“Well, shit,” I finally said. I had to get rid of this vessel if I was going to get my yacht—I still liked saying, “my yacht”—to the fuel pump up the river, which hopefully, would still have fuel when we got there. I really didn’t want to drop a flare into the fuel tank, but that was all I could think of without taking the time to search the boat to see if there was anything explosive onboard. I had to get gas in order to continue…
I smiled as I looked up at the bridge. This ship was twice the size of my yacht; it stood to reason it would carry more fuel than mine. Rather than bringing my ship to the pump, what if I brought the fuel out to Jimmy and the waiting yacht? That would kill two birds with one big ass rock. Surely they hadn’t have left the keys in the ignition, had they?
Only one way to find out. I untied the ship—everything except the shore power cord— grabbed my bag, jumped aboard, and raced up to the bridge. The ship’s bridge was a step backward from my yacht, and I looked at all of the switches and dials—there were far fewer high-tech monitors on the warship. Still, the systems were mostly the same, and there were certain things that needed to be done to start a ship, regardless of how big it was. I knew the shore power cord would disconnect once I reached the end of the cable, so I had to hurry.
I turned the power on and had just gotten one of the motors started when a voice behind me asked in Spanish, “What the fuck are you doing?” I hadn’t thought about the possibility of someone living aboard, although I now realized that people would live on it for days or weeks while it operated offshore. Oops.
“I need to borrow the ship,” I said as I turned, not worrying about my accent. “If you help me, I’ll let you go once I’m done.”
The man was big and burly and had more hair on his body than anyone I’d ever seen. He was covered in oil and grease, and carrying a very, very large wrench. “I think you need to step away from the controls,” he said, hefting the wrench, “before I hurt you.”
“Look,” I replied. “It doesn’t have to be this way. Neither of us has to get hurt. I just want to borrow the boat for an hour. You can tell your superiors I was armed and made you help me.” I slid my knife from its sheath. “See? I’m armed.”
He tapped the three-foot-long wrench in his hand, not looking scared of the knife in the slightest. Were our places reversed, I probably wouldn’t have been either.
“Step away from the panel,” he said. “Last chance, before I break your head open.”
I sighed. I really could have used a hand operating the boat, especially one that knew what he was doing. “No chance of a compromise?”
“None.” He advanced on me and drew the massive wrench back for a strike. I boosted and raced past him, severing the tendons in his wrist as I passed. The wrench fell to the floor with a clang and a spray of blood. I’d also gotten the artery, although I hadn’t meant to.
“I don’t know how you did that,” he said, bending over to pick up the wrench with his other hand, “but I’ll kill you for that!”
I didn’t have time for this. The boat shuddered as the stern grounded slightly and the bow started swinging around. The problem with knives, of course, is that they are messy, and by the time he finally fell, a lot of his blood painted the walls and deck of the bridge. I wished he’d just helped, as I dragged his body over the doorway coaming to keep any more of his blood from spilling onto the bridge.
As I returned to the control panel, fervently hoping no one else was aboard, I saw that I had actually gotten lucky for once. When we grounded, the boat had spun, and we were now facing the direction I needed to go. I engaged the propeller as a bullet spanged! off the metal of the bridge frame, then another smacked into the glass. The bridge windows, however, appeared to be bulletproof—at least to the caliber of whatever was being shot at me—and I drove off into the night unharmed.
Sometimes, plans do come together in this Fallen World.
* * * * *
Chapter Twenty
I found Jimmy as dawn broke over the mountains to the southeast. It was pretty easy once I figured out how to get the radar working; there weren’t many ships out on the ocean anymore. In the meantime, I’d gone and done a quick search below decks. Happily, only the engineman had been aboard. He wasn’t anymore; I’d pitched him over the side when I saw some sharks circling.
As I approached my yacht, Jimmy came out onto the bridge wing with his hands up. My new ride really was a pretty impressive ship, I could see as daylight brought everything into focus. Aside from the paint scheme—the green, white, and red stripes of CruiseWorld—it was every bit the dangerous warship. I went out onto the bridge wing and waved, just to watch Jimmy’s jaw drop. The look on his face was worth all the trouble of stealing the patrol craft, including killing its crewman, and I doubled over in laughter.
He couldn’t hear me over the noise of our engines, so I quickly pantomimed throwing a rope over for him to catch. The actual process of completing the action took a lot longer and was a lot harder than I’d thought it would be. It involved him jockeying the yacht around to come alongside—after I made him put out the bumpers so he didn’t totally destroy the paint on the side of the yacht on the steel skin of the patrol boat.
“What the hell is that thing?” Jimmy asked once we were finally tied up. As it turned out, the low deck on the warship was fairly close to the deck of the yacht, making communication easy.
“According to the plaque in the bridge house, it’s a Damen Stan 4207 patrol craft,” I replied with a smile. “She’s a beaut, isn’t she?”
“Um…we’re not going to take that, too, are we?”
