The Black Rose Legacy Ch. 05

Peering inside, I saw a tipped-over 5 gallon plastic bucket, the human waste contents spreading through the bars and across the engine room floor toward the port side as the ship continued to list. This waste was the source of the smell I'd detected earlier. Then, in the furthest corner of the cage I saw a soiled mattress, with a smudged bare foot sticking out from under it.

My heart sank - I hoped the poor soul whose foot it belonged to had pulled the mattress on top of themselves before the tank of compressed gas exploded, not the mattress being blown on top of them after they'd been hit by shrapnel. As I hadn't smelled the metallic pungency of blood, I didn't think that was the case.

Then I heard the whimpering again, and the foot moved. They were alive! I shouted, "Hang on, I'm getting you out!"

Using my bolt cutters I easily snapped off the padlock, but when I tried to open the door, it was jammed and wouldn't budge. The force of the explosion must have somehow warped the metal frame of the cage. Before I could determine how to unjam it, the person in the cage stood up, and I got my first look at her.

It was definitely a female. She was naked, sort of. Except for her head, hands, feet, and face, her body was covered with a reddish-gray fur, coarse like a wolf's. Her height was above average, probably 6'6" or more; the cage itself was 6' tall, and when she stood upright she had to hunch over. She did have a head of remarkably human-looking black hair which extended to her shoulders. Of course, her being female, I couldn't help but notice her breasts; thinly covered with fur, they were grapefruit-sized with only the prominent brown nipples bare. The size of a baby's pacifier, under different circumstances I could imagine them in my mouth.

That thought triggered something in me; I felt an ancient desire, a longing I'd never felt before, stir in me and suddenly I wanted this girl. Even stinking of diesel fumes and smudged with engine room grime, with her golden Asian complexion and deep-set eyes, I found her breathtaking. I don't know how long I stood there looking at her, but another wave crashing through the hull breach sufficed to snap me out of my reverie.

My adrenaline was already pumping just from being part of the Coast Guard action, but now a stronger, hotter fire burned in me. Rage, no, it was more than that; more like an unadulterated fury, just like Grandma Tulip predicted 24 years ago. I couldn't explain it, I didn't understand it, nor did I care. This girl was all that mattered now. I was going to save her if it killed me, and standing in the damaged engine room of a sinking ship, it just might.

Looking around, I spotted a big valve wrench with a 24" handle, weighing about 12 pounds. Perfect. Before I could pick it up, another wave hit the side of the ship, and I was once again deluged by seawater. I could hear and feel the wind and waves intensifying; needed to move NOW!

Somewhere from within the bowels of the ship I heard the loud groan of metal, most likely it was the keel being stressed by the compromised hull and the additional weight of the water. Not good, not good at all! If the Panja Bhum's keel was compromised she'd probably split and sink within minutes. But any panic I might have felt just wasn't there. Instead, I felt strong and singularly focused. All the noise around me from the waves and rushing water faded, I just heard my own heartbeat and breathing.

The wrench lay not far from where I'd dropped it; picking it up, I turned towards the cage. A sound suddenly emanated from deep within me, an angry roar so loud it echoed throughout the cavernous engine room. I wouldn't have been surprised if the Commander even heard me up on deck. Following that roar, I began to pound the warped cage door with the wrench, using a raging strength I'd never known I had.

But I didn't just pound it, no, powered by my fury I bent it, battered it, pummeled it, clobbered it, walloped it, and basically did everything in my power to completely destroy it. When I finally stopped and stepped back to take a breather, the remains of the hell-bent metal door fell off its hinges. I looked at the wrench; the jaws and upper handle were now twisted like a shopping mall pretzel. It had served me well. The girl was free!

Instead of looking fearful, she had a look of wonder on her face. Like Grandma Tulip had warned, I felt a sudden urge to couple with her, but another wave struck the ship, snapping me back to reality. We weren't out of danger yet, I needed to stay focused.

Keying the microphone of the waterproof service radio clipped to my vest, I shouted, "CPO Tran, this is MPO Heller, do you copy?" The radio frequency was one that typically only Greg and I used, so I knew nobody else was listening.

He responded immediately, "Roger, MPO."

