A Deeper Blue

by John Ringo

  "And it's worked," Kacey said. "They're about as dangerous as the tiger that's their totem. More. I swear the kids are like little sharks."

  "But the point is that the Kildar gets first crack," Wilson said. "And . . . Have you met Stella yet?"

  "Yes?" Britney replied.

  "You might have noticed that she's a bit pregnant," Tamara said. "Her husband is the guy who guided you from the airport, Vil, one of the team leaders by the way. The child is the Kildar's."

  "They make sure they're right at ovulation when they put him to stud," Kacey said, cackling.

  "That's . . ."

  "Weird," Tamara said, nodding. "But that's the Keldara. And it's apparently worked. Even the women . . ."

  "The women took on a Chechen force of about their own number during the last battle," Bathlick said. "They slaughtered them, the Chechens then being in prepared defenses. Keldara girls took five dead, about fifteen wounded. And just slaughtered the fedayeen. About a hundred. No quarter. Mostly chopped them up with axes. Then they got out shovels and filled in the trench. That's the women."

  "The men took on about forty times their number and did much the same thing," Tamara said. "But we were talking about the Rite of Kardane. That's what the Keldara call it. Anyway, sometimes things . . . go wrong."

  "Might have gone right," Kacey said, looking at her water. "Sometimes I wish this was beer."

  "The Kildar participated in the Rite with a young lady named . . . Gretchen Mahona," Tamara said, swallowing and closing her eyes for a moment. "She was our crew-chief."

  "Didn't have a fucking clue how," Kacey added. "But God she was willing. And good. Damn she was good." She took a drink of water and tossed the bottle across the room, dropping the bottle in the trash for three points.

  "And unfortunately, the Kildar . . ."

  "Fell in love," Britney said, connecting the rather obvious dots. "And Gretchen . . ."

  "Got blown all over the inside of the bird by a 12.7," Kacey said. "Nothing we could do. We were loaded to overweight with wounded and had to . . . Fuck."

  "We had to fly right through the fire," Tamara said. "Three bunkers, interlocked. We were moving about as fast as a person could run. Very high altitude, we were only making it on ground effect as it was. She was engaging the bunkers with the mini . . ."

  "And she got blown away," Kacey said, jerking to her feet and pulling out another bottle of water. "Literally. Made a hell of a mess."

  "The Kildar has not taken this loss well," Tamara said delicately.

  "He went on a two-month bender," Kacey said bluntly. "Up until yesterday, no, two days before, he was nose deep in a bottle. I'm surprised he was able to recover so fast."

  "Mike's . . . got a thing for women," Britney said.

  "Oh really?" Kacey asked. "Do tell? He's only got a harem of teenaged girls and a harem manager that's one hell of a fox. I think we were luck of the draw, but . . ."

  "That . . . wasn't what I meant," Britney said. "I shouldn't have said that much. But . . . Yeah, I can see that hitting him pretty hard."

  "He's only here because of Adams and Vanner getting hit," Tamara continued. "And he feels guilty about that as well."

  "Might have a point," Kacey said. "I'm not sure that would have gotten him. He's got the touch. I've got it for flying but he's got it for . . . shit like this."

  "I've heard," Britney said. "We did a little catching up."

  "You keep dropping these hints," Kacey said. "He wouldn't 'catch up' with just anybody. Catch up about what? As far as anybody in the Valley knows he just appeared fully formed! Give, girl!"

  "I can't," Britney said. "Let's just say that he saved my life and leave it at that, okay?"

  "So you gonna save his?" Kacey asked.

  "I'd be open to suggestions how," Britney admitted.

  "Screw him," Kacey said.

  "You think that will fix things?" Britney asked, blushing. "I mean, as you mentioned he has . . . Did you say a harem?"

  "Screw him and then get him to open up," Kacey said, ignoring the question. "He won't fucking talk about it! He's gone all macho on everybody. Big boy that doesn't need to talk. He's fine. He just needs a drink or two. Or a hundred. He needs to get it off his chest. He won't talk to Anastasia, he won't talk to the harem, which is what it's there for, he won't talk to even his oldest friends. Maybe he'll talk to you."

  "Methinks my overly testosteroned friend has a point," Tamara said.

  "I'll . . . consider it," Britney said. "Just that. I . . . don't have sex with anyone much these days."

  "Some issues there, too," Kacey said. "Bad boyfriend?"

  "Oh . . . worse than that," Britney said with a sigh. "And not something I can discuss. I have a counselor. I work with it. But it's . . . Heck, most people I could probably talk about it . . ."

  "Hints and hints and hints," Kacey said. "Thank God I'm not an intel puke; it'd be an itch I couldn't scratch. Me, I don't give a fuck. If you can get the Kildar back in shape, more power. If you can't, at least find me a target."

  "I thought you were the driver," Britney said, smiling thinly. "The targets are for the guys with guns."

  "You haven't seen our other bird. By the way, my handle is Dragon."

