Seeking Safe Harbor: Suddenly Everything Changed (The Seeking Series)

by Albert Correia

  “What are you going to do?” There was a hint of concern in Stacey’s voice.

  “You saw what happened when you tried to wake that fellow up by yelling, so I need to get on that dinghy and shake him into consciousness. Otherwise, we’ll lose valuable time dragging him behind us half the day.”

  “Be careful, Zach. We’ve seen what that kind of man is capable of.”

  When Denise returned with the pistol, Zach stuck it under his belt at his back. He told his daughter to go to the wheel and keep an eye out for any other vessels while they checked out the man in the dinghy. “If you see anything, let us know and take it out of autopilot. We’ll decide what to do from there.”

  “What about me?” Glen was eager to help.

  “You need to rest that shoulder,” his father told him. “You might just as well stay above decks, though.”

  “How about I redo the dressing on that wound?” Millie asked.

  “Good, and thanks, Millie. Stacey, you and George stay here.” He handed George his weapon. “I’ll have the guy covered on the dinghy, but you keep your eye on him, especially when he first gets aboard and I’m still climbing the ladder.”

  He climbed over the rail and down the ladder. When he was on the bottom rung, he pulled the line in until the dinghy was right below him. He tied it off and watched the man for several seconds before risking getting into the small boat.

  The dinghy had two seats that extended from one side to the other, and the man was draped over both. One leg was bent and totally inside the dinghy, but the other was straight out, the foot slightly outside the boat. He appeared to be slender and about as tall as Zach. His clothes were still soaking wet. Zach concluded the man must have crawled up from the water and passed out as soon as he was safely in the small boat.

  He stood over the man and nudged him with a foot. The fellow stirred, but didn’t wake up, so Zach nudged him harder. This time, the man opened his eyes and raised his head slowly. The first thing he saw was a gun pointed at him. He looked higher, and saw Zach staring down at him.

  “Who are you? And what are you doing here?”

  “You blew up my boat,” the man mumbled weakly. His head dropped down again.

  “You were trying to kill us.”

  The man didn’t raise his head, but turned it a little and looked up at Zach. “No. They were, not me.”

  “They?” Zach felt no sympathy for the man but decided to listen to what he had to say.

  “The pirates.”

  Zach shook his head. He could see this was going to take some time, and the dinghy was no place to hold an inquiry. “I’m going to move to the back of the dinghy, and you are going to go up that ladder there. Keep in mind, you’re our prisoner. There are two automatic weapons trained on you up there, and I’m behind you with this pistol. One false move and you’re history.”

  “I’ll do whatever you say. Being your prisoner will be a lot better than it was being theirs.” The man started to get up, but quickly fell back down. “Give me a second.” It was a quiet plea. “I’m pretty weak.”

  Zach said nothing. He waited but his eyes never left the man.

  Breathing heavily, the prisoner got to his knees slowly. He moved over close to the ladder and grabbed one side with one hand and then brought his other hand around to grab the opposite side. Using the ladder for stability, he stood. Then, still moving slowly, he climbed the ladder. When he got to the top, it appeared he didn’t have the strength to climb over the rail. George set his weapon aside and took an arm to help him over. As soon as the man was on deck, George released his arm and retrieved his weapon.

  Zach was over the rail a second after the prisoner. “Sit here on top of the cabin,” he told the man. “We have a lot of questions.”

  “Do you mind if I stretch my legs a bit?” man asked. “They had me at the wheel of my boat for three days straight, and my muscles are really tight.”

  “I suppose a few minutes won’t make a difference.”

  “Do you think you can trust him to not try to make a break for it?” George objected.

  Zach looked around at the ocean that seemed to go on forever in all directions. “Where could he go?”

  “Good point,” George agreed. “But…” He set his weapon aside and patted the man down thoroughly. He nodded at Zach. “Nothing.”

  “Okay, walking around the deck is good exercise when you’re at sea…” Zach started to explain to the man.

  “I know. I am – was – a boat owner.”

  The man walked unsteadily toward the bow. Millie was over to one side with Glen, redressing his wound. Denise was at the wheel. Zach, Stacey, and George watched the man go, and then lapsed into a discussion about what Zach and their new prisoner talked about while on the dinghy.

  When he got to the front of the main cabin, the man’s legs appeared to give out, and he squatted and sat on the cabin top. He looked back and shrugged his shoulders at his captors, his hands out, palms up, letting them know he had no ready explanation for why he wasn't able to go any further. He turned to look out over the bowsprit at the vast ocean in front of them. Something on the deck, to his right, caught his attention. He looked down and saw the AK-47 lying next to the hatch. He studied it for a moment and then looked back at his captors. They were in deep conversation.

  He reached down and picked up the weapon.

  Chapter 24

  THEY could see the man bring the weapon up to waist level. He looked it over before turning toward the stern where the three were standing. The rifle swung around with him, and it ending up pointing where he was looking, directly at them.

  “Drop it!” Zach ordered in a loud, firm voice.

  “What?” the man said. He looked up to see three automatic weapons pointed at him.

  Zach fired a warning volley to the man’s side, the bullets zooming past and out into the Pacific. “The next ones won’t miss.”

