Chapter 2

The Irish redhead ... excuse me ... the Short ... the Tiny ... ah ... if you'd quit hitting me ... the Vertical Quadrant Dimensionally Challenged ruby headed Irish beauty ... continued on a course connecting the dots. She putt-putted along picking the men out of the water as she went.

Austin, Lead.

Peterson, Ivanovich, Sniper / Spotter.

Smith, Black, Jones, Scout.

Carlyle, Costas, Demolition.

Donatello, Communications

Saṃdīp Barār, Knives.

Carmine and Johnson were missing.

The first question everyone asked as they came out of the water, was, "Who is she?"

The only thing I could say was, "Fortuitous coincidence."

When they found out where they were wet, the men radiated cold ... deadly cold.

Maveen had an actual washer / dryer in the cabin and the men brought their sopping wet gear to be dried. In exchange, she supplied "Togas," I was quite surprised to find they were well versed in "toga" and "party". What do these guys do between jobs that I don't know about?

Since my gear was first in, it was my gear that went tic-tic-tic in the dryer and tink on the cabin floor when she took the junk out and shook it.

"Tink"

A little green pill started rolling towards the crack between the middle floor and the last one. She caught it.

Sailboat floors are the last flat piece before the fiberglas hull. they're usually hollow and echo when things are dropped. Or maybe not. Whatever, she brought it to me ... my clothes ... my little pill.

While the toga party was discussing, who and why, Maveen deposited the pill in my hand.

"Yours, I think. It was in your clothes. It fell out when I shook the pants."

Naturally, I knew immediately what it was ... a Federal GPS Personnel Tracker. In our line of work, we had used them often. State of the art little buggers ... with a nickel cadmium battery they had a pretty good range and lasted as long as your quartz watch ... about three years. It was warm but that might have been the dryer.

Donatello dug in his pack and opened the waterproof carrier for the detector and ... Whada ye know ... the puppy was active.

My faith in my government ... never all that strong ... weakened even more. Donatello scanned all our clothes ... Yup ... every one beeped. Even after the trackers were removed Emile kept uncovering more. The Feds were serious ... there were over a million bucks worth of the damn things.

"Maveen, would you please retrace your course? We need these to go overboard in the places we were when you picked us up ... and we need some beer or soda bottles to put them in."

Beer and soda bottles sink slowly, it takes awhile for them to fill enough to go under ... some times they never do sink ... but that's the exception ... every rule has them.

The beautiful redhead ... with the brilliant green eyes turned the 114 foot ketch Iskoristidan and putt putted back over her wake. The bottles with trackers were dumped overboard slowly so as not to sink. Wave action would take care of filling the empty but bug laden bottles.

On the return trip the bodies of Carmine and Johnson were spotted but left. This would only work if everyone was 'dead' ... revenge is best if the target is unaware.

"Maveen?"

"Colonel?"

"This is an awfully big boat to be working without as crew."

"Iskoristidan is ... unusual ... there is a builders document in the office compartment," she said.

"How about you tell me?"