Chapter 27

The ship lights were still on so using the goggles would be useless for now. I had to assume that the captain was directed to cut them at first contact. I probably would have cut them already, then changed course and sped up to try and lose them. There must be some reason we haven’t tried to avoid contact though, so I just settled in on the rear of the boat and got comfortable.

“Listen up, people. The three babies are less than a mile away now and arrowing in. Lights out in thirty seconds. Guns free.” Dave’s voice came over the radio followed by a single click from each of the rest of us, letting him know we heard him.

The thirty seconds until the lights out took, like, ten minutes. Or, at least, that is the way it felt.

It was funny, it occurred to me I felt more relaxed here than I had just two months ago in Mexico. On a boat, I knew what I was doing, I had a clear idea of where everything was, where I should be, how to fight. I was at home here, and these guys were coming in to my territory.

Once all the lights were off and we were just a black hole in the water, I flipped down my NVGs and turned them on. Even with it overcast and with a light rain, the starlight and the moon behind the clouds gave us enough light to see.

What appeared in front of my eyes was a field where everything was in shades of green. Unless you live under a rock and have no internet access, you know what I am talking about. From movies about Viet Nam and soldiers using Starlight scopes to the videos of Apache helicopters taking out Iraqis during Desert Storm, you are almost certain to have seen the green.

What they don’t tell you, or what might not be clear from watching two-dimensional videos of the view, is that you lose a lot of your depth perception. Okay, big deal, right? Yes, it is a big deal. We evolved with stereoscopic vision. Our forward-facing eyes peg us as a predator and we are used to having those two viewpoints, even if they are only inches apart, give us a different perspective on the world. The difference between what we see in the left eye and what we see in the right eye is translated in our brain to give us an idea of how close or how far away something is.

When we lose that, we may think everything is copacetic until we reach for something. You might reach for a glass and accidentally knock it off the table because it was closer than you though. You might reach for your keys and swipe the air, missing them because they were further away than they appear. Now if things are like that when they are right in front of you, try judging the distance if things are a hundred feet, a hundred yards, a mile away.

Yeah, it’s a big deal when you are trying to hit something with a gun! Still, with practice and experience, you can do it. Even with training, and with that second skillset there in your brain already, you just better hope that nothing happens in that first minute or two until your brain readjusts!

Thankfully, we had plenty of time. With the goggles down, I went through a set of exercises that I had learned to make my brain adjust faster. I picked out a known object at a known distance, then work my way from one to another, switching distances back and forth, back and forth. I don’t know if that would work for others, I know Dean has his own method, but it works for me. Since we were at sea, I was switching back and forth from the girls to Dave on the roof.

It was about ten minutes before we could see any movement out on the water. There was light from the smaller boat helms, the dials and gauges were lit up and, to our light amplifying goggles, they might as well have been high-powered flashlights instead of tiny LEDs.

The boats that were coming in were what I always thought of as whalers. They were about twenty feet long, high-sided and with a raised prow to handle the waves. The controls were located amidships and had a standing console style setup. The one arrowing in towards the back port quarter had seven or eight men in it that I could see.

The one coming in from starboard had the same number of men but balanced in the prow was a guy with what looked like an RPG. He was riding the wave motion like he was born to it and would be formidable with that rocket launcher if we didn’t take him first. I was about to radio up to Dave when Deb sounded off.

“Dave, RPG to starboard. Opening fire.” That brief message was followed by a three round burst that caught the boat as it was dipping into a trough. Instead of the rounds impacting center of mass, Deb was sure to aim there at this distance, I saw the rounds hit him higher, almost decapitating the man. Even better, the RPG went overboard.

Looking back to the Port again, I saw that boat slow a bit and the men onboard started to look a little nervous. When a couple of them raised their ubiquitous AKs to fire, Steph and I fired together, taking down at least four men, including the Coxswain, the guy steering the boat.

I heard other shots being fired from the bow and from Deb, even a couple by Dave on top of the ship. When the firing stopped, all three boats were ghosts, no living souls aboard. Only one was still under power and it was barely making steerage way.

