“What?” Sam asked. The noise of the storm was making it hard to hear, and he thought he misunderstood.
Warren didn’t take time to repeat himself. “Then,” he continued, “I’ll turn south and head straight for Isthmus Cove as fast as fifteen-foot seas will let me.”
“I don’t get it,” said Sam. “What’s the point?”
Warren shouted so Sam could hear him. “It’s hard to see anything in this weather and, hopefully, the skipper isn’t the one who came out here with McFee last time.”
“So what if he can’t see much? He’s right on our tail and can see us just fine.”
“That’s the point.”
Chapter 52
OVER half the buildings at Two Harbors were damaged and several were totally destroyed. Fifty people were dead and seventy-five injured. Both men with bazookas on either side of Isthmus Cove had run out of ammunition. The helicopter tried to take off twice but the growing winds made it impossible to fly; the pilot was barely able to set the powerful aircraft back down safely.
The three seventy-foot assault boats were ready for the kill. One broke away from the attack on the island to finish off Warren’s boat. The other two continued to blister Two Harbors. They remained five hundred yards offshore while bombarding the island with rocket fire, and now they started to move in.
The boat on the east side, closest to Avalon, moved in first.
It hadn’t gone thirty yards when it was blown apart.
The crew of the other boat watched in horror as their companion boat went down.
“What happened?” cried one of the gunmen.
“That had to be a torpedo,” said the boat’s captain.
“The sub wasn’t supposed to get in this fight,” said the gunman.
“Tell them that,” the captain replied.
“What are we going to do?”
“He’s got one more torpedo, so we need to get out of here as fast as we can,” the captain replied as he started to maneuver around.
The boat blew up before they were halfway through the turn.
* * * * *
Warren was on a zigzag course in the direction of the dock at Isthmus Cove. The seventy-foot boat with two bazookas and ten men with automatic weapons aboard were in close pursuit. They were on a straight course. The bazooka gunners and five of the men with smaller weapons were on the bow, ready to shoot.
The bazooka shooters tried to hit the cabin cruiser several times but distance, the wind, and Warren’s constant turning caused them to miss badly. Warren kept looking back and saw that they were now waiting until they were so close they couldn’t miss before shooting again. It wouldn’t be long.
With all those men at the bow and the windblown whitecaps kicking up, the man at the helm would have a hard time seeing anything except the boat he was chasing. To make the helmsman’s job even tougher, Warren kept up his serpentine course.
“They’re gaining on us,” Sam yelled at Warren. “This zigzagging slows us down.”
“It makes it harder for them to get a bead on us,” Warren called back.
“They’re not shooting now, so you can stop swerving and get us away from them.”
“I need to keep it up a minute or two longer,” Warren replied.
He kept turning, first to port and then to starboard. The boat in pursuit kept going straight – and gaining a yard or two every second.
The seventy-footer got within twenty yards and all the men on the bow got to a knee and aimed.
“Warren, they’re going to. . . ” Sam started to yell, but had to grab the rail to stop from being thrown overboard when Warren cut hard to starboard.
One of the bazookas got off a shot just as Warren’s boat started to turn.
They were so close, when the shell hit, the explosion was almost simultaneous with the sound of it being fired.
* * * * *
Chips flew as the rocket shell exploded on Bird Rock, the rock that stood above the water on the way into Isthmus Cove.
Warren knew exactly where the rock was and veered away at the last moment. The seventy-foot boat he led there headed right at it at full speed.
The gunners at the bow jumped to their feet and, waving their arms, cried warnings to the helmsman. He saw the rock and cranked the wheel hard to starboard. He managed to turn the bow slightly to the right, but that might have been worse than if the boat had plowed straight into the rock. As it was, the bow missed hitting the rock, but the port side bottom smashed into it. At full throttle, the boat continued on, ripping up fifty feet of its bottom as it went.
The big boat caromed off to the side, taking on water so fast it was filled to the decks by the time it went another fifty feet.
The captain, his two crewmembers, ten men with automatic weapons, two bazooka gunners, and their two loaders all managed to jump into the water. They swam toward Bird Rock, the only dry spot around.
None made it. The sharks in Isthmus Cove were as ravenous as their brethren on the other side of the island.
* * * * *
A victorious roar arose from the island when they saw the last enemy boat go down.
The islanders had faced certain death; the submarine was out of torpedoes; they were short of ammo; the helicopter couldn’t fly; and the cutter could not get around the island in time to save them from that last attack boat.
But, Warren found a way just as others had found a way to sink the first seven. Fifty of the islanders were killed, seventy-five injured, and half their buildings were heavily damaged. . . but they had won.
An ominous sound came from offshore as powerful engines revved up. The cheering slowed and came to a halt. In the heat of battle and the euphoria of victory, they forgot about the three-hundred-foot, heavily armed ship that was waiting a mile away.
It was no longer waiting. It was coming to finish what the others could not do.
The islanders had no way to stop it.
Chapter 53
ON the bridge of the cargo ship, McFee trained his binoculars on shore with one hand and held his walkie-talkie in the other. He was involved in a strategy conversation with the driver of the tank on the bow of the ship.
