Invasion USA 3 - The Battle for Survival (34 page)

Marie said that she was going to help with dinner and left him to his learning program. He moved the little dot to the right a few degrees and he saw the wheel turn as the autopilot automatically changed the ship’s direction. He looked at the large echo sounder computer and screen and switched it on. The screen slowly glowed and, after a minute blinked on to reveal a fuzzy green panoramic view of the sea floor.

By the way the program started and loaded, he guessed that most of this equipment was from the seventies; it must have been state-of-the-art for that time. He studied the contours of the bottom stretching out around the ship for about three miles, a brighter green band of light circled around the screen every minute. The bottom showed 112 feet and the water was getting deeper.

Still at four knots, he increased the radar to thirty miles, its furthest point and made a dot five miles offshore, west as well as south from the eastern tip of the island. His travel time increased to six hours and forty nine minutes. He reduced power to two thirds, the speed reduced to three and a half knots and the time automatically increased to eight hours, fifteen minutes. Mo Wang was enjoying his lesson.

He left the bridge thirty minutes later, feeling weird that nobody was up there doing anything. They had been traveling now for two hours. It was just after nine and they would reach the end of the island hours before he had told Pedro to meet him. The table was set and a tasty dinner of steamed fish and rice, made by Lu, reminded him of home. It was the first time he felt a little nostalgic for China.

“Is everybody happy with the sleeping arrangements?” Mo asked over dinner. There wasn’t enough room at the dining table and the five younger people were sitting on the floor and eating around the large coffee table. Only the four adults were at the six-seat table.

“I’m sleeping with Cheri in the one room, and Annabel and Virginie have commandeered the other,” said Marie.

“I offered the master stateroom to Lu and her two children, but they are refusing to take it,” added Beatrice. “If they take the main cabin then there is perfect room for the two of us in the lounge, Mo. The couches are better for us. It will save using the uncomfortable camp beds. Somebody needs to be on watch at all times.”

“I will stay out of the discussion. I can use the separate toilet off the bridge and I can easily nap sitting up in the captain’s chair,” replied Mo. “I might not be a good sailor yet, but I’m a light sleeper and can sleep with one eye open. I’m sure that the electrical systems all have alarms built into them, but I did not yet get that far with my lesson.”

“I’ll help you with those after dinner,” added Marie. “Mo, you still haven’t told us where we are going. It has been such a rush since you decided to leave just this afternoon and with so little warning.”

“I’m planning for Florida,” Mo replied. “How far do you think it is?”

“Without looking at the maps, I would say less than a thousand miles. I expect you will find maps in a drawer under the table-top in the bridge. The square table is the exact size of a maritime map, so it should hold all the maps we are going to need. We need to plot our course, which I’ll teach you how to do after dinner. The idea is to mark our course on the bridge table, which is really the ship’s navigation table, and then plot the directions into the autopilot. The worst problem I ever faced sailing was other shipping. The large container ships and tankers always sail on autopilot and don’t often look out for smaller vessels. That’s why, as Beatrice said, we always need a person on watch.”

“I expect that problem doesn’t exist anymore, and apart from fishing boats and other yachts, there isn’t much traffic out there,” stated Mo. “I know that my nephew, Lee Wang, is somewhere around North Carolina and I think there is an airfield where he is staying, a friend’s airfield. I told Lu about her brother and we are hoping to meet him. I can phone him, but he is not very friendly with me. He knows I betrayed him.

“I think this ship could be a good safe home for the future, and if we make it, I don’t think the German lady will be around to take it back or complain about us stealing it in Florida or North Carolina.”

After dinner while the kids and Lu and her family were washing dishes in the galley, Mo, Marie and Beatrice went up to the bridge, got out the maps and looked them over.

