Just Needs Killin (22 page)

Jan was waiting impatiently, clearly worried about my well-being when steam rose through the hatch. She pulled me from the steamy closet, and slammed the hatch shut. I gave Jan a thumbs-up, pulled off my mask and hood, and spit out my mouthpiece. Cool night air from the open porthole felt like a little slice of heaven on my face and wet hair, but inside that suit I was still boiling.

"Hetta, you don't look so good. Here let me unzip that suit for you." She jumped back as about a gallon of water spewed out. "Maybe you should have peed in the sink like I did after you left."

"Eeeew. I hope you filled our water bottles first. And for your info, I did not pee in my suit. I think I'll use that sink real quick though, before we jump."

"I want to see this, Shortstuff. It's worth—what was that?"

There was a sickening, growling sound, and the boat veered wildly to port and listed sufficiently to tilt the deck and throw both of us against the bulkhead near the porthole.  The ship righted itself somewhat, but then the other engine quit and we lost steerage and turned broadside to the small seas. As we rapidly slowed, I noticed a pronounced list to port.

"Okay, Jan-san, sorry to ruin your voyeuristic treat of the day, but now I don't have time to use that sink. Get out that handy knife of yours and cut my safety line so's we have maybe ten feet left. Then, out you go!"

As she cut the line, she said, "No, I changed my mind. You first. I may have to shove your big butt out, so while you were gone, I olive oiled the porthole."

"Great, all I need is some Parmesan cheese. I'm already boiled and salted.

The cabin lights dimmed. 

I grabbed our dive bags, and a couple of personal things off the bed, which I stuck into my dive suit and zipped it up.

When my head and shoulders cleared the porthole I realized the upper deck lights were still on, but we were leaning with our side of the ship at about a twenty percent list, which was in our favor. We'd be hard to spot from the deck, even if they weren't blinded by their lights. There was, however, just enough ambient light on the surface to make me remind myself it was only a ten foot fall. It looked like a hundred. I couldn't back out now anyway, for with a mighty heave, Jan pushed my butt, and I was spit out like a watermelon seed. This watermelon seed spitting out thing was becoming way too common.

I did my best to roll, and not land on my face, which I didn't, but I hit the water hard enough on my side to knock the air out of me. Jan came cannonballing down not fifteen feet away and swam over to me.

Gasping for air, I managed to ingest half of a small wave before Jan grabbed my arm and began side-towing me away from the boat. "Float on your back, Hetta, I've got you."

I tried, but without my fins to give me a boost, I sank like that proverbial rock and panic set in. Conjuring up all the self control I own, I fought off every fight or flight instinct in my body, and let her jerk me back to the surface. As she towed me, she said, calmly, "We're gonna get away from the ship, and then we'll put on your mask and fins. You'll be safe. Use your rebreather if you have to, okay?"

I nodded and coughed up seawater, then opened my eyes and looked back up at the ship.

Moto was standing on deck, looking straight down at us. He leaned over and picked something up. My heart seized, thinking it was an automatic weapon.

Then, as the ship listed slightly more, he grabbed the railing with one hand, bowed deeply, and tossed Po Thang's raft over the side. He then turned and disappeared from sight just as the last deck lights went out.

I told Jan about the float, we put on our fins and masks, and with my fins on, I was Michael Phelps personified. At least in my own imagination. The truth was, I was still having to work to stay above water, but if I treaded hard enough, I got the job done. 

We finned over to the float, which was dark blue and not easily seen if anyone on deck had looked over the side. Once we had a grip on the float we both paddled rapidly away and were soon out of eyesight from the ship.

Strange, torturous, noises cut through the still evening, and then a full moon blessedly rose from behind the Baja mountains, illuminating
Nao de Chino
, and her alarming angle of list.

"Holy crap, Hetta, what did you do to Chino's boat?"

"I allowed us to escape, that's what. What an ingrate. I probably saved your life."

"Oh, yeah, but then I saved you."

"Might I remind you we are floating out in the Pacific Ocean in the dead of night? Somehow that does not constitute
saved
in my book."

We were quiet for a few minutes as we changed direction and kicked our way toward shore, now that we knew where it was.

"I didn't mean to sink it, you know. I only wanted her dead in the water so someone could get the gold and grab the bad guys. I hope Moto saves himself. He did us a huge favor, you know."

"You think they'll send out a Mayday?"

"Probably not. My guess is they'll try to get as much gold as they can and escape in pangas. From what I overheard when they were all on deck, there's a ship out here somewhere they're supposed to meet. If they call anyone, it'll be them."

