Albury continued to listen and look. As the crew was at their most vulnerable point, the six-foot-four-inch seaman’s eyes adjusted to a sight just off his starboard bow, some one hundred yards away. It was like nothing he had ever seen. The night air was cool and wet. His boat sat perched, floating on the black, bottomless sea. Hell could have resided below these depths for all he knew. His close friend, Bobby Alazar, had been killed not far from there, just a few months before. Albury did not consider himself to be a superstitious man, until now.
The vision appeared as a ghost dancing on the water, an apparition of flapping white sheets that he could hear fluttering over the hailer. Albury was but for a minute, stunned. Then, without giving it a second thought, he did what his aggressive, alpha male intuitions told him to do. He jammed the boat’s two throttle levers forward and charged the vision. The two outboards roared like dogs fighting over a piece of meat as the razor sharp propellers slipped through the air and water, trying to grab a bite.
“Dr. Pepper, what’s happening?” Del asked over the radio, hearing the noise of the roaring engines.
“Pepsi, do you have a contact on your radar? It should be about three hundred yards off your starboard bow,” Albury said, holding the mic with one hand and the wheel with the other.
Del looked over at Roberto who popped his head up from the radar hood, nodding in the affirmative. How could we have missed this? he thought.
“Yes, Dr. Pepper! You should be bearing down on him any minute now.”
As a large, rolling swell lifted the charging Mako up twelve feet over the other swells, Albury could see the vision with full clarity. The hull and mast came into view as he came to within fifty feet of the vessel. She was a trimaran, about fifty feet in length and in the midst of coming about in the wind with the sails ruffling about. The captain had just brought his boat up from Marathon and was changing course to head west toward Key Largo. Albury stopped the Mako and waited as the craft sailed by.
“Everyone hold your position,” he instructed into the mic.
The rain picked up its intensity and as hard as they tried, the crew of the Vibrations could not see what Albury had found. Alazar continued to peer into the hood of the radar while Del stood on the bow in the rain staring through a pair of field glasses.
The captain of the sailboat sat in the cockpit holding the tiller arm, completely oblivious to what he had stumbled upon. He watched Albury stare at him as he passed. The look gave him even more goose bumps than the cold night air had delivered already. The exchanging stares lasted for what seemed like minutes. Albury’s first instinct was to charge the boat again, only this time ramming her. The trimaran was obviously a home-built plywood craft. She would sink with the first blow within the span of a few seconds. Albury developed a pity for the man, a fellow captain at sea and with who knew what else on board. Children? A wife? The trimaran was not close enough to either the Cho Chos or Gordo. It was obvious he could not see what was going on. Albury followed the crudely shaped craft past the reef line into the much calmer water until the man and his boat disappeared, sailing off into the night.
“All clear, just a lost sailboat,” Albury announced over the radio.
“Thank you Dr. Pepper, good work,” Del answered with a sigh of relief.
* * * * *
Attrition
Despite the numerous complaints from the homeowners who lived along the Key Largo Cut, Owen Sands made no apologies about running any of the noisy high-powered patrol boats through the man-made canyon during the midnight hours. To get there though, they first had to navigate the winding South Creek of the John Pennekamp State Park.
•
At the same time, the La Pinta cruised into the mouth of the North Creek under the power of her one running engine. Chino watched the gauges nervously as the oil pressure started to drop down to eight pounds. The 454-powerplant required at least fifteen to maintain adequate lubrication of all the bearings and other moving parts within the motor. With the drop in oil pressure came an increase in engine temperature that was approaching two hundred and eighty degrees.
Alberto counted the tributaries along the banks of the North Creek. Taylor Creek was the third on the right.
“There it is,” Alberto called out.
“Thank God, I don’t think this thing will make it much longer.”
“Take it easy man, just a little longer.”
As Chino turned the boat into the mouth of the smaller tributary, both were shocked by what they saw.
“A fucking fork. I don’t remember a fork Alberto.”
“Shit man. What do we do now?”
“Call Del?” Chino suggested.
“Fuck that. No way. I’m not calling him.”
“Then let’s flip for it.”
“Do you have a coin, man? I don’t got a coin Chino.”
“Alberto, you are totally useless,” Chino said, digging into his right pocket and then his left.
“You don’t got a coin either.”
“Shut up. I don’t want to hear it. We’ll go left.”
Chino powered up the tired motor as smoke eased from the vents in the engine box. The engine temperature had dropped as did the oil pressure, hovering at four pounds.
The two idled through the winding creek as mangrove trees brushed both sides of the boat. The boat was extremely hard to maneuver with only one engine although the power-steering pump was mounted to the one running engine. Chino realized it could have been worse.
Instead of culminating at the end of Grouper Lane, the creek the Cho Chos had chosen opened up into Lake Largo, close to the mouth of the Cross Key Cut.
“Shit, we should have gone right!” Chino said.
“I was thinking right, but I didn’t want to say anything,” Alberto added.
“I probably wouldn’t have listened to you anyway,” Chino replied, conceding his mistake.
“What are we going to do? This engine isn’t going to last five more minutes.”
