As if they had heard or saw nothing, they climbed the ladder, faking conversation and laughter. Without looking to shore, Ellen lowered the dinghy and the three of them climbed in. Alan manned the oars with the girls sitting on the front pontoons. He began rowing them around the small harbor while the girls pointed at Bird Island. Cormorants and Pelicans dotted the sandy beach. Their loud squawks at the intruders filled the air, making it impossible for anyone to ignore them.

  “Um…I think we are being waved to shore.” Hannah said.

  “Just pretend you don’t see whoever is doing the waving. Put the sunken boat between us. That should buy us some time.”

  Alan rowed alongside the half sank boat, effectively blocking them from the men on shore.

  Ellen rapped on the exposed hull, “Hello?” She asked quietly. “Is anyone here?”

  She really didn’t expect anyone to answer, because the boat was mostly under water. Dan had said they had glimpsed a guy on her the day they had arrived, but not since. She wondered if he had gone with Dan.

  “Go away!”

  Hannah let out a squeak of surprise because the voice sounded as if it came from right beside her. Realizing she may have alerted the soldiers she changed her squeak to a laugh as if she were having fun. Without another word she fell backwards into the water. She began splashing and slowly swam away from the dinghy.

  Seeing what she was trying to do, Alan slipped into the water and began splashing water at her. They slowly swam away from the derelict boat.

  “Quiet! Just go away or they’ll shoot me again.”

  “Who’s going to shoot you?” Ellen whispered, thinking the noise Alan and Hannah were making would drown out their words.

  “That fucking Nazi on shore. He already thinks I’m dead so please just go away.”

  “He shot you?”

  “Are you deaf? That’s what I just said, now go away.”

  “We’ll be back tonight. We need to talk.”

  “We don’t have nothing to talk about. If they find out I’m in here, they’ll kill me like they did those others. They know I saw what they did. That’s why they shot me. So do us both a favor and forget we had this conversation.”

  “Uh oh, we need to go.” Hannah whispered, as she swam close to the dinghy. “A couple of the men are getting in the boat. They haven’t taken their eyes off of us either.”

  Ellen let go of the gunnel she had been clinging to, slid on to the seat and grabbed the oars. “I’ll be back after dark,” she said as she began to row away. She didn’t expect an answer and didn’t get one either. She rowed down the hull to where Alan and Hannah were floating on their backs, just off the stern of the sunken boat.

  “Show time,” she said under her breath. “Okay you two, play time is over,” she added loudly. “Time to think about dinner.”

  Alan swan up and clambered over the pontoon. Before he could reach out a hand to help Hannah, they were bumped from behind by the smaller powerboat. His arms wind milled as he tried to maintain balance. With a splash he landed back in the water. Sputtering and hacking he surfaced and reached for the dinghy.

  “Hey! How about some common courtesy here? You trying to drown this kid?” Ellen yelled at the two soldiers in the patrol boat. She put on her best outrage face and turned to them. Whatever she was hoping to accomplish, didn’t work. Both men looked angry as if she were the one to ram into them.

  “You need to come with us,” the man forward growled.

  Ellen was unable to tell his rank but of the two he seemed to be the one in charge. He couldn’t have been more than 22 or 23, but his actions were much older than his age. He wore the same shaved haircut as the Major. He could have been stamped from the same mold, right down to the ice blue eyes, minus the acne scarring. Briefly, Ellen was reminded of the perfect race; blonde and blue-eyed. Every uniformed man on the island looked the same at least in their coloring and their demeanor as well. She wondered if they were of German descent.

  He reached over intent on grabbing Ellen’s arm. Maybe he thought to physically drag her into their boat, but momentarily lost in thought, she pulled back before he made contact and he fell head first into the water.

  Startled by the cascade of water, she began to laugh. Even to her ears she sounded hysterical. The accumulation of events the past several days had finally taken their toll and she couldn’t stop laughing. Through the tears running down her face, she watched Alan pull Hannah into the dinghy as well as the remaining soldier helping his cohort into his boat.

