Battleship Boys

by Paul Lally

  Five seconds later, after pondering away, he does.

  “Vargas isn’t going anywhere. Not if I can help it. You work on getting DeltaCon in the game. In the meantime, I’ll work on getting my forty-millimeter locked and loaded.”

  “Where the hell do you have a forty?”

  “Right over there.” JJ points to the Rock. “Thought you knew about it.”

  “Sir, my team landed on your ship and then jumped off on the mission. We never got the cook’s tour.”

  “You will soon.”

  “Stanley, what kind of crew can you muster?” Admiral Lewis’s voice is crisp and confident over the navigation bridge loudspeaker. Minutes before, a hospitality student nudged Stanley awake from a nap filled with confusing dreams, and hustled him topside to join Captain Koga, where his confusion continued until JJ laid out the current dilemma.

  That he, Tommy, Jack, and the guys are in deep trouble doesn’t take long to figure out. One look at the motionless ferry in the distance with cigarette boats clustered around it like hungry hornets is all it takes.

  “I’m a big gun guy, admiral, but let me give those popguns a shot.”

  “Do more than that. We’ve only got a few minutes left before they open fire.”

  “Maybe they’re bluffing. Ever think about that?”

  A brief pause. “I can’t take that chance.”

  “Wait one.”

  Stanley hustles out onto the port walkway—hobbles is more like it—his right hip is acting up again. Once he arrives at the stanchions, he looks down on the main deck at Admiral Lewis’s restored 40mm quadruple Bofors gun tub mounted on the main deck just forward of Turret 1.

  Even though Stanley’s pushing 94 years old, his eyesight remains blessedly sharp. It only takes seconds for him to spot the small hatch to the right of the starboard gun. Behind it are stored racks of “ready-service” ammunition in four-round clips.

  This brings a smile to his face.

  His watery blue eyes expertly calculate the angle of fire needed to reach the ferry. Primarily used for anti-aircraft defense, it’s going to be a challenge for the barrels to depress enough much to engage surface targets.

  A frown replaces the smile as he hobbles back inside the bridge and snatches away the microphone from Captain Koga without even asking for it.

  “Deflection’s going to be a crapshoot, but what the hell, give me a couple minutes and I’ll give you “guns ready.”

  A quick back-and-forth between the two experienced seamen about targeting, range, order of fire, and ammunition type ends with Stanley deciding to operate only two of the four guns. Normally requiring a crew of eleven: gun captain, pointers, trainers and loaders, Stanley takes a calculated leap of faith.

  “I’ll do it with three yahoos.”

  “You sure?”

  “Hell, no, I’m not sure, but we ain’t got time. I’ll just tell them what to do and they’ll damn well do it.”

  “You’re okay being gun captain?”

  “If I can fire the Rock’s big boys—which I can—count on me shooting your popguns.”

  “Who’s your crew?”

  “For the trainer, one of those eggheads from the Delta’s recon unit, For loaders, Chef Curcio and one of the hospitality kids.”

  “Why Curcio?”

  “Because he kicks ass in the kitchen.”

  “What if—”

  “—gotta’ go, time’s wasting.”

  “Look, make sure you got commo working in the tub. Raise me when guns are hot and stand by to fire at will. Need to set up the switcheroo.”

  “What is the—”

  “—gotta’ go, too.”

  Muñoz allows himself a well-deserved moment of pride in his security team. Less than an hour ago, they were heading due west on wild goose chase, courtesy of Iván Zambadas’ ill-conceived attempt to get rid of his rival to the throne.

  Fast forward through his high-speed return to Puerto Morelos, commandeering the cigarette boats, racing off after the ferry, and lo and behold, here he is, training binoculars on a motionless vessel where, if the gringo admiral’s word is to be taken seriously, Vargas will soon appear.

  From there, he’ll board one of the ferry’s launches, be lowered to the sea, and motored over to the cigarette boat where Muñoz will get to witness firsthand the “warm welcome” Iván will make to his archrival.

