Chapter 26

Karl just shook his head as he left Springfield watching the divers and headed for the engine room, wondering just what Winchester would be like with a wrench in his hand.

However, he needn’t have worried. Winchester turned out to be a mechanical marvel, almost instantly realizing what Karl wanted to do and why he was doing it. On top of that, the man who had worked on the burner had taken the old badly worn parts that Karl had left out on the workbench and rebuilt them until they looked like new. Karl explained how the fuel and water filters were installed, then while Winchester went ahead with that, he worked on replacing the burner. Even though Winchester was unfamiliar with his task, and Karl was being very slow and careful with his, it still took less than an hour before they were ready to test fire the boiler.

Karl flipped on a switch and they both grinned as the pumps brought the fuel line up to pressure, then the burner fired. Karl did a quick check for fuel and water leaks as well as glancing around to be sure everything looked right, then hurried up top to the main controls in the wheelhouse.

“You done already?” Springfield questioned.

“Yep,” Karl flipped a thumb to point at a tiny cloud of grey smoke and water vapour drifting on the breeze. “Everything’s still cold though, we’re showing smoke.”

“That’s smoking? Christ, you should see the smog from one of the Navy ships when they’re started from a long stop.”

“Mm hmm,” Karl was busily adjusting controls just a bit. “Well, I’ve got a lot more smoke than normal, but like I said, everything is dead cold. I’m going to take a while to bring her up to operating pressure. Gimme half an hour at least.”

“I can’t believe that’s all the smoke your burner makes. What are you burning for fuel?”

“Mostly furnace oil, some diesel,” Karl said shortly. “I can burn nearly anything, but I don’t usually use anything except one of those two if I can help it. For other fuels I’d have to make changes to the burner, and I’m lazy.”

By now both Springfield and Winchester had realized that Karl was so deeply involved in checking and double checking his ‘baby’ that they simply watched. They were ready to offer assistance if he needed it, but mostly they tried to stay out of his way as he worked. About twenty or twenty-five minutes later they watched carefully as Karl went outside and walked slowly around the deck of the boat. Then he moved down onto the dock and walked to the bow, looking at the water, then back to the stern, checking there as well. Once he’d checked all around, he came aboard again, but now he was grinning. Still tied firmly to the dock, he eased the engine into action, first running it in forward, then in astern. Finally, he returned the throttle to neutral and reached down to adjust two or three controls before sighing deeply.

“There, it’s on standby now,” he smiled. “And by the way, you can tell your buddy he does good work.”

“It’s ready to go?”

“Well, I never took it up to full steam to test the safety, but it’s all warmed up. If we needed it, we could be steaming at full pressure in fifteen minutes,” Karl smiled. “I should go below and check everything once more, then top up the oils and such, but yeah, it’s pretty well ready to go at any time now, thanks in several ways to you guys and your friends.”

“Well, whatever we did, you’re welcome,” Winchester frowned. “But, I don’t see that we did much.”

“Huh, I know what this boat and the dock must have looked like when you first saw it. I hate tying up under this cedar tree, but the boat is safest here, at least when it has to sit at the dock for a while. Cripes, I’m looking around and even the brass is polished. Usually if it sits for a while, everything gets to looking old and corroded.”

“Yeah, we noticed,” Springfield snorted. “ Just a glance and we knew it hadn’t been used for weeks. One of our guys, Marlin, almost cried. He’d started cleaning up before I even mentioned that it would be nice of us to clean it up in return for all the favours you’d done for us.”

Mentally Karl had to kick himself several times so he wouldn’t grin, mentally quoting Springfield’s words; “Just a glance and we knew it hadn’t been used for weeks.” He repeated that to himself, thinking that he had to remember the line to tell Ely and David. He was thinking about David running around only a few days ago and spraying things with his vinegar and water mixture and how proud he would be that he had done well.

“So, what have the divers been up to?” Karl asked changing the subject.

“Well, up until a few minutes ago, they were all down in the water, but I see all four of them are on the boat now and it looks like they’re stripping off their gear,” Springfield answered. “Either they’ve found the box or they found the rock you mentioned. Since my cell phone hasn’t rung to announce that they hit paydirt, I’d say they found rock.”

“So Davis knows that you’re here?”

