Along with the propensity for classified government units to turn chameleon, had come a certain acceptance of the necessary murkiness of the sources of their funding, a fact which Malvone had noticed and exploited in his creation of the STU. In the aftermath of 9-11, even more special-operations funding spigots opened up, and Malvone used his Capitol Hill connections to ensure that a good-sized piece of this invisible financial pipeline was directed his way. In the atmosphere of secrecy and compartmentalization prevalent after 9-11, Malvone was able to shield the total amounts and sources of his funding even from his own nominal chain of command within the ATF and the Justice Department.
And the fruit of all of his bureaucratic cunning was that today he had his own domestic special operations unit, answering virtually only to himself, operating as he had envisioned it operating, and all with the President’s knowledge and complete blessing.
STU operational commander Bob Bullard met up with them as they walked into the nearest of the two large hangars. The fifty-foot high overlapping sliding panel doors had rusted into place in their tracks at each side, leaving the hangar permanently open for a hundred feet of its 150-foot width. Inside were five long trailers, lined up with their ends facing the hangar opening. They were generic white-painted government models similar to mobile homes, the plain vanilla types which were sent by FEMA to disaster areas for emergency housing and services. In recent years the sixty-foot trailers had intermittently provided temporary quarters for soldiers, spooks, SEALs and spies.
“Hey, Wally, welcome to STUville,” said the hatchet-faced Bob Bullard, smiling for a change. “The vehicles are all stashed in the other hangar. In here we’ve got two barracks trailers full of bunk beds, a classroom trailer for briefings, a kitchen and chow-hall trailer, and one trailer with bathrooms and showers. All the comforts of home.”
“STUville…I like it,” said Malvone. “Home away from home. And I couldn’t see anything from the air, just a couple of the guys outside walking around. The hangars are perfect, it’s a great setup.”
“Yep, and next to the hangars we’ve got a couple of smaller buildings for offices, secure storage, whatever we need. Club Fed it’s not, but it’ll do,” added Bullard.
“Well the important thing is keeping operational security, and this place looks about as secure as anyplace we could ever find. Is everybody here yet?”
“Yeah Wally, the last of ‘em are just rolling in now, you must have seen the motor home from the air. It’s kind of confusing; the last turns to get in here don’t match the map. But what the hell, even that’s good for opsec.” As Bullard spoke the thirty foot Winnebago which contained the bulk of the STU’s computer and communications capability rolled around the front of the other hangar to the west and parked just outside of it, followed by the blue van which disappeared inside the hangar.
“All right then,” said Malvone, “muster the troops in the briefing trailer in ten minutes. Operators and support pukes. Everybody. We’ve already got a short-fuse real-world mission, and that’s no bullshit.”
****
Just after four PM, when the sun was still high enough to make the day a hot one, they anchored Guajira in twenty feet of water inside the mouth of the Nansemond River.
All afternoon, Ranya had been learning a new vocabulary in the language of sailing. She learned that there were no ropes aboard Guajira, only lines, and each line had a precise name to match its location and function. There were sheets and halyards, vangs and preventers, outhauls and downhauls and a dozen more. She learned about cam-cleats and jammers, traveler tracks and Harken cars and two-speed Lewmar winches.
They practiced tacking and gibing and running and reaching and beating to windward. She learned what the numbered red and green buoys signified, she learned about cans and nuns and channel markers. Very importantly, she learned that while all of the water of the Chesapeake Bay looked the same greenish brown from shore to shore, only certain parts of it were deep enough for Guajira’s seven-foot-deep keel. All afternoon they sailed back and forth across Hampton Roads and the lower bay, using Guajira’s mainsail alone. The area forward of the mast would remain bare until Brad’s sail maker finished his new genoa jib.
She was thankful for this nautical education, to occupy her mind. It gave her a reason to stop her from constantly scanning the sky for helicopters (of which there were many in this Navy town) and to prevent her from being tormented by each approaching Coast Guard cutter and patrol boat. They were sailing within a few miles of the largest naval base on the entire planet, and security was thick and omnipresent.
