by T I WADE
There was silence as the girls thought over what he had said. Marie was the first to ask the next question. “So that means that everybody we know in the world could be dead?”
“No, Marie, you are wrong. Yes, there are many who are dead from winter conditions, or starvation, but there will be areas where survival is quite easy, like on this island for another week or more.”
“Then what happens?” asked Beatrice.
“Then, Madame, I assume the whole island’s infrastructure will crumble and life here will become very dangerous, as it is in the bad areas of the world. The island will run out of gasoline and diesel, the electricity generators will fail. Then the shops will be empty of basic foodstuffs. Yes, fish and island produce will become the staple diet of the local community, but in every community there are good and bad people. This was part of Zedong’s strategy: to enable the bad people in all the corners of the world to take control by force. Life on this island for people like you, the tourists, will become extremely dangerous. You don’t belong here and bad people might feel it necessary to get rid of everybody who doesn’t belong, me included.”
The girls’ faces became white as they realized what he had just said and pictures went through their minds of what could happen to them if bad people captured them. Virginie swallowed hard. “What about the police?” she asked.
“I would assume that they will be the first to stand up against any bad people and they will either win a fight against the bad people or be the first to die. Also, in many countries the police are often bonded, or friendly with the bad people in some way.”
“What do you think we should do?” asked Marie.
“Prepare to leave the island within a week,” replied Mo bluntly. “I visited what I believe are all of the stores on the island and purchased what I could. There is not much left. If you remember, last night we came to the conclusion that we have enough food for the six of us for a month, a little more if we eat less. I do not believe that we will find anything more, except fish which will always be around. We can catch our own fish; we have the yacht if we need it.”
“We are not allowed to use it,” replied Marie.
“Where are the keys to the yacht?” asked Mo.
“In the villa… in the office of my bedroom. We believe it is the owner’s private office. I don’t want to meet the German lady if she finds out we went fishing on the yacht,” Marie added.
“And if your lives are at stake?” asked Mo.
“Then I think we should go fishing and just not come back. It will save her questioning us,” Marie stated, trying to make a joke.
“Precisely,” replied Mo. “It is probably our only ticket out of here, until somebody else decides to take it before we do.”
“What do you mean?” asked Beatrice. “Actually steal the yacht and sail away? That is not a good idea and I would not do that.”
“Would it be a better idea if bad men were pulling down the gates and shooting to get in here to take any food, liquor and women and even steal the boat for their own escape? Would you still think it was a bad idea?” Mo asked.
Beatrice studied him for a while. She realized that he wasn’t joking; he was serious and she slowly nodded her head in agreement. So did Marie.
“Oui,” stated Virginie quietly, looking at the two older ladies and adding her understanding that things could go from bad to worse.
“Think about it, ladies,” Mo suggested. We still have time and I would like to see the inside of that ship; I’m an engineer after all. At minimum I could work out a plan to exit the villa if we need to.”
Marie rose and climbed the stairs to get the keys.
Now that the rain shower had ended, they walked down the stairs to the beach, and walked along the pier to the rear end of the yacht. There was a side gangway to what looked like an entrance to the lounge area and they stepped onto the steady yacht and went on board.
The second key opened the main, heavy wooden door and they stood still looking over the well fitted-out space. The floor appeared to be teak with a large rug in the middle. The rear area had two couches in an “L” shape and the forward area contained a six-seat dining table backing onto an open-plan bar, behind which was the galley. Six stairs led up to the next higher level of the yacht. Marie opened the door and when Mo stepped into the control room he was taken aback. He had never sailed before, had never stepped aboard a luxury yacht before, and the dials on the control dash astonished him.
“Have you been in here before?” he asked Marie.
“We wanted to but, of course, we are not allowed. It is stated in big black letters in the lease. Beatrice and I are competent sailors. Both of our husbands are, or were, professional sailors. Beatrice’s late husband often sailed in the America’s Cup, the biggest yacht race in the world, and my husband helped many teams compete by paying for the expensive yachts. My husband and I have, or had, a fifty-foot ketch moored in Long Island, New York, and often sailed her across the Atlantic to the French coast. I wanted to take this boat out the minute I saw her, but I’ve never seen instruments this complicated in a sailing boat,” she stated, looking in amazement at the control panels in the dash area. “This yacht has more instruments than a power boat of her size. She is the most interesting yacht I have ever seen…and yet she doesn’t really look like a yacht.”
This got Mo’s attention and he sat in the left-side captain’s chair and studied the gauges. There were certainly two big engines, or more, by the look of her controls, and four separate fuel tanks. The radar screen looked old but very powerful and he had a sudden sinking feeling that this modern vessel was as useful as the latest American Aircraft Carriers; expensive scrap metal.
He looked forward, through the Portuguese bridge-type windows onto a short, flat deck and saw a rubber boat with small engine underneath the window Forward of the boat the space was clear to the pointed bow.
