Invasion USA 3 - The Battle for Survival (33 page)

He found the two folding beds and had the beds and piles of blankets and extra pillows in the villa’s lounge by the time his five French housemates arrived hauling their large suitcases he had seen on the pier. Europeans seemed to travel with a vast amount of luggage and he wondered how much they needed to vacation with.

“Captain Mo, where do you want your guests to sleep?” asked Marie with a military salute once they had descended to the pier and were ready to board. The stress of waiting had gone from their faces and everybody, including Lu peering out of the door, looked more relaxed. “If any yacht or boat or military vessel is going to take us to safety, this is a good one to steal, and it would make me so happy to see the German lady’s face we she learns it’s gone!” Marie added.

“As long as we don’t have to return the ship to your German lady friend,” added Mo. “There are four single beds in the front bedrooms, or cabins as you call them,” he started, smiling at Marie. “Marie, you and your daughters take those and, Beatrice, you and Virginie take the master cabin with the very big bed. Lu, her children and I can take the couches in the lounge and the two camp beds out here. We are smaller. Please listen. Until we leave here after dark, nobody is allowed on deck or swimming around the ship. I want all curtains left closed as if nobody has touched them. I want the villa’s lights on and make sure that it looks like we are still there. Put on some loud music. Beatrice, Marie, Lu, girls, everybody… bring down all the food we have as well as all the liquor from the drinks cabinet and trolley. I don’t want to starve to death at sea and I want the villa completely empty of everything edible or drinkable. Also, I saw a watermaker on the ship. There are dozens of bottles of water in the kitchen pantry in the villa. Bring every bottle and then fill up all the empty bottles you can find, even those that were thrown in the trash. I will be getting everything ready and working here on the ship. It seems I am now Captain Mo, but I don’t know anything about sailing, so Marie, you and Beatrice will help me get to where we are going. Right now, I’m going to fill up the large gas cans of diesel and gasoline I saw in the boat shed and organize whatever I can think of here.”

The lounge quickly emptied and Mo picked up his satellite phone to call Lee Wang in America.

“This is Lee Wang,”
he heard Lu’s elder brother answer the phone.

“Hi, Lee, this is Mo Wang. How are you?”

“Mo Wang, the fishes haven’t eaten you yet?”
Lee answered.

“No, not yet, Lee.” Mo smiled. “I have some excellent news for you but I need to speak to Carlos Rodriquez first.”

“My uncle would like to speak to you,”
he heard Lee say, handing over the phone.

“Comrade Mo Wang, it is surprising that you stayed alive so long. Maybe you are not such a bad guy after all. Thank you for the information you gave us in January. It was precise and accurate and I know that Lee told you the outcome,”
stated Carlos, his tone not very friendly.

“Carlos, I am leaving Honduras with some good friends and heading for Key West in Florida or Cuba. Can you pick us up?” asked Mo.

“I don’t think I’m interested in picking you up in Key West or Cuba or wherever you are.”

“Carlos, please, just listen. I have important information you will find interesting. I know about a depot of working electrical parts Zedong Electronics stashed away in a town called Harbin, in China. I will give you all that information. Also I believe that this area is becoming a bad place and that the troubles around here could advance north to the American border soon. I have some other interesting information for you about—”

Carlos interrupted him.
“If you are correct, when you get here I will listen to you. But if you are bull crapping me, Comrade, you will spend the rest of your life in a place you don’t want to be. As far as I’m concerned, Lee, his family and I owe you no favors and vice versa. I will make that decision if you ever make it here. If you don’t, nobody here really cares. I will meet you when you are on American soil. Call me from a callbox in Key West and I’ll think about it. Goodbye, Comrade Wang,”
and Carlos hung up the phone.

Mo Wang put the phone away; he understood the man’s disdain. He was probably the world’s worst surviving bad guy right now. Mo got back to reality and began to figure out what he could do to get ready. He wanted to leave about an hour after dark.

