A Deeper Blue pos-5

by John Ringo

  “No,” Pierson said definitely. “Don’t. Don’t ever offer an American official, police or soldier a bribe. That’s like… That’s like saying a Keldara is a coward. Let me speak to him.”

  Now the guy was babbling in a foreign language. What the fuck were foreigners doing asking for his boats?

  The guy finally stopped and held out his phone.

  “This is colonel,” the man said. “He is wishing to speak to you.”

  “I’ve got a billion other things to be doing,” O’Connor said, but he took the phone. “What?”

  “It’s customary to state your name when you answer a phone,” whoever was on the line snapped. “I just want to get this straight. You were presented with a requisition. Was all the information you normally require present?”

  “Yeah,” O’Connor said. “But I don’t know who this fucker is, I don’t know who you are and I’ve got authority to deny and I’m invoking it. So you can go revolve on your little stool as far as I care, Colonel.”

  “You’re Marshals Service, right?”

  “Yeah. We’re not fucking Army, we’re not fucking Marines, and we’re not your God-damned boat dealer.”

  “Just checking,” the man said. “Give the phone back.”

  “Vil,” Pierson said. “Where are you?”

  “The Hollywood Florida Central Governmental Surplus Repository,” Vil said, reading it off the form.

  “Just as a matter of interest, what are the authorization code and security code on the form?”

  Vil read them off and got a read back.

  “The security level on that is Ultra Blue?” Pierson said. “For real?”

  “Yes, sir,” Vil replied.

  “And he kicked it back?” Pierson snapped. “Is he fucking insane?”

  “You come to my understanding of the situation,” Vil said, sighing in relief. “I feared it was me or that I did not understand.”

  “Oh, I so have some calls to make.”

  “You still here?” Jason asked.

  “I am, sir,” Vil said, closing the phone. “I shall be for a time, yes.”

  “Then wait outside,” O’Connor said, gesturing with his chin. “I’ve got paperwork to do.”

  “Yes, I will,” Vil said, picking up the form.

  “We are getting the boats?” Sergejus Shaynav asked.

  “There is a problem,” Vil said. “I have presented it to Colonel Pierson. If it is not to be resolved, he will call us back.”

  “I have never driven a boat,” Viatcheslav Devlich said, nervously. “I can barely swim.”

  “We are the Keldara,” Vil said. “McKenzie has told me the words to the Song of Remembrance talk of the days when we were feared warriors in boats. The Vikings, yes? We’ll figure it out. How hard can it be?”

  “How long do we wait?” Viatcheslav asked.

  “Until dark,” Vil said. “Then we call the Kildar for further instructions.”

  However, it was barely thirty minutes until a government sedan pulled into the yard and a tall man wearing a Marshals Service windbreaker got out. Unlike the man in the office, the newcomer was wearing a gun and badge on his belt although he was in civilian clothes.

  “Which one’s Vil?” the man asked, walking up to the group.

  “I am,” Vil replied.

  “Gimme a minute,” the man said with a sigh.

  Jason sat up and tried to look busy as the regional supervisor walked in the room.

  “Sir, it’s good to see you!”

  “No, it’s not,” the RS said. “Pack up your personal stuff and go home. You’re on unpaid administrative leave pending termination.”

  “What?” Jason said, his face going gray. He felt like he was going to faint. He was going to faint.

  “You are too fucking stupid for words, do you know that?” the RS said, angrily. “Did you look up that guy’s security classification? I won’t even get into the authorization.”

  “Yes, sir,” O’Connor said, suddenly realizing how truly he had screwed up. “But it was listed as Need-To-Know.”

  “Well, keep in mind that if you whisper this in your next job, you’ve got a one way ticket to Marion, Illinois,” the RS said angrily. “But an Ultra Blue security classification can only be issued by the National Security Council. And since you’re too stupid to probably know what that is, let me make it clear. They were authorized to draw on your equipment by either the President, the Vice President, the national security advisor or the secretary of Defense. The good news is that it only got up to the level of the commandant who called me. So the President has not heard about our little fuckup. But I’ve now got to explain to the commandant why I had a shit for brains like you working this desk.”

