Just Add Salt (2) (22 page)

Chapter 31

When Jan and I woke up a little after noon, we were still cocooned in gray, and the guys weren’t back. Not good.

The house batteries, which had already been going down a little day by day, were dangerously low. Our solar panels were only an auxiliary source for charging and days of not being able to run the generator for fear of someone hearing it were taking their toll. The radio and cell phone, our lifelines to the outside world, weren’t huge draws, but we had another biggie: the bilge pump.

Since
Raymond Johnson
was at rest, the seals around the shaft logs had significantly reduced the amount of water leaking into the bilge, but the bilge pump still came on at least once a day. It didn’t pump for long, but any draw on our batteries was now critical. Our other battery bank, the one for our engines, was deemed sacred and not to be tapped for any reason other than starting those engines. Everything else ran on the slowly dying house batteries. And here we were without AAA for a jump start.

Fabio had been operating a manual bilge pump to lighten the load on the batteries, but he’d been gone for over twelve hours. When I saw the bilge pump indicator light spring to life, I quickly shut down the pump at the main panel, and prepared to climb down into the dreaded bowels of the ship for a little upper body exercise. Pamela the muscle maven would be ecstatic, for the pump handle was almost certainly designed by some body builder with maximum exertion in mind. I was giving my screaming biceps a break when, topsides, the Satfone chirped.

“Hello? Hello? Anyone there?” I heard Jan ask as I scrambled from the mechanical netherworld, hitting my head on several bulkheads in my haste. I arrived just in time to see her slam the phone shut.

“Who was it? Could you hear anyone?”

“No, sorry. Do we have caller ID on this system?”

“Sort of.” I picked up the phone and hit the CALL BACK button. Lots of clicks and hums, but no ring. “That’s it, Jan. We are getting out of here. I can’t stand this crap for one more day.”

“We’re taking
Raymond Johnson
out of here?”

“Can’t. Low tide. But we can saddle up
Se Vende
and form a posse. Go find Fabio and Chino.”

Jan gave the dilapidated panga tied alongside a skeptical look.

“What does
Se Vende
mean, anyhow?”

“For Sale.”

“Why am I not surprised? Might I remind you, we will stand out like flies in buttermilk riding around in that piece of crap?”

“I think I’ve come up with a way around that.”

She threw her arms skyward. “Oh, Lord, what have I done to deserve this woman?”

After rummaging through a couple of lockers, I came up with what I considered the perfect solution for bopping around Mag Bay undetected. Left over from our Hasta La Bye-Bye party at the yacht club five weeks—seemed like centuries—ago, we found two large sombreros with coarse black hair stitched to the brims, and luxuriant mustaches to match. Panga fishermen do not wear wide brimmed hats, so we Velcroed the hair to baseball caps. Dressed in jeans and long sleeved plaid shirts, we looked fairly authentic unless one looked closely; I doubt there were many other Pendleton shirts and Ralph Lauren jeans on the bay that day.

“No sunglasses, Jan. Mexican
pescadores
don’t wear ‘em.”

Jan reluctantly tucked her Diors into a pocket and helped me round up charts, a handheld GPS, and a VHF radio. I noted with satisfaction that both the GPS and the radio had a full charge. We also took a cell phone, though we doubted dialing 9-1-1 would get us anywhere if we got in trouble. We stashed our bags under a pile of green fishing nets in the bottom of
Se Vende
and threw in several gallons of water, a can opener and our last three cans of tuna fish. Now came the fun part.

Twenty feet long and very narrow,
Se Vende
was light years from the newer models the lobster guys use to ply the bay and ocean. Judging by her peeling paint and battle scars, she’d seen a lot of fish come over her gunwales. We bailed out the three inches of oily water standing in her bottom, but thirty minutes later, when we were ready to go, two inches were back. I went into a locker and came up with a spare hand pump for expelling water from my dinghy. Bless Jenks once again, for his insistence on spares.

“Jan, sit up front and look Mexican. I’ll try to get her started.”

“Uh, you know, there are no oars. Or life jackets.”

“Pangueros don’t use ‘em.”

“We aren’t
pangueros,
you can’t swim, and we’re setting off in a leaky boat.”

