Chapter 11: Surprise

Day 11

The Revenge

Walter

I ran to the rail and shouted down to her, "Jenny. What is it?"

"Can we keep them?" she shouted up at us.

"Keep what?" I said.

"Come and see," she replied and turned and ran back to the caves.

I looked at Mike and he shrugged. We went to the gangway and ran to the garage. We entered the garage and followed the giggling to the back right hand corner of the cave and I found all the kids sitting inside a large box. Looking in, I started laughing as I saw eight basset hound puppies licking the kids' faces. They looked like they were about fourteen weeks old. I examined the pups and found there were two males and six females.

"Can we keep them, Daddy?" Ela asked as she hugged one of the females to her chest.

"Ask your mothers, I'm not getting into this," I said.

"Chicken!" Katia asked as she walked over and knelt to pet them.

"Nope. I just refuse to get up at three am, to take eight puppies outside to let them go potty. I did that once with Andrew's pup, when he was six. I swore 'never again'," I replied with a smile.

"We'll take care of them, Daddy. Pleeeeeeeeeeeease!" the kids begged, all at the same time.

Shaking my head I looked at my wives and said, "Up to you mothers."

Katia stood there holding the smallest male, and he licked her face and she sighed.

"Ok, but you clean up after them," she said.

She set the pup down, as we walked away laughing.

Mike followed me out and we went back to the sloop.

"You know we are going to be doing puppy duty," I said as we went up the ramp.

"Yeah, I know. It will be nice to have dogs around, but I hate training them," I replied.

We looked at the boxes of supplies. Going to one of the small casks, I grabbed two cups and filled them with rum. I took a drink of mine.

"Ahhh, that's good," I gasped.

I set the cup down, and Mike took a drink from his cup.

"Shit! That stuff you can use for paint thinner," Mike said in shock.

"It's damn good. Too bad they don't make it like this, anymore," I said.

I went over to one of the barrels of salted pork. Picking it up, I carried it down the gangway and put it into the back of the pickup. Mike came down with a second barrel and set it beside mine, and looked at the container.

"You know, some of this meat may be still good," he said.

"I know, but do you really want to eat it?" I asked.

"Hey, the English Navy survived on it. I say we bag it, and store it for winter. You never know, we just may need it," Mike said as we walked back up to the ship.

I stopped and looked at Mike for a second and then asked, "Where the heck would we store it?"

Mike looked at me in shock and said, "Didn't you see the freezer in the back of the garage?"

"What the hell are you talking about? The only thing back there, is the shelves," I asked as I grabbed another cask.

"That was true, yesterday. This morning, I went to get something. There is a door there, now. It opens into a new passageway, and has two big fridges and a humongous freezer. Also, there are quarters off my side of the garage now for the Hyatt's," he said.

He picked up a crate of nails and followed me down the gangway.

Setting the cask down, I said, "Can you show me."

"Sure," Mike replied, and walked towards the garage with the crate on his shoulder.

We entered and went to the back of the garage. Near the middle of the bay, there was a six-foot by five-foot door. He pulled it open and the roof lit up. Walking about thirty feet, we found two doors, one to the left and right. Opening one, I saw it was a fridge. The right one had shelving that split the forty by forty foot room so you could walk between them to get or place any food you want. The fridge was twenty feet high. Each shelf system had its own ladder you could climb. The left one was the same, but the shelving system was shoved to one side. I saw that they slid in grooves, and could lock in place.

"They can be used as freezers as well, but for right now, they are set as fridges. Follow me," he said.

He went to another door. Opening it, icy air blasted out at us, as we stepped in. The freezer was forty feet deep, and sixty feet wide. It had five levels that were a total of eight feet high. A dumb waiter sat to my right, and there was a spiral staircase that went up on my left. Each level had shelves that went to top to bottom.

"My God, when did they do this?" I asked.

"No idea. Yesterday, where the Hyatt quarters are, there wasn't anything there before last night. This morning, there is. It's a three bedroom, four bath home. On the main level is the living room, and above that is the kitchen and dining room," he said.

"Rala really must want us to survive," I said.

"Of course I do. I have put a lot of time and effort into you two," came a voice behind us.

Turning I looked at Rala and said, "Thank you."

"You're welcome. I brought back the Wyatt's and now as to a 75mm cannon. No. I cannot get you one. You have to make do with the weapons you have. I did have our construction drones, build you a gun platform out on the island and install an M-40A1 106mm recoilless rifle, with an M-8C spotting rifle. I have supplied you with two hundred rounds of high explosives and one hundred rounds of armor piercing..."

"Why?" I asked.

"So you have a chance to survive," Rala said.

"Then just remove them, and send the pirates back to where they came from," I said.

"We cannot. They were taken from the past. We cannot change the past. Captain Black and his entire fleet were wiped out when they sailed in front of what you call a category five hurricane. If we sent them back, they would know about the hurricane and avoid it and probably change history. We cannot do that. We can take people that are supposed to die, and bring them to this world, but the council of scientists would shut down all aid we can give you. They would find a way for the natives to wipe you out, or have the animals kill you. They have done it, before. So please, you must defeat them on your own..."

"There are almost two thousand of them. How can we do that?" I snapped.

"Superior firepower," Mike said.

"Mike, there is no way we can win. Would you sacrifice all our loved ones for this insanity?" I said.

"No ... No, I wouldn't. We can still win, but it will take all of us working together, to do so," turning to Rala he continued, "I assume all the ordinance on the cruiser is still good?"

"Yes, it is," Rala replied.

"Good, then here's what we do, Walter. We load all the cannons when we know they are coming. We arm the Gatling and Nordenfeldt guns and have them ready. In fact, I would like to mount two of the Nordenfelt guns to the back of the pickups if possible," Mike said.

