by T I WADE
Mo Wang wondered who those men were as he followed the girls in and closed the door behind him.
“Pedro is about twelve miles ahead of us,” stated Marie as he entered the bridge. “I have plotted a course five miles ahead of his current position and we should be with him in an hour at three-quarter throttle.” Beatrice asked what should be done with the bags. Mo replied to put them in the stateroom. They would look at them later.
The rain was hard, and like the previous day’s, lasted all of twenty minutes. This time they headed with the storm and the ship hardly felt the four-foot waves being sliced by her bow.
They reached Pedro just as dark closed in. He waved as they came up to him, his night lights already on. Mo motioned to him to slow down, and as they came along side he handed Pedro the eight cans of gas.
“These will get me a day closer, Señor Wang. Do you have any more beers aboard? My father and I can celebrate our gift from you tonight. The fish was good, no?” Mo laughed and retrieved a six pack and a bottle of the white alcohol from the refrigerator in the bridge.
“I haven’t had a drink for 48 hours, Pedro,” Mo stated, smiling as he reached out and passed the bucket of bottles to Pedro.
“That means that I’m 48 hours ahead of you, Señor. What was the boat you found to give us this gas?”
As they slowly drifted apart, and with Pedro’s father already pouring the first can into the virtually dry gas tank, Mo told Pedro what he had seen.
“Smugglers or drug runners from Mexico to Colombia via San Andrés Island,” shouted Pedro as both craft gathered speed back to five knots to prepare for the night. “And thanks for the gas.”
Pedro was right. He needed a drink. He showered and got ready for his night on watch. The eight hours of sleep the night before had refreshed him and he felt strong enough to get them safely through the night. The voyage was becoming a dream to Mo; it would be lousy if it came to an end, but he knew that there could be problems up ahead and the next day he would empty the extra diesel into the tanks.
As time passed on the voyage, everybody did their part. The youngsters, enjoying the ride, had each been assigned tasks by Beatrice and Lu. Once Pedro returned to his night position several hundred yards behind to follow the wake, dinner was served. The bridge was left on autopilot while Mo drank a cold beer and opened a bottle of Colombian red wine for the ladies.
Again, the tasty meal consisted of fish, vegetables and rice, and was as good as any restaurant could offer. Dessert was sweet Danish cookies, purchased in the last haul from the supermarket. They had no bread, the only thing missing in their daily diet. After dinner, just like the previous evening, the adults retired to the lounge while the kids had KP duty.
“We should be close to Cozumel tomorrow night,” stated Marie. “Also, I checked out the watermaker in the engine room earlier today and it is working well. It seems to top off two tanks each side of the ship. I have calculated that the generators and watermaker are using about twenty gallons of diesel per day in total. In the future, we must add that into our fuel equations.” Mo nodded.
“By the time we know how to use everything on this ship, the journey will be at the end,” he added.
“It seems that our journey aboard this ship never has to end,” stated Beatrice. “All we need is to find is a secluded island to search for food and water, and a diesel tanker floating about somewhere.”
I honestly think I saw another blip on our screen today,” added Marie. “It was at our maximum 60-mile range, it must have been big and I only saw a blip on our screen three times before it disappeared. It was earlier while you were sleeping, Mo, and I never thought any more about it.
“There must be floating ships out here on the oceans, thousands of them,” suggested Mo.
“Many of them would have run aground by now,” added Beatrice.
“That’s why we must always have a watch on the bridge. Even though time passes slowly on the water, the unexpected can appear from nowhere, especially storms and other ships,” continued Marie.
Nothing much happened that night. Mo sat in the bridge until four, contemplating life, and every so often checked the dials and even tried the depth gauge once. It took several seconds to give him a reading of 2,700 feet. It was a long way to the bottom.
Pedro’s boat stayed a constant four hundred yards behind them and kept to the calmer water inside the bigger ship’s wake.
