“Dad, the SUV is full.”
“There’s room for one in the front seat, and one can squeeze in between the supplies. I’ve got luggage racks on the roof, so two of you – you and Ron would be my suggestion – can ride up there.” He laughed. “I know it’s against the law, but these are extenuating circumstances, and at the moment you don’t have to worry about the highway patrol nailing you.”
“You have supplies up there, too.”
“It’s a darn good thing you both have watched your weight. You can squeeze in nicely.”
That settled, they filled the SUV with gas in anticipation of their next attempt to get to Gaviota. Then, they all took advantage of the down time to clean their weapons. Each had a road to watch, looking to see if the cars were leaving the roadblocks, or if any others were out searching for them. It was boring, but boredom was suddenly a welcome relief.
* * * * *
The skiff took Stacey back to the La Sirena so she could change into dry clothes and pick up a few things to take with her on the cutter.
When told he was going to be responsible for sailing the boat to Catalina, Glen said, “Mom, what about Dad and Denise? The boat will have to be here for them.”
Stacey explained the timing problem the container ship had created. She added, “Don’t worry; the cutter will be here to take us to Catalina when we pick the others up tonight.”
“What if they’re not there again?”
“In the first place, they will be. In the second place, I do not intend to leave until we have them on board. Settle in at The Isthmus and wait for us. We’ll be there a couple of days after you, at most.”
“I’m having word relayed via our antiquated, but right now very useful, communications system for those at The Isthmus to be expecting you,” said Captain Kotchel. “Go around to the second harbor, the one on the southwest side. There’s good anchorage there and, unlike the one on the northeast side, it is well protected from the weather – and is hidden from view.”
Stacey and the captain got back on the skiff, and Glen and Millie started out for Catalina, using only the diesel engine for power.
“I didn’t say anything at the time,” the Coast Guard captain said to Stacey as they motored toward the cutter, “but you weren’t entirely honest with your son.”
“In what way?”
“We are making a last run north now, and will return tonight to watch for your husband’s signal. After that, we have to go south to intercept that container ship. The way you expressed it to your son, we would wait for your husband and daughter no matter what. Obviously, that isn’t true. We can’t wait. If they aren’t there to signal us, we have to go.”
“They’ll be there. If not right at midnight, then within an hour or two, I’m sure.”
“If you’re so sure, then you’ll have no qualms about promising not to jump in the water again if they’re not.”
“I know Zach and his parents. They’ll show.”
“But, on the unlikely possibility that they are unable to…”
Stacey grimaced and hesitated. Whispering through gritted teeth in a throaty growl, “Okay, yes, I promise!”
“Good,” said the captain. “This time, I’ll give them a two hour leeway. Not a minute more. Those people on that container ship are ruthless, killing everyone and everything in their path. We have to stop them, no matter what the cost. We will leave at two a.m. whether your people are there or not.”
Chapter 52
NOTHING had changed in the area around Vandenberg by noon. Nor had it changed at one p.m., or two, or three. It seemed certain there would be no change the rest of the day, so the elder Glen Arthur conducted a quick poll of everyone.
They all felt they stood a better chance of avoiding bloodshed if they doubled back through Santa Maria. They decided to leave at five p.m., which would give them ample time, almost an extra five hours, to get to Gaviota. They could make it by midnight even if they ran into minor problems. They could not gauge how much time a major problem might cost them.
At five, they motored cautiously out from behind the missile silo. Nothing moved around them as they drove east toward Santa Maria. They were all thankful that, at least at that point, they were alone.
* * * * *
By the time the SUV and Mercedes approached Santa Maria, the Coast Guard cutter was turning back from their northern cruise. They were told that there was a vessel in distress in the waters off Pismo Beach, but after searching the ocean in that area for several hours, they didn’t see a single vessel… much less one in distress.
The contact on shore that relayed the distress message to the cutter at one in the morning, said he heard nothing further and had seen nothing in the water all day. They concluded that it had to be a nuisance call or the boat had sunk.
There was nothing to prevent the cutter from arriving at the pickup point on time.
* * * * *
The senior Arthur, still in the lead, made stops along a side street so they could check the 101 for motorcycles with their binoculars. After only two stops, they spotted several bikes on the highway. There were also bikers still blocking the side streets.
“There’s only two or three on each street, so we could easily bust through,” Zach reasoned. “The problem with that, of course, is that the others will hear and be on our tails in seconds. There will be less risk in going back to Vandenberg and blasting our way past the fewer locals.”
“There is one other alternative,” said his father. “I didn’t bring it up before because it’s long and risky.”
“What is it?” Zach asked. All the others looked at the older man expectantly.
“We could go east on the 166. It’s not too far from here.”
“The highway to Bakersfield?”
“It could take us there if we wanted, but I was thinking about the turnoffs. If we take the right one and make the right connections when doubling back this way, we will end back on the 101 north of Gaviota, but south of here.”
“That explains the ‘long.’ And the risk?”
