Chapter 9

I finally got what I wanted. Once my car was back and repaired, I settled down and the rest of the year was quiet. Well, if you can count any room with Debbie in it as quiet. The woman talked non-stop and usually about things that made others uncomfortable. She could be amusing though, and her girlfriend Amy was a saint. They seemed pretty serious for a high school couple, already looking at colleges together.

Debbie still hadn’t given up on getting me to date and had taken to inviting girls to our lunch table. They all seemed nice, and I enjoyed talking with several of them. A few even stuck around and seemed to settle in to our lunch crowd and maybe, just maybe, they would be friends too. But I didn’t date and it drove Debbie absolutely crazy.

“It’s porn, isn’t it?” She asked one day when I had politely declined an offer to go to the movies with the latest girl she suckered into coming to our table to tempt me.

The question was borderline offensive anyway, but when she asked it with sufficient volume that the entire lunchroom heard her, I got annoyed. Alan, poor Alan, her long-suffering brother, would have slid under the table if Pam hadn’t been there to prevent it.

“Debbie, what the hell does that even mean and will you please, for heaven’s sake, keep your damn voice down. Didn’t your mother ever teach you about inside voice versus outside voice? Christ, you are a damn foghorn.” I chided her, annoyed at the attention so many people were giving our table. I had barely gotten over the beginning of the year fights.

“The reason you don’t date. I read that thirty percent of men between the ages of fourteen and twenty-five have problems with real relationships because they are addicted to porn.” she said primly.

“And you read this where, exactly?”

She mumbled something too low for me to make out.

“Sorry, I didn’t catch that. Did you suddenly remember how to use your inside voice? You can whisper it in my ear if you want.” I teased, holding a hand to my ear.

“The Huffington Post.” she spat out, blushing.

“Well, as long as it was a reputable source. Aren’t they the ones that ran an article that said, “If you judge people for the way they like their steak, you are a racist, then ran an article the next day saying that the president likes his steak the worst possible way, well done?” I asked, making those at the table laugh.

“Look, Debbie, you are a nice girl. A very loud, very pushy girl, but I still like you.” That got more laughs. “Here’s the thing though. Except for clicking a sketchy link a couple of times trying to figure out what someone was talking about, sexually, I mean, I haven’t watched porn. I have never, now listen closely here, Deb. I have never sat down and deliberately watched a pornographic video.”

She looked put out that I had called her on her source, and even more annoyed that I had gotten people to laugh at her.

“You are such a jerk sometimes, Jack McCoy.” she fumed. Amy gave her a hug but, when Debbie buried her face in Amy’s neck, the long-haired brunette winked at me! Heh.

“If you would just date someone, get it over with, maybe she would stop obsessing over you.” Alan said plaintively. I felt for him, really. He lived with her!

“I don’t know why people are so damned interested in me dating. Why does it even fucking matter? I could be dating a guy, and that is okay. I could be screwing anything in a skirt, but that is okay. I could probably be caught with a sheep or a blow-up doll and that, well, I would live it down eventually. But when I don’t date, when I don’t flirt or made crude remarks, or brag in the locker room or any of the juvenile bullshit I see here in school, I am a god damned freak?” I don’t know where the anger came from, but I could feel it building. I wanted to hit something, hit someone. I wanted to break something.

Carefully, controlling my movements, I lifted my tray and walked to the disposal area, then walked out of the cafeteria. I heard a couple of people call me, but I ignored them and walked out of the building.

When I got to my car, I decided that it was not a smart move to drive, but I had to do something to get this out, something to release this, whatever it was inside, or I felt like I would explode. If that football goon was in front of me right now, I am afraid I would have killed him. I looked at my hands and they were trembling with suppressed rage.

I don’t know how long I stood there but a voice behind me made me spin in place on the balls of my feet, my hands poised to grasp or strike.

“Jack, come to the Gym.” One of the coaches, a Mister Beck, was standing there. His hands were in front of him, but slightly spread and his palms were toward me. Given his size, it was as non-threatening as the man could get. He was easily six foot, ten inches and was built on a massive scale. I bet he weighed in at four hundred pounds. I had seen him on campus this year, hell, I would have had to have been blind to miss him, but had no classes with him.

