Ghost pos-1

by John Ringo

  “You were catching dolphin?” the blonde said angrily, looking up at him with flashing green eyes.

  “Uh, dolphin fish,” Mike said. “You’d probably call it mahi-mahi.”

  “People call it dolphin?” the blonde asked, confused.

  “Yeah,” Mike replied. “Don’t worry about it, though, everybody gets it confused. But if somebody is talking about fishing for a run of dolphin, they’re talking about mahi-mahi, not Flipper.”

  “Okay,” the blonde said, chuckling. “Sorry about that.”

  “Like I said, common,” Mike replied. “Anyway, that’s pretty much what I do.”

  “And that pays the bills?” Pam said, raising an eyebrow.

  “Oh, no,” Mike replied. “Well, not all of them. I’m sort of retired.”

  “You’re young to retire,” Pam said, leaning back and looking at him with real interest for the first time.

  “Short story or long?” Mike asked, trotting out his standard cover. “I used to run a very small company that sold communications widgets to the military. Classified, very low use, very niche market. Decent income but not rich or anything. Then, well, then 9/11 happened and my particular widget got really popular. The third buyout offer from a major defense contractor was too good to pass up. Now I’m semi-retired. The fishing pays for gas and food and sometimes docking charges. The company paid for the boat,” he finished, grinning.

  “Nice,” the blonde said, glancing at him. “What’d you walk away with?”

  “Uhmmm…” Mike said, shrugging. “That’s… not classified because it’s business, the term is proprietary. The IRS was really happy, though,” he added sourly.

  “So now you just… fish?” the blonde asked.

  “Pretty much,” Mike said, shrugging again. “Sometimes I do a little consulting.”

  “Classified?” Pam asked.

  “Yep,” Mike replied with a grin. “In general it falls into military communications and operational analysis. From my boat I tell guys who are out on the sharp end what they did wrong.”

  “The sharp end?” the blonde asked.

  “Guys who do fighting,” Pam said. “Like special forces and stuff.”

  “And do you know much about that?” the blonde asked, disbelievingly.

  “I used commo gadgets before I sold them,” Mike said with a shrug. “Now, I am just a retired widget maker.”

  “That’s our table,” Pam said, as their pager started to buzz. “Nice talking to you… Mike?”

  “Jenkins,” Mike said, nodding as the two got up. “And, hey, I get a seat!”

  “Still warm,” the blonde said, smiling.

  “I’ve hot bunked with smelly guys,” Mike replied. “This is much better. Don’t forget your drinks.”

  He sipped his Fosters until his pager went off and then had dinner. He wondered why he hadn’t made more of a play for the girls. He could have played the hero card, that’s for damned sure. Lift up his shirt just a bit and the blonde’s disbelief would have gone away like a light. And there was still a certain amount of newly modified patriotic fervor after Aleppo. Young ladies who hadn’t previously were suddenly finding military guys interesting. But… he’d just been willing to pass for some reason. And there was zero chance that they’d want to go fishing; they weren’t the type.

  Three days later he was upside down under his starboard engine and cursing the idiot Swede who had thought putting an oil pump in the bottom of an engine was a good idea. To reach the oil pump required a trained gymnast and he was just glad he’d been doing some limbering exercises along with the working out. To get to the pump, he had to lie down on top of the engine and then slide down the side and underneath. Getting back out was on the near order of impossible, but he’d rigged a line that he could pull, over his back, to give him some leverage.

  But he’d managed it, finally, and was just cranking down the last of the bolts when he heard a female voice hailing from the pier.

  “Hang on!” he yelled, sliding the wrench back where he’d be able to retrieve it and then slipping out from under the engine. He clambered, awkwardly, up onto the top of the engine and then stuck his head out of the hatch to see who it was; he was surprised as hell to see the blonde and brunette from the bar carrying small bags.

  “Hey,” he called. “Come aboard. I’d shake your hand, but you don’t want to get within ten feet of me right now.”

  “Nice boat,” Pam said, walking across the gangway. “I thought you meant some sort of sailboat or something. What is this?”

  “Bertram 45,” Mike replied. “With a God damned Volvo engine designed by an idiot. But it’s fixed now.”

