TOCABAGA (Revised Edition) (Book #1 of The Tocabaga Chronicles) (6 page)

I gave her a little kiss on the cheek
and asked, “What did you do today?”

“
Nothing new, just picked lettuce, fruit, and cleaned fish for dinner. Oh, I helped Doc Scott and Amy fix up Sammy at the clinic. That was intense but he will be fine. It was a clean hole through his arm. He may lose some movement, however.”

I commented,
“Well, at least he is alive and he will be relieved from security duty for a few weeks, but his wife won’t be happy having him around the house all day.”

We both laughed at that comment.

I never let Hemmi take security guard duty as she has no experience in gun battles; she does not have the proper training. But if she had to, Hemmi would kill to protect our family.

Most of the time Hemmi hang
s around with Amy; they either work at the medical clinic, garden, or are busy cooking a meal for the family. They tend to the more or less everyday life necessities, as well as spend time teaching the small number of kids we have here, the youngest being ten years old. We have three teachers who instruct the kids on freedom, the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. In addition, we teach them reading, writing, math, history, fishing, hunting and farming. An old-fashioned education never hurt anyone.

We do have some good points besides the sun and clean air; for one thing, food is fairly easy to obtain. We have orange, lemon, grapefruit, avocado, and coconut trees, which yield a lot of fruit for about six months out of the year. We have many gardens and grow all varieties of vegetables, enough to feed everyone here and more. Great fishing is right off shore, or further out in a boat if you want bigger fish. You name it, we fish it. We have 20 fulltime fishermen, as we need about a pound of fish per person a day. For 500 people this is 500 pounds, meaning each man needs to bring in 25 pounds a day. Actually, it is not so hard to catch 25 pounds of fish as one grouper is usually up to 30 pounds. King fish and snapper can run 15 pounds. We smoke fish and grill it over an open fire. We have rabbits, squirrels, and birds to eat. The only bird I like is dove and we have a lot of them, for some reason. They taste like chicken.

Speaking of chicken, o
ne day a chicken farmer arrived in a truck loaded with chickens and the necessary equipment to build a hen house. He also had a couple of roosters for breeding. He asked if he could join our group and in turn he would supply us eggs and chickens. This chicken farmer loves his chickens. The chicken farm is located in NO MAN’S LAND as the birds make a lot of noise and need room. Chickens can be dangerous. Close contact with them brought about the bird flu years ago in China. People living and eating with a bunch of chicken excrement nearby is not healthy. Now we eat eggs almost every day and sometimes a fried chicken. We draw numbers to see who the lucky ones are that get the chicken. The coyotes are always after the chickens so the pen is guarded.

I told Hemmi, “I’ve got a 6:30 meeting.”

Just then
Robbie and Tommy walked in and asked, “You ready to go?”

I put my Glock in my hostler,
grabbed my AR 15, and kissed Hemmi goodbye saying, “See you later, I will be home tonight.”

My
decision was to leave the gang alone for now. The gang just lost another eight men, bringing their force down to 20 or 22 people. They had no food and sooner or later they would have to give up and leave for greener pastures. I explained this to Tommy and Robbie and they agreed with me. The plan would be do nothing for now. We just lost one man and one was wounded, we needed to rest.

Tommy replied, “
Today we can recuperate but tomorrow I want to do another recon to verify if they are still there.”

I
thought,
Oh no!
I remained quiet as did Robbie while we drove to the meeting.

Everyone was at the meeting except Rick.

I asked, “Anyone seen Rick?”

Doc
Scott answered, “Rick is sick, he was a fever, I think he has malaria so you are in charge for now.”

“I had
malaria, or may still have it. Give him some quinine water and that will put the bug into remission,” I told the Doc.

“Really
, that will cure him?”

“No
, it will not cure him but he will feel better right away and it may save his life. Make sure he drinks a quart of it.”

The Doc left
the meeting to search for tonic water. Doc Scott is a trauma surgeon and good at fixing bullet wounds and broken body parts, but not good at diagnosing a disease.

Bugs are everywhere and at night we are eaten up by the mosquitoes. There are 3,500 different species of mosquitoes. They can carry all kinds of nasty bugs that will kill us if not treated. Years ago I did contract malaria when I went to Southern China. The mosquitoes bit me and about a week later I started feeling like I had a fever. My muscles and joints ached. I went to the Mayo Clinic and they confirmed that I had a low level case of malaria, a less dangerous strain. To combat malaria you need to drink quinine, also called tonic water. For some reason this puts the disease into remission. When it comes back you drink some gin and tonic. You need to drink about a quart of tonic water to get it back into remission. The British discovered the use of quinine in the late 1890s; hence, when stationed in an area with a malaria problem they would drink a gin and tonic every day.

