Chapter 25: Warehouse Rescue

Sunday dawned bright and clear. Already, I could hear the activity on the pier as the holiday boaters readied their yachts to go out for the day. I guess I should mention that the local yacht club shares the harbor with the navy.

After a quick shower, I started for the salon when I suddenly turned and went back to get dressed. Then, once again, headed for the salon. Grabbing a cup of coffee, I made my way to the flying bridge.

“Good morning!” I told everyone.

“We’re waiting on Craig to take us to the Canadian Consulate,” Captain Alfred told me. “Some big celebration going on.”

“What would you say to me just staying on the Serendipity today?” I asked. “I could use a rest day.”

“I’ll be glad to stay with him,” Reggie offered. “I’ve got some reports I need to go over.”

So that’s how, an hour later, I found myself alone on the bridge, looking out over the harbor and Fort de France Bay. Reggie was down in the salon, doing his reports and talking on his satellite phone.

As I lounged in the captain’s chair, I began to casually study the various yachts as they positioned themselves to exit the harbor to head out to sea. I marveled at all the different kinds and sizes of pleasure yachts and I began to be able to tell which ones were piloted by more experienced captains by the way they handled their crafts in the tight bay, as they headed for the small opening to the sea. It reminded me of sheep in a small pen trying to get through a hole in the fence.

The French Navy actually only kept a handful of ships in the port. It was all they needed to effectively manage the seas surrounding Martinique. The two largest were small cruisers, Captain Alfred had told me. And they were moored off to our starboard side, near the mouth of the bay. I couldn’t spot any activity on them. I guess it was because it was both a Sunday and a holiday weekend.

Around noon, Reggie brought us sandwiches and drinks to the bridge. I was to find that Reggie didn’t waste many words, so we didn’t talk a lot as we ate our lunch looking out over the bay. Just as he was picking up the dirty plates to return them to the galley, he stopped and stared. I quickly followed his gaze.

It was an old fishing trawler, worn and in sad repair. I think Reggie noticed it because it looked so out of place in a harbor full of sleek and expensive yachts. And it was entering the harbor instead of leaving it. Grabbing the binoculars, he studied the trawler then barked, “Alex! Get below!”

I ignored him and grabbed the other set of binoculars as he began using the yacht’s radio to call the base. I quickly discerned what he was worried about. The sad looking trawler was loaded to the gills with men in ragged outfits and armed with a variety of weapons. The problem was, the weapons all looked brand new, including the forward mounted 50 caliber machine gun and the even uglier looking box-like gizmo with the four holes in it, on the stern.

” ... This is Motor Yacht Serendipity currently moored dockside at the Fort Saint Louis Naval Base. We’re calling an emergency situation because a heavily armed trawler has just entered the harbor and...”

He stopped because of the explosion. As the trawler had rounded the point that marked the entrance to the bay, they were less than 500 yards away and headed straight for the Serendipity. When the seamen began removing the cover off the big box-like thing on the aft deck, I didn’t know what it was, but I knew it was bad. Before even I could blink, it exploded in a huge fireball that engulfed most of the old trawler. I saw men falling or jumping overboard, but couldn’t take my eyes off the now flaming trawler as it began drifting closer to the two moored Navy cruisers.

“Kinda brings home what you were describing the other day,” Reggie said. “And if I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t have believed it. Was that a SAM launcher?”

We spent the next hour just watching as the French Navy and some local firefighting boats extinguished the burning trawler and pulled it out of the harbor before it sank and became a navigational hazard. Uniformed men in small Zodiacs with blue lights were rounding up the survivors while others, mostly Navy personnel conducted search and rescue. The two Navy cruisers, so bereft of life earlier, were now swarming with uniformed men.

“What do you think they were after?” I finally asked Reggie.

“It looks like they were targeting the Serendipity,” Reggie replied. “So my best guess is they were after you. The real question is why?”

“That’s easy, my amigos,” said a strange voice behind us. He was big. I was sure he would tower over my six-foot-two frame, and he was wet. He also carried what I later found out was a new AK47 assault rifle and some kind of pistol tucked in his belt. “It is the dinaro. They gave us the guns and promised mucho dinaro if you were to die!”

“Before you kill us, may I ask who is paying you so much dinaro to have me dead?” I asked.

“Si. It is good to know why you are going to die,” he agreed. “I do not know his name, my amigo, but he is holding my daughter hostage until I return. Then he will pay us and set her free. So you see, I must do this thing he demands, for I love my daughter and would not see her harmed.”

“Gently!” whispered Reggie as I suddenly charged his EMF’s with my energy. Unfortunately, he was sopping wet and standing in a puddle, so when the small charge hit him, he dropped the rifle and clutched both hands to his heart. Reggie was on him in a flash, stripping him of his weapons. Then grabbing the AK47 and checking the action, he headed for the cockpit and a quick inspection to see if there were more intruders.

I sank to the floor and pulled the big guy’s head into my lap as I desperately tried to think of something to do.

“Is okay, amigo,” he rasped and then coughed violently for a moment.

“Hang in there, my friend,” I replied. “Help is on the way.”

“I am sorry, I did not want to kill you, but the man, he threatens to kill my daughter if I didn’t kill you. Please, you must save my little Gabriela,” he rasped.

“Where is she?” I asked. “Where can I find Gabriela?”