  “Rich and a mechanic,” the blonde said wonderingly. “Will wonders never cease?”

  “And I cook,” Mike said, grinning and standing up.

  “Holy SHIT,” the blonde said, obviously staring even with sunglasses in the way. “You weren’t kidding about having some experience, were you?”

  “No,” Mike said, wiping his hands and then slipping on a shirt over his oil-covered torso.

  “Sorry,” the blonde said, shaking her head. “What was all that?”

  “Bullets and shrapnel,” Mike replied, picking up his tools and cleaning them off. “Shrapnel is little pieces of metal. Those were from a grenade, I think. Must have been; there wasn’t any artillery or mortars incoming.”

  “Where’d it happen?” Pam asked, softly. “Or is that…”

  “Classified, yeah,” Mike said simply.

  “What were you?” the blonde asked. “Or is that…”

  “No, I was a SEAL,” Mike replied. “That’s not classified. And I can tell some great training stories that will have you laughing your ass off. But I can’t talk, won’t talk, about missions.”

  “Okay,” Pam said. “But… were you in Syria?”

  “That was after I was out,” Mike said, not exactly lying. “The team is open source, it was Charlie Three. It was actually the same team and platoon I was in when I was operational. I know a couple of the guys who are still in it, were on the mission. But I wasn’t in the team for that.” He set the cleaned tools in their box and climbed out of the hatch. “Let me show you the boat. I’m really proud of her.”

  He led them up to the flying bridge and then down the companionway to the closed bridge and into the lounge.

  “Lots of electronics,” the blonde said.

  “Yeah, when you’re by yourself you need them,” Mike said. “By the way, your friend is Pam and you are… ?”

  “Sorry, we didn’t get introduced, did we?” the blonde said. “Courtney Trays.”

  “Mike,” he said. “Let me go get cleaned up and I’ll shake your hand. Drinks in the fridge, two bathrooms down the companionway on either side, liquor cabinet if you’re of a mind.”

  “It’s a little early,” Pam said.

  “You’re on vacation,” Mike said, grinning. “And the sun’s over the yardarm somewhere.”

  He walked down the companionway to the main cabin and into the bathroom. He wasn’t about to scatter oil over the marble countertop, so he pulled off his shirt and bundled it and the shorts he’d been wearing together, then pulled out a can of Go-Jo and worked off most of the grime. After a very quick shower he was mostly clean, as a glance in the mirror proved. He slipped on a pair of swimming trunks and another T-shirt, then went back to the lounge.

  “Hi, I’m Mike Jenkins,” he said, holding out his hand to the blonde, who was perched at the bar sipping a Coke.

  “Nice to meet you, Mike,” the girl said, grinning.

  “I hadn’t, frankly, expected you two to show up,” Mike said, getting out a Gatorade.

  “Well, coming down to Islamorada sounded like a great idea after last semester,” Pam said, sipping her drink. “We’re from the University of Missouri in Springfield and it had not only been a bitch of a winter it had been a bitch of a semester. Courtney said: ‘Let’s go to the Keys,’ so we dropped our stuff at the parents and got in the car.�
��

  “Little did we know how much staying here was going to cost,” Courtney said sourly. “We’re not moving in on you, but we’re, frankly, getting tapped except for the money we need to get home. So, since you’d offered to go fishing or something, we decided, what the heck?”

  “Did you make a safe call?” Mike asked neutrally.

  “Uhm… a what?” Pam asked.

  “Oh, Christ,” Mike said, shaking his head. “You must be freshmen or something.”

  “And your point?” Courtney asked sharply.

  “Safe call,” Mike said. “You don’t know diddly about some guy you’ve met in a bar. So you have somebody you know is home that you call and say: ‘Hey, I met this guy named George Winson, his address is 52 Bonny Lane. If you don’t hear from me by tomorrow morning, call the police.’ ”

  “That’s a little…” Courtney said.

  “Cold-blooded?” Mike asked. “It’s better than the alternative. And get ID.”

  “Okay,” Pam replied. “Uh…”

  “Hang on,” Mike said, grinning. He found his wallet and handed over his, entirely fictitious, Florida driver’s license. “I wish I still had my Kinky Single Girl’s Guide to Sex and Dating, but my ex took off with it.”

