Dick's Island

DICK’S ISLAND

Mark Raymond Corrigan

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

SMASHWORDS EDITION

DICK’S ISLAND

Copyright © 2017 MARK RAYMOND CORRIGAN

Cover Design & Interior Layout: Laura Shinn Designs

http://laurashinn.yolasite.com

This Book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. The ebook may not be resold or given way to other people. If you would like to share the book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Published also in Audio Format:

REMARKABLEPUBLICATIONS®

A subsidiary of

The Corrigan Company LLC

393 Caesar Road

Harpers Ferry, West Virginia 25425

DICK’S ISLAND

Fantasy fiction written in a historical period of the early 1980’s, which adds the flavor and the color of the times without the restrictions of reality. Have you ever thought of living on a tropical island or even owning one? Dick McLaw not only owns his Island Paradise, his Island is the smallest nation in the United Nations just 150 miles off the shore of Miami Florida. Like in the original Garden of Paradise, there is evil that first threatens him and the people who live on Dick's island. However, killing a prehistoric shark that should have been extinct 350 million years ago, only opened the door to an even greater threat. Finding a 10-year-old Soviet Union Space Vehicle buried just off his island with Cosmonauts still alive in it pulls him and his tiny Nation into a major International Confrontation that could start World War 3.

The Russians wants its Space Vehicle back, the United States does not want the Russians to have it back, and China wants to steal it and use it to catch up in their own outer Space Exploration and Development Program. Dick may have won this island in a poker game but now he faces the biggest poker game of his life where the winner could take it all.

Chapter One:

EVIL IN THE LAGOON

It was mid morning as I found myself working the lagoon to catch some Tiger striped shrimp. For some reason this lagoon had an over abundance of them in tail lengths between 6 to 8 inches which is a lot of meat for anyone who like shrimp as much as I did.

I could catch enough shrimp for myself, supply Jennie's bar and pay my bar Bill in less than an hour. I did not need the money as I had given up working for the man long time ago. I technically owned the island if one could really own such a thing.

I had a good streak of luck in Vegas and I had been invited by the Casino's Management to sit in on a high dollar poker game. My luck continued to hold and when one of the players tapped out, and he offered to sell his Island for 100 Grand to stay in the game. He claimed it was worth a Million dollars and he wanted to buy it back after the game.

The document he presented had the Island’s Registration Numbers on it. The Casino’s Management verified who the man was and he even called the Island’s Registry Authority to confirm the man’s ownership. I was one of the big winners in the Game and took the Deed on the Island to hold as collateral against the One Hundred Thousand Dollar Note he signed. Needless to say, the man continued to lose and he was not able to raise the money to buy it back as he had agreed to do.

The Island was just bigger than a speck on some maps. It was over 2 miles long on the base of a triangle with the other two almost equal sides of nearly a mile. The top end of the triangle looked like a hole had been drilled slightly off center into it to form this lagoon and the Beach House on that lagoon was my home now.

The total number of people permanently living on the island was a little over 750 depending upon if Mama King had her baby or not. It was not overdue yet and people were not concerned. The baby would get here when it was supposed to.

Most of the people on the Island were involved in capturing rare and exotic Tropical reef fish that lived all around it and in this lagoon. There were normal fishermen, who fished the island waters and sold fresh fish in the town’s Market for your dinner table.

The Carmine Brothers were involved in the Commercial Business of flying live Tiger Shrimp to Miami and the Florida Keys. I had set up an Island business of shipping frozen shrimp anywhere in the world.

No one on the Island had to work very hard and everyone respected each other’s little business to make a living, so most of the problems occurred when some of the North Americans came down and stayed too long. Dick McLaw’s position as owner of the Island made him the island's Sheriff and the Justice of the Peace. By holding both Offices, he could catch them try them and punish them within a few hours after anyone had commit a crime.

The laws on Dick’s Island were simple as they had been years ago when Moses came down from Mount Sinai. Dick had the 10 Commandments carved on boards from a ship's bulkhead and hung in the Town Square. Nothing more and nothing less ruled his Island.

There were two churches on the Island. One was Catholic and the other one was a Mission Church of Mormon Later-Day Saints. Although they had different opinions as to how one should get to heaven, they both accepted the Rules of the Island as Law.

The Island had an Airport with a 3000-foot paved runway. Three airplanes were based on the Island. A Mooney 21 belonged to a Doctor Nelly Brown, the Carmine Brothers had an old Fairchild C-119 Flying Boxcar and I had a twin-engine Beechcraft F-90 Model King-Air. There was not that much traffic at the Airfield to support a Fixed Base Operator on the Airport.