“Let’s make it to the Cut. I have an idea,” Chino said.
The La Pinta made it to the mouth of the Cut before the engine stopped in a flurry of racket and smoke. Luckily the tide was high, forcing water away from the ocean and toward the bay. Like a household vacuum cleaner, the current sucked the 24-foot boat into the mouth of the Cut toward the bay. The Cho Chos fended the boat from both sides as it traveled from side to side, riding the fast paced flow of water. Lining both sides of the Cut were steep walls, twenty feet high in some places of carved coral rock, a cross-section of the island cut down to its core. Cast into the walls were petrified fossils, some dating back millions of years.
“Once we make it past the bridge, we’ll have to beach it on the starboard side,” Chino said.
“What do we do then?”
“There are some trees and a retaining wall. We’ll have to dump this stuff there for now.”
“Roberto’s not going to like that,” Alberto warned.
“Roberto doesn’t have much of a choice now, does he?” Chino answered, straining as he pushed the heavy boat off the wall.
As the bridge approached, the two climbed up onto the bow. The current was moving along at a brisk pace, close to ten knots. The Cut now resembled a river amongst a flash flood rather than a navigable waterway. Both men prepared for the bridge that had concrete stanchions supporting the span in the middle. Each one had flashing spray coming from the leading edge with a wake trailing behind. The idea was to guide the boat under the bridge without hitting any of the stanchions. The Cho Chos failed miserably. The last push from the coral-faced wall sent the boat into a sideways attitude that it maintained until striking the first stanchion broadside. With a crash, the boat spun around, throwing Alberto from the bow into the cold, flowing water. Chino managed to cast a bowline to his brother and hold him close.
“Oye, are you alright? Maricón, I think we cracked the boat!” Chino yelled.
“I’m gonna swim the boat over to these rocks,” Alberto sa
id as his loud voice echoed within the tall walls.
“Just beach the damn thing.”
Alberto, while not very smart, was strong and was born with the gift of endurance. As the Cut opened up to Florida Bay, the walls descended to the water’s edge, made up of a rock-lined shore. Alberto managed to climb over the rocks and maintain a footing where he pulled the boat against the current toward the shore. Once past the spoil of the Cut, the La Pinta laid into the rocks, resting with little effort.
Chino climbed to the top of the hill overlooking the gorge that was the Cross Key Cut. Less than a hundred feet away was a public storage complex. There were two hundred mini-warehouse storage units contained in seven separate buildings. Each unit had its own rollup entrance, about half the size of a regular single car garage door. All were accessible via a series of driveways that wound throughout the complex. This particular complex maintained an average occupancy rate of seventy percent and on this night, Chino was lucky to find an unused stall within the southwestern quadrant of the complex, the area closest to the beached boat.
The rollup doors had built into the bottom frame a hasp that tenants would attach a padlock to secure their belongings. The unused stalls were left unlocked. Chino chose a unit that measured eight-by-ten feet and within minutes, the two were lugging their load up the embankment towards the complex.
During their ordeal, two very prominent things went wrong with the La Pinta. First, the gasket around the running engine’s oil pan had developed a threatening leak that accounted for the smoke and falling oil pressure. Second, the boat had a slow leak in the rubber tube that housed the series of flexible U joints that drove the propulsion end of the outdrive. The hose was a shield between the bilge and the seawater on the other side. The problem went virtually unnoticed for months. Gradually, small amounts of water seeped into the hole that had started out small, but due to the fact that the hose was corrugated, old and dried out, it began to crack, allowing more water to enter. The flexible hose was implemented because the outdrive was designed to tilt up and down and also turn from right to left which was why, after getting lost in the small tributary and making many unnecessary turns, the hose was leaking to the point where the bilge pump could not keep up.
Chino had made it to the top of the hill with the last bale when he heard the noise of two high-powered marine engines pacing through Lake Largo, the body of water that sat at the mouth of the Cut. Both men looked at each other before shuffling the last few bales to the storage unit. Chino shut the roll-up door while Alberto made a run for the boat. Both men were starting to panic. Their boat was still laden with residue and if confronted, they would surely be detained and lose their boat, not to mention the possibility of the authorities finding the load stashed within the storage complex. Chino watched as Alberto stopped at the edge of the hill. He looked down at the Cut while holding his forehead in his hands. Shit! Chino thought, where did it go?
By the time Chino joined his brother’s side it was gone. The current within the Cut had taken the 24-foot boat to the bottom of the murky water. The next action was done out of pure fear as the sound of throbbing engines came, echoing from the walls of the Cut.
“Look! Policía!” Alberto whispered, pointing to the approaching boat. The two made a duck-walk back toward the storage unit. Once there, Chino rolled the door up high enough for the two to enter and then closed it behind them seconds before a stray spotlight shown down the corridor containing their bay.
•
Joel watched as the waterfront homes along the Cut became illuminated as they passed. Owen continued to drive as jeers from the residents, some of whom were standing on their porches in nightclothes, were directed at them.
The Indian, with its blasting exhaust headers, six hundred horsepower engines and blazing spotlights was despised and Jordan Cheney would have more than one angry phone call to deal with in the morning.