“Oh yeah, it’s not a secret.”

“So, if all the divers are out of the water, want to cruise over and ask for sure?”

“In this?”

“Well, I’m not taking the damn dinghy, not with the stiff breeze that’s starting to blow.”

“Since you said you offered to help Davis out, let’s wait,” Springfield grinned. “To be honest, I’d rather have you let Davis come to you for once.”

“Pardon me.”

“Well, usually you just seem to show up at the right time, then quietly make a couple of comments to haul everyone’s butt out of the fire. I’d like to see someone actually come and ask for help this time,” he chuckled.

“Okay, I think I’ll put on a pot of coffee then,” Karl grinned.

“Let me get it, I’ll use our supplies, then it’s on the government’s chit,” Winchester grinned. “By the way Karl, where the hell is your fridge? Not that we’ve really needed it, but we wondered.”

“Check the floor in the galley,” Karl laughed softly. “There’s a cooler under the floor boards. You’ll see the brass finger tabs inset into a section of the flooring.”

“Should’a known,” Winchester sighed. “You’re using the water temperature to cool stuff most of the time.”

“Not really, I’ve got little solid-state coolers in there that work off the batteries, but having the cool surroundings does help them keep up easily,” Karl grinned as they both went back below deck.

While Winchester made coffee, Karl oiled up the engine and pumps. Then they went back to the bridge and sat and talked, watching the antics of the smaller boats out in the bay for almost an hour before the cell phone rang. Springfield answered.

“Springfield here ... Yeah, I saw ... Rock huh?” he grinned and winked at Karl. “Yeah, he’s still here ... Oh yeah, it’s working ... Well, we’d cleaned up a lot for him ... Oh, probably, you want to ask? ... Oh, okay.”

He flopped the phone closed and fit it into his pocket then grinned at Karl. “How long to get this thing up to steam pressure?”

“Oh, maybe ten, fifteen minutes,” Karl chuckled, reaching down and adjusting the burner. “It’ll take longer to get all these ropes untied and out of the way.”

By the time they had the spring lines untied and led forward, leaving them on the dock so that they could use them later to retie the boat, they could see Commander Davis and the Captain of the dive boat approaching. Winchester stayed on the dock to cast off the mooring lines and Karl climbed back aboard to wait for them. The two Navy men climbed out of the inflatable, carrying a marker buoy and line.

“Welcome aboard gentlemen,” Karl called.

“Thanks Karl,” Don nodded. “We thought we’d ask you to show off for us and let you have a try at putting down a marker buoy where you think the wreck would be.”

“We can give it a try,” Karl shrugged.

Two minutes later they were slowly backing off the dock and swinging slowly to move out. To everyone else’s surprise, Karl headed for the entrance to the cut. When he was there he swung the boat so their stern was toward the cut, then eased the throttle down until they were just barely able to stem the outward current.

“Anything swept out of the cut on an incoming rip is forced toward that little island in front of us,” he pointed, then he increased the throttle slightly to get them moving. “Now something as big as a forty-foot boat has a lot of momentum, so in a heavy current it would get carried damn close to the island.”

He was steering carefully, trying to follow the path the wreck would have followed. He’d already asked Springfield and Winchester to make note of any sudden changes in depth on his sounder’s screen, so only part of his attention was on that.

“From what I read in that confession by Bonetti, the wreck went down fairly fast, but with the current flow that we get here on a rapidly rising tide, it would have still travelled a fair distance, even while it was sinking under the water.”

They were past the end of the little island and Karl was heading almost parallel to the dive boat, but well short of it, when Springfield yelled. “Something there.”

“Yep,” Karl slipped the engine into reverse and increased the throttle, literally stopping the boat on a dime, then turned to Don. “If you throw that marker off of the bow on the port side, I think that’s what you want. At least, that’s my guess. But you’d better hurry, before we drift too far away.”

The Captain of the dive boat ran forward and tossed the marker buoy overboard, then waved at the men on his boat. Coming back inside he looked at Karl with a smile.

“Would you mind running me over there? My divers still have some dive time today, so I’ll shift the dive boat now.”

