Bight

By Dave Moruzzi

Ben Bass, retired fighter pilot and owner of a high tech sailboat, continues to ply the Caribbean Sea as he did in the novel Abbondanza. His current assignment is to open a new boat charter location for the Windward Islands Bare Boat company. The adventures of Ben and his sailboat place him squarely in the center of a mad man’s act of nuclear terrorism and are intertwined with events of the past. The 16th century discovery of Florida and subsequent attempts to subjugate the pre-historic population are examined, and actually affect the deranged industrialist’s attempt at revenge.

This fast-paced story includes historic events as more than just a subplot. Sailing across the Gulf of Mexico and the western Caribbean Sea takes Ben to many interesting ports -- not all by choice. While trying to avoid being blown to bits, our captain finds solace in the charms of a beautiful and intelligent woman.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jul 25, 2014
• ISBN: 9781312383340

Book preview

Bight

BIGHT

Revision II

Copyright © 2014 by Dave Moruzzi

All rights reserved

ISBN 978-1-312-38334-0

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Common Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

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FRONTISPIECE

THE CHALLENGE OF THE CALUSA WARRIOR

Artist: Carolyn Landers

"One day while visiting the Collier County Museum, I realized how difficult it was for the Calusa Indians…known as the shell Indians…to defend their land when the Spaniards came to the New World.  They had only shells to use as weapons against the heavily armored Conquistadors and their swords. They wore little clothing which made them even more vulnerable.  It was believed that they were completely annihilated.  They are credited with the demise of Ponce de Léon as he died on an island in the Caribbean from wounds from the Calusa Indians.  Today we do see their legacy in the frequent use of their name in South Florida.  I was inspired to depict this time in our history in a simple way."

Original oil painting and comments by Carolyn Landers

[e-mail]

Prologue

It was a rout!  If it were not for the efforts of Pedro Jimenez and the free African, Juan Garrido the settlers would have never gotten their wounded admiral off the island and into the boat.  The native Calusa had come silently across the bay in their dugouts during the dark of the night.  By false dawn they had the small settlement completely surrounded, except for the sandy shore on the gulf side of the barrier island.  With the rising sun at their backs, they slowly and silently moved through the mangrove fringe to the slightly higher ground.  These natives knew better than to charge the village directly.  In the ten or more years since the first contact with the Spanish intruders, they had suffered many losses to the fire sticks.  In the process they had developed new tactics.  The native Matecumbe from the small keys to the south and the Tequesta to the east had been fighting off Spanish slavers even longer than that.  When the fierce Calusa warriors captured other natives from outside their own territory, they gained even more knowledge from their prisoners before they were killed.

From their vantage about 100 meters from the new Spanish settlement, the chief gave the signal and, as one, the Calusa raised their voices in screams of defiance, causing the roused Spanish to quickly form a defensive position.  Then, one by one, a native would step out or rise up from hiding, screaming and shaking his primitive weapons in a challenge.  When a Spaniard raised his muzzle-loaded arquebus, the bravest of native Calusa would wait until they saw the puff of white smoke, drop down to assure the metal ball would miss, then take their own sweet time with bow and arrow or war club while the Spaniard struggled to reload his weapon. It didn’t take very long before the combatants were fighting toe to toe.  Toledo steal against hafted conk shells and hard wood clubs might have made a difference if it were not for the sheer numbers of wild and determined Calusa.   Faced with mounting loses, the admiral did the only thing left to do and ordered a retreat to the caravel moored just offshore.

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Juan Ponce de Léon had first encountered natives on what he believed was a lovely island, much like those he had been passing on his 1513 voyage of discovery, albeit only much larger.  He had been given a contract from King Ferdinand to explore, settle and govern Beimini [sic] vaguely described as the lands that the great Admiral of the Ocean Seas Christoforo Colon had heard of but not yet visited.  In reality, giving him this task was the method the Spanish Crown selected to move Ponce de Léon, arguably the true Governor of San Juan Batista (now Puerto Rico), out of the way of Juan Ceron, the choice of Diego Colon who was the son of the Admiral.  Juan Ponce named this new land Isla Florida -- Island of Flowers.

This initial voyage of Juan Ponce de Léon became the first time in recorded modern history when a European walked on the continent of what was to be called North America.  Juan Ponce had traveled north and west from San Juan Batista with three ships, sailing through what is now the Bahamas to the east coast of Florida.  He landed on the 2nd of April 1513 and was accompanied by a number of his crew including a Spanish lady and a free African male.  What has not been recorded, but could have occurred had Ponce wanted to make a grand entrance, might have been the first time in eons when the modern horse returned to a land that had been home to its ancient ancestor, a three-toed horse about the size of a dog that died out in the Miocene over 15 million years ago.  Ponce’s landing was 94 years before the settlement of Jamestown and 107 years before the Pilgrims landed on and settled in the area of Plymouth Rock.

