by John Ringo
It was a shitty day in Athens. A weak cold front was coming through and the light, misty, rain was soaking into Brenda McCarthy's sweatshirt as she walked up College Street. The conditions fit her mood, which was crappy. The girls had been given A averages for the semester that had been "disrupted" as the administration put it. But since the beginning of this new semester she'd had to contend with being "One of the Syria Girls." The whispers and looks in class were bad enough. But the experience tended to attract . . . the wrong kind of guys. Guys that she really didn't want calling her "Babe." Guys that, frankly, set off her creep meter.
So it was just adding insult to a screwed up day when some loser sitting at the Starbucks called out to her.
"Hey, Babe, it is Babe, isn't it?"
She spun around to deliver an angry reply and stopped as the man stood up and took off his sunglasses. She stood still as he approached to where he could speak quietly.
"I don't like it when most people call me that," she said, her face working, trying not to cry.
"Well, I don't know your real name," the man said. "But some people call me Ghost."
BOOK TWO
Thunder Island
Chapter One
"Hey, Mike, how was the fishing?" Sol Shatalin called from the dock.
"Pretty good," Mike yelled, as he backed the forty-five-foot Bertram up to the pier. "Grab my lines, will ya?"
He'd spent the first month or so pretty much out of sight of land, working on his tan and fishing, using various products to get the scars to look older than they were. By the time he started taking his shirt off in public, they didn't look fresh except to a very trained eye. Now he fished and SCUBAed in the area of Islamorada, and his "address" was Slip 19-C, Islamorada Yacht Club.
Spending that much time offshore had had another benefit; he caught a lot of fish and learned how to catch them and how to fillet them, which brought more money than whole. Now, he rarely went out without at least making gas money. In fact, since he really lived a pretty Spartan existence, he was living pretty much on money from fishing. Of course, it wouldn't have covered the payments on the Bertram, but he'd paid for that in cash. All three-quarters of a mil.
He'd recently, though, been considering a developing lackanookie condition. He could fix that easy enough by a run up to Athens, but he'd started to think he might be using the girls, and that was the last thing he wanted to do. He hadn't been in contact with all of them, just a core of about twelve. And of those twelve, he'd only had sex with three. It had been healing for both sides. And with a few of the others, he'd just slept, and that had been healing, too.
But he didn't want to get into a habit of just turning up for nookie. He wasn't planning on spending his life with any of them, for various reasons. And they needed to get on with their lives. For that matter, every trip to Athens meant a possibility of somebody who recognized him from a class putting Mike Harmon, former SEAL and jerk in class, together with one of the "Syria Girls" and getting four. So letting the girls go, slowly, was a good idea.
But it wasn't helping his lackanookie.
There were, as around any major yacht club, various "boat bunnies." But they didn't appeal, either, even the good-looking ones, and they were in short supply. It was a philosophical thing. He didn't mind paying for sex; he'd done it often enough in various third-world countries. And he didn't mind having a girlfriend who was "a little hard up." Christy, his ex, had been a live-in aspiring actress who didn't make her share of the rent most of the time before they'd gotten married. But boat bunnies lived "on the kindness of strangers" as Mae West would say. It was prostitution, but even hint at that fact and you got one hell of a telling-off and generally a cleared boat. Then there was the issue of "Bluebeard's Stateroom."
The boat had five cabins: the "master" cabin forward (with a really nice bathroom, the nicest he'd ever owned) and four "regular" cabins, two with bunk beds and two with doubles. He'd converted one of the doubles cabins into his "team locker." Besides using his "special" status to buy various interesting weapons, he'd contacted a company that sold gear to the teams and ordered, well, one of everything. He now was as well equipped as anyone on a team: body armor, ammo vest, everything down to boots and wetsuits. He didn't figure he'd ever need it, but he also hadn't figured he'd end up in Syria shot to shit.
But he'd really rather not have to explain to a boat bunny why one of his cabins had a weapons' locker, weight set and various military equipment. The cabin was locked, but some of the boat bunnies wouldn't have cared. More than one owner had come back to find their boat stripped of everything valuable and their "girlfriend" gone. Which was why he called it "Bluebeard's Stateroom." And another reason not to pick up boat bunnies.