“And your point is? Just joshin’. Grab a couple of PFDs off
Raymond Johnson
. We’ll hide them under the nets. Not much we can do about the oars.”

While Jan got the life vests, I studied the outboard motor with a great deal of trepidation, as outboards and I have a long history of incompatibility, if not downright animosity. I know, inanimate objects don’t have emotions, but if they did, outboards would hate me. It was mutual.

As expected in a Mexican panga, there was no gas tank, just a five gallon plastic bottle with a piece of surgical tubing leading into the motor. A U.S. Coast Guard nightmare. There was a pump bulb in the line, but I decided to venture a couple of pulls on the fraying length of polypropylene line that served as starter cord, rather than take a chance on flooding the carburetor.

I stood in the tippy boat, bent my knees, got a death grip on the starter cord and gave it a mighty pull. The cord came flying out of the motor, sending me ass over teakettle backwards into the pile of fishing nets. I was on my back, staring dumbly at the cord when Jan returned with our lifejackets.

“Ya know, Hetta, this probably isn’t a good time for a nap.”

“Very damned funny. The pull cord came off in my hand.”

"Can you fix it?”

“Dunno.” I un-netted myself and took the cowling off the motor, which wasn’t hard, since it was held on with sun-warped duct tape. I sent Jan back into
Raymond
Johnson
for more tape while I painstakingly rewrapped the pull cord onto the motor’s flywheel. Several pulls later, along with some major cussing and a couple of gentle pumps on the gas line, and the old Johnson hacked to life. In gear.

The prop dug in, the engine squalled, and
Se Vende
jerked wildly when the slack lines holding her to
Raymond Johnson
twanged taught. I was tossed forward, then back, painfully bruising shins, knees and bum. I somehow managed to crawl aft and push the gearshift into neutral and then cut the throttle.

Jan, wide-eyed, began giggling and pointing once she realized I was unharmed. Regaining some modicum of dignity, I scolded, “While I admire your jejune ability to find humor in inappropriate situations, I cannot, for the life of me, see what you find sooo amusing right now.”

She fumbled in her backpack and handed me an open compact. A glance in the mirror and I had to laugh myself. My oversized nylon mustache had somehow attached itself to the brim of my baseball cap, which was jammed low onto my head. It looked as though I had one, very bushy eyebrow. Chuckling, I relocated the mustache to my lip and gave her back her compact. “Get in, I think I’ve got the hang of this now.”

Jan gingerly stepped into the panga while I took a few swipes at the blue panga paint marring
Raymond Johnson’s
gelcoat. Once Jan was settled in, I began toying with the throttle and shifts on the old Johnson. Several pulls later the motor coughed to life and I gave Jan the signal to untie us and push us away from
Raymond Johnson
. Holding my breath, I eased us into gear and steered into open water without further bodily damage to myself,
Raymond Johnson
, or
Se Vende
.

After several days cooped up on a boat, the joy of being out in open air, even foggy open air, overcame our trepidation of lurking danger. Exhilarated, we gave each other a thumbs-up. Okay, so we had no idea where we were going, but what the hey? We were, for the moment, free.

Our elation quickly evaporated.

Heading straight for us, cutting through the wispy, lifting fog, was another panga. Jan gave me a “what now?” hand and shoulder signal. We dared not talk over the motor, as sound carries great distances over water and our clearly American voices would reverberate all over the bay. I shrugged an appropriately Mexican shrug, pulled my baseball cap bill down on my forehead, checked my mustache and held my course.

For what seemed forever, but was probably only a minute or two, the other panga bore down on us and then, with an airy wave, the fishermen veered off, and disappeared behind a stand of mangroves. I killed the motor and listened with pounding temples to the fading drone of their engine.

“I think they just wanted to see if they knew us,” I whispered.

“Let’s drift and figure out where we’re going.”

“Yeah, having a destination is good. Why didn’t we think of that before we left the boat?”

“For one thing, we’d probably have talked ourselves out of leaving. Oh, crap. I forgot something.”

“Bet I know what,” Jan said in a teasing voice. She fished in her pocket and jangled
Raymond Johnson’s
ignition keys in the air. My heroette.

