Gus Openshaw's Whale-Killing Journal (9 page)

Dealer Dan was in such a hurry to board his brig and chase after
us, he’d completely forgot that Moses was up in the sky test-flying
the F-15. We reached Moses by radio from the Lucky Sue. If he
could hit Dealer Dan’s cruiser with just one of the missiles he
had on that thing, he’d save our poop deck, not to mention the
rest of our brig and every man and rodent aboard.
Moses reported he had no idea what any of the buttons
and stuff were for. “However,” he said, “when the oxygen mask’s
off, my feet are able to think all by themselves.”
If the thing about the feet doesn’t make sense to you,
you’re not alone.
Fortunately, for all Dealer Dan knew, Moses was the Red
Baron.
“Dealer Dan’s on the phone,” Flarq announced.
Good. Dan saw fit to negotiate.
“Tell him the Cap’s in a meeting,” Nelson said.
“What’s your problem, Nelson?” I asked. “You want to get
us torpedoed to death?”
“Dudes like that who are all about whose missile’s bigger,
they’re intimidated by that kinda fake bravado shit.”
“How do you know?”
“I’m a dude like that.”
He had an okay point. So I waited a minute to call Dealer
Dan back. Turned out it was a minute too long. No sooner did
I snatch up the phone to dial than the F-15 had begun a dive
straight towards Dealer Dan’s brig.
“Kamikaze!” shouted Duq.
“Cool,” came the voice of Moses over the radio, “My
favorite drink.”
The F-15 shot out of the clouds and towards Dealer Dan’s
cruiser like a meteor.
Moses, the crew and I realized, was sacrificing his own
neck to save us, his shipmates. There wasn’t a dry eye on our
deck. It looked like even Bob the rat was moved.
Somehow, though, the jet missed the cruiser altogether,
cracking the water a good fifty yards to Dealer Dan’s stern. A
skyscraper’s worth of splash later, the F-15 was gone from sight.
And there was no sign or reason to think that Moses got out.
Speed that plane was going, our poor shipmate’s only chance was
making it all the way through the planet and surfacing in China
or wherever.
“What a total loser,” said Nelson.
P.S. Here’s a scrimshaw Flarq did of Sybil the intern, who works
for Dealer Dan. It’d be a real shame if this picture helped the
authorities catch her. Incidentally, to those of you who’ve been
wondering what the Plus is
for in Dealer Dan’s Illegal
Munitions: they also sell ice.

“Dealer Dan’s on the phone again,” Flarq told me.
“Per the time-honored tradition, to grant us a last
request,” Thesaurus speculated.
This was seconded by the rest of the crew’s long looks.
In just a few seconds, Dan’d be in range to laser lock his
Neptune missiles on our stern. One of those babies could turn
a mountain into driveway gravel. He had twenty-four of those
babies. Plus like fifty other kinds of guns, rockets, and torpedoes.
“Tell him the Cap is in a meeting,” Nelson told Flarq.
“Sucking up to him is our last chance, Nelson,” I said.
“Don’t you think you’re taking this fake bravado business a bit
far?”
“With all due respect, Cap, no.”
“’Cause dudes like him,” I said, doing a Nelson
impression, “are intimidated by dudes who are too cool to give a
shit that they’re about to die?”
“Sometimes, yeah,” he said. “But this time, it’s cause he’s
dead in the water.”
He pointed aft. I saw that, oddly, Dealer Dan’s cruiser
hadn’t advanced at all in the last minute or so. Also, she’d begun
to cant to starboard.
It turned out that a couple of seconds before the F-15
struck the water, while still in the clouds, Moses had managed
to eject. (We’d missed seeing his chute because of the clouds,
the splash, and all the smoke from Dan’s anti-aircraft fire.) Also,
with the help of his “feet that could think all by themselves,”
Moses had paged through the F-15’s manual and initiated a
missile launch. A missile fired just when the jet struck water. On
target. It ripped through Dealer Dan’s hull.
To rescue my on-the-spot choice for Employee of the
Week without getting into Dealer Dan’s firing radius, me and
Thesaurus dispatched the remote control robot squid (we
temporarily took the plastic explosive out of its tail in case that
duplicitous Sybil had an extra detonator). Moses climbed aboard
and was able to ride the squid safely back like it was a jet-ski.
After that, we cruised the heck out of Dealer Dan’s waters. I
don’t think he’ll come after us either, for fear we’ll post his L &
L for real.
The only shadow over today’s victory is that during his
test-drive of the F-15, Moses crossed into a Tortolan No-Fly Zone
and their navy radared it and they’re cruising this way to check
it out. Plus, thanks to Stupid George, they’ve got a scrimshaw of
our brig, the Lucky Sue. So now we got those plankheads and
their Bluepeace puppet masters on our stern again.
Meantime, though, we got us a whale to harpoon.
P.S. Here’s a scrimshaw Flarq
did of Moses. Note: Moses
wasn’t actually wearing a
flight suit or a helmet, but he
wanted to be drawn that way.