“You plan to meet Pedro at the extreme end of the island,” confirmed Marie, looking at a large map of the island. “We are here.” She showed Mo by pointing out the island parts and coastline on the radar and plotting their position onto the map. “We have covered fourteen miles and used three to four gallons of fuel.” Mo looked at the gauges which were all still at maximum. “It is going to take us six hours to get to our first point.” She then placed a second map on the table, a map showing far more territory. Mo could see the tip of Mexico in the top corner and saw the island of Cozumel, where Pedro wanted to go. “That will be our second point,” he stated to Marie. She got a pencil out and drew a faint line on the map, and with a compass and protractor worked out the degree west of north it would require them to sail. “Remember this saying:
‘From grid to mag you add, from mag to grid get rid.’
Never forget that, Mo. You know the difference between True North and Magnetic North?” Mo nodded, but looked a little perplexed so Marie added a little more information. “I know that our difference here is currently about two degrees. So we take away two degrees from our compass bearing or add two degrees from our map bearing. The difference changes all over the world but we are due south of Long Island where I have sailed before and two degrees will put us within a one degree accuracy. I’m sure we will find a book which will tell us; every ship has one as a backup if their GPS system goes down. Remember, we have the radar to warn us when we are thirty miles from land. Since nobody has GPS out there, that is about as accurate as I or anybody else can navigate on the high seas.”

“So, one degree in a hundred miles is one mile off course?” Mo asked, his memory a little rusty. Marie nodded and they did a few math problems so that he could understand. Mo then plotted a course to Cozumel, from the point in front of them and he came up with the angle to steer. Then Marie showed him how to work out the distance.

“One hundred and fifty-three miles to a safe point five miles off the center of the island,” Marie explained. “Five knots is nearly six miles an hour, so without sea currents and head winds, it should take us about twenty-six hours to our second waypoint.”

“Next point is the tip of Florida,” stated Mo. He was finding all this so exciting.

“Let’s map a voyage nonstop from our second waypoint to Key West.” And Marie let him plot the course this time.

“Four hundred and sixty-eight miles, but we pass right next to Cuba,” stated Mo looking rather pleased with himself.

“I don’t think we should get too close to Cuba, there could be pirates,” suggested Beatrice. “I would like to plot a course taking us at least fifty miles north of Cuba.”

Marie showed Mo how to do this by adding an extra waypoint, fifty miles northwest off the Cuban tip and then turning towards Key West.

“A distance of 539 miles,” stated Mo adding the travel distance. “Slightly less than one hundred hours which is just over four days.”

From Key West he plotted a route all the way up to Wilmington, North Carolina; another 710 miles on a direct route.

“So we are going to map a total voyage of 1,400 miles at, say, a gallon per four miles, and on high cruise at 6 knots, or seven miles an hour. Work it out, Mo,” suggested Beatrice.

“Minimum 350 gallons of fuel and 200 hours nonstop,” Mo stated.

“Work it out at 2 gallons per mile with the big engines at 12 knots or 15 miles an hour,” encouraged Marie.

“Easy, 2,800 gallons. I’m sure we don’t have enough fuel and only four days travel time. So we should use our sails when there is wind, use only the small engine, and keep our diesel reserves for emergency. Does that sound correct?” asked Mo. The ladies agreed with him and he felt a little more like a sailor.

For three more hours they travelled until, at a distance of five miles from the southern coastline of the island, Mo suggested that he see what he could about the defensive situation. He told the girls that he had brought the shotgun and an old army pistol aboard and he showed them where he had hidden them. He then went below, turned on the fourth generator, and went into the battery room where all the ammunition was stored.

There certainly was a lot. He opened the door to the separate and forward gun room and pressed the button to elevate it onto the deck above. It worked quickly and this time he could see stars above before the gun reached the deck and closed off the room below. Behind where the gun had stood Mo noticed that a shoulder rocket launcher was heavily taped to the V-seam of the bow with several cases of what had to be rockets.

He returned to the lounge, grabbed his night binoculars, and went outside to see the machine gun. It stood there just like in the movies, except that the barrel was pointed down at the deck. He unscrewed a large knob, lifted the heavy barrel skywards, and it clicked into place.

