John Ringo Ghost 05 A Deeper Blue

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time. Really!" The money was a small bill and some change. There was a
suspicious bulge under the bill.
"Okay," Ali said, taking the money from the boy's hand and giving him a
Snickers Bar. "But you must have the money, yes?" He handed back change. In
fact he handed back more money than he'd been given.
"I will, Ali," the boy said, grinning as he bit the Snickers.
"Now get out of here you thief! I have real customers to attend to!"
* * *
"He could kill us for this," Katya moaned as Suarez stroked her belly.
"Ritter and Juan are both gone," Suarez said, dropping his pants. "The boat is
nearly empty. And what is life without a little danger?"
It had taken Katya two days to arrange the assignation in the computer room.
She wasn't sure if the bug would even be able to pierce the walls but it was
worth a shot. Besides, at this point she'd bugged the main bathroom, Juan's
office, the main saloon and Juan's bedroom. This was the only place left worth
dropping one of the transmitters.
She leaned back in the reclining computer chair, stretching her arms over her
head and moaning as the
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Mexican went down on her. The bug slid under the console and stuck with barely
a flick of the finger. It was away from Suarez' main station, just in case he
was a nose picker. The little rotter probably was.
He'd clearly been watching the video of her fight with that American bitch;
God knows he'd mentioned it often enough.
"Oh, yeah, baby," she moaned, glancing at the computer. Stuck on the underside
of the keyboard was a strip of tape with a long series of numbers and letters
on it. She looked at it in astonishment for a moment then remembered to moan.
"Oh! Oh!"
She looked at the numbers and letters, trying to burn them into her memory.
Oh, hell, she didn't need to.
* * *
"Oh, my," Julia said, watching the take from Katya. "Would you look at this?"
"That is interesting," Lilia said, holding her finger up to her lips.
"The internet is a wonderful thing," Julia nodded. There was no way to ensure
that the room was secure.
The windows, alone, guaranteed that. The computer was, however, a secure
console. Surrounded by a metal cage, nothing could be remote detected from it.
Words were something else.
"I didn't even know you could do that with a donkey," Lilia said, batting her
eyes.
"I'm sure you've tried," Julia shot back, writing down what was obviously a
password. She wasn't sure what they could do with it, but it was interesting.
* * *
The inshore waters of the Abacos chain are renowned among boaters. With strong
offshore breezes from the Atlantic, but protected from the swells, they are
perfect for sailing. By the same token, they are perfect for all sorts of
boating and had, literally, thousands of miles of beaches and coves, a lover's
paradise.
They also had thousands of rocks and shoals, which was today's lesson.
"Watch the water," Randy shouted, pointing to a disturbance up ahead and to
the right. "You can see where the rocks are jutting up. Not always, but
usually even if they're slightly submerged. And if you hit one going this
speed. . ."
"Airborne," Vil shouted back, grinning. He knew the thrill of battle and the
thrill of doing really well in a
video game or the Ondah contest. None of them really matched the thrill of
taking a fast boat and cranking it up to max power.
"Okay," Randy shouted. "There's a series of them up here. Wide spread. You
figure them out."
Vil knew the instructor wasn't going to let him slam into one of the rocks.
Among other things, they'd both probably be killed. But he still knew he had
to get this right. He could see the first one, almost straight ahead. He
banked left then saw another that way. To the right looked clearer but he
wasn't sure he could turn back fast enough.
He realized that was the reason for the hours they had spent turning around
the buoys back at the base.
He knew, instinctively, that he didn't have the turn radius to make it back to
the right but he could slalom through the two rocks successfully.
He continued the left turn for a moment then banked hard right, the boat
skipping across the water, dangerously close to the second set of rocks, then
banked back hard left to line up again.
Movement on the water like a shoal. No, a skein of fish jumped out of the
water ahead of the fast moving craft, some of them clearing the nose and
slamming into the low windshields, splatting like overlarge bugs.
Vil ignored the distraction, continuing to weave. He'd learned that
distractions were death. Learned the hard way.
* * *
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The guy was doing good. Before he'd set up this test, Randy had carefully
navigated the same course, years of experience filing away all the functional
routes through the jutting reefs. Vil was taking the simplest, admittedly, but
he was proving he could spot the rocks and shoals.
Rocks and shoals were the proverbial bane of the Navy. The very term was used
for any sort of trouble and had been the nickname of the long defunct Navy
Manual For Court-martial. If you got into trouble with your NCOIC, you'd hit
"rocks and shoals." Same for wife or girlfriend. Actual rocks and shoals had
ended more than one promising Navy career.
If the guys all passed this test they'd made it through the very basics. This
was the easy stuff. Doing the same thing at night? That was another thing.
Doing it at full speed would be suicidal, but even at any sort of high speed
it would be tough. But they'd do the run tonight if everyone passed. Slowly.
Tomorrow, they'd be back on the ocean. Randy had kept their crossing slow and
easy. But the Atlantic beckoned just beyond the nearby islands to the east.
Let them face the monster at full speed. If they could cross the rollers as
well as Vil was doing in the shallows, ah, then glasshoppah. . . [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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