“When you get like that, all bound up, all it takes is a spark to start a major fire. The problem is, fire burns indiscriminately, Jack, I know this from experience. Come with me. Let me show you something.” he said softly, backing slowly towards the gym.

I felt myself uncoil a bit, but there was still that refrain in my head, that voice that wanted to watch the world burn.

I hadn’t spent any time in the school weight room, since we had equipment at home. In the back of the room there was a row of heavy bags that the football team used, I assume, since they were all painted with football jerseys and helmets.

Mister Beck kicked off his shoes and bounced on his toes again, then set himself and swung a meaty fist at the first bag, spinning left to launch a crippling kick at the next and a flying knee to the third. He made his way through all twelve of the hanging bags and, when he was done, the entire row was spinning, bobbing, banging together and swinging back and forth.

Mister Beck was at the far end looking winded and breathing hard, but he was smiling.

“Take out your anger on these. They don’t complain, they don’t bleed and there is no guilt afterwards.”

I closed my eyes for a moment. There, in front of me, smiling and smirking, superior and all powerful, was his face. He knew he was in control, and that I was just a plaything. He could do anything he wanted to me and I was powerless to stop him. He loved the screams of pain. He loved the scent, the sight and the taste of blood. He was giddy when he could breathe in the aroma of cauterized flesh. And I was next.

The twelve bags had almost settled in place and, under each painted on helmet, I could see his face, his smirk.

I launched a forward kick at the first and, when it swung clear, I used my momentum to spin and connect with my heel where the temple should be. I kept moving, striking, killing until there were no more. Only Mister Beck stood there and he looked shocked. In fact, he looked a little afraid for a moment.

When I turned around to see why, I was shocked too.

The first bag had a tear in it and was leaking the sand or whatever they used inside. The second was laying on the floor. I had caused the mounting point to tear free. The third had two tears and the fourth hung limp, the bottom opened up like a can opener. Of the twelve, there were only four that seemed undamaged in some way.

I laughed. Not sure why, exactly, but I laughed and it felt good. It felt wonderful, in fact. It felt like the anger that had been burning me up inside just ... evaporated. My hands and feet were sore as was my back, my hips, my shoulders ... I hadn’t stretched and was now paying for it, but I felt good.

“Thanks, coach, that really helped me, but I think we need more bags. Just get me a bill and I will pay for them, no problem.” I told him, then moved over to the side and started stretching. It would help, but I was spending some Jacuzzi time tonight for sure!

Coach Beck was just watching me and shaking his head. “Jack, you have some anger issues and if you had done that in the lunch room, you could have killed some of your classmates. Frankly, you are worrying to me.”

“Coach, I walked out of the lunch room because I got mad. Not annoyed, but crazy, Hulk Smash kind of mad. Never felt anything like that before. I knew I had to get away from folks and I knew, when I got to my car, that I shouldn’t drive. So don’t worry, Coach, I can control myself.”

“You did the right thing by walking away, but you need to talk to someone, figure out what is going on with you and these anger issues. Some day you might not be able to pull back, and then what, Jack? With the training you obviously have, you could do a lot of damage before you were stopped. Think about that, Jack. Which ones of your classmates, your friends or even your family are you willing to sacrifice? You need to get control of this.”

“You have my word on it, Coach. Now, I think I should get to class before I miss the whole period. Thanks, Coach, for this. Seriously though, either tell me how much or give me a bill afterwards. I can afford it, okay?” When the Coach shrugged and nodded, I left the weight room building and headed for class.

Dean seemed to think that I had just been letting stuff build and that I needed to find a way to let off the little stresses before they became big ones. Anger management is what he called it and said that the heavy bags were good for little things. Get annoyed, spend five minutes punching the bag. Get angry, then half an hour.

The key, he insisted, was exercise. “It takes a lot of energy to be angry, Jack. Think about it. When you were raging, you felt like you were burning up inside, right? Your fight or flight responses have been flipped. These days, you are all fight and no flight, the complete opposite of how you used to be. Not sure if that is a good way to be when you are not actively in combat, but it is what it is.”

