by John Ringo
“In the Keys,” Anastasia said, taking a guess. “Something Key.”
“Fuck, he even knows it’s in Marathon?”
Katya rolled onto her side, trying to turn the gales of laughter into something else. She’d been tortured by experts over the years and while she didn’t enjoy it, she knew what “expert” meant. And Gonzales was an idiot. If he was the quality of individual that ran major segments of a cocaine smuggling ring, well, anybody could do it.
Come to think of it…
She managed to stop laughing by turning it into a whine as if from terror.
“Katya,” Julia said over the radio link. “That whine is not only extremely annoying, we’re having a hard time hearing what is being said. Did he just say a boat with money on it is in Marathon?”
“Uh, huh,” Katya said through her gag. “Uhhhh…”
“Get that bitch over here,” Gonzales said, gesturing to Katya. “You wanted to make out with this one. Well, make out with her. Do it all with her. I want to watch…”
“Katya,” Julia said. “Be advised that if you can extend the time with your hands undone, it might be advisable. We’re going to need a distraction in a few minutes.”
“There’s the boat,” John Hardesty shouted over the wind, pointing to the water below.
Mike’s regular pilot had eventually turned up and upon Mike’s arrival at the island had had a bit of a tiff with his boss. Tom Chatham, on being informed why Mike needed something along the lines of a Beaver, had insisted on driving. But John pointed out that not only did he have more time with Beavers, he was Mike’s regular driver. The two had worked it out as gentlemen after Chatham pointed out who was the boss. So Chatham was driving the blacked-out Beaver while Hardesty worked the door.
Mike gave him a thumbs-up and considered the angle. Given the reported winds aloft, it was close enough. So he grabbed the edges of the doorframe and hurled himself out.
Since they were only at fourteen thousand feet, the jump didn’t technically qualify as a HALO. HALO only counted if you were using oxygen. But Mike was glad enough to be able to dispense with the bulky bail-out bottle. In fact, all he was carrying was a set of battle armor, a heavy load of rounds for the Whisper .45 caliber sub-gun, a pair of silenced pistols and a few flash-bangs. Jeseph and Ivan, who followed him out the door at fifteen second intervals, were just about as lightly loaded.
He delta tracked in on the anchored yacht, then popped his canopy at 1500 feet, banking around to approach from the stern. There were two guards on the rear deck, armed guards, watching the water for boats or swimmers. Well, couldn’t have that…
He lined up on the open deck, then drew a silenced pistol in either hand. The shots were almost simultaneous, in very rapid sequence. Both of the guards dropped without ever noticing the black parachute dropping out of the night sky like some elder god.
Mike hit the release on his harness while still five feet in the air and dropped soundlessly to the deck. The parachute sailed backwards on the light wind and vanished into the water. With no one in sight he holstered the pistols and lifted the Whisper sub-gun, moving silently forward towards the superstructure.
There was another guard posted to port. Two rounds to the head sent him overside to splash into the water. A guard came from the bow, wondering about the sound. He found out what had caused it, but it didn’t do him much good as two more of the hollow point rounds blasted his brains all over the side of the vessel.
A quick check to starboard showed a fifth guard there. He, too, went over the side, just as Jeseph thumped onto the deck.
Mike looked back to make sure the Keldara had gotten free of his parachute, and that it was out of Ivan’s way, then gestured to the superstructure. The topside guards were down but that wasn’t the whole mission.
As the Kildar ghosted forward, as silent as a murderous shadow, Jeseph followed as quietly as he could. There were souls to gather this night.
Yosif was still having some control problems with his nerves and on one level he knew he shouldn’t be doing the op. But he had scores to settle. These bastards had helped bring in the shit that had probably permanently fucked him and he intended to send at least a few to the Cold Lands.
But he let Vugar lift the ladder to catch on the side of the yacht. He wasn’t sure he had the dexterity for it anymore.
He did have the dexterity, though, to be the first swarming up the ladder. When he got on deck he dropped the rebreather and pulled his MP-5 into a high ready position, then ghosted down the port side of the superstructure.
Below were the guard staterooms. They were his team’s job to “secure.”
He intended to make them very secure.
Suarez flipped through the security screens, then backed up. The guard at the starboard security position was missing. Flipping to port, at first he didn’t see anything. But checking the forward looking camera he could see a body down on the deck.
As he leaned forward to hit the alarm there was a thump outside his door. Several. Two quiet thumps then a louder one, like something hitting the deck.
