Chapter 39 - Confrontation on the Not So High Seas
At 3pm that afternoon, thirteen people arrived at the marina and boarded the Gromstov’s boat, Henric and Helstof welcoming them with glasses of Champagne. The second thing Henric did was to open a large ice chest and pull out four sea trout and a fifteen pound sea bass. He said, “This is why I came to Charleston. You don’t have to cut through the ice to go fishing, like we do in Saint Petersburg. Look at these babies. Dinner.” He looked at Slev. “Can you cook these tonight, French style? It’s enough for all of us, I think.”
Slev had been learning French cooking from Gale, in the June’s kitchen, using mostly chicken and beef. She hadn’t done a lot yet with seafood, so she looked at Gale, who nodded. Slev said, “We’ll cook ‘em, if you clean ‘em.” Everyone looked at Jinny, who was done his second glass of Champagne before anyone else had finished their first.
Guignard poked him and said, “It’s you, big boy. You’re the one who keeps telling everyone your mother used to tear the heads off fish with her bare hands, so you’re stuck with the job now.”
Jinny smiled and said, “Ok. Wait till we get out into open water. I’ll do it on the front deck so I can wash the blood and guts over the side.” Everyone smiled weakly.
Participating in the Champagne aperitifs, by proxy, were two others: Stirg and Nev. They sat a hundred yards away on the top deck, moored at the far end of the marina, because that was the only berth big enough for their ship. Stirg watched the festivities with a grim face. Nev watched Stirg and noted the grim face, which pleased him. The grimness portended action later that day; action that would include payback for the humiliation the team had heaped on Nev that day at the house, watching Roger hit Stirg in the head with his gun. Having Jinny unload Stirg’s Brusshev and throw it up to Nev standing on the dock, as the team pulled away. Payback time now, and Nev was into it. Seriously into it.
Stirg and Nev were ready to go. They would let the other boat unmoor first, and wait an hour. Charleston harbor wasn’t big enough that they had to worry about finding Henric’s boat. They were pretty sure Henric wouldn’t take his boat out beyond the jetties, into Atlantic waters. Stirg had only a vague plan in his curdled mind: wait until dark, and attack. There were no details in the plan, and he didn’t care. This was all emotion based. The idea of attack was enough to go on, and he would figure out the details later. Maybe. He had the Brusshev, and Nev had a 50. caliber Israeli Desert Eagle. That was enough.
Henric’s boat left the dock at 4pm. Gwen was tempted to do another gun check to see who had dropped theirs since brunch that morning, but she let this slide. She had her Glock, and Roger had his Sig Sauer. She bet Jinny was armed, though he would be useless in an emergency if he kept drinking at the rate he was going. As soon as Slev had come aboard, Gwen had taken her and Helstof below. “Are you armed?” she asked.
Slev opened her purse and pulled out Anna’s Walther.
“What’s Anna got?”
Slev shook her head.
Gwen looked at Helstof, who looked back.
“Dear, where’s your gun? You know the rule, until Stirg is off our backs.”
Helstof went into the stateroom and came back with a Glock and an extra mag. She held it correctly and confidently. “Is that yours or Henric’s?” Gwen asked.
“Henric’s.”
“Where is yours?”
“Home.”
Gwen leaned forward and put her hands on Helstof’s shoulders. She didn’t say anything, just looked her in the eyes.
Henric motored the boat away from the marina, out into the Ashley River. In ten minutes they entered the harbor, with James Island on their right and the Charleston peninsula on their left. Henric, Constantine, and Jinny had put together a rough itinerary for the evening: circumnavigate Castle Pinckney, go under the massive Ravenel Bridge and back, cruise the eastern shore and enter Shem Creek, sail out to the jetties, and anchor off Fort Sumter. What an evening. Everyone hoped they could accomplish this without Henric running into any of these landmarks. Gale stood on the top deck and held onto the mast. “Where are the life-jackets, where’s the rubber life-raft?” she asked. She wasn’t far behind Jinny in the getting sloshed department.
