Invasion USA 3 - The Battle for Survival

by T I WADE

  “Of course, leave immediately. We have enough power to pull you, Pedro. I want you to head towards Cozumel in a straight line to save gas. We can come around the end of the island and catch up to you. I have radar, understand?” asked Mo.

  “I am casting off quickly, Señor, there is shooting very close and we are heading out to sea. I have a compass on the boat and I will go directly towards the Cozumel Island. I have a fisherman’s map with a direct line drawn on the map. It shows 410 miles. I have ninety gallons of fuel in the tank, the gauge shows one quarter. I think that this boat will travel at five knots, but I’m now at full power to get away from the shore.” There was silence for several seconds. “Señor Wang, we are out of our cove and about half a mile from our farm. There are lights to the west and a small fire. It looks like one of our neighbors’ house or barn is on fire. There is lots of shooting. My neighbor had many guns and many unlucky gangsters will die at his and his seven sons’ hands tonight. They picked the wrong guy.” There was silence apart from Mo hearing Pedro’s orders being shouted to his family in Spanish.

  He heard the engine’s noise die down to a low murmur, and then Pedro came back. “We are safe enough now, Señor Wang. I have the boat going forward at five knots. I think I have enough fuel for about three hundred miles. I will keep in a straight line and wait for you to call me at dawn, OK?” Marie was next to Mo with a map of the area on the table.

  “Ask Pedro what his compass reads,” she told Mo. Mo did and Pedro told them that the needle was halfway in-between north and northeast.

  It took Marie and Beatrice a couple of minutes to discuss his course. Lu was asked to come in and show them where Pedro’s farm was on the island map. She didn’t know for sure but she showed them where she thought it was, Mud Cay, and she added that it couldn’t be more than two to three miles out.

  The two female sailors plotted a course and asked Mo to increase speed to high cruise. The ship increased speed to six knots and the radar decreased its time from four hours to two hours before they would round the island. They had to sail past a couple of small islands and Mo didn’t want to go through the shallower waters between them. He did close the course distance to the last piece of land, as Lu told him that it was uninhabited. They could turn northwards close to shore and that would save them 30 minutes.

  He made a new dot on the radar as close to the shore as he thought safe and Marie showed him how to set a second marker several miles north of the island and then after several calculations, a third marker where she thought that they could pick up the fishing boat up on the radar. The distance was forty miles and would take them eight hours to reach the third dot.

  Since Pedro was moving as fast as they were Mo suggested that to catch up to them he would need to start the big engines during the third leg, but he wanted to have no land in sight and full daylight before he would do that.

  Marie suggested that he should rest, but Mo was having the time of his life. It was the first time he had ever had such authority over something of this size and the excitement would certainly not bring sleep.

  He replied that everybody should bed down for the night and he would be fine. He would have no trouble staying awake to turn the boat onto the next two legs, the first one in an hour’s time.

  “You don’t have to turn the ship, silly,” admonished Marie. “Everything is plotted into the autopilot. It will run the course we set and will reach the third marker with no help from any of us. The maximum range for auto cruising is 60 miles. At that range the radar might not pick up such a small boat, but set at a 15-mile range, we should see Pedro as a blip pretty easily. Somebody will relieve you of your watch at 0600 hours, Captain Wang. I haven’t delegated who yet, but if the relief watch finds you asleep, you will be given six lashes with the cat of nine tails.”

  “There is a cat with nine tails on the boat?” asked an astonished Mo. He did not understand, but Marie was gone and he was left alone to work out where this darn cat was. Did it want food or something?

  He looked over the dials: depth 167 feet, one hour, ten minutes to first radar marker, engine at high cruise at six knots, temperature outside 67 degrees and the island’s coastline over six miles to his north. There was nothing blinking or blipping as Marie said, nor was there a cat under the table of the captain’s chair he was sitting in, and he felt at peace with the world.

  Mo gently pushed the engine to full power to see what it could do. The speed increased a paltry half a knot and he then reduced it back to high cruise. The four fuel tanks still showed full, even the one he was running on. The red indicator still hadn’t moved.

  He searched around the bridge; it was the first time he actually had time to look around. There was an old American coffeemaker in a corner with a large bag of unopened Colombian coffee. Underneath he found a small refrigerator; it was stocked with bottles of liquor, beer and Cokes, all printed, it seemed to him, in Spanish. He found a cup of coffee creamers; he liked his coffee strong and with cream, the American way. Next to the machine was a small washing-up sink with a high faucet. Upon turning the tap, water poured out. He brewed a pot of coffee and continued to look around while the coffee machine made its gurgling noises.

  Behind the table was a couch built into the rear wall and above the couch were bookcases. Here he found boxes of bullets. Normal for a gangster to have bullets instead of books, he mused to himself.

  The bridge was still semi-dark; he was working from the lights on the console which were ample. He turned on the main light switch which had a dimmer and he pulled the side curtains closed and increased the light in the bridge so that he could see more.

  He returned to the bookcase and found several books steadied by dozens of boxes of 9 mm and 7.62 ammunition.

  “That’s strange. I haven’t found any guns that would fit these rounds,” he thought. There were several sailing books in the bookcase and he spied a 9-mm automatic machine pistol in each corner of the four-foot long bookcase. Both had a long magazine and Mo thought that the senator had these as backup pieces, easily accessible if he needed them.

  The bookcase was completely checked. He left everything where it was and closed the smoked-glass sliding bookcase doors. He sat down on the couch and thought for a moment.

  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.