  * * *

  “All Father,” Vil whispered, looking at the boats.

  Each of them was different. Two had two hulls, the others just one. But all were in a series of wild colors and just looked fast. He suddenly knew how Captain Bathlick must feel when she looked at the Dragon. But the captain, he reminded himself, was a highly trained professional. He had no clue how to even start one of these.

  “We got one Fountain, a Nordic, a Cigarette, a Drone and a Hustler,” the regional supervisor said. He didn’t know who these guys were, but they had White House clearance so he was going to handle them with kid gloves. “You’ve driven one before, right?”

  “No,” Vil said, shaking his head. “But we are to pick up instructors on the way. We must get them from here to there, though.”

  “Ever driven a boat before?” the RS asked cautiously.

  “Never,” Vil replied. “I grow up in mountains.”

  “O-kay,” the RS said. “In that case, take it slow. There’s no such thing as too slow. They’re all gassed, but I can’t guarantee performance. We sell these things as is. They all worked when they got here and none of them have been tied up long.”

  “We will be careful,” Vil said. “I can assure that.”

  The RS gave each of the two-man teams a short class in how to handle the boats, then helped them untie and get pulled out. Two of them collided, briefly and lightly, getting pulled out. Then he made sure the gate was open as the line of boats slowly motored out towards the intercoastal waterway.

  He wasn’t sure where they were going but he hoped that nobody got in their way.

  “We will go very slow,” Vil said. He’d donned the standard team headset as had the other drivers. “Very very slow.”

  “Where are we going?” Clarn Ferani asked.

  “A bar,” Vil said.

  * * *

  Randy Holterman sat at the Caribbean Sports Bar and Grill and considered whether he was making one fucking huge mistake.

  The former PO had been a FAST boat driver with the Norfolk Underwater Support Group up until about a year before. The reality was that while FAST was the shit, the guys they were supposed to support, SEALs and very rarely Delta, hardly ever used them anymore. Most of the ops that Norfolk supported were in Europe and Africa. And nobody had used a FAST in operations in a couple of years.

  So when his reenlistment date came up he got out and turned his car south for Florida.

  His rep as a former FAST driver had gotten him a gig as a mate on a dive boat which gave him time to get his civilian captain’s license. The combination had him doing gigs as a part-time captain, filling in for guys who had been around for a while. He’d figured out the deal; you worked your way up in the local community, you learned the fishing waters and eventually made enough to get a boat. Maybe you got picked up by some guy with money who had the sense to know he needed a captain. You networked. You built customers. In the meantime, you got a lot of water time, which was the name of the game.

  Randy was an easy-going guy and he got along with the customers so he was doing well there. But he was a long way from his own boat. Not a good one. He wanted either a good solid yacht or a fast fisher. And that was serious money. You had to show you had a business before you could get the financing
on one. Randy figured five years.

  Then he got a call.

  “Captain Randy. The fish are here, where are you?”

  “Randall Holterman?” the woman had asked. Foreign accent, Slavic probably.

  “That’s me,” he said, trying to figure out which payment he was behind on.

  “Mr. Holterman, my employer would like to retain your services for up to two weeks. Are you available?”

  “I don’t know,” Randy said, thinking about his schedule. He had lots of things going on over the next two weeks; you stayed busy or you got poor quick. But nothing he couldn’t slide to somebody else if the money was right. “That would depend upon the nature of the job and the price. If he wants to go fishing for a couple of weeks…”

  “That is not the nature of the job,” the woman had said. “He has some employees who need training in handling small boats. Fast boats.”

  Randy’s alarm bells started ringing hard at that. There was only one group in South Florida that had multiple fast boats and people that needed to learn how to use them. Racing teams, well, they didn’t need trainers. And nobody had multiple boats and needed a trainer except druggies. Randy didn’t really give a shit about the running, but he also didn’t want to end up with a Colombian necktie, also known as having your throat cut and your tongue dragged out of the hole to hang down in front.