“The fight urge gets things ramped up, your body preparing for great physical effort, burning energy that makes you hyped, speeds up your reflexes and lowers response time. It makes your vision sharper, your hearing more acute and your body starts to dampen down on the pain receptors. These are all survival traits. Exercise will drain that energy and soon your body can’t sustain that peak any longer and you calm down.”

“The trick is to train your body to ride the edge of amped up and too much. If you can control exactly how much energy your body burns when you need that edge, then you can ride the edge for much, much longer. For now? Run, or swim or jump rope or punch a bag, whatever it takes to burn that energy.”

“That’s the physical side, Jack, but there is a mental side too. You learned about the fire triangle, right? Fire needs fuel, heat and oxygen to burn. Anger is like that. It is as much physical as it is emotional and mental. Take one side away and the anger melts away. A mentally strong man can slow the burn, control his anger. An emotionally strong man can slow or even prevent the anger by recognizing the cause. A physically strong man can control his body’s response to anger, channel that anger. Someone who can do all three is damn near unstoppable. That is what you shoot for.”

Okay, great. Just call me grasshopper. I am sure a lot of that would come in handy down the road, but right now? I was going to be doing a lot of running and pushups and sit-ups and...

The next day the lunch table was quiet, and more than a few eyes across the room were on our table, including Coach Beck and another coach. Wonderful. By the end of the week though, things were mostly normal except that Debbie didn’t bring any more girls to the table and hadn’t asked me anything about dating. Maybe she finally got the message!

I guess the football team got the message too. No more dirty looks in the halls or whispered comments behind my back.

Christmas vacation was coming and I was not in a Christmas kind of mood. I got it in my head that I needed to go out on the boat, go somewhere, do something.

“The Bahamas are practically next door.” Dean said at breakfast, after listening to me talk about wanting to go somewhere.

I thought about it and nodded my head. “I had no idea how close until I started boating.” I admitted. “Heck, the West End airport is like eighty miles from Fort Lauderdale. That is damn close!”

I let that thought percolate for a minute.

“The Bahamas, huh? You know, that sounds cool. See if there is anything particular you might want to see. A resort or beach maybe. I’ll see what kind of boat amenities we can get and get the charts for the waters around the Bahamanian islands. This sounds like fun!”

We sat down with the charts and a tourist guide to plan out our trip. We were going to stop in the Bimini Islands first, a trip of about five hours if we took our time. We planned to stay at the Bimini Big Game Resort and Yacht club, not because we were big game fishers, but because it had a Scuba center, something I was keen to try out.

How long we stayed depended on if we enjoyed the scuba diving, but our next stop was a premier tourist mecca, Nassau. It was only a three-and-a-half-hour trip, so we could take our time and explore when we felt the urge. We reserved a berth at a place called Hurricane Hole Marina, mostly because it was next door to someplace Dean wanted to go, Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville. He wanted to see if it was different that the one here.

No accounting for parrot heads.

From there, we had a loose list of sights to see if we had time but mostly, I just wanted to cruise around, hitting as many islands as we could before heading home again. Vacation would start at noon on the 22^nd, with school letting out early. We could leave as soon as I got home and be in the Biminis before dark.

School did not start again until January 8^th, so we had sixteen days of fun and sailing. WOOT!

The last week before vacation started was horrible. It seemed to drag by and I was going a bit nuts checking and rechecking supplies. I bought the second Ruckus and Dean and I had taken a break from working on the bikes because he had found some stuff on the internet.

“When you bought these things, I was skeptical. Scooters? Dave would laugh his ass off. Still, I went on the web and there are hundreds of websites and companies that make parts for these. There is a huge modding community in Japan just for these and the bigger 250cc models. There are three different countries whose military jump these in frickin’ torpedo shaped cases with their airborne.”

“Okay, cool, so they aren’t junk.” I said, happy that my whim had turned out to be a good buy.

“No, you don’t get it. I ordered two kits for these and this weekend we need to put them together. I want them done before vacation starts, weekend after next.”