  His dip in the water must have been more than the irate soldier could handle. Dripping with sea water, he pulled the second soldiers pistol from his holster and began firing.

  Ellen felt more pain than she had ever experienced in her life. Her eyes briefly met Alan’s. She registered the look of shock on his face as her vision began to grow dark.

  From somewhere she heard the sound of a much bigger gun going off several times and then nothing. She knew she had to be dying and she wondered who would look after Hannah and Alan now that she wouldn’t be around any longer. Who would look after the Annie-C?

  “I guess I’m not taking you home after all,” she mumbled as she fell into the bottom of the dinghy.

  Hannah stared at Ellen in horror and wiped frantically at the blood pouring down her face. The guy had shot Ellen in the head. Hannah pulled her cotton T-shirt over her head and pressed the material tight against Ellen’s skull trying stop the flow of blood.

  “Help me in!” a voice demanded. Alan dragged his eyes from the body lying in the other power boat to see a man he had to assume was from the other sailboat climbing down the side of the hull. He carried a shotgun that was almost as big as he was.

  “Come on give me a hand here!” The guy hadn’t shaved in a few days and his skin was as white as the bandage that crudely covered his abdomen. “If we don’t do something quick none of us will ever leave this island.”

  Without thinking of the consequences Alan grabbed his outstretched hand and pulled him aboard. There was barely enough room for all four of them.

  “I suggest you get to rowing and get us to your boat. The Major is going to be all time pissed when he sees this mess.”

  Alan then registered the two bodies of the soldiers. The water had turned red around the floating soldier and the soldier in the boat was missing half of his head. Remarkably, he was still sitting upright, held up by the motor. Wild eyed Alan looked around himself and then spewed vomit over the side of the dinghy.

  “No time for that! Start rowing if you don’t want to end up the same way, buried on this island or left for fish food.”

  Wiping his mouth off, Alan helped Hannah pull Ellen’s legs out from under the dinghy seat to give himself more room. In a daze, Alan sat down and began to row.

  “Is she…?” the man asked Hannah.

  In the minutes that had passed, Hannah had managed to slow the bleeding enough to see Ellen’s wound. She shook her head slowly no. “He grazed her with the bullet. I can’t believe it but he only grazed her. I can’t see the full extent of the damage, until we clean it up.”

  “Well we need to get her aboard and make tracks out of here. I don’t know how many of the soldiers are still left with the loss of these two and the one this morning, but there can’t be many. By my thinking maybe one or two is all.”

  At the Annie-C, Alan tied the dinghy to the stern and climbed aboard. The man must have been stronger than he looked because carefully balancing his weight, he lifted Ellen up to Alan. Hannah climbed up behind them.

  Alan carried Ellen below and laid her on the settee. Hannah followed him down and brought the first aid kit from the V-berth.

  “Alan, go help him. I have this.”

  Alan returned to the cockpit to find the guy fiddling with the key. “This is a little different from my boat but the principal is still the same. I don’t think you guys had enough time to change out the glow plug so we’ll just have to hope this baby will start. He turned the key to initiate the fuel pump and gave Alan a satisfied grin when they heard the tick tick tick of the fuel pump.

  “Are you going to untie us or are we going to have to pull that frickin’ ball all the way to china?”

  Realizing what the guy was talking about, Alan hurried forward, untied the mooring ball and let it slip back into the water.

  As he turned the motor coughed and started. Alan was as surprised as the guy pushing the start button. Ellen had been right. He silently thanked Ellen for having the forethought to store the spare parts. Had she not had the chance to change them out they would have been royally screwed.

  “I’ve got the helm. If you have anything to defend us with you need to be getting it.” The man screamed. “Now would be a good time.”

  The man opened the throttle and turned her hard to starboard. She acted as if she was sitting on the bottom for just a second and then surged forward.

  Grabbing hold of the hatch cover Alan swung below. “Where did you guys put the guns?” He screamed at Hannah.