Things settled down and Henric took the boat in a slow circle around the pre-Civil War era Castle Pinckney. Not long ago the State Port Authority, which controls shipping in the harbor, and had owned Castle Pinckney for many years because it was close to the shipping channel, had given the island fort to the Sons of Confederate Veterans. The first thing SCV did was to raise funds for a large flagpole, which they erected in the center of the vegetation clogged and deteriorating fort. This portended the worst. The worst happened shortly thereafter. On a Friday morning Charleston woke up to find a huge confederate battle flag flying from the pole. This was quite a statement, and all hell broke loose. The mayor, the NAACP, the Chamber of Commerce, the Charleston Tourism Bureau, the ACLU, the president of the College of Charleston, and about 100 other political and cultural entities screamed bloody murder, which was lost on the Russians. They rather liked this patriotic and aesthetic display.
After Pinckney, Henric reached across the harbor to where the USS Yorktown permanently is berthed in harbor mud, its WWII flight deck covered with fighter jets and helicopters. Constantine saluted. Then under the Ravenel Bridge, Henric managing to avoid running into the massive concrete supports engineered to take a direct hit by a quarter-mile long container ship. They drifted there for a while, at the juncture of the Wando and Cooper Rivers, then back under the bridge, and heading along the Mount Pleasant shoreline.
As they approached the mouth of Shem Creek, Henric said, “I wanna go in. Pick up some fresh shrimp to go along with the fish.” Roger and Gwen looked at each other, knowing that Shem Creek was a narrow, busy, dead end waterway, lined with restaurants, boats, and docks. Was this a good idea?
The first casualty in the creek was a young woman on a paddle board. She decided to play chicken with Henric, and over she went, though she came up smiling. Then Henric sidled up to the NancyAnne, a Shem Creek based shrimp boat. Constantine asked if they could buy ten pounds, fresh. The guy said, “Fuck no, go buy in the fish shop like everyone else, and get your piece of shit sail boat away from the NancyAnne, she don’t like fureners or rich folk, and if you scrape the paint, you’ll pay. Unnerstand?”
The NancyAnne hadn’t seen a coat of paint in twenty years. If they touched it, they might ding a hole right through the rust that was holding it together. Gwen and Roger noted that Charleston civility didn’t extend over here to the suburbs. Jinny said to Henric, “You want me to educate him? Then we got all the shrimp we want, no charge.” Gwen gave Jinny the stand down and button it up eye.
From that side of the narrow channel Henric bounced over to the other, narrowly missing the end of the new Town of Mount Pleasant Shem Creek Park dock, after which they split and capsized a kayaking class, with the instructor staying upright but the six students prematurely executing full underwater rolls. Henric throttled back to neutral and a slow drift, with restaurants on both sides and beer drinkers looking at this big boat sitting in the middle of a waterway too small for it. Gale waved and yelled, “Everyone aboard that’s going aboard.”
Roger stood next to Henric in the cockpit and asked him, “Now what? You want cocktails delivered out here?”
Henric smiled. “Jinny, fish shack over there. Get ten pounds.”
Jinny was ready for some action. Enough Civil War and WWII history. It was Saturday night. He stood on the stern of the Beneteau and looked around, seeing that the woman on the paddle board had gotten up and was paddling towards him. He motioned her over. She still was smiling, not minding that they had dumped her, loose and easy, and built, in her shorts and tank top. “You help me get some shrimp, you come party with us tonight,” Jinny said.
“Ok, come in, I’ll go with you and bri
ng you back.”
Jinny didn’t think twice, he was over the side and into the creek. He’d never even seen a paddle board before, much less operated one. As soon as he grabbed at the board, the woman went over, again. More wet smiles. She told him they had to get on the board at the same time, her standing, him sitting. They made it upright, and headed for the shack’s dock, Jinny helping by paddling with his hands. As he tried to get off the board and onto the dock, there she went again. Up, smiles. Fun. Jinny went in to the fish shack, came out immediately, and said something to the woman, who shrugged no. They were back on the board, back at the side of the boat, with Roger looking down at them.
“Need money,” Jinny said.
“How you gonna keep the money dry, Jinny?”
Jinny waited calmly, looking up at Roger and Henric and his girlfriend, Guignard. The paddleboard woman waited calmly too, like this happened to her every day. If Jinny wasn’t mated to Guignard, he thought he could get mated with this woman. She was cool. Gwen handed Jinny a zip locked baggy with bills in it, and off they went.