“Good girl.”

“And, I locked her up tight. Fabio has a key to the door, just in case they get by us. But you know, I am more and more worried about those two.”

“Not much we can do except look for them.” As I talked I dug out the charts and GPS. I punched in the coordinates for Puerto Lopez Mateos and found that, as the crow flies, we were only five miles away. Since we didn’t have any navigational charts for this part of the bay, I checked out an old aerial photo and could see a winding channel, with all kinds of branches to lead us astray. The good news, though, was we could hug the mangroves and duck for cover if we got company. Of course, with the old Johnson’s whine, we probably couldn’t hear anyone coming. Oh, well, in for a peso, in for a pound.

I handed our sketchy charts to Jan. “You be the navigator, matey. We’ll take it real slow, so if you see the bottom coming up, just raise your arm and I’ll shut down the engine. Hopefully we won’t ding the prop.”

Two harrowing hours, three dead ends, and several close encounters with other boats later, we adopted a new modus operandi. Lurking under the mangroves, we waited for a panga to pass, then followed at a safe distance until we lost his wake pattern.

Even with timeouts while awaiting other boats, we found this method much faster than meandering around like ducks lookin’ for thunder in the on-again, off-again fogbank.

We were lying in wait for another boat when Jan whispered. “Hetta, I just had a thought.”

“I hope it was a good one.”

“How do we know we are going the right direction? Maybe the pangas we’ve been following aren’t even going to Lopez Mateos.”

“Jan, please do not think. It gives me a headache.”

“I’m serious.”

I dug out the GPS. We were now only two miles south of our destination. I showed the screen to Jan with a flourish. “Oh, ye of little faith.”

“Shhh. Here comes a panga.”

We assumed the position.

Jan pulled her hat low over her blond hair and hunkered down in the bow, holding onto both gunwales. The drone became a roar as we braced ourselves against what we knew was going to be a mini tsunami when the panga’s bow wave whapped us up against the mangroves, tossing our old skiff around like we were on the inside of a Maytag. It soon became apparent this new panga was headed the opposite way from where we wanted to go and, of course, the sun took that moment to disperse the fog. We managed to pull ourselves out of sight behind some mangroves, but didn’t have time to turn around, point our bow in the right direction.

A huge bright red panga thundered by, nearly swamping us as a wall of water hit us broadside, then refracted off the bushes and whammed up on the opposite side. Gallons of water poured into our already leaky boat. But being drenched and sinking wasn’t what threw us into shock, it was who we saw in that panga.

Once
Se Vende
stopped its violent rocking, Jan and I stared at each other, dumbstruck. I was the first to recover.

“Am I hallucinating?”

“If you are, I am too. How on earth…?

I didn’t bother to answer, as I was busy trying to start our cranky motor. “Jan, start bailing. We got us a panga to catch.”

Chapter 32

“Are you absolutely certain, Hetta?” Jan asked as we frantically scooped water out of
Se Vende
. “What if we’re wrong?”

“We are not wrong. The question is, are Fabio and Chino under arrest, or are they going to the rescue of us damsels in distress? Judging from those other guys in the boat, namely the gun-toting, uniformed ones, it could go either way. We gotta know, so hang on, we’re on their ass.”

But we weren’t. Our antiquated panga and motor were no match for the shiny new red job that flew by us in the mangroves. The best we could do was to keep abreast of their wake, and hope we didn’t head-on someone coming around a bend from the other direction.

Jan held onto the bow cleat with one hand and her mustache with the other. She’d turned her baseball cap around so the bill faced me. When she looked back, I couldn’t help but laugh at the incongruity of the bushy black mustache, blue eyes and blond bangs sticking out from under the cap band.

Streaking along at full throttle, I was barely in control of our craft. The bow had lifted so that Jan was prone, hanging on to that cleat for dear life. Every wave we hit threatened to throw us from the panga. Something had to change, fast. Even though it went against everything in my very self-protective being, I did what I’d seen the pangueros do; I stood up and put one foot as far forward as I could, throwing my considerable weight onto the front foot.

Using the throttle extension, which looked to be an old oar tied to the handle with baling wire, I was soon able to take two more shaky shuffles forward. A few stomach-threatening veers later, our panga miraculously leveled out.