“No,” I replied, shaking my head. “I didn’t see anything else in port that could come after us; however, I’ll bet headquarters in Zone 8 is getting a phone call right now—assuming the phone system is operational. If not, someone is driving there as quickly as their car will go. As Zone 8 is only a little farther south, I suspect an even larger ship will be getting underway really soon to come looking for this one. I don’t particularly want to try to fight off something larger, as all this ship has are a couple of machine guns.”
“So…uh…what are you doing with that ship?”
“Its fuel tanks are full,” I said. “It was easier to bring the fuel station here than to take the yacht into port.”
I learned two things in the next hour. First, it is possible to suck-start a fueling hose. Second, diesel fuel tastes like shit. I had heard someone in the past say that it tasted lemony, but to me, it tasted like I licked a skunk’s ass. While it sprayed me. Perhaps there were different types or flavors of diesel fuel—I didn’t know—all I knew was that Jimmy was doing it next time.
Once I got the transfer going—and taped the lines in place so they didn’t move, causing me to have to suck-start it again—we searched through the patrol craft, taking anything we thought might be of value.
The first thing I found was the armory, and the two .50 caliber machine guns it held. I made several trips to take them and all the ammo I found there. It wasn’t much, but it was more than we’d had before. I also removed the four bolts from the forward mount and brought that aboard. It took the massive wrench the engineman had been carrying to do so; they were rusted on. The damn wrench had fallen in a puddle of blood, though, and it was disgusting.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t the most disgusting thing onboard. The dubious distinction for that fell to the porn magazines the engineman had been looking at when I fired up the ship; it was some of the most awful stuff I’d ever seen. I caught Jimmy looking at it as I went through the crew’s quarters, and he didn’t stop blushing for about 30 minutes. It was that bad. Apparently, Mexicans would have sex with anything that moved…and some things that didn’t.
There’s something for everyone in this Fallen World.
* * * * *
Chapter Twenty-One
As it turned out, warships do have something like drain plugs. Of course, they had a naval name—seacock—that I’d never heard before. Jim
my made fun of me for not knowing when I told him I was having a hard time deciding how to sink the patrol boat. Apparently, he was a history major, and over a hundred years ago, the Germans had scuttled an entire fleet rather than let it fall into allied hands. I appreciated the “fuck you!” of doing that, even though I’d never heard of the event. Scapa Flow? It sounded like something you got with a nasty venereal disease. In any event, all I needed to do was open up the seacocks, which would flood the ship and intentionally sink it.
Which I did.
We moved off and headed south, wanting to put as much space between us and the ship as possible before someone came looking for it. We saw it slip beneath the waves before we got too far; they were going to need sonar if they were going to find it.
Sure enough, about an hour later, a fast interceptor went by. It looked like one of the older cigarette boats, but it was painted in the green, white, and red stripes of CruiseWorld. Call me old-fashioned, but there’s something wrong about a warship painted that way.
Although it wasn’t armed with anything I could see, it undoubtedly had communications with its base. And with the frigate that passed us about an hour after that. This warship was several hundred feet long and had a large gun mounted on the front of it. Neither of the boats came close enough to talk to us, although they both changed course and came within a few hundred yards of us to give us a quick look. Happily, I had taken off all the fenders, and we were cruising along slowly with fishing lines out, trying to look as inoffensive as possible.
Whether they completely bought our act or not—two white guys in a yacht nowhere close to where they belonged—I don’t know, but it was obvious we didn’t have the patrol craft that was the object of their search, so they kept going north. We sped up a little bit, hoping to clear their search area by the time they came back. I didn’t want them stopping us to do a drug search; finding the patrol boat’s machine guns on board might have been a little tough to explain.
We never saw them again, nor did we see much other traffic the rest of the way to Panama. It took us another eight days of continuous steaming to get there. We mostly talked and fished and took turns sleeping so that someone was always “on watch.” For the most part, the ocean was empty, and the ships that had the ability to see us coming—those with radars—generally gave us a wide berth, as we did them. Only a few times did anyone get close enough to worry me, at which point I put the two machine guns into the mount I built on the bow after we cleared Zone 8’s territory. That was usually enough to scare the raiders off, except for one intrepid set of would-be pirates who decided to push their luck, believing that their trio of ancient AK-74s could top my two M-2s.
They were wrong, and we left their bullet-riddled boat, smoking and sinking, behind us as we continued our transit. Jimmy was excited—I’d let him fire off 50 rounds to feel the rush of getting behind a .50 cal and letting it rip—although I was annoyed at the waste of ammunition. We only recovered one of the AKs and a couple of magazines of ammo; two of the stupid pirates took theirs with them into the water when they were hit.
* * *
“How do you know the canal will still be in operation?” Jimmy asked me one afternoon. It was a slow day, and we hadn’t caught many fish. “Even if it is in operation, how do you know they’ll let you use it? How are you going to pay them?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know if it’s open; we’ll find out when we get there. Unfortunately, there is no way to call ahead and say, ‘Hey, can I use your canal?’” I smiled. “I do, however, know one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Teledyne owns the canal. I expect that it will not only be in operation, but they will let me use it. I also don’t expect—as a company employee on a mission—they’ll require me to pay anything.”