  The man dropped the weapon. In seconds, Zach, Stacey, and George had him surrounded.

  “How did you get that weapon?” Zach demanded.

  “I found it laying right here,” the man said. “Just now.”

  Stacey picked it up. “It’s an AK-47, the same as what we have.”

  Denise locked in the autopilot and joined the group at the front of the cabin. “That could be mine,” she told her mother. “I thought it fell overboard last night, but maybe it didn’t.”

  “You didn’t say anything,” her mother said.

  By that time, Millie and Glen had come up from the salon to investigate the ruckus.

  “We were all busy fixing wounds,” Millie pointed out. “Besides, she almost went overboard herself.”

  “What?”

  “She was trying to stop the gun from going over.”

  “Millie stopped me as I was sliding,” Denise added.

  “Oh, Sweetie,” the girl’s mother said, hugging her, “I’m so sorry. Last night was such a horror.”

  Zach joined them in the hug. After a few seconds, he broke away and sat down on the cabin top. “Unfortunately, last night may be the kind of thing we will be having a lot of in the future. With any luck, we’ll have enough free time to get better prepared on our trip to California. We all have a lot to learn.”

  He turned to the man who was ostensibly their prisoner. “To start with, though, we need to learn something about you. What’s your name?”

  “If it’s all right, I think I’d better sit, too,” the man said. Without waiting for approval, he sat. “My name is Ron Tillman.”

  “Why were you and your people trying to kill us last night?”

  “As I told you before, I wasn’t.” He put up a hand when Zach started to protest. “Let me tell you the story. “That was my boat. I lived aboard and used it mainly for fishing. When the world went crazy, I was almost out of fuel so I anchored in the harbor. The four pirates – there’s no other word for them except pirates – boarded my boat and took me captive three days ago.”

  He pau
sed and looked around, his eyes coming back to rest squarely on Zach’s. “I’ve had nothing to say about what happened aboard since. None of them knew much about boats, so they kept me alive and forced me to do all the piloting. In those three days, they attacked four small boats looking for food and fuel. None of the boats had much of either, so they killed the people aboard and scuttled the boats.”

  He sighed and looked down. They couldn’t read what was in his eyes when he looked up. There might have been sorrow in them for a moment, but that changed quickly. When he looked back at them, they saw neutrality.

  “Oh, I tried to be heroic,” he went on, his voice low. “For a while. After they killed the people on the first boat and sunk it, I refused to do any more piloting. They tied me up and beat me. Several times. When that didn’t work, they threatened to kill me. That did. I saw that they had no compunction about doing that, so I relented and continued driving the boat, biding my time until I could find a way to escape. I’m a good fisherman, so they were living mainly on the fish I caught. By the way, if you have food, I’d very much appreciate some. They ate almost everything I caught and allowed me barely enough to survive on.”

  “Their plan,” he took turns looking them in the eye, “was to get to the U.S. mainland. But they knew they could never get there on my boat because they would never find enough fuel. When they saw your beautiful sailboat and saw those barrels you have back there, they thought they hit the jackpot. They decided to take it over, keeping a couple of you around to run it.”

  “A couple of us?” said Stacey. “And the rest?”

  “Everyone else would have met the same fate as the people on the other boats they attacked. Me, too, I’m sure… being as they would have had no more use for me. Dead people don’t pose a threat, and they don’t eat, either.”

  “You tried to sink us,” Zach stated firmly. “You, personally.”

  Tillman looked at him questioningly.

  “The dynamite,” Zach prompted. “You tried to pick it up and throw it at us.”

  “That? Look, all I knew was that someone threw a stick of dynamite at us. If I didn’t get rid of it, it would destroy my boat – which, by the way, it did. What would you have done? I had no idea where I was going to throw it, but I sure as heck intended to throw it away from my boat. As it turned out, it was my chance to escape. When it rolled away from me, I dived overboard to get away from the explosion. When I came up, I saw your dinghy trailing along behind you. It took every ounce of strength that I had left, but I somehow got to it. I held on until it looked like most of you had settled in for the night, and then I managed to climb up into it. I guess I passed out right away. The next thing I knew, you had a gun pointed at me.”

  “What’s that bruise on the back of your arm?” Millie asked.

  “Where they hit me, I suppose,” Tillman said, twisting his arm around so he could look at it, “although they mostly hit me on the back.”

  “Zach, do you mind if I take him down to check out his bruises?” the former nurse asked.

  “No, go ahead. It’s time for us to get some breakfast, anyway. Then we need to start cleaning up.”

  Millie helped Tillman walk to the cockpit and helped him climb over and down the ladder to the salon.

  “What do you think?” George asked when they were gone.

  “I don‘t know,” Zach admitted. “He could be telling the truth.”

  “I think he is,” Stacey said. “He seems to be in bad shape.”

  “Diving into a rampaging ocean and struggling to stay afloat would do that all by itself,” George pointed out.

  “Either way – whether he’s our guest or our prisoner – he’s here and will be until we reach California,” Zach said. “We’ll treat him with respect, but we can’t treat him as one of us.”

