Chapter 21: Rescue

Cockpit, Tiburón

Punto Fijo, Venezuela Province, WestHem

Tuesday, January 2, 2153

For the millionth time, Reggie Jones thought he had to be losing his mind. This was the most dangerous thing he had done in his life, and that included his vacation on Mars seven years ago. That he was doing it with his mother was even more proof he was crazy.

It had started two months before, when a thumb drive showed up in his bedroom, sitting on top of his computer. He had asked his mother if she had placed it there, only to be told, “You know I don’t go in there, Reggie.”

“So where did this thumb drive come from?”

“No idea. What’s on it?”

Her son had given her a blank look and shrugged. He put it into his computer, and with his mother watching over his shoulder, called up the single file on the drive.

“Reggie, it’s Harlan. Really, it’s me. I know you’ve been told I’m dead, that I died during Martian Justice, but it’s me. To prove this isn’t computer generated, it’s been suggested I tell you something only the two of us would know. How about this? In our last conversation before I went off to Denver to be flown up to Departure City, we talked about Martian Hammer, and you told me about a pair of drunk colonels who said the losses in Martian Hammer were two hundred thousand. I know you never said that to anybody official, because you’re not in Butte or Andes for treason or sedition or something. Do you believe I’m still alive?”

“Oh my fucking God!” said Reggie, staring at the screen.

“What is this?” demanded their mother.

“I have no idea what you were told. Did they say I died on one of the ships in the convoy battles? Did they tell you I died in the attack on the Jutfield Gap? Or did they say I was captured by the communist Greenie terrorists and was then tortured to death? None of that happened. I made it to the surface, just like you did, bro, but then got hit when my APC got nailed by a one-fifty. I broke just about every bone in my body, but the Greenies rescued me and fixed me up. I spent most of a year in the hospital, but I am healthy again.”

“Reggie! Stop this! Reggie!” protested Andrea Jones.

Her son hit the pause button and looked at his mother. “He’s alive!” he said quietly.

“Reggie?”

“What he said, we talked about that our last night he was here, right before he deployed! That’s what I told him, that I overheard a pair of drunken colonels talking about our losses. Harlan is alive!”

“Reggie, the Marines told us he died! They sent an officer and a chaplain!”

Reginald pointed at the screen and replied, “He is alive!” He hit the pause button a second time and the vid resumed.

“I know this is going to be hard to believe, but you need to believe it, because your lives are on the line. Just knowing what I am telling you would be enough to have you killed, but you are going to die anyway.”

With that statement, Harlan Jones began to describe the plan by WestHem to form a ‘fifth column’, terrorists forced by blackmail to attack Mars. Then he showed some of the vids of the torture and rape of WestHem survivors of Martian captives. Reggie glanced at his mother, who was staring, white-faced, but watching raptly.

“I said this would affect you, and I meant it. The Greenies have been trying to catch any WestHem spies they can, because they are the people who are trying to figure out who can be coerced into attacking people. They want us to kill civilians, Reggie, not soldiers but civilians. That makes you two targets. You need to get away from WestHem!”

“Reggie, is this for real?” asked Andrea.

Her son didn’t answer immediately, but he looked at her and said, “Let’s keep watching.”

“I know this is asking a lot, but if WestHem discovers I am still alive, your lives aren’t worth a WestHem dollar. Even if I were to agree to kill people up here, you will still die. They have no use for survivors. You will be killed, hopefully quickly, but I wouldn’t make book on that. You need to leave. You need to get to EastHem and turn yourself in to Scotland Yard. Use the phrase ‘Talisman Gold’. The Martians have made a deal with EastHem. If you can get to EastHem, they will send you here. It’s not like InfoGroup says. Mars is different, but it’s safe and nobody will be trying to catch and kill you! Find a way to get to EastHem and say Talisman Gold! Please, please, leave WestHem and get to EastHem. Your lives are on the line!”

