by John Ringo
"Fuck you, you goat sucking . . ." The man was crying now.
Mike gestured for the winch and hooked up a sling under the man's bound arms.
"Wanna talk?" he asked mildly. "Let me tell you something, you Islamic fuck. A woman I dearly loved was killed by your kind about two months ago. I can't really be said to be over that. Now, I dearly want to add you to the frenzy, just push you over the fucking side and be done with it. But, as I said, I won't kill you. If you tell me the coordinates. If you tell me now, you can leave this ship with all your limbs intact. But when I tell them to lift you up, you are going into the water. So you want to tell me? Come on, it's just a few numbers. You can do it. A few numbers. I know you know them. You've got them memorized. You punch them in and erase the track after you've done the pickup."
"No," the driver said, whimpering.
"God, you people are sooo stupid." He straightened up and gestured.
"Please!" the driver said as he was lifted into the air. "You cannot do this to me!"
"Did I listen to any of the rest of them?" Mike asked as the diver was lowered over the side. "Do you listen to the pleas of your victims? To the men whose throats you cut? To the little girls that get raped for the sins of their brothers? Do you care for those you're starving to death in the Sudan? Did you listen to the pleas of the pilots you dragged through the streets of Mogadishu? Did you jump for joy when the Towers fell? Did you, YOU CAMEL-SUCKING FUCK?"
The driver probably wasn't hearing him. He was screaming as he was lowered, slowly, towards the water. His legs were drawn up to his waist, but that just left his balls the most exposed. He must have realized that because as the first shark came out of the water after him he bent upwards, straining to keep his crotch out of the water.
"Hold it there," Mike said, lifting a hand. "Let's see how good of shape he's in. In fact, bring it up a little. I don't want them getting a bite until I say."
The winch was jerked up so that the driver was dangling about three feet over the water. The sharks, having finished off most of the crew, were circling underneath hungrily.
"One little set of coordinates," Mike yelled. "I've got all night. Really. We brought packed lunches."
The driver couldn't hold the pike position and he straightened out after a minute or two, his legs quivering as he tried to hold them up. Finally, they too began to straighten. The left went first, dropping straight down as his strength gave way and he screamed as his foot disappeared into the maw of a tiger shark that had turned up for the feast.
"Up," Mike gestured as the severed limb started squirting blood.
The driver was rapidly lifted and a tourniquet was on before he hit the deck, eliciting another scream as his stump hit the steel deck.
"I can do this all night," Mike said. "One. Piece. At. A. Time. We've got whole blood with us. If you lose too much we can give you more."
"They will kill my family," the Yemeni gasped. "I have a mother, a sister, in Yemen. They will kill them."
"We'll take care of them," Mike said. "I will make sure of it. They will be taken to a safe place. Now tell me the coordinates."
The driver gasped out some coordinates.
"Okay, now say it backwards," Mike said.
"What?"
"SAY IT BACKWARDS YOU SON OF A DISEASED CAMEL!" Mike screamed. "FAST!"
The driver stuttered coordinates again.
"Close enough," Mike said. "But I'm holding you to that. If it's not there . . ." He gestured over his shoulder with his thumb. "Okay, now I have a few more little questions to ask . . . ."
Chapter Twenty-One
"I have a probable location on the mother lode," Mike said as the Hind headed back to base. He gave the admiral the coordinates. "And you can suspend monitoring operation on the freighter."
"Will do," Ryan said. "I'll send a team to those coordinates immediately."
The radar tech's face was frozen when the CIC officer approached.
"PO, you can suspend monitoring the suspect vessel," the officer said, then paused. "Are you okay?"
"Yes, sir," the tech said, shifting the zoom on her screen.
The officer wasn't sure what was wrong. He'd gotten good at ignoring things on screens he wasn't supposed to see but he had to admit he'd sneaked a peek at this one. And there wasn't much there. Just a few boats moving south and an aerial track right at the edge of detection.
In the center of the screen there was just . . . nothing.
Come to think of it, wasn't there supposed to be a ship there?
It wasn't their usual job but they could do it. The Seahawk helo was nominally an antisubmarine warfare bird. But over time it had done Search and Rescue, flown the mail and everything else that was possible to do in a helo capable of carrying 8000 pounds over 380 nautical miles.
Now it was looking for a magnetic anomaly at a given set of coordinates. Suited up in the back were two SEALS with the mission to check out the contact, if any.
The Seahawk swept southward and slowed as it approached the coordinates.
"We got anything?" the pilot asked over the intercom.
"Negative so far," the sonar tech watching the Magnetic Anomaly Detector said. "Wait. MAD, MAD, MAD. Right on the coordinates."
The co hit the release for a smoke and fire buoy, then the Seahawk banked back around. The pilot came in low over the buoy, hovering, as the sonar tech lowered the sonar sensor on a cable.