Any of the helicopters and patrol boats that she saw could even at that moment be receiving the word, that the prime suspect in the Sanderson assassination was named Ranya Bardiwell, and that she had been seen leaving Portsmouth on a sailboat named Guajira. She didn’t think that she had made a mistake; she didn’t think that she had left any clues or forensic evidence behind. But she also knew that she could very well have inadvertently done so, starting with her computer searches in the ODU library, or perhaps yesterday with her pretext phone call to Sanderson’s office in Richmond.
So she was content to fill her mind with the world of sailing and navigation. All day, in the boatyard and while sailing, they had listened only to music CDs. Ranya had not heard a single news bulletin since Friday evening. She didn’t underestimate the police or the FBI, and she could only hope that even now they were not faxing around blown-up college yearbook pictures of her face. But despite her fears, she was glad she’d done it, proud that she’d tracked him down despite his security, found the smarmy self-righteous bastard, and killed him. She had fears for herself, but no regrets for what she had done.
When they decided they had had enough of sailing, they headed for a spot which Brad had previously marked on his chart as an ideal temporary anchorage. He had seen it Monday while motoring down the Nansemond to the James River, on his way to the boatyard. The mouth of the Nansemond was a mile wide where they dropped the hook; it was open only to the northeast with the point of Newport News six miles away on the distant horizon. The other three sides of the little bay were well-protected by bluffs, with stately mansions scattered along their green fields and oak studded crests. The wind from the west meant that the anchorage area was calm and sheltered, and Guajira rode easily at anchor without rolling or pitching.
Infrequently, a ski boat or wave runner passed within a few hundred yards of them, but by and large they possessed their own broad expanse of water, under a nearly cloudless sky on that Indian summer Saturday afternoon. The wind had died under the cover of the surrounding slopes, and Brad had stripped down to a pair of blue swim trunks. They were a little tight on him, Ranya thought, not that she was disappointed… He had wide shoulders and a nice back, which narrowed where it disappeared beneath his blue shorts, and like her own, his skin was not marred by so much as a single tattoo.
She sat across from him on the other side of the cockpit, watching him while he dug under the lifted-up starboard cockpit seat into the locker below. Finally he pulled out a net bag with a mask and snorkel and fins in it, and dropped the hinged cockpit seat back down. The snorkel was not attached to the mask, and he left it in the yellow mesh bag.
“I need to go down and see how the anchor’s set. I’ve never used this kind before. It’s called a Delta, and it’s supposed to be good for all kinds of bottoms. Anchors might not seem very exciting, but when the wind’s howling at midnight a good anchor is worth its weight in gold, and a bad anchor can get you killed, or make you lose your boat.” He was adjusting the clear silicone strap on the mask while he spoke. “So I really want to see how this one sets. I need to know how well it works, it should be soft mud here. Are you coming in? The water’s nice and warm.”
Ranya was still wearing the pastel green hospital scrubs that he’d lent her, with the pant legs rolled up. “Sure I’d love to, if you don’t mind me looking like Old Mother Hubbard going for a swim in about 1905.” They were now si
tting across from each other on opposite cushioned cockpit benches, their toes and knees just occasionally brushing, their eyes and smiles sparkling at one another. The backs of the cockpit seats rose up almost to their shoulder heights, and the sheet handling winches that were bolted on top lent them even more privacy from any passing boats.
Earlier Brad had put in a mix of beach and summer music CDs, and following Jimmy Buffet, the Beach Boys were singing about an island off the Florida Keys, a place called Kokomo, where you wanted to go to get away from it all. Ranya was sipping a rum and coke from a glass tumbler, looking into Brad’s blue eyes, imagining that they were anchored off of one of the islands spoken of in the song: Aruba, Jamaica, Bermuda, the Bahamas... It was a dream that Brad was going to live.
