“Dangerous ground, Don,” Mike said seriously. “The guy who did that has every jihadist on the planet looking for him.”
“Which is why I’d only mention it to an old friend,” Don said. “But you were the one who brought it up. So what’s in the container?”
“You really want to know, ‘old friend’?”
“Holy fucking Jesus,” Don whispered.
The container had been rolled to a concrete pad in an interior courtyard, then the mover pulled away. The Keldara had immediately gathered around and on Mike’s nod, opened it and started unloading.
Cases of ammunition. Rocket launchers. Body armor. Cases of Semtek plastique. Guns. More guns. Sniper rifles in cases. MP-5s and M4s and SPRs. M-60E4 machine guns capable of delivering 2500 rounds in three minutes of continuous fire.
Then the big stuff started coming off. Miniguns. Pallets of ammunition, multiple each. Fifty-seven-millimeter rocket launchers. A pallet of rockets. The container had been stuffed to the ceiling.
“I had all that on my boat?” Don said, his eyes wide. “Jesus Christ if customs had even suspected…”
“Why do you think they didn’t open it, Don?” Mike asked. “The guys who were there when you arrived were hand-picked.”
Don looked up at the sound of rotors and blanched as a black Hind helicopter flared out for a landing. It had come in at nearly water level and was out of sight from the launch. The pilot, a female, grinned at the sight of the rocket launchers, gave Mike a salute and started getting out of the cockpit.
“I so didn’t want to know this,” Don said.
“Yeah, but I figured you should,” Mike said. “I’m going to need you to pick it up in a couple of weeks. Well, except for the ammo.”
“And I’m supposed to just float this back to Miami?” Don said, shaking his head. “You think that the U.S. government isn’t going to ask a few questions?”
“Who do you think arranged to pass it through Bahamanian customs?”
“How’s it going?” Mike said, sitting down on the dock next to Randy.
“Pretty good, actually,” Randy admitted. “These guys are soaking it up like a sponge and you can’t beat sitting in the Bahamas sunshine.”
“Mike Jenkins,” Mike said, sticking out his hand. “We haven’t met.”
Mike had been very careful about that. Over time he’d dealt with a lot of FAST boat drivers on both coasts. Finding a combination of one who a.) was available and b.) he’d never met had been hard. And he’d had to do it on the plane over since it wasn’t something he could delegate.
“Randy Holterman,” Randy said, shaking Mike’s hand and watching as the speed boat made a hard turn around a buoy. “You’re the one they call the Kildar.”
“That would be me,” Mike said. The Nordic was headed back in, slowing and backing as it approached the pier, then backing one engine to swing around and pull in backwards. The Keldara at the helm, Sergejus Makanee, did the maneuver as if he’d been born on a boat.
“They’re very good,” Randy said.
“Yes, they are,” Mike replied.
“I don’t know that they can win any races…”
“Among other things, the boats need work, right?” Mike asked.
“And if you’re going to be doing long runs,” Randy said, “and I somehow suspect you are, they’re going to need bigger tanks.”
“That’s being worked on.”
“Okay, this is a ‘what the fuck’ moment, sir.”
Senior Chief Edward Marrow had been in the Navy seventeen years. As a young recruit, fresh out of machinist mate’s A school, he had been transferred to the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy sure in the knowledge that he’d be working on the massive engines, the arresting gear, all the parts that made a carrier work.
Instead, he’d been placed in the tiny unit that maintained the carrier’s many small boats. It was a proverbial Siberia, the place where the more senior machinist mates who were unfit to work on “important” systems were shipped. But the unit was short a slot, he was a machinist’s mate and thus he’d ended up there.
However, he’d quickly come to love it, despite the company. The boats were just fun. He’d become a specialist in making sure that small engines ran to the very top of their performance. He even extended his knowledge — despite superiors who barely knew which end of the wrench was which — to hull design, tankage and all the small bits that made a boat work. Whereas if he’d been in one of the bigger sections he’d have worked on just one small part of a complex system called a carrier, here he could do it all.
He’d reenlisted, made PO2 and eventually ended up on shore duty, doing the same thing with small boats at Norfolk Naval Base. There he had come to the attention of people who really cared about small boats, via a brief conversation in the Norfolk enlisted-men’s bar. Shortly afterwards he was asked if he’d like a transfer. The unit was small and it only did small boats. And it still counted for sea duty. There might be some travel involved.
The NCOIC of the Little Creek shipyard had been fixing FAST boats, and various other small, fast, lethal vessels for the last twelve years. There wasn’t a thing he didn’t know about high-performance engines and how to coax every last bit of energy out of them. And he’d done some travel, oh, yeah. FAST boats were complex machines and where the FAST boats went, there went their maintenance crews. A shipping container and a dock was all they needed. And the shipping container was a type that would fit on an aircraft.
The Team didn’t just work FASTs, either. They supported not just the FAST unit but every other spec ops group on the East Coast. Delta, for example, wanted a lower profile than FASTs. They tended to train and operate in cigarettes almost purely but Ed had ended up working on just about every civilian boat on the market. Hell, he’d flown out to Rota one time to fix a sailboat’s engine for some guys who sure didn’t look military. He wasn’t as good with diesel but he could hum the tune and once he got to fumbling around in the guts of a machine he could generally make it purr.
But the travel orders on the latest job were pretty worrying. NCOIC, team of five technicians, one container with assorted materials, specifically long-range tanks. Civilian clothes only. No mention of rank. Commercial bird to Nassau. Transportation from there to be arranged by a contact to meet at airport.
“Agreed, Senior Chief,” the lieutenant commander said. “Delta probably. Maybe some of the CIA operations guys. But, hey, it’s the Bahamas. Get moving. They want you in the air in six hours.”
Allen Barksdale, a brown-haired, brown-eyed slightly overweight dentist from Cleveland on his first island adventure, sat down on one of the benches that lined Nassau Harbor and pulled out a package of Ritz crackers. He bit into one, then threw the remainder into the air.
Seagulls poured from everywhere, filling the air with their raucous cries. One swooped down ahead of the others, plucking the morsel out of the water and flying off. It was attacked by a dozen others but they banked away as another cracker flew through the air.
The man tossed two more crackers in the air, then slid his right hand down onto the seat to lean forward, watching the loathsome birds. He could feel the package. A handful of crackers and the birds were now swirling all around him. Another lean and the GPS was in hand, slid into the pocket. Another handful.
The dentist leaned back, setting the Ritz box down and pulling another package out of his pocket. He opened the container of Alka Seltzer and tossed one in the air. A seagull immediately caught it, midair, and quickly swallowed the small morsel. Kurt tracked it through the throng until the bird suddenly staggered in midair and then fell to the water, shrieking piteously for a moment then going still to lie, wings spread, on the surface of the bright green waters.