When they paddled back, Jinny had twenty pounds of shrimp, him not wanting to go hungry. He threw the bag up to Roger, tried to stand up on the board, and dumped both him and the woman into the drink again. They both came up smiling, Jinny got aboard, and told her to come up. She said, “I don’t like fureners or rich folk,” winked at everyone, and paddled away. The woman was something.
They backed the quarter mile out of Shem Creek with no close calls. Miracle. By now it was almost seven o’clock, and they headed for the last objective before anchoring out at Fort Sumter, where they planned on cooking and eating and drinking all of the Krug, Billecart-Salmon, and Bollinger. Henric pointed the boat at the Atlantic Ocean, laying like a gray blanket beyond the Charleston jetties. They passed the tip of Sullivan’s Island, where Gwen pointed out to Slev the Fort Moultrie flagpole. Gwen stood on the top deck and said to everyone, “Right out there, not far, is where we found the Hunley, the submarine that sank in 1864 after attacking a ship. Eight guys were lost, turning hand cranks in the tiny sub.”
Jinny looked astern and noticed in the distance a really big cruiser coming out of the Inland Waterway behind Sullivan’s Island. This boat was huge. When Gwen was done with the history lesson about the Hunley (the Russians had noticed that Charlestonians are really big on history), Jinny said, “Henric, you need a real boat like that out there, not a toy like this one. When you gonna upgrade?” Everyone turned to look at it, and saw two figures on the flying bridge. Everyone, that is, except Slev, Gale, and Anna, who were below, starting dinner preparations. The big boat moved very slowly, with just enough weigh on it to keep from drifting.
As the sailboat approached the jetties, the mood on board changed. Facing the Atlantic Ocean in a small craft has that effect on you. Out there they saw four foot waves, and those were the small ones. They gazed at the distance line marking the vast expanse of a hostile yet inviting place. The open ocean. Henric thought, 'Someday.'
It was 7pm, and high tide. Only the tops of the jetties could be seen above the relentlessly crashing waves. Henric spun the wheel to starboard and headed towards Sumter, thinking, 'Too bad the six flags come down at 5pm, when the fort closes for the day. I wish I could see them now.' His plan was to anchor in the shallow cove between the fort island and Morris Island. In that spot you hardly could see civilization, with the fort blocking the view of Charleston, the huge bridge, and Mount Pleasant. Morris Island still was wild and undeveloped. The only structures you could see from there were the Sullivan’s Island Lighthouse on one side and the much older Morris Island Lighthouse on the other. Jinny would clean the fish, Slev, Gale and Anna would cook, and everyone else would drink Champagne on deck.
At 7:30 Roger and Constantine dropped anchor. They could see a container ship in the distance, heading towards the jetties. The ship, the lighthouses, and the fort were the only man-made objects in sight. Jinny carried the ice chest with the fish in it, and a cutting board, up to the bow. Folding deck chairs came out of storage lockers and were set up in the stern. Slev and Gale decided to poach the fish and shrimp together in a Provencal tomato sauce, loaded with shallots and garlic. Fifteen chairs and fifteen people maxed out Henric’s boat, but they fit ok, the wine and conversation flowing. Jinny put his back to the cockpit so the others could not see him cut the heads off the fish with a knife rather than tearing them off with his hands, the way his mother used to do. He looked back at the group once, and again saw the large cruiser across the harbor, still moving slowly. Jinny thought if the boat was heading out to the jetties, it should have been through them by now. He went back to the blood and guts.
As a kid, Roger had fished this spot many times, and loved it for its feeling of remoteness. Instinctively he knew they had to watch the tide because it was a shallow anchoring. They had two hours before they had to get out of there, which he mentioned to Henric. Enough time for a great meal, and to drink the boat dry.
Soon the fish fillets went into one large pot of tomato sauce on the propane stove, while sliced potatoes and carrots simmered in the same tomato sauce in another. It would take three separate, twenty minute poachings to cook all the fish in the one pot. Anna and Slev debated the timing of the vegetable stew and fish, and how to keep the first two batches of fish hot while the last one cooked. Up on deck Henric and Constantine served caviar on soda crackers. Unlike the Russian crackers Roger and Gwen had eaten in Saint Petersburg when they met this crew during the Hermitage caper, these American crackers did not appear to be made from finely ground sawdust held together by suet. From below Anna, being the youngest of the group, asked if the caviar was from sustainable sources and harvested using an environmentally friendly method. Pater picked up one of the large tins and looked at the label. He read, “Guaranteed to be from sustainable sources, and harvested using an environmentally friendly method. The fish never felt a thing, had many babies, and lived happily ever after.” Anna took the ribbing good-naturedly.