He had purchased, based on a Google translation from a Japanese website, a kit that would upgrade the suspension and let us bolt on bigger off-road tires that were rated for dirt and sand. In addition, there was a bigger fuel tank, a GPS and a holder for a hand-held radio. Dean was a mod-a-holic!

The day finally arrived. Friday and not a damn thing got done at school. Most teachers didn’t even try to teach anything, rather they did their best to keep the students’ chatter to a dull roar and rode herd on the overenthusiastic among us. When the bell rang at noon, I swear that every student in every building cheered!

Getting out of the parking lot tried my patience but I concentrated on the open water and made it without any road rage incidents. I was home a few minutes later and tucked my car besides Dean’s truck in the garage. Damn good thing we had four bays!

I went from the garage, straight out the rear doors to the boat dock without even going into the house. We had packed our gear last night and, unless Dean needed something, I was all set. I rounded the end of the boat shed and stopped in shock.

There were a lot of little boats in the canal where we lived. Some tiny two-man boats with a trolling motor, there was even a yacht bigger than mine that I had seen once, evidently belonging to vacationers. On any given day, I might see a smaller boat or two motoring down the canal on the way to or back from the open water, but I had yet to see any of the big boats up close.

Today there was a big one, maybe twice the size of the E-Key, and it was tied off to the concrete seawall that kept the canal and ocean from flooding our back yard. It was completely blocking the exit I would need for the E-Key! I wandered down to the water to check it out, and it was gorgeous. I saw that it was a trimaran, with three hulls to my two, and was about a hundred and ten, a hundred and twenty feet long!

She was a hybrid, having both powerful motors and two masts. I had read about them but never actually seen one up close. They were supposed to be the best of both worlds, fuel wise, in that the sails could be used to assist the motors, but the motors were perfectly capable of taking the boats anywhere and everywhere.

The boat itself was absolutely gorgeous, with masterful woodwork everywhere, all protected by a deep coat of marine urethane. My first thought, raking the boat from bow to stern, was this is how a trimaran would look if Chris Craft had made one. I think the biggest boat they ever made was smaller than this and was aluminum hulled.

I was looking over the side, trying to see through the murky water of the canal when I heard someone calling my name. I looked back to the house at first, because it sounded like Dean, but then it occurred to me that it had come from ... the boat?

There on the flybridge stood Dean, Dave and Jake! As if that was not enough of a surprise, alongside of them was Charles Mercier! “Close your mouth, Jack, you’ll catch a fly.”

This came from lower and I think I was all shocked out because somehow, I wasn’t surprised to see Rene and Sylvie keeping Madeleine Mercier company. The only person missing was Judge ... ah, there he was, playing bartender.

“You going to stand there all day, young man, or are you coming aboard?” Charles called down, waving me towards the ramp that had been laid over the edge.

I got hugs from the ladies, and a couple of the men, and an affectionate handshake from the rest.

“Okay, so what is going on? It is fantastic to see all of you, but this is a huge surprise! Dean sure pulled a fast one on me, I had no idea at all.” Dean was looking smug, buffing his nails and he laughed when I scratched my nose with my middle finger.

“Holy cow, Jack! You have grown six inches at least, and you are a stud now! Wow!” Rene said, running her hand across my chest. “How tall are you?”

“Six one so far, though the doc thinks I might get another inch or two before I am done. I work out with Dean every day, so he keeps me from getting fat.” I joked, lifting my shirt and showing her my pride and joy.

No! Pervert. My abs! I worked hard on them! I have a freakin’ eight-pack, biatch.

“Damn, Jack. I don’t even like men all that much and I am impressed.” Sylvie said, getting a laugh from everyone.

“Mister Mercier, Ma’am, it is wonderful to see you two again. Did you decide that you couldn’t live without a boat after all? This one is gorgeous!” I said, turning to the older couple.

“Charles and Maddy please, Jack. No, we have ended our boat owning days and were happy to see her go off with someone who would take good care of her. Dean gave me a tour earlier and she looks ship shape. I have to say, I like the name, very clever.”