“Jack, Jake says it’s your call. Search them? Head for the parent? Report and get the hell out of here?” Dave called over the radio, no clue in his voice what he would choose if it were up to him.

“Not our boat, Dave. What does the Captain say?”

“He wants out of here and us off his boat.” Dave answered with a laugh.

“Dean, want a freighter?”

“What the hell would I do with a freighter?” He answered with a laugh. “Can I sell it?”

“I have no idea. How far are we from land? Far enough to claim international waters and salvage rights? I say we take it and find out.”

The radios were quiet for a moment, then I heard Dave again. “All hands, report to the main salon.”

When we were gathered in the salon, the Captain told us in no uncertain terms that he would not take his ship any closer to the parent vessel that had released the whale boats. If we attempted to force the issue, he would claim mutiny and press charges.

He would, however grudgingly, let us board one of the smaller boats and would wait here for no more than 48 hours, or until he heard from us, whichever was fastest. He warned us that if he got even a sniff of another pirate, he would run for the nearest port, screaming for help.

Okay, I could deal with that.

It took us half an hour to get close enough to grapple one of the whaleboats. After climbing aboard, it was clear that at least one of them had taken a while to die, but they were all definitely dead. I used my phone to take clear shots of each man, then we tossed them overboard and used some salt water to wash away the worst of the blood, piss and shit that had been left behind.

When it was cleaned up, we had eight AKs in various states of disrepair, a Dragunov-style SVD rifle for sniping, minus a scope, and a Soviet style RPG with four rounds. Three of them were HEDP and the fourth, based on the red tip, was probably incendiary.

We spent another hour catching the other two boats and found about the same. One of the boats had only six bodies on board, but there were blood smears on the gunwales so perhaps they had fallen overboard. The worst of the three we tied off to the fantail of the yacht, the other two we loaded up in and headed off to the mother ship, anchored about three miles away.

Dean and I were on one boat, Dean with an RPG over his shoulder and a grin on his face. The other boat held Dave and Deb. Steph, over her objections and with a lot of cursing, had stayed behind to watch over their principals.

It took almost an hour but, as we got closer, we could see that the boat was set up as a coastal freighter, though it looked like it might have been a commercial fishing boat at one time. It wasn’t all that big, about a hundred and forty feet long or so, and had permanent platforms welded to the hull on both sides and in the rear. With metal stairs that reached the water line, crews and cargo could be loaded by hand.

The bridge was at the rear, raised one level over the main deck so it could see past the bow. Even with the boat brightly lit, it was too far away to make out much detail and too bright for NVGs so we planned on the fly.

Dave had the only boat with a loud hailer so he was going to come in from the bow and go slowly along the port side, demanding the surrender of everyone on board.

Meanwhile, Dean and I would approach from the aft, heading for the rear stairs. Hopefully, their attention would be on Dave for long enough and we could get aboard unnoticed. If not, we could always use the RPG to sink them like they would have threatened, or even done, to us.

It worked. Not like we planned, of course, that would be too much to ask, but when the three men remaining on board all opened up on Dave with AKs, they were way too busy trying to hit a dodging whaleboat and its two occupants to even notice us tying up to the rear.

We got on board and called for them to put down their weapons. Two spun to fire our way and went down with new holes in their heads. The third man just lowered his rifle to the deck and turned, watching us warily.

I called Dave on the radio and gave him the all clear, then used cable ties to secure our prisoner to the gunwale of the ship. The two bodies got photographed and tossed overboard.

A quick search of the ship by Dave, Dean and Deb produced no more pirates, but they did produce two young girls. Dean was smart about how they told me though, moving to stand between me and the prisoner before he said a word. I had to grin a bit at the precaution, recognizing exactly what they did and why they did that. This guy was going to die, make no mistake, but how and where, and whether it would be at my hand, would depend on what he had to say.

When Dean saw that I was not about to fly into a rage, he just nodded and stepped aside.