  Muñoz is a betting man. He loves to play the odds and has uncanny luck in predicting outcomes. Mostly cards, a little roulette when the opportunity presents itself, but...whenever the chance to bet on horses occurs, he leaps at the chance to immerse himself in the endlessly fascinating permutations required to properly estimate the ability of a jockey astride a racehorse to cross the finish line ahead of his equally skilled competitors.

  Muñoz rarely gets it wrong because he gets human nature right—racehorses, too. And if ever two evenly matched “horses” existed, it’s these two hungry, drug cartel lieutenants; one Mexican, one Maya, who both lust after Señor Garcia’s empire like Muñoz lusts after his current mistress: with wild abandon, heedless of the consequences of failure, so determined is he to win her over.

  In like manner, Garcia’s lieutenants are so desperately determined to win the race that they refuse to consider the possibility of failure.

  Who will cross the finish line first?

  Muñoz scans the length of the motionless ferry while contemplating the odds. Not a soul to be seen...yet. Are they bluffing?

  Stalling for time?

  Trying to pull a fast one?

  He sweeps his view to starboard until the image of the battleship fills his view.

  Damn!

  Has it moved?

  Hard to say.

  He has a landlubber’s notion of how the ocean operates. But even an idiot can see that the gringos’ great grey monster of a ship is closer than it was a few minutes ago. Drifting? Can ocean waves move a ship that big? Is there some kind of current out here?

  His concerns vanish with the sight of a crewman appearing on the ferry’s upper deck. Then another. They start removing the weather cover on one of the boats.

  “You can’t do this, sir!” Gunny Nuell splutters. “Not after all this!”

  “I don’t have rank on my Hawaiian shirt, sergeant, but back home in my bedroom closet I’ve got three stars on a uniform that outranks your five stripes.”

  “But he killed all those guys.”

  “And his guys out there will murder all our guys if we don’t hand him over.”

  JJ continues down the passageway leading from the main passenger area, where minutes ago he ordered Sergeant Nuell to escort the prisoner from the room and follow him topside.

  They walk along in silence; the only sound is Vargas’s shackled feet shuffling along the passageway’s polished linoleum deck.

  JJ stops and points to the prisoner’s feet. “You got a key for those things?”

  Nuell pats his pants pocket. “Yes, sir.”

  “Undo them. We’ll make better time that way.”

  The veteran Marine gives him a look that would stop a clock. JJ might take offence, if it weren’t for the fact that he’s been on the receiving end of those kinds of “looks” from both enlisted and officers a zillion times—and delivered those kinds of “looks” a zillion times in return to his superior officers.

  A picture’s worth a thousand words, and in the armed forces, a silent “look” like the one Nuell’s delivering is worth ten times that much.

  It’s all in the eyes.

  That’s the art of it.

  Gunny bores them clear through JJ’s skull as if to say, “You are without a doubt the most pussy-whipped, mother-fucking, ass-kissing three-star I’ve ever known who’s surrendering a goddamn murderer to the bad guys because you’re too damn scared to fight for what’s right.”

  That’s what he “says” with his eyes. Out loud he says, “Aye, aye, sir.”

  As he bends to the task, JJ turns to Vargas. “Don’t get too co
mfortable. We’ll be coming back to get you yet.”

  Vargas barely nods. He’s flying high above the law, above the gringos, above everything except the noble idea of Maya supremacy. Think about it: to have brought a gringo special ops team to a complete standstill, all because of him. Is this not concrete proof of the value Señor Garcia places on him as his right-hand man to the organization? Muñoz must be leading the charge on the rescue mission. Nobody else has the bulldog determination that his fellow Maya has demonstrated again and again over the years.

  Which is why, when that perfect day arrives and he assumes command of the cartel—with Adriana by his side, of course—he’ll take extra special care of Muñoz.

  Being a student of history—especially the lives of famous military and political leaders—Vargas knows that Julius Caesar had Brutus by his side, too. But unlike Caesar, who miscalculated his sidekick’s ultimate intentions, Vargas will make sure Muñoz is always happy. That way, his security chief’s dagger will always be aimed at a rival’s chest, not his own.

