Seeking Safe Harbor: Suddenly Everything Changed (The Seeking Series) (12 page)

“I’ve got almost everything picked up,” George called out from below.

“Great… thanks, George!” Stacey said. “You and Millie have already been a great help. Glen, I’ll set up your bunk.”

“And your daughter’s arm is bandaged,” Millie said. “She ought to rest, too. In a few days, she’ll be as good as new. It’ll take a little longer for your son, though.”

“Thanks, Millie,” Stacey said. “You can sleep with Denise in the V-berth. There’s a couch that makes into a bed for George on the side opposite where Glen sleeps.”

“Before we settle in,” Zach advised, “I need to do what I started out to do before we heard about Glen’s wound. We need to know we’re finally alone out here. Stacey, after you get Glen set up, check the radar for larger craft. I’ll use the flashlight to look for small boats nearby.”

He took the flashlight from Stacey and started around the boat, shining the light out over the ocean as he went. Stacey set up Glen’s bunk quickly – it was just a matter of turning the table over on a swivel and adjusting the seats. Denise got the sheets out and put them on the bunk as Stacey went back up to the cockpit and turned on the radar.

Once they got Glen settled in, Denise and Millie went to the forward cabin. Both climbed onto the V-berth bunk without bothering to pull the blankets back or disrobe. In seconds, they were asleep.

George went up to the deck and joined Zach walking around the vessel. After adjusting the radar to study different distances for over two minutes, Stacey turned it off and went to join Zach and George, who were just then nearing the bowsprit.

“There’s nothing as far as the radar reaches,” she told the men, “except for the island behind us, and there’s nothing moving around it.”

The men looked relieved to hear that. They had already looked over the starboard side of the ocean and it was clear. Zach shined the light dead ahead now, and all three looked out for anything that wasn’t part of the ocean. There was nothing but water. They continued around, all scanning the ocean as far as the light shined.

Zach even shinned the light directly below them to be sure there was nothing near or attached to the boat. They were determined to inspect every inch of the ocean around them.

It never occurred to them to check what was on the boat itself.

N
O ONE saw the automatic rifle behind them. It slid back toward the center of the forward deck when the boat rocked and the port side raised up for a moment, and it stopped at the center when it hit the hatch that Glen had used to go below deck.

They were looking the other way and it was dark, so they wouldn’t have seen it, anyway. It was the next day before they saw the weapon again, and it wasn’t any of them who found it.

The three continued looking out over the port side until they reached the stern. They maneuvered around the barrels of fuel. Zach shined the light on the barrels and discovered that three of them were hit, and fuel leaked out onto the deck.

Fortunately, the boat was watertight and the fuel had washed overboard. It would require some cleaning up the next day. Probably a sixth of the fuel was lost, but it didn’t pose a problem.

Zach next passed the light over the dinghy, which was trailing along behind the boat, tied to it by a twenty-foot line.

“We won’t need the dinghy any more tonight, Zach,” Stacey said. “Should we bring it in and hang it on the davits?”

Zach flashed the light on the little boat, shaking his head. “No, we’ll need to clean it up before we hang it, and none of us is up to that right now. We all need to get some rest tonight. Tomorrow, we’ll do a thorough inventory, check the damages, and clean up whatever got broken in our skirmishes. You and George should head below and get some sleep. I’ll take the first watch. George, how much experience do you have on boats?”

“I’ve done some fishing and a bit of sailing,” George responded. “And if we’re under power, I can handle a watch with no problem.”

“That’s good, because we’ll keep the motor going until we get things in order tomorrow,” Zach told him. “However, I’m not turning any lights on, including the running lights, for the time being. We’ll rethink that once we’re clear of the islands. Right now, we need to get as far away from here as possible, and I want everyone else to sleep all night. We’ll do three-hour watches. George, I’ll call you in three; you’ll wake Stacey for the watch after your turn.”

“Sounds good.”

“I’ll show you your bunk and get some linen out for you,” Stacey told him, leading him down into the salon.

When the two were gone, Zach took one last look behind the boat. They were leaving Hilo and the big island of Hawaii behind them. He could see a faint light in the sky where the city was, probably the result of the fires that were growing in size. He glanced again at the dinghy, which was skipping through the waves behind them. All looked in good shape, so he moved into the cockpit where he could keep an eye on things.

All was quiet. The
La Sirena
motored smoothly away from Hawaii and everyone except Zach was asleep. He was comfortable, looking out into the dark night and periodically checking the radar.

Even when the light shined on the dinghy, no one had noticed the fingers that grasped its transom. As time passed, and all but the man on watch slept, and the sloshing waters hid the sound as a man’s arm reached over the transom.

He slowly climbed into the little boat.

S
TACEY was on watch when the sun rose the next morning. Whatever the skies might be like in other places in a world ravaged by a nuclear holocaust, there was no unpleasantness in the skies over the Pacific Ocean east of Hawaii this day.

It was the kind of day that made the Arthur family fall in love with cruising. The sky was a clear and pristine blue, artistically enhanced with a few cotton-like clouds. The sun threw light out upon an ocean that rippled with small waves pushed by light breezes, and there was just enough nip in the air to tell Stacey it would not be an overly hot, nor cool, day. There was enough wind to tell her that they would still make good time when they hoisted the sails and turned off the engine.