"I'm in the engine room near the stern. Advise the Commander of the Mendocino that there appears to have been an explosion in the engine room earlier that breached the hull, and the ship is taking on water. The same explosion took out the control panel for the bilge pumps. That must have been why the crew abandoned her. She's not going to stay afloat much longer, he needs to evacuate everyone on board immediately."

I thought for a second. If anyone was to find out about the girl down here, I needed a cover story. "Also tell the Commander I found remains of a woman down here; she must have been caught up in the explosion because there's not much left."

"Roger that. What about you?"

"I'm not coming back on deck. Listen closely; I need you to bring the utility boat around to the hull breach on the port side. I'm coming out there, so I'll need you to fish me out of the water. Tell the Commander we're heading in before the waves get too rough for our boat."

"Roger that. Are you injured?"

"Negative, I'm fine." I paused for a second, this was going to be a real test of our friendship. "Also, I won't be alone. Once I get on board with our passenger, we'll need to haul ass back to Monterey. I don't want the Commander to have visibility, understood?" The radio was silent for a moment. I called out, "Greg, you have to trust me, this is something I really need your help on. Do you read me?"

There was more silence, then I heard "Copy that, MPO Heller. Bringing the boat around now."

I responded, "Roger that. Thanks."

Grabbing a life jacket out of the locker, I moved to put it on the girl. At first she flinched and pulled back, but then I instinctively did something to the girl Grandma Tulip did to me -- I reached up and gently touched the girl's cheek. "I'm taking you out of here," I told her, "I'll keep you safe, I promise. But we have to get this jacket on you, or you'll drown, OK?"

I wasn't completely sure if she understood me or not, but when I reached around her again to put the life jacket on, she didn't turn away. Once it was secured on her, I walked over to the gaping hole and used what remained of the big wrench to hammer down the jagged metal around the breach so we wouldn't be sliced open as we exited.

Once I'd finished hammering the sharp edges down I turned to find the girl, but to my surprise, she was standing right behind me, all 6'6" of her. Despite the oily smudges of dirt on her face, up this close she looked even prettier. I threw the poor wrench out of the breach, pointed and said, "We're going out this way." I took her hand, we walked up to the big hole, and jumped.

++++++++++

Once back aboard 41410, I found a dry blanket for the girl and put on my spare XXXXL-sized jumpsuit. Realizing I'd managed to actually get the girl off the ship and onto the utility boat, I was filled with a feeling of elation. She was soaking wet and shivering under a blanket, but when she smiled at me for the first time, I'd never felt so connected to a woman.

Standing at the helm, Greg looked at her, gave me a quizzical look and asked, "Don't tell me, Manny, she's the human remains you found?"

I shot back, "Yeah, turns out with some gauze and a couple of adhesive bandages I was able to bring her back to life!"

He shook his head and asked me, "Big guy, do you realize exactly how many laws you're breaking right now? Legally you're now in the same league as the smugglers!"

To calm myself I took a deep breath, and slowly exhaled. It didn't work. "Look, partner, the way I see it, I've spent 14 lonely years being a good guy. Today I was given my shot at not being lonely. Fuck the rules, I'll take my chances." We stood staring at each other for a moment. Being boatmates for as long as we had, I figured Greg was on my side. From the moment he pulled us aboard, he could have reported me at any time, but he hadn't. So far, anyway.

Just to be sure, though, I drove home my point. "I know it sounds crazy, but there's something about this girl that makes me want her. No way I want her in the hands of the Feds. They'll treat her like an animal and deport her. With me, I'll make sure she's well cared for."

When he wisecracked, "You make it sound like she'll be a damn house pet," I could feel my fury building up again.

Raising my voice, I snapped back, "Fuck you, man! Look at her! She's pretty, she's tall like me, I'll treat her like a fucking queen!"

When my voice got louder, I could feel the girl looking back and forth between us like a tennis match spectator. Greg shouted, "What the hell are you talking about, dude? You don't even speak her fucking language!"

This was true, but my fury was rising again, taking me past the point of rational discourse. I took a step towards the girl and shouted back at my partner, "Shut up, asshole! Four generations ago, my grandmother's grandparents didn't speak the same language, but here I am so they must have worked it out! Besides, you got your girl, why can't I have mine?"