"So what did you do when you went into the engine room? Whatever it was, it sure worked."

"Maybe a little too well. I cut the lines to all the warning alarms, then put holes into the exhaust hoses and cut power to all bilge pumps. Well, except the manual bilge pump, but it wouldn't do much against all that water coming in, even if they could get to it. I'm guessing a few hundred gallons of water flooded out the engine room and for some reason the ship is listing to port."

"Why do you think that's happening?"

"I don't know, but—Oh my God."

"What?"

"I need to concentrate for a minute." Jan said okay and I ran calculations in my head to support a theory doing its best to bloom there. We paddled along toward shore while my brain crunched numbers.

"Okay, Jan, I need you to store these numbers under all that blond hair. Let's say one of those gold bars in Kazoo's cabin weighs roughly twelve and a half pounds."

"Okay."

"And I did a rough count of what he had in his cabin, and came up with around…twelve hundred of them? Can that be right? The bunk is about three by six feet and the bars are six inches by two inches, and about one and a half inches deep. They were stacked six deep."

"TMI, Hetta. Stand by." Jan's mental calculator went into overdrive, working on Too Much Information.

I was redoing my own numbers and when we were done we agreed that twelve hundred bars was about right. "Okay, then, here's what probably happened, and if so, that ship is doomed. If one bar weighs a little over twelve pounds, that makes a total of over fifteen thousand pounds. Moto might have an equal amount in his cabin, so when we veered to port, maybe the load shifted. We're talking about thirty-thousand pounds of gold suddenly moving to one side of the ship, and along with all that water in the bilge, it's sayonara,
Nao de Chino
."

"Oh, dear. Chino will be broken hearted."

"Hey, I'm heart broken too. All that gold, lost again."

We paddled in silence once again, until Jan asked, "Think it's okay to turn on a flashlight now so I can see the GPS."

"Do we really want to know how far we are from shore?"

"Probably not. Let's take a break, climb up onto the raft, and see which way we drift."

"Sounds good to me." I hadn't wanted to admit how winded I was getting, but Jan must have picked up on my fatigue.

The minute we stopped churning water, we heard a hum.

"You hear that?" we said at the same time.

It was growing louder.

Jan cocked her head. "That's an outboard motor. What do you think, friend or foe?"

As we held onto our raft, floating and listening, we realized the boat we heard was coming closer to us, but not all that fast. The outboard spluttered some, and had the sound of so many overworked models in Mexico. "Think it's someone from
Nao de Chino
coming after us?" Jan whispered.

"Naw, sounds like a clunker. Besides, I doubt anyone but Moto even knows we're gone. He's not going to tell anyone, since he threw us this raft. We locked our cabin from the inside, and besides, what would they care if we went down with the ship? I think that's an old panga we hear, and it's coming from the direction of Mag Bay."

"Just in case, though, put on your mask and let's use our rebreathers to hide under the float, okay?"

"Good idea." I slipped on the mask, inserted my mouthpiece, let go of the raft and sank rapidly towards the bottom. I managed to grab the safety line we'd tied between us, and jerked Jan under, as well.

She evidently grabbed onto the raft and somehow pulled me back to the surface. Shoving her mask onto her head and spitting out her mouthpiece, she whispered, "Geez, Hetta, you just gotta stop packing in the tacos. What's with you? Smuggling gold?" Then her eyes widened. "Oh, hell, you are, aren't you? How much do you have on you?"

I spit out my own mouthpiece. "Five bars. Oh, and some silver coins."

"Well, for cryin' out loud, drop your weights!"

She helped me release my weight belt and it fell swiftly downward. I suddenly felt much lighter, but I was still too heavily laden with gold to reach ideal buoyancy.

Jan pulled a tube from my vest and pushed a button on the buoyancy compensator. "Let go of the raft. Let's see how you do now."

I didn't sink. "Good, now we need you to reach neutral. Keep adjusting it until we can float just under the raft until that panga goes…oh, hell, I think he's headed for us. Dive! Dive!"

I fiddled with the control on my buoyancy vest until I was able to hover four feet under the raft, and Jan and I held hands as we waited. Sure enough, the unmistakable underwater sound of an outboard grew more distinct. We couldn't be certain how far away it was until, in the moonlit water, I spotted telltale white water stirred by the props. I squeezed Jan's hand and pointed to the whirling water. She squeezed back.

We floated, waiting anxiously until the bottom of the panga glided up to the raft, and nudged it.