  “Most of them are behind the food in the aft cabin,” Hannah yelled back. “But Ellen took two and put them under the V-berth. She said they were the ones you and I would learn on.”

  He quickly thanked God for putting Ellen on the settee and not in her own bed. Cushions went to the floor and Alan grabbed the first long gun he touched. Without thought he grabbed in the duffle bag for a clip. He had no idea which clip went to which gun, but he got lucky as the one he had slid right in and seated with an audible click. He flew back up to the cockpit.

  “I don’t know how to work this,” he hollered to the man. “I don’t know where the safety is or if it even has one.” He was panicking and he knew it, but he couldn’t help himself. He knew not to point it at anything he didn’t want to kill and thrust it towards the man.

  One handed the guy reached over and did something and screamed, “Point and shoot! Point and shoot!”

  Alan turned to shore. Someone was running down the grass headed for the beach they were cruising right by. He tried to aim the gun the way he would a rifle and the guy yelled, “Hey! Get that gun off your shoulder! Just point it and shoot. He ain’t going to stand there and be a target for you.”

  Alan pointed it in the general direction and pulled the trigger. He wasn’t prepared for the string of bullets that flew out the end, nor the way they directed his fire. He saw the sand dance around the soldier’s feet and raised the barrel up. He saw the soldier drop, but couldn’t stop firing until the magazine was empty.

  They cruised at hull speed past the red channel marker. No one else fired on them.

  “Take the wheel and give me that thing.” The guy said as he yanked it away from Alan. “Head for that green marker out there and keep your eyes open.” He turned and disappeared down below.

  Alan finally had time to catch his breath. He had possibly killed another man, but couldn’t think about it yet. They were on the back side of the fort and knew someone could shoot at them once they passed to the west side. He saw nothing in the cockpit he could use for cover. He also knew, if they didn’t get away from the fort, Hannah and Ellen would never make it to safety.

  He also knew the water was too shallow to leave the channel. He saw the buoy out at Iowa Rock, but the color of the water told him he could not take a direct route. They would be sitting ducks if they were to get stuck in the shallows.

  The man had still not come up from down below by the time he passed Iowa Rock so he continued the way they had come in. Following the darker water. He was really hoping the dark water wasn’t coral reefs or rock formations hiding in shallows, but to his relief an hour and a half later he spotted the yellow buoy. He didn’t think it was the same one they had passed on the way in, but from listening to Ellen, he knew there was deeper water on the outside of the yellow buoy’s.

  So intent on guiding them through the shallows, he hadn’t even had time to wonder about Ellen. He had heard Hannah say she would be okay, and about that time he had been concerned with them getting shot by the other soldiers.

  “Hey, can someone give me a short break here?” He realized they may not have heard him above the sound of the engine so he kicked the rpm’s down to fifteen hundred and tightened down the wheel brake. He stepped to the hatch and asked, “Can someone please give me a short break. I need to use the head.”

  Hannah glanced up from where she was giving Ellen a sip of water. Ellen tried to look his way, but with a grimace, she clenched her eyes shut as if the act were more than she was capable of. Hannah eased Ellen back onto the cushion. Hannah had wrapped a sparkling white bandage around the top and sides of Ellen’s head, making it look like she had a turban on. The top of the turban had a streak of red showing through. Alan wondered how bad her injury was.

  He stared at Hannah hoping she could read his mind; he tipped his head at Ellen. Without her they would be lost. She was the glue that made them all a family. He raised his eyebrows in question. He let his breath out quickly in a sigh at a nod and close lipped smile from Hannah.

  “Be right there Alan. Just give me a minute to clean this up…or you could just lean over the handrail.”

  “Huh?” he was dumb founded. How could she say that to him? She didn’t even know what he had to do.

  She saw the stricken look on his face and laughed. “Oh don’t be a baby I was only joking.”

  The man had been standing at the foot of the V-berth where he had all of the guns laid out side by side. The duffle of magazines was open in front of him. It appeared as if he was trying to match them up with the guns they belonged to.

