Flotilla (18 page)

Yusef must have been thinking the same thing. After ten minutes of trying to figure out how to tie up to the rocks in the dark without bashing into them, he suddenly gunned the motor in reverse and pulled us away. "I'm an idiot for not thinking of it," he shouted. "We'll beach on that point over there." He pointed to a small beach just to the north and pulled out his cell phone. He told their contact about the change but whoever it was, wasn't happy about it. Yusef had to argue with him in some language until we were almost up on shore.

Finally, he hung up and said, "He's on his way ... let's take her in." Yusef killed the motor and allowed the waves to take us in. I could hear the sand hiss under the boat hull when we touched the shore. Nobody made a move to get out ... we sat in the darkness listening to the waves chuckle and push us into the sand.

A few minutes later, I saw some headlights stabbing the fog. A panel van pulled into a parking lot about 50 yards away from us. The contact guy was an old Portuguese guy and he was pretty grumpy about changing what he called his contact position. Yusef shrugged and gestured for us to get started.

The 'merchandise' everyone was so weird about turned out to be a bunch of rotting cardboard boxes ... the same kind of trash I had just finished going through for Crazy Addie. I was glad I didn't have to inventory and fix this truckload. Let Mitch do it - he needs the experience.

The entire van was stacked full of junk. Box after box of old circuit boards and dusty plastic left over from when TRON, the first one, was a big hit. I took about twenty trips with large, sagging boxes of junk across the sand to where Yusef was stacking them on board the RumRunner. I was getting exhausted ... walking in sand takes a lot out of you.

I stumbled with one box and dropped it. I swore under my breath and started picking things up. Then I thought I saw something strange. I had a small flashlight ... Dad had given it to me at some point and I stuck it in a pocket last night so it wouldn't get lost. I twisted it to life so I could see what I was doing. It didn't feel like metal and plastic. Neat, double-freezer bags full of blue pills. A few other ones had white, pink or red capsules. There were no labels but I didn't need them. What a shock ... Mitch's 'buried treasure' scam was nothing more than a badly-disguised drug run.

This place never gets better ... It only gets worse
, I thought. Mitch had borrowed Miguel's boat to run drugs to the Colony. I had nothing to do with it but I knew no one would believe that ... not even my probation officer. The other boxes were probably full of drugs, too. I was suddenly terrified at what I had gotten myself into.

Did Dad know? Probably not ... hopefully not ... not after that run down to Ensenada. He swore to me that stuff like that would never happen again but here I was, up to my neck again in trouble. I wasn't among friends and I was a long way from home. What was I going to do?

The decision was about to be made for me. The old guy had noticed the light and walked over. "What are you doing?" he demanded. He snatched up the light and hurled it into the breakers where it shorted and died immediately.
Guess it wasn't waterproof
, I thought absently. He grabbed me by my shirtfront and hurled me backward to the sand six feet away. He was yelling at me while picking up the stuff that had fallen out. Mitch and Yusef had seen the commotion and came running up.

"What's going on?" Yusef asked harshly.

"Snoopy here ... Probably wanted some for himself." Yusef didn't bother to ask my side of the story and he went off on me and Dad.

Yusef and the old guy took turns screaming while they finished loading up the boat. Mitch turned to stone. I looked several times in his direction hoping that he would do something, defend me or put a call in to Dad. All he did was sit in the pilots chair and ignore what was happening five feet away. I had no idea what I should do at that point so I finally sat down on the sand a few yards away and waited for it to be over.

Every time I think I've seen it all, these bums managed to outdo themselves. It's really amazing. The weirdness dipped into dangerous, borderline psychotic, behavior on a regular basis. Everyone just accepts it on the Colony and I guess that's how they deal with life on land, too. The gray, foggy sky had lightened - dawn was approaching and they needed to be on their way. I just wanted to get back to my mom and forget this night ever happened.

They were heaving against the boat, trying to get it deep enough to use the motor and off the sandy beach. Yusef waved me over to give them a hand and with all three of us pushing while Mitch worked the throttle, we managed to get it deep enough to where he could put the prop down and pull the boat free.

Yusef heaved it into deeper water and pulled himself up over the lip of the bow to land on a few boxes. I was ankle-deep in the wash and wondering how I could get aboard without getting soaked. It turns out that they already had an answer for that.

The engine was growling and the boat pulling further into the surf. At first, I was confused - were they going to make me swim out to it? Was that their idea of fun? There wasn't a dock in sight...it's the beach after all. The boat began to nose around to head for deeper water. I was running into the small breakers and shouting for them with my heart sinking - this wasn't going to be pretty.

"Sorry, kid," Yusef yelled to me. "I guess we're too heavy to take you back. Emil will take you back to your mom." Emil, I guessed, was the angry old man.
I'd rather ride with an angry wolverine.
"What about my mom?" Yusef's answer was to shrug.

"You guys were supposed to take me back," I hollered.

"I was supposed to, and then you started poking your nose in where it didn't belong. That was right about the time I realized we were too heavy to take you."

The subtlety wasn't lost on me - Yusef was pissed because I figured out what was going on and this was his way of pointing it out. It was a rotten thing to do ... maybe Mitch didn't agree with it but he wasn't saying anything. I could barely see him over the dash of the boat but he was looking out to sea like there was absolutely nothing more fascinating than a gray, foggy sky at 5:30 in the morning.