"Yankee search," the pilot reminded him. "It's going to be a passive."
"Yes, sir," the sonar tech said, grimacing. He wasn't sure what they were after, but he had been in the briefing, too.
The SEALs, though, clearly knew what they were hunting. They'd hauled SEALs around before; he'd even hung out with a few. And these guys, under the bravado, were not happy campers. Whatever they were supposed to check out it wasn't a good thing. Since SEALs were generally entirely without fear if it was something they could punch, shoot or fuck, it meant whatever they were looking for fell into none of those categories. And everybody knew the entire damned CVBG was looking for VX nerve gas. Ergo . . . He was happy to stay in the bird.
He hit the control for active search as soon as the collective was in the water and got an immediate return.
"Yeah, we got something," he said, then turned and nodded to the two SEALs.
The first went over the side like a rescue diver, one hand on his mask the other on his regulator, hitting the water ten feet below with a splash. Unusually for SEALs, he was using a powerful flashlight. So it didn't pay to be tactical, apparently. Not part of the tech's area of interest, so he started lifting the sonar ball.
The second SEAL hit the water and stopped about ten feet down as the first continued deeper. But even that light turned and started to come up after just a minute or less. He popped to the top and held a thumb up, indicating it was time to winch them up.
The SEALs had brought their own commo and the first SEAL got on it as soon as he was back in the helo. Whatever he was saying was muffled by the rotors.
"We're supposed to circle the area until the frigate gets here," the pilot said over the intercom about five minutes later. The SEALs, with obvious relief, were stripping off their wet suits. If they had anything to say, they weren't talking.
"Kildar, Admiral Ryan," Greznya said as Mike walked in the door of the house.
"Great," Mike replied wearily. "I've got some info that needs to be passed to Jay. We get anything from him?"
"Not recently," Greznya said. "He sent a message, though, that he thinks he has the contact in Nassau."
"We've got that," Mike said. "I need to find the guy who's giving the orders."
"Two of the boats taken down in two nights," Gonzales snarled. "And my first shipment gets caught. You are bringing down too much heat on me."
"Relax," Ritter said, rubbing his broken nose. "Everything will be fine. We have another shipment on the way, just as good, to replace that one. And more. We are going to need more boats, though."
"If they haven't found your stash," Gonzales replied.
"They . . . will not talk," Ritter said, smiling lazily. "They are very tough. And we know where their family is. Their sisters and mothers. If you violate the honor of their sisters and mothers, you violate theirs. They will not talk."
"This Kildar bastard is the problem," Juan said. "We need to do something about him."
"I am," Kurt Schwenke, AKA "Michael Ritter," replied. "I will need to use some of your people, however."
"Fine, use as many as you need," Gonzales said, standing up and walking out of the office. "I need to go fuck someone."
"It was there," Ryan said. "We're sending a recovery team down to do an inventory."
"Good," Mike said. "That was what I was waiting to hear. I'm going to be sending you the names of some people in Yemen. Somebody's going to need to secure them. Fast. Put 'em in the Witness Protection program. Treat 'em right. Okay?"
"Will do," the admiral said.
"They will kill my family," Souhi said, miserably. "All of them."
Souhi had been led to a concrete room just about filled with plastic sheeting. And a lab facility for some reason. Then he remembered the maddened crew and gulped.
"They will be taken care of," Oleg promised, standing behind him. "We have word that you told the truth so we will keep ours. And we can get you a new foot. See? I have a new leg," the team leader said, lifting up his trousers to show the mujahideen. "I had it blown off by Chechens. And now I have a better one. I need their names, though. So we can make sure they are well."
"Very well," Souhi said, picking up a pen. He scratched out a series of names of his family in Yemen. "Where will—"
The hammer smashed into his upper spine, severing the cervical vertebra and yanking down on the medulla oblongata, killing him instantly.
"The Kildar said that he would not kill you," Oleg said as the man voided in the chair. "He didn't say anything about me."
Katya was sitting on the back deck of the yacht, a pair of sunglasses on her face and suntan oil spread on liberally, when Ritter walked out and sat down next to her.
"Having a good time, Katya?" Ritter asked.
"Great, Kurt," the agent replied. "You?"
"Win some, lose some," Ritter said.
"Father of All . . ." Julia whispered. "It's Kurt Schwenke."
"And Katya knows," Lilia replied. "I wonder for how long?"
"How well did you wire the boat?"
"Pretty thoroughly, Kurt," Katya admitted. "Full sound and video. In fact, this is going out in streaming video. So is this where we go for round two?" She had met the former East German Stasi member on a previous mission. Both had tried, with minimal success, to kill the other.
