Flotilla (36 page)

I didn't recognize him at first without that nasty coat he always wore. His beard was trimmed back and it was the first time I'd seen him with combed hair. His usual fuzzy and bloodshot eyes were sharp and pointed. He was wearing blue jeans, a polo shirt and in a waistband holster he carried a pistol. He dropped a thick manila folder full of all kinds of paper and then sat at the desk in front of us.

"You're in a lot of trouble here, Jim," he said. "You could help your sister here and tell us where your Dad's been hiding his stashes."

"I don't know..." I began but Trash cut me short.

"Spare me," he said bluntly. "Spare me, okay?" He was trying hard to hold his temper ... why was he so mad at me? "Your Dad is on shore and I'm having a hard time holding these people back. Maybe you saw what's waiting for you out there?" He paused while I tried to make sense of all of this.

What was Dad really into? Did he leave us to fend for ourselves knowing these freaks were going to come after us? What kind of parent would do that? Trash wasn't going to let me take much time to think ... he already had it all figured out.

"Your only chance at this point," Trash continued, "is to give it up and let us take you into 'protective custody'. That way, they'll see what we have you and that we have the drugs. After that ... you'll probably just end up losing the
Horner
."

"Lose the
Horner
?"

"Yeah, Jim," he explained wearily. "These people gotta take their rage out somewhere ... I'd much rather it be on some crummy boat than on you and your sister."

"But...wha...?"

"Jim!" he slapped the table and thundered at me. "Wake up! Those animals are getting ready to rip you apart. Now where are they?"

"I don't know!" I said, feeling myself start to cry. Dad really had abandoned us, hadn't he? He left us to this and never even bothered to warn me. I didn't know what I was going to do at this point. I guess I still love him but at that point I wasn't worried if I ever saw him again.

"Think, kid," Trash said. "Think hard. Did you ever see him with bags or boxes?"

"Of course ... he always has something. He's scamming with different people all the time."

"Who?"

"Everyone," I answered. "He's always trying to do something with somebody." I wasn't lying: that was the truth. Dad's 'pickle test' philosophy means that he is constantly throwing pickles at the wall and looking for one of them to stick.

"Anyone in particular?"

"Miguel," I said, feeling like the world's worst traitor. I knew that giving Trash Man the names of anyone on the Colony meant they would become targets. I hated myself for doing it but I didn't know what other choice I had.

Trash surprised me. "Nope ... Miguel's not involved," he replied. "Who else?"

"I dunno...The Burning Man people?"

"Big guy named Mongo?" he asked in reply.

"Yeah. Dad and Mongo are tight." Trash grunted thoughtfully and it made me think I'd just confirmed something he already knew.

He kept at us for another hour or so until he was convinced we had told him everything we knew. Meanwhile, Trash Man told us how he had been working as an undercover DEA agent on the Colony to put a stop to the drugs and his real name was also Rick. I had to tell him the same story, over and over again. He'd ask the same questions in different ways to see what I would do. It was exhausting.

After he was done, Trash Man assigned a Security detail to walk us back to the
Horner
and keep an eye on us. "For our safety," he said. I think it was more like they wanted to use us as bait. Madison was still crying. She had heard everything we said and it was way too much for her to absorb. After we went inside and the security goon was gone, I grabbed her and pulled her close.

She cried for a few more minutes, sobbing into my shoulder but stopped when I said, "Maddy. Mad, listen to me!" She choked back a sob and started breathing heavily. "Listen to me," I said again, grabbing her by the shoulders and looking right into her eyes. "We gotta go."

"What?"

"We have to leave here."

"On the boat?"

"Yes. I have to take the boat and you and get us out of here."

"But why can't we stay here?"

"You heard 'em from before?" She nodded. "They're talking about letting people take this boat and it's all we have right now. Do you want people to sink our boat?" She shook her head vigorously. "Well if we stay here, they will. That's why we gotta go."

"But can you drive this thing?" she asked. Dang ... Why are little sisters so good at that? That was the question I was hoping she'd overlook. I wanted to say something like "I don't know but I'll try" but it sounded so phony. When I looked into her eyes I saw something like hope and trust. There was no way I was giving that up.

"Yes," I lied. "Yes, I can. It's easy. I'll even show you how."
Good answer
, I told myself when I saw her shaky smile. We quickly hashed out a plan for escape.

"We need food and we need fuel," I said. "You're in charge of getting the food together. Find out what we have and then check the boats next door for whatever is left." She nodded and went to the kitchen to get started. I would work on getting the fuel and this was going to be a
lot
more difficult.

The
Horner
did have some fuel but I had no idea how much. Assuming that Dad never took it anywhere, I thought the tanks might be empty. The fuel gauge showed that we were about half-full ... how much was that? I knew that the boat ran on diesel and that the engines should run okay. Ever since I got here, Dad had me start the engines every week and run them for 10 minutes to keep the batteries charged. It was a boring chore but now it might be the thing that saves our lives.

I found a binder under the console on the bridge that gave me some basic numbers about the
Horner
. Forty-six-foot pilothouse, built in the nineties ... blah, blah, blah. Fuel capacity ... it was a thousand-gallon tank. Half-full meant five hundred gallons of fuel. How far would that take us?