“What’s that?” Joel asked, pointing to some oily bubbles at the base of the bridge.
“Nothing. Probably just some shrimp. They run through this cut when the water gets cold,” Owen said.
Ten minutes later they were docking at the Deep Six Marina, a large dry storage facility on Key Largo’s bayside.
“Sector to 1903,” the radio squawked.
“1903 here; go Sector,” Owen replied.
“We have an inbound target approaching the North Creek. Are you available to intercept?”
“10-4 Sector. We are transferring to a different unit but will be en route in five.”
“Roger that 1903. Sector out.”
Joel looked over the 17-foot Boston Whaler, the much smaller open-utility boat they were docked behind. This was going to be a great transition from what he had just driven.
“Boats like these are how we get the job done,” Owen said. “Everything else is just propaganda for the public’s benefit.”
* * * * *
Depot
The Chris-Craft called Old Faithful glided into the dock space in front of Kevin Pinder’s Taylor Creek trailer for the second time of the busy night. Kevin’s partner, Gil Lindback, sat on the edge of the wooden dock with his feet outstretched to fend off the boat as it approached. Red shut down the engines, making the docking that much quieter.
“This is it boys,” Red said.
“I thought we were getting three loads?” Lindback questioned.
“The Cho Chos haven’t gotten here yet?”
“Unless I slept through it, and that’s not very likely.”
“Shit. They got their load long before us!”
“That was at least two hours ago,” Lindback said.
“We didn’t pass them on the way in,” Red added.
“On the way out, stop by and check with Plimpton. Maybe he knows something.”
“That’s a no-no,” Stump said.
“I think you’d better reconsider,” Lindback suggested.
“When I get out into the open water, I’ll try to call Roberto. He’ll know what to do.”
Winding out through the channel was easy. Red jockeyed the wheel like he was driving a bright red Ferrari through the paces at the Miami Grand Prix. The feeling was great. Both his loads were delivered, and since it was raining, there was no need to bathe the deck with the cleaning solutions.
Several clouds moved in which made the seascape darker and more clandestine than it was before. On nights like this, the area in front of Key Largo stayed bright from the street light on the shore, but past the mangrove point and south for two miles, there was nothing. Desolate mangroves covered the shore. These were wetlands and there were no signs of civilization for miles.
To make up time, Red augmented the boat’s power to almost full throttle, increasing the boat’s speed by ten knots. Red looked down at the illuminated compass showing 210 degrees. The heading was perfect. They would arrive back at their home dock in twenty minutes.
•
Less than a mile away, Alvin Hipshire slept alone on his home-built trimaran. The three-hulled sailboat constructed entirely of plywood and Fiberglas took every bit of four years to construct. The boat was basically self-sufficient, drawing electric from the sun through solar collectors crudely mounted on the aft deck. A small windmill affixed to the cabin’s hardtop provided limited twelve volt service and also aided in recharging his battery cells.
Hipshire despised civilization. His neighbors jeered him for building his sailboat in the backyard of his home in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He was thought of as a crazy old dreamer who didn’t amount to much, but when he quit his job as an environmental consultant, sold his home and moved aboard the Dream, all were proven wrong.
The dark side of John Pennekamp State Park and Lake Largo was the only place he could find where it was quiet. He imagined this was the way it looked ten thousand years before and going back in time ten thousand or ten million years for that matter, was just fine with him.
The custom-designed bunk was warm and comfortable. A large wool blanket
kept it that way. The garment had been quilted by his aunt and given to him as a going-away present. It was bright red with baby blue panels. Patterns were sewn in depicting different seascapes and lighthouses. Not quite his style, but it was warm. It served a purpose and Hipshire was not one to look a gift horse in the mouth.
He lay there, half asleep. Tomorrow he would do some much-needed maintenance on his boat. Even Dreams succumbed to time and corrosion. This area was heaven, he thought to himself. The night air was cool and clear. There wasn’t a sound for miles. Earlier, Hipshire turned off his anchor light so he could see a more unobstructed view of the stars. With a sextant in his hand he could plot ‘til his heart desire. No LORAN-C or fancy video screens. It was by the seat of his pants, or nothing at all.
•
The 26-foot Old Faithful forged ahead. A quick look at the gauges; oil temperature right and left, okay, compass heading of 210 degrees, still on course. Even the voltmeters were showing considerable improvement despite earlier trouble he noticed with one of the batteries. Red looked up from the illuminated gauges. He hated how his eyes had to adjust back to the darkness ahead. There were no markers or anything else for that matter to hit on the dark side of Key Largo…or was there...
SMASH!
Red and Stump felt the craft lurch upward toward the sky. Both held on for their lives fearing the worst.
Hipshire felt the massive surge of energy hit the side of his boat. The craft sank to the port, and then to starboard, bouncing back up again, throwing Hipshire to the deck. While on his back, he looked up as the entire cabin top, one he had milled and constructed himself by hand, disappeared, leaving the bright stars shining through the scattered clouds overhead.
Mid Ocean Page 14