In the old days the county would spray to kill the little bloodsuckers, but not anymore. They can drive a man nuts buzzing around looking for a tender place to suck blood. You need to wear long
-sleeve shirts, pants, and a hat with netting to protect your face. Everyone gets bit. Standing water puddles are their breeding sites. To keep them at bay at night we start wood fires and the smoke helps. Problem is the smoke gives me a bad headache. I go to my screened-in porch and sleep there free from bugs and snakes. It is cooler than sleeping in the house.

“I call this meeting to order,” I said. “We will discuss what actions we should take against the so-called gang. Does anyone have a suggestion or idea?”

Bob asked
me, “Whatever happened to the Rangers?”

“I don’t know
, maybe they were delayed. We can’t count on the Rangers for help, so it’s up to us.”

Tommy jumped in saying, “
I propose we do nothing tonight, just keep our guard up and everyone stay at the ready. Tomorrow night I will do another recon but I need a volunteer to go with me. My Dad has done enough. I need someone young, fresh and ready to go.”

Anyone can attend the meeting and speak up at anytime. From n
ear the door a voice called out, “I will go with you, Tommy.”

It was Carlos
. He came here from Puerto Rico years ago and was in the Army for four years.

Tommy said,
“Great, then it is Carlos and me.”

M
y son-in-law, Jim added, “I’ll go too, you may need extra eyes.”

“
Great,” Tommy said. “Jim, Carlos, and I will make up the team.”

I stated, “
With no further business, the meeting is adjourned. Beers for everyone.”

Jim is a great shot. He pulls guard duty but his main job is making repairs to equipment, cars, boats—you name it, Jim can fix it. Everyone relies on him as our Mr. Fix-it. I am lucky to have such a great son-in-law. I call him Jim Bo.

I know Carlos and he is a good
, brave man. He is Catholic, loves God, and prays continuously. He and his wife Sandy are freedom lovers and hate when the government tells you what to do. I was ok with Carlos going with Tommy, but I also had another idea which may be better.

I will tell them about my new idea later as I need to rest now.

APRIL
20, 2025

The sun is up and it is another hot day. Hemmi cooked me eggs with smoked fish and cut up some oranges. Simple, but good, healthy food. I put on my bulletproof vest, my Kydex hostler, and Glock. I grabbed my AR 15 9mm carbine and an AR 15 H bar rifle chambered for 5.56 NATO rounds with a 4X lowlight scope. It is good for 500 yards.

My wife asked,
“What are you doing today?”

I told her, “
We have another recon tonight. Tommy, Jim, and Carlos…maybe I will go along. But I’ve got to go to the bridge now, see you later.”

She comme
nted as I walked out the door, “Be safe you big dope!”

“A
man’s got to do what a man’s got to do. Bye, I love ya,” I said softly as the back door closed behind me.

As I approached the bridge everyone was looking down the road,
with ten men on guard duty. Jeff was in charge overnight. The guard had just changed at 7 am, but some of the guys still hung around and were also looking down the road.

I asked
Jeff, the team leader, “What’s going on?”

T
hen I looked down the road and saw a car about 100 yards away. That’s what everyone was watching. I asked out loud to anyone, “How long has that been there?”

Plum
ber Greg said, “It came sometime in the night, no one saw it approach.”

I
said, “Is everyone blind, sleeping or what? How can you let a car sneak up and get that close?” This car would throw a whammy at the recon for tonight unless we learned more about it.

No need to tell you what Greg the Plumber does. He is a good person and helps anyone with plumbing problems, from fixing broken water lines to unclogging drains. He has no military experience and sometimes makes quick decisions and judgments that could put him and others in danger. Greg is a hard worker and you can trust him to get any job done, plus he keeps his word.

I advised Greg and the others, “Maybe this is a trap, a booby trap. The car could blow up when we get near it. They might have explosives rigged in it and could set them off by a radio or cell phone or just by opening the door.”

Greg replie
d, “Duh, you think so?”

No one here knows
much about explosives. This was a dangerous situation. I looked at the car through my rifle scope trying to discern wires or telltale signs of a bomb. It appeared to be just an empty car. I thought,
This seems to be a Trojan horse, we need to be careful.

I
radioed Tommy, “Wake up and bring the Cobb 50 to the bridge right away, we have a situation.”

“Yes
, Sir, be right there,” Tommy replied.

Twenty minutes later Tommy arrived with the Cobb and saw the
problem. The car’s motor was pointed directly at us. I said, “Tommy that could be a car bomb. What do we do about it?”