The message ended after a few minutes more of pleading and begging, and a promise to be there when they touched down in New Pittsburgh. Reggie pulled the drive and stuck it in his pocket. Then he turned to his mother, looking at him white-faced, and said, “We need to talk.”

That was an understatement. What was more unbelievable, that Harlan was still alive, or that there was a WestHem scheme to use hostages to force captured Marines to kill Greenies? It was a conversation that played out over the next week or two, and generally took the same form. ‘Reggie, is this real? Is this possible? Can we do what he says? Should we do this or call the FLEB?’

Reggie had found the drive the last week of October. It had taken two weeks to talk it over and decide to do what Harlan wanted and try to get to EastHem. What finally convinced Andrea to go along with the crazy idea was that Reggie told her that some of the things Harlan had said in the vid could only have been told by a real, live Harlan. Nobody else would have known those things. The next month was spent with Reggie and Andrea figuring out how to escape.

By the end of November, they had a plan. First was to get as much cash as possible freed up. They took out loans and Andrea remortgaged her home. Meanwhile, Reggie investigated how to get from WestHem to EastHem. The best way was to go on vacation someplace close to EastHem territory. There were two possible places, the southwestern Pacific or the Caribbean. The Philippines were owned by WestHem, and they could take a vacation there, but then what? Try to find a ship that would get them to another island closer to EastHem? EastHem controlled Australia and New Zealand, but that was thousands of kilometers.

A better bet was in the Caribbean. Most of the Caribbean was owned by WestHem, with the notable exception of the Bahamas. It might be possible to take a vacation in Miami or the Keys, maybe Cuba or the Dominican Republic, and then try to find a smuggler to get them to the Bahamas. More likely, they would be caught by the fleets of Coast Guard ships in the area.

It was then that Reggie learned about the Kingdom of the Netherlands, a remnant of colonial times that was now owned by EastHem. Several southern Caribbean islands were part of EastHem, including the ABC islands, Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao. Aruba was only seventy klicks off the South American coast. A little research showed that there was an active smuggling/black market in Venezuela and the ABCs. The Joneses decided a vacation in Venezuela was just what they needed to escape the Kansas winter.

Reggie and Andrea had their last Christmas in WestHem before flying to Caracas on December 26. They stayed there a day before flying to Maracaibo, a popular tourist spot. After that, things became questionable. South America was more ghetto than vacation spot. Caracas was relatively safe, Maracaibo not so much. In Maracaibo, Reggie told his mother to stay in their hotel suite while he went shopping. He returned three hours later with purchases made in cash in a less than desirable section of the city. The purchases included a pair of body armor vests and a pair of high velocity 5mm pistols and extra magazines. He showed Andrea how to wear a vest but didn’t give her one of the pistols. She didn’t know how to handle a weapon and it would take too long to teach her.

From Maracaibo, it became much more dangerous. Maracaibo was too far from one of the ABC islands to have any smugglers. They would need to travel to the Paraguaná Peninsula to find somebody who could get them from WestHem to EastHem. According to WikiWestHem, the closest town to the nearest island was Puerto Escondido, but that was too small a town to be useful. The largest port town on the peninsula was Punto Fijo, which had a protected harbor and was only ninety klicks from Oranjestad in Aruba. Reggie studied as much of the possible route as he could.

Sunday, New Year’s Eve, Reggie left his mother in the cheap hotel room with instructions to keep the door locked and let nobody in unless he gave her a code word. She wasn’t to order any food or let in anybody claiming to be from room service or house cleaning. Andrea looked around the room and commented that nobody in the dump worked for house cleaning anyway. Reggie let himself out and waited to hear his mother lock the door. Then it was off to the dock area. New Years’ Eve wasn’t the best time to find a smuggler, but it was early; the odds were that he could find somebody before they got drunk. He found Pedro Himeldo in a bar near the waterfront. Pedro pointed him to a different bar and a man named Juan Escanya. Escanya owned an old Scarab that he and a mate used to smuggle Maracaibo Gold, a popular local marijuana, and rum to Aruba. The return trip typically brought back a load of Scotch whiskey destined for wealthy South American drinkers. Escanya told him to be at the dock at 1900 Tuesday night, and to bring the money promised.

