On The Beach (Modern Vintage)

9. Sabotaging from the Bottom

CHAPTER 9

sabotaging from the bottom

MICK

T here was usually an easy way to do things, and then there was the hard way.

The hard way, for me, would've been to ask Belle to stay on the island for a few more days because? Yeah, I had no good answer for that. The easy way was to physically prevent her from leaving, which did not involve kidnapping or tying her down to my bed, which I didn't have.

In my previous life, I never chose the easy way, but Mick Bottom, the beach bum, was all about the easy .

Franco, Cato, and I drifted up to the dock like three stealthy idiots in a boat that sounded like a dying lawnmower powered it. I hadn't even been sure if RiRi's piece of crap would make it all the way to the mainland where our target, the ferry that would come over to take Belle away from Reef Harbor, was docked.

Franco swayed a little as he pointed a finger at the large boat, his voice a loud whisper.

"Is that it?"

"Yeah, that's the one," I muttered, nerves kicking in .

What the fuck was I doing? And, more importantly, why the fuck was I doing it? I had no answers, just questions.

Papa Lou's Ferry to and from the mainland was the only lifeline off Reef Harbor. To keep Belle with me for a few more days, disabling it was the only viable plan I'd managed to come up with.

"It looks like a big mother." Franco blinked, looking all the way up to the ferry from our teeny-tiny boat.

"Let's go," I urged.

"You sure?" Franco slurred. "It's a big mother."

"You gonna think about your mother when you have to climb that thing," Cato offered unhelpfully. "Especially since you're not sober."

"You drank more than me," Franco accused him.

"Yeah, but you're still more drunk."

I was already regretting dragging my friends into my half-baked plan. But desperate times called for desperate ideas—and better to sabotage a ferry than to admit to Belle that I wanted her to stay.

"Can you both shut the fuck up and move the fuck on?" I rage whispered.

Cato scratched his head, looking skeptical. "This is a commercial boat. If we get caught, we're not just screwing around with a rowboat, Mick. They'll throw the book at us."

"Which is why we're not getting caught," I insisted. "Just a quick job. We pull a wire, unhook something, and make sure it's out of commission for a day, two, or three max . Then we get out of here."

Franco nodded with an almost solemn expression. "Got it. Like pirates." He hiccupped. "Low-key, uh…non-swashbuckling pirates."

We secured the boat as quietly as possible, scrambling up onto the dock, trying to look as inconspicuous as three guys sneaking around a commercial ferry in the dead of night could look.

We climbed onto the ferry on a creaky metal ladder hanging off of it. I worried the entire way up that Franco would fall over my head and take both Cato and me down. We should've left him on the boat, I thought as he swayed above me, asking if someone wanted to sing My Heart Will Go On 'cause he felt like we were on the Titanic.

Once we got on deck, we looked around and found that no one was paying any fucking attention to this boat. There was zero security. I'd been counting on that. Papa Lou ran a tight outfit. There was Papa Lou, and then there was his brother Unca Pep, who was around five hundred years old, if a day.

I pointed to the back of the ferry. "Let's go."

When we got into the engine room—area— room was too fancy a description for what this was, Franco, wobbling slightly, eyed the hull. "So, uh, where's the…off button? To make it stop working?"

"There's no button. We're just gonna disable it."

"How?" Franco asked.

I looked at Cato. Fuck, if I knew.

Cato cocked an eyebrow. " Hombre , why do you think I know anything about this?"

I stuck my hands in the pockets of my board shorts. "It's a feelin'."

Cato scanned the dock with a practiced eye, calm and calculating like he'd done this sort of thing before. Which, I was certain, he probably had.

He smirked at me. "Y'know, I've done stealth work on boats before, Mick, but, uh,"—he gestured at the ferry's patched-up hull—"those were generally armed. This? This is sabotage-lite. Civilian stuff."

Franco, half-listening, nodded enthusiastically, his eyes slightly glazed from the rum he'd downed earlier. "So, like, uh, you're sayin' this is an easy job? Pfft , that's what I said!" He stepped over to a metal hatch on the side, yanked it open, and promptly fell backward as a burst of stale bilge water sprayed him in the face.

Franco swore, staggering back onto his feet and wiping his face with his sleeve.

Meanwhile, Cato puttered around the engine compartment with a kind of quiet, efficient focus that suggested this wasn't his first rendezvous with nighttime sabotage. I knew it!

He shot me a small grin, his eyes glinting with some story I knew he'd never tell me. "You need something important disabled?" he whispered. "It's all about finesse."

"Fine," I muttered. "Work your military magic."