It was a beautiful sunrise, and she decided to walk to the front of the boat to see it better. The autopilot was on, so she needed do nothing before she climbed over the side of the cockpit onto the port side deck. A quick glance back over the diesel barrels told her there were no boats in the waters behind them for miles Satisfied with that, she looked left and right, with the same result, and then started toward the bowsprit to get an unobstructed view of the of the rising sun.

Like her husband, she was a thorough person. It occurred to her that looking over the barrels had given her a look at the ocean several hundred yards distant, but nothing closer. There was space between two of the barrels, so if she craned her neck a little she could get a better look. She stopped, turned, leaned to her right, and looked between the two barrels. In that way, she could see the ocean that was nearer, and the corner of the dinghy they were towing.

She saw nothing there except the ocean and the corner of the dinghy. She wasn’t interested in the dinghy, and paid it little heed at first. But something seemed… strange. Was that a part of a shoe she saw?

She reached back into the cockpit and grabbed the weapon that she kept on the seat beside her during her watch. Bending over and keeping behind the barrels, she stepped quietly toward the stern. Peering over the last barrel, she was able to see the entire dingy – and the man who was sprawled across it, apparently asleep, or unconscious or…

“Hey!” she yelled. The prone man did not move. She called again. Then again, louder.

“What?” Zach called from the cabin below.

“You better come up here, Zach. We have a… situation.”

A second later, the hatch leading down to the aft cabin slid open and Zach climbed up on the deck. He had on shorts and a t-shirt, and an AK-47 was in his hand. The deck above the cabin was over a foot higher than the deck Stacey was on, so he could see the dinghy as he walked over to join his wife. He stepped down and walked over to the aft rail.

He shook his head. “He couldn’t have been there the whole time,” he opined.

“No,” she agreed. “It was dark last night, but you shined the light on the dinghy, and I certainly would have seen a body if there’d been one there.”

“He must have come from the boat that was after us… but how?”

“Are you going to kill him?” asked Millie, who heard the commotion and came up behind them to look over their shoulders at the man lying on the dinghy.

“No,” Zach stated emphatically. “Maybe the rest of the people in this world have come to that, but we haven’t.”

“Besides,” Stacey added, “for all we know, he’s already dead.”

“Don’t think so,” Millie advised them. “I can see a slight movement of his back.”

The two Arthurs turned to stare at the white-haired woman.

“What? You think I’m blind just because I’m getting a little older? Look for yourself. It’s faint, but he’s breathing. Not sure how good of shape he’s in, but he’s clearly alive.”

“I see it,” said Denise, who had come out on deck and was atop the aft cabin. Glen and George came up behind Millie.

“It’s too bad, then,” Zach sighed. “That means we have a prisoner on our hands.” He turned to his son. “How’s the shoulder?”

“It hurts when I move my arm, but it's not as bad as I thought it would be.”

“Denise, how’s your arm?” Stacey asked.

“It’s just a scratch,” the girl replied. “It’s nothing.”

“Good,” Zach said, half in jest. “Because I need you to go below and bring me the .38. The AK-47 will be too cumbersome to carry down there.”

“What are you going to do?” There was a hint of concern in Stacey’s voice.

“You saw what happened when you tried to wake that fellow up by yelling, so I need to get on that dinghy and shake him into consciousness. Otherwise, we’ll lose valuable time dragging him behind us half the day.”

“Be careful, Zach. We’ve seen what that kind of man is capable of.”

When Denise returned with the pistol, Zach stuck it under his belt at his back. He told his daughter to go to the wheel and keep an eye out for any other vessels while they checked out the man in the dinghy. “If you see anything, let us know and take it out of autopilot. We’ll decide what to do from there.”

“What about me?” Glen was eager to help.

“You need to rest that shoulder,” his father told him. “You might just as well stay above decks, though.”

“How about I redo the dressing on that wound?” Millie asked.

“Good, and thanks, Millie. Stacey, you and George stay here.” He handed George his weapon. “I’ll have the guy covered on the dinghy, but you keep your eye on him, especially when he first gets aboard and I’m still climbing the ladder.”

He climbed over the rail and down the ladder. When he was on the bottom rung, he pulled the line in until the dinghy was right below him. He tied it off and watched the man for several seconds before risking getting into the small boat.

The dinghy had two seats that extended from one side to the other, and the man was draped over both. One leg was bent and totally inside the dinghy, but the other was straight out, the foot slightly outside the boat. He appeared to be slender and about as tall as Zach. His clothes were still soaking wet. Zach concluded the man must have crawled up from the water and passed out as soon as he was safely in the small boat.

He stood over the man and nudged him with a foot. The fellow stirred, but didn’t wake up, so Zach nudged him harder. This time, the man opened his eyes and raised his head slowly. The first thing he saw was a gun pointed at him. He looked higher, and saw Zach staring down at him.

“Who are you? And what are you doing here?”

“You blew up my boat,” the man mumbled weakly. His head dropped down again.

“You were trying to kill us.”

The man didn’t raise his head, but turned it a little and looked up at Zach. “No. They were, not me.”

“They?” Zach felt no sympathy for the man but decided to listen to what he had to say.

“The pirates.”