  Little Caesar stoops and rubs his ankles, his hands still bound with zip ties. “What about these?”

  Admiral Lewis says, “In due time—let’s move out.”

  Stanley Albertini’s got a thorny problem on his hands.

  But you wouldn’t know it to see him. Because he’s such a very old guy, by now there’s not much he hasn’t seen, faced, encountered, dealt with, endured, suffered, and survived by now—not the least of which is being within shouting distance of having lived a hundred years on the planet earth.

  True, he’s got people with him who’ve never seen a Mk 4 Quadruple Bofors gun tub before. True, their four-round ammo clips top the scales at nearly twenty pounds apiece. True, you absolutely must load them into the feed guides at a certain angle to ensure the breech guide rails catch hold.

  And truest of all, the three folks standing before him, eyes wide, faces blank, are a thorny problem, for sure. Trying to teach a chef, a college student, and Airman 2C techie how to operate an autocannon in less than five minutes would challenge anybody.

  But Stanley’s not just anybody.

  He hustles around to the rear of the gun tub—gone is his sore hip as if by magic—and yanks two clips off the storage rack. Forty pounds of ammo in his arms, mind you... he hefts them like two loaves of bread as he hands them to Chef Curcio..

  “Hold ‘em against your chest, like so.”

  The chef—still wearing his white toque—grabs them. “Heavy.”

  “Supposed to be—you’re next, kiddo. Here you go.”

  He shoves two more clips into the arms of the hospitality student. “What’s your name again?”

  “Margaret McAfee, SIR.”

  “Don’t ‘sir’ me, I work for a living!”

  That’s gets a grin. An hour ago, the dark haired, blue-eyed, deadly serious young woman was making up bunks in the guest quarters. Two weeks ago, these 40mm clips were sleeping in the forever darkness of an armory in Ohio.

  Stanley spins around and grabs the young airman by the shoulder. “You’re my trainer, what’s your name again?”

  The guy’s eyes are as big as saucers. “Operations Specialist Howe, sir. Lawrence B.”

  “Friends call you ‘Larry?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So will I—let’s go ‘operate’ something that makes a BIG noise..”

  Shanghaied from Commander Weinstein’s reconnaissance team, the fresh-faced, skinny young man yields to Stanley’s iron grip on his left shoulder as the geriatric dynamo plunks the kid DOWN in the farm tractor-style seat and shoves his hand onto a handwheel.

  “Turn it this way and the gun swings to starboard, that way to port. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “When I tell you to do so, be quick about it—see over there?” He points to the ferry, about two hundred yards off the port quarter. “They’re getting ready to transfer the bad guy onto that speedboat. But not on my watch, by God—

  “—McAfee! I want you and Curcio, to load me up like I showed you, but wait until I get in position—two clips, one in the breech, one ready. And keep doing it until I tell you to stop—got that, chef?”

  Curcio grins and salutes. “Aye, aye, captain.”

  “That’s more like it.”

  Stanley’s moving like a ballet dancer as he hustles over to the “pointer” side of the twin gun mount. (While it may be true that most men are not as good at multi-tasking as women, don’t tell that to Stanley.)

  He PLOPS down onto the metal, tractor seat like he was born there, slips his right foot into the firing pedal and his left onto the non-moving one, while simultaneously spinning the handwheel like a dervish to turn the gears that elevates or depresses the twin barrels.

  He squints through a concentric-ring metal gunsight called the “pancake” to align the guns with the bow of the ferry.

  “Traverse starboard!” he shouts.

  Airman Howe sitting in the trainer’s seat directly across from Stanley gives him the blankest look imaginable.

  Stanley expands on the order. “Spin that hand crank clockwise so we move to the right!”

  Now this makes perfect sense to the guy. But in his enthusiasm to do as he’s told, he spins it so fast that the gun platform swings way too far. So much so that the gun barrels are pointing almost directly aft. Chef Curcio and the hospitality student bump into each other on the loaders’ platform trying to follow the unexpected swing.

  “Belay, belay,” Stanley shouts. “Your other starboard, damn it!—and loaders, back off until we recover—son of a BITCH!”

