Flotilla (30 page)

"You hear that?" he asked.

"Yeah, I'm on my way - they said it's a about the emergency on the mainland."

"I know," he said with a grin. "Which one?" He started walking quickly again, not bothering to explain himself. We stared after him for a minute.

"Dad-" I began but he shook his head.

"Don't ask, I don't know either," he replied. "See what you can find out." Dad started jogging toward the boat launch where a crowd was piling on. They motored off and left us - I watched them go and realized that Stacy was still standing there.

"Oh, dude...I'm sorry," I said.

"It's okay," she offered. "Can I come in?"

"Yeah, sure," I said, opening the door. "He won't be back for hours."

She came into the lounge. "Hey, Madison."

Madison looked up from her place on the couch where she'd huddled with a blanket and her stuffed Tigger. "Hey."

"That guy on the AM said that there's more than one disaster," I said to Stacy.

"I know," she replied. "There's a bunch of things happening." She sat down and accessed the cable television menu we couldn't get on our boat because Dad refused to pay for it. The news channels came up and the carnage began to become very apparent to all of us. We stared in silence for half an hour - the bugs in LA and Baltimore. San Jose's downtown area had several fires that they were covering at a distance, afraid that a bug was spreading there, too.

My wetsuit started to get uncomfortable after all that time - dry suits bind at your shoulders; mine does, anyway. I went downstairs to my stateroom and almost had it all off when I realized that Stacy had followed me. She grinned at almost catching me with no clothes on - she knew that I never wore anything inside my suit.

"I just wanted to tell you, in case I didn't get a chance later ... it was fun." She stepped forward and kissed me on my cheek. Then, she put her arms around me and pulled me close. It was a kiss that I would spend many nights afterward reliving ... probably the sexiest moment of my life. Then, the roof caved in. "I gotta go," she said, turning to leave.

"No, wait!"

She was already upstairs and in the salon when I caught up to her. As Stacy turned around, I saw the tears going down her cheeks. "Sorry, Jim, I hate to tell you like this. My mom and dad are leaving today, after the meeting. I wasn't supposed to be gone this long but I had to tell you goodbye." She started crying hard and put her arms around me again. Sniffing, she kissed me again and again before tucking her head into my shoulder and giving me a whiff of her apple-scented conditioner. We held each other like that for a long time.

Stacy finally pulled away and gave Madison a hug. They had become pretty good friends in the month we were all together and Madison was crying, too. Finally, Stacy came back, put her arms around me and gave me the second best kiss I'd ever had in my life. Then, without another word, she was gone. She waved to Madison as she closed the door. I stood there, my wetsuit half-off with all of these feelings twisted up inside and no way to say any of them. Madison watched us in silence. Finally, she looked up at me, "I'm telling Dad!"

I looked over at her. "Really?" Madison wasn't usually one to narc on me.

She gave me that look that only a little sister can. "No. I'm sorry, too." For an eight-year-old, Madison could be downright inscrutable sometimes.

Dad returned about an hour later, looking shaken. "Did you guys know that it's happening in other places, too?" he asked.

"We saw it," I said. "Stacy got us onto the cable nets." Mercifully, he said nothing about her being on board. Nodding, he went to the refrigerator and pulled out a beer. Sitting down, he started to tell us how the colony was organizing a boatlift evacuation for people on the mainland.

"No one thinks that it's 100% safe but they aren't giving us a choice. The President's declared martial law." So now, in addition to pirates, the Trash Man and whatever else is going on with Dad that he doesn't want to tell me, we have martial law, the mainland is in chaos and we're supposed to try to go to shore in this rickety tub. Can anyone else say 'between a rock and a hard place'?

"You've gotta be kidding," I said. "We can't make the mainland with our engines."

Dad sat there with his head down between his shoulders, staring at something no one else could see. It was one of those times where I could see what he must have been like in prison. He wasn't a large man but he had a certain strength that reminded me of a Rottweiler. For all his strength and ability to survive prison, this type of emergency was beyond him. I could see that he was scared, really scared, of something. Maybe he wasn't telling us everything.

"What is it?" I said finally.

He sighed. "The Coast Guard is ending their zone enforcement of the water south and west of us," he said. "They're moving in to assist with the emergency and have informed the colony that quote, 'it should not expect further assistance'." Madison looked confused but my heart sank.

I never got a straight answer out of Dad or Miguel about what Dad was involved with after that visit from the pirates before Madison arrived. Dad had called it 'harassment'. "The Coast Guard patrols these waters," he had promised. You could even see the cutters off in the distance every few days. "Anybody tries anything ... the Coast Guard is right there."

At the time, it made us feel better. Now they were going away - there wasn't anything to stop these guys except Miguel and that big huge gun. Our world had suddenly become even more dangerous.

"So what does that mean?" I asked.

"It means," He said, "we're in trouble. Bad trouble. I give the pirates one or two days tops, and then they'll come for us." Silence ensured as my stomach turned to water. Dad had told us some hoodoo stories about the pirates, about them capturing small boats and what they did to the crews. I read something similar in an old paperback Dad had lying around...Clear and Present Something - I can't remember the title.