I crouched down next to the sole surviving pirate, handing my AR to Dean and pulling out a knife instead.

“Do you speak English?”

“Yes, I speak very best.” the man said earnestly, his head bobbing up and down.

“The slave girls, where did you get them?”

The pirate looks blank for a moment, then brightens, “Girls? Girls down ... um ... below? Under?” he stumbles, searching for the words.

“Yes, those slaves. Where did you get them?”

“They are not being for me! They are gift to captain. He get with ship, from le Admiral.” That last bit was clearly French, even to the accent.

“Le Admiral has more slaves? More women he sells?”

“Many! He has many! He capture ship, take children, sell to Morocco.”

I turned to Dean and shrugged. “I think we have to go official on this one. We need someone to actually question this guy. I would love to just shoot him and dump him, but if he isn’t lying, well, I need to find out for sure.”

Dean just nodded like he had expected that answer and turned to Dave.

“Let’s see if we can find the radio. Our little units won’t reach back to the yacht.”

Twelve days. Twelve god -damned days. Jake, once he was sure that we were not going to disappear into the Italian justice system, left a raft of high-priced lawyers to watch over us and flew back to the US with Liz, Dave and Steph. That was after day four.

Dave wanted to stay, but we convinced him that his duty was to Jake and he couldn’t really argue with that. He flipped me off when I told him not to worry about his share of the freighter, that I would be sure to donate it to a home for unwed mothers in his name.

Eight days later the Italians, under pressure from the US, British, Spanish, French, Portuguese and, strangely enough, the Ukrainians, gave in on trying to hold us. Meanwhile, the Italian military, not bothering to okay it with the civil authorities, located the base for the pirate ‘fleet’, if you could call two converted freighters and ten whaleboats a fleet.

Well, make that one freighter and six whaleboats!

Meanwhile the Tunisians, embarrassed because these pirates had taken over a small island owned by Tunisia without anyone even noticing, went in guns blazing and captured twenty-three pirates. They rescued a dozen more girls, all aged from twelve up to sixteen and all suffering from being raped regularly.

There was evidence gathered at the pirate base that they were trafficking girls to Morocco for shipment by air to the middle east. No country wanted it known that they condoned that kind of activity, especially after the revelations and scandals over the last few years, so the data was turned over to every law enforcement effort with a claim.

This risked the information getting back to the slavers, of course, but any refusal to share data would have been seen as either complicity or as a sure sign that the requester was not trusted.

It’s funny. Terry calls me a shit magnet, but says I have a golden thumb. I am beginning to think he is right, about the shit part anyway. It is almost as if some cosmic force is directing these particular types of scumbags into my path.

I am strangely okay with that.

As for the boat we took, I had it surveyed, along with the whaleboats we took and the one still on board the ship. The boat was indeed designed as a deep-sea fisher, but the company that ordered the boat, and its sister, ran out of money before the ships were completed. Rather than let them sit and rust waiting for a buyer, the builder completed the ships as cargo vessels instead, replacing the big net hoists with small cranes and calling them coastal haulers.

The ship was in surprisingly good shape and was appraised at the equivalent of three hundred and ten thousand. The small whaleboats were simple, but strong and well built, and were appraised, after the bullet holes got repaired, at fifteen thousand each.

A phone call to Paolo Iglesias to gauge his interest and a couple of more to the Tunisian official who was in charge of the Pirate situation, and I had two practically new ships in my name. I even got the whaleboats thrown in for a steal of five thousand each.

For Dean, Dave, Deb and Steph, I had Terry wire a hundred thousand to each of their accounts as payment for their shares of the captured ship and boats. For the cost of the one additional ship at three hundred thousand, plus thirty for the remaining whaleboats, I got two ships, ten whaleboats worth for seven hundred and thirty thousand, about forty thousand under appraised value and about two hundred thousand under market value.