Tommy
said, “I can shoot that car from here and start it on fire. If there are any explosives in it the fire will cause them to go off.”

I said
, “Great, start shooting.”

I
f we didn’t get rid of this car it would render our recon by land impossible and we might have to conduct it by boat, which is risky because any time you are on the water you are an easy target.

Tommy chambered a round into the Cobb.

The Cobb 50
BMG is a 50-caliber rifle, shooting a Browning machine gun round that can go through steel, even an engine block. It can enter through one side of a car, come out the other side, and kill someone. The BMG has a muzzle velocity of 1,900 miles per hour or 2, 800 feet per second. The BMG bullet is ½ inch in diameter and nearly four inches long. I call it the Superman Bullet. The Cobb is a semi automatic rifle, built just like an AR 15 but bigger and has a ten round magazine.

Tommy put the Cobb on some sand bags for support and took aim at the car’s engine, squeezing the trigger, sending the superman bullet … Kaboom! The whole front of the car exploded in a massive fire ball, sending pieces of metal at us and a shock wave of wind, as we all ducked. If we would have been any closer one of us could have been killed. The sound was so loud it almost blew out my eardrums. Now we had a burning wreck sitting in the middle of the road with black smoke billowing high into the sky but at least it was no longer a bomb threat. We’d just let the fire burn itself out which would probably take most of the day.

Tommy looked down the road
through the Cobb rifle scope and yelled, “They’re coming! Everyone get ready.”

We all looked down the ro
ad and I saw six cars. Without warning, Tommy fired the Cobb again…BAM! BAM! BAM! Three shots in a row and three cars exploded. The other three cars stopped and quickly backed up to get out of rifle range.

P
eople were jumping out of the blazing cars and running for cover. Tommy shot three of them with the Cobb and I guess about nine of them got away. It doesn’t matter where you are hit with a Superman bullet, it kills you. Hitting you in the leg or shoulder it blows those body parts right off into big chunks of meat and you go into shock, bleed out, and die.

I think the ass
holes heard the explosion and thought we were all dead and this was their chance to breach our roadblock. They had no clue that we were waiting for them and ready to take out more of these creeps. They had no idea we had a Cobb 50, which can stop a car in its tracks. These guys were really pissing me off. They didn’t even know they had already lost the war; probably because they were all doped up and had no idea what they were doing, no logic, no reasoning, the dumb bastards.

Si
nce they were out the range of the AR and 308 rifles, no one else got off a shot. We all just started to laugh and Deputy Matthews shouted out, “Great shooting, Tommy!”

Tommy
had just dropped another three guys, bringing the total number of junkies over there down to less than twenty and he blew up three of their cars.

I commented to everyone, “
The question is what do we do now? Is the recon patrol still on? Should we wait? I am out of ideas and think we need to regroup before acting. We need to push that burning car off the road all the way into the water if possible. The three cars down the road we’ll just leave at that location and hope the coyotes eat the dead bodies.”

Rick heard the
explosion and drove down to the bridge. We told him what happened and that we used four rounds of BMG in the process of dropping these guys.

Rick said,
“Great shooting Tommy, you can have the Cobb 50 and all my ammo. You are a better shooter than I’ll ever be.”

“Thanks
,” Tommy replied.

I asked Rick, “
How do you feel?”

“I
am ok now. Thanks for telling the Doc what to give me because he had no idea how to treat this. I appreciate it buddy but what are we going to do now?”

“I
suggest we do nothing as there is no urgent need for us to leave the island, so we wait them out. Let’s get some lunch and think about it.”

We jumped in Tommy’s truck and drove to the bar.

I felt like something was missing, my shadow. I asked Tony the barkeeper, “Have you seen Mark around?”

Tony replied
, “No, not today.”

I got on the radio
announcing, “All security stations: If anyone has seen Mark, give me a call. I’ve got a job for him.”

Chris
, one of the security guards, clicked his radio and said, “Yeah, a job dumping bodies into the water. Ha, ha.”

I gave no reply and Rick laughed.

Mark wo
uld disappear for one or two days at a time. He wouldn’t tell anyone where he was going or what he was doing. Mark was like a shadow. He would come and go without anyone seeing him. No one paid attention to him. I was a little concerned because Mark didn’t think like a normal person and if he got some idea in his head he might act on it, even if it put him in danger.

Rick and I were e
njoying a meal of smoked fish and drinking tonic water when Tommy walked in and said, “I suggest we go back to my original plan of sniping them from the back of my truck. I suggest we hit them now. It’s 2 pm and hot as usual, so the scumbags will most likely be inside, out of the sun.”

