Seeking Safe Harbor: Suddenly Everything Changed (The Seeking Series) (24 page)

The roller furling was what let out the jib sail at the front of the boat, but they had no need for it at the moment, so Stacey could concentrate on what they needed to do to stay alive.

The powerboat came to a halt a hundred yards away, and the men aboard checked for damages to their own boat. As was the case with the sailboat, the damages were mostly superficial. But the men aboard were now angry. Whatever their intent was before, their faces now showed that they would settle for nothing less than sinking the sailboat. Their caution increased to the same degree as their anger, however, so they stood behind the main cabin to focus on their target. Even the man piloting the boat stayed low. Everything but his eyes and the top of his head was hidden.

The nearly invisible pilot turned the boat and moved it slowly in the direction of the sailboat. This time, he didn’t attempt to get in close. When he felt they were close enough to take a shot with the bazooka, he stopped and peered malevolently over the cabin at the people who attempted to ram his boat.

Stacey saw what the men on the powerboat were doing and was worried. They were too far away for her to try to ram them again, and it was obvious they were going to stay just far enough away to avoid a repeat of their first encounter. She looked futilely around, but there simply wasn’t anywhere they could escape to.

She could see the bazooka clearly enough, but the man holding it was mostly hidden by the cabin. His angry face was visible, but it presented too small a target for them to hit with bullets at that distance. Only the tops of their heads and fierce eyes were visible. Except for the man holding the rocket shell. All they could see of him was his hands. The rocket shell itself was all too visible.

In seconds, the shell that would tear a hole in the
La Sirena
’s hull and sink her and her crew would be on its way. There was nothing they could do to stop it.

“I
WAS too busy at the time to notice, but do you have a vehicle?” Zach’s father asked as they watched the motorcycles bearing down on them. “There’s no way we can fight off that many hoodlums.”

“It’s out front,” said Zach’.

“Good. You have automatic weapons; see if you can slow them down. I’ll get your Mom, and we'll get the SUV out of the garage.” He rushed back into the house.

The motorcycles were within fifty yards of the house, though the field was bumpy. Zach could see that two were riding double, and he thought he saw that one of the riders on the back was wearing an eye patch.

“I’ll take the ones on the right,” Ron said.

“Okay, I’ll take out those on the left,” Zach added. “Denise…”

“The center,” she said before he could finish. “I’m going for their tires again.”

“Good idea. The more bikes we can take out of action, the better.

They opened fire. Dirt spewed up in front of the motorcycles and none stopped at first. Soon, though, the front tires of the front bikes burst and they went down. One wobbled to a stop, but the others flipped and crashed. Those behind the leaders began hitting the downed bikes or sliding to a stop off to the side.

“Let’s go,” yelled the elder Arthur from inside the house.

The motorcyclists were in disarray, and none were heading for them at the moment, so the three turned and rushed into the house.

“We’re ready,” said Zach’s mother as the three got to the living room. “Dad’s got the SUV started and the garage door open.” She started for the door leading to the garage.

“Hey, what about us?” one of the wounded men said. The two of them were sitting on the sofa where Zach’s mother had kept them under guard.

“The house is all yours,” she called over her shoulder as she left.

“Huh?” the man said, looking around the living room.

“Enjoy it while you can,” said Zach as he, Ron and Denise darted out the front door.

The SUV, a four-wheel drive Ford, was on the street next to the Mercedes, which George already had running.

“Where to?” called Zach’s mother from within the SUV.

“We need to find a nursery,” replied Zach as he opened the front driver’s side door to the Mercedes. George, realizing that the Arthur men would be likely to know each other’s moves, relinquished the wheel and slid over to the passenger seat. Ron and Denise jumped in the back.

“Nursery? What for?” Mae Arthur wanted to know.

“Seeds. The people at The Isthmus need them.”

“We’ve got thousands we were taking with us to the mountains.”

“Then let’s head straight for Highway 101,” Zach said.

They hesitated when they heard the roar of motorcycles behind the house start up again. “They’ll see we’re gone and come after us,” Zach’s father said. “They’ll have to go to the main road and come here, the same way you did. The sounds of their motors are moving in that direction. We need to detour around the back way.”

“We’ll follow you,” said Zach.

“What’s happening?” George wanted to know. “It was really quiet out here until the shooting started.”

“That’s the way it is these days,” Zach mused. “We’ll explain what happened this time as we go.”

They drove in the opposite direction of the main highway, turning left at the first corner.

The two wounded men came out onto the front steps and watched them disappear. A few seconds later, the first of the motorcycles, many of them now carrying two people, turned onto the street.

Pulling up to the curb in front of the house, they looked over at the two men who clearly didn’t belong.

“We’re looking for the people who have a bunch of food,” a large, scraggly-bearded man who was riding on the back of the first motorcycle called out.

“They went that way,” the man with the leg wound called back, pointing toward the corner the Arthur family and friends had just turned. “They got the food and all kinds of other stuff with them.”

“Other stuff? How about gas? They have any of that?”

“Yeah, they got some full cans in the back of the SUV”

“A bunch of hoarders. Is this their place?”

“No,” the wounded man replied, “It’s ours.”