Ten minutes later, the ‘Skolka’ was again heading for the dock and inside of half an hour, she was tied up again. This time though, Karl decided he wanted to tie her on the other side of the dock, and out from under the cedar tree. Even though it meant they had to shift all the ropes to tie her down again, he wasn’t surprised that Winchester sighed in relief.

“I was not lookin’ forward to cleanin’ all that shit off her decks after every heavy breeze or light rain,” he explained.

“I know what you mean,” Karl laughed.

Commander Davis thanked him profusely, which Karl tried to slough off as nothing. They agreed that since low tide was still three hours off, Karl was going up to the house for a while and Don was going back to watch the divers. With a final wave of his hand to Springfield and Winchester, Karl headed slowly up the hill and back toward the house.

The walk felt very strange to him and he had an urge to hurry when he came to the place where he had first shot Karpichov. Instead he actually forced himself to stop and look around. He didn’t see anything, not even his spent shell casing, but in a strange way that pause for reflection made him feel better. The rest of the climb up the hill seemed to pass quickly or perhaps he was hurrying to get there. When he got to the little shed at the top, he forced himself to take the time to look around there too. He was planning to try to find and destroy any signs of the attack, if he could, but he really didn’t know what to look for. After a few minutes of futile searching, he started on toward home in a sober mood.

He paused on the bridge over the gorge, finding that someone had repaired the handrail and he took the time to check out what they had done. It hadn’t been done quite the way he would have repaired it, but he nodded his head in appreciation, it would certainly do for now. His mood had lifted again as he entered the last section of the path leading home. He found he was actually relishing the feel of walking under the trees because the sun had been quite warm when he had been out in the open.

Coming out of the trees, his first impression was of surprise. George was actually outside, sitting in his wheelchair in front of Karl’s old cabin. At the moment he was calling up to David, who was doing something on a ladder leaned against the front porch roof. Mary-Beth was carrying something in her hands from the main house. Someone was up on the roof itself and he could hear people inside. As well as that, there was someone working on building a roofed over enclosure near the goat shed and he could hear Ely singing somewhere. Looking for her, he realized she was out in the garden.

“Hey, Karl’s back,” he heard Lyle Elgin call. Then for the next few minutes he was the centre of attention as everyone came over to try to tell him all about their morning. The problem was that most of them were talking at once, so he just grinned and held up a hand.

“Guys, I’m sorry, but I’m tired after walking back from the dock. I think I should just sit and take a short break,” he sighed softly.

To his surprise, those quiet words seemed as effective as if he’d shouted, everyone slipped away leaving him alone. Feeling astounded by that, as well as a bit tired from his walk, he slowly made his way to the porch of his cabin and sat down in one of the chairs.

“Are you okay Karl?” Ely said as she came up the steps from her trip to the garden.

“Oh, I’m fine, just a bit tuckered from the walk up the hill. I forgot to take one of Fran’s pills this morning,” he shrugged. “Damn, is everyone working on our stuff? There are people in uniforms everywhere.”

“Pretty well,” she laughed softly. “Just a minute, I’ll get you one of those pills and a sandwich to go with it. It’s time that you ate something too.”

Karl just nodded, satisfied to sit quietly in the strong breeze and warm sunshine for the moment. It couldn’t have been more than a moment or two before Ely came back with a sandwich, the pill he wanted, and a glass of water to wash it down.

“I’ve put the coffee pot on,” she smiled at him. “How did your morning go?”

So he told her about what had happened to him. He made sure to include the tidbit of information that Springfield and Winchester had given him that they might be forced to stay in the house when the box was found.

“It will be worth it to get the damn thing out of here,” she said vehemently. “Now, do you want the good news?”

“What’s the good news?” he asked.

“Well, there’s a whole bunch of it,” she smiled, almost radiantly. “First; Keri is clean. They didn’t find any sign of HIV or any other form of STD in those blood tests. Second; Fran is okay and she’s taken Trudy and Keri into Victoria to have those x-ray and ultrasound tests done. Third; L C Greene and Able Seaman Archer flew out on the same chopper, supposedly on transfer orders, but Springfield told me after the chopper was gone that they were under investigation for involvement in an international smuggling ring.”

“Yeah, he mentioned that to me too,” Karl grinned. “That sounds like a stunt Don would pull, make a guy think he was getting transferred, but have him go someplace where he could be caught easily if they found he’d done something wrong.”