It was important to the Spanish to determine if this was indeed an island.  Finding a northern route back to the European continent would allow returning Spanish ships to avoid the hurricane belt in the Caribbean and around Cuba.  The thirty-eight year old admiral sailed first to the north and then to the south of Florida’s east coast, passing south of the small islands, until he found a passage that would let him move northward again.  He move up along Florida’s west coast and was the first European to encounter the fierce native tribe who called themselves the Calusa in an embayment that looked ideal for a future settlement.

Lack of provisions and an unfriendly attitude by the Calusa forced Ponce to reverse course and sail south on a route that passed tiny islands awash with large sea turtles.  Ponce and his sailors harvested a number of turtles and even a few seals to provision his return to San Juan Batista.  As there was no fresh water present, Ponce named these islands the Dry Tortugas. He completed this voyage of discovery without having solid evidence that Florida was an island and a northern route existed.  When he gave his report in 1514, first to the pilot-major of the Casa de Contractacion, Juan Diaz de Solis, and then to King Ferdinand, he was received with warmth, but the impact of his news was to be judged as only as important as the recent discovery of the South Sea (the Pacific Ocean) by Vasco Nunez de Balboa.

King Ferdinand designated Juan Ponce Governor and Chief Justice of Bimini and Florida, and also Captain of the Armada to pursue and subjugate the Carib natives in what is now the Windward Islands. He was also directed to settle Bimini and Isla Florida for the Spanish Crown.  As these two duties had to be handled sequentially, another ten years would pass before Ponce was able to purchase ships and supplies and sail again for Florida.  On the 20th of February, 1521 Ponce left San Juan Batista in two vessels with about150 settlers, a mixture of Spanish adventurers and Taino natives, and pigs, goats, horses, plants and seeds.  That the settlers never really had a chance never entered the admiral’s mind.  He felt he was fully prepared when he returned to the land of the Calusa on Florida’s west coast, and was in the process of finding the area for a permanent township, one with fresh water, grazing and growing land and one close to natives that he could proselytize to the Christian faith.

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Though Juan Garrido had fought hard, he had received at least two wounds from the native arrows.  Pedro Jimenez still had his sword, but lost his dagger when he expertly threw it into the throat of the man who had stuck Juan Ponce in the thigh with his shark tooth-tipped lance.  Once those that survived the attack gained the caravel, they realized that the Admiral was badly wounded and there would be no chance of returning to their sparse settlement.  They raised sail and made way for the port in Cuba where a settlement called Havana would be located.  It was in Cuba that Admiral and Chief of Bimini and Florida Juan Ponce de Léon died from his wounds.  Juan Garrido and Pedro Jimenez were probably among the few Spanish adventurers that then sailed west and joined Cortes in Mexico.

BOOK ONE: THE PRELIMINARIES

Chapter One: The History Buff

Shakespeare had it right. What’s past is prologue.  Ben Bass loved history, especially the history that dealt with how the New World was discovered.  He had a strong feeling for the plight of those that had, for centuries, lived and prospered in the western continents before the Spanish and other Europeans brought their own brand of civilization westward.  He was keenly aware that injustice and cruelty had accompanied the settlement of the New World but, while that was all in the past, the very recognition and admission of what had transpired could, in Ben’s mind, help mankind in dealing with the present.

Ben worked for Sam Ko, the owner of Windward Islands Bare Boats, a charter sailboat company operating in three Caribbean Islands.  Normally he could be found at the marina Port de France located in Anse Marcel, a cove on the northwest end of St. Martin.  Ko, a French national originally from South Vietnam, invested in the French West Indies business with the encouragement of the French government.  Now Ko owned and operated twenty four sailboats on St. Martin, Guadeloupe and Martinique.

After serving in the US Air Force, Ben got into sailing and obtained a US Coast Guard captain’s license.  His first job in the sailing industry was demonstrating sailboats for Boynton Boats, a major producer of both sail and power boats located in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.  But that job turned sour when a sailing accident occurred while Ben was demonstrating a newly designed boat, an accident that took two lives.  Ben was ultimately cleared of all responsibility but, tarnished by the events, he had become a pariah in South Florida, hence his withdrawal to the Leeward Islands and Sam Ko’s operation.

Ben would have been content to let sleeping dogs lie but, in the past year, he had become embroiled in the affairs of Boynton Boats once again when the owner died mysteriously and Sally Boynton, his daughter and heir, had enlisted Ben’s help in gaining rightful control of the company.  Ben and Sally had quickly become close friends, perhaps because they found themselves targets of Russian mafia thugs who had been hired by Sally’s uncle.  That friendship blossomed under the adversity and possibly because of it.  This was an exceptionally painful memory for Ben.  They had no sooner become lovers when Sally was killed by the hired guns.  Ben was wounded during that attack and narrowly escaped aboard the luxury pilot house ketch Abbondanza he had acquired as a result of a salvage operation during hurricane Aaron.  In the end, Ben was able to avenge Sally’s murder by closing a trap which caught a number of individuals involved in smuggling cocaine in Boynton Boats sailboats.  Sally’s uncle met his end as a result of the justifiable actions of a disgruntled employee but the real surprise came when Ben found he was named by his lover to be her heir.  Ben Bass became the owner of Boynton Boats!