  “Your what?” Courtney asked, aghast.

  “One of the funniest books you’ll ever read,” Mike said, taking the ID back from Pam. “Great tips about dating, even if you’re not kinky. Including a great section on safe calls. Got a cell phone?”

  “Yes,” Pam said, shaking her head. “Who should I call?”

  “Well, youre parents might be a bit much,” Mike said. “But you’re sure to have somebody on your speed dial list. Tell them we’re going out and you’ll call them back around a specified time, even to leave a message. Depending on how far out we go and how long we stay out, you might not have cell coverage. But you decide the time and we’ll work around it. If nothing else, I’ve got a satellite phone.”

  “You do?” Courtney said. “Why?”

  “Because I’m not always where there’s cell coverage when I need to make a call,” Mike said, shrugging.

  “Like on the ‘sharp end’?” Courtney asked, curiously.

  “No,” Mike said, shaking his head. “Like in the Bahamas Deeps and I just caught a really nice marlin and I want to call a friend and rub it in.”

  “Oh,” Courtney said, grinning.

  “I’ll call Stacy,” Pam said, smiling. “She’ll get green with envy.”

  “I’ll go topside,” Mike said after a moment’s thought. “Get the bollards in and the gangway up. Come on up when you’re ready to go.”

  Chapter Two

  He had gotten all the lines in but the stern and was on the flying bridge lifting the gangway when Courtney came up, carrying her Coke and his Gatorade.

  “You forgot this,” she said, sitting down on the bench and looking out. “This is so cool.”

  “I sometimes forget that,” Mike said, nodding. “It’s better than… some stuff in my life. Lots. I’ll get tired of it after a while and have to go find something interesting to do. But right now… I need the downtime.”

  “What are we going to do?” Courtney asked, looking at the instruments. “And how do you read all that stuff?”

  “It takes practice,” Mike admitted. “There’s radar, GPS with charts, depth-finder, anchor, winch and gangway controls and various stuff about the boat,” Mike said, pointing to each of the screens and buttons. “The closed bridge below has duplicate instruments and controls as well as more and larger. There’s a tuna tower up there,” he said, pointing overhead. “It’s got most of the same stuff, but in miniature and harder to read. It’s also only got a Bimini top, so I mostly stay here. Except in storms, then I go in the closed bridge.”

  “I was right,” Pam said, climbing up onto the flying bridge. “Stacy was just green. Where are we going?”

  “I’d say ‘up to you,’ ” Mike replied thoughtfully. “But you don’t know what’s around. The snorkeling in Islamorada is only so-so, but there are a few shallow reefs. Go for that, first?”

  “Fine by me,” Pam said, looking at Courtney.

  “I’ve never been,” Courtney said.

  “It’s not hard,” Mike said, grinning. “And, well, SEALs make Number One life guards.”

  “Okay, we’ll try that I guess,” Courtney said, shrugging. “I was just planning on, well, boating and sunning.”

  “That too,” Mike said, opening up a glove box and pulling out a foil packet. “You guys know if you’re susceptible to seasickness?”

  “No,” Pam said. “I don’t. Courtney?”

  “No,” she said, warily, eying the packet.

  “Bonine,” Mike said, showing her the printing. “Better than Dramamine, lasts longer, very little in the way of side effects. Not perfect. If you turn out to have real problems, I’ve got scopolamine tablets. They’re prescription in the U.S., but I get mine from Canada where they’re over-the-counter. You probably won’t have any problems, but I recommend taking one before we go out.” He paused and flicked the packet to Courtney. “Sealed.”

  “You take this safety stuff seriously, don’t you?” Pam asked, taking the packet from Courtney and pulling out a tablet.

  “They’re chewable,” Mike said, starting both engines. “And, yes, I do.”

  He climbed down and walked to the stern, throwing the docking lines onto the pier, then scrambling back into position.

  “If we do this much, I’ll probably have you guys do that the next time,” he said, engaging the engines and pulling out of the slip, turning hard left with a bit of bow thruster.