"Nein," Kurt replied. "It's a nice day. Why ruin it? Besides, with what the Kildar probably has on standby I wouldn't live to appreciate the moment."
"There's that," Katya said. "In fact . . ."
"In fact, I think I'll take a little trip out of town," Schwenke said. "Since I suspect this boat is going to become less welcoming soon."
"Might be a good idea," Katya replied. "Just between friends, you wouldn't care to tell me where?"
"Just between friends, you wouldn't care to tell me where the Kildar is?"
"Probably drinking a beer."
Mike sipped at a bottle of Mother Lenka's best as he watched the TV.
The Prime Minister of the Bahamas, sweating profusely and grinning just as much, was standing on the deck of a U.S. Navy salvage vessel currently holding station just north of Grand Isle.
"I am extending the personal thanks of the President of the United States and all Americans to the nation of the Bahamas for their support in finding this cache . . ." an admiral was saying. "Without their help and support this mission would have been impossible."
"And I thank the United States government," the president said, still grinning, "for their ongoing support in the war on drugs and terror. Without their aid it would be impossible for our small country to police all the islands . . ."
The two black SUVs slammed to a halt at the edge of the Straw Market and the DEA teams unassed, fast.
Before the Pakistani shopkeeper could begin to react another team came in the back of his kiosk and slammed him to the floor. Fast-ties went on his hands and feet as rigger-tape secured his mouth. A black hood covered his head and he was gone in thirty seconds. All his merchandise was gone in about sixty.
Although some of the tourists stopped and stared, the merchants continued as if nothing had happened. Just another day in paradise.
"Hey, I got an interesting rumor."
Jason Cox had been working Washington for ten years and he'd built up a few pretty good contacts. Not like that bastard Woodward, but pretty good. And the latest thing that had been dropped in his ear was a fucking bombshell.
"Go," his producer said, spinning around in his chair.
"That black ops team that took down the terrorists in the Keys?" he said. "My source said they're those Mountain Tiger guys from Georgia that had that pitched battle with the Chechens last month."
"Two months," the producer said, frowning. "Not Delta or CIA black ops?"
"Nope," the reporter said, grinning. "They're called the Kildarra or something. He wasn't sure on the name. But, get this, their commander is an American."
"Yeah, that was what AP said from that battle," the producer replied, thinking. "You get a confirmation?"
"I'm going to work on one," the reporter said. "I'm meeting a source for lunch. I thought you might shake a few trees, too."
"I can do that," the producer admitted. He had his contacts, too. The two might overlap, but not by much. "We need to keep it low, though. If you're wrong . . ."
"I'll find out at lunch."
"Nice steak," the congressional staffer said. "Which means you want something."
The reporter had covered the congressman's run back when he was just a comer. And he'd cultivated the staffer, each man hoping to end up with the "big boys" but not really believing they'd be doing the Watergate thing over a power lunch. But here they were.
"I heard a credible report on something," the reporter said, waiting for the guy to take a sip of his Diet Coke. "Just wondering, you know . . . The Kildarra were the team that took down the VX, right?"
The staffer managed to not blow the Coke across the table. But it took a manly effort to prevent it.
"Who did you hear that from?" he asked sharply, trying to keep his voice down at the same time.
"You know about—"
"Let me explain something," the staffer said, leaning across the table and looking the reporter in the eye. "I don't know who you got it from but they must be totally out of the fucking loop. Because if they knew shit they would be telling you what I'm going to tell you. Forget that name. Forget anything you heard. Don't go playing super sleuth."
"Or I die?" the reporter said, chuckling. "Yeah. Right."
"No," the staffer said. "Your career does. You breathe that word and you have no more sources. Nobody will talk to you. Nobody will touch you with a ten-foot pole. You will be untouchable, unclean. I'm a pretty good source, right? You say the word Keldara on network TV, put them together with that op or any other op, and your career is toast. Trust me on this. You do not want to fuck with that guy."
"Guy?" the reporter said, pouncing.
"I'm serious, Jason," the staffer said, standing up and tossing down his napkin. "Do not do this."
"Well, I had an interesting lunch," the reporter said, walking in the producer's office.
"I didn't have any," the producer said. "I made one phone call and then got five more, including from the head of the network. I think we can take it that you're confirmed and it doesn't matter . . ."
"Kill the story," the reporter said, nodding. "I was going to talk to you about that."
"It is deader than a doornail," the producer replied. "That what you got?"
"Oh, yeah," the reporter said, shaking his head. "
What happened to journalistic ethics?"
"I think they're pretty much moot," the producer admitted. "Especially when the head of the network said that he got calls from two prime ministers explaining how much difficulty the network would find in getting visas to enter countries, or anything else, if we breathed a word about these guys. Oh, and you don't even want to hear what a certain senator had to say. But I will mention things like FCC license renewal. And then he got nasty."