Dangerous Shores: Book Two; Hell or High Water

by Christine Conaway

  “Frank, I feel like we are abandoning them. How can we not help?”

  “For one thing, he, the Staff Sergeant gave me an order. I was military too long not to obey.

  “Oh hooray! Look…there’s the boat. They got through it just in time the gate is closed. Oh my God, at the very last second they came screaming through.”

  Frank looked around for Dan, but he still wasn’t in sight. He could hear the sound of the Zodiac as he came speeding up behind them.

  “Frank, I think you better stop. They are waving their arms like crazy at us.”

  Frank did as she asked and kicked it out of gear. Their momentum moved them along but they were slowing. He saw that someone in the Zodiac was waving both arms at them. He had no choice but to stop.

  Ellen could only see the Staff Sergeant and the driver. The other men were not in sight and she wondered if he had not picked the two men on shore up after all.

  Then she saw them. Their uniforms were dark with blood. Two men lay in the bottom of the boat and another was draped over the middle seat. The front of the Sergeant’s uniform was covered in blood, but he was the one standing and waving at them.

  “Hannah, we’re going to need some medical help out here.”

  The Zodiac came close and Alan caught the line that was thrown. He pulled them up tight against them and cleated the line off. “Aw gees, what happened?”

  Two of the soldiers were down on the floor. Both were moving but in great pain.

  Alan bailed over the side and went to the guy draped over the seat. He felt his neck for a pulse.

  “Don’t bother, he’s gone. Both of these guys are still alive.” The Sergeant said as he began to pull the shirt off one of his men. “Gauze…I need gauze here.”

  “Ellen, keep an eye out, I can help over there. What medical supplies do we have?”

  “I’ve got what we have right here,” Hannah said as she handed him up a tote.

  Alan helped the Sergeant while Hannah and Frank worked on the other.

  “Hey Sarge, we’ve got more company.”

  “Take them out! If they so much as fire a pellet gun at us take them out!”

  “You got it Sarge.” Private First Class Scott looked to be no more than nineteen, maybe twenty years old. So far he had run the big Zodiac as if he had drove one his whole life. When in fact they had lost their watercraft operator the week before when a group of pirates had decided they needed the big Zodiac more than the army did. As if it was second nature to him, Scott had taken over the duty of driving. The Staff Sergeant had found no reason to replace him with a higher ranked person, simply because they were down to himself, one corporal who didn’t know anything about boats and seven privates of which only two were First Class. Scott watched an open boat as it came out of the trees and circled them, staying too far away for either of them to be effective with firearms. After a second pass, the boat headed back the direction they had come from without any aggressive action.

  The Sergeant was busy stuffing gauze into his soldier’s shoulder wound. The hole was relatively small where it went in, but where the bullet exited was a ragged hole. He and Hannah were doing what they could to stop the bleeding.

  The other soldier was not in as bad of shape. While he had been shot, the bullet had somehow ricocheted off his vest and went through he fleshy part of his upper arm. It looked to Frank as if it had missed the bones and tendons. Alan wrapped it with clean gauze after cleaning it as well as they could. The man, his name was Mike, said he felt well enough to help keep watch. They helped him back into his shirt and assisted him to the stern where the driver could help him if he needed it.

  On the other kid, between Hannah and Chuck, they had managed to get the bleeding slowed down enough to bind it. He had regained consciousness briefly until they had begun to pack the exit wound. “We need to move him to our boat.” Hannah declared.

  The Staff Sergeant looked around as if he were trying to come up with an alternative place to put him. He finally realized Hannah was right. There was nowhere to lay the kid out.

  “He needs to have that stitched closed and I can’t do it here. I’ll have Alan break the table down into a bed and we’ll put him there.”

  He nodded but didn’t speak. His face had grown pale with worry over his men. Or that was what Hannah thought had caused it. He looked as if he had lost his best friend and maybe he had. Of the eight men he had started out with when they entered the lock, he had three left. He slowly rose up looked at her and toppled over. It was then Hannah saw the back of his shirt and pants were soaked in blood.