Ben didn’t really want to be tied to a boat manufacturing company, no matter how successful it was.  He wanted to spend time on his own boat Abbondonza, a custom built Secure Passage 78 ketch-rigged pilot house motor sail boat that he had modified with the latest electronics and additional diesel power.   His solution was to leave the day-to-day operations of Boynton Boats in Fort Lauderdale to Tommy and John Pascal, while he spent his time in the Caribbean.  Lately, Abbondonza has become a test bed for advances in propulsion, sail navigation and control.

Chapter Two: Impure Hatred

Mike Mansavi was a stone-cold killer.  To make matters worse, he was independently wealthy as the scion of Mohammad Mansavi, an Iranian businessman who came to the United States when the former Shah Pahlavi was allowed into the US in 1979.  The Shah didn’t stay long.  His health was failing and his presence in the States wasn’t well received.  Ultimately, he ended up in Egypt where he died.  But the senior Mansavi was able to find a permanent presence in the US and began a construction company that, with his ties throughout the Mid-East, grew exponentially by building US military installations in Iraq during that country’s prolonged conflict.  Their international operations included oil exploration, and they had constructed a number of deep water exploration platforms.  Mohammad had arrived in the States with a brother, a wife and an infant son named Maklahi.  He had little time for family and his brother, Afshin, became the father figure in young Maklahi’s life.  Afshin lacked his older brother’s business sense and had an aversion to hard work.  He was a wastrel and he would have been a drag on the Mansavi family’s fortunes, if Mohammad hadn’t insisted Afshin join the US Military.

It was in Marine boot camp that the younger Mansavi honed his cruel streak.  He was a bit bigger and stronger than most men in his outfit.  This allowed him to bully the others when the training instructor wasn’t around.  Consequently, he cheated and lied his way through the basic training at the expense of his fellow recruits.  He also discovered he had a perverted proclivity for sex with young men -- the younger the better.  It wasn’t long before he secretly began to covet his young nephew.

When Maklahi Mansavi was around ten years old and in the local elementary school system, he shortened his first name to Mike.  It was easier to blend in with his American school mates with an English-sounding nickname.  Mike Mansavi was a small, sensitive boy.  He had inherited the genes from his mother and lacked the bulk and build of the male Mansavi line.  In Mike, Afshin found the perfect victim.  The boy had nowhere to turn, no other family father figure to ground him in right and wrong.  His father was never home.

During a short leave after boot camp, Afshin raped his nephew for the first time.  He continued to sodomize the young boy at every opportunity and, after years of this mistreatment, something in Mike snapped.  The recurring rapes stopped when Afshin was assigned to a Marine outpost in Afghanistan but, by then, the die was cast.  Even when Afshin was killed when the Humvee he was in triggered a roadside bomb, it gave Mike no joy.  He grew into manhood hating everything and everyone the US military establishment represented.  He began to plot his revenge.

Mike Mansavi was a sophomore in college when his father died.  By then the Mansavi Construction Company was being run by a group of trusted employees and could easily sustain itself without day-to-day leadership from Mike.  Nevertheless, he quit school and began to spend more time in the field, visiting construction sites around the world.  His dual citizenship allowed him to return to his home country for the first time, where he was looked upon as a curiosity.  Here was an Americanized Iranian with practically unlimited financial resources, and an easy passport into US military facilities around the world.

Chapter Three: Splash!

If Ben wasn’t already fully alert, the shock of diving completely clothed from the restaurant railing into the warm but night-darkened waters raised his adrenalin level to new heights.  Even before he struck the water he heard the rapid-fire reverberations of automatic weapons.  Once underwater, that most recent memory was enough to warn him not to surface where he might be expected.  He reversed course and groped his way back below the West End Café’s supporting pilings.  Being careful not to cut himself on the barnacles, Ben surfaced silently under the restaurant.  Saki Kamura had done the same and was only a few feet away, but there was no sign of their other dinner companion Harry Joans.  Using the universally recognized sign for silence, Saki then dipped his hand and indicated they should swim underwater in the direction of a cluster of beached and moored fishing boats further southwest down the coast.  Then he was gone.  Ben moved quietly closer to the outer piling, hyperventilated four deep breaths and slid beneath the water.

It isn’t easy swimming in one straight direction underwater at night without scuba gear.  Twice Ben was forced to the surface both to catch his breath and also to determine if he was making any progress towards the nearest fishing boat.  On his second surfacing, Ben felt secure enough to glance back toward the restaurant.  The only movement there was by two shadows; shadows that moved silently among the victims of the attack as if trying to identify each.  Just before he submerged for another excursion underwater he heard one of the shadows curse.