“They brought out two bazookas to fight us,” he told the tank driver, “but that won’t do them any good. Even if they pierce the hull of this ship, we won’t sink for hours, so that’s not an issue. But, if they accidentally hit you, we would have to finish them off with small arms and that would be messy. Your first priority is to take the bazookas out. They’re on that little hill about a hundred yards left of what remains of the buildings.”
“Okay, I see it,” came the reply from the tank.
The first shot hit at the bottom of the hill.
“Up ten yards and I six to the left,” McFee said.
“Roger.”
When the next shot hit, McFee saw a man and a bazooka flying through the air. “Great shot! Okay, put two more in that area, and then pepper the whole area from the hill over to the buildings. I’m going to take us in close but I want most of them dead before we land.”
With the tank blasting away, the ship moved slowly, inexorably, in for the kill. There was a little spasmodic and ineffective return fire.
* * * * *
The people on shore who still had ammunition for their rifles shot at the big boat. They knew they weren’t doing any damage and that they were doomed, but they would not go quietly. One man with a bazooka and one shell was holding his fire. He would put a hole in the big ship’s hull when it was closer. He knew a hole in the ship’s bottom wouldn’t sink it for hours, but at least he would die knowing it would eventually sink.
The ship kept coming. The winds slowed it a little, but it plowed straight ahead toward what was left of the dock at Isthmus Cove.
Suddenly there was a loud crashing noise, and the ship’s bow rose up and turned sharply to starboard.
“It must have hit another rock,” a woman said excitedly.
“There are no rocks there,” said
a man who had lived in the area for years. “Ferries that size have sailed through there thousands of times.”
They all watched in awe as the cargo ship continued to rise and move to the right. The tank began to slip to the left and back toward the superstructure. The one hundred men aboard who were preparing to go ashore to kill the people there tried to find solid structures to hold onto. Some went over the side and were quickly devoured by the frenzied sharks.
“Look,” cried a woman, pointing to the ship’s bow.
As the cargo ship continued to rise, the snout of another vessel appeared above the pounding waves. The end of the snout was rounded, but overall it was narrow and pointed enough to have smashed through the cargo ship’s hull, creating a very large hole.
“That has to be the Chinese sub,” said Harry Peckham, the acting mayor of Two Harbors. “Apparently, using up all its torpedoes didn’t leave it totally unarmed.”
As they watched, the sub reversed gears and backed away from the ship. At first, the ship caught on the snout and stayed with the underwater vessel. Captain Wang changed directions several times, in effect wriggling away, and the part of the ship’s hull that was caught on the snout slipped away.
The cargo ship’s bow slid down and the churning waters surged through the large hole. As the bow sank lower and lower, the stern crept higher and higher. In minutes, the ship’s propellers rose above the water, their revolutions in the open air sounding like the screams of frightened banshees. Now, the only movement of the ship was downward. The tank that had slipped backward toward the superstructure now slid forward and dove into the water.
The ship’s skipper, the only one aboard who knew anything about a ship in distress, realized that they needed to close off the holds to stop the water from going from one hold to another. By that time, the ship was halfway under water. He rushed below but could only get to the most aft hold and the engine room. The ship’s engineer fled, abandoning the engines in his attempt to escape. More than two feet of water had already flooded into the room, but the skipper did manage to get it closed off.
All the men except McFee and the skipper went over the side, hoping to swim to shore. Those two saw a lifeboat attached to davits. They tried to get it untied but the crashing waves made it impossible. When it went totally under water, they half swam and half climbed to the stern rail. Within minutes, it was the only part of the boat above water. Because of the air in the engine room, that small part of the ship still bobbed upon the wild ocean’s surface.
The sharks ate all the others, leaving those two the only survivors.
Peckham trained his binoculars on the two men. McFee pulled out a revolver and shot the other man, and then turned the gun on himself.
Better than being eaten alive by sharks, I suppose, Peckham thought.
And that’s the end of it.
* * * * *
Some called it divine intervention; others chalked it up to changing weather patterns caused by radioactive air currents around the world. Whatever the reason, the violent winds died away to soft breezes by late morning. It made the grim task of burying the dead easier, though not less sad.
The islanders continued their usual practice of burying the enemy at sea. Being as almost all had perished in the stormy seas, the only bodies were the fifteen on the hill. When they went to get Slaughter’s body from the rock outside Catalina Harbor, it was gone, presumably washed away by the huge combers that had hammered those rocks for hours.
Many structures at Two Harbors were rendered uninhabitable. Half of the people still alive agreed to move to empty homes in Avalon.
“I’ll call George,” Zach told them, referring to the former concierge who went with the Arthurs to Avalon. “He’s been refurbishing hotel rooms. There will be no tourists or business travelers for some time, so I know he’ll be delighted to put you up until you can find the houses you want.”
They used the Arthurs and Warren’s boats, along with four others not damaged in the attack, to transport them.