I don't know if she was reading my body language or what, but the girl certainly seemed to sense my feelings. She stood up and protectively wrapped her arms around my waist. At this point she smelled like a mix of diesel fuel and seawater, but as far as I was concerned, a bottle of Chanel perfume wouldn't have smelled better.

Like the climactic face-off of a Sergio Leone movie, the three of us stood and stared at each other until Greg relented. He released the wheel and held up his hands in surrender for a moment, then grasped the wheel again.

"OK, Manny, you're right. You deserve to have your girl, even if she'll have no idea what you're saying." Then he teasingly added, "Come to think of it, you're such a bullshitter that was probably the case with every girl you've been with."

"Thank you, Greg." I sat down on an equipment bench, and was delighted by the girl putting her arms around my neck, sitting on my lap, and nestling her head into my chest. She may not have spoken English, but seemed to be empathetic to my feelings and did exactly the right thing. I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her in close. I'd rescued the girl, and she seemed to appreciate it. She was thin and definitely undernourished, but I'd fix that. With her in my arms, life was good.

The sun had gone down, the heavy overcast from the storm blocking any moonlight as the boat cut through the waves on the way back to the Coast Guard station. As Greg steered her through the choppy waters, he filled me in on what had happened topside while I was below in the engine room.

"The DEA dogs found a bunch of containers with drugs hidden amongst the cargo, but the big find was a container carrying 23 girls from Thailand and Vietnam. I spoke with one of the Vietnamese girls, and it sounds like they were being trafficked for prostitution rings in the US. They were purchased by slave traders passing through villages along the Vietnam/Thailand border, then trucked at night to Laem Chabang seaport and loaded into the freight container with some food, water, flashlights, and 5-gallon buckets for toilets."

"How long were they in there?"

"They were in the container for about three weeks; a few times a week, armed crewmen would let them out on deck while other crewman emptied the toilet buckets and gave them fresh food. It wasn't exactly first-class accommodations. They were locked in the container when the explosion occurred in the engine room. They knew something was wrong when they didn't feel the engines anymore, and they heard the crew abandoning the ship. They were frightened the ship would sink and believed they were left to die. They're aboard the Mariposa now, and will be processed by Immigration Services when they reach San Francisco."

"Any idea why the girl here was in a cage in the engine room instead of in the containers?"

"Your girl has an interesting background. The woman I interviewed said she was bigger and stronger than most of the crew, plus a lot of them were superstitious and scared shitless of her. Because of what she is, she's also very valuable."

"What do you mean 'what she is'?"

"You remember that night at Long Tot restaurant where that old lady mistook you for a Batutut? According to the girls in the container, your furry friend here is a real one. They overheard some crewmen talking about her. Somehow your girl was captured in the jungle, drugged, and kept in that cage. She wasn't on her way to a prostitution ring like the rest of them, she was being shipped to a collector's private zoo somewhere in Nevada. The asshole had paid a pretty penny for her, so the crew had plenty of incentive to keep her undamaged."

I was incredulous. I mean, with her height and all the fur on her I could see it, but the whole story was too fantastic to believe! "How do they know that?"

"Oh, she told them in the truck when they were being driven to the seaport. Apparently she speaks Vietnamese." Then to confirm this, he turned and asked the girl. "Bạn có nói được tiếng Việt không?"

She said nothing, but nodded. I told Greg, "I'll take the helm. Can you question her and find out what her real story is?" As Lewis Carroll once wrote, "Curiouser and curiouser!"

The weather was getting worse, so I cut the boat's speed as the rough waves were making things bumpy. We got a radio call from the Mendocino thanking us for our help, and letting us know that the waves had finally claimed the Panja Bhum, sending her to the bottom of the Monterey Bay's deep-water canyon.

For the next 30 minutes or so Gary sat and questioned the girl in Vietnamese. I had no clue what they were saying, but my formerly silent companion suddenly had a lot to get off her chest. A couple of times she emphatically gestured towards me, loudly declaring "Người đàn ông đó là của tôi!"

When they were finished, Gary filled me in. "As far as I can tell, your girl is about 23 years old and her name's Tuyen, which in Vietnamese means 'angel'."

