***

            At dawn the lines were cast off and the engines roared to life while I tried to keep sleeping. The boat stopped briefly in Alice Town. People mentioned about Ally getting off here and not fitting in with the rest. There were Good-byes and Good-luck wishes. I didn’t get up, figuring that if she didn’t come over to say Good-bye she preferred nothing more with me. Knowing her, in a couple days she wouldn’t remember my name anyway!

When I finally came on deck Carl appeared to be hiding something. “Is Joni below? Can’t let her see, she’d kill me.” He pulled out a black container and screwed a small metal cartridge into a chamber until a puff of compressed air shot into the container. He put the tip in his mouth and squeezed the handle, inhaling the entire contents of the canister.

“Laughing gas,” Gun informed me as he took the canister from Carl, whose eyes had an immediate rapturous gaze upward. “Why not? It’s not illegal...yet,” he told me.

“Don’t you guys get enough nitrous when you’re down there?” chided Jim. He referred to the nitrogen narcosis that formed naturally by diving.

“Nothing wrong with more euphoria,” Carl replied with that little smirk of supreme bliss. “Not the same thing as narcosis, either.”

When Gun offered me the nitrous I indicated No Thanks with my hand.

“Go ahead,” said Gun. “It’s like a one-minute acid trip.” Then he took the whole hit himself in one blast.

“So, Cal, what’s your bag, anyway?” inquired Carl. “What’re you into, ecstasy? What?”

“No. Just what I tell everyone.” I smiled wide. “I’m on an old fashioned quest for girls, and adventure!”

“Girls? Where?” Carl searched under the bench and looked inside a cooler. “No, man, you got the wrong boat!” he cackled. “The only women who’ll get on this boat are practically men!”

He had a point when I pictured Joni and Ally, each with their tough manner, but he was wrong about the good sex. “Ally is gone, eh?”

“Pfft, finally!” poohed Jimmy. The old guy shoved Gun in the arm as he was re-charging the gas canister. “What were you thinkin’ bringing her on board? You’re hittin’ that gas too hard!” Gun responded by sneering and inhaled another can of the stuff. “With all those cameras and notebooks and all the complaining! Get lost, woman!”

Gun’s cheeks puffed out to the max, then he blew out his hit and blurted, “Ya-aah, that was stooo-pid!”

The Shark’s wake trail fanned out behind us, with the usual wisps of black exhaust hovering over it.

“What’s with Killis, though,” Jimmy lowered his voice. “That one gives me the willies, the opposite of her, you got no idea what’s going on with him.”

Killis appeared and everyone clammed up. “What’s all the excitement?”

Gun covered the gas dispenser and changed the subject. “Oh, yeah, Killis, according to Jim over here, the government’s got some new ‘non-lethal’ electron weapons.” He reverted to that discussion in Miami. “You’re a military guy, too. You know about that?”

Before Killis answered Carl rolled up his eyes up in mock dismay. “What good are weapons that don’t kill?” He laughed with gusto.

“Good if it knocks out all the power and electronics,” Jim argued. “But leaves the buildings and population alone.” Of course he seemed to be joking, but was he?

“That’s a perfect capitalist fantasy if I ever heard one!” Gun laughed. “Leaves all the property alone!”

As usual, the somber Killis listened but didn’t seem like he would comment.

“Don’t laugh,” Jimmy went on. “Fries anything with wires and microchips. So they say. Leaves no trace where it came from, either. Killis, you tell them.”

I was wrong, Killis chose to speak up for once. “Well, that might stop all technology in its tracks.”

“Bingo.” Jimmy pointed straight at Killis. “It’s like a Doomsday Weapon.”

Carl sighed in a long drawn out way like coming down from a high. “Now that’d be one great equalizer in this age of terrorism.”

“Halt technology?” Gun spoke with an upward glance at Killis. “On second thought, that don’t sound half-bad.”

“Don’t let the terrorists get it, though,” Jim said. “They’ll cancel our advantages in a heartbeat.”

“That could set technology 100 years,” Gun speculated.

“Stop war as we know it,” Carl pondered out loud.

“Yeah. Changes the world’s economies,” Jim added. “They say you can aim the weapons, too. Knock out the power of a whole country with a single electron beam.”

“Sounds like science fiction,” scoffed Killis.

“Not science fiction,” Jim fired back. “They can develop high-temperature superconductors to create intense magnetic fields. And focus them like lasers.”

“Must use huge amounts of power,” I guessed wildly.

“It’s probably nuclear powered,” Carl said.

“No. They say it knocks out the nukes, too,” Jim argued.

“Give me a break,” said Gun. “Propaganda.” Then, he faked a Middle East accent, “Lies, American government lies! There are no US tanks in Baghdad!” With a raised finger he poked at the sky. “Oh Jesus!” Gun exclaimed. “Look at that!” A huge tornado-like funnel cloud had formed a few miles away with lightning behind it. “I don’t know about any Doomsday Weapons but there’s the most powerful force I know! Coming right at us!” He swung himself up into the bridge like a slingshot.