He considered what he wanted to do for the evening while running the lackanookie in the background. Fixing dinner and eating alone was getting tiresome but so was going out alone. Finally, he decided to just bite the bullet and go over to Rumrunners II and get dinner. They didn't cook mahi as well as he did, but he also didn't have to do the dishes.
As he pulled out of the club in the truck, the air conditioning going at full blast, he considered, again, whether he should get a pussy-mobile. He'd kept the truck even though he could buy any car in the world for some of the same reasons that he didn't like boat bunnies. If he met a girl, he wanted her to like him for him, not for his money. So far that hadn't worked very well, so he was considering getting a car that would reflect his . . . how did Pierson put it that one time . . . "comfortable" status. A Ferrari would do that but he really liked the look of the Jaguar XK-8. It was just a sweet-looking car. Not as hot as the Ferrari or the Bentley Continental, but . . . great lines. Like a woman's body. And much more of an eye magnet than a five-year-old pickup truck.
There were people sitting outside of Rumrunners, some of them quite pleasantly female. But it meant the place was probably packed. He wandered into the open air front and got in line for the hostess anyway.
"How many in your party?" the cute little blonde asked. Quite shapely, she reminded him of Bambi, same pretty face and curly blonde hair. As he thought that he got hit with a nasty flashback of the blonde bending over to scavenge ammo from the dead, arms and legs covered in blood and lovely blonde bush reflecting in the red flare light. "Are you okay?" the girl asked hurriedly.
"Yeah," he answered after a second, closing his eyes and telling himself that he was in Islamorada and at Rumrunners. Not back in the bunker. "Sorry, sort of a headache thing," he continued, taking off his sunglasses to dangle on their lanyard. "One, nonsmoking."
"We're pretty busy this afternoon," the girl said nervously. "It will be about an hour."
"I'll wait in the bar," Mike replied, taking the flashy buzzy pager thing and dropping it in his pocket.
The bar was even more crowded than the front, all the tables taken and no room to even move up to the bar and get a beer. Finally he spotted an open seat next to a curvy brunette and pushed his way through the crowd to it.
"This seat taken?" he asked, groaning to himself. He'd be more than happy to hit on the brunette, who was wearing a light sundress and looked even better from the front than the back, but mostly he was just trying to get to the bar.
"Yes, as a matter of fact it is," the girl said coldly. "My friend will be back in a minute."
"Not hitting on you," Mike said, trying to get the barmaid's attention. "I was just trying to find a seat."
The girl turned away and he shrugged. Finally, the barmaid got free and came over to him.
"I'll take a Fosters," Mike said. "And please give the young lady and her 'friend' a refill so she won't think I'm a jerk."
The barmaid glanced at the brunette, who shrugged and nodded.
"I'm sorry I snapped," the girl said, not turning her head.
"It's okay," Mike replied. "You probably do get hit on all the time. I think it would be different for a guy, but for young ladies it probably gets to being a pain in the butt."
"It is," she s
aid as a short, well-set-up blonde with short hair and lovely green eyes walked up and looked at Mike. He realized he was enough in the space that she couldn't sit down.
"Sorry," Mike said, backing away. "Just trying to get a drink."
"And buying us one," the brunette said, with a slight grin. "I'm Pam Shover."
"Mike Jenkins," Mike said, holding out his hand over the blonde's back. "Boat bum."
"What's a boat bum?" the blonde asked, interested despite herself.
"Somebody who lives full time on a boat and has no visible means of income," Mike replied, taking out a card and handing it to "Pam." "If you ever want to go fishing or cruising or whatever, give me a call. Again, not a hit. I just like to show off my boat."
"Probably not," Pam said, tucking the card away. "We're only down here for a week."
"Summer break?" Mike asked.
"Yes," Pam said. "And even with all the other girls in town, I feel like the main character in the song 'Fins.'"
"'Got fins to the left,'" Mike sang, chuckling. "Gotcha." He glanced at his watch and shrugged. "I've got about fifty minutes until my table's ready. So can we talk or should I just crawl under a rock?"