A sleepy Marie and one of her daughters came up to relieve him. He was ordered to the master stateroom, where Beatrice was asleep, having the night off from any watches. Mo had been more than happy take her watch as well.
By midday the next day, Marie calculated that they were within a hundred miles of Cozumel and the small engine’s fuel tank was showing three-quarter full. Mo poured in the extra fuel on board, filling up the two tanks the larger engines had used. It just filled them and he realized how thirsty the big engines were.
Pedro came in close and said he expected their engine would cut out in a couple of hours, and Mo readied ropes to set up a tow line.
The fishing vessel must have had a little in reserve as it lasted another four hours. At dusk Mo threw him the lines as the land mass of Cozumel showed up on the sixty-mile radar screen.
Earlier, Pedro spent an hour on board the Cutter explaining that his father had a large family on Cozumel, and they believed that the island, without the gangsters that had inhabited Roatán, would be peaceful and serene. He showed Marie on the map where he wanted to be taken. His family owned a large villa, a couple of fishing boats, and a strong jetty. Pedro also invited them to stay for a day, so that his family could supply them with fresh fruits and vegetables.
Mo first tried to tow with the smaller engine and it worked well at just under four knots. Pedro returned to his boat. Later that evening while everybody was outside watching Pedro’s boat being pulled along fifty feet behind, Mo remembered the cases from the stricken speed boat. He walked into the master stateroom and looked at them. They were untouched and he carefully opened the first bag.
It was full of Mexican bank notes under some dirty clothes. All the notes were brand new and still in wrappers. He closed the case and put it to one side. The next two were full of clothes on top and underneath row upon row of U.S. hundred dollar bills, again, all new. It looked like the same amount he had in his suitcase at the beginning, about a million dollars in each. The fourth was dirty clothes with some heavy boots in the bottom. The fifth was the same except for several bottles of Tequila. He added the bottles to the five unopened bottles he had pulled out of the other bags. The last bag took his breath away.
It was packed full of American bank notes and dozens of what looked like expensive and extremely beautiful pieces of jewelry—necklaces with stones, gold pieces of every size, very heavy and very expensive, and some of the biggest white, red and green stones he had ever seen. Again, everything was hidden under a change of clothes.
Mo decided to give the bag with the Mexican money to Pedro and he would keep the rest in case of an emergency.
An hour before dawn the next morning, and two hours after they had first seen the light of the still-working lighthouse on the southern tip of the island, Mo phoned Pedro and said that they would be slowing down in a few minutes, the depth was sixty feet and they were about a mile from the shore where Pedro wanted to be. They had run without lights the whole night and did not want to be seen by anybody out fishing. There had been one small blip on the screen an hour earlier, twenty miles away and heading due south.
The dawn slowly gained light and Pedro pointed to a boat dock with one fishing boat on it about two miles along the coast. It was in a low inlet and the roof of a farmhouse could be seen behind the beach and the inlet wall of grass.
Carefully, Marie guided the two craft in at three knots, the exhaust hardly making a noise, passing within several feet of the end of the dock. Pedro pointed the bow of their ship in to dock as the ropes were readied. Feet from touching the wooden dock Pe
dro cut the tow ropes and Marie quickly pointed the Cutter’s bow out to sea. They were leaving nothing to chance.
They all watched as Pedro tied the boat up and ran down the wooden dock to the house. Several minutes later he returned with several people who helped him pull the boat further in, and tied it in front of a similar old fishing boat. Pedro raised the satellite phone, indicating he wanted Mo to call him.
“Mo, everything is OK here on Cozumel. My family is fine and there is no trouble. I have one side of the dock open for you. There is enough room for you to moor the ship. It’s not as strong as the one in Roatán but it will be OK as long as you are gentle and there is no storm.” Mo told Marie it was safe and she prepared to take the ship in.
Marie wanted to be prepared to exit quickly just in case and she came around slowly and turned to face south a dozen feet from the end of the dock. The depth was twelve feet and she had six feet to spare. Slowly she reversed in with the rudder hard over to close with the people waiting for thrown lines. Lu, Mo and Beatrice threw out the lines as they neared.