  "No, I haven't," Britney said, distantly. "You did say 'harem,' right? I'm sure you said harem . . . ."

  Greznya was an intel puke. And she was a good one. She, too, had the "touch," that special feel for a situation. And hers was ringing bells about the new intel specialist. She had spent a long time with the Kildar but had not been briefed. She knew him from before. She had something for him, something like the Keldara did. She was bonded. But she had said she was not a former girlfriend and she had that look. Whatever had happened it had not been a romantic relationship.

  The yacht was rented but it was top-of-the-line and had massive satellite connectivity, including to the internet. The Keldara were tapped into every available database on earth and at the caravanserai Sergeant Vanner, All Father let him live, had built a gigantic server system capable of crunching data as fast as most supercomputers. They also had access to remote data systems, buying time on servers all over the world for anything their in-house system could not manage.

  So she ran the name Britney Harder into the query and then on a hunch threw in possible connection words of "terrorism," "terrorist," and the various synonyms the Western press preferred such as "militant."

  The system was highly intuitive and used advanced algorithms similar to those used by Google to get likely hits. The response was almost instantaneous and came from, of all things, Lexis/Nexus, the database for the international press.

  Greznya found the girl's name, then went back to the beginning of the article. Then she pulled up other articles about the same event. There were thousands of such; it had been a world-wide event even if the Keldara were unaware of it. But "most read" often did mean the best information and most of it was repetitive. She sorted for some publications she knew were capable of actual in-depth reporting and nodded to herself.

  Finally she was done and wiped the search. The search had been sent through two different intermediate routers so she was comfortable that it would not have been traced even if anyone was looking for them. A college student researching "recent events" would have done much the same as she.

  On the other hand she now knew that people were looking for them. At least, they were looking for the Kildar. And she knew that they had a true Kildar, warrior born, if it wasn't evident already. And that if anyone could bring him back, it would be the blonde lieutenant, a girl that would be considered moderately pretty among the Keldara even if she was a "ten" for most cultures.

  But how, exactly . . .

  Chapter Six

  "WOOO-HOO!" Katya hooted, taking a swig from the bottle of tequila.

  She wasn't the only girl on the yacht but she was, without question, the center of attention. Which had the other six girls somewhat pissed. And she was definitely the center of attention for the
target.

  The gathering could not be called a party simply because it was more or less continuous. Juan Gonzales was well-known as a center for partying, even in the fun-loving Bahamas. Wherever he went, his boat was filled with casual "company," most of the company young, good-looking females.

  But except for during spring-break—when things got wild enough to make any of the various "party" shows would it be possible to smuggle a video camera on-board—the girls were rarely so . . . exuberant.

  "I'm glad you're enjoying yourself," Juan said, raising a glass towards the new girl.

  "I LOVE the Bahamas!" Katya shouted, taking another swig.

  Jay had given her a drug that counteracted the effect of alcohol but she hardly needed it. She wasn't taking nearly as big slugs as it appeared for one thing. For another, she had a fairly high tolerance for alcohol. Despite that, she'd taken one of the pills, which were tucked in a special pouch under her left arm, before she came back on deck.

  There were more devices secreted around her body. Under her right armpit there had been four bugs, newest generation "brilliant" monitoring devices. The bugs recorded conversation, screening for background noise and nonconversational sounds, then, when their memory was full, dumped a short directional squeal towards a central receiver.

  One of the bugs, and the central recorder, Katya had placed in the bathroom. It was amazing what people, especially females, would talk about in the bathroom. And she'd wanted to get rid of the receiver as soon as possible. While it would normally require a body cavity search to find it, Juan might just be into backdoor.

  The bug, which looked like a small wad of chewing gum, went under the sink. There was enough detritus under there it was clear that it was rarely, if ever, cleaned. The receiver went inside the holding tank of the toilet. It looked fairly natural there even if anyone bothered to lift the lid.

  But she still had three more to plant, not to mention anything she could pick up.

  Getting the data out, though, that was another problem. She could leave the boat freely, small dinghies regularly ran back and forth to the nearby town, but she couldn't off-load any of the data loaded in her head as she was used to. However, Jay had given her a number of drop points if she had anything to report. "The old-fashioned way" as he put it.

  Juan Gonzales was a known cocaine trafficker. Convicting him, ah, that was the rub. As was getting anyone to extradite him given that the few witnesses willing to testify against him had all ended up dead. And he had very advanced measures to prevent exactly what Katya was, in fact, doing. While Juan was fully immersed in the partying, the several "security" men in the area were carefully watching most of the guests. Most. They had clearly been well-trained to ignore the girls. Otherwise one could be used as a distraction, right?

  The one guy that had Katya nervous was the security chief. Michael Ritter was an Australian, a medium-height blond guy with a hearty laugh and long wavy hair. Pretty good looking if you ignored the broken nose that had been inadequately set. An Australian SAS veteran, he now did "international security contracting." He'd been hired by Gonzales after a serious attack that had nearly captured the drug trafficker while in transit in Colombia. It still wasn't clear if the attack had been by the Colombian government, American special forces or competitors.