“That I can remember which is the right turnoff and what are the right connections. And, of course, that the roads haven’t been destroyed.”
“What are the chances you’ll remember the roads?” asked George.
“I haven’t gotten us lost yet, have I?”
“If you find the right roads, and they're still there,” asked Zach, “how long will it take?”
“If all works perfectly, probably about five hours.”
Zach looked at his watch. “That would get us there a little before eleven. If we run into trouble, we will only have an hour to solve the problem.” He looked around.
“It beats having to kill some people,” George opined.
They all nodded, some reluctantly,
“It’s our best course of action,” Mae stated flatly. She looked directly at the two men. “If anyone questions whether or not my husband’s faculties have diminished,” she said pointedly, “I’ll match him against any of you in a memory contest.”
No one took her up on it. As they started toward their vehicles, they heard someone yelling off in the distance. Moments later they heard motorcycles engines starting up in the same area.
They had been spotted.
“The 166, Dad!” Zach called as they jumped into their vehicles. They turned the cars around and sped north toward the highway that led to the hills between the coast and California’s vast Central Valley.
Somewhere along that highway was a turnoff that would lead them back to Gaviota… if they could evade the motorcycle gang… and if Glen Arthur could remember the way.
The motorcycles congregated from all the side streets. There were men on over thirty bikes, and they had the SUV and Mercedes in their sights.
They were less than a mile behind and gaining fast.
Chapter 53
BY THE time they reached the highway, the lead motorcycles were within five hundred yards of the vehicles. They coul
d see there were not as many bikes as before, but thirty was more than enough to worry them. The gap got smaller and smaller as they sped toward the hills.
It had started to rain – unusual for that time of the year, but they assumed the global weather patterns had changed along with everything else. Neither those in the cars nor those on the motorcycles changed their actions because of the weather. The situation was too intense to let up in any way.
When the bikes got close, Zach caught up to the Ford SUV and drove alongside it, filling both lanes. When a biker tried to encroach on the narrow spaces between them or on the shoulders of the highway to get close shots at the drivers, one car or the other moved over to block the way. Those in the car were running low on ammo, so they didn’t shoot as long as the bikers were kept at bay behind them. They could only guess that the bikers were not firing away from behind for the same reason.
Driving alongside one another worked until they came across an abandoned car in the road. One of the vehicles had to drop back and then speed up again to keep ahead of the bikes.
Several bikers tried to get ahead by taking frontage roads, but they were soon blocked by stalled vehicles on the roadway, and they had to double back and return to the chase on the highway.
When the bikers finally realized they were never going to get alongside to get shots at the drivers on that stretch of the highway, they lost their patience and opened fire. When they did, Denise leaned out and shot at the tires of the leading bikes. She hit two, and they flipped, taking three more with them as they slid along pavement slickened by the rain.
The other bikers slowed for a minute but were urged on by a fallen biker who survived his crash. Most were right on the tails of the cars again. Several had inexplicably stopped, two behind the fallen bikes, and one stopped right after passing them.
Denise was out of ammo, so Ron and George leaned out and tried to shoot the tires out from under the closest bikes. They got rid of a few, but there were still almost twenty bikers after them. Ron soon ran out of ammunition, as well. George kept shooting for a while to keep the bikes at bay, but he, too, ran out of ammo. The only weapons they had left with bullets were Zach’s AK-47 and the single shot weapons his parents had.
Up ahead, they could see that the highway widened. Once they were completely out of ammo, there was going to be no way to stop the bikes from moving to the sides of the cars and shooting the drivers. The rain was coming down harder, but the determined bikers kept coming.
Zach handed his AK-47 back to Denise. “Keep them away from this side as long as you can,” he instructed her. They were left of the SUV, so the bikers would be able to get close to the driver’s side window when the road widened. “To save ammo, put it on single shot and don’t shoot until they come alongside.”
Mae had her window rolled down and her shotgun at the ready on the right side of the highway.
The bikes moved over to the sides of the highway as they approached the side section so they could get in position to surge ahead for shots at the drivers. Denise got a bead on the one in front on the left side, but it slowed down, slowing the others. They could see it pull over to let the others by. It stopped in the middle of the highway. Then, another slowed and stopped. One did pull up, and Denise shot the front tire out from under it.
On the other side, Mae shot the lead biker, and his bike turned into the SUV and bounced off. The caroming bike tripped up two more that were following it.
Looking back, they could see that the remaining bikes were slowing. Several more stopped. Six others kept after the cars at first, but when they realized they were alone, they, too, stopped.
The cars kept going for ten miles with the passengers looking back anxiously and the drivers keeping their eyes on the rear view mirrors. When it was clear they were alone, they slowed to a stop alongside one another in the middle of the highway.
“What was that all about?” George asked the senior Arthur, who was directly across from him. He spoke loudly over the sounds of the falling rain. “Why did they stop?”
“I’m not sure, but I have an idea,” the elder man replied.