“Thank you, sir! I love that boat and have had some great adventures so far, and more to come! So, if this is not yours...” I turned to Jake with a raised eyebrow but he was grinning and shaking his head.

“Not yours, Jake? I thought maybe you were going to retire or something.” Stumped I looked over the faces and zoomed in on the one remaining person I thought might have the assets to buy a boat like this, the Judge.

“Ah! You liked mine enough to get your own, good for you, Judge!”

When he shook his head no, the rest all laughed and, as if on cue, they all pointed at me.

Jake stepped forward and slipped his arm around my shoulder, drawing me inside the salon. Everyone else followed.

Inside was a banner which said, “Merry Christmas Jake” and a small tree with a lit-up trimaran tree topper in place of a star.

“I don’t understand!” I protested.

The Judge took over, having everyone sit down and, when we all had a drink of some kind in hand, he began to speak.

“Too many people were involved in the investigation around that slavery mess. First, we had forty different FBI agents, probably that many Homeland Security types, most of them Border Security and Immigration, and we even had some Secret Service involved, Jack. That was before an anonymous teenager from Key West blew the whole thing wide open.”

“The FBI, who were leading the investigation, stated in an earlier report that it would take another three months before they could get their inside man close enough to make any real headway in the case. They had identified a dozen accounts related to the men they thought were leading this ring, but needed more evidence, more proof in order to convince judges. Their best guess was nine months to a year before they would be ready to make any substantive moves, assuming their man actually got actionable information. Then comes you.”

“When you put things into action down here,” he said, dropping the act, “to save the little girl of a distraught woman, you did more than you know. Not only did we capture or kill all of the leadership except for one, and most of the muscle, we also captured almost a billion dollars in assets both domestic and foreign. Bank accounts, security accounts, business, real estate, planes, boats ... you name it, we got it. We put a real dent in the very lucrative slave trade.”

“So, you can imagine that if a hundred or more people were involved before the bust, that a thousand were involved after the bust. That means more people learned about your part in this Jack. There were some that wanted to investigate how a kid from the Keys was involved!”

“The Attorney General put a kibosh on that, stating that your involvement was key to shutting this down and rescuing so many. While they couldn’t very well make you a target by telling the world, he did want to find some way to reward you. This is part of what we came up with, just in case people ignored his injunction about investigating you.”

The Judge handed over a pair of blue leather folders, both with embossed seals. I opened the first and there was something I never thought I would see. I learned about pardons in school, but ... wow! A pardon from the Governor of the State of Florida with my name on it! The second folder was on letterhead of the Attorney General of the Unites States of America. It had a lot of legal language that was, frankly, way over my head, but the bottom line, according to the judge, was that it was a non-prosecution agreement signed by the AG.

“The AG’s boss in the big white house asked me to pass on a hearty ‘Well Done!” and says that if it comes down to it, he would give you one too. Right now though, with all the scrutiny on him, the Governor could give you a secret pardon easier than he can. The big man also asked if there wasn’t something more concrete we could do to show our appreciation.”

“The Judge came to me and we talked about your new fascination for boats.” Jake said, “I figured that if you were studying hard for your license on top of school and training with Dean, then it was serious.”

“They remembered that you had bought your current boat from me.” Charles said, taking up the tale with a smile, “and ... voila! One confiscated yacht that was declared excess to government needs and released for auction from the US Coast Guard in Hawaii. A quick call to a friend and the release announcement got lost. The only bid was the minimum ten thousand dollar opening bid. She had to be reconditioned and rehabilitated, of course, but she came out nice.”

I just sat there, shaking my head at these three. What was I going to do with a seventy ... no, there on the bulkhead was the commissioning plaque. It was thirty-eight meters, about a hundred and twenty-five feet. What was I going to do with a one-hundred and twenty-five-foot yacht?

I just thanked them all, hugs all the way around. The Judge and Jake, along with Dave and Dean, gave me the grand tour. This thing was massive.