In an hour, Anna announced dinner was ready. Half the troupe went below to sit at the galley table, while the other half stayed on deck to eat at individual folding tables. Roger pulled the stoppers on four more bottles of Krug. The poached trout and sea bass was served on china plates, with the vegetable stew on the side. Roger hardly could wait to show everyone how well Champagne went with this tomato based seafood dish. Champagne is a magical wine. Roger, Gwen, Henric, Constantine, Helstof, and Jinny were on deck. Jinny looked at his plate and asked Helstof, “Where’re the heads?”
“What heads?”
“The fish heads. I gave them to you. My mother always used them in her stew.”
“Don’t worry, we saved them for you. We have them in baggies. You can take them home and make all the fish stew you want, tomorrow.”
This placated Jinny, though not Helstof, who would see that they got lost in the shuffle at the end of the night, back at the marina. Jinny had to admit this was a very tasty dish, even without the heads, and he liked the bass better than the sea trout. He figured he could do four plates of this stuff, but his problem was getting to the third and fourth plates without incurring Gwen’s evil eye. He knew she wouldn’t begrudge him seconds, but thirds and fourths were not part of her Emily Post training, so he would need something to distract her. He looked up from his empty plate at his empty glass, and then over Helstof’s head to the water, where he became distracted from formulating a distraction. In the distance, about a quarter mile away, he saw the big cruiser, and it wasn’t pointed at the jetties. It was pointed at them, and it was moving forward.
Intuition made him rise, and a remote sense of fear banished the nicely escalating Champagne buzz. The others picked up on this like Cro-magnons did, sitting around the fire, when one of them heard something moving out in the darkness. Gwen’s eyes flickered into alertness, and where Gwen led, Roger followed. They, too, rose and looked
across the water. The sun was getting low in the west behind them, and it glinted off the windshield of the cruiser’s flying bridge, behind which they could see two figures. Now the others turned to look. Plates and glasses stayed on the table, while emotions rose in their throats.
Gwen said, “Stirg.”
As soon as she said this, they heard the muffled roar of the two big Caterpillar diesels in the cruiser increase. The bow of the cruiser rose, and so did the waves on either side. It would take no more than a couple of minutes for it to close the distance on the sailboat. The ebb tide had partially swiveled Henric’s boat on its anchor line, and it now presented its flank to the bow of the approaching cruiser.
For a moment everyone was stunned by the realization that Stirg was not out for an evening cruise; nor was he out to socialize with the Junes and their associates. This was an attack. Then thinking flared, orders were issued, and muscles contracted. Roger computed tidal flow, water depth, and boat drafts. Gwen’s first thought was about Anna. She went to the steps that led down into the cabin, saw Anna at the stove, and said, “Anna, stay below.” The tone of command alerted those below to something other than normal social order above, and they sensed trouble. Jinny climbed out of the cockpit and jumped to the upper deck, where he held onto the mast. Helstof was the first one to go for her gun, and Gwen followed her lead. Constantine and Henric remained seated, behind the cognitive eight ball.
Roger finished his computations and realized their boat would do much better in shallow water than Stirg’s boat. He wondered if Stirg knew about the shallows here, and how much his boat drafted. He hoped not.
Roger said to Henric, “Start the engines.”
The cockpit was jammed with tables, bottles, plates, glasses, hats, and personal bags, and Constantine cleared a path to the control panel. Gwen went down into the cabin to confirm what those eating there suspected: trouble. Slev and Guignard were in the cabin, pulling guns from their purses, while Jinny watched the commotion and listened from the top deck. He watched the approach of the cruiser and saw that Stirg had the engine throttles wide open. The sound was loud now, a roar, and the bow waves were impressive. Gwen, Guignard, and Slev reappeared in the cockpit and looked quickly at the attacking boat. Everyone on deck came to the same conclusion at the same time: Stirg was crazed and he intended to ram them. He had a clear shot at the flank of their much smaller boat.
