Apocalyptic Pirates 6, page 21
“Jesus, Ally.” I took a quick step before she could do any damage. “You’re so good at that, it’s scary.”
“It’s cathartic.” Ally’s light-green eyes were gleaming. “I wish you were wearing protective gear so I could really lay into you.”
“Excuse me?” I sputtered.
“Or, you know, if we had a dummy to practice on.” Ally grinned at me.
“You’ve got a real violent streak hidden underneath all those manners,” I told her.
“I’m full of surprises,” Ally laughed.
Then she froze.
Her eyes looked past me, and her eyes went wide.
“Drew,” she said faintly.
I turned around quickly to see what she was looking at, and my heart dropped into my stomach.
There was a boat on the horizon.
Chapter 13
“Nobody panic,” I commanded.
“What, why?” Dia asked as she came to see what we were looking at. “Oh. I see.”
“We’re not panicking,” Letty said in a voice that was clearly trying to be confident. “We’re not panicking.”
“We’re not panicking.” I gave her hand a quick squeeze while my brain raced through our options.
“Is it the Navy?” Ally asked in a voice pitched high with anxiety.
“It looks like just one boat,” Shannon said.
“We could send the drone out,” Dia suggested. “Use it to see who it is and what kind of boat it is.”
“If it is a Naval vessel, they’ll shoot it out of the sky.” I shook my head. “I don’t want to put one of our most valuable assets in danger like that.”
“Oops, yeah.” Dia pulled a face. “I didn’t think about that.”
“Okay.” I came to a decision. “Grab the binoculars, first and foremost. Then you guys are going to hide with your guns. We don’t know what kind of firepower this boat has, so we might need to downplay our strength and numbers so we don’t come across as a threat.”
“Plus, if they have our descriptions, they’ll be looking out for a yacht full of women,” Shannon said as she handed the binoculars my way.
Ally looked queasy at the thought.
“It’ll be okay,” I reassured her. “You guys get your guns and hide down the hatch or in the cockpit. And be ready to open fire if it comes down to it.”
“Should we have a code word?” Dia suggested.
“This isn’t Mission Impossible,” Shannon said crushingly.
“I’m being serious,” the Latina woman insisted. “What if we want to take these people by surprise?”
“That’s actually a good idea,” I said. “If I say ‘palm wine’, then you know it’s a signal to open fire.”
“See,” Dia said to Shannon in triumph.
Shannon rolled her eyes, and the four of them quickly grabbed their guns and found suitable hiding places.
Ally went into the cockpit and crouched down behind the captain’s chair. Shannon hid with her in the cockpit and pressed herself against the control panel. Letty hid at the bottom of the hatch steps, and Dia sat at the top.
It wasn’t the most sophisticated strategy, but the yacht hadn’t been designed with espionage in mind, and hiding places were limited.
I stood on deck with my gun in my arms as I raised my binoculars to my eyes and locked onto the shape of the approaching boat.
They had to have seen us by now, but they didn’t divert an inch from their course. I could tell now that it was a yacht like ours, but much smaller and in much worse shape than ours. The paint job was peeling, and the windows were smudged.
It looked like it was deserted.
“Hmm,” I muttered and placed the binoculars down as I prepared for anything.
Then as the yacht drew closer, I saw there was a lone man standing in the prow. And he had a gun pointed right at me.
As soon as I saw that, I trained my gun on him.
The guy shouted something in Spanish and gestured with his gun.
“I don’t understand,” I shouted back. “Hablo inglés?”
“Shoot!” the guy shouted. “I shoot!”
“No!” I yelled back. “Don’t shoot! We’re not out here looking for trouble, we’re just passing through.”
“I shoot!” he shouted. “I have gun!”
He did, but by this point, there was less than twenty feet between our two boats, and I could see that the gun in question was little more than a BB rifle. Even so, I wanted to leave this interaction with all of my internal organs intact. BB gun or not, it could still do some damage with a lucky shot.
“Calm down,” I called in as even a voice as I could manage. “We don’t have to shoot.”
“No, you let us pass!” the man yelled. “We go through!”
We?
“I shoot you!” he hollered.
His voice climbed to a raw edge, and I could see the wild whites of his eyes in his tanned face. He gestured with the gun. His chest was rising and falling in panicked gasps, his knuckles were white, and the tension was visible in every rigid line of his body.
I looked past the man to the cockpit of the yacht.
Although the windows were dirty, they weren’t quite grubby enough to fully hide the little face peeping out at me.
It was a kid– a little boy of about five years old.
He stared at me with huge eyes.
I smiled at him, and he ducked down for a second in embarrassment before he peeped around again and threw me the biggest grin.
I waved, and the little boy waved back.
The guy was staring at me with all his bluster gone, and I felt sorry for him. He must have been doing exactly what we were doing, and hiding part of the crew down below while he stayed on deck to suss out the situation.
Except my hidden crew members were capable adults with some serious firepower. We weren’t hiding kids on board.
“Hey,” I said, and I looked the guy straight in the face. “We’re not here for trouble. If you don’t hurt us, we won’t hurt you or your family.”