  “How do we do that?” Glen asked.

  “First,” his father said, “we keep all our weapons away from him. We’ll have to watch them closely from now on.” He looked at Denise, who nodded. “Second, we’ll have to have two people awake at all times when he is. I’ll let him stand watch, but one of us will be watching him throughout.”

  “Do you think he can really fish?” Glen asked.

  “He’d better be able to,” Stacey replied. “With the extra mouths to feed, we’ll need the extra rations.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t add what I thought you would.” Zach said, a small smile playing on the corner of his lips.

  “Which is?” she asked, attempting to maintain a look of innocence.

  “Because I certainly can’t,” Zach answered.

  “I believe,” Denise cut in, “that message was implied by how the statement was formulated.”

  All eyes turned to the girl who was trying, with little success, to look intellectual. For the first time in days, the family had a good laugh.

  Chapter 25

  BREAKFAST was a different experience than any meal they ever had, either on this trip or at any time. The food was the same as what they had been having and the preparation didn’t involve anything new, but that was where the similarity ended. In addition to the three new people, the conversations were what might be heard on the battlefield, with talk centered on the fighting they in which they had just engaged and what battles might lay ahead.

  Once breakfast was over, they went to work, sobered by the retelling of what they were forced to do the night before. Simply giving voice to those horrid memories engendered even more alarming visions of what awaited them in the new, unknown world that lay ahead. It was seemingly unspoken knowledge that keeping busy would help them concentrate on more mundane – and calming – issues, those having to do with everyday life.

  The Arthurs always kept good track of what they had on hand, so it didn’t take long to tally up an inventory that included the meager new supplies they got from the hotel. There was not enough to sustain the three new people on board, but having them was better than not.

  They found locations for the new things. Because they had a “prisoner” aboard, they locked the AK-47s away. Zach, George, and Millie kept their handguns on their persons. The dinghy was lifted to the deck and cleaned. Barnacles had attached themselves to the bottom in the short period it had been in the water. It was soon hanging on the davits that extended out over the water at the rear of the boat. The sailboat’s deck was scrubbed, getting rid of the fuel and blood that had stained it, and the barrels at the stern were rearranged to even out the weight.

  All told, they counted twenty-one bullet holes in the boat’s structure but none of the bullets had hit anything vital and did not inhibit their ability to sail the boat. As they had originally thought, there were holes in three of the barrels, all in the top one-third portions of the containers, so they still had most of their fuel left.

  Millie found that Ron Tillman had multiple bruises on his back, but only a few resulted in cuts. She dressed and bandaged them in short order. Because of their injuries, both he and Glen were told they didn’t have to participate in the cleanup, but both elected to lend a hand. They, possibly even more than the others, saw the value of keeping their minds on small chores.

  By ten a.m., all was ready for the hoisting of the sails. When Zach gave the word, Denise cut the engine, and he raised the mainsail. At the same time, Stacey was raising the mizzen sail on the aft mast, and within seconds, Glen had the jib up at the front of the boat. Denise disengaged the autopilot and was at the wheel. There was a ten-knot wind coming from the northeast, and that was enough to move them along comfortably. The boat leaned only a little to starboard with the wind hitting the sails over the port side.

  “Dad, with the wind coming from where it is, we can stay right on course for a while,” Denise advised her father.

  “Good. Keep that course as long as you can.”

  George and Millie watched in awe as each member of the family did their job with coordinated proficiency. “You people are really good,” George said. “I’ve been wanting to learn how to sail, and n
ow seems to be the perfect time.”

  “A person is never too old to learn,” Millie added. “Teach me, too.”

  Zach readily agreed. “It will be my pleasure. We’ll need all the knowledgeable hands we can get on this trip. Okay, let’s start with what we’re doing right now. A boat can sail in any direction except directly into the wind. The wind is coming in from the northeast. The course we’re on is almost due east, so the northeast wind is coming in on the port side, over the front quarter of the boat. It’s at about thirty degrees off our bow. As long as it keeps coming from there or moves in a northerly direction, we’re okay to stay on this course. Sailing this way, into the wind, is called reaching, or beating. If the wind moves even a little south, however, and I’m afraid it probably will, we will have to fall off and head in a southeasterly direction.”

  “Won’t that take us off course?” asked Millie.

  “Yes. We’ll be tacking from that point on. That is, we’ll head southeast for awhile, and then come about.” He laughed and took a moment to explain the second sailing term. “All ‘coming about’ means is that we’ll change directions. In this case, we’ll change to a northeasterly course. At that point, the wind will be coming in over the starboard front quarter of the boat. We’ll keep doing that, changing course, for most of the trip. First southeast and then northeast. The idea is… we will end up going to a point in the middle, almost directly east.”

  Millie thought that over and had a question. “If you keep changing, and we’re out here in the middle of the ocean, how will you know you’re really heading toward the right spot?”

  “Good question. Wait here.” He went below and came back with the sextant Commander Kotchel had given him, along with the book of directions. “At noon,” he said, holding the book up to be seen, “I’ll get a reading, and then I’ll be able to determine exactly where we are.” He thumbed through the book, looking for the chapter on noon sightings.