Through the binoculars he could see quite well. Mo suddenly realized that it wasn’t so dark outside anymore and saw a faint glow over the horizon to the east. He didn’t know if it was the moon, but it was going to light up the sea pretty soon. He could just see the black island mass five miles off the port bow. He signaled to Marie to turn to sail slightly farther away and over the horizon. If he could see land, then anybody on land might see them.

The gun was ready to fire, he noticed, with a large green steel box of pretty gold rounds on a belt, in place next to the barrel. He could see much more but realized that the mortar was in the way of firing the gun and it took all his strength to pull it off the round flat plate, which had pneumatically lifted the equipment on deck. He noticed a triangular steel plate installed on the deck where the mortar was meant to be placed, maneuvered the mortar to the plate and, using clamps already there, secured it to the deck. The sky was getting lighter and he noticed a camouflage-colored tarpaulin folded neatly underneath the gun.

He opened it, and twenty minutes later he had the tarpaulin secured and covering both guns, tied down to half a dozen “D” rings welded to the deck. Mo was impressed; this senator sure knew how to set up his ship. The thick weatherproof tarp was tight and the wind wouldn’t get under it if it blew. He decided to leave the equipment where it was and reminded himself to look for possible bombs for the mortar.

Mo now felt prepared for any possible confrontations, except that he had rarely fired a gun in his life. He hoped that somebody else knew how to and he would study the guns more when it was light and they were far from any land.

Calderón – Mexico

The dozen nondescript Venezuelan propeller transport aircraft left San Salvador Airport to collect the next load of 500 men as two larger transporters, old Venezuelan Air Force C-130s, came in to deliver six small civilian trucks and jeeps. There were four C-130s operational with the Venezuelan Air Force and the other two were twenty minutes behind with four bigger civilian trucks as their payload.

There was fuel in San Salvador, but the aircraft were returning to San Andrés Island to refuel on their way home; the island being Colombian-owned and under the control of one Colombian senator.

Two days later, two thousand men and over one hundred old civilian and military vehicles of all sorts drove out of the airport. Two dozen El Salvadorian army transport trucks carrying 30 men each had been commandeered from the local army barracks. Dozens of dead El Salvadorian soldiers were simply left where they had been shot by firing squads. Their offense: they did not join the attackers. Two of the transporters dragged fuel tanker trailers and two jeeps pulled smaller 200-gallon fuel trailers behind them. They had ransacked the barrack’s armory for rocket launchers, machine guns and ammo, and headed north.

A second group would follow them three days later, stopping for the twenty army transport trucks that were left under guard at the airport, while the much larger force of 100,000-plus men worked their way through Central America, robbing, murdering and stealing food and fuel.

Manuel Calderón was in charge of the first group and his younger brothers Alberto and Pedro in command of the second and third groups. They all had dozens of military radios which would keep them in contact once they were within 50 miles of each other.

The older brother had given himself the mission to eliminate the most deadly air base in Santa Lucia, Mexico, where they had jets. His aim was to forestall any future attacks from the air—the cartel’s biggest danger.

Once that was complete he would return south and help his brothers attack the army bases in the most southern area of Mexico, the Chiapas region. There were several military bases in each region and the plan was to work northwards and recruit or shoot Mexican soldiers.

His first attack was on the closest air base in Tuxtla, Gutierrez. He attacked at dawn on his second day in Mexico. The base had a few hundred soldiers and several propeller-driven aircraft. He didn’t know much about aircraft but a hand grenade in the cockpit would make sure they would never fly again.

It took Manuel and his 2,000 men less than an hour to capture the entire air base, hitting the radio tower first. A dozen or so soldiers were left, once the rest had scattered to the hills. Those who did not accept his offer to join them were executed.

The next day they overran an air base in the Oaxaca area. Ixtepec, a small city in Oaxaca Province, had the same size base as the first one with even fewer soldiers and only five aircraft.

An hour later he headed further into Mexico with a couple more vehicles and several local banditos added to his ranks. In his wake, black smoke poured from the airfield where twenty-odd men lay murdered. He had no radio contact with his brother to the south, but he was due to join him within the week.