Jan sat up and I, mimicking my fellow pangueros, stood straight while guiding our course with one hand on the extension. I thought I looked quite the part, but Jan, judging from her panic-laced glances over her shoulder, didn’t share in my delusions.

We didn’t see the oncoming panga until it was just a few yards in front of us. Having no idea which side of the channel to take, I did know we couldn’t chance, at this speed, being cuffed broadside with another wall of water. I jogged us as far to the right as I dared, hoping not to snag mangrove roots, or worse, the bottom.

Jan put her head between her knees and assumed the crash position touted by the airlines, which probably isn’t to save your life, but your teeth, for later identification purposes.

Passing starboard to starboard, within ten feet of the other boat, I dipped my head casually to the driver, panguero a panguero. As soon as he passed, I bent my knees for the expected shock of his wake and turned directly into it. To my amazement, not only did we not go airborne, we sliced right through the two-foot comber like a warm knife through butter, baby. I decided right then and there to buy
Se Vende
if the old scow and I both survived this mess.

I was heartily congratulating myself for my outstanding panga skills when I spotted the object of our chase had slowed and was just clearing a bend not a quarter mile ahead. I jammed the throttle back too fast, almost launching Jan overboard. As water sloshed over our transom, I killed the engine and turned around to face my friend, who, from the look on her face, was mightily pissed off.

“Sorry,” I whispered as I began to bail, “they’ve slowed down and I don’t want them to see us behind them.”

“Give me some warning next time?”

“Where’s the fun in that? All right, all right, already. I’ll do my best.” I removed the GPS from its waterproofed bag and checked our position. “The good news is, they slowed down. The bad news? They could be heading for
Raymond Johnson
.”

“And if they are?”

“Uh, I guess we need to figure out if they’re friend or foe? I mean, have Chino and Fabio spilled the beans? Or have they convinced the Mexican Navy that we are innocent, and they’re on the way to save us?”

“Is that what those guys are? Navy?”

“I think so. Or probably marines, judging by the blue uniforms and brimmed hats. Hell if I know.”

“Sooo, let me know if this is our plan. We follow, and then if we think they are holding Chino and Fabio against their will, we jump ‘em—all five of ‘em—take away their very large and scary looking guns, save our guys, and sail into the sunset?” Jan said acidly. Jan can get a mite sarcastic when she’s scared. She got it from me. This time, however, her caustic take was right on. Just what could we do against five men with automatic weapons? Five, I might add, marines?

“We’re screwed.”

“Probably, but you’re right, we need to find out what they’re up to. No use going to Lopez Mateos now, because Fabio and Chino aren’t there. And we gotta go somewhere, so why not back to
Raymond Johnson
for some dry clothes? Unless, of course, it’s chockablock with marines.”

“You know, there was a day when we didn’t think that was a bad thing.”

The red panga passed right by
Raymond Johnson’s
hidey hole with nary a glance. As we passed, and even though I knew my boat was there, nothing gave away its presence. Good camo job, Fabio and Chino. We continued our pursuit of the other panga until we were certain they were headed for San Carlos.

I turned us around and shut down the engine. “I think it’s safe to say that Fabio and Chino will be unavailable for statements at this time.”

“You don’t think they’re, like, in real danger, do you?”

“Probably not, but who knows how much clout Lujàn has in this burg. What I would like to know is whether the entrance to the bay is still under surveillance. You up for more time in this panga? We can go out to the entrance, take a look.”

Jan looked wistfully in the direction of
Raymond Johnson
. “Can’t we go tomorrow? It’s gonna get dark before too long.”

She had a point. I scrolled through the waypoints in the GPS.

Even though we could clearly see the entrance to Mag Bay, distances over water can be very misleading. And from the looks of it, another fog bank lurked outside the bay. We putted back to the boat and, as grateful as we’d been to get away, we were even happier to be back. Home sweet boat.

Gratefully swathed in dry clothes after a quick dip and a fresh water rinse off, we planned the next day’s maneuvers. We’d ruled out storming the Bastille and liberating the prisoners.

