Short Stories By Charles Below, Ph. D.

The Southern Venture is an ocean-going tug boat that was stolen by the Black Tuna Gang and taken down to the Colombian area in South America. It is an ocean-going tug, approximately eighty feet long by twenty-two feet wide. It has two Cat engines in it and two diesel engines with generators, two cylinders diesel engines. It sleeps eight people, also a crew and captain and first mate. It has a large rear deck with anchor chain that is piled up in the stern of the boat so you can take gunfire from a boat behind you. It has diesel capacity of four thousand gallons of diesel on board. The outside is painted true black and it has the white, two-story bridge on it. This boat belongs to a group of lawyers in New York, and they leased it out to a gentleman that is in the business of salvaging boats and other equipment in Key West. Chet Alexander & Company is Key West Salvage & Equipment, and the owner’s name is Chet Alexander. Mr. Alexander was in a tight spot. He had this Southern Venture down in the Caribbean and it was taken over by the Black Tuna Gang. When he found out, he wanted to get the boat back to the U.S. So he went to the FBI and CIA, and they told him that they could not do anything about it but they could get hold of a person, or two, or three, and go after it. They gave him names of people that he could contact. One person was down in Key West and he said he would try to get hold of him. He called me on the Sea Ranger. It was a Wednesday evening. I was sitting on the boat, watching television and the phone rang. I picked up the phone and Chet Alexander was on the line. He says his name, says his number and, “I’m with the Key West salvage yard, salvage and equipment.” He says, “Yeah, you know me, I’m just down on dock four. Chuck... Chuck Below.” “Well, I got your name from the government. They said you could do me a job, if I needed you to.” So he started to talk to me and tell me that he had this boat down in Panama, and he had to go down and pick it up, so he wanted to know if I would do the job for him. I asked him how big the boat was and everything else, and he told me what size it was. I asked him if I needed a crew. And he said that I needed another person to go down there with me. And I asked if he minded if it was a girl or someone? He said, “No, whatever you do, whatever it is, just get the boat back as soon as you can.” I told him that I would try to get hold of my contacts and set it up to go down in two days or so. Also that, “You have to get the airline tickets for two people, and you have to pay for that. It’s ten percent of whatever the boat size is, and so if it’s a $300,000 boat, it’ll be $30,000 when the job is finished.