  “I need help here!” Careful of the young soldier, she tried to turn the Sergeant over. It was a useless attempt as he was twice the size of her and dead weight.

  “Alan, you’re going to have to make the table into a bed. You and Frank can move this kid down below. He needs stitches and I can’t do it here. Ellen, can you give me a hand please.”

  Ellen came over to help her. Between the two of them they got the Sergeant stretched out and fed up with trying to get his arms out of his shirt, Ellen grabbed the scissors and began cutting it off of him. Hannah found where the bullet had entered and followed its track around to the exit wound. It had entered to the right of his spine, travelled around his side and exited out just below his ribs. Blood had pooled under his skin showing her the bullets pathway. She didn’t know if he fractured his ribs or not but she had to assume there was the danger of puncturing one of his lungs if they moved him wrong.

  She found herself in charge of men’s lives with no one to fall back on for advice if something went wrong. Of the three who had some medical training, the brunt of it fell to her as she was the most qualified. The burden of one or all of these men dying weighed heavily on her.

  “It’s not supposed to be like this. I am not prepared to be a doctor yet.” Tears pooled in her eyes as she met Ellen’s. “I can’t do this.”

  “Stop it. Yes, you can. That’s exactly what you said you wanted to be. These guys put their lives on the line for us today and now it’s up to us to see that it wasn’t for nothing. You do what you have to do. Or tell me what needs to be done and I’ll do it.”

  Frank returned and began digging through the medical kit. “Aw ha! I thought I saw some of this in there.” He held a small ampule of Dynarex Ammonia Inhalant. He compressed the middle and it immediately turned pink so he knew it had been activated. He waved it under the Sergeant’s nose and was relieved when he jerked his eyes open.

  “Good. Sergeant we need to get you on to our boat and it’s easier if you can help us.”

  “Call me Chuck…the Sergeant died today.” He managed to groan out. “Help me up.”

  The finally got him onto the Annie-C and put him on the port settee. Olivia had removed the back cushions for them making the settee wide enough to let the soldier lay comfortably. She ran back into the v-berth and climbed up out of the way.

  Frank turned to leave him in Hannah and Alan’s capable hands when the Sergeant grabbed his hand. His eyes met Franks. “You’re in charge. My guys out there, this was their first battle and I don’t want it to be their last. I’ve lost enough of my boys today. Look after them.”

  He looked up to find Hannah watching him, “I heard you tell Alan that once a marine always a marine, so now you’re the marine in charge. Now get out of here so I can do my thing.”

  Alan came down the ladder with their medical kit in hand. He’d heard Hannah’s last remark and nodded at Frank. “You heard the lady, now let’s get this ship moving. We have a deadline to meet or we are stuck in this lake remember?”

  “I’m kind of getting tired of kids giving me orders,” he mumbled as he climbed the ladder.

  Ellen was standing behind the wheel with a AR15 held tight in her grip. She had a streak of someone’s blood on her face and her clothes were a mess, but she had never looked so good to him. He walked up to her, his eyes never leaving hers. Without warning he grabbed her, pulled her to him and planted a k
iss on her mouth. She never had a chance to return it, before he was gone. She watched in stunned silence as he climbed back down to the Zodiac.

  With basically no current they were lucky the boats had remained in one spot. There was no wake from other boats or waves to move them. Ellen’s little Universal idled along going nowhere. She watched for any sign of the open boat or even Dan to return. At that point they didn’t know if he’d made it through the shallow water or not. The way he had taken off on his own again was the last straw as far as she was concerned. If he showed up at the locks, fine if not, that was fine too. She was tired of worrying about everyone else. Her crew had grown substantially and she didn’t know if they were permanent or temporary, but as long as they were on her boat, she felt responsible for them. Dan was going to have to be responsible for himself and his crew.

