evil within them, which was important for Jake and Ashby’s future safety. Living a life on a deserted island with other people might just work. But doing so while constantly looking over your shoulder or sleeping with one eye open at night would not.
Jake picked up the pace as the excitement of his new life with Ashby on Isla Socorro raised his spirits. He rowed a little faster, and a little deeper, fighting against the low tide. His efforts of digging deeper into the ocean paid off, as his speed quickened.
The vibrations were stronger now and the great white sensed that its prey was near. The sweep of its tail hastened as the creature’s excitement rose. Its giant body thrust forward with a speed that caused the tiny fish just below the surface to scatter. The miniscule fluorescent sea life became agitated, causing them to glow like sparks around the great white as it swam through them toward the splashing.
The King of the Ocean was in the house.
Closer. Closer. Assessing.
The great white closed on the fishing skiff and rushed past, giving its prey twenty feet of space. Now six feet below the surface, the killer stalked its prey, giving it a casual glance as it sped by.
Jake felt the fishing boat list slightly—a wave of pressure that seemed to lift one side of the skiff and ease it down again. He stopped paddling and immediately lifted the oars out of the water like a toe recoiling from a cold swimming pool.
His head swiveled in all directions, looking for the cause of the motion. Was it a wave? Did a porpoise swim by? Maybe a piece of driftwood?
Jake held his breath and then exhaled, hoping to calm his nerves. Then he chuckled.
“Come on, Wheeler. You shouldn’t be afraid of things that go bump in the night.”
Jake dropped the oars back into the water, hesitated, and then slowly restarted the process. Despite his internal pep talk, his senses were on high alert. His strokes were no longer smooth. They were short, choppy slaps at the water. Then he’d stop to listen. His anxiety rose as he continu
ed this odd rowing pattern.
The great white smiled, but not as we would envision a happy shark in a cartoon. The smile had nothing to do with emotion and had everything to do with preparation.
Preparation to eat.
The great white broke the surface for the first time, allowing more of its sensory perceptions to assist in the hunt. It could smell Jake now. The smell of sweat and adrenaline. The previously rhythmic motions of the oars stroking the water had been replaced by erratic, sharp movements. To the great white, that was a signal of distress.
It began to circle the source of food from a greater distance of forty feet, but not so far away that the great white couldn’t close quickly. With its dorsal fin breaking the water and its tail thrashing back and forth, the smooth plane of the surface became violent. The great white’s body began to shake as tremors shot through it. Food was near and the beast had worked itself into a frenzy.
For the first time, Jake was frightened. He couldn’t see the great white, but Jake concluded that the disturbance in the water could be only one thing—it was close. Jolts of energy shot through Jake’s body, generating a warmth that caused his face to flush and his hands to shake.
He glanced back toward the island, which still remained half a mile away. Jake turned back around and looked in all directions; then the bow of the boat lifted a few feet into the air and crashed back down onto the ocean’s surface.
Jake resisted the innate reaction of screaming for help. Or simply screaming out of fear. He had to keep calm, or he would die. He searched the water again, looking for the telltale sign of the great white—its dorsal fin appearing above the water.
Thirty feet to Jake’s left, the great white circled around, dropped below the surface once again, and turned directly toward the boat. With three quick shakes of its tail, the great white was racing directly for Jake.