“So, Hetta, we go out to the
entrada
, checking all the way to see if, by some wild chance, we can get this tub out of here and head for Cabo. Sounds good to me.”

“Best I can come up with. I think, since Fabio and Chino haven’t arrived with the cavalry, we can safely assume the bad guys have them. Or that the guys who have them can’t be trusted not to deliver us into the hands of the bad guys.”

Jan yawned. “I’m bushed. Think we can both sleep, or do we need a watch? Just in case one of our guys cracks under torture or something.”

“Trust me, if they rat us out, we’re toast. We might as well get some shuteye, we have another long day tomorrow. I’ll sleep up here, though.”

Jan went below and I checked the batteries. Not good. One more foggy day and they’d be drained. I could always switch on the engine battery bank, make a Satfone phone call, and check our e-mail, but a little voice, Jenks’s, warned, “Don’t even think about it.”

I grabbed a pillow and blanket and stretched out on the couch.

After battling that outboard all day, my shoulders ached, as did my thighs. To heck with paying a personal trainer when there’s Panguero Pilates.

We got an early, chilly, start the next morning before the sun finally burned off the morning marine layer. By the time we cleared the mangroves, we found the bay calm, the air clean.

“Mr. GPS says it’s about ten miles to the entrada. No wind, no waves. Hang on and we’ll be there in a flash.” And flash we did. We could have made it in thirty minutes, easy, if I hadn’t spotted trouble on the horizon after twenty.

“Why are you slowing down, Hetta?”

“There’s a boat up there. A big one.”

She stood up slightly. “Oh, yeah. Think it’s the Mex navy?”

“Don’t know. I hope it’s a shrimper, but just in case I’m gonna keep our distance until we can figure it out. Pull your hat down and check that handlebar on your lip for slippage, just in case.”

I made a wide circle, sticking to the far left side of the channel.

Granted, it was the same side of the entrance the large boat was on, but I circled around in order to get to Margarita Island, where we planned to hike up and look for lurkers who were looking for us. This looking and lurking were getting a tad old, in my book.

About mid-island, where I’d planned to land, we got another surprise in the form of about twenty colorful kayaks pulled up on the beach, and people milling around in bathing suits. I brought the panga to a halt a few yards offshore.

“Jan, ditch the
panguero
outfit, I have a new plan.”

If the kayakers, a women’s group from France, were surprised by two American chicks showing up in a fishing panga in the middle of nowhere, they didn’t show it.
Au contraire
, they seemed delighted to see us.

Jan and I dazzled the entourage with our extensive local knowledge. After all, we’d been here a few weeks, so that made us experts. We showed them where to get clams, if the hurricane had left any, and, in return, we were invited to lunch. Never one to say
non
to a petit four, we said, “
Mais oui
,” and an hour later, while they set up camp, Jan and I were paddling one of their kayaks toward the large boat we’d spotted.

“Ya know, Hetta, sometimes I think you’re downright brilliant.”

“But, of course,” I replied in my best Charles Boyer.

“I said
sometimes
. Okay, what now?”

“Check out that boat, then climb up to the highest point of the island, see if we spot any bad guys. If they aren’t keeping an eye on things, maybe we can sneak
Raymond
Johnson
out of this Popsicle joint.”

“And leave Fabio and Chino?”

“We can’t do any good for them by staying here. If we can make it to Cabo, which is not that many hours away, maybe we can get them a lawyer or something.”

“Or catch a plane, forget we ever knew them?”

“Or that. Shhh, look French.” I picked up my binoculars and trained them on the boat anchored between us and the entrance, in about the same place where we rode out the hurricane. “Oh, crap.”

“Oh, crap, what?”

“It’s the
Tanuki Maru
.”

“Isn’t that good? After all, they’re your client.”

“Jan, doesn’t that name ring a bell with you? Like, as in, canned whale?”

“Shit, shit, shit.”

“I want a thirty-dollar credit. And, what do we have here? Dickless Richard himself onboard, jawing with some Japanese dude.”

“So much for our escape plan. Now what?”

“Back to French camp. We regroup.”

“I don’t want to regroup. I want to go home.”

“Didn’t you read Thomas Wolfe? You can never go home again.”