“It could just as easily have been Springfield who would do that,” Ely grinned. “Actually two guys that took orders from Springfield did fly out on the same chopper, so they could have been guards.”

“Yeah, I think they were. What else happened?”

“Well, Keri and Linda had a heated discussion, then hugged each other a lot. After that Linda gave Trudy a short massage and Trudy said she felt wonderful. Keri was so envious that Linda was going to do the same thing for her, except Fran showed up about then to take Keri and Trudy away. Then Lyle and Raymonde showed up at the door wanting us to show them where to start work on cleaning out the old cabin. Do you know they’d already cleaned all of the manure and stuff out the old goat shed and had washed the floor with a hose, even before they came to get us?”

“Well, Elgin told me that they were both farm boys, I guess a bit of goat shit didn’t faze them much.”

“I don’t think anything fazes those two,” Ely laughed. “Daddy called them a pair of poofs and Raymonde looked him square in the eye and said “Mais oui, je suis un pouff. Et puis alors. An’ w’at ees wrong wiss zat?” then waved his hand with a limp wrist and giggled. It was so damn funny that even Daddy laughed.”

“Oh man, your dad must have been in a good mood, otherwise he’d have eaten him alive,” Karl rolled his eyes.

“Oh, I think he’d have had quite a job. I’ve never seen two guys work like those two do and they’re quick on the uptake. Actually, they’re like machines for work, they just go, go, go. And Linda has worked just as hard, especially after Daddy told her that he and Trudy would rather stay in our cabin with us until their own house is repaired.”

“Whoa. That’s a surprise,” Karl stared at her

“Not really, can you see Daddy getting far from a radio?” Ely giggled. “And he knew darn well you wouldn’t let him move your radios out of your house.”

“He’s right,” Karl chuckled.

“Anyway, Linda has been pushing people like mad to try to have the old cabin all fixed up for her and Keri to spend the night there. Raymonde had a look at the cow and he said she’s ready to calve in just a few days, so he said we had to have a barn of some kind. Which meant that he and Elgin started to work on that once they got all the heavy stuff done in the old cabin. It’s only taken them a couple of hours and they’ve got a dirt floored lean-to made up where the cow can have some shelter. As soon as that’s done, they’re going over to Dad’s to see what needs to be done there.”

“Wow. Everyone has been busy,” Karl grinned. “And all I’ve gotten done is...”

“Oh, listen, helicopter,” Ely interrupted. “I’ll bet its Fran, with Keri and Trudy.”

“With all the military here, it could be anything.”

“Bets?” she grinned.

“You know I don’t gamble,” Karl snorted.

“No, I guess you don’t do you?” she frowned slightly. “Funny, I never realized that before, you play the odds in real life, but you don’t take a wagers or make bets on anything, do you?”

“Nope, I learned early on that I was better off not trying to outguess anyone else for trivial stuff. You never know what you’ll end up with when you win something that way. Look at Keri’s damn pigs.”

“Oh, oh, oh!” Ely almost jumped out of her seat. “Fran has arranged to sell our pigs for us, as many as we want to sell. Naval supply will buy them and come get them. All they need is a rough number and Dave Peacock said he can give you that from the infrared scan. The only thing is, the navy doesn’t want any little ones.”

“So that still leaves us with the weaners. They may be small, but they’re still pigs,” Karl sighed.

“Sure, but now we have a buyer who will come here, catch them, and haul them away when they’ve grown big enough. Besides, they’re down there on the bottom land and if we fence them in well they almost look after themselves. We sure can’t use that swampy place for much else,” Ely laughed. “And look, here comes the helicopter. I was right. I can see Keri waving at the window.”

“See. I told you it doesn’t pay to bet.”

“Hah, I’d have won,” she laughed. “I’m going out to meet them. Are you coming along?”

“Nope, I’m going to go get a cup of that coffee that you said you’d made. Then I’m going to sit here and think a bit. I want to try to make sense of the things I’ve already learned today, before I get swamped with still more information.”

“Stick in the mud,” she teased, then hurried off.