Mo suggested a tour and Marie and Beatrice agreed. Female curiosity had got the better of both of them. Entering the lounge area he asked her how long she thought the ship was and she replied eighty-two feet with a slimmer than usual seventeen-foot beam. “Most of the America’s Cup racing boats have the same dimensions as this yacht has,” Marie stated.
“What is the importance of a thinner ship?” asked Mo.
“More speed with less comfort. A luxury 80-foot yacht should have at least a 24- to 25-foot beam. Also, her sides slope more directly vertical into the water, more like a military vessel than a luxury yacht. I checked last time I came down here; she has a steel hull, not the usual cement or fiberglass; more like a warship.”
“Maybe she was a warship,” stated Mo simply, and Marie suddenly smacked the top of the dining table.
“Of course! How stupid of me!” she replied, a light going on behind her beautiful eyes. “I’ve being trying to analyze her and have spent a couple of weeks just trying to figure her out. She must have been a very small warship and was transformed into a private luxury yacht. Why would somebody do that?” she asked herself aloud.
“Several reasons,” suggested Mo. “The owner might just be a very rich man, or ex-navy, or like speed, or, he might even be a drug smuggler. But, by the look of her, it could be all of the above! She is certainly well appointed, but a piece of junk unless I can see the engines.”
“We haven’t been down there yet,” Marie stated showing him back down to the lounge and to the door to the engine room. It was in the wooden floor, hidden underneath the large expensive Oriental rug in the forward area of the lounge. “I swam next to her and she lies very shallow in the water with no keel. Her hull is less than six feet deep, which is not sufficient for a luxury yacht her length, and she has three propellers, two large and a smaller one in-between them, which is very weird for any boat. The sea bottom around the boat is rock and it has been dug out so that she can sit so close to the beach at low tide and there is a channel dug outwards for about another fifty feet to allow her in and out.”
Underneath
the floor entrance was a set of ten stairs and a thick sea-proof door was at the bottom facing aft. Mo felt for and found a light switch on the right-hand wall and they walked into a professional military-looking engine room painted white. For Mo the height was fine as he entered the lower deck, but for Marie she had to stoop a little; the ceiling was an inch too short for her six foot one inch frame.
Mo stood there frozen. The machinery was beautiful. The two engines on either side of where they stood were both big Cummins 800-horsepower six-cylinder diesels. But what really relieved him was seeing three large carburetors on top of each engine, a carburetor for each two cylinders. There was less than a foot of space between the top of the carburetors and the ceiling; pretty big engines in a small space. In between the rear of the engines and in the middle of the engine room was a third, much smaller diesel engine, about the size one would find on a tractor, or maybe in a yacht of this size.
“That middle engine is what I was expecting to see in here, not these monsters,” stated Marie holding a hand up to cover her mouth.
“Two large marine carburetor generators there on the port (left) side in front of the engines,” pointed Mo, “and the fuel system is certainly complicated, but a gravity, or suction-fed unit, I bet. All good so far and the engines are certainly not modern. I would say they are a couple of decades old and very thirsty for diesel fuel. That’s why there are two sets of engine controls on the control panel. I believe the smaller engine runs independently of the two big ones. It has its own fuel system and a backup or starter generator over there,” he pointed to two more generators on the starboard (right) wall in front of the other engine.
Four generators on a boat; I’ve never heard of that before,” exclaimed Marie. “My husband would have loved to see this configuration; it must have cost a lot of money.”
“The outer engines are big and the smaller engine is certainly a weird configuration, added as an extra, I believe,” continued Mo. He saw a small etched black shield with silver letters on the forward wall on a closed steel door which told him everything he needed to know: “USCGC Point Harris WPB-82376, 22nd June 1970, Coast Guard Yard, Curtis Bay, Maryland.”
“Now let us see what electronics work up there in the control center. They also looked older but top quality products,” Mo stated.
“The bridge, Mr. Wang,” smiled Marie.
He took mental pictures of where everything was. While trying to figure out what USCGC stood for, he knew the ship was American and closed the engine room door after turning off the light. The light was battery-fed, he noticed. It had the yellowish color of a low-amp light. “I bet the light is brighter down there when a generator is working. She must have a large group of batteries somewhere.”
“Did you see the steel door in the wall, forward of the engine room? They must be stored in there,” suggested Marie.
“It looks like this level runs throughout the ship,” added Mo.
“They returned to the lounge area and found all the girls waiting for them. Mo hadn’t heard a single footstep above them. It showed how well built this ship was.
He went forward and walked down the short corridor to the front area, next to the stairs and up to the control room, or bridge as Marie wanted him to call it.