"Why not use the modern machine guns?" I asked.

"Because we have a limited amount of ammo, and over half of it is blanks. I need to rearm all that ammo. With the guns we have, we have plenty of ammo. Almost twenty thousand rounds for the Nordenfelt and five thousand rounds for the four Gatling guns.

"However, the first thing I want to do is unload all six boats, and stash them. Then we empty the ship of all the food and supplies, including ammo. I only want to leave enough ammo onboard to defend her. This way we won't have an explosion if they penetrate a magazine," Mike replied as he rubbed his chin in thought.

"You want to use our cave as a munitions dump?" I said in surprise.

"No, I guess we can dump it or burry it, that way its..."

"Use one of the other caves," Rala said.

"What other caves?" I asked.

They are on the other side of this mountain. I think it would work, and it would protect you all from an explosion. You will need to hide the entrance, but you all should be safe. The cave entrances are big enough to drive into," Rala stated.

"Cool idea. We'll do it. We can load the trailers with the ammo, and the back of the trucks. With three of us driving the trucks, and one bringing the tractor we can unload and move everything inside," I said.

"Ok, we will do that," Mike said as Rala vanished.

"Shit, she did it again," I said.

"Yep, she did. Now let's go get some help," Mike said as he walked down the passageway.

We walked into the garage and the Wyatt's were hugging their kids. Amber walked over and hugged me, and then Mike. She led us over to her family, and we shook hands with everyone. Where Arthur and Mary Hyatt were once middle age adults, going soft at their waistlines, they were now trim and fit. They both looked like they were eighteen or nineteen. Arthur even had a full head of hair, again. They were both wearing camouflage fatigues, and had pistols at their waists.

"Welcome back," I said.

"Thank you, Walter. Rala said you were in command, and we have no problem with that. What do you want to do first about the pirates?" Arthur asked.

"Rala gave us a good idea for a problem we have. We are going to unload eighty percent of the ammo from the cruiser out there, and all the black powder from the sloop. We are going to store it in a cave on the backside of the mountain. Once there, it should be safe from detection.

"Then I want to save as much stuff as possible from both ships, and store it out of the weather, so we can use it. Eventually, I want to break up the sloop, and store all the wood for later use. We also want to unload all the lifeboats from the cruiser, and stash them in the boat cave ... if they'll fit. This way we have some well made small craft, for out on the water.

"We started unloading the food and supplies from the sloop, but there is still a lot to go. For now, we will store all the casks back in the freezer, and then check each of them for spoilage. If it's bad, it goes, but I want to save the casks. There are also some big water casks on the sloop that we can use. Once cleaned and sealed, again, I think they will hold dry goods like flour, wheat and corn, once we start planting it next year," I said.

"Sounds good. Let's get the trailers hooked up, and them parked next to the ships. We just need pallets to stack the stuff on," Arthur replied.

"We have them on the other side of the trailers. They are stacked up for extra wood," Mike said.

We went to the trucks, backed them up to the three big trailers, and pulled them out. I went inside the main cave, while Mike and Arthur went into the cruiser to start unloading. Mary got the tractor and brought it out. I had Jenny sitting at the computer stations. I had the cameras from the bay watching out onto the ocean with two of the monitors. I also set Jenny up to play some computer games.

I handed her one of the hand held radios. I took several to our wives, and showed them how to work them. I then took one to Mary, Mike and Arthur. The first thing we did was load the ready boxes, for the main and secondary guns. Then we primed the antique machine guns. It took just under two hours to load all the guns with ammo, and then we broke for lunch.

The girls made BBQ beef and French fries with Amber's help. After lunch, Mike and I readied the Zodiac and then went back to work. We started loading the pallets up, and using the ships boom. We swung the stacks of ammo out and set them on the beach. While we did that, Mary picked them up with the tractor with the forklift on it. It took six hours more to unload the rest of the ammo. At seven PM, the girls called us in, and we ate a late dinner. Amber had them cook a dozen frozen chickens in the rotisserie oven and made mashed potatoes, and cans of corn.

I was in bed two hours later, sound asleep before my head hit the pillow.

Day12

Walter

The next morning after breakfast, we started on the sloop. We unloaded the fifty barrels of gunpowder. We loaded the powder on another trailer, which we hooked to the tractor. I grabbed a dozen large tarps and put them on the truck.

We had several coolers of food and drink in the trucks as well as other tools. I was worried about the girls, and could only pray the strong breeze that was blowing out over the ocean continued for the next three days.

We headed out around three and twenty minutes later we were out of the canyon and driving on the grass as ten miles an hour. It was slow, but we didn't want to detonate anything. We drove until it was almost too dark to drive and then stopped for dinner. Katia, Nakita and Galina made an excellent dinner for us all by cooking us some of our T-bone steaks we had brought with us.

We slept in the trucks that night, and the next morning we were groaning as we stretched the pain out of our backs. After several bottles of Starbucks coffees, we were feeling better. We saved the empty bottles, because I had a use for them as Molotov Cocktails, to use on the pirates if they did attack.

After we ate, we started up again and drove along the cliff wall. We found a narrow area with no trees, and came around the bend in the cliff.

I slammed on the breaks as I looked at the giant bear tearing apart a fallen tree. It stood up in front of us, and it was about sixteen feet tall. It started walking towards us on its hind legs, and I hit my horn, and held it down.

Everyone else joined in and the bear dropped down to all fours. It swung its head at us, so I revved the engine in my truck, and popped the clutch. The truck backfired and the bear was gone, running down the path. I was laughing as I started the truck again.