He had checked the ship’s fuel tanks the day before, but first he wanted to see how the fuel system worked. It took him half an hour in the engine room to understand how to open the tanks for delivery to the two big 800-horse Cummins and he found a totally separate fuel line and system, a back-up by the look of it, to the smaller engine. He studied the small writing on the engine. It was also an old Cummins engine, a much smaller six-cylinder and three-carburetor model stating 200 horsepower.

This would not get the large eighty-foot vessel moving along at any great speeds, but it would propel the boat forward and he assumed that the smaller engine and the small sails were meant to work together for a longer range, or, to curious eyes, it would look like a sailing boat traveling at a descent speed. Marie said that the sails were far too small and, with the weight of the steel, probably pretty useless. He worked out the four-generator system and checked all the fuel filters.

By the time he went back up it was starting to get dark outside; the lights were turned off inside the boat and there were seven females and a young male sitting there waiting for him in the dark.

“Let’s check out the boatshed,” suggested Mo.

“The house is totally empty of all food and liquids, Captain Mo,” joked Beatrice. “We left the house as you wanted it, double-locked the gates from inside and left lights and music on. We even brought all the toilet paper we could find.”

Mo, Marie and Beatrice checked out the boatshed at the end of the pier and found and filled what they could from a simple re-fueling system. There were fuel pipes long enough to reach the boat’s fuel inlets, two on each side.

He pulled out the long pipe, opened the steel caps one at a time and topped off the tanks. Somebody had already done a good job filling the tanks, but he managed to get another twenty gallons of diesel into them. There was very little gasoline, only one full five-gallon red canister. Everything in the ship worked on diesel. They found a dozen empty red gasoline canisters and he filled them with diesel. There were also five larger thirty-gallon gas canisters on wheels and he filled those as well. They were moveable gas tanks and had a manual pump and gas nozzle on each. The five mobile tanks, steel, also had a Colombian military insignia on each one.

“Do you have any idea how much fuel she takes, Marie?” Mo asked. The bridge fuel indicators did not indicate fuel quantities, and the gauges only marked quarter-tank quantities.

“I would guess that, being a Coast Guard ship, she should have a range of at least a thousand miles, maybe even two thousand miles, but it could be as little as six or seven hundred miles. The tanks must hold 350 to 500 gallons each, and there are four of them. Those engines will drink fuel at about a gallon per mile per engine. Estimate 2,000 gallons for about 1,000 miles of cruising at around 15 knots for a steel military ship. Now with the small engine, I’d say that the smaller Cummins would consume about a gallon every five miles, a gallon or two an hour. It should be supplied out of the same fuel tanks and that puts our range at about five knots per hour to as much as 5,000 miles. If you get five knots from the smaller engine and a strong breeze fills the sails for another 2 knots, then we are talking a good situation. With a stiff twenty-knot breeze and the smaller engine on low revs, she could even get up to ten knots on a gallon. Mo, it would take a year, but this ship could circumnavigate the earth, a pretty good setup. I’m starting to like her.”

They carried the extra two hundred gallons on board and tied the canisters to the aft railings. It was now dark as Mo asked the two sailors to show him how to drive the ship. They laughed and told him “sail” the ship even though it was engines doing the work.

The little engine was running and a very faint gurgle could be heard from its exhaust below the water line; Mo had the lights and instruments dimmed in the bridge. The old radar scanner atop the first mast was working and showed him the bay and the hills behind. Marie told him to shut it off until they were out of the bay. She had found a few pairs of military night-sight binoculars in a cubbyhole and now they could creep out of the small bay without lights or radar.

The depth gauge showed fifteen feet as Beatrice eased the aft line and handed it to the three French girls for onboard storage. The water was totally calm around them as she threw in the middle line and then ran for the last one on the bow. Marie took over control from Mo. She gently pushed the engines’ control lever forward and a gear clicked and Mo could feel faint forward movement. Beatrice threw the last line in as the ship inched forward and away from the pier, coming abreast of her, and she nimbly jumped on deck.

Marie eased the side slowly away from the pier, keeping in the dug-out stone furrow under the ship and not letting her touch bottom.