  “Not interested,” he said.

  “I suspect you think we are drug runners,” the girl had said. “Very far from the case, Petty Officer. We obtained your name from your service record, not from ‘the street’ as you would say. The vig, as my employer would put it, is twenty thousand dollars. It can be in cash if you so desire. Oh, and at the completion of our stay here, one of the boats is yours.”

  “What kind of boats?” Randy asked.

  “I do not know,” the girl said. “I am only told they are very fast ‘cigarette’ type boats.”

  “Jesus,” Randy said. Anything along the lines would set her “employer” back a hundred and fifty, two hundred big ones. The pay was peanuts compared to getting a boat like that as a fucking tip. “You’re sure you’re not drug runners?”

  “Quite,” the girl said, chuckling. “We are in, as you say, the other war.”

  Randy frowned at that and then nodded.

  “Which side?” he asked. There had to be a catch.

  “The side of the angels, Petty Officer,” the girl said placatingly. “Truly, we need your expertise. Are you in?”

  I’m going to regret this.

  “I’m in.”

  So here he was, eating a cheeseburger and nursing an overpriced but really fucking good Mountain Tiger beer while watching the sun slowly sinking towards the yard arm. Two o’clock in other words. Whatever you could say about the gig, whoever these fuckers were, sitting on a dock, eating a burger, beer in hand, watching the intercoastal on a balmy day in a Florida winter, well, that weren’t bad.

  He didn’t know who, exactly, he was meeting. Not even any names. No names at all, in fact. All he’d been told was that there would be five boats, “fast boats.” Five turning up all at once, well, he’d be able to figure out who that was.

  And sure enough, here they came, motoring along in a straggling line and really slow. Not even idling. Lug speed, that spot where a boat still wasn’t planing but it was digging up one monster wake, nose pointed at the sky. It was just… ugly.

  But, Oh, My, God, the boats! A couple of them were in rough shape, one was a Cig 36 circa ’99 if he was right, and the Nordic had seen better days. But the lead was a practically mint fucking Fountain Lightning 42! He’d nearly fainted when he saw one at a show; the fucker smoked. Reggie Fountain made “the fastest, safest boats on the water.” Just ask him. Not to mention some of the most luxurious. Forget two hundred bills, the Fountain was closer to three quarter mil and worth every penny. God, if only he got to choose. He didn’t even care if it had the full racing pack. Fuck selling it, too.

  He walked down the dock, beer in hand, then set it down as the drivers tried to dock. They acted like they’d never driven a boat before. No clue about sail area, no clue about dual engines. The guy driving the Hustler powered up when he should have backed and slammed, hard, into the pilings. Ouch. Jesus Christ, they were fucking cherries. Real, “What’s a throoottle?” cherries. He could tell. Christ. Oh, this was so gonna suck.

  * * *

  “Vil, we suck,” Clarn said as he rebounded off the pier. “I think I just broke my boat.”

  “We have to learn,” Vil said. “Remember what the man said, there is no such thing as too slow.” Vil was taking him at his word, barely creeping into the slot.

  A bit of a crowd had come out of the bar. Fast boats were pretty common in the South Florida area, but five at once was somewhat unusual. As was a group with such bad boat handling skills driving them. Randy seriously didn’t want to do the introductions with people wandering around looking at the boats. But that was how it was going to go.

  The Fountain was driven by a tall, really handsome guy. Hell, all ten of the group were damned good looking. Randy wasn’t a slouch, but these guys were drawing the girls for more than just the boats. The rest stayed in the boats as the guy clambered out. Randy had handled most of the line work with just a toss from the rear from the throttler.

  The tall guy walked over and Randy held out his hand.

  “Randy Holterman,” Randy said.

  “Petty Officer,” the guy said. In Russian. Shit, somebody had been reading his service record. Randy had picked up the language thinking it might be useful. It had turned out to be about as useful as tits on a hog except for picking up the occasional Russian girl that hung around South Florida. “Lieutenant Vil Mahona, Georgian Mountain Infantry.”