That made perfect sense to me, because in my eyes she was one. He went on, "By the way, several times during our talk she made it very clear that you are now her mate. She's very aware that if not for you getting her out of that cage and off that sinking ship, she'd be dead. Plus, she says she really likes the way you look at her. I hope you're really into her, Manny, otherwise you're going to have 250 pounds of clingy infatuation on your hands."

I was still feeling very protective of my Batutut princess, so it was a good thing Greg was grinning as he said that; otherwise I think I would have thrown him overboard. Looking at her sweet, smudged face, I responded, "I don't think that will be a problem. I feel like there was a reason I was in that engine room." It was the truth, too. Something powerful that had been buried deep inside was emerging, driving my actions. All I could do was shut up and go along with it.

Greg got back to his story. "So, Tuyen used to live in the jungle outside a little border village. Her mother had been killed at the end of the war when she stepped on a landmine, so I'm guessing Tuyen had been on her own since she was about 11 years old."

My heart ached at the thought of Tuyen as a young, scared girl. Based on my own height at that age, I'd estimate she was physically about 6' tall by then, but emotionally still a little girl. Damn, that had to be rough!

Greg continued, "Late at night she'd sneak into villages and look for food to steal. One night last year a man discovered her, but instead of reporting her to the village Communist party official, he struck a deal with her: in exchange for food twice a week, she'd 'be his girlfriend' if you get my drift."

"Yeah, I get it," I replied flatly. I accepted that Tuyen had to do whatever was necessary to survive alone in the jungle, but that was in the past and not worth thinking about. Her being in my care was all that mattered now, but I still swore to myself that bastard was a dead man if I ever met him.

"The day the traffickers stopped in the village, the man immediately guessed her value and ratted her out for cash. They set a trap, caught her in a net, and caged her. Then it was in the truck and off to Laem Chabang seaport and the Panja Bhum, and now here she is."

Wow. The poor thing. Separated from everything she knew, stuck in a cage and treated like an animal, it was just wrong. Now that I'd rescued her, I wasn't going to allow her to be treated badly again.

Greg interrupted my thoughts. "So, now that we're a couple of government employees on the open ocean in a Coast Guard boat illegally transporting what's supposed to be a mythical creature who's about to become an undocumented immigrant, what's your plan, there, Master Petty Officer Heller?"

I had to admit, when I'd jumped with Tuyen off the crippled container ship I'd literally jumped into uncharted waters. In my 14 years with the Coast Guard, I'd earned a reputation among my peers as a planned and precise kind of guy. If I was going to get my new mate out of the Coast Guard station and into my apartment without being discovered, I needed to start thinking like a member of the Marine Corp, adopting their strategy of 'improvise, adapt, overcome'. I began to think out loud as I worked through it.

"When we tie up at the Marina, you and Tuyen will wait on the boat. I'll stay in my coveralls and go get my civilian clothes out of my locker; my sweatpants and my hooded sweatshirt should fit her well enough. Then I'll throw the breaker to kill the lights in the parking lot so I can get her to my car without being seen, and drive her to my place. Now that my Coast Guard days are over, I was planning on a road trip up to Portland to visit my parents. I'll just take her with me."

Greg shook his head in disagreement. "Dude, sneaking her out in a hoodie will work at night, but driving two days and 750 miles to Portland, she's going to stick out like a sore thumb if you use a rest stop or check into a hotel."

"What are you suggesting?"

"I'm suggesting that you're going to need help to get her passable. A beautician, for starters, one of which I happen to be dating."

My eyes got wide. "You really think Bian will help us?"

"I'll need to prepare her for the shock of getting face-to-face with a genuine Batutut, but yeah, she'll help. Then on your way to Portland, you'll need to swing by the Little Saigon district in San Jose and pick up some identification papers from an uncle of mine, Dr. Lanh Nguyen, although Henry is the American name he goes by.

He runs the Dong Phuong Y Dao Medical Facility there, and basically he's unofficial emperor of Little Saigon. If you need something there, he's the man to go to. But a big-ass white guy like you won't be welcome unless I introduce you."

That made sense, since the Little Saigon district in San Jose, California was the largest Vietnamese community outside of the real Saigon, although after the war it was changed to Ho Chi Minh City. "Sounds like a plan, then!"