He hit the alarm switch and turned to call for a guard when the door opened.
A man in black was pointing a silenced submachine gun at his head and Enrico slowly raised his hands.
“Hola,” the man said in a friendly tone. “Enrico, isn’t it? Tell you what, back away from the computers and nobody gets hurt.”
“Find out what it is,” Gonzales said, picking up a knife and advancing on the two women on the bed. “It is probably your boss, come to pick up his little whore,” he said, reaching across the bed to grasp Anastasia’s hair. “Well, let him find a dead body instead.”
Stasia lifted an arm to block but she needn’t have bothered. A blow from Katya on a nerve juncture opened Juan’s hand and sent the knife spinning across the room.
Katya continued the strike into an arm-bar and rolled the man backwards onto Stasia.
“Hold onto this prick,” Katya said, her accent back. “I’ve got things to do.”
One of the many enhancements that the Americans had given her was a combat drug that enhanced speed, strength and reactions. Katya sent the mental command to start the drug as she performed the complicated finger twist necessary to get the poison sack in her palm opened.
As the first, nearly naked, guard charged her, she stooped and swept her fingernails upwards, ripping the man in the crotch and lower belly. As he continued forward she knelt and used his momentum to toss him over her head in the general direction of the bed. Of course, it was only the general direction so what he really hit was the side of the bed. With the back of his neck. The modified cobra poison became moot at that point.
That only left four more to take out.
No problem.
* * *
Yosif blew open the first door and entered the room as the guards started to react to the alarm. The shots weren’t his usual precise three-round bursts. On the other hand, in those close quarters just spraying and holding the barrel down worked. Messy, but it worked. He tried hard, though, to get all the rounds into the bodies. The Kildar had been strangely insistent that the boat not get too shot up…
Kacey brought the Hind into a hover over the back deck and waited as Pavel’s team slid down the fast-ropes, then she drifted sideways and checked the bridge of the yacht. The Hind had been in a hover just beyond the nearest island, waiting for the go word. It had only taken thirty seconds for her to fly to the yacht and begin dropping Pavel’s team.
There were men moving on the bridge, obviously trying to get the yacht into motion. That wasn’t part of the plan so she turned, slightly, bringing the doors around…
Lasko targeted the moving figures on the bridge and fired three rounds, nearly as fast as a machine gun would have fired. All three of the figures dropped, red splotches on the windows behind them.
“Bridge secure,” Lasko said.
Stella swarmed up the side of the ship and headed for the computer center. She pas
sed two small firefights on the way but didn’t slow down until she skidded through the door of the room.
The Mexican intel manager was wrapped into a chair with about a mile of rigger tape and his mouth covered by it as well. But his eyes bugged out eloquently when the girl sat down at the computer and typed in his password.
“Let’s see,” Stella muttered. “Boat, Marathon, dollars… Ah, here it is… Keldara base,” she continued, keying her throat mike. “I’ve got a lock on Gonzales’ money transfer. The boat is docked at Ocean View Marina in Marathon with sixty-two million dollars onboard. It isn’t shown as having left, yet. Does the Kildar want us to pass on the information, or keep the money for ourselves?”
Mike knocked politely, then opened the door to the “dungeon.”
Katya was standing in the middle of the room, stark naked and covered in blood. Most of it had come, apparently, from one of the guards who was more or less hacked to death. Three others were twisted in positions that indicated she’d used the modified cobra venom in her fingernails on them. The stuff was a very close cousin to VX and had much the same effect. A fifth appeared to have broken his neck in a fall.
Anastasia was on the room’s sole bed, holding Gonzales immobile in a full-Nelson. From the looks of it, one of his arms had been dislocated.
“Hello, Juan,” Mike said, stepping into the room. “I’d like you to meet Katya Ivanova. And I’d like to formally thank her for not only wiring your boat to a fare-thee-well with electronic devices but also for giving us a full layout. It made taking it down so much easier.”
“You’re going to die for this, you pig,” Gonzales said, struggling to break free. The dislocated shoulder made that rather hard, though.
“Yes, well, others have said that,” Mike replied. “And here I am. I’m not much of a gloater but I’m going to tell you something and then I’m going to write it down and return it to your bosses, attached to your dead body. It’s like this. You want to run drugs, you want to fuck around with your own government, you want to blow up Colombian civilians, that’s your business. People like me most of the time just won’t care. But you start helping terrorists get shit like VX into the U.S.? You help kill American civilians. Then we care. That’s pretty much it. Oh, except for one thing. The lady who’s holding you? My harem manager? Major league masochist. Comments, Stasia?”