The ship lightly touched the 50 feet of available wood and the whole structure groaned as the ship pressed against it. There were old permanent truck tires to cushion the blow, the dock held and Marie closed down the engine.
Mo decided to put on the cowboy belt with the two Magnums before he left the ship and he handed the two machine pistols from the bookcase to Marie and Beatrice. Both girls laughed at him and told him he looked like a Chinese cowboy with his gun belt, and that he had put it on far too tight. He ignored the remarks from the ladies and asked Lu to be the guard on the ship, allow nobody aboard, and he gave her a machine pistol from inside the couch. He was shown how to wear the belt like an American cowboy would, then went into the stateroom and picked up the one bag for Pedro and closed the door behind him.
“I’m glad you are going to protect us with all the guns I told you were on board,” smiled Pedro seeing the well-armed Mo. Mo noticed that the M-16 he had given Pedro at sea was being carried into the farmhouse.
“I think we can now defend ourselves, Pedro. I have a little payment here for you in return for a month’s supply of everything we can eat except fish,” returned Mo, handing Pedro his bag. “Fish, I can catch myself.”
They were introduced to Pedro’s father’s large family. They looked rather shocked at the well-armed visitors. It was peaceful here and very little in their lives had changed since January. They weren’t happy until Pedro, in Spanish, gave them a quick rundown on why they were armed. After that the Mexican family seemed to understand and happily welcomed the visitors into their house.
It was a big old house and was very Spanish. Mo placed the bag on the floor while Pedro rapidly told the several members of the family that the big ship would leave very soon and they needed supplies. There was an old American Ford outside, rusty with not one lick of paintwork on it and Mo was sure that it didn’t run.
“There is a store in the area,” Pedro said to Mo. “There hasn’t been a ferry for months and the stores are running dry in the tourist areas. There aren’t very many tourists on the island. The last ferry, the day before New Year’s Eve, took many tourists to the mainland, to Cancun. Many of the aircraft also departed that day and never returned. The next load of tourists was expected on January 2nd, but the aircraft never arrived and the ferry carrying the tourists in from the mainland also never arrived. My uncle says that there are only about 300 tourists on the island and the shops by the tourist areas are now straining to feed them. Many tourists have run out of money and are looking for work on the farms. He knows of one store that is not close to the tourist hotels, and with money could fill up his truck with what you need. My uncle is not rich and you will need to pay for your supplies.”
“Then I suggest you look in the bag, and I would suggest, Pedro, you look in private. There is enough in there to purchase our supplies and more for you for a long time. I might even come back here if I’m not welcome in America,” replied Mo.
Pedro carried the bag into a bedroom, shouted to the kids to show the visitors to the chairs on the porch where they could sit in comfort, and he gave orders for food to be prepared.
“Also, my uncle says a storm is coming; he says his right leg hurts and when that happens, it means that a storm is coming in from the east.”
“May I assume that when his left leg hurts, the storm is coming in from the west?” joked Mo.
“You are getting the picture, Señor Wang,” laughed Pedro, closing the bedroom door for privacy. Mo was starting to feel good here. The people all smiled at them and everybody got busy to feed the guests.
Fruit juice was served and it wasn’t long before Pedro returned with a pile of new bills in his hand and a look of shock on his face. He thanked Mo profusely. He explained to Mo that he could get some diesel for him and that they should get all the cans off the boats and see if he could get them all filled from the store. It had gas and diesel pumps. Mo heard the old Ford start up and head over to the jetty. He followed it and carried all the empty diesel canisters off the boat, filling up the bed of the truck.
The truck sped off with Pedro, his father and his Mexican uncle.
Mo looked up at the sky. It looked impossible that there could be a storm brewing in the close proximity, but In China he had learned that farmers were usually right when they predicted the weather.