However, the Texaco distributor, who also ran the island's Marina, was willing to put an underground tank for avgas, once I agreed to pay for a full tank. The tank was a Test Model made of the new type of plastic that would control condensation and ground water seepage and this would be an ideal location to prove its worth.

Dick came up from 30 feet with three nice Tiger Shrimps and he put them in his live bait box on the back of his 40-foot wooden Cabincruser. Dick has seen what could best be described as a marching herd of perhaps 700 to 1000 large Tiger Shrimp on the bottom of the lagoon and they had not deviated from their direction of travel when he has scooped netted the three he had gotten. He would like to get three more just as easily. He took a deep breath, he dove right back down into the herd of marching Tiger Shrimp, and he netted three more just as quickly. He had what he wanted and was on the way back up when a huge dark shadow passed over him. There was no mistaking it. That shark was now cruising in the lagoon looking for something to eat.

Every once in a while, when the tide was high enough, one of these big bastards would glide over the reef and come into the lagoon. Then when the tide went out the shark could not find his way back out into the open sea so be became trapped here. Since God made the shark a perpetual eating machine, that shark would have eaten anything he could have caught.

Depending on how long that shark had been in the lagoon would be an indication of just how hungry he was. Dick had seen where sharks had eaten just about anything, old tires, license plates, gunnysacks full of junk, wooden toys and even ice coolers.

Dick needed to get out of the water as quickly as possible before that shark found him. He would have had about half of his breath of air left in his lungs if that shark scare had not given him an adrenaline rush that already burned most of it. Dick swept his head and eyes around trying to locate the shark but he could not see where it went.

Dick was letting his body rise slowly to the surface without kicking or flipping his fins as that might alert the shark to his presence. He was just a few feet from the surface when he saw the shark heading directly towards him. He would not have time to get in the boat. His only chance was to get in between the boats twin outboard motors and they might offer some protection to hold off this monster. As the shark bore in on him, Dick found himself behind the right outboard propeller but completely out of breath. The shark bore in on him looking for any easy meal but the shark bit into the propeller. Having missed his change of an easy meal it turned away just long enough to allow Dick to reach the swimmer's ladder and he jumped directly into the boat just ahead of some unbelievable shark’s jaws that had latched on the top of one of the Outboard Motors. The shark ripped it from its boat mounts as it took it with him in its mouth as it fell back into the water. Fortunately, the Outboards were mounted above the waterline so his boat was in no immediate danger of sinking.

Dick picked up the boat’s Gaff hook and he watched for the shark to make another pass. When the shark did, he was still carrying the outboard motor in his jaws actually chewing on it as if it were a tough piece of meat.

The shark passed on one side of the boat and then the other. Each time he did, he was closer to the boat’s rail and each time the engine housing of the Outboard Motor was being crumpled and crushed as if the shark was really enjoying eating it.

Maybe the bastard would swallow the damned thing then he might think he has some real food in his guts and that will give him what he deserves, a real bellyache. Dick thought.

On one pass along the side his boat the bottom half of the Outboard had fallen off so the shark had only the Engine’s cover that he was shredding into his stomach. Once the shark had dropped the motor housing cover or had eaten it, he was back for dessert and nothing looked more appetizing for the moment than Dick himself did.

Dick had a 30/06 rifle in the cabin and he felt there were few living things on this earth that could not be stopped dead, when it was hit by one or more of its bullets. Dick climbed up higher in the boat’s Conning Tower where he could see all around his boat. He was ready except he could not remember if the optical illusion caused when you looked into the water was higher or lower than where the shark was actually located. The shark was making it easy for him as the shark’s dorsal fin was riding high above the water making the shark’s location a perfect target.

Dick felt that he needed to kill that bastard with a brain shot. Leading the shark by 3 feet, he fired his first shot. The water erupted as the shark came out of the water dancing on its tail like a Marlin Sailfish did when he first got hooked on the bait. Dick jacked another cartridge into the chamber and fired at the shark hitting it right behind and above its eye. The shark sounded deep into the water. However, the depth of the lagoon would only allow him to go so deep and as the shark moved off, Dick could see that the shark was hurt and hurt bad. He had gotten two lucky shots into it and Dick thanked God.