One third of the sky was a mass of anvil-shaped clouds and leaning towards us was a line of water spouts, dark streaky columns of weather descending from the clouds to the horizon line. Lightning flashed behind the advancing funnels and the corresponding thunder cracked moments later. It was like an immense sea monster appeared firing all these different super weapons!

The ocean kicked up fast and everyone’s fun was cut off. Caught by surprise Gun seemed very upset about the squall. He snapped open a map, and pointing at some shoals called out to Killis and Jim, “I don’t know if we’ll be able to anchor before it hits us! We need that shallow water over there, or we’ll capsize!” We all scrambled from the bridge, facing mortal danger again!

Thunder roared louder and hammered down like immense avalanches. Gun was more intense than I ever saw anyone. It was way beyond anguish. The naked grimace of survival was stamped on his face. But he pretended full control, fighting to save our lives by skillfully maneuvering the boat from the cliffside reefs into shallower water. It was astonishing how quick our lives were threatened, just a few moments and BANG!

Another horizontal rain pelted our skins, literally whipping from left to right and perhaps even shooting upward at times, slamming and penetrating every crack and crevice and leaving painful indents on us. We hooked our bodies to cleats and charged out to save ourselves by dropping multiple anchors. Jim led the fight to move forward against the wind-driven onslaught, “Damn stinging!” he bawled.

It was impossible to face the weather. A thousand drops dimpled Killis’s skin while he stoically held a line taut, resembling a gallant statue. His bad-weather military training was crucial.

As he fought the storm, Gun turned halfway into the semi-solid wall of water, huge globs hitting his eyeballs and choking his open mouth as he gasped to breathe.

Everyone rose to the challenge as we dumped multiple anchors and tightened the lines which finally held us in 40 feet of water. Just when we were almost safe another shock of thunder struck. I happened to look up while tying off the last rope. More juicy globules of rain splattered my eyeballs.

Joni shrieked, “EVERYONE GET DOWN!”

I watched a crooked white ribbon of brilliance streaking over the Shark, then it burst in a millionth of a second of blinding bright light that etched in my consciousness like an instant God-This-Is-It! The bolt of lightning exploded with such a shocking wave that it pancaked me onto the deck and rained yard-long sparks which superheated the air and evaporated the rain momentarily! It was like a steam bath.

“Damn!” Gun yelled and choked on a huge cloud of smoke blowing out of the console. Both engines died but thank God we were finished anchoring. The heat blast and the shock of electrified air exploding left my body a jumble of confused impulses, like my finger was in a light socket and receiving body shots of current.

I’d be overboard at this moment if not lashed to a cleat. The safety instinct was sinking in. Most of us huddled in the ten-foot square main lounge while the weather raged above and below. Jingling sensations traveled the length of my body as if electrical charges from the air connected and surged through all the fluids and bones inside me.

Jimmy shouted, “Not even the lightning arresters handled that. What a doozie!”

We endured the boat thrashing about for the next three hours. Everyone agreed it was a huge overload caused by the lightning bolt which killed all power. My insides still felt sizzling, congested, while my limbs and breathing seized up from time to time in a kind of paralysis. I never heard of anything quite like this. I didn’t believe what they were saying before about the electron beam weapons, but it could be true. Scientifically, it was 100 percent valid. But, my God, imagine if you could aim that lightning bolt mother! That’s one big stick! I thought. This boat was dead dark and powerless. Not even a radio worked. Undeterred by the storm’s dangers Carl rode it out on deck drinking with another Hammerhead, and both were almost whisked off their fannies into the heaving cauldron of water.

The calm came just as quick as the storm. Helped by Jim and Killis, Gun repaired most of the electrical damage and cursed the whole way. “Freakin’ good thing this wiring is simple as can be,” he grumbled.

“Damn freakin’ good thing,” Jim replied.

They worked through the evening and some of the next day.

When we were underway again I held my breath in the foul toilet to go, and overheard some whispering with Gun’s voice replying, “You bring cash... Yeah, got it here... It’s worth a lot more... Sure, I can do it.” The other voice was Carl’s. I wondered what it had to do with.

Then Gun spoke, “The government’s got a spy. I think it’s Killis.”

“You don’t think it’s your new friend, that Caleb kid?”

“Na-ah, he doesn’t know his ass from the copper highlights in his hair.”

“That Patriot Act, what a joke,” Carl replied quietly. “Can you believe jailing those people without charges? Police State Act is more like it.”

“Sure, searching homes without the owners knowing and tapping everyone’s phone, that’s not a police state? Even gives me an idea for a song.”

“You’re a man after my own heart,” whispered Carl.

“Get out, you homo. I mean homie.”

I didn’t want to know about Gun’s illegal business but hearing them refer to me and spies didn’t keep my interest down. I pretended to be asleep when he bunked down for the night and my curiosity ate at me. Now I regretted not hearing more and considered ways to find out what they were doing. He was probably in some illegal deal or else why the hush-hush? Should I have concerns for my own safety? I had to be overreacting though.

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