AAA Background Story

AAA Background Story

Reuben Rule had the auto-pilot on and Saltine was doing about five knots. The wind was not strong, but it was steady from his starboard beam. All three sails but the staysail were up and full. Music played from the cockpit speakers and Reuben felt compelled to sing along to Hey Jude, by the Beatles.

Reuben was on his second solo sail. He kept his eyes on the ocean front back and sides. His was the only boat out on these waters. It was a perfect day; the water was a deep blue as was the sky with thin fluffy clouds in the distance.

He checked his chart-plotter on the instrument panel and saw the little boat, a virtual Saltine, on the map heading for Las Perlas Islands, a group of Islands off the west coast of Panama, and all seemed well with the boat, though he had butterflies in his stomach which seemed to have taken up permanent residence. This was all new to Reuben, and the excitement of the challenge was strong, almost overbearing at times. He was alone out here. If something should go wrong, what would he do? His sailing skills were minimal at best. But… but he knew enough. He told himself he was doing fine.

Then the little panga was in view, dead ahead five hundred yards. Fisherman out here? He went to the wheel to make a course correction and then quickly went back to the instrument panel for the auto-pilot. He pressed a button that took the AP off, and hurried back behind the wheel where he corrected course to pass the little skiff by thirty or forty yards. He let out the main a bit to slow himself down. He let out the Genoa to reduce more speed. He saw no people on the boat in the nearing distance. He let more sail out of the sails and turned slightly closer to the panga, which was now on his starboard side. The boat looked empty!

Reuben turned into the wind and his sails flapped loudly. He called over the noise of his sails to the panga. “Ola! Ola! Hello!”

No heads popped up from beneath the cap rails.

He wound the genoa until it all but disappeared, and lowered the mizzen sail fully, at which point he all but ran down the steps into the cabin. He switched the starter battery to on, and hurried back topside where he warmed the engine for a count of ten and pressed the starter. The big engine came to life and he let it warm for a moment more before he pulled the wheel hard to starboard and came up toward the little boat. There were three huge 750 merc engines on the stern of the panga. This was no fishing boat. This was a smugglers boat. Reuben thought about pirates often, and he read about them whenever an article was written about an episode regarding them, for they were surely about and if these were pirates, were they hiding on the bottom of the panga?

He slid slowly past the boat. It was too late now to do anything about defending himself. He thought of his gun underneath his mattress down in his cabin and the little good it would do him there.

Suddenly a head did appear from the panga. It was a child’s head.

“Hey?” Reuben called.

Another child popped their head into view, and then another and another and another. They began to yell and wave their arms. More heads appeared. None of them belonging to an adult
One by one the children climbed the ladder from their boat up into Saltine. There were six of them, all sunburned. He brought them water bottles and distributed them about. They drank from the bottles but didn’t seem particularly thirsty.

They were all different colors of children, black and white and a few brown. Most of the kids were boys but there was one girl who looked to be the youngest of the bunch. She was perhaps six. The boys were from about nine to thirteen years old.

Once Reuben had got them seated in a semicircle in the cockpit, they silently stared at Reuben. Reuben stood up to look around his boat and the empty ocean as Saltine simply bobbed in the growing swell as the day began to reach afternoon and the winds began to perk up. He saw now that the panga was neatly tied up to the stern of Saltine with a long painter, which must have happened while he was serving the water bottles.

“Do any of you speak English?” Reuben asked. “Huh? Espanol?”

The tallest and most likely the oldest one of the children raised his hand high above his head. “I speak English and Spanish,” he said without accent. His eyes were bloodshot, as were the eyes of all the children; the only real difference between this boy’s eyes and the other children’s, this boy, though tired looking, appeared clean and well dressed. Even preppy, with khaki shorts, a golf shirt that looked new, and Top-Sider boating shoes.…

“Okay, what are you guys doing out here?” Reuben asked him.

“Well,” the boy began, “Waiting for you, Reuben…” he then pulled a gun from the rear waistband of his shorts which he aimed at Reuben’s forehead.

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