No sooner’d we escape Dealer Dan than Luck paid us one of
her rare visits, in the form of a reliable report of the blubbery
bastard’s pod sighted just six leagues south!
Within seconds, our bullet-quick brig was giving us that
one-of-a-kind rush (at least as far as anyone of us except Moses
knew) of hot, salty air at high speed, and we breathed it in deep.
Every man and rodent among us was feeling the bliss, the thrill,
the whirl, of bounding over whitecaps again, distancing ourselves
from the red-taped-up ways of land, and getting back on the
hunt. And quicker than you can calculate how many miles six
leagues is, from atop the bridge, Stupid George shouted, “Thar
he’s blowing” and pointed at the geyser of mist ahead.
Beneath it was a blimp-sized gray form. Normally, it’d be
incumbent on me to verify that it was in fact the bastard through
the telescope before giving orders to the crew to go after him. I
didn’t need the telescope though. I’d already gotten the answer
from the bile flooding every single one of my cells.
On my command of “Get the bastard!” Flarq and
Thesaurus shot to the bow to lower our two motor launches
that’d serve as whaleboats—each one was packed with enough
harpoons for ten blubbery bastards, all sharpened and shined to
the point he’d see the reflection of his ugly whale face as the iron
bore into him.
Moses and I, who would join them in the whaleboats in
a few seconds, lowered the S-1 exploding robot squid into the
water. A keypunch on the remote control later, it was rocketing
towards the pod.
Nelson and Duq ran to the howitzers, our first line of
defense should Dickhead try to ram us again.
As for George, I told him to stay atop the bridge on
lookout duty. I wanted him the crap out of the way. I’d have
heaved him overboard but for fear he’d get tangled in the rudder.
“But I already sighted the whale,” he protested.
“In case we lose sight of him,” I told him. He returned
his attention to sea, with an air of pride at the importance of his
assignment.
Seated in the bow of the first whaleboat, Thesaurus
used a harpoon to signal he was ready. The waning sun gave it
the appearance of a lighting bolt in his strong arm. Within a
couple minutes, he’d be close enough to the bastard to let fly!
Even though I’d never had a blubberburger, my mouth watered
at Duq’s suggestion of them for supper. Each tick of the clock
seemed like an hour.
“Big problem,” shouted George from atop the bridge.
“What did you do now?” I asked him.
He pointed aft at the Tortolan battleship cruising our
way with her state-of-the-art missile launchers. Unless we took
immediate evasive action, she’d have us for supper.

P.S. Here’s a scrimshaw by
Flarq of one of the smaller
members of Dickhead’s
pod. If Weight Watchers did
advertising directed to whales,
this one would be the “After”
to the bastard’s “Before.”

“Battleship” wasn’t as intimidating as it sounds. After the
Korean War, the Tortolans had been PAID $100,000 to take her
off the U.S. Navy’s hands, saving America the much bigger cost
of scrapping the decommissioned dinosaur. The intimidating
part was the dinosaur-sized, state-of-the-art missile launchers now
glistening in the setting sun on her bow.
Any doubt we had about whether the launchers could
reach us yet was settled when a puff of smoke materialized on
her deck. A moment later a blur in the shape of a rocket came
screaming our way, and a moment after that there was a sound
compared to which two trains crashing would’ve been merely a
dinner bell. And that was nothing compared to the explosion
on our stern deck—I should say, what used to be our stern deck.
The entire brig reared up like a mustang, and everything that
wasn’t tied down flew aft—deck furniture, papers, tackle, bits of
rope, Bob the rat (I reached out and caught him as if I was a first
baseman).
Worse, it seemed, the spooked pod fled. There’d be no
more whaling today. The issue though was now whether there’d
be any more living.
Then the bow thumped back onto the sea.
“The engines are fine!” called an incredulous Flarq from
the bridge.
We were still motoring forward. The rest of the crew,
though, was staring back in horror at the sight of our rudder,
bobbing in our wake, looking like a giant pork rind.
Then a second puff of smoke formed on the battleship,
and another missile hollered our way. I pocketed Bob and
grabbed onto the starboard rail so tight it occurred to me my
fingers might never uncurl.
The missile splashed—and do I ever mean splashed—a
hundred yards short of us. The deck got washed over (as this
meant Duq and George got baths, not a totally bad thing), plus
we felt some concussion as the shell exploded against the sea
bottom, but overall it was nothing to write home (or blog) about.
The real news is it means we’ve managed to get out of the
Tortolans’ firing range. As we have the faster brig by plenty, that
means we’ll be able to leave her in our wake.
The problem (and does there always seems to be one,
or am I just a glass-half-empty guy?) was, cause of the rudder
business, we can only go straight. And we’re on a direct course,
Flarq has reported, ashen, for someplace called the Sea Witch’s
Claws, which didn’t sound so good. But even if was called the
Sea Fairy’s Cotton Candy Store I’d be worried. Anything that’d
make Flarq so much as blink would likely stop most men’s
hearts.
P.S. Here’s a look at
the bow only of the
Torts’ battleship—she’s
so big Flarq couldn’t
fit all of her into one
scrimshaw.