The primary hull was a standard V-hull configuration but the design had been modified with two outriggers about seventy percent of the length of the primary. Where the beam on the primary hull was about forty feet at the widest, the beam on the outriggers was ten feet. The main deck stretched across the entire width of the boat though, making it a total of eighty-two feet across when you counted the span between hulls. MASSIVE!

The primary hull had four decks not counting the flybridge. The main deck spanned all three hulls and was bordered by rails to keep people and gear from going overboard. There was a huge salon, kitchen, dining area plus a pair of offices completely outfitted with everything you might need to run a business at sea!

The deck above the main held another lounge with a baby grand piano, a big bar, a hot tub large enough for a dozen people, half again if they were really friendly. The forward part of that deck was the weather, or inside bridge and it had gadgets I had never seen before, and some I had only read about. The panoramic view was very nice! A third office, for the at sea skipper, I guess, was next to the indoor bridge.

The part that fascinated me the most was the controls for the sails. Not only were they raised and lowered by electronics and electric winches and capstans, they were controlled and positioned by computer. There was a very informative book on sail configurations for specific weather patterns, various things to look out for and common problems that might be encountered. While I would want some tutoring, I could, in an emergency and with the help of the manual, sail this boat right now.

A little chrome tag above the gauges told me that the motors were Caterpillars and the boat made about ... I had to think about it for a moment. Fourteen hundred and ninety kilowatts translated to about two thousand horsepower so, not shabby but no speedboat. She should do maybe twenty-five knots if we opened her up, probably cruised at twenty.

The flybridge had a neat, hide-away system that allowed all of the delicate electronics, even if they were rated for marine use, to be hidden away behind waterproof cabinets and doors. The captain had the same access to the electronics as on the main bridge, but with smaller displays. It was an awesome setup. There were even glass windows, not plastic, that could be folded down for airflow or raised if it was storming.

Below decks, there was a master stateroom with a bed that would fit six or more and a bathroom fancier than my bathroom in the house. The secondary staterooms on this level, two large and two small, were almost as well appointed. On this level in the bow, was a tiny gym as well so the boat passengers could work out. Well, if a single bicycle, a bench and some barbells constituted a workout.

The second below deck was crew quarters with bunks for a half dozen crew or, if there was no crew, other passengers. The desalinization plant, water purifier, washer and dryer, the twin turbo diesel engines and all the other mechanical spaces were here on this level. I made myself a vow to learn more about the mechanicals on this boat and on the Emancipation Key. I would hate to get stuck if something broke I couldn’t fix!

Back up on the main deck, Dave walked me over to the outriggers and showed me that each of them had a jet ski docked in the aft compartment and a whole lot of additional storage, including a set of spare sails, in the forward sections. The outriggers also held auxiliary fuel and bladders, fifteen hundred gallons each or about fifty-seven hundred liters, per outrigger. These were in addition to the seventy-five hundred liter / two-thousand-gallon main fuel bladders.

I had no idea how much fuel the boat used, though with a thousand horsepower each indicated, that should get me about fifty to sixty gallons per hour at cruising speed, whatever that was. So, with seven thousand gallons, that would be a bit.

At the fantail, there was a davit very much like mine, but instead of a Zodiac (There was one in the aft storage bay!), the boat that hung here was, according to the book in my hand, a 1957 Chris Craft Sea Skiff. She was twenty-two feet long with an eight-foot, nine-inch beam, a fixed windscreen and convertible top. I had seen pictures of Chris Craft boats. Anyone who likes boats has drooled over them, but never had I seen one in real life. They were shockingly affordable, considering the cache owning one brought, with restoration like this one going for anywhere from $25,000 up to $50,000 depending size and accessories.

When I thought I was done, and couldn’t be any more shocked and surprised, Dean showed me the hidden armory. There were two disguised and locked gun cabinets, one on each of the top decks. Each held six AR-15s, six shotguns and six handguns along with ammo, slings, bandoleers and so on. There was one longer range rifle in each cabinet, complete with a scope. There was a locked seat along the wall, similar to my cabinets in the E-Key, but this one contained a Lynx GM6.50 in its distinctive bullpup stock. Damn, I wanted to try that in the worst way.