The man’s head snapped around. He shot a powerful glare at the kid in the cockpit window, but the kid was entirely unrepentant and gave his dad a merry wave with his chubby little hand.
The man let out a long sigh. He looked at the gun in my hand and clearly recognized that mine was the superior weapon, and if I wanted to, I could very easily take him out in a single shot.
“We won’t hurt you,” I repeated.
“Okay,” the guy said in a defeated voice.
He lowered his rifle and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. He was about my age, maybe a little older, with an untidy scruff of dark beard covering his face, and wild black hair tied back in a bun.
“Is that your kid?” I asked with a nod toward the cockpit.
“Yeah. Vamos,” he called.
Three little boys came out of the cockpit and ran to stand by their father’s legs. I saw the kid I’d waved to, and he shot me a cheeky smile. A woman ran out after them and halted when she saw me. A panicked look came over her face, and she shot a frantic line of Spanish at her husband.
“Dia,” I called. “Can you come and translate, please?”
Dia climbed out of the hatch, and the other women followed.
The woman on the other boat stared in amazement as Dia came to the railing and called out to them. She answered, and Dia nodded and smiled at her.
“I just told them we’re okay,” Dia said to me. “She seemed pretty scared we were pirates or something.”
“We are pirates,” Shannon reminded her. “The good kind.”
“Qué estás haciendo aquí?” the woman in the other boat called. “Adónde vas?”
“Nos dirigimos de esa manera,” Dia replied, and she pointed in the direction that the other boat had just come from.
The man and woman looked at each other with confused and slightly suspicious looks on their faces.
“What is it?” I pushed. “Dia?”
“Has visto los barcos?” the man said.
“He’s asking if we’ve seen the ships,” Dia translated.
“Ships?” Ally questioned. “Does he mean the fleet?”
“Dia, ask him if they’ve seen the Naval fleet and if that’s what he means,” I urged.
Dia obliged, and both the man and the woman immediately began nodding their heads and talking over each other in their hurry to explain.
“They say yes, they’ve seen the fleet,” Dia said. “That’s what they’re running from.”
“They’re running from the Navy?” Shannon frowned. “Why? What have they done?”
“They haven’t done anything,” Dia retorted. “They’re just anxious. They saw our video about the Coast Guard, and now they don’t trust anyone in the armed forces. They’re getting the hell out of Dodge.”
“Okay,” Shannon conceded. “That makes sense.”
“Yes it does,” Dia said with a sniff.
“Speaking of which…” Ally touched my arm lightly. “We are on a schedule, remember?”
“You’re right.” I nodded. “Dia, tell them thank you for the information.”
Letty suddenly sprang up and ran back down the hatch. Dia translated my thanks, and then Letty was back and breathlessly holding a plate with some cookies on it.
“Here,” she gasped and held them out over the water.
We were close enough for the woman to reach out and take the plate from Letty’s hand, and the kids all let out delighted gasps when they saw the cookies.
“Gracias,” the woman called and nudged the children.
“Gracias!” they chorused obediently.
“De nada!” Letty shouted back.
As our boats pulled away from each other, I looked back over my shoulder and saw the little boys each devouring a cookie with the biggest, happiest grins on their faces.
“Aw man, that was cute,” Letty said with a smile.
“They were very sweet,” I agreed. “You’re going to need to bake more cookies at the rate you’re giving them out.”
“I just love seeing the look on little kids’ faces when they get a surprise treat.” Letty smiled as widely as one of the kids herself. “It’s like Halloween, when I get to hand out candy to the trick-or-treaters. It’s just the sweetest thing.”
“You know, a couple hundred years ago, you probably would have had a cottage in the middle of a forest,” Shannon said. “You’d give out sweets to children, but then you’d lure them into your oven and eat them.”
“Oh, my Lord,” Letty exclaimed. “Why am I the evil witch in this story?”
“I don’t make the rules,” Shannon said with a grave shake of her head. “If you’re a woman who hands out candy to children, you’re probably planning to eat them later on.”
“Yeah, sure,” Letty scoffed. “That’s totally my plan.”
Ally went into the cockpit, and I followed her.
“Everything okay, skipper?” I asked.
“Yeah.” She nodded as she bent over the control panel. “I just wanted to double-check that we are still on track with our itinerary.”
“We’re going to make it.” I rubbed her shoulders soothingly, and Ally let out a deep sigh and let her head droop down so her long auburn waves brushed the control panel in front of her.
“Tell me that again,” she sighed.
“We’re going to make it.” I massaged her shoulders and felt the knots and tension in her muscles melt away. “We’re going to get to that bay, and we’re going to chill without a care in the world. You’re going to lie in the sun, and we’re going to have a nice relaxing time.”
“Mmhmm.” Ally let out another sigh. “I don’t know if it’s the fact that you’re really, really good at massages, but that sounds like absolute paradise.”
“It will be,” I told her firmly. “You just wait and see.”
I hoped that my words sounded more confident than I felt. I believed what I told Ally, but at the same time I couldn’t help feeling apprehensive now that we’d had another confirmation about the Navy being on the move.
It was going to be a race against time to reach the bay before the Navy found us.