It was hot and muggy when the Joneses left their hotel that evening, a condition not much different than in their room. They left everything behind but the clothes they were wearing, the armor under their clothes, and the two pistols Reggie had hidden away. He was also carrying the thumb drive they had been hiding since that first night they had watched it. Only the fact that Reggie had taken Spanish in high school and had used it in operations in South America with the Marines gave him any feeling of security. That proved useful when he flagged down a taxi and opened the back door for his mother and then sat in the front with the driver. “ ¿Quieres seguir viva? Llévanos a donde te digo, o si no.” ‘You want to stay alive? Take us where I tell you, or else.’ He had been told by the desk clerk not to trust any of the cab drivers. It was a fifty-fifty guess whether they would take him where he wanted to go or whether they would drive him somewhere deserted, to kill him and rob him.

“Sí, señor!” The driver glanced at the pistol the passenger was holding and decided to take him and the woman where they wanted. He could always rob the next gringo who was stupid enough to visit Punto Fijo.

Reggie had the driver drop them off half a kilometer from the Tiburón. It was already dark, but there was enough light for Reggie to lead his mother down to the docks and to the boat they were heading towards.

Juan Escanya was surprised to see the gringo show up. He had figured the damn fool to end up dead by that point. Punto Fijo was much too dangerous for Yankees to chance, and to bring an old woman with him? Insane! “ Hola. Suban a bordo.” ‘Hello. Get on board.’

Reggie kept an eye on the two men on the boat as his mother climbed aboard. “¿Cuándo podemos irnos?” ‘When can we leave?’

“Suban a bordo. Entonces podemos irnos.” ‘Get on board. Then we can leave.’

Reggie nodded but continued watching everything. His right hand stayed in his jacket pocket, though it was too warm to wear a jacket. Escanya noticed Jones’ posture and shrugged. He turned away and ordered his assistant to untie the ropes holding them to the dock. Two minutes later the engines were roaring, and they were leaving the port.

Reggie asked, “¿Cuánto tiempo?” ‘How long?’

Escanya shrugged. “ ¿Noventa kilómetros? ¿Una hora? ¿Una hora y quince minutos?” ‘Ninety kilometers? An hour? An hour and fifteen minutes?’

Reggie nodded and kept watching. Escanya waited until they cleared the harbor before turning north and pushing the throttles forward. The old racing boat seemed to leap out of the water as the engines raced. The Joneses were pushed back into their seats as Escanya and his mate guided the racing boat towards Aruba.

Trouble didn’t start for another twenty minutes. They had changed from a northerly heading to north-north-east when the engines slowed slightly. Reggie noticed the mate moving away from his seat and turning, and he was holding a pistol of his own. Reggie didn’t give him a chance, shooting him twice with the pistol still in his pocket. Escanya stared as his assistant slumped to the floor of the cockpit and turned around, only to be shot as well. Reggie scrambled forward and pulled the throttles back to Neutral.

“Reggie! What have you done?” demanded his mother.

“I’ve saved our lives. Give me a hand here, Mom.” He grabbed the mate and struggled to pick him up.

“Reggie!”

“Grab his feet! We need to get them overboard!”

Andrea helped her son move the bodies to the side of the boat and push them over, though she threw up as they entered the water. They also threw their weapons and armor overboard. Once they were gone, Reggie moved to the driver’s seat and studied the instruments briefly. They needed to travel roughly one hour with the compass reading 22.5 degrees. They would be bound to hit Aruba that way. He pushed the throttles back to top speed and prayed the WestHem cops were still sleeping off their New Year’s Eve party.