“He can’t whip as hard as you, Kildar,” Anastasia purred. “And his dick is tiny.”
“Another county heard from,” Mike said. “And I promised a lady something. Katya?”
“Thank you, Kildar,” Katya said, walking over to the drug smuggler. “I’ve been beaten and raped by the worst pimps on earth; you’re a piker compared to them. But you like to get off beating on women, women who don’t enjoy it. Just like the bastards that raped me so many times over the years. You like to watch? Watch this.”
She drew back her hand and struck with middle and index fingers, straight into the man’s eyes.
“Oops,” she said as the screaming man began thrashing and Anastasia rolled him to the floor, “I did it again…”
Epilogue
“When I said ‘can I go for a ride in your GT,’ I sort of meant around Orlando,” Heather said as Mike pulled into the parking area by the beach.
“What, you don’t like the Bahamas?” Mike asked, turning off the car.
The estate had a small road that ran around the perimeter and up to the airstrip. Mike had used the latter for a brief demonstration of the GT’s acceleration, but it obviously wasn’t the ride the girl had hoped for.
“This car is hot,” Heather replied.
“I know,” Mike said. “It’s unfortunate that where I live, there’s not many places worth driving it.”
“No, I mean it’s hot,” Heather said, opening the door. “Like, why’d you go and paint it black?”
“I like black,” Mike said.
Heather’s family, along with Lindsey’s, had been surprised by the invitation to come visit a private island in the Caribbean. However, given that many of Orlando’s attractions were closed for “renovation,” they weren’t going to look the horse too closely in the teeth region. Especially with a ride in a private jet thrown in. The man who’d invited them might have been… eccentric, but he was a fine host. And, what the heck, they all owed him their lives.
“Maybe I can drive you around Orlando some other time,” Mike continued. “And I’ll run the air conditioner.”
“Okay,” Heather said, heading for the beach. “Later.”
“Later,” Mike replied, chuckling.
He walked over to the beach chair by Will and flopped down.
“Thanks for inviting us down here, Mr. Jenkins,” Will said uncomfortably. His hand, in a cast, was propped on the arm of the beach chair.
“You’re welcome,” Mike replied, looking out at the scene. The entire harem, most of the intel girls and about half the Keldara shooters were playing in the water while Vil and his team were offshore giving rides and racing each other. Even Dr. Arensky was down there, wandering in knee-deep water. Although, he seemed to be collecting specimens… Vanner wasn’t exactly disporting, just sitting in the water, holding Greznya’s hand and talking with Master Chief Adams. But he was alive at least. “And it’s just Mike, okay?”
“Okay… Mike,” Will said. “It’s right nice of you, though.”
“I had my reasons,” Mike said. “They’re strange reasons, but very real. I sort of had an epiphany around the time that I dragged Lindsey out of the water. I think in a way that Lindsey saved me as much as the other way around. This is sort of a… resolution of that.”
“Well, Lindsey’s sure getting along with your daughter,” the man said, waving to where Lindsey and Martya were splashing each other and giggling fit to die.
“Oh. Uhm…” Mike paused then shrugged. “Martya’s not exactly my daughter. She’s one of my… wards. I’m her guardian.”
“Oh,” Will said. “I’d wondered about you having so many kids. What about that one?” he asked, pointing at Tinata.
“Ward,” Mike said.
“Those three?”
“Wards.”
“That one?”
“Oh, one of my… employees…”
“She looks… a little young…”
“Look, Will, just go with the flow,” Mike said, accepting a beer from Britney as she walked by. The lieutenant was looking better as well. “Changes in latitude and all that.”
“Yeah,” Will said, obviously just a tad confused. “Nice boat, too. You doing renovations?”
Mike looked over at the yacht. The former White Line was undergoing an extensive paint job and some cosmetic work to its superstructure.
“Mostly cleanup,” Mike said. “I live over by the Black Sea. I figure I’ll drive her over there, use her to cruise around, you know? Maybe I won’t have to rent a yacht. Next time.”
He was wondering if he could manage to hang onto all the boats or if the U.S. government would insist on getting them back, when he drifted off to sleep in the sun.
To sleep, perchance to dream…
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