  “That’s not bad,” Courtney said, washing down a Bonine with her Coke. “You’re strange, Mike. Most guys wouldn’t talk about safe calls and whether a drug is in a sealed packet.”

  “Most of the guys you date, maybe,” Mike said, shrugging. “They’re your age and wouldn’t know about it, most of them. Or they’d take it as an insult. ‘What, don’t you trust me?’ ‘Don’t you trust me?’ translates as ‘The check is in the mail’ and ‘I won’t come in your mouth.’ ”

  Pam nearly snorted Coke out of her nose at that. “I can’t believe you said that!”

  “Why?” Mike said, maneuvering into the narrow channel out of the marina. “You don’t know the list of great lies in history? ‘The DZ is wide enough’ is one that we loved in the teams. Yeah, for one guy to land on at a time,” he added, chuckling. “By the way, you guys want classes in what I’m doing?”

  “I’m interested,” Pam said. “But those controls are beyond me.”

  “Now,” Mike said, “but I was talking about general navigation. See those posts with signs on them?” he said, pointing to the channel markers.

  “Yeah,” Courtney said, frowning. “They’ve got numbers.”

  “Thing to remember is color,” Mike said. “Red, Right, Returning. That is, the red one is on your right when you are coming back to port. Which side is it on right now?”

  “Left,” Pam said. “We’re going out.”

  “Yep,” Mike replied. “But when you’re in some channels, especially in turns, all you’ll have is one channel marker to figure out where the channel is.” He leaned forward and dialed in the GPS to maximum. “See these contour lines? They say what the depth is to either side. This thing draws nearly six feet. See that two? That’s how shallow it can get to either side of the channel. If we drift out of the channel, we’re going aground. That’s why you have to know which side of the channel marker to follow.”

  He waved at a passing jet ski and turned to watch as the man jumped his wake.

  “That’s what I’d like to do,” Courtney said, watching it recede.

  “Hate those things,” Mike replied. “Most of the people who ride them are just fine, but you’ll get some drunk idiot going eighty miles an hour and not realizing he can’t turn in time, and then you’ve got blood on the side of your boat and a hole and a big investigation. But yeah, they�
��re fun.”

  “Well, I’d like to try one,” Courtney said. “Carefully.”

  “I shall, as Bill Slim’s logistics chief said, arrange,” Mike replied, grinning.

  “I’m going to go up front and sun,” Pam said. “Do you mind?”

  “Oh, jeeze,” Mike said. “Break my heart. Beautiful college coed laid out forward. I don’t think I can handle that.”

  “You are a tease,” Pam said, getting up and going below.

  “Okay, what’s that?” Courtney said, pointing to a screen. “I know that one’s a map or something. But what’s that one?”

  “Radar,” Mike said, pointing. “See the red dot?”

  “Yes.”

  He pointed off to starboard at a boat nearing the end of the channel.

  “That’s that dot,” he said, then pointed to a moving blue dot. “That’s an aircraft,” he continued, looking over his shoulder. “Yeah, Coast Guard helicopter.”

  “Do you use it much?” Courtney asked, looking around. “I mean, you can see…”

  “It’s more useful at night or in storms,” Mike said. “Boats are supposed to have running lights and most do. But this radar is on a computer that can be set to beep if there’s something coming up that looks as if there might be a collision. So, say I’m off coast and I want to go below and get something to eat? I set it for a close point approach of, say, a mile. So when I’m eating and some idiot in a cigarette boat comes barreling in, I have time to get to the bridge and maneuver.”

  “Oh.”

  “Or, say I’m in a storm, which I have been. I can see what’s around even through the storm. I can see the land forms, the way the islands are laid out,” he added, pointing to the land that was visible on the screen. “Sometimes that gives me a better feel for where I am than the GPS. But mostly I use the GPS to navigate.”

  “What’s that one with the fish symbols?” she asked. “Oh, a fish-finder. Stupid.”

  “Not stupid, good guess,” Mike said. “It’s that, but it also tells me the depth. I would like to take you guys offshore, if you have time. The water out there…” He paused and shook his head. “Pelagic water has to be seen to be believed. This stuff is what’s called brown water, then you hit green and finally the real blue of the ocean. It’s beautiful.”