Stirg said to Nev, “You ready, ‘cause this is gonna happen?”
“I’m ready. Give it to them.”
Nev picked up his Desert Eagle from the shelf above the control panel and racked the slide. Stirg kept his left hand on the wheel and his right on the dual throttles, in their full forward position. His mind repeated over and over, 'Right the wrong. Right the wrong.' Nev wanted to see all of them in the water, the babes not wearing bikinis now, the babes scared shitless, hanging onto pieces of their boat. Little pieces. He wanted to see Jinny and Roger swimming around like fish in a barrel. That’s what Nev wanted. He wanted to shoot fish in a barrel. Four hundred yards to go, four minutes to impact.
Roger dove into the cabin and returned with a large kitchen knife, a few pieces of shallot clinging to the blade. “Jinny, cut the anchor line.” He tossed the knife to Jinny, who caught it by the blade and scrambled to the bow, slashing the inch-thick nylon rope. Blood dripped from his hand onto the fiberglass deck. Roger picked up two tables and threw them overboard, making a path to the controls. His hand found the ignition key at the same time that Henric’s did, and together they turned the key. The engines fired. Constantine threw everything else in the cockpit overboard. The six people who had been eating above deck stayed there, with Jinny near the mast. Gwen kept everyone else below, especially Anna.
In the few seconds after Roger had computed the tidal flow, water depth, and relative boat drafts, he had figured out his maneuvering tactics. His mind worked like that of a ca. 1800 British sea captain engaging a French man-of-war on the Toulon blockade: my boat position, his boat position, wind, tide, firing distance, damage objectives. His hand jammed the single throttle lever forward while he spun the wheel hard over. He had his flank to the approaching cruiser, which was bad. He had to rotate a quarter turn to present his bow to Stirg’s bow.
Christ, he’d turned the wheel the wrong way. The boat started pivoting in a direction that would require a three quarter turn to get its bow pointing the right way. Roger jerked the throttle back into full reverse and spun the wheel all the way in the opposite direction. He had lost them time. Would he make it now, or would Stirg ram straight through their beam?
Gwen saw her husband’s tactics and his mistake. Must be all that Champagne. She saw his correction, and realized it would take time to bring the bow around. She wasn’t sure if they would make it, but she decided to act as if they would. She realized Roger wanted to present as small a target as possible to Stirg’s cleaving bow. If they didn’t make it, Stirg would plow through them, and it was over. The mass and momentum of the cruiser was huge. Gwen banished this thought and replaced it with an analysis of what to do if they did make the turn. Three seconds later she acted, calling to her friend.
“Jinny, get all the rope. All the big rope.”
He still had the kitchen knife in his hand. At the mast, watching the drama, he saw halyards all around him leading to the top of the mast, and began slashing. As they were cut, the weight caused one end to disappear upwards where they ran through their pulleys, high on the mast and yardarm, and then fell back to the deck. In thirty seconds Jinny had a pile of thick rope at his feet, and Gwen gave him a thumbs up.
The engines of the approaching cruiser roared, and the engine of the sailboat rumbled. As the sailboat spun and the cruiser bore down, there was nothing to do now for all the players but watch. Stirg and Nev understood Roger’s tactic. They wanted his flank, he wanted his bow. But Stirg had had his throttles wide open the entire attack approach, and there was no more speed for him. Neither could Roger increase the rate of his rotation. Gwen hissed at Helstof. The two women were the only ones on deck with their guns. She racked the slide on her Glock, and nodded to Helstof, who followed suit, gun pointed towards the deck, held in both hands. Anna stood on the steps to the cabin, looking out into the cockpit. She couldn’t see her grandfather’s boat, but she knew what was happening, and saw the women holding guns. Oh, god, no.
Thirty long seconds passed, and then Roger knew he would win; if you could call it that. He saw that Stirg would hit them head on, bow to bow, instead of on the side of their boat. They would get hit, but not cleaved in half. Now his challenge was to avoid a perfect knife edge to knife edge, bow point to bow point collision. He needed to turn his bow just slightly so the cruiser would hit a glancing blow and run down the side of their boat. Gwen saw this too, and said to her husband, “Well done.”