“Yours?”

“Yep,” the man said proudly.

The bearded man and five others pulled out a variety of handguns and peppered the two men on the front step with bullets.

“Ain’t no way I’m gonna let people that shoot at me live,” the bearded man snarled as he put a last bullet into the man's head. As soon as they were sure the “home owners” were dead, they jumped off their bikes and, stepping over the dead men, went to investigate the house.

A few minutes later, having found nothing to eat and little they wanted to steal in the house, they came out and looked around. The bearded leader said to a man with a patch over one eye, “Blinky, are you sure it’s the same people?”

“Same MO,” replied Blinky, trying to make it sound like a certainty. “They shot the tires out from under us on the 101, just like they did back there in the field. Gotta be the same ones.”

“Then they’ll probably head back to the 101,” the leader surmised. He turned back to the man with the eye patch. “You take twenty guys and go watch for them on the 101, south of town. Me and the others will try to catch up to them. Between us, we’ll have them pinned down within the hour.”

T
HERE was no way to stop them from shooting the rocket, but a split second before it fired, Stacey made one last, desperate move. She shoved the throttle full ahead and cranked the wheel hard to starboard. The shell from the bazooka, a small rocket with the power to stop a tank, whistled by, barely missing the stern.

She knew it was a temporary reprieve, at best, but at least they had another minute or two of life. She could see the man with the bazooka zeroing in on the sailboat again. This time, he would be ready for any diversionary tactic she might employ. She was too far away to try to ram them again. They could get off four or five rockets in the time it would take to reach them, and they wouldn’t miss a target on a straight course, either.

The
La Sirena
would be sunk long before it had a chance to get near them a second time. Even at that distance, she could see the evil smile on the face of the man with the bazooka.
Great
, she thought,
we’ve come across one of those fiends who enjoys killing
.

“I’m sorry, Glen,” she said. “You, too, Millie. There’s nothing more I can do.”

“Maybe not, but I can at least try to nail one or two before I die,” Millie growled. She began shooting at the distant boat.

Glen followed suit.

The men on the launch were under cover, but instinct told them to duck, so the bazooka was momentarily out of action. The bullets flew by without coming close to hitting anyone.

All the crew on the sailboat had gained was another few seconds.

The smile on the face of the bazooka triggerman broadened. He trained the weapon on the sailboat and called for a shell to be loaded. The second man picked up a shell and shoved it into the tube.

Before they could get a shot off, the launch raised high in the air, knocking all of the men down and causing the bazooka to fall into the ocean. The nose of a submarine shot up right at the launch’s bow, creating a massive wave that lifted it and threw it backward. It rolled over and capsized, throwing all the men into the angry water.

The submarine surfaced, stopped its forward motion, and backed up to where the swamped launch was laying half out of the water; the overturned boat was sinking rapidly. Two of the men were trying desperately to get a small dinghy loose from the davits that attached it to the launch. A third person was swimming around the bow of the boat, trying to get back to them – and away from the sub. There was no sign of the other men.

Captain Wang, joined by two armed crewmembers, climbed onto to the conning tower deck and watched as the bad guys got the nine-foot fiberglass dinghy loose from the davits and climbed aboard. They all watched as the third man managed to get to the dinghy just as the launch sunk into the ocean.

The Chinese captain called to them. “I suggest you head for shore.”

If the men were surprised there was a Chinese submarine in California waters, or that the officer in charge spoke English, they didn’t show it. They looked out to sea, but the container ship was off in the distance and heading away at a fast pace. They apparently anticipated that would be the case, because their expressions didn’t change when they looked back. The only concern they expressed was for the unfortunate situation in which they suddenly found themselves. “We don’t have a motor,” the man who'd held the bazooka yelled back. “We don’t even have oars.”

“Well, now, you do have a dilemma, don’t you?” Captain Wang was not sympathetic.

“You sunk our boat!” the man screamed.

“Because you were trying to do the same to friends of mine,” Wang reasoned. “A fitting response, I’d say.” The dinghy drifted close enough for him to get a good look at the men and converse just by talking a little louder than normal. He looked the three men over. None had anything but what they were wearing. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I will tow you ten or fifteen miles from here, far enough away to be sure you can’t get back to bother these people again. I will take you to within a mile of shore, and you can paddle with your arms to get the rest of the way in.”

“By hand? That will take hours!”

“Exactly.”

By that time, the
La Sirena
had motored up alongside the submarine, on the opposite side of where the men sat in the dinghy.

“Captain Wang,” Stacey called, “We thank you for saving us.”

He went over to the other side of the conning tower. “Ah, Mrs. Arthur, so good to see you again.”

“In this case, I can assure you the pleasure is all mine!”

“No, not entirely. It is always a pleasure to see my friends.” He explained that he was going to take the three men far away.

“Good! We dropped Zach, Denise, and the other two men off this morning. The three of us are alone out here.

“Yes, I know.”

“You know?”

“We have a periscope.”

“Which also explains how you knew we were under attack.” She voiced in a moment of realization. “It continues to be in our favor that you and your submarine are in the vicinity. What are you going to do after you take those men to an isolated spot?”