“Me, too,” said Zach, “and I bet it’s the same one. He was looking at his dashboard gauges. “We’re about empty.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” his father agreed. “They’re out of gas. That is why there were fewer of them and why they were so blasted persistent. And patient enough to wait for us all night. They saw the extra gas and were bound and determined to get it.”
“They’d kill people just for gasoline?” Denise wanted to know, perplexed at the thought of how ruthless that was.
“Those kinds of people would kill for any reason,” her grandfather told her. “But in this case it was a really big reason. They need their bikes, and there may not be gas for hundreds of miles. That’s probably why those cars didn’t move from their roadblocks, too.”
“What now, Dad? I’ll be running out of fuel myself pretty soon.”
“The turnoff is about ten miles ahead,” he replied. “Keep going as long as you can. When you run out, all of you hop in the SUV. It will be a little crowded, but without those bikers and local thugs to hassle us, we’ll reach Gaviota in plenty of time.”
Chapter 54
THE Mercedes ran out of fuel five minutes later, so the four occupants moved their backpacks and weapons to the SUV. Because of the rain, they moved more of the goods to the roof and they all squeezed into the SUV.
It was after dark when they found the turnoff. They decided the risk of being ambushed in that open area was less than having an accident, so the senior Arthur turned on his headlights. They only saw two people as they traveled along, and neither of them appeared threatening. After two wrong turns, they ended up on a road Glen was certain was the right one. It was ten p.m.
“It’s not much over an hour from here,” he said. “We should be there with time to spare.”
The rain was coming down in a torrent by the time they reached the final crossroads before they arrived at Highway 101. They turned right and headed west.
Fifteen minutes later, the rain had dwindled to a light drizzle. Looking ahead, the senior Arthur hit his brakes hard and the SUV skidded from side to side on the wet road, finally coming to a stop with its front tires at the edge of a steep precipice.
Pushing away the cans, blankets, and boxes that had crushed him against the side of the vehicle during the frenzied braking, Zach cried, “Dad, what is it?”
“The bridge.”
“What about the bridge?”
“It’s gone.”
The SUV’s lights shined out over a thirty-foot gully that was dry most of the year; but at that moment, it was full of rushing water. There was a concrete foundation, pilings, and portions of twisted metal girders half in and half out of the water, but no bridge.
Glen backed the SUV up a few feet and set the parking brake. He reached behind the front seat and pulled out a flashlight, then got out of the car. The others followed. Zach had the flashlight they were going to use to signal the cutter. They aimed the lights onto the water in both directions; it was easily ten to fifteen feet wide as far as they could see. They couldn’t tell how deep it was just by looking, but they knew it had to be deep enough to make it impassable. The current was too strong for them to try to ford it there.
“Is there another bridge?” Zach asked.
“There’s probably one somewhere, but I have no idea where, or how far,” his father replied. “Hop in and we’ll look.”
Having just come from the north, they knew there wasn’t one there, so they drove south. After driving half an hour with no luck, Zach suggested they stop.
“I saw some spots as we passed that looked more or less level,” he said. “Do you know of any place shallow enough for us to drive across?”
“I have no idea,” his dad replied. “I’ve never seen water in that gully before.”
The rain had stopped, and while the water was rushing at a slower rate, it
was still far from calm. They got out of the vehicle and again shined the lights on the water as they walked along the edge. They came to a spot where the water widened to almost thirty feet.
Zach walked across and the water never got higher than his lower thighs. In the places he walked, the ground underneath was covered with rounded rocks. Spread out over thirty feet instead of ten or fifteen, the current was not too strong. It barely threatened to move him downstream, so it shouldn’t push the SUV at all. He looked at his father. “Do you think you can cross here?”
“Not knowing much about what the ground is like below the water, it’s a risk,” his father said. “But, it’s the only chance we have of getting there on time. And, what the heck, this is what a four-wheel-drive is for!” He got behind the wheel of the SUV and, while the others walked alongside, he drove into the water.
The tires gripped the rocks underneath and the vehicle moved along well at first. When it was half way across, one front tire hit sand. The front of the vehicle on that side dropped several inches, but it kept moving. When the back wheel hit the sand, the back also dropped. The vehicle kept moving, but slower. Then, both front tires hit a soft spot and the entire front dropped almost six inches.
The vehicle almost came to a standstill. Glen pushed down a little harder on the accelerator, and it began to move a little faster. The front tires found some gravel and the car moved ahead. They were now within ten feet of the other side.
Then, both the front and the back tires hit soft ground. The whole vehicle dropped six inches. Glen again pushed down on the accelerator, but the wheels spun and the car sunk deeper. It stopped moving.
“Get behind and push,” Glen called out.
While the others got behind and pushed, Glen handled the steering wheel and the accelerator. No matter how hard they pushed, or how hard Glen pushed down on the accelerator, the only direction the SUV moved was deeper into the muck.
Seeking Safe Harbor: Suddenly Everything Changed (The Seeking Series) Page 19