When the cutter got around to the Isthmus Cove side of the island, Captain Kotchel and his engineer examined the damage to the Chinese submarine’s bow.
“We have people at Port Hueneme who can fix that,” Kotchel told his Chinese counterpart. “Can it sail well enough to get there?”
“It is being obstinate and doesn’t want to go straight,” Wang said, chuckling, “but my men and I can coax it along for a short journey.”
They left that afternoon, taking Marcus, Han, and Bai with them. They would set them free in Port Hueneme with a few days’ provisions. If they wanted to join the California “governor” they had spied for, it was up to them to find him. Barry Goldman was not exiled because both he and Marcus swore he had nothing to do with Silva or the spying that took place. That split-second image in the back of Zach’s mind sprang forward the instant he saw Han. By then, the only thing about it that mattered was that he knew his memory bank was in good working order.
.
* * * * *
The Arthur family had a quiet evening on their boat in Avalon Harbor. Both Glen and Denise had disobeyed their parents, but because they had, Zach and others were still alive. There was a reprimand but it was couched in language that could be interpreted as an expression of gratitude.
The senior Glen had fought in a foreign war, as had his son, Zach. Now, Zach’s offspring was thrown into an even greater conflict. A few months earlier, their biggest challenges were algebra and English; now, they had to fight just to stay alive in their own country.
Zach did not like war. He prayed for a world where he and his family could live in peace. That afternoon, as they were taking another family to Avalon, Zach had his weapon ready as they passed the spot where they saw the assault team land.
The boat that brought them was gone. I guess whoever was on that boat survived, he thought. All he did was drive the boat, so I don’t begrudge him his life.
But, he wondered if he would have to confront him someday on a field of battle.
Stacey read Zach’s thoughts that night as he watched his children eating dinner. He saw many soldiers after they’d been in a battle. They talked amiably and joked around, but their eyes were always wary. His children appeared to be their normal, happy selves, but he saw that their eyes were ever alert to the sounds around them.
“Maybe it’s over now,” she said quietly.
He sighed. “If only it were. But we both know that isn’t the case, don’t we?”
* * * * *
Chapter 54
IT drizzled the morning of the election. Campbell stood in front of the polling place – which was his office – five minutes before seven. He planned to be the first to vote.
Two minutes before seven, Silva, Venable, and fifty men marched down the street toward the polls. All except Silva and Venable were armed.
Madruga and West came from the other direction with almost two hundred men and women from the area. Thirty-five of the thirty-seven that Madruga predicted would bring guns did. All sixty-two of the farmers West expected to bring weapons had them in hand. Those who weren’t armed lingered behind.
Silva put up a hand when he got to the intersection of the streets where the election was scheduled to take place. The men behind him stopped. Madruga and West had just reached the other side of the intersection, in front of the building. They, and the people behind them, also stopped.
“Hey, Campbell,” Silva called out, “I see you are attempting to be made governor. It’s a stupid idea, and this so-called election is illegal. I order you to cease and desist.”
“You order?” Campbell responded. “By what authority?”
“As your governor.”
“There was never a public election. None of us recognizes you as governor.”
“There was an election. All these men behind me, and many more who are not here right now, voted. I am the governor. Stand down, I said!”
“I said public election, one in which everyone was noti
fied and permitted to vote. An election such as the one that will take place here today. Even you were notified, and you will all be permitted to vote. In fact, we urge you to vote. That’s how a democracy works.”
“That’s enough talk,” Silva snarled. He looked back at his small army to call attention to them, and then turned back to Campbell. “I advise you to leave right now. I have fifty armed men, and they’re all trained to kill.”
Campbell pointed to Madruga and West in the street immediately in front of him. “Manuel and Ted have more people and more guns.”
Silva was about to retort when a commotion could be heard coming from a side street. A battered car came to stop on the street between Silva and those planning the election. A man almost as large as Malcolm Slaughter got out of the passenger side and slowly walked over to stand by Silva.
“We’re here, governor,” said Nick Garcia. “Fifty armed men are coming down that street. They’ll be here in about three minutes.”
“Well, Larry,” Silva said with a sneer, “it seems that now I have more guns. And, all of my guys know how to use them. From what I can see of your rag-tag mob, they’ll be useless. You don’t stand a chance.”
Madruga and West checked their weapons to make sure there were bullets in the chambers. The chambers clicked shut, and there was a chorus of clicks behind them as more than ninety others did the same. Besides ensuring they were ready, it let Silva and his men know they were facing people who knew more about weapons than they gave them credit for.
Garcia’s men arrived, and he went over to deploy them behind buildings and abandoned cars on the side street. He stopped when he heard cars coming from the other direction.
A minute later, a convoy of over twenty cars drove up the street. The first cars stopped at the opposite side of the intersection from Garcia.
Paul Burchett got out of the lead car and walked over to Madruga. “We decided to take you up on your invitation to participate in the election. There are fifty of us from Santa Cruz, and everyone is bound and determined to vote.”
Seeking a Sane Society: Nothing is the Same (The Seeking Series Book 2) Page 22