"We can talk," Pam said, grinning again and looking over the blonde's shoulder. "So, what does a professional boat bum do?"
"Mostly fish," Mike admitted.
"I'd wondered what the smell was," the blonde said, then flinched. "Jesus, I'm sorry, that came out as a real cut and it wasn't intended."
"I was catching dolphin this morning and spent a couple of hours filleting them all out," Mike said. "I showered and scrubbed before I landed. But getting all the smell off is tough."
"You were catching dolphin?" the blonde said angrily, looking up at him with flashing green eyes.
"Uh, dolphin fish," Mike said. "You'd probably call it mahi-mahi."
"People call it dolphin?" the blonde asked, confused.
"Yeah," Mike replied. "Don't worry about it, though, everybody gets it confused. But if somebody is talking about fishing for a run of dolphin, they're talking about mahi-mahi, not Flipper."
"Okay," the blonde said, chuckling. "Sorry about that."
"Like I said, common," Mike replied. "Anyway, that's pretty much what I do."
"And that pays the bills?" Pam said, raising an eyebrow.
"Oh, no," Mike replied. "Well, not all of them. I'm sort of retired."
"You're young to retire," Pam said, leaning back and looking at him with real interest for the first time.
"Short story or long?" Mike asked, trotting out his standard cover. "I used to run a very small company that sold communications widgets to the military. Classified, very low use, very niche market. Decent income but not rich or anything. Then, well, then 9/11 happened and my particular widget got really popular. The third buyout offer from a major defense contractor was too good to pass up. Now I'm semi-retired. The fishing pays for gas and food and sometimes docking charges. The company paid for the boat," he finished, grinning.
"Nice," the blonde said, glancing at him. "What'd you walk away with?"
"Uhmmm . . ." Mike said, shrugging. "That's . . . not classified because it's business, the term is proprietary. The IRS was really happy, though," he added sourly.
"So now you just . . . fish?" the blonde asked.
"Pretty much," Mike said, shrugging again. "Sometimes I do a little consulting."
"Classified?" Pam asked.
"Yep," Mike replied with a grin. "In general it falls into military communications and operational analysis. From my boat I tell guys who are out on the sharp end what they did wrong."
"The sharp end?" the blonde asked.
"Guys who do fighting," Pam said. "Like special forces and stuff."
"And do you know much about that?" the blonde asked, disbelievingly.
"I used commo gadgets before I sold them," Mike said with a shrug. "Now, I am just a retired widget maker."
"That's our table," Pam said, as their pager started to buzz. "Nice talking to you . . . Mike?"
"Jenkins," Mike said, nodding as the two got up. "And, hey, I get a seat!"
"Still warm," the blonde said, smiling.
"I've hot bunked with smelly guys," Mike replied. "This is much better. Don't forget your drinks."
He sipped his Fosters until his pager went off and then had dinner. He wondered why he hadn't made more of a play for the girls. He could have played the hero card, that's for damned sure. Lift up his shirt just a bit and the blonde's disbelief would have gone away like a light. And there was still a certain amount of newly modified patriotic fervor after Aleppo. Young ladies who hadn't previously were suddenly finding military guys interesting. But . . . he'd just been willing to pass for some reason. And there was zero chance that they'd want to go fishing; they weren't the type.
Three days later he was upside down under his starboard engine and cursing the idiot Swede who had thought putting an oil pump in the bottom of an engine was a good idea. To reach the oil pump required a trained gymnast and he was just glad he'd been doing some limbering exercises along with the working out. To get to the pump, he had to lie down on top of the engine and then slide down the side and underneath. Getting back out was on the near order of impossible, but he'd rigged a line that he could pull, over his back, to give him some leverage.
But he'd managed it, finally, and was just cranking down the last of the bolts when he heard a female voice hailing from the pier.
"Hang on!" he yelled, sliding the wrench back where he'd be able to retrieve it and then slipping out from under the engine. He clambered, awkwardly, up onto the top of the engine and then stuck his head out of the hatch to see who it was; he was surprised as hell to see the blonde and brunette from the bar carrying small bags.