So there I was, standing in cold salt water up to my knees and screaming for a ride. I never felt more pathetic or lost in my life. What kind of a jackass takes a kid for a boat ride, promising his Dad to deliver him home safely and then leaves him on a beach somewhere?

The other thing that made it so surreal for me, now that I think about it, is this. When you're thirteen or fourteen, you have no idea what to do when the adults you're with suddenly turn on you. That moment of 'it's-gonna-be-okay' that suddenly turns into 'Oh-my-God-no-it's-not'. It's awful. "What am I supposed to do?" I screamed.

"I guess you'll figure something out," Yusef shouted. "Good luck." The boat was pulling out into the water and I had to strain to hear the last thing he said to me. "Hurry up, kid ... I think Emil's leaving."

I turned around to see the insult added to the injury: Emil's headlights were on and he was slowly backing out of the parking space. I splashed out of the water and made a run for Emil who was preparing to leave 75 yards away in the predawn darkness. My sneakers were squishing with water and sand was sugaring my feet and wet pants. Just as I reached the broken asphalt edge of the parking area, Emil was pulling out into the traffic of the PCH.

"Wait! Wait!" I screamed and it was debatable whether Emil heard me or not. Maybe he did hear and decided to leave anyway. The kind of guy he was, it makes more sense. I was panicking, running after the van that was speeding away and my breaths began to sob in my chest as I realized that yes, this was happening and yes, I was stuck in some god-forsaken stretch of road in the middle of nowhere with no one to contact and no way to get home.

I was sobbing as I stopped to catch my breath. I took a page from Mitch and started screaming a bunch of oaths standing there on the side of the road. It was the kind of cursing that the good people at the Naval Air Station nearby would have applauded. My voice was cracking and my face was red from crying and running - I thundered violent epithets with all the emotion of a preacher in a church tent revival. It made no difference at the moment but it made I feel better for some reason.

The taillights of Emil's van disappeared around a bend in the distance and eventually I ran out of things to scream. My breath rasped in my throat and, looking to my right, Mugu Rock loomed overhead in the gloom.

I had to hike back down to the beach where they had dropped my sea bag. It was right at the water line and a few waves had reached it: all my clothes were soaked and if I hadn't packed all my electronics in little Ziploc sandwich baggies, they would have been ruined. That is, everything except for my phone. The bag had punctured and my phone was sitting in two inches of sandy salt water. Somehow, I don't think the warranty was going to cover that one. I stayed there on the beach, crying for a while. Why not? At least on a beach nobody can hear you bawl.

Part of me died in the sand there. I know that sounds sad but I think it happens for everyone. You have to get over the fact that nobody is going to help you and you have to take care of yourself. No one should have to learn it the way that I did but I didn't have any choice in the matter. After a while, I thought about getting out of here. Behind me, back at the parking lot, an RV that had camped there overnight had lights dimly glowing inside. I picked up the bag and walked toward them.

Early risers
, I thought, wondering what time it was. I wiped my face on a damp sleeve and tried to blow the snot out of my nose without getting too much on my hands. The orange glow behind the curtains looked friendly and as I approached the rear door, I could smell the coffee brewing. "Hope they have a phone," I muttered under my breath. I was about to raise my hand to knock at the door politely when I heard the
schkk-shckk!
of a pump-action shotgun on my left.

"You hold it right'chere," the old Midwestern voice bit out. I instantly raised my hands and froze, dropping my sea bag next to my feet. I'd never had a gun pointed at me but I knew what the appropriate response was. Now what?

I finally risked a turn of my head to see who it was. A wiry old man with a bristly, white mustache wearing nothing but an old Western shirt with fake pearl buttons, faded blue boxers and a pair of battered cowboy boots was holding a pump-action shotgun at the hip. "I was watching the whole thing. I've called the po-lice...they should be here directly."

"What a night," I muttered. Did this ever end? The comedy of errors that this evening started out with just kept getting better and better. Now I was at the scene of a drug shipment, with the cops on the way, no phone, no ride and no money. If this was happening to anyone else, I'd have laughed my butt off. All I wanted to do right now was cry.
I can't believe this is happening to me.

"You with Al-Qaeda?" the old man asked suddenly. I should have seen this coming...

"What?" I asked, carefully.

"What?" the old man repeated sarcastically. He stepped forward aggressively, putting the muzzle of the shotgun into my face. "Are you a terrorist? Are you with Al-Qaeda?" Before I could respond, the muzzle was pushed almost into my eyeball. "Don't you lie to me, boy!" the old man shouted furiously.

I couldn't keep up with all of this crap. Mitch and Yusef. The botched 'electronics run' that was nothing more than a badly-disguised drug shipment. Left at the shore to fend for myself ... we all know how good I am at that. Now there's an old man in his underpants with pointing a gun at me, interrogating me about terrorism. All I could do was stand silently and hope the old man was smart enough not to pull the trigger.

"I saw you come outta the water with them other boys," he drawled. "I saw you carry them boxes fulla junk. You makin' bombs? Who's your contact?" The geezer grabbed me by my shirt and threw me against the vinyl wall of the RV. "What did they give you to betray your flag?" he shouted. The old man raised the shotgun up to chest-high and it seemed like he was going to try and run me through with the muzzle.

"Let it go, Bob," a voice from my right said wearily. A female voice, older and also from the Midwest. She was thickly built with red hair that had rusted from age and wispy with bedhead. She put her hand out gently to Bob and his shotgun. "Put it down." Bob suddenly looked confused and embarrassed, holding the weapon and walking around outside in his unmentionables.