That was all that could be done in the way of maneuvers. Gwen ducked her head under Anna’s arm and yelled into the cabin, “Hold on!” When she turned back, the cruiser’s bow loomed over their cockpit, and then it hit. BAM. But it hit the glancing blow that Roger wanted, not the direct cleaving blow that Stirg and Nev wanted. The sailboat violently rocked to the side, and the sound of fiberglass scrapping on fiberglass dinned their ears. Through the motion and the sound, Gwen yelled at Jinny, “Throw the rope, all the rope, into their screws, into their rudder.” She picked up the sailboat’s stern lines that were coiled in the corners of the cockpit and detached them from their cleats. She held these high, and motioned to Jinny how she would throw them into the foaming water at the base of the cruiser’s stern as it passed by. He smiled and nodded. Leave it to Ms Gwen to think of this.
And that’s what they did. She and Jinny threw a mass of rope at the stern of Stirg’s boat, and watched it slip down into the boiling wake. They waited for the screeching, scrapping sounds of the colliding sides to end, and watched as a gap appeared between the sterns
of the two boats. Gwen counted one, two, three, four, five six….The sounds of scrapping fiberglass were replaced by a louder, harsher, metallic grinding sound, which was music to Gwen’s and Jinny’s ears. It was the sound of Stirg’s engine transmissions tearing themselves apart, caused by the mass of rope that had wrapped itself around both of the cruiser’s props. The props stopped turning, the shafts stopped turning, but the engine kept spinning the gears in the transmission. Almost instantly the gears were turned into a pile of metal filings.
Not only were Stirg and Nev not familiar with this area of harbor shallows, sitting in the shadow of Fort Sumter, but their naval warfare tactics stank. Their momentum carried them towards the shore and shallow water. The sailboat moved in the opposite direction with the ebbing tide, towards the open harbor waters. The sound from the cruiser of metal eating itself was replaced by the sound of silence. The engines had shut down, and the rudder was locked in position by the mass of rope. Twenty seconds passed, thirty seconds passed, and then everyone on both boats heard the sound that boat operators hate above almost all others; the sound of a boat’s hull scrapping on the sand and shell of the bottom. The big, heavy cruiser plowed a V into the harbor bottom three-feet deep and 100-feet long, at which point its forward momentum stopped. The forward momentum of the two men on the flying bridge did not stop, but continued rather dramatically. Stirg went completely over the windshield, landing on the deck six feet below, shoulder and hip hitting simultaneously and hard. Nev, standing in the corner of the flying bridge, also went over the windshield, but he dropped a full ten feet to a lower deck that wrapped around the side of the boat. He landed in a sitting position which violently compressed three of his lower lumbar vertebrae. Slowly he lay back, groaning loudly.
Those in the cockpit of the sailboat saw this. Gwen was glad Anna did not. Roger pulled the engine throttle lever back to the neutral position and spun the wheel hard, bringing the boat around and into a motionless position. They were safe, and relatively undamaged. Gwen motioned those below deck to come up the ladder. Anna, Selgey, Bart, Gale, Peter, Pater, Guignard, Slev, and Richard got to see what the hell had been going on for the last twenty minutes. They saw the Romanov’s Revenge sitting motionless, 300 yards from the shore of Morris Island. Stirg lay on the upper deck and Nev lay on the lower deck. The only sound was that of the sailboat’s idling engine. They watched. Anna watched. Slev put her hands on Anna’s shoulders and held her. Minutes ticked by. Anna didn’t say anything, her face expressionless. Then there was movement on the big boat. Nev reached out, grabbed the handrail, and pulled himself into a sitting position. Then he pulled himself to his feet, put his hands to his lower back, and closed his eyes. Twenty seconds later he opened his eyes and looked across the water at the sailboat. He walked forward towards the bow and saw Stirg four feet above him, lying on his side. Slowly he climbed up and knelt by him. He said something, and got a reply. He took hold of Stirg’s arms and pulled him to a sitting position. More words. Then Stirg slowly turned around and looked at the sailboat. He looked and looked, and then said something to Nev. Nev stood up and got his arms under Stirg’s armpits. He pulled Stirg to the standing position, and let go. Stirg stayed upright, staring across the water. So did Nev. There were no gestures on either side. Roger put the engine in gear and the sailboat turned away from the massive granite blocks surrounding the fort, out to the open harbor. The confrontation on the not so high seas was over. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.