“In a ... In a warehouse, Señor, behind the hospital,” he said.

“Can you tell me which hospital?” I asked gently.

He looked at me as if I was stupid, and then finally mumbled, “Si, the big one. The Princess Margaret,” he told me. “They are holding her in a warehouse behind the hospital. They are very bad men, Señor, They sella the drugs in the warehouse.”

“Alex!” Carina screamed as she dropped to the floor beside me. “Are you alright?”

“He was wet and standing in a puddle when he received a shock. He can speak some, but has hardly moved,” I told her.

“Have you tried to heal him?” she asked.

Duh! So call me stupid and put me in a padded room, but I had been so worried about hurting him and then I got sidetracked worrying about his daughter, that I just hadn’t got there yet. I focused as I placed my glowing hand over his heart and held still. His glow was still a muted amber when Carina lowered her stethoscope and said, “His heart is beating normally now. Let’s see about getting him to a hospital and getting him looked at.”

When the ambulance came, I asked one of the tech’s, “Do you know where the Princess Margaret Hospital is?”

“Yeah, man. But we sure as hell ain’t taking this guy there. It’s in Roseau, on Dominica. And this guy is heading for the base hospital here.”

“I’ll find Gabriela,” I told him as they wheeled him away.

“I’m sorry, Alex. I just cannot allow it. It would be putting yourself in danger, unnecessarily,” Reggie said firmly.

I couldn’t help it as the lights began to flicker and the engines below deck began to whine.

“So you’re saying that a little girl can die because you can’t be bothered?” I screamed. “Well, fuck that! I don’t need you or your permission to go save her. So get out of my way or you’ll end up like her papa!”

I was down the steps and headed for the pier when I realized I didn’t know where to go. News of the botched attack would soon reach the drug dealing kidnappers. The hospital was sixty miles away by sea and I didn’t have a clue how to get there. I suddenly found myself wishing I could use the power I felt when I was loving Carina to just go there, now!

POP!

Suddenly, I was standing in front of a warehouse in the eastern shadows of a big building. It sure looked like a hospital. It was in fact, a complex of many two, three, and four story buildings, that served as the hospital itself. Surrounding these half dozen buildings was a crushed oyster shell road that ringed the hospital. On the outer edge of the road were all the support facilities, including the warehouse standing before me. It was not much more than a metal shack and as I stood in the dirt courtyard in front of the warehouse, everything was quiet. Too quiet!

Suddenly, the door opened and a guy with an AK47, just like Gabriela’s father had, stepped out to light a cigarette.

“You know ... smoking is bad for you,” I told him as I zapped him. I wasn’t trying to kill him. But at the moment I was wound up, angry, and on a mission to save a little girl.

I stepped to the partially opened door and just listened. Not hearing anything, I slowly eased into the metal building and stopped. It had a curved dome like a Quonset hut but seemed taller than I remembered from The Gomer Pyle show on TV. And it seemed to go on forever. At least fifty feet. There were rows and rows of shelving but no people. It remained eerily quiet.

At the far end was a single pedestrian door. With nowhere else to go, I began making my way to the other end of the building, staying against the side walls as much as possible.

When I reached the door, again I paused and just listened. That’s when I heard a girl shriek! I quickly spun and burst through the door.

No matter how many times I had seen it done on TV, busting down a door is just plain awkward. And of course I promptly pitched forward doing a spectacular faceplant into the floor.

“Owww! That smarts!” I thought to myself, as I quickly realized that the faceplant had probably saved my life. Because that’s when the bullets flew over my head and strafed the wall where I had just been standing. I quickly targeted the guys with the guns and they were all stunned in a microsecond.

I glanced around and had just realized that I was in someone’s living quarters when a door in the back wall banged open and there stood an ugly, heavily tatooed brute, holding a wicked looking knife to the throat of a young teen girl.

That was the last thing he ever did in this life. I’m afraid I got carried away, again. Oh, well,” I thought. “He shouldn’t have hurt her.”

“Are you Gabriela?” I asked. “Your papa sent me.”

“Gabby,” she said in a monotone as she stared at the dead body. She hadn’t seen how he died, but it must have been a knife because she didn’t hear a gun.

“Are you alright?” I asked her.

“I’m okay,” she replied. Then, “How did you do that?”

Of course she was referring to the body that was crumpled at her feet.

“Long story,” I told her. “I think we should get out of here before someone else comes.”

Okay,” she said as she studied me closely. “Wait!”

I watched as she turned back into the small room behind her and came back carrying a small mesh bag. She stopped and gingerly poked at the body on the floor, then reaching into a pocket on his shirt, pulled out a roll of what appeared to be currency with a rubber band around it. She then put the roll in her bag.

“I’m ready,” she said, watching me closely to see if I was going to challenge her for taking the money.

I just smiled and offered my arm to the young teen.

“Shall we?”

We started walking down the crushed oyster shell service road behind the hospital complex, heading for the Emergency Room that was located at the opposite end of the complex (naturally). As we walked, I asked Gabriela if they had hurt her.

“Not really,” she replied. “They weren’t much rougher than the guys in my neighborhood.”

“How long had they been holding you?” I asked.

“Not long. Since early this morning.”

“Do you know why they were holding you?” I asked.

“It had something to do with Carlos wanting my dad to take a bunch of guys in his fishing boat somewhere to knock off some gringo,” she said.