Rick replied, “
Ok, after we eat and down a few cool drinks.”

We
decided to go snipe after 4 pm. That way the sun’s angle would be to our advantage, if we stayed on the west side of the road, near the mangrove trees.

We were
slowly driving down the dirt strip near the bushes, when Tommy announced, “Is that Mark’s bike?”

I
saw it too and responded, “Yes, maybe Mark is nearby. Get out and look.”

I drove w
hile Tommy and Robbie paced the roadway, searching through the thick vegetation. Tommy yelled, “Dad, here he is! I think he is dead!”

I jumped out of the truck
, my heart pounding, and ran about ten feet to reach Tommy’s location. Looking down I saw Mark lying in the bushes all cut up in a puddle of blood. His hands and feet were duct-taped and he had a piece of duct tape across his mouth. He was a bloody mess and had a note pinned to his chest by a knife. I recognized the knife, it was Mark’s fishing knife.

The note read
, “Feed your buddy to the fish.” I pulled the tape off his face and cut the tape off his hands and feet. They roughed him up real good, even skinning half his face off; I could see his jaw bone. He was a mess of blood and dirt with black and blue marks, and his face was swollen beyond recognition. I could hardly tell it was my poor buddy.

I
was looking at his beaten face and said, “Hey buddy can you hear me? Who did this?”

Mark
couldn’t open his eyes as they were swollen shut. I gripped his hand and assured him, “Mark you’re going to be fine, we’ll get you back to the Doc and Amy to patch you up.”

Mark
moaned in a whisper, “Jack… they got me buddy … they killed me dead. Get ’em for me.”

I
squeezed his hand as he was coughing up blood. Then Mark whispered, “Fish food.”

He gasped and took a
deep breath and went limp. They cut him all over and he had bled profusely. They left him for dead knowing we would find him. I wasn’t sure if Mark would make it with the extensive body wounds and beating he took. They probably tried to get information out of him but I knew Mark would never talk. We lifted Mark into the back of the truck and drove to the clinic as fast as we could.

I got on the radio to Amy
and instructed her, “Amy, get the Doc, we are bringing Mark to the clinic. He’s been beaten and stabbed.”

Stab wounds are the worst as you don’t know how much damage has been done internally and we had no X-ray machines or any type of scanners. I know what damage a sharp knife can do. I always carry one with me. Years ago when I lived in Ohio, a junkie broke into our house when we were sleeping. My wife and two kids were sound asleep in the house. I am a very light sleeper and the slightest noise can wake me up. I had heard something. I sat up in bed and listened carefully. I heard the stairs creaking. I knew the sounds of this house like the back of my hand since I grew up in it. I knew every creak a stair would make as my brother and I used to play hide and seek in this big old Victorian.

I put my hand over my wife’s mouth and woke her up
, holding my index finger to my mouth, signaling her to remain silent. I whispered, “There is someone in the house, call the police and be quiet.” Back in those days we didn’t have 911 so you called the operator by dialing zero and asked to be connected to the police. I didn’t have a gun because my wife did not let me keep one in the house, claiming it was safer for the kids.

Moving with
stealth to my dresser, I pulled out the bowie knife that my dad purchased for me when I was 12 years old to use when we went camping. I kept this knife very sharp and it was the only item that I had of my father’s. I recall us going to the hunting store and he let me pick out any knife I wanted; it was a big deal because Dad never bought us anything. My heart was beating a mile a minute, as I listened again. The creaking was coming closer to the top of the stairs. I slipped on my pants and quietly closed the three bedroom doors. I was now standing at the top of the stairs, out of sight around a corner. I would be able to see his foot when he reached the top of the stairs. That was when I would strike and try to run my knife through his heart or die trying. I was praying he didn’t have a gun. My dad always told me: Don’t bring a knife to a gun fight.

I could hardly
breathe and my heart was racing so fast I could hear it. I heard his steps coming up so very slowly, and then I saw his foot touch the top of the stairs. I leaped at him and screamed, plunging my knife into his chest as hard as I could. We both fell back down the stairs and I landed on top of him. My knife was stuck in his chest, all right, but not in the heart, it was in his shoulder near the collar bone, above the heart. I feared he had a gun but did not see one. Looking around I only saw a small pocket knife. He moaned, my wife came out of the bedroom and screamed. I told her to shut the hell up and go open the door for the cops, whom I assumed were on the way. She stepped over us crying while racing down the stairs. I admit; I was upset at my wife for not allowing me to have a gun in the house and it almost got us all killed. I was scared and shaking.