  Five minutes later Frank was back, “They are going to stay beside or right in front of us all the way to the lock. They know the way so we don’t have to worry about sticking to each channel marker. Run about twenty-two hundred and we should be fine.

  “What are you going to be doing?” she asked. “And what was that…kiss for?”

  “I am going to be watching for the bad guys and that was to show you that I am not one of the bad guys.” He walked forward and began to undo the straps that held the 50 caliber on the chain-locker. He picked it up as if it weighted nothing and brought it back to the cockpit.

  Ellen followed the Zodiac as if there was an invisible line tying them together. Occasionally she caught Frank watching her, finally she couldn’t stand it anymore. “Will you stop staring at me please. You make me think I have a dirty face or something stuck between my teeth.” She saw the corners of his mouth turn up and felt something give inside of her. “And you weren’t going to get involved,” she muttered.

  “What’s that?” he asked although he had heard her.

  “I said, who were those guys back there? The ones shooting?”

  He chuckled as if he wanted to let her know he had heard and knew this question was to cover what she had actually said. “That was the untimely arrival of the Columbian fighters. At least that’s what the guys think. There was only the one boat, but they came out of nowhere and surprised them. According to the privates, no one lived to talk about us. They thought it was some kind of advance squad or something. We talked to Miguel on the radio and he is all set for us. We get in the chamber get the line around the cleat and we’ll let the line out as we descend. It won’t be as bad as it was filling up but we’ll still have to keep the lines tight. We’ll have the Zodiac tied to us so the driver will help. The other guy won’t be much help but at least he can watch for any shit to come down.”

  Ellen yawned loudly, she had been up all night already and the day was only half over. “I will be so glad when today is over. I’d like a week of uninterrupted sleep.”

  “So would we all I think. Maybe in ten or twenty years we can plan on that.”

  Ellen lifted her eyebrows on question. Ten years…you’re kidding right?”

  He shook his head. “Stop doing that! Every time you shake that head of your you make me feel as if you think I’m simple-minded. I know it can never happen. It just felt good to say it.” She beat her fist on the wheel as tears rolled down her cheeks. “Damn it Frank, those were young boys. They never had a chance to live or get married or become fathers…why did they have to die?”

  Through her tears she saw he was going to come over to her, “You stay over there. Every time you get near me I can’t think straight. So you just stay away…and don’t kiss me anymore either.”

  He held his palms out in submission, “Okay but next time you have to ask me to kiss you.”

  “Okay,” she said between sniffles. “But don’t hold your breath.”

  They stayed on alert past each of the markers and so far had seen no one. Ellen saw monkeys and heard their chatter as if they were scolding for them interrupting whatever it was they were doing as they passed several of the islands. Beautiful birds flew overhead, soaring form island to island.

  The radio crackled startling them both, “Frank?”

  Frank grabbed the radio, they had forgotten all about it. He put it close to his mouth, “Here Scott, what’s up?”

  “We were wondering about the Sergeant and Mills?”

  Frank looked at Ellen as if she knew but no one had come up top the past couple of hours and he hadn’t felt it was safe to leave Ellen topside alone. He stuck his head inside the hatch. Alan was asleep on the floor with his head in Hannah’s lap. She was awake and met his eyes

  “What” she mouthed. She then put both palms together and lay her head on the back of one as if she was mimicking sleep. She pointed at both injured men and nodded yes and then gave him a thumbs up. She pointed at Olivia who was laying on her tummy in the v-berth playing with the music box.

  “Dang”, he thought, if he ever had kids he hoped all of them were just like Olivia. Half the time you forgot she was even on board. He nodded at Hannah and moved back into line-of-sight with the Zodiac. “Looks like they are both sleeping. They’re going to be okay. How’s your man?”

  “He’s okay. He managed to sleep a little too. I just wanted you to know that I am going to run on ahead like we talked about and see if the way is clear. We’re only a mile or two out from the first lock. I’ll see if Miguel has made it yet. I’d sure hate to get there and find out we’re on our own here.”