I didn’t voice any of my concerns to Ally, though. I trusted that the yacht and her navigational skills would see us through, and I kept repeating that to myself for the rest of that day and during my hours on watch that night.
And the next morning, about an hour before lunch, we saw the bay on the horizon.
Ally deftly sailed the yacht into a little inlet. It was a beautiful place with deep, bright-blue waters and long stretches of reddish-brown sand fringed and broken up with vibrant green clusters of palm trees waving their fringed leaves in the gentle breeze.
A flock of white seabirds flew overhead as the yacht sailed up to a little beach that curved around like the inside of a bowl. On the inside of the bowl was the beach and the water, and on the other side, beyond the sandy beach, was a thick line of palm trees.
If my calculations were right, walking through the trees would take us to the beach on the other side of the inlet, from which we would have a perfect view of the rest of the ocean. And that meant I could film the Naval fleet as it passed by.
There was so little information online about what the Navy was doing, and if they were on their way to help the Coast Guard, which was looking increasingly likely, then I wanted to get footage of the bastards in action.
“Oh, my god, it’s so pretty!” Dia exclaimed as Ally carefully guided the yacht behind the thickest part of the treeline so we would be hidden from view of any vessels passing by. “Look at how clean the sand is!”
“Perfect for sunbathing,” Letty said.
“No one is sunbathing until I’ve scoped out the area,” I warned. “Unless you want to get eaten by a dragon. Or mauled by a crocodile. Or drown in quicksand. Or fall down a well.”
“Wow, morbid,” Dia commented as she raised her eyebrows. “When did you get so dramatic, Drew?”
“I’ve been hanging out with you for too long,” I told her with a grin. “I’m going to get the drone and do a sweep of the area. Once we’ve established a bit more firmly what this bay is like, then we can think about exploring.”
“Right on, jefe.” Dia threw me a joking salute.
Ally hauled in the sail, and I settled down on the deck with the drone and sent it out over the side of the boat.
I was right in my estimation about the beach on the other side of the trees. There was a thin strip of land, about 500ft, between the shore where the yacht was moored and the rest of the open ocean. We would have a perfect view of the fleet when it sailed by.
I sent the drone up into the sky to go over the tops of the trees and get a bird’s-eye view of the cove. For a long way, all I could see was trees in both directions.
I sent the drone right, and saw trees, trees, and more trees.
“Lots of trees, huh?” Shannon commented.
She was looking over my shoulder, and she kissed the top of my head when I nodded.
“Trees mean dragons,” I said. “Potentially. We know they like being undercover.”
“It’s so near water, though,” the Indian woman objected. “And it’s not even fresh water, like in the estuary.”
“If our theories are right, though, it means that the dragons are being forced to make do with all sorts of environments,” I countered. “A little island strip of land might not be ideal for them normally, but if it comes down to it, there’s no real reason why they wouldn’t be able to settle down here.”
“Damn,” Shannon sighed. “And I’d hoped we might be able to sunbathe on the beach.”
“Well, you still might be able to,” I said encouragingly. “I haven’t seen anything so far that suggests there are dragons.”
“You haven’t gone left yet, though, have you?” Shannon shook her head in a gloomy way.
“They’re like pockets,” Dia mused. “You know how you never find what you’re looking for in the first pocket you try? It’s always in the last pocket.”
“Yes, Dia,” Shannon said solemnly. “Dragons are like pockets.”
“It sounds dumb when you say it like that,” Dia giggled. “I know what I meant.”
“I know what you mean, too,” I said with a chuckle. “And you’re right as well, I would bet my hat that we’re going to see all kinds of shit as soon as I change directions.”
Sure enough, as soon as I had finished looking over that area and zoomed the drone back the way it had come, the environment started to get interesting.
The trees thinned out suddenly, and I saw a clearing on the drone’s camera. I flew the drone a little lower to try and get a better view of what was in the clearing, and I saw a bunch of what looked like grass huts built on stilts.
“Do you think this was a village?” Letty asked.
“Maybe,” Shannon said.
The huts were in a bad way. Some of them had had their grass thatch pulled down and shredded to reveal gaping holes in the roofs and exposed ceiling poles that were splintered and broken. Others had gaps in the walls like a wrecking ball had come through there.
But then I saw some tell-tale gouges in the earth, and I knew that it wasn’t a wrecking ball that had caused the damage.
“There you go,” I said. “There are the dragons.”
“Of course,” Shannon sighed. “It was too much to hope that it was going to be different here.”
“Hon, I hate to break it to you, but we are in the middle of a dragon apocalypse,” Letty informed her. “The dragons are kind of everywhere.”
“Oh, my god, really?” Shannon gasped with sarcasm dripping from every syllable. “Shit, why didn’t you guys tell me about this earlier?”
“Wait, what’s that?” Dia pointed to something on the screen.
“Is it a dragon?” Shannon instantly switched from sarcasm back onto high alert mode.
“No, oh, my god, is that a plane?” Dia said in disbelief. “Is this an airport?”
“I think this might have been a resort,” I said. “It’s pretty remote out here, so it makes sense that they would have facilities for small planes to land here to drop off visitors.”