“You can go swimming in the scrubs if you want, but I think I might have something a little better in the bathing suit department.” Brad got up and disappeared below, and in a few moments he returned, holding a small clear plastic bag containing a bit of folded red fabric, which he handed to Ranya.
“Oh, and what have we here, Mr. Fallon?” She tore open the sealed bag. “Your basic one-size-fits-all spandex bikini, that you just happened to have on board? Well, aren’t you full of surprises! You’re just like a Boy Scout, aren’t you, always prepared?” She was trying to sound like she was scolding him, as if she somehow disapproved of his forethought in purchasing a woman’s swim suit, but she was laughing too hard. “And just how many bikinis DO you have on board? Well I guess I should be honored to be the lucky girl to try it on first.” She eyed a sticker on the clear plastic bag: “Hmm…50% off clearance sale—good job, Brad, there’s hope for you yet. So was this going to be a present for some lucky island girl?” Ranya held the red triangle-top up over the green scrubs, teasing him.
Brad was blushing and grinning at the same time. “You never know who might decide to come sailing without bringing along a bathing suit… like today. It’s sort of like having a new toothbrush on board for an unexpected guest.”
“And do you have a new toothbrush on board too? For an unexpected guest?”
He paused, not removing his eyes from her. “…Of course…”
She stood up and ‘accidentally’ brushed the shimmering red fabric across Brad’s face as she slid past him and went below. She was a little surprised, but glad at the same time, that he’d had the new suit. She wondered if he had more of them in different styles and sizes and colors, or only this one which seemed to be in her size, meaning that she was the size of girl he was hoping to meet in the islands? She wasn’t exactly huge in the boob department, rather nice she thought though, somewhere between a B and a C cup, depending on the bra.
Plenty of young men had certainly been interested in them since she had developed a figure at about age fifteen. She could never quite understand why, but she knew that she had been forced to remove the octopus-like hands of enough boys from her breasts on dates over the last few years to know there must be something magical about them. She certainly was aware that most guys developed some sort of spontaneous eye spasm when talking to her; their eyes tended to acquire an involuntary downward twitch. Men were such pigs, but she still loved them: crude behavior, rough edges and all. She understood that it was simply the way that they had been designed by God and nature.
She changed in the small second bedroom behind the galley, located half under the cockpit on the port side of the boat. It was a strangely shaped room, with the bottom of the cockpit dropping into it over the middle of the oddly truncated bed.
The green hospital scrubs and her underwear were quickly off and she dropped them on the bed, then she immediately stepped into the stretchy red bottom and pulled it up. It was going to be so embarrassing if her butt was too big for it! But it fit nicely; it was high cut on the sides, and had almost full coverage in back. Thank God he hadn’t given her a thong! She just wouldn’t have worn it. Not that she was totally against thongs, but for what it would have said about her, borrowing a thong! And at least I still have my summer tan, she thought.
The simple wireless triangle top was easier, she tied it together and spun it around, then tied the strings up behind her neck, and she was glad to see that she filled it out more than adequately. She had been briefly terrified that he might have inadvertently given her some gargantuan DD-sized top. She would not have been able to show herself on deck if there had been droopy folds of excess fabric, which her breasts were too tiny to fill out! But she did fill the two soft red triangles, and quite nicely, as she admired herself from different angles, in the small mirror in the micro-sized toilet compartment next to the bed.
Ranya’s big department store shopping bag, with the Tennyson pistol, her .45 and her gray track suit was wedged in the back corner of the bed where she had put it before they left the boatyard. She took out her fanny pack, found her brush, pulled the rubber band out from around her pony tail and quickly brushed out her shoulder length brown hair. She checked her face closely in the mirror, and retrieved the tube of lip gloss from her bag. She applied it looking in the mirror again, and rolled her lips together, satisfied with the subtle improvement. She considered wrapping a towel modestly around her hips, but discarded the idea, and at last she took a deep breath, squared her shoulders and climbed up the teak companionway ladder and back into the sun-drenched cockpit.