  He turned at hearing Alan ask for assistance. “Sorry, I got tied up in here. I guess by the sounds of it you found your way out. I’ll be right up to give you a hand.”

  Alan was surprised to see Hannah smile at the guy as if she adored him. He didn’t think she had ever looked at him like that and he felt envious that her look wasn’t for him. He didn’t understand what she could possibly see in the guy. His dark brown hair was shoulder length and wavy and he hadn’t shaved in who knew how long. He may have had some Mexican blood or he had spent hours in the Florida sun. His lean body was obviously without an ounce of body fat. Alan couldn’t judge his height but the top of Hannah’s head was mid-way up his chest. So maybe he was 6 foot or so. Someone had replaced the bandage on his torso and Alan suspected it had to have been Hannah. He didn’t like to think of Hannah smiling at the guy let alone touching him.

  Brown eyes found his and Alan could swear the guy knew exactly what was going through his mind, because he flashed a smile at him, showing white teeth with just a small gap between the two front teeth. And dimples…for Christ sake the guy actually had dimples.

  Alan turned back to the wheel, fuming because he had let the guy get to him. He loosened the wheel and then it hit him. He didn’t know where he was supposed to be going. Looking back, he was able to see the outline of the fort and a thin line of land. He hoped there was no one left to follow them. He wondered again what had happened to Dan.

  “Hey sport, sorry for yelling at you earlier. I never thought about you never having handled a gun like that.” He held his hand out to Alan, a clear indication he wanted to be friends. “No hard feelings?”

  Begrudgingly, Alan took it and shook. He noticed the guys tattoo. “You were a Marine?”

  “I am a Marine. Retired, but you never quit being a Marine. Got my twenty in and got the hell out. The wife and I used part of our savings and bought the Choy Lee. Been on the water since then.”

  “Wife? You have a wife?” Alan was feeling better by the second.

  “Lost her last summer to breast cancer.” He said, in a gruff voice as if the memory still choked him up. “The name is Frank Carpenter.”

  “Alan Boone. Sorry to hear that. I guess we owe you a big thanks for coming aboard. No telling what would have happened if you hadn’t.”

  “I couldn’t do anything else. I heard you guys talking and knew from all the banging around that you were probably changing out parts. I knew that if I didn’t go with you, I would have ended up like the rest of those people back there.”

  “You were here from the beginning?”

  “Yeah, before the beginning actually. I have been anchored out here for the past two weeks. Water was getting low and had already decided to get out when shit hit the fan so to speak. The next morning, these guys showed up and all hell broke loose. They ended up taking out all of the Rangers and most of the campers who hadn’t left on the ferry. I was on shore when it happened. I guess they thought they had finished me too when I went in to the water from the parapet. I got lucky and did a magnificent belly flop in the only pool of water that was deep enough. I held my breath and just floated hoping they would think I was dead. In truth I hurt so badly it took me some time to get my wits back.”

  Alan stared at Frank and wondered if he would have had the same kind of fortitude to survive had he been in Frank’s position. He hoped so, because he would likely be tested somewhere along the way if what Ellen thought was true. At this point he didn’t doubt her a bit.

  “How did you get back to your boat and why let it sink?”

  Frank laughed softly, “Well I let myself drift close to the culvert where the croc hides from tourists and slid through into the ocean. Luckily it was one time he was not in residence or he would have had company. Bleeding like a stuck pig may have enticed him to have dinner. Anyway…what?”

  “A crocodile? Now I know you are pulling my leg. They don’t come out this far.”

  “I kid you not. There has been a resident American Croc out here for years. Ask Ellen I bet she knows. Anyway once I felt certain they had forgotten about me I made my way around the Garden Key and hid in the bushes on Brush Key until night time. As for the Aurora, I think they must have put holes in her. She was sitting low in the water when I finally made it aboard. Everything I own is in that boat and my last mementos from my life with Amanda. God how I miss that woman.”

  Alan realized they hadn’t been paying attention and either it was chance or a premonition, but his eyes picked up the shape of a boat far off on the horizon and it was moving fast…directly at them.