“I’m getting really tired of waking up in this same damned hospital,” Mike said as Pierson walked through the door.
“Be glad you woke up at all,” Pierson replied. “Exsanguinated doesn’t begin to cover it. And it took FAST quite a while to find the frigate that was in support. All they could do was plug the holes with the stuff you had on you. Good tip on the tampons, by the way. FAST’s carrying them, now. They ran out, but one of the pilots from the helicopter had some spares with her.”
“I hope they kept my damned cigarette boat,” Mike said.
“Your cigarette boat?” Pierson said, grinning. “You were practically dead when they got to it. I think that counts as salvage. Surely it’s the FAST’s boat.”
“I wasn’t all dead,” Mike replied. “Salvage only counts if you’re all dead. And you’d better not have lost it. I captured it fair and square.”
“We kept the cigarette boat,” Pierson said, relenting. “I take it you want to keep it?”
“Yep,” Mike said. “Gonna paint it silver and black. Call it the Too Late.”
“Well, you stopped the nuke from getting to the U.S. or any other major populated area,” Pierson pointed out. “And the fallout fell in open ocean. It was pretty nasty, too. That’s what ground-level nukes do with water: very, very nasty fallout. The fishing in the area will be somewhat hazardous for a while.”
“I’m not planning on going fishing anytime soon,” Mike said, leaning back and closing his eyes. “I hope somebody remembered my girls.”
“That we did,” Pierson said. “FAST and a Navy team dropped on your boat and picked it up. One of the FASTs nearly got shot, but everything’s kosher. I’m sorry to tell you the girls decided that, all things considered, they wanted to go home. So… nobody waiting for you on your little Caribbean idyll.”
“I think the Caribbean is getting a bit too hot for me, anyway,” Mike replied, shrugging with his one good shoulder. “I think I’ll go down for a while, just to rest up. But then I’m going traveling.”
“Well, you’re entitled to a rest,” Pierson said. “And the Finding decided that you still were owed for the mission. So you’ll have plenty of money to rest with.”
“Money, shmoney,” Mike said, closing his eyes. “I’m going to miss Pam and Courtney, though. They were good for an old soldier’s soul.”
Mike slid the Maker’s Mark around in a puddle of condensation as he waited for his table.
He’d been in the body and fender shop for over a month, long enough to be fully capable of getting around on his own, and then headed back to Islamorada. When he got there there was a cigarette boat tied up next to the Winter Born. It was black and silver with the legend “Too Late” already painted on the rear.
He’d taken it out a time or two, but mostly he’d stayed on the yacht. The explosion in the Andros was the talk of the town but nobody seemed to connect him to it, which was fine by him.
So he’d been doing his usual, hanging out, fishing, generally getting his head back together, working on his tan and new set of scars. But that meant he was back in the same lackanookie situation he’d been in before the girls showed up in his life. And he was pretty sure it was almost time to travel. It had been a while since he’d seen Europe and he’d never been to Eastern Europe. He was looking forward to traveling — among other things the hookers in Eastern Europe were supposed to be the finest on earth — but something had kept him around. A nagging sense of something left unfinished.
He’d just glanced at his pager, wondering when his table was going to be ready, when a soft voice spoke behind him.
“Excuse me,” the familiar voice said, “is this seat taken?”
Mike looked over his shoulder at Pam and Courtney and shrugged, grinning slightly.
“I dunno,” he said. “I was waiting for some friends to show up. But it looks like they just did.”
Book Three
On the Dark Side
Chapter One
“Come ’ere, lovely,” Mike said, pulling a blonde into his lap as she walked past. The girl — she was probably no more than sixteen but nobody cared in a place like this — was wearing a thong and a garter stuffed with bills. She had very nice tits, large with small pink nipples and fricking gorgeous blue eyes, true cornflower blue, with that sexy Tartar lift that so many of the Russian girls sported. Great cheekbones. Gorgeous tits.
“You gonna show me a good time?” he asked, sliding a five euro note into the garter and playing with her nipple.
Mike had decided that he purely loved Eastern Europe. The living was cheap, not that that mattered much, and the women were gorgeous. It was more than the fact that they dressed to the nines to go to the grocery store and didn’t tend to run to obesity. It must be pure breeding or something. Just gorgeous, one and all.
He’d started in Amsterdam, where he found out that most of the really good-looking hookers were Polish. Which had taken him to Poland, one damned beautiful country, where quite a few of the hookers were Lithuanian. This had led him to Lithuania, which he still felt had the best overall quality in Europe. But a bunch of the best-looking whores were from Russia, so he wandered that way. It was like that Beach Boys’ song, but with lots more screwing and some damned fine head. No training these girls; they were teaching him a thing or two.
“I show you very good time,” the girl said, wriggling in his lap and leaning forward to breathe in his ear, her nipples rubbing on his chest. “I be very good to you and you give me much money.”
Even in Russia he hadn’t stayed in one place, generally moving further eastward. He’d been fascinated by Siberia since he was a kid and wanted to get a look at it. He’d made it as far as Perm, moving slow and taking his time with the girls. This place, though, was the back of beyond. But the girls were fantastic and the price was sure right. He figured this one would be less than fifty euros for the whole night. And he intended to have one hell of a time.
“Just another rich American,” Mike snorted, starting to lift the girl up as another hooker sat down at the table.
“She has the pox,” the woman said. She wasn’t nearly as young, or pretty, as the girl on his lap. The term “rode hard and put up wet” came to mind. But she fixed him with her eye and shook her head. “Besides, you need to talk to me, not her. My name is Tanya.”
“About what?” Mike asked, tickling the girl’s nipple again.
The girl on his lap spat something in Russian at the newcomer and stuck out her tongue. Mike was picking up some of the local languages, but this was too fast for him to catch. He did catch the word for “old,” though.
“Go away,” the newcomer said. “He’ll be around for you later. We need to talk.”
“I’m not particularly interested in talking to you,” Mike said, standing up and taking the girl’s hand.
“You will be,” the woman said, standing up and coming over to whisper in his ear. “You want a nuclear weapon?” she asked quietly.
Mike froze and leaned back, looking her in the eye. She regarded him calmly, then raised an eyebrow.
“Take off, honey,” Mike said, pulling out another note without looking at it and handing it to the girl. “Me and Tanya gotta talk.”
The girl looked at the money, then rolled her hand over it and walked away quickly.
“You’re joking, right?” Mike said, sitting down and leaning back in his chair. The nearest patron in the dive was ten feet away, so they could talk without being overheard. He hoped. This was not something that you talked about in public. Or private. Hell, outside of a secure facility. “And why me?”