Ranya tried to be casual and blasé, she was ready to feel Brad’s eyes devouring her, but he played it cool and tried not to look below her neck, at least not too obviously…
He said, “I don’t have another mask, but I’ve got some swim goggles, if you want to try them. I thought you might like to see what Guajira looks like underneath.”
“Sure, I’ll use your goggles, I’m pretty used to them. I usually swim laps a few times a week at school to stay in shape. You know, the lifeguard thing.”
“Let me get some towels and fill the sun shower before we go in.”
“What’s a sun shower?”
“This thing.” While Ranya was below Brad had pulled a square vinyl bag with a spray nozzle on the end of a hose from the cockpit locker. “It’s clear on one side, and black on the other, so the sun heats it up pretty fast. You use it to rinse the salt water off.” Brad went below and filled it with a few gallons of water from the galley sink, and then he laid it in the sun on the outside of the cockpit between the winches and the toe-rail along the edge of the deck. Ranya appreciated that he had waited until she had changed and come back up to the cockpit, before he went below to the galley. He wasn’t taking liberties; he was a gentleman…so far. She adjusted the strap on the goggles and pushed the two black-tinted lens caps tightly down over her eyes.
“I’ll race you,” she said.
“What?”
“I’ll race you to the anchor.” She gestured to the digital depth display inset above the engine instrument panel, to the right of the companionway hatch. “We’re in twenty feet of water. You put out about seventy feet of rope and thirty feet of chain, that’s what you said, and I’ll race you to the anchor.” With that she sprang out of the cockpit past him to the starboard side of the Guajira’s deck, and dived over the lifelines and into the water. As soon as she surfaced she began a fast free-style stroke forward along the side of the boat.
Brad grabbed his mask and ran up the side deck all the way to Guajira’s bow, scrambled onto the stainless steel bow pulpit which wrapped around in front of the forestay, and dived far out ahead into the water. When he surfaced he pulled on his mask, he was already a little ahead of Ranya after his running forty-foot short cut. The thick white nylon anchor line leading from Guajira’s bow disappeared into the water at an angle. As Ranya swam past him, he took a few deep breaths and surface dived, grabbing the rope and pulling himself along it hand over hand.
On the surface Ranya kept on going with her fast free-style, she lost sight of the white rope halfway out to the anchor when it disappeared into the muddy bottom, but she could see the path it cut by the disturbed silty water ab
ove it. She thought that she was comfortably ahead of Brad, but then she saw him below her, pulling himself out along the rope much faster than she could swim on the surface! No fair!
He’s cheating again, she thought. She took a deep breath and surface-dived down after him, her ears squeezing with pressure as she passed ten feet, so she did a quick nose blow to equalize pressure. He was already slightly ahead of her, so she grabbed the only “handle” she could find, the back of his blue swim trunks, and yanked them hard, pulling him in surprise off of the anchor line lying along the muddy bottom.
He spun around, shocked to see her right behind him, and while he was turned away from the rope she kicked past him, pushing his shoulder backward with her foot. She reached for where the anchor line was shackled to the chain, grabbed it and pulled herself through water and silt hand-over-hand the last thirty feet to the anchor, with Brad in hot pursuit. He tried to grasp her by her ankle, but she easily wrenched her foot free.
She touched the gray anchor first; it was buried like a plow in the mud except for the tops of its flukes. She held on until he touched it a second later, they were looking at one another through swirling clouds of silt. The water was glittering all around them as the sunlight pierced down into the depths and turned the particles to radiant gold dust.
They broke the surface together, gasping in lungs-full of air, their legs kicking to hold them up, touching at many points, their bodies close. Brad pulled his mask back up onto his forehead and said, “That was cheating, no fair pulling down bathing suits.”
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