  Gonzales had escaped but only barely. And his bodyguards had performed less than ably. He'd come to the conclusion that he needed a professional, versed in all the modern methods of security and countermeasures and Ritter was highly recommended. Despite being formerly on the side of Light in most people's eyes, he had worked in enough shady places it was clear he'd gone over to the Dark side. What the heck, with rare exceptions the money was much better.

  The rest of the security, though, were Colombians. They'd been spiffed up and given new shoes but they were still boys right out of the jungle. Big and probably capable in a firefight but they weren't expert watchers. Ritter had the eyes. He saw everything and he saw through many things. He was the one to convince.

  "So where are you from?" Gonzales said, waving for the girl to sit in his lap.

  "North Carolina," Katya said, dropping lightly into the lap and then giving a little wiggle. "I go to ASU, you know? And I just figured why hang around for winter quarter? There's hardly anything going on. So I caught a bus down to Miami and a guy gave me a ride over here on his boat. But it wasn't nothing like this! This is just fine."

  She was aware that the southern accent needed some work but she'd watched all the episodes of Dukes of Hazzard she could stand.

  "I'm glad you like it," Gonzales said, grinning. "I keep it just for ladies like you."

  "Well, thankee," Katya said. "But you know the one thing here that's wrong?"

  "What?" Gonzales said, furrowing his brow. "Simply ask and it shall be yours."

  "You're not having any fun!" Katya said, squeezing her tits together and pouring some of the tequila into the skin-lined cup. "Body shots!"

  Gonzales grinned and leaned forward, sucking the raw tequila out of the crevice.

  "WHOO-HOO!" Katya hooted, pouring in another shot.

  This was a lot better than getting beat up.

  Lilia frowned at the beeping. There were so many systems in the room and one of them was always beeping. But she couldn't figure out which one it was this time.

  She spun back and forth in her station chair, looking for the source then, when it wasn't apparent, started hunting around the compartment.

  "What?" Greznya said. She was compiling a report on known smuggling methods. Most of them related to drug smuggling, but people quite often tried the same methods without realizing they were reinventing the wheel.

  "You hear that?" Lilia asked, turning her head from side to side.

  "No," Greznya said, looking around. But Lilia was a top voice analyst for a reason; she had phenomenal ears.

  Lilia finally tracked the sound to a case, one of the many they'd used to bring the gear over. It was third down in a stack. After she'd gotten to it she popped the latches and looked at the laptop sized device. A blue light was flashing on the edge and every few seconds it let out a "beep."

  "Low battery?" Lilia asked, lifting the box out of the foam cocoon. The fact that she'd been able to detect the beeping through the foam was testament to her hearing.

  "No," Greznya said, coming over and taking it from her. "You weren't on the Balkans op."

  "That's Katya's box," Julia said from across the room. "What the hell is it doing?"

  "I don't know," Greznya said, sliding a USB cable between the box and her computer. She brought up the communications software, then punched in her security code. Immediately, the data screen started to scroll.

  "The reason it was beeping was that its memory was getting full," Greznya said.

  "We dumped it after the last mission," Julia pointed out.

  "Yes, but it's been receiving for the last two days."

  "Katya's here?" Mike asked.

  "Yes, sir," Greznya replied. "She is currently a guest of a man with a boat not far from us. Close enough that we've been getting her take for the last two days. We didn't know that. Sorry."

  "Who?" Mike said, frowning.

  "Juan Gonzales," Greznya said, sliding over a folder. "Suspected cocaine smuggler. Known for all practical purposes, but nobody will arrest him due to lack of evidence."

  "Interesting," Mike said.

  "We've been worried about drug smugglers hooking up with Al Qaeda for a while," Britney said. "One of the reasons we've got the Narc Shop. But if he's actually working with them, well, that's a first."

  "And one that we're going to discourage," Mike said. "Very directly. We know anything about his methods?"

  "Various," Greznya said. "Sometimes he'll send shipments hidden in containers. Some have been caught, others . . . presumably not. He's used planes in the past. A current method involves fast boats. They come in from offshore and drop bundles off. They've been caught with the bundles but Coast Guard and DEA
have never figured out how they make rendezvous. And they don't know where the cocaine comes from. The boats don't have the range to make it all the way from Colombia."

  "Lots of islands around," Mike said. "Famously. Lots of ways to transfer it, too. But transferring in closer . . . They probably rendezvous with boats offshore."

  "Won't work," Britney said, walking across the office. "Greznya asked me to sit in on this one."

  "Lieutenant Harder has experience in this area," Greznya said.

  "I thought you were Army?" Mike said.

  "South American desk of SOCOM," Britney replied, sitting down and crossing her legs. "We do a lot of counter drug ops. I spend more time in the DEA database than in Harmony."