Karl watched the chopper land, then stood up and went inside to get that cup of coffee he wanted. When he came back out, he was surprised to see that the helicopter had been powered down and the pilot was walking across the goat pasture with the passengers who had been on board. He couldn’t understand why, but forced himself to wait patiently while the whole group walked toward him.

Suddenly Keri broke away from the rest and came running to him to plop herself on his lap and hug him tightly.

“Hiya Daddy. The baby is fine and so am I,” she announced with tears running down her face.

“That’s great,” Karl wrapped her in a tight hug. “Ely told me about the results of the blood tests.”

“Umm, I had a bunch more today,” she pointed to a small piece of white adhesive on her arm. “Fran thinks she knows what sex the baby is, but I told her not to tell us, okay?”

“Oh, I knew that already, we didn’t need any test for that,” Karl grinned. “Remember, my granny was a medicine woman, she told me how to tell.”

“Well, don’t tell me then! You’d probably be right and I’d rather be surprised. Now, I have to go see Linda, I thought she’d be here to greet me.”

“She’s probably trying to get one last little thing done in your new house,” Karl grinned. “Maybe making the bed for tonight or something?”

“Oh, we have a place of our own,” she squealed, diving off of his lap and running madly toward the old cabin.

“Slow down,” Fran called.

“Later, Boss, when I have to waddle instead of walk or run,” Keri called and it seemed to him that she ran even harder.

By now Karl could recognize everyone that was in the group approaching, even the pilot. He had been the pilot on the day that Karl had been forced to shoot Karpichov. As well as him, Dr. Fran was there, along with Trudy, and even Gillian Mathews, the girl who had been hurt that day. She was walking very stiffly and standing very upright, but Karl remembered that she’d had broken ribs in the attack.

Since everyone was coming his direction, he moved to get up, but Ely ordered him to sit down again.

“This fellow is going to have you busy enough in a little while, you just sit and rest for now,” she ordered.

“Ed Koch was our pilot Karl. This is Karl Larson, the fellow you were talking about Ed.” Fran spoke up. “And Karl, I imagine you remember Gillian Mathews, one more of our walking wounded.”

“Hi and hello,” Karl greeted them both. “Welcome back to Gull Island.”

“Yeah, last time I was here, I didn’t feel too welcome,” Ed said with a wry grin as he sat on a step and gazed around. “Quite the place.”

“We like it,” Karl responded.

“Yeah, I can see why.”

The women all went inside, leaving the two men on the porch.

“So, how are you going to get me busy Ed?” Karl asked.

“Well...” the pilot glanced at the watch on his wrist. “In about a half hour or so, I’m supposed to load you and a couple of helpers in the helicopter and take you for a ride to look at trying to lift a tree off the roof of the other house. It seems Springfield thinks that would be the easiest way to get rid of it without doing a bunch more damage to the house. If we can’t move it quickly, or if it looks like it might be necessary, I’m to leave the other two guys there working on getting it ready to be shifted. That’s because about an hour from now, at low tide, you and I are supposed to fly between the cliffs and above a pile of rocks down in that damn cut of yours and take some pictures. Then I’m supposed to land you down at the lower camp so you can go by boat to have a look at the rock slide up close. If we didn’t get that tree shifted before, which I think we can do, I’m to go back and see if the two guys we left behind have it ready for me to lift out of their way.”

“Sounds like a lot of work for you to do and not much for me,” Karl grinned.

“Yeah, well, I do have one other job,” the pilot grinned. “Your lady said when I was all done with that, I was to go pick you up from down below again and bring you back up here. Oh, and while I was along with you, if I saw you so much as try to use a tool that was harder to use than a hammer, I was to hog tie you and sit on you. She said you’d been working too hard lately and needed to conserve energy.”

“Well, is Ely getting you a cup of coffee for now?” Karl asked.

“I certainly was,” she said from behind him as she came back outside.

Then she called David over, telling Karl that she needed to talk to Lyle Elgin and asking David to run get Lyle and Raymonde. When they came over, she had coffee for them as well, then the pilot explained what Springfield had suggested. Talking it over, the four men decided that all they needed to take along from Karl’s place was a chain saw and a short section of cable that had a loop on each end, which was used to shift logs or heavy weights. As soon as they were done their coffee, they loaded what they needed and climbed into the chopper, then flew over to the other house, landing nearby.