A hand reached into the water and pulled on the tether line that was still attached to us. We quickly untied ourselves, and as soon as I was free, I swam to the other end of the panga and sneaked a peek above water. The skiff, an old beat up model not unlike my
Se
Vende
, was definitely not one of the newer pangas from
Nao de Chino
.

When the boater started hauling our float into his boat, I had to stop him. I propelled myself out of the water, grabbed the gunwale, and threw my weight onto it, throwing the unsuspecting man overboard. He came up spluttering and flailing, and it was obvious he couldn't swim a lick. Takes one to know one.

Jan surfaced, clambered into the panga and pulled the man back in. It was easy, as he looked to weigh ninety pounds soaking wet, which he was.

The man was terrified, and cringed in the bow as he coughed up water. If he'd ever seen
The Creature from the Black Lagoon
, he probably thought he was living it.

Jan pulled off her mask and hood, and when he saw she was a woman, he relaxed visibly. Mexican men always underestimate us
Gringas
.

Speaking to him softly in Spanish, Jan assured him we were not only not going to harm him, we were grateful that he came along to save us.

I hadn't realized how fluent she'd become in Spanish, but then again, she lived with a Mexican and worked in a fish camp. As they talked, I tried to heft myself into the panga, but couldn't make it.

"Hey, a little help here?"

"You know, I'm thinking of throwing you the raft and leaving you out here. Your greed has finally reached an all time stupidity level. You could have drowned both of us."

"Oh, come on. We're safe now, and r-i-c-h." I wasn't taking any chances of the man not speaking English.

"How r-i-c-h?"

"At today's rate? One m-i-l-l-i-o-n t-h-r-e-e."

She held out her hand. "Well, welcome aboard, sailor."

As we motored back to port, Jan checked the cellphone, but we still weren't getting more than one bar, and decided to save the battery time for when we got closer.

The old Mexican seemed fascinated with the two
gringas
he'd pulled from the sea, and when Jan fibbed she was engaged—which sounds so much more respectable than shacking up with—to Chino, he beamed. Seems he was somehow related. What a surprise.

"I wonder how he spotted us?"

Jan asked him. "He says he can hear a fish fart out here. He's been fishing these waters for over seventy years, and notices anything different. When he saw the raft, he came over to check it out."

"Lucky for us." We were putting along at the speed of grass growing, but it was obvious the old motor couldn't go any faster. "I wish this thing could speed up. We've got to rescue Po Thang."

"Where do you think they took him?"

"My guess? That house in Constitución. Where the black Lincoln Navigator you never saw might be by now."

"Maybe Chino will kinda forget about that."

"Fat chance." I looked out to sea, but there was no sign of
Nao de Chino
. "I think she's gone."

Jan followed my gaze.  "I hate to say it, but I agree."

"I hope that surfeit of skunks went down with her."

"Except for Moto. I like him."

"He did the right thing. My guess is Dickless was planning on grabbing the gold, tossing Kazoo, Moto, and the two of us into the drink, and never meeting that ship Fujikawa was talking about."

"Maybe Moto and Kazoo figured that out somehow. Otherwise, why would Moto, who was most likely sent by his grandfather to retrieve the gold, throw us a raft? He had to know we'd sic the authorities on them."

"Fujikawa is just another of Luján's victims."

When the old man heard Luján's name, his head snapped up and he spat over the side. Another fan, I surmised?

I didn't have a chance to ask him, because we heard another panga, and it was headed straight for us at a high rate of speed. In the moonlight I thought I recognized it.

"Jan, I'm almost sure that's Kazoo and Moto's panga!"

Jan quickly explained there were bad men in that boat who would harm us. The old fisherman waved us down into the bottom of the panga, and covered us with nets, then pulled the raft over us.

A wake rocked the boat and we heard the outboards grow quieter as they slowed and came alongside. The fisherman talked with them for a minute or two, told them he'd found the raft floating a mile back, but no, he hadn't seen any people. We could barely hear him under that raft, but he sounded perfectly calm, not giving away any fear he might be feeling after we told him to be careful.

Evidently satisfied with the fisherman's story, someone hit the throttle on the other boat and roared away.

We pushed out from under the nets and raft, and peeked over the gunwale, just in time to positively identify the big panga with twin outboards from
Nao de Chino
.

Jan asked the fisherman what they wanted. He told us they said they were looking for some fishermen who fell off a panga, but he didn't believe one word of it, since he had evidence they were lying right here on his very boat. And, he spat into the water in the direction of the departing panga, and added we were right; bad men were in that boat.

Actually, what he said was, "
Ese hijo de puta rata
, Luján."

My sentiments, exactly.