Kurt Schwenke grinned and stood up, wandering through the cloud of birds towards his hotel.
“I want to buy some candy, Ali!” the boy said, grinning, the white teeth standing out against his black skin.
“You are a thief, Robert,” Ali said, waving him away.
“I want a candy bar,” the boy said, holding out his hand. “I have money this time. Really!” The money was a small bill and some change. There was a suspicious bulge under the bill.
“Okay,” Ali said, taking the money from the boy’s hand and giving him a Snickers Bar. “But you must have the money, yes?” He handed back change. In fact he handed back more money than he’d been given.
“I will, Ali,” the boy said, grinning as he bit the Snickers.
“Now get out of here you thief! I have real customers to attend to!”
“He could kill us for this,” Katya moaned as Suarez stroked her belly.
“Ritter and Juan are both gone,” Suarez said, dropping his pants. “The boat is nearly empty. And what is life without a little danger?”
It had taken Katya two days to arrange the assignation in the computer room. She wasn’t sure if the bug would even be able to pierce the walls but it was worth a shot. Besides, at this point she’d bugged the main bathroom, the main salon and Juan’s bedroom. This was the only place left worth dropping one of the transmitters.
She leaned back in the reclining computer chair, stretching her arms over her head and moaning as the Mexican went down on her. The bug slid under the console and stuck with barely a flick of the finger. It was away from Suarez’s main station, just in case he was a nose picker. The little rotter probably was. He’d clearly been watching the video of her fight with that American bitch; God knows he’d mentioned it often enough.
“Oh, yeah, baby,” she moaned, glancing at the computer. Stuck on the underside of the keyboard was a strip of tape with a long series of numbers and letters on it. She looked at it in astonishment for a moment then remembered to moan. “Oh! Oh!”
She looked at the numbers and letters, trying to burn them into her memory. Oh, hell, she didn’t need to.
“Oh, my,” Julia said, watching the take from Katya. “Would you look at this?”
“That is interesting,” Lilia said, holding her finger up to her lips.
“The internet is a wonderful thing,” Julia nodded. There was no way to ensure that the room was secure. The windows, alone, guaranteed that. The computer was, however, a secure console. Surrounded by a metal cage, nothing could be remotely detected from it. Words were something else.
“I didn’t even know you could do that with a donkey,” Lilia said, batting her eyes.
“I’m sure you’ve tried,” Julia shot back, writing down what was obviously a password. She wasn’t sure what they could do with it, but it was interesting.
The inshore waters of the Abacos chain are renowned among boaters. With strong offshore breezes from the Atlantic, but protected from the swells, they are perfect for sailing. By the same token, they are perfect for all sorts of boating and had, literally, thousands of miles of beaches and coves, a lover’s paradise.
They also had thousands of rocks and shoals, which was today’s lesson.
“Watch the water,” Randy shouted, pointing to a disturbance up ahead and to the right. “You can see where the rocks are jutting up. Not always, but usually even if they’re slightly submerged. And if you hit one going this speed…”
“Airborne,” Vil shouted back, grinning. He knew the thrill of battle and the thrill of doing really well in a video game or the Ondah contest. None of them really matched the thrill of taking a fast boat and cranking it up to max power.
“Okay,” Randy shouted. “There’s a series of them up here. Wide spread. You figure them out.”
Vil knew the instructor wasn’t going to let him slam into one of the rocks. Among other things, they’d both probably be killed. But he still knew he had to get this right. He could see the first one, almost straight ahead. He banked left then saw another that way. To the right looked clearer but he wasn’t sure he could turn back fast enough.
He realized that was the reason for the hours they had spent turning around the buoys back at the base. He knew, instinctively, that he didn’t have the turn radius to make it back to the right but he could slalom through the two rocks successfully.
He continued the left turn for a moment then banked hard right, the boat skipping across the water, dangerously close to the second set of rocks, then banked back hard left to line up again.
Movement on the water like a shoal. No, a skein of fish jumped out of the water ahead of the fast-moving craft, some of them clearing the nose and slamming into the low windshields, splatting like overlarge bugs.
Vil ignored the distraction, continuing to weave. He’d learned that distractions were death. Learned the hard way.
The guy was doing good. Before he’d set up this test, Randy had carefully navigated the same course, years of experience filing away all the functional routes through the jutting reefs. Vil was taking the simplest, admittedly, but he was proving he could spot the rocks and shoals.
Rocks and shoals were the proverbial bane of the Navy. The very term was used for any sort of trouble and had been the nickname of the long defunct Navy Manual For Court-martial. If you got into trouble with your NCOIC, you’d hit “rocks and shoals.” Same for wife or girlfriend. Actual rocks and shoals had ended more than one promising Navy career.
If the guys all passed this test they’d made it through the very basics. This was the easy stuff. Doing the same thing at night? That was another thing. Doing it at full speed would be suicidal, but even at any sort of high speed it would be tough. But they’d do the run tonight if everyone passed. Slowly.
Tomorrow, they’d be back on the ocean. Randy had kept their crossing slow and easy. But the Atlantic beckoned just beyond the nearby islands to the east. Let them face the monster at full speed. If they could cross the rollers as well as Vil was doing in the shallows, ah, then glasshoppah…
Randy looked up, briefly, as a shadow passed overhead. It was a small business jet. Nothing that had anything to do with him. He went back to making sure they both didn’t die.
Mike watched as the golf carts pulled up to the main entrance of the estate. Besides the four pilots, there was a woman with them. Maybe in her fifties but looking younger. Brunette and busty although there had to be some modern medicine involved.
It was getting on towards evening and Mike was glad the plane had made it in. The strip had lights but there was no way to do traffic control. Day landings were much safer under those conditions. Especially since the strip was a bit short for a Gulfstream. Putting it down at the very beginning of the strip was more or less a necessity. Doing that at night was… tricky.
“Thomas Chatham,” the first pilot said. Also older, perhaps older than the female, big and beefy with a florid expression but very sharp eyes. “Chatham Aviation.”
“Pleasure to finally meet you,” Mike said. “Mike Jenkins.”
“The way it usually goes with customers as good as you is that I host,” Chatham said, grinning. “But I thought I’d pop by. If that’s okay.”