Dick started the other outboard and he was able to make it safely back to his Boat’s dock. That narrow escape with the shark had gotten to him more emotionally than what he was willing to admit at first. Now that he had the chance to think about it, he realized just how nasty these creatures really were. Dick always thought of sharks as rats of the sea and he hated rats with a passion.

When Dick first arrived at the Island before he chose to make it his home he paid for a big rat hunt. Now the US dollar was still big money to most of these people so his bounty of a dollar a rat, no matter what its size, had become a great financial incentive and that reword caused everyone on his Island to hunt those rats with a dedicated vengeance. They dug into trash heaps and thousands of other hiding places a rat might be, to find them and kill them.

A baseball bat or a heavy club was an ideal weapon when dealing with rats. Batting Rats was a game you did not want to strike out in. You never knew what a rat would do when he was cornered. Most of the damn things would turn on you and they would come out fighting almost flying towards your face. You wanted something that would stop them, sometimes in mid-air like a high inside fastball. After a week of steady hunting and batting rats there were no more four legged rats on the island.

The next morning a 90-foot monster lay dead on the beach in the lagoon. The shark must have wash ashore early last night as its skin had already turned rubbery from the heat and thousands of crabs had come for the feast as ants would come from their Ant Hills for your picnic lunch. A shark’s skin is not easy to cut even for hungry crabs. They found it easier to eat him by working on that shark from the inside out. Many of the island’s people stopped in to talk to Dick about the fish since he had killed it and it was his fish, if he wanted it. Dick told them he did not want it and he knew the Island people wanted to cut it up quickly before the meat spoiled. Dick told the island committee they could have the fish, as long as he received the jaws with all its teeth, as that would be his to claim by right of the kill.

The young men yelled and jumped in the air so that the people on the beach knew that Dick had given them permission to cut it up and take as much of it as they wanted. Dead things did not stay fresh very long in the heat down here on the Tropical islands and the people were eager to get what they could before the crabs did and before the meat would go bad.

The Old Man as that was what all the people called him sat down on the steps of Dick's house, as he was interested in the kill of this monster and the story behind it. Dick could count on the Old Man to tell his stories the same way, every time. The Old Man on this Island was just like the Story Tellers of the North American Indian Tribes. The oral history of the Tribes and the Legends of great events and great Tribal Leaders were kept alive though the telling of such stories from one generation to the next.

The Old Man would tell the children of the legend Dick McLaw, as he was a true life, hero who fought and killed this mighty shark. Dick McLaw did not need anyone to claim that he was a hero as he had done it many times when it really counted and other people’s lives were at stake.

He had been a Green Beret when it was first formed based on President Kennedy's orders to the US Army to create a highly Trained Unit to deal in Counter Insurgency in developing Countries where the Communist were attempting to over through unstable governments especially in South East Asia and in South Vietnam.

Dick had been in the first Green Beret Trading Unit, the first Platoon, first Squad and he finished number One in his Class. Those who were setting up and running the first Green Beret Training Unit did not have a complete idea about what the President wanted these men to be trained to do and no one wanted to admit they did not know. That meant the men of the First Green Beret Class had to be given more than enough physical conditioning. They learned to fight with just about every weapon produced in the world. They had to be taught, how to survive as individuals and as the Basic Unit called an A-Team. They had to know as part of a natural instinct to deal with every possible battlefield contingency. Learning to do it well was not good enough they had to be close to being a perfect fighting machine as sharp as a razor’s edge as their instructors could make them. The men of the first class got more of everything and they continued to move forward until each man who was assigned to the first class represented the finest warrior the United States Army could produce.

The Army had taken these well-trained men and continued to make them better if that was at all possible. The men never stopped training and they continued to improve their physical fitness by running several miles and doing the Army’s daily dozen exercises as they went through the Vietnamese language school at Monterey California. After eight weeks of Language School, the men were immediately shipped to South Vietnam.

The Army had attempted to disguise their arrival by having these Green Berets dressed in three piece suits as if they were regular businessmen. However, these men did not fit the physical image of any normal Businessmen from the United States no matter what clothes the Army had dressed them in. There is only so much that could have done to hide a well-trained physically fit military fighting man.

The men disappeared as if they had never been in Siagon. They were sent into an area where the Mekong River came into South Vietnam and then spread out into hundreds of smaller rivers and backwaters known as the Mekong Delta. The North Vietnamese through their Vietcong had already pacified the area into their way of thinking and now the Westerners from America where trying to take it all back somehow for the government in Saigon. This effort must have been seen as a joke, to the North Vietnamese and their Viet Gong as there had not been a representative from the Saigon Government down there in years.