A fantastic breakfast of several different fruits and cereals was presented to the visitors by the women and children of the house. Marie and Beatrice spoke a little Spanish and with their French managed a conversation with the ladies. Mo called Lu and her children from the ship; the farm was safe and there was no danger.
They were full and the heat of the day rose as they sat and enjoyed the peace. There wasn’t much to do and they waited for the truck to return. It arrived with the tanks full of diesel and nothing else.
“My father is preparing stores for you, Mo,” shouted Pedro as they drew up to the jetty. “There is a boxed American bread-toaster machine and three new bread-making machines in the store. They are old, the pictures on the packets are losing their color but my father found a device to change the power to make them work on the ship. Do you want them?” Mo nodded that he did. “There is also an old television that is working and a Computer Dish Internet system. It is in an old box and says “Hughes Net” on it. You can have the lot for the old pistol I’m sure you don’t need any more. The store owner feels like she needs something for protection. I have lots of money but I wanted to know if you need the stuff.”
Mo got excited. As an engineer he knew what Pedro was talking about and he could play with the Internet system and maybe get direct communications with the Chinese satellites. He asked Pedro’s father if he wanted the old pistol back Mo had bought from him and he shook his head no. Mo went to the master stateroom and returned with the old pistol and boxes of ammunition he had purchased on Roatán. He handed them to Pedro and then helped get the heavy canisters on board to refuel the tanks.
The first tank the ship had been using for the small engine took the first hundred and fifty gallons. That wasn’t bad for 70 hours of cruising at five knots, and he thought that Marie was slightly off in her calculations. Three miles per gallon was the correct usage, or just over two gallons an hour at five knots. The level had been below the three-quarter level and Mo now knew that the four tanks held about 400 gallons each.
He emptied the rest, fifty gallons, into one of the two tanks he had used for the big Cummins and it was still thirsty. He had already emptied the two hundred gallons, a hundred gallons into each tank from the Roatán supply, and they still sat under the full mark.
The truck left and returned an hour later with another 200 gallons. “This is all they have, Señor, their tank is empty,” stated Pedro. “Tomorrow I will buy gas for my boat and go fishing. We have a load of food supplies for you and I will return again in an hour.”
By the time Pedro returned, Mo had all the tanks filled to the br
im and still had forty gallons tied to the railing. This time the old Ford was full of supplies: bread flour, corn flour, tins of baked beans and several other types of food, boxes of Mexican cookies, a pile of freshly picked corn, vegetables and several types of fruit.
This time all the girls helped carry the supplies aboard and every kitchen cupboard and the fridge were filled to capacity. There was no milk, but several pounds of butter, still frozen bacon and pork roasts were in the load.
His uncle pushed a wheelbarrow up from behind the house and in it was produce from his garden: fresh herbs, lettuce, onions, turnips and tomatoes, as well as several dozen eggs in old and used containers. This was packed away and the visitors said their thanks to the Mexican family.
Lunch was ready and Pedro’s uncle patted Mo on the shoulder and pointed to dark clouds appearing over the eastern horizon.
“You should keep my satellite phone, Pedro,” stated Mo over lunch. “I put a phone charger in the bag and you must keep it fully charged. You can leave it on the charger at all times, but keep it turned off apart for a couple of hours every Saturday afternoon. If I want to contact you, I will call you around dusk on a Saturday. I’m sure that your time and American time are about the same. Just listen in for a call. Now, if you need to call me, here is my phone number. Only call me if you need to tell me any important news. I hope to return in a few months for a visit. I suggest you buy all the fuel you can and see if you can purchase a gas generator or two. You will run out of electricity here on the island one day and you will need gas to generate power. Try and keep the phone charged as long as possible. It will only be charged and usable for 48 hours on standby once you run out of electricity or gas for your generators. If your electricity goes off, call me and tell me how long your gas will last and maybe I can organize some for you. Also, make sure that the airport runway is clear. I might be able to get an aircraft in here to supply you.” Pedro nodded.
