All Chapters of THE CHOSEN OFFERING: Chapter 441 - Chapter 450

Cairns, Australia 2005.Time is a healer. At 57 a badly broken foot takes it’s time, but I was fairly fit from a lifetime of hard physical labor. Even after David’s transport became a massive company I still made sure I got out in the yard with the guys and did a bit of the heavy stuff. Loyalty is won in many ways but in the trucking game you don’t get it sitting in the boardroom sipping chardonnay while others sweat.I was in hospital for another week after Wendy visited and was then released to a regime of physiotherapy and daily visits to the swimming pool for low impact exercise. In this time I realized two things. The first was the company could run without me. I was fairly sure this would be the case because I always worked on the belief that as owner and general manager I should only give directions and it should be up to the bright and well paid managers I had recruited to get us there. The business was just too big for me to do everything. If a department was working well I d

“I fucked my own stepfather.” Mary Ann was horrified enough to use language that I would not have expected.“Was it good?” I asked.“What an awful question to…”“Was I related in any way at the time?” My turn to interrupt.“No, but…”“Was it a very long time ago?” I asked.“Well yes but…” Mary Ann was a little less mortified.“Did it harm you?” I asked.“No…” She was hesitating a bit.“Did it help you?” I asked, not waiting for her reply.“Yes, but…”“Get over it or get out.” I said roughly.“What?” Mary Ann was shocked with the way I was speaking to her, which was what I intended.“I can’t change it, you can’t change it, Wendy can’t change it, and it’s done. We all agreed at the time so if you can’t handle it now go away and let Wendy and me have our life together, something we both want.” I was being as brutal as possible, trying to stop her thinking too much about the past. I was also trying to make myself as unattractive to her as possible to prevent any thought of a repeat, eithe

Jeff interrupted my thoughts coming up with a cup of coffee to take over the helm and end my watch. We actually ran three eight hour shifts for sleeping and there were always two awake but Jeff had been doing some engine maintenance, a job we shared, which had left me alone at the helm. We exchanged small talk for a while and then I headed below, giving Mary Ann’s cabin door a knock as I went past. I put my head down as fell asleep very quickly, a habit which had developed on the trip. I slept for a couple of hours with the feint noises of refueling above. We usually refueled mid ocean, lashed to one of Rupert’s many support vessels. The support on the trip was amazing and the fleet they had just looking after us could have been used to invade a small country. At one stage we threw a piston in engine two, which had destroyed the block, and had called Rupert describing the damage. Eighteen hours later we were under way again with a new engine, rebuilt in the engineering shop of a large

More talking I did not understand inside, the scrape of a bolt being drawn, and then Wendy’s voice. “Come in David, with your hands up and close the door behind you. Do not say anything except to answer questions.”I opened the door, stepped in and then closed it behind me. I put my hands back up as another instruction was whispered in one language and translated by Wendy, somewhere in the darkness.“Lock the door, David.” Wendy sounded tired.I locked the door and turned to face the dark room, not able to make out much in the gloom. There were a couple of windows up at the roof level but my eyes were yet to adjust.More whispering then “Stand still, do not move or talk no matter what she does.”I nodded my understanding and a small figure with a very large gun approached. Louisa would have been about five foot three and very slight. She could easily have been mistaken for a child except for the menacing assault rifle. She motioned me to turn around and I did. Louisa then checked me f

“Get out of sight.” Jeff said and we went below to where Mary Ann waited. Mother and daughter had a huge hug and a quick “Are you all right, Yes I’m fine” discussion.Mary Ann turned to me, “Thank you, David.” She said. Second woman in the last half an hour to thank me. I must be doing something right.Jeff had started the engines and we were slowly moving forward when the spotlight picked us up.An amplified voice boomed out, first in the local language, and then in English. “Stop your vessel now and prepare for inspection.”Jeff continued slowly forward.The message was repeated and then Jeff, wearing a large hat I had not seen him put on turned on a megaphone and said something to them in Vietnamese followed by “No English.”A brief discussion on shore with the next announcement being “Stop or we will shoot.”Jeff said quietly to us, “Hold on tight this will get very bumpy.” Then again called out “No English.”, in his best Vietnamese accent.On the jetty they finally responded with