Cato sighed and bent again to examine the engine. "I don't know why I spend time with you two mother fuckers." He straightened. "You got any tools?"

I pulled out the pockets of my shorts. "Does it look like I got any tools?"

Franco raised a finger. "I got dis ." His drunk eyes had spotted a toolbox. Thank the fuck, God.

We opened it and found a screwdriver, a wrench, and a hammer. If all else failed, I was going to just pound the shit out of the engine with the hammer, I decided.

Franco, meanwhile, had spotted another hose, tugging at it as if he'd just unearthed some kind of hidden treasure. "This thing looks really crucial?—"

"No, Franco, that's not the…." I sighed, exasperated, as he yanked the hose free and was immediately sprayed with another burst of water. The end of the hose flailed wildly, soaking all three of us.

Cato shook his head. "This is exactly why they don't let amateurs near ops. "

"Yeah?" I shot back, rolling my eyes. "Well, welcome to the amateur hour, James Bond."

Cato held up a wrench with a gleam in his eye. "Who's ready to see some true engineering incompetence?"

He reached into the engine compartment, tugged on a few cables, and promptly yelped as a stream of foul-smelling water sprayed him in the face.

"Perfect," I whispered, trying to keep it together as Cato wiped his face with a bandana. "This is exactly the level of professionalism we're going for."

Meanwhile, Franco stumbled onto another compartment next to the engine and yanked out a piece of tubing with a triumphant shout. "This thing looks important!"

Fuck, here we go again!

"Franco, no!" I whisper-shouted as he waved the tubing around like a trophy. "Put it back; that's the bilge pump line. We're trying to sabotage the ferry, asshole, not turn it into a swimming pool!"

With some coaxing, he managed to reattach the hose—although the result didn't look anything like it had before.

Well, fuck!

Cato finally pulled out a small piece from the engine, holding it up proudly. "There. Should be enough to keep this ferry grounded for at least forty-eight to seventy-two hours, especially since Papa Lou is gonna need to ship a couple of parts."

I pointed to the metal objects in the palms of his hand. "What are those?"

"The starter plug and a couple of fuses," he said, incredulous that I couldn't recognize something so basic. "What would you have done if I wasn't here?"

"I was gonna use a hammer… if I found it," I admitted. I had absolutely no viable plan. Bringing drunk Franco and Cato along had been the best I could do .

Cato shook his head in disappointment.

"Hey, I know fuck all about a boat," I told him, chafed at his disgust for my lack of boat-disabling skills.

"But you're a Ph fuckin' D." Franco thumped my shoulder.

"In science, not vintage boat. This piece of shit is a hundred years old."

"Thirty," Cato corrected me. “Feels like a hundred 'cause it was and continues to be a piece of shit."

" Great . Now, let's get the hell out of here before anyone sees us," I suggested.

But as we were attempting to sneak off, Franco tripped over a rope, sprawling across the dock and knocking over a stack of metal crates with a spectacular clang.

The three of us didn't move, staying absolutely still until the clanging stopped, which took a minute. Then, alerted by the noise, we waited for someone to show up. We waited a minute and then two, but there was no one.

As I'd suspected, this harbor had absolutely zero security. The real mystery wasn't just how Papa Lou still had a functioning business—it was how this antique disaster of a boat hadn't capsized and dragged a bunch of poor passengers to a watery grave.

At least now Belle would be safe, I told myself.

Yeah, that was the reason you did this. Real smooth, Mick.

We scrambled onto our boat, shoving off as fast as the engine would allow, which wasn't much. As we sailed back to Reef Harbor, Franco muttered about true love's labor, and Cato despairingly mumbled about how he was now the embarrassed doer of fucking ferry sabotage and how far he'd fallen.

We'd most definitely made a mess of things, but I didn't care. Tomorrow morning, when Belle tried to board that ferry and found it missing as it was mysteriously out of order, I'd have at least one more chance to keep her here—for a few days more, that's all I needed, anyway. A couple days here and there I'd be bored like always. I was sure of it.

Yeah! I. Was. Sure. Of. It.

"So, Cato," Franco mused. "That whole military boat sabotage thing...you ever worry you'll be recognized for some of the stuff you've done in the past?"

Cato glanced at me, raising an eyebrow. "Only when I'm helping lovesick friends disable ferryboats on tropical islands."

"I'm not lovesick," I protested.

No one paid attention to me.

Franco nodded gravely as drunk men did. "So what…are you, like, a real-life spy or something?"

Cato shrugged one shoulder. "I could tell you, but then, Franco, I'd have to kill you."

I suspected that he wasn't joking.