Mo found three well-appointed bedrooms, each with a head. The first bedroom must be the owner’s room, he thought, as it was bigger than the other two which both had twin beds in them. Opposite the owner’s bedroom he found the door to the galley which faced onto the bar, dining room and lounge area aft. Well-appointed, it had a gas range with oven, an old military-looking fridge, two large chest freezers and behind them in the corridor, a sliding door opened to a washer and dryer. He tapped on the wall directly below the control room; it was metal. He tapped in the owner’s room and again found metal. He went to the most forward wall which was still ten feet before the bow of the ship and it sounded like fiberglass.
“This wall has been especially placed here,” he thought. Mo then returned to the lounge on the same level and tapped the lounge walls; again fiberglass.
Suddenly Mo Wang knew what the owner had done and it was he who slapped the bar this time, startling the girls. “Feel the walls, Marie. What are they made of?”
“Fiberglass,” she replied.
“OK, follow me up into the control room. What are the walls made of here?”
“Steel!” she replied. “How can that be?”
“The owner took a military vessel and added extra space to make it look like a yacht. I did not see any mast below in the engine room, like a sailing ship should have, but there are two masts going through this upper deck only.”
“I see it now,” Marie stated, excited that she was figuring out the ship. “He has added two reasonably short masts to turn her into a ketch, a twin-masted yacht, and he has fixed the masts to the metal of the military ship and added this level to support the masts. That’s what I was wondering: the ship’s mast height would not give her much forward speed for a sailing ship, maybe under full sail, six to seven knots, with just fiberglass in a stiff breeze, but less than five knots with all this steel. And this sail structure could not survive a bad storm. I don’t think this ship could sail in a storm with more than forty-knot winds, the whole structure would collapse.”
It’s all for show, I bet,” stated Mo. “But that’s fine. This boat, whatever it is, is useless to us unless we can get an engine started. As he said that the rain returned and started pelting the ship. “Good. The rain will hide any noise.” They headed back up to the bridge.
He looked at the keys and found one which would fit into the slot in the middle of the control panel. He switched it on and all the electrics came to life. Miraculously, everything worked. The fuel gauges all registered full and the entire control room started to hum under battery power. He saw a start button under each set of caterpillar controls and he pushed the starboard one. Nothing happened.
“Push the four starter buttons for the generators first,” Marie suggested. One by one he felt a slight vibration as one after the other the generators started two floors below him.
“Marie, please go down and tell me what is working in the engine room,” he directed. She returned up the two flights of stairs a minute later saying that all four generators were running.
This time he decided to start the smaller engine first and he pushed the single “start” button separate on the one side of the console. He felt a slight rumble and he checked to make sure that the control arm was in neutral.
“The little engine has started!” shouted Marie loudly, again down the stairs with her head poking through the engine door. “Make sure it is still in neutral.”
“I did!” he shouted back, at the same time checking that the two bigger control arms were in the neutral position.
He let the single engine run for five minutes, turning the four generators on and off and finding out what powered what. It was certainly a sophisticated system. He then turned off two of the generators and the small engine.
“The last two generators should start the bigger diesels,” he shouted at Marie who went down the second flight of stairs again to check what was going on. “Starting large starboard engine!” he shouted and pushed the button. He didn’t need Marie to tell him the engine had started when on the third try the steel plates underneath him began to rumble and vibrate and he felt the ship come alive. He started the port engine which took longer, but the rumbling increased and he felt the whole 1,600 horsepower of both engines vibrate through the ship.
Again, he let them run for five minutes before he turned them off. It was silent inside once the engines ceased; only the heavy rain outside still pelting the ship could be heard.
“Merde, Merde, Merde!” stated Marie walking up to him and patting Mo on the back. “This ship isn’t a yacht. I knew it! It is a bloody warship!”
“It is a United States Coast Guard Cutter,” replied Mo turning around and gave the excited woman a hug. “Go down and read
the sign in the engine room.” She did and returned a couple of minutes later, her face white and beckoned him to follow her.
She led Mo to the door he hadn’t opened and still speechless she motioned to him to open it. His shock was nearly as great as hers.
Inside the room and surrounded by batteries were a hundred cases of what looked like different types of ammunition. He walked through and opened a second door on the forward wall. He calculated that now he was underneath the forward berths. It was a heavy watertight door and inside was a heavy single-barreled military-type machine gun with steel protection panels. It stood on a pedestal and ready to fire. Next to it was a vertical barrel, which looked to Mo like a mortar. “What are they doing down here?” he thought aloud until he saw a small control panel. He pressed the button and suddenly realized what the fourth generator was for. It automatically started from the start button and an entire panel above the machine gun slid back and a hydraulic pump began moving the whole pedestal upwards, the rain falling through the hole. He quickly pressed the button again and the hum stopped and then started again, the pedestal reversed downwards and the steel door shut itself.
Mo said a few words in Chinese and looked at Marie. “This is certainly a handy vessel to steal. I want to see where that gun comes up on deck. It must be at least ten feet forward of the control room and directly in front of the bedrooms. There is nothing between it and the metal roof of the ship above and I think I know why there was a fiberglass wall in the front of the bedrooms.”