The area was control by the VC Province Chief, who had his Police Force, and his Army all wrapped up in one. They not only controlled the area, they knew just about everything that went on in their Province and what every Green Beret was doing. An A-Team of Green Berets was seen as nothing more than fresh meat for the VC to feed on under the illusion of the Siagon Government’s protective mosquito net.

The North Vietnamese and the VC believed that the Americans would come out into the jungle for a few weeks and then they would return to Saigon after reporting that they could not find any Vietcong. The orders from the VC Province Chiefs were to just leave these Green Berets alone and do not talk to them. They will go away just like the French did and all the rest of those who came from outside the country of Vietnam. But these Americans did not leave as predicted. They had given the Americans too much time to leave and they gave them more than enough time to build themselves a bunker from which they could defend themselves and extend their defensive perimeters into effective killing field to engage anyone who might attack them.

The Vietcong spies who had seen what these Americans had built were impressed with the ideas and the use of different types of materials that the Americans had used that no one had ever seen before. The Americans had used their Helicopters to fly in runway interlocking steel plates and these steel plates had been used to re-enforce the walls and ceilings in their bunker. The Americans had placed these steel plates on the outside and inside of their walls with 2 feet of earth packed in between them. None of the VC’s rockets would be able to punch their way through it. The gun ports were very small but they were able to cover a great deal of the battle area in front of them. They could control the leveled off distance that had been extended out from their bunker into open spaces leading up to the bunker. These gun ports were designed so the Americans could shoot and hit anything from the ground level to over a man's head.

The Americans had hired a large number of local workers and paid them well to create this level ground for distances of over 400 yards completely around their bunker when they were double reinforced A-Team they had more than enough fire power to hold off just about any size unit that would attack them.

The only way that anyone could effectively shoot inside that bunker would be to jam the barrel of a gun inside the gun port and then sprayed bullets inside the bunker for as long as they could. What the local Vietcong did not realize, without a place to hide, anyone who tried to reach the bunker would be shot dead before he even got there.

Having established a secure home away from home the Green Berets expanded their circle of influence beyond the local village. To accomplish that the Green Berets had to walk through the jungle making them moving targets for the VC. As much as the Green Berets had been trained and prepared for this assignment there is nothing like the real thing when it happened the first time the A-Team was ambushed by the VC.

Dick had been the second Green Beret in the Main force behind the Point Man when it happened. The man ahead of him froze in his tracks when bullets started flying and Dick jumped up to push him down and Dick received his first Purple Heart for doing it. Dick would rather not have been first in that class as that knotted scar below his left knee that had a way of reminding him that he was not bulletproof every time the weather changed.

While Dick was recovering from that wound, the Green Berets perfected the Art of turning a VC ambush into a pile of dead Zips. All it took was guts and the Green Berets had plenty of guts to go around. The first thing they had to do was charge and attack the VC who were shooting at them rather than take cover where the real killing zone was located and well booby trapped. Jumping off the trail and using it to hide behind only insured your death.

In the greater scheme of things, attacking in the direction of the first shots fired in an ambush was actually the weakest link in the VCs ambush and that would result in the fewest casualties. During one such VC ambush, Dick picked up his second and third war wounds as he had continued the assault on the VC position and it was Dick’s hand grenade that took them out.

With those three combat wounds Dick had already earned the right to go back home but he chose to stay as he believed that he could help stop the North Vietnamese from supplying the local VC with weapons and explosives to carry on the war with the Central Siagon Government.

Most of these Military Supplies would be coming down the many branches of the Mekong River’s Delta. The best way to stop that traffic would be to stop every boat that came down River into their area. Those boats that were just carrying food to market were allowed to proceed. Those boats carrying Military Supplies to the local VC were stopped permanently.

This was like looking for a needle in the haystack as every Military Supply boat looked the same as every other boat and it took time to check them all out during the daylight hours. The A-Team became so effective in stopping all these boats carrying Military Supplies that the VC only sent them downriver at night.

The A-Team was still faced with separating the Military Supply Boats form all the other boats without letting the VC know they were waiting for them. They used several extraordinary swimmers who could lay and wait for the Military Supply boats to come down River. When a night boat was spotted on the river, two Green Berets would swim after it with simple Metal Detectors that could be bought at a Civil War Relic Hunter’s Hobby Shop. These Metal Detectors were surprisingly good for the money. If they got a hot reading, the rest of the team moved in to take the boat over. If the night boat was clean, the Vietnamese would never know they had been checked and allowed to pass through.