"Hey," he called. "Come aboard. I'd shake your hand, but you don't want to get within ten feet of me right now."
"Nice boat," Pam said, walking across the gangway. "I thought you meant some sort of sailboat or something. What is this?"
"Bertram 45," Mike replied. "With a God damned Volvo engine designed by an idiot. But it's fixed now."
"Rich and a mechanic," the blonde said wonderingly. "Will wonders never cease?"
"And I cook," Mike said, grinning and standing up.
"Holy SHIT," the blonde said, obviously staring even with sunglasses in the way. "You weren't kidding about having some experience, were you?"
"No," Mike said, wiping his hands and then slipping on a shirt over his oil-covered torso.
"Sorry," the blonde said, shaking her head. "What was all that?"
"Bullets and shrapnel," Mike replied, picking up his tools and cleaning them off. "Shrapnel is little pieces of metal. Those were from a grenade, I think. Must have been; there wasn't any artillery or mortars incoming."
"Where'd it happen?" Pam asked, softly. "Or is that . . ."
"Classified, yeah," Mike said simply.
"What were you?" the blonde asked. "Or is that . . ."
"No, I was a SEAL," Mike replied. "That's not classified. And I can tell some great training stories that will have you laughing your ass off. But I can't talk, won't talk, about missions."
"Okay," Pam said. "But . . . were you in Syria?"
"That was after I was out," Mike said, not exactly lying. "The team is open source, it was Charlie Three. It was actually the same team and platoon I was in when I was operational. I know a couple of the guys who are still in it, were on the mission. But I wasn't in the team for that." He set the cleaned tools in their box and climbed out of the hatch. "Let me show you the boat. I'm really proud of her."
He led them up to the flying bridge and then down the companionway to the closed bridge and into the lounge.
"Lots of electronics," the blonde said.
"Yeah, when you're by yourself you need them," Mike said. "By the way, your friend is Pam and you are . . . ?"
"Sorry, we didn't get introduced, did we?" the blonde said. "Courtney Trays."
"Mike,"
he said. "Let me go get cleaned up and I'll shake your hand. Drinks in the fridge, two bathrooms down the companionway on either side, liquor cabinet if you're of a mind."
"It's a little early," Pam said.
"You're on vacation," Mike said, grinning. "And the sun's over the yardarm somewhere."
He walked down the companionway to the main cabin and into the bathroom. He wasn't about to scatter oil over the marble countertop, so he pulled off his shirt and bundled it and the shorts he'd been wearing together, then pulled out a can of Go-Jo and worked off most of the grime. After a very quick shower he was mostly clean, as a glance in the mirror proved. He slipped on a pair of swimming trunks and another T-shirt, then went back to the lounge.
"Hi, I'm Mike Jenkins," he said, holding out his hand to the blonde, who was perched at the bar sipping a Coke.
"Nice to meet you, Mike," the girl said, grinning.
"I hadn't, frankly, expected you two to show up," Mike said, getting out a Gatorade.
"Well, coming down to Islamorada sounded like a great idea after last semester," Pam said, sipping her drink. "We're from the University of Missouri in Springfield and it had not only been a bitch of a winter, it had been a bitch of a semester. Courtney said: 'Let's go to the Keys,' so we dropped our stuff at the parents' and got in the car."
"Little did we know how much staying here was going to cost," Courtney said sourly. "We're not moving in on you, but we're, frankly, getting tapped except for the money we need to get home. So, since you'd offered to go fishing or something, we decided, what the heck?"
"Did you make a safe call?" Mike asked neutrally.
"Uhm . . . a what?" Pam asked.
"Oh, Christ," Mike said, shaking his head. "You must be freshmen or something."
"And your point?" Courtney asked sharply.
"Safe call," Mike said. "You don't know diddly about some guy you've met in a bar. So you have somebody you know is home that you call and say: 'Hey, I met this guy named George Winson, his address is 52 Bonny Lane. If you don't hear from me by tomorrow morning, call the police.'"