Raymonde grabbed a long ladder, then climbed to the roof of the house to see if anything had to be done there. While he was there, he pulled up Karl’s lifting cable, wrapping it around the upper trunk of the tree. At the same time Ed and Lyle dragged one end of a fifty-foot length of cable toward the house after rigging a clevis through one of the loops on the end. They manhandled one end up the ladder and Raymonde fastened the clevis through the loops of the lifting cable. Meanwhile, Karl started the chain saw and made two small cuts in the trunk of the tree near the base. One cut was on the upper side of the trunk, nearest the base, while a second cut was on the lower side of the trunk and several feet farther up the trunk. Neither cut was deep enough to seriously weaken the trunk as it sat now, but hopefully when the strain of the lift came on the trunk, it would split between those two points.

By working the way they had, it only took moments before they were ready to try to lift the tree clear of the house. Karl and the pilot climbed into the chopper and lifted off, dropping a cable toward the ground near the far end of the fifty-foot cable whose other end was hooked to the tree. Karl leaned out the door, and when Lyle signalled that they had the cables linked, he signalled the pilot to give it a try.

To Karl’s surprise, the pilot flew very slowly and carefully around the house until he thought they were almost above the base of the fallen tree, then he began to reel in the cable. As the cable came tight, Karl was able to see the stub of the branch that had punctured the shingles lift out of the hole in the roof. Just after the tree was pulled clear of the house, he saw the trunk split between his cuts, which allowed the base to drop to the ground and the upper section to break free. He shouted and waved at the pilot, who lifted the tree upward, then flew sideways until they were in the clearing before lowering the cable again. They hovered there until Lyle had released the clevis. With that now clear, the pilot reeled in the cable and they landed once more.

The whole operation had taken less than a half hour and even the pilot seemed impressed. Karl certainly was and the other two were ecstatic. After Lyle and the pilot had retrieved Karl’s shorter cable, the pilot rushed Karl aboard the chopper. He wanted to hurry so they could take photos of the rock slide and the cliffs at dead low tide. Once they were in the air, it seemed only a moment before the pilot was easing them down toward the cut and flying along toward the rock slide area.

“I hate flying so low around one of these cuts that lead to the sea,” he shouted. “Feel the turbulence and wind gusts?”

“Well, don’t get so damn low then,” Karl shouted back.

“Gotta be fairly low, I’m using the radar to try to get an idea of water depth,” the pilot shouted back. “In addition I want close-up pictures for you.”

“I don’t need big pictures. I just need good ones,” Karl laughed loudly.

“Well, there’s your rock pile, what do you think?”

“Holy cripes, most of what’s causing the problem is one big slab of rock.”

“Sure is. I’ll bet there’s a lot more rock underwater though.”

“Damn, how the hell did I get a boat by that so easy this morning, even with a full tide?”

“You went through this cut with a boat? Are you fucking nuts?”

“Well, I didn’t think so until I rode in this damn machine, now get us up out of here. I want to die decently either on land or water, not burnt to a crisp in a wrecked helicopter.”

That seemed to tickle the pilot, but he lifted out and swung the chopper over to land it on the temporary landing pad on the edge of the lowland area. Don was there to meet Karl when he climbed out. To his surprise one of the seamen who was there hopped aboard the chopper, which lifted off again, heading right back to the cut.

“Well, what do you think of the rock slide or did you see it?” Don asked.

“It’s a bloody mess and the worst part is, it’s mostly one big slab of rock,” Karl answered.

“Well, let’s go look at it from water level. Two of my divers are waiting for us in the inflatable. Do you want to play pilot again?”

“Do you want me to?” Karl asked.

“Please,” Don grinned. “I’d probably sink us.”

“There’s no money-back-guarantee that I won’t,” Karl grinned back. “I haven’t been in the cut at low tide since that rock fell either.”

“Well, our two divers can kneel on the bow and keep an eye out for submerged rocks as we get close,” Don said, helping Karl aboard. “Karl, meet Sam, our head diver and Dave, his 2IC.”

“Hi fellows, everyone ready?”

“Take us out, Cap’n,” Don smiled.

So once more Karl headed them out across the bay, this time skirting close by the dive boat and waving at the crew as they passed.

“No more diving today?” he asked.