  “Hello, Lieutenant,” Randy said. “My Russian is poor now.”

  “It will come back to you,” Vil replied. “Few will be able to understand us, yes? Oh, if asked, we are the Mountain Tiger Racing Team. I am team leader.”

  Randy bent down and held up the bottle.

  “This Mountain Tiger?” he asked, wrinkling his brow.

  “That Mountain Tiger, yes,” Vil said. “We are here to learn to drive fast boat.”

  “Mountain Tiger speed-boat racing team,” Randy said in English, shaking his head. “Is that anything like the Jamaican bobsled team?”

  “I do not know,” Vil answered in Russian. “I do not know what bobsled is. Jamaica… is an island in the Caribbean, yes?”

  “Yes,” Randy said, grinning and shaking his head.

  “Well, let us talk,” Vil said, turning and waving to the rest of the team. “I see they serve our swill here. Let us find out how bad it is after travel.”

  Chapter Eight

  “This is suck,” Danes said in English, holding up the bottle. “Is shame upon our name. Is insult to Fera, Goddess of Beer. Is Mother Lenka knowing how bad this is?”

  “Yes,” Beso said, belching. “Have you not heard her cackling about it?”

  “I have,” Vil said, shaking his head. “Has been asking me to find reviews on internet. Have not seen her so happy since cutting up Chechens in pass. Is laughing so hard tears are coming out of eyes. Mother Lenka. Laughing.” He took a swig and winced. “World is coming to end.”

  “Guys, this is good shit,” Holterman said, taking a sip. He couldn’t figure out what they were complaining about. Mountain Tiger was expensive as hell but it was the shit. It made the best German beer he’d ever had taste like Budweiser.

  “It is swill,” Vil said, in Russian. “Fit only for pigs. Our pigs would turn up their noses. When we get to Bahamas, we will show you what good beer tastes like. But that is for later. We are needing to take boats to Nassau. You are coming with, yes?”

  “Sure,” Randy said. “They said I’d be traveling. I’ve got a bag. But there’s a problem.”

  “Which is?” Vil asked.

  “Well, there’s about a thousand,” Randy said, shaking his head. “You guys are obviousl
y clueless about boats. Okay, it’s my job to make you less clueless. But there’s one of me and ten of you. There’s five boats. I can only be in one place at a time. That’s problem one. Problem two is that all those boats don’t have the same range. I didn’t look close but they all look stock. Some of them are going to have more gas than others. If you’re planning on doing long runs, they’re going to need extended range tanks. On the way over we can tank at Bimini. But if you’re going to be doing distant running… you need more tankage.”

  “Where can we get those installed?” Vil asked.

  “The problem is not where,” Randy said, shaking his head. “The problem is when. The boat yards around here have a month or more backlog.”

  “Can we do it in the Bahamas?”

  “Same problem,” Randy said. “They’re backed up, too.”

  “Where can we get this job done, quickly?” Vil asked, sighing. “Think outside the box, yes?”

  “Any boat yard that has the parts and the time,” Randy said, shrugging. “The parts… some of them could be custom manufactured by a boat yard. Others you could order from the manufacturer if they’re in stock. But you need people that are capable of doing this stuff with boats. And they’re scarce.”

  “Would your Navy have such?” Vil asked, cocking one eyebrow.

  “Well, yeah, up at Little Creek they’ve got a mobile yard, but…” Randy paused and shook his head. “Don’t tell me you guys can…”

  “We will see when we get back to base,” Vil said. “Next problem.”

  “Timing,” Randy said, glancing at his watch. “I can’t figure out whether you guys are more of a menace in the intercoastal or offshore, but if we’re going offshore we need to clear the Bal Harbor cut. Now, you seem like fine people, but Bal Harbor any time but slack tide is a ball-buster. There are standing waves run twenty feet high. If you fuck up with one of these on those waves, you can do a somersault and pancake. You get me?”