  After a few dubious groans, the engine of the Pez Vela’s bright red, motorized captain’s launch coughs into life. Still dangling from the davits, the propeller spins once as the clutch engages, then comes to a stop.

  “Works like a charm,” CW shouts.

  He crouches in the stern, alongside a Delta Force team member at the engine hatch who fiddles with the controls. Gone are their Hawaiian shirts and baseball caps. In their place, dark blue, Ultramar Ferry crew uniforms.

  Gunny’s smile is as close to joyful as it will ever get when he spots his CO tricked out like a deckhand. “I might have suspected you and the admiral were up to something, sir.”

  CW shrugs. ““Don’t ask, don’t tell. Now be a good team player and board the prisoner, will you? It’s not like we got all day.”

  Vargas backs off slightly. “What are we doing?”

  CW’s maniacal grin would chill an iceberg. “Holding up our end of the bargain. Now get his ass on board.”

  Admiral Lewis uses one of the Delta Force’s handheld radios to raise Stanley over on the Rock.

  The Falcon IV AN/PRC-155 multiband is a marvel to behold and a joy to operate. Small, lightweight, an elegant, distant cousin to the clunky commo equipment he used during Operation Desert Storm, JJ can talk local, distant HQ, and even use “Blue Force Tracking:” a military-grade GPS to help find the bad guys—but in this case, he has no need: they’re already knocking at his front door with guns.

  “Status report?” JJ says, when Stanley finally answers.

  “Close to weapons ready.”

  “How close?”

  A slight hesitation. “It was a hell of a lot easier when we were doing the gun drills back in Portsmouth.”

  “That was make-believe, this is for real. Can you deliver the goods or can’t you?”

  “Got no choice. We’ve got to. And we damn well will.”

  “Roger your last. Stay on this channel.”

  JJ signs off and switches frequencies as easily as changing his television cable channels. Commander Goldstein’s voice is crisp and professional, when asked to give a status report.

  “DeltaCon is tracking multiple targets sir.”

  “Well done.”

  “That’s the good news, sir.”

  “The bad?”

  “The Reaper drones are weapons-hot but need clearance.”

  It doesn’t take long for
JJ to face the facts:: Vargas is less than thirty minutes away from a handoff and a free ride to chop off more guy’s heads while everybody wrings their hands but does nothing.

  “Can you patch me through to SOCOM? Yes or no.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Do it, commander. That’s an order!”

  JJ catches Major Williston’s eye and gives him a thumbs up for reaching DeltaCon, but then rocks his hand back and forth as if to say, “But we’ve got a slight hang up.”

  CW gets JJ’s drift right away. He checks to be sure that Vargas is secured in the center of the launch, zip-tied hands in his lap, feet unshackled.

  Then he turns to the hi team member acting as the helmsman. “Ground floor, Jamie, if you please—and Sergeant Nuell, if you please, release the prisoner.”

  Nuell frowns briefly, but a telling “look” from CW changes all that. They’ve been working as a team long enough for the subtlest of gestures to carry deep meaning. In this case, a tiny raising of CW’s eyebrows and a swift glance up at Admiral Lewis on the boat deck, combined with a fractional nod, is all Nuell needs to understand there’s more to what meets the eye than what he’s seeing here.

  Nuell says, “I assume you wish me to lend a hand in the transfer, sir?”

  “If you would be so kind. Never know how these things turn out in the open sea.”

  CW pulls up and shakes loose a dark blue jumpsuit with the Ultramar logo emblazoned on the back. “We even have appropriate uniform-of-the-day for you. Size XXL as I recall.”

  “Aye, aye, sir. I am a big boy.”

  “Let us make haste, then.”

  Nuell reaches around to the small of his back, flips out his matt black, Glauca B1 tactical knife, the preferred multi-purpose knife of France’s ultra-elite GIGN Special Unit. (Nuell’s girlfriend Rachel got it for him as a Hannukah present. Good thing she’s rich. The damn thing costs almost 400 bucks.)

  Nuell unfolds its razor-sharp blade and positions it beneath the zip-tie cuffs for the cut.