There used to be a saying that pride came before a fall. It still did in this Fallen World.
* * * * *
Chapter Twenty-Two
Traffic picked up markedly as we rounded Punta Mala and headed toward Panama Bay. The water was less than 100 meters deep across the length of the bay, and there were a lot of larger cargo vessels anchored there. It seemed like all of them had armed sentries on deck, which was great security for them, but they were so close it got my hackles up as we weaved through, trying to look like we weren’t heading for any of them.
“Is it always this busy here?” Jimmy asked. “Is this the normal traffic waiting to go through the canal?”
“I don’t know,” I replied.
“I thought you said this was Teledyne territory. Weren’t you Teledyne?”
“Yes, I was Teledyne,” I said with a touch of snark, “but they usually didn’t send me on missions to places we already owned. Want to know about Charlotte? Ask away. Been there lots of times. But the Panama Canal? Never.” The bay got even more congested as we reached Toboga Island, just outside the entrance to the canal. “Still, I have to admit, it doesn’t look like most of these ships are going anywhere fast.”
“So…uh…where do you want me to go?” Jimmy asked. He was piloting the boat from the flying bridge while I provided lookout and security duties.
I pointed to some land sticking out from the mainland, with a large cluster of boats around it. “Looks like something’s going on over there. Why don’t you pull up alongside someone who’s about our size, and I’ll call over and ask?”
Finding someone “our size” wasn’t difficult; there were ships of every size and shape in the area. After a few minutes Jimmy pulled within 50 feet of one, and I was met by a man with a pistol. I held up my hands to show I was unarmed.
“Hey!” I yelled over.
“Hey, yourself,” the man replied in English. “What the hell do you want?”
“Just got here,” I replied. “What’s going on?”
The man snorted and waved toward the entrance to the canal. “Not a damn thing. Not in the three days I’ve been here, anyway.”
“Why’s that? Is the canal broken?”
“Not that I’m aware. It was open until about five days ago. When I got here, though, I was told that some other company took over the other end and wasn’t letting anyone through. Damn companies and their damn wars.”
I nodded knowingly. “Stupid companies,” I said in agreement. “You wouldn’t happen to know who’s in charge, would you?”
“Some dumbass Teledyne rep on the island over there,” he said. What I thought was a point of land, I could now see was a series of islands connected by causeways. “See that big building?” I nodded. “That’s Teledyne.”
“Thanks,” I replied. He nodded, and I walked back over to Jimmy.
“Catch all that?” I asked.
“Yeah. Sounds like someone’s blocking the other end of the canal.”
“Yeah.” I sighed. “Damn it.” I sighed again. “Okay, let me go talk to the powers that be. Why don’t you anchor here, and I’ll be back shortly.”
“Okay…” Jimmy said, looking over at the yacht next to us.
“They aren’t going to mess with us,” I said.
“How do you know?”
“It’s my job to know things like that. Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t keep the pistol I gave you close by, though.”
Jimmy’s eyes jerked from side to side as if looking for threats. “You think I’ll need it?”
“No, I don’t, but it’s better to be over-prepared than under.” I smiled. “Just breathe. And keep it close by. I won’t be long.”
I went down to my stateroom and threw some gear into my waterproof bag—the one without the bullet holes—changed into shorts, then went back to check on Jimmy. He was nervous but not freaking out too badly, so I went down to the transom, strapped on my diving knife, and slid into the water.
The water was warm, and the swim over wasn’t too bad, although it was oily with all the ships nearby. I kept my face out of it as much as possible.
When I reached the island at the end of the causeway, I was immediately met by two men wi
th guns. Both men were dressed in Teledyne uniforms and looked soft—this was obviously a cushy duty station. They both carried themselves like bullies, and I instantly disliked them.
“Who the hell are you?” one of them asked. He wasn’t quite pointing his gun at me, but it was a lot closer than I liked.
“I’m one of you,” I said. “I’m here to help.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I’m Teledyne, and I’m going to help end the siege and get the traffic moving through the canal again.” I started to open the bag.
“Easy!” the other guard exclaimed. “What’s in the bag?”
“My gear,” I replied. I pulled out a blue T-shirt and put it on. I’d had it made some time ago, but had never been able to wear it openly until now. I’d had it on under my uniform when the bombs started falling.
“I’m a Specialist, so get out of my way,” the first guard read. “That’s funny. Is it supposed to mean something to us?”
“Yeah, it means you should take me to see the boss, or I’m going to take your weapons and beat you with them.”
As far as negotiations went, that probably wasn’t the best way to move things forward. It was that “tact” thing again. All I succeeded in doing was getting them to point their weapons at me. I sighed.
“Oh, so you’re a tough guy?” the second guard asked.
“No, just really good at what I do. Now, can you please take me to whoever’s in charge here?” For the record, I tried to use my manners, although I could already see where this was going to go.
“The boss is busy,” the first guard said. “Why don’t you just get back in the water and swim off to wherever it is that you came from?”
The Price of Freedom Page 8