I checked that map again - from here to Puget Sound was over 1200 miles. Cruising range of the boat is 2000 miles. That's how far it can travel, right? I was going to need some more diesel. So where was I going to get fuel? And how would I do it with the Security goons breathing down our necks?

Pacific Fisheries made a tidy profit hauling diesel out from Los Angeles in rusty green Castrol drums. Then they bring the drums out to your boat on a dolly to be siphoned into your gas tanks. Getting gas for the boat is miserable work and you wouldn't believe what they charge for it. One of the good things was that Dad had an electric pump system that allowed him to run a hose out to the dock and pump the gas directly into the tank. It used to be somebody's bilge pump but he figured out a way to re-purpose it for fuel. It wasn't a bad system and it saved hours of back-breaking labor when you were miles from the nearest gas station.

The security detail, whoever they were, weren't close enough to see me slip out the door to the bow, over the rail and onto the fishing porch. Madison ran the hose over to me and I was able to stretch it over as far as the gas tank on the ship next door to us. I gave her a little wave and she hit the switch to start the pump. Gas was sucked up through the hose - it was old surgical tubing, I think - and into our fuel tank.

From the bow, I noticed that we were totally exposed if someone wanted to swim around and get to us that way. The goon squad wasn't watching the back side of the Colony. They certainly missed the one pirate who almost found us. I shivered just thinking about it. The guy next door didn't have much and he ran dry in only a few minutes. Madison heard the air bubbling into the tank, hit the OFF switch and then we went through the process again of moving the hose to another nearby boat and emptying their tank.

I felt rotten to be stealing from our neighbors and it was a hard job, too. I found extra hose and connectors in the Junk Room buried under a box of old software CDs. I figured out how to connect the hoses but we had to be careful to keep it out of the water and keep salt water out of the gas tank.

Each boat was a nightmare. There would be a few tense minutes while I scoped it out and then climbed aboard. Each time, I was risking a serious beating or worse for being a looter. I ended up checking four or five boats near us and they each had less fuel than Dad did. It was still something and we were able to empty their tanks with the help of Dad's little home-improvement project.

It took hours to find hose, move to different boats and avoid anyone who might see us. We were completely exhausted and terrified at the same time. All we got for our trouble was a hundred gallons of fuel. Not enough, but we were out of options.

I made the decision to let the fish go while Madison was out checking other boats for food. She called it 'grocery shopping'. I took a pair of heavy shears and started cutting the nets open from their plastic housings. Part of me was sad to see them leave after working so hard to take care of them but at the same time, it was great to see them go free. I had to remind myself that they knew how to take care of themselves. They didn't really need us as much as we needed them. I didn't finish the cuts ... I just went about halfway and let them figure the rest out. Then I cut loose the rig of plastic pipes that held the nets together and let them drift away.

Since the decking was hooked to us and to the E-Ring docks, it wasn't going to give us away if I unhooked them. They weren't going to float away or anything. It felt historic and sad to unhook the big rubber-coated chains that held the decking to our ship and let them fall into the water. They were free and now ... so were we. There was nothing between us and the horizon but water. The only thing holding us onto the Colony was a few feet of rope.

We completed our preparations about six that evening. Maddy had raided a number of abandoned boats for food and whatever else she thought was worth taking. She did okay but we ended up with a lot more junk food than real food. While she put the food away, I slipped over to the
Barco de Arma
one last time.

"Hello?" I called. The place was tore up ... someone else had gotten to the
Gun Range
before I did. Miguel's wife was gone and so were all of the rental guns we rented to customers. The empty green velvet racks looked sad and pathetic without any hardware sitting in them. I remembered long days, checking them out and back in again maybe an hour later and endless afternoons with rods, patches and a bottle of Hoppe's No. 9. The silence of the room was so heavy that I had to spend a few minutes to get it together. I remembered a line from a book that said 'the time for grieving would come later.' Right now, I had a job to do.

Whoever raided the gun cabinet may have missed the hidden stuff. The small lock that kept the back cabinet closed was still locked and that gave me hope. I spent a few minutes looking for a something to use as a lock pick. Have you ever tried to pick a lock with absolutely no training or experience? I jammed pieces of wire and straightened paper clips into the keyhole like I'd seen guys on TV or movies do it. After a few minutes I gave up ... I didn't know what I was doing. I went back to the
Horner
, rummaged around the Junk Room and returned with a rusty crowbar. That was much more effective.

"Miguel's gonna kill me," I muttered and rammed the point of the crowbar into the space between the two doors to wedge it all open. When that didn't work I started on the hinges and eventually, the door popped loose and one of the large shelf pieces crashed to the deck. I had no time to lose ... if anyone heard me they would be here in seconds. I heaved the shelf out of the way for a peek inside.

It turns out that there was nothing to take. The interior shelf unit that nobody was supposed to know about was just as bare as the one outside. That big machine gun was gone and so was everything else.

He told me later on, after the pirate run, that the gun was a 'PKM' ... whatever that is. He also had an automatic shotgun, some nickel-plated handguns and a Mac-10 with a fat suppressor screwed onto it. That thing really would have done some damage against the pirates. I guess it will still do some damage when it gets used wherever Miguel ended up at. I wondered if he was still alive.