  “Okay, keep your eyes open and be safe.”

  “Yes sir. We’ll be back.”

  The Zodiac pulled away from them, leaving them bouncing on the boats wake.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Frank picked up the handheld when he heard some chatter on it. He wasn’t able to understand exactly what was said, but he distinctly heard Private Scott, tell whoever he was talking to that they had best be there when they got there.

  “Let’s kick it up, if you can. I think they’re headed back and it sounds like we need to hurry.”

  Ellen looked at the rpm gauge and nodded. She put the throttle up until the gauge showed 2500 R.P.M.’s. The hull speed was only 6.8 knots and she felt they were now doing close to maximum. “That’s it, that’s all she’s got.”

  Frank nodded, “That’ll have to do then. The guys are on the way back here.”

  She kept an eye on the temperature gauge, because the last thing they needed was to have her overheat. She had no wish to be changing out hoses if one blew one. They still had a very long way to go before they reached home. In some respects, they still had the hardest part of the journey in front of them. Once they reached the Pacific, she would have to lay out both routes she saw as viable and see how they felt about them. She thought she knew what the safest way would be, however it would require them to find fuel somewhere. Lots of fuel.

  “And more food…and restock our medical supplies, and water…” she let her words trail off, because no one was listening but her. She had gone over the supplies in her mind too many times already and at that moment she didn’t have a clue where everything was going to come from.

  With the need to find enough of any one thing, she figured they would have to make the coast run north. Beating against the current all the way to Washington was not going to be easy and that was providing they could find enough fuel. Even with the use of their sails, which were far less than ideal, they would run out of supplies long before they ever made it to Washington State. However, going the other route, out to the Galapagos and then Hawaii would require far more supplies than they had on hand, with no chance of replenishing them. Even with the M.R.E.’s that the Sergeant had given them they would fall short.

  “You want me to take her in?” Frank realized she’d been lost in thought, when she jumped at his words. “Sorry, the two guys on the Zodiac are going to tie up to us and come aboard. Scott is going to work one of the ropes and Alan the other. I thought you might want a break.”

  “Yeah, okay. Thanks,” she said and made ro
om for Frank to take the wheel.

  “Can you send Alan up?” The Zodiac was coming up on the starboard side and we need Alan to help them.

  “Sure.” Ellen went down the ladder. “Alan, Frank needs your help. How are they doing?” She asked directing her question to Hannah.

  Hannah, sank down on the corner of the starboard settee. Alan had dropped the table, making the seat into a double berth. Sergeant Wilson was asleep in the middle of it, leaving room for Hannah. She used the towel tucked into her waistband to wipe the sweat from her face. She was exhausted. It had taken everything she had to stitch up the private. Alan had helped clean out the Sergeant’s wounds and wrap them. She’d had to resort to using strips of sheet to bind him. When she had to change the dressings for both men, the wraps would have to be washed and reused. She had a few sterile pads left, but they would be gone by tomorrow.

  “We have to find some more medical supplies.” She waved her hand at the bucket of soiled bandages and towels. “I can wash those, but we need more. Sorry, I had to cut up one of your sheets to bind them.”

  Ellen saw how well Hannah had taken care of the two men and managed to keep Olivia happy as well. She was curled up with the bunny fast asleep. Someone had taken the time to braid her brown hair and put ribbons on the ends of the braids. She realized how very lucky they were to have Hannah with them. She was sure Alan would have stepped up if they had truly needed him and Hannah had not been there, but Hannah had proven her worth many times over.

  Maybe in time, Alan’s desire to learn medicine would come back and he would be an asset to them, medically speaking. Until then he seemed content to follow Hannah’s lead. Frank had exercised his medical abilities today with the soldiers and it left Ellen wondering what she could contribute to their group. At first it had been her boat and her food, now everything was theirs. They had equal shares in all that was on the boat. There was no such thing as mine or yours and it left her feeling inadequate.