If the VC wanted to fight when the A-Team tried to stop them that was okay too, as it would give the A-Team a good reason to fire their weapons and improve their methods of interdiction.

The A-Team's Primary Mission was to Win the Hearts and Minds of the Vietnamese people. They provided free vaccinations’ and medical care. They dug safe fresh water wells and offered agricultural suggestions to improve the amount of rice production. They opened a free school for anyone who wanted to attend. Men, women and children of all ages were taught the basics of simple mathematics that would allow them to know if the Rice Buyers were cheating them. The ability to read and write came from their first lessons, when they learned to write and read their own names in both Vietnamese and English. This education had been the start the rebuilding program for South Vietnam that the United States Government and the A-Team's had hoped to achieve. Dick came home with a chest full of Medals, after his fifth Purple Heart.

Chapter Two:

A CLOSER LOOK AT THE SHARK

Dick walked down to the beach with the Pabst Blue Ribbon in his hand to get a better look at that strange looking fish lying on his beach. It did not look like any shark he had seen before. If it was indeed a shark it just about the largest species of shark that he had ever seen. He was not sure if there were any larger; sharks any place else in the world but if there were he had no desire to meet up with any of them.

The women and children were very happy singing some native island song while they were cutting up this shark, as it would be a major part of this evening's meal.

Thank you, Mr. Meek Law, the children sung out as he approached. Man you shoots him dead Mr. Meek Law. Bang, bang he’s dead. One of the little boys yelled as he pointed his finger as if he were holding Dick’s gun and he were shooting this evil looking thing that was laying on the lagoon's beach.

Dick walked over and to the side of the shark's head, where the two shots he had fired at it had hit its head. He was surprised at the two shots location. He could have been covered both those shots with the palm of his hand.

Although the Island’s people would think this was some great shooting when it really wasn't if you are shooting something that was less than 50 feet away. Dick knew he was not going to convince them otherwise. He had aimed for this part of the sharks head each time he shot. Dick pulled out his US Army Ka-Bar knife and cut through the two shots that had killed the shark. He was cutting inside the shark’s head and following the path of both bullets as they entered the shark’s skull. He was surprised that he had hit the shark brain and the bullets had really scrambled it good.

The more amazing thing was the shark had just swam away as if he had not been affected at all by his bullets. Just how long it would have actually taken for this shark to die, was a question he really wanted to know. Dick thought he might want to take this shark’s brain to his friend Ms. Kathy Jordan at the Marine Biology Department at the University of Miami in Florida. She might be interested in knowing about this strange looking shark and maybe she could tell him how long it would have lived with its brain’s shot out.

The more Dick looked at this shark to more he realized he might have a difficult time describing what it looked like. If a picture is worth a thousand words then a video had to be worth a million. Dick asked the people to stop cutting on the fish until he could get his Video Camera and record what it looked like.

Once he had videotaped the entire shark, he set up his video camera on its tripod so it would help document all the measurements he would make on it. He carefully measured the shark from its blunt nose to tail, the height of its unusual dorsal fin and the size of its open mouth. When Dick was satisfied, he had documented this shark, he thanked the people and he let them harvest all the meat they wanted.

Dick reset his video camera so it would record his efforts to remove the shark’s brain. When the island people got to the shark’s stomach Dick took pictures of all the junk the shark had eaten and carried inside of itself. It was amazing to see some of the things this shark had in its stomach and that included his boat’s Outboard Engine Cover.

The Outboard Motor itself must be somewhere on the bottom of the lagoon what shape that was in would be the question. Dick offered a five-dollar reward, to the boy who could find his Outboard Motor. To collect this money, they would have to tie a balloon on a string and attached it to the motor then come and tell him so he could retrieve it.

The news of this shark was making quite a ruckus throughout the island. More and more people were coming to see this shark and they were prepared to help cut it up and put it large pans and even wash tubs to carry the meat back home and put it on ice from Dick’s Ice Factory. The meat from shark’s fin was the first to be taken, as its meat was as nice to eat as shrimp or lobster.

It was too bad the whole shark could not have been taken to the Keys or Miami, as there could have been a handsome reward for a shark of this size. But here on Dick’s Island, it was just the makings of a big feast and a very good reason to have an island wide party.

While Dick was carving out the shark’s brain, the Island's people could read his mind and they knew