Very slowly, she allowed the small engine to move the large, heavy ship forward. As the pier disappeared behind them Marie gently swung the wheel to starboard. She increased engine revs and Mo could feel a slither of power vibrate through the ship.

The depth gauge read thirty feet as Marie turned the bow southwards and the ship peeked out of the bay around them. Mo scanned the sea close to them through his binoculars and saw nothing. Apart from a few lights in the direction of a small town they were about to sail past, everything was pitch black; blackouts were probably in effect in the main town and harbor.

“Mo, turn on the radar and size the screen down to a ten-mile range,” directed Marie, as she swung the wheel to port slightly and increased power to three quarters. Mo complied with her instructions and thought about going out on deck to look around. He glanced at the instrument; the depth gauge indicated seventy feet and he could see the black shape of the island beginning to line up with the left side of the ship half a mile away.

“I think a five-mile range from the island would be better, Marie. I’m sure somebody could see us if the moon rises.”

“I agree,” she replied and turned the ship to angle away from the black shapes of the island and increased the speed to cruise power, a line in between three-quarters and full power. “She’s just gone over five knots, Mo, Exactly what I said she would do.”

“You are Captain now, Marie,” smiled Mo. “I’m going to act like a sailor in the movies and do the binocular search.” He grabbed two pairs of binoculars and left the bridge.

He went down the stairs to the lounge and found that thick curtains had been pulled over all the windows and a small kitchen light was on so they could see each other.

“We are getting ship-shape, Mo,” stated Beatrice. “The fridge and three freezers are full. We found a third chest freezer in the engine room and put the rest of the frozen fish in it. I also found several high quality fishing rods and a fishing chair which hooks onto a pole or something on the aft area. It can be checked out for fishing tomorrow. We have put the water away and the girls, and Lu and I have been getting to know each other. They are a nice family.”

Mo handed her a pair of night binoculars. Reading what was written on the side, he noticed they were high quality military issue, made in China. He led Beatrice outside, quickly closing the door behind her.

The first slight swell reached the ship causing Mo to lose his balance and knock into Beatrice. She steadied him and he held onto her for a brief moment.

“Mr. Wang, I might think you were making a pass at me, or trying to push me overboard,” suggested Beatrice, putting the glasses to her eyes and staring out.

“Making passes at you would be far nicer than pushing you overboard, Beatrice. Now show me how to see clearly through these glasses.”

They looked together for several minutes. There was nothing visible on the becalmed sea. Mo noticed that the land was now further away and through the night vision, he could identify green unlit shapes of houses along the beaches. There were faint lights in the small town or village now abreast of them, and a few further up on the hills behind. He searched carefully for any shapes on the water without lights but couldn’t see anything.

The swells were getting larger and Mo could hear the faint throbbing of the small engine below deck. He could hear the gurgle of an exhaust, but even though it was quiet all around them, the noise of the ship gliding through the water and the noises from the aft area were certainly not going very far. He had heard that sound travels better over water but did not think anyone would hear them a mile away. They were still on the southern side of the island with at least thirty miles to go to the eastern tip.

He went in to tell Marie to take the power down to three-quarters and nearly panicked when he stepped into the lounge to find her there, talking to Lu.

“Who is driving the ship?” he asked, shocked.

“Monsieur Captain Autopilot, Captain Mo,” she replied. “Do you want me to show you how it works?” He nodded yes.

She returned with him after asking Lu to think about dinner and that she, Beatrice and the girls would help her. Marie showed him how simple it was to engage the autopilot. She placed a dot on the radar, now at a fifteen-mile range, with a plotter instrument on the radar control unit, a line automatically was drawn by the radar’s antiquated computer system to the dot from the ship and the heading was fixed with a readout of twelve miles and ETA, or Estimated Time of Arrival, in 153 minutes at five knots. Mo decreased the power to three-quarters, the speed dropped to four knots and the time went up to 179 minutes.

Mo was impressed. Since there wasn’t much else to do he sat down and started studying the other instruments. The depth gauge was showing over a hundred feet and the radar showed them to be two miles off shore.