"Julian's got his gun," I said. "The sniper rifle?"

Dad nodded. "He's a good shot, too," Dad added. "The very last time pirates came around, he was up on top of the
Gun Range
and just let them come in. When they were in range, he fired one shot and punched a hole through the front of the boat. The bullet went through the entire boat and buried itself in the engine block; stopped the entire thing in one shot."

He sat back on the couch and pushed his fingers through his hair. "But he won't be here this time," Dad said. "He's going with us." There was silence in the room for a minute.

"This is going to sound dumb," he said. "But how good are you driving this thing?"

"Driving the boat?" I said. "I've never driven a boat."

"You've driven the
C Minor
."

"The
C Minor
is a wakeboarding boat, Dad," I said. "This..." I waved my hand at the air "is a ship."

Dad shrugged. "Just a question," he said. He sat up and stood, going to the refrigerator. I could hear the door open and the can snap. I squeezed my eyes shut in frustration - just like Dad to reach for the beer when we had a problem.

"Wait a minute," I said. Something was missing here. "Shouldn't you be driving the boat?"

"I can't," he said with a sigh.

"Why not?"

He was silent for about a minute, sipping at his beer and staring at the wall. It looked like he was trying to make his mind up about something. "I'm in a bit of trouble," he said finally. "Your friend, the Trash Man, is an undercover DEA agent and he's trying to bust me."

"But why would ..." I began before a sickening feeling crept over me. A very ugly piece of the puzzle just fell into place: this was why Dad was so successful. He was running drugs again. The room was silent while I tried to think of a way to ask the next question. "Mongo?"

He nodded slowly. "The groceries I've been running with Mongo...yeah." Children of the Burning Man and their grocery runs were how they were running drugs through the Colony. Whatever happened after that, I don't know. Maybe the Colony was just a conduit so the drugs could be shipped elsewhere or maybe that's what Mitch was selling. "If I make a move to leave, they'll be all over me and all over you."

"Who would, the cops or the pirates?"

He took a breath and let it out with a sigh. "Both of them," he said.

I made a little groaning sound in my throat and Madison looked at me weird. Dad was involved in the drug trade. He was also supposed to be running the
Dixie Star
and was probably funneling money to the wrong people doing that. On top of that, there were illegal immigrants running around. That meant he might have ties to the human trafficking and I'm sure the Trash Man would love to bust Dad for that even if he couldn't get him with the drugs. On top of all that, he had some low-rent pirates out of Baja looking for his nuts on a platter because he was probably trying to screw them as much as he was Pac Fish.

Madison and I were in a huge mess. My head ached when I even tried to think about it all at once. I'm turning 15 years old soon - are 15-year-olds supposed to be handling problems like this? Like I said, my head hurt when I tried to keep all the problems straight ... don't even ask me about a solution.

"I don't know what we're going to do right now," Dad continued. "Might not even be an issue. Up there," he nodded toward the
Phoenix
, "they're still arguing it all over. I slipped out to get a jumpstart on getting the boat broken down." I couldn't believe he even said that ... 'might not be a problem'. Dad was losing his grip and it pissed me off that he was doing all of this under our nose ... doing it and inviting us out here to be a part of it all. Something snapped in me and I got very, very pissed off.

"So you already decided," I said flatly.

"No," he stared back at me, not liking the challenge.

"But you came back to start breaking down."

"That's what I told them, Jim," he said. "You seriously think I'm going to put you in harm's way?"

"You already have," I snapped. I didn't really want to and I hadn't planned on doing it but the oaf made me so angry that it kind of just slipped out. I shouted at Dad and I hit him closer to where it hurt than anything I might have done (or not done ... I admit nothing) on the C Minor. But we crossed a line of some kind here and I didn't know what it might mean.

Madison jumped but I saw Dad just lock down like he was all of a sudden back in the joint. He tightened like he was going to either give or take a punch. His eyes tightened and his jaw clenched. I was terrified at the way I was speaking to him - this was nothing like the fight we had last night. Do you ever remember your first man-to-man argument with your father?

He stood up to his full height and went into his classic "I'm in charge" pose - hands on his hips and shoulders hunched like he was going to throw blows. "Don't you dare talk to me that way," he hissed thinly. "I may be a lot of things but I'm still your father."

It was a voice I'd never heard and it scared me a little ... but not enough to back down. I roared back: "And you're the guy that has the DEA on one side and a bunch of drug pirates on the other. Everyone wants a piece of you!" Dad slapped me then. In one smooth motion he stepped forward and gave me a big open-handed smack that knocked me to the floor. It happened so quickly that I was on the ground before I realized he'd hit me, but he wasn't done. Dad picked me up by the front of my shirt and slammed me back against the wall.

"Think you're so smart?" he shouted. "The stupid, drunk kid from rehab is going to tell
me
that I'm screwing up?" Madison was screaming with her hands over her ears. I could still talk and so I did.

"At least I didn't bring my kids into it! Screw you, old man!" His eyes widened with surprise. Oh, it was on now.