Per my phone agreement with Paolo, I paid to have him and several of his buddies to fly into Cagliari, Sardinia where we were holed up. They were able to take possession of the ships, with the boats loaded aboard, and begin steaming towards the Straights within a week, happy as clams. He would return home to find a quarter of a million in working capital in the company accounts to be used for finding and leasing, or buying, property, and a spending account with a shipyard in Peniche who would convert the ships back over again. The folks here in Cagliari seemed to think it would be cheap and easy.

Terry would have to work out the details, but I was now a forty-nine percent owner of Iglesias Y McCoy, Pescadores LLC and I used that ‘offshore’ money to get it all done too! With what I was going to pay to have those ships converted back over to fishing vessels again, not to mention what it was going to cost for some place to dock them and our catch, I could have asked for a lot more, but why?

Estrellita was the poorest of the girls I helped rescue and it felt good to help out her family. They had pride and would not have accepted money directly, so this would allow them to earn a better lifestyle. The profits from my portion of the company would be donated to the Demeter Foundation EU with instructions that they were earmarked for charity and scholarships in Portugal.

A million and a quarter, out of eight hundred million in drug money was a drop in the bucket. That did make me think though. I still had years on my tax agreement, not to mention import agreements, with the various governments. I made sure to send Terry an email asking him to look into that, see how it affected this deal. It could save us, conservatively, a hundred grand in taxes and import fees, maybe even more if that tax agreement covered businesses in which I had partial or complete ownership.

Finally, we were free to leave. We had been virtual prisoners in our hotel because of the press and law enforcement from several countries who had demanded a chance to interrogate, oh, excuse me, to question us.

One of the Italian investigators even became a sort of gateway to us, being very careful to remain impartial and to let us make decisions on who we would see and when. His bosses wanted us to want to help, and not because we were being browbeaten into it!

Calogero Agostino was Sicilian by birth but attended university in Rome and joined the police force there when he graduated. He was very successful and became a detective, then was recruited in 2007 by the newly formed AISI, or Agenzia Iformazioni e Securezza Interna. The Internal Information and Security Agency was about as close as you could get to the Unites States’ FBI.

He liked to joke that he was glad he only joined up after the change. Before the change, he would have worked for SISMI and, as he put it, the entire world had good reason to hate those people; they had screwed over everyone!

Calogero was youngish for his rank and position, blaming it on the government cleaning house, but I think it was because he was damned good at what he did for a living. Several times, during just casual conversations, I found myself skirting things that he definitely didn’t need to know. Every time when I thought about the sequence of events, I could see that he had carefully, skillfully, guided the conversation in the direction he wanted.

When I called him on it, he just laughed and laid a finger alongside his nose like he was some old time mafioso or something. “A guilty man flees when none pursue.” he said with a grin.

“Yeah, well, curiosity killed the cat. You are too slick for your own good. Every man is guilty of something, if only you dig deep enough. What skeletons do you have in your closet, Calogero?”

He sat quietly for a moment, his eyes unfocused as he obviously was searching his own past. Fleeting expressions; smiles, frowns, once a flash of pain, seem to creep up and disappear. After a couple of minutes, he looks over at me and nods.

“There are secrets and there are secrets.” he said softly, shaking his head. “It is a game I play with everyone, Jack. It is probably why I am still single and why I will never climb higher in rank than I am today. You know what though? I am okay with that. I am good at what I do. I am also a good judge of character, or at least I think I am, and I think you are a good man. I will try to restrain myself in the future.”

Of course, that was easier said than done, but we actually got to be pretty good buds in a short time, good enough that he promised to keep in touch, telling me what he could about the investigation into the slavery angle. I promised to share whatever I learned from others, which had the potential to be more than he learned, given my circle of contacts these days!

We flew back to the states the first week of August, having shipped our weapons home via insured courier. We landed at Miami International to go through customs and switch to a domestic flight but were shunted aside at customs and held for more than an hour in an interrogation room.

When the locked door finally opened and Sid Meir walked in, I was seriously pissed.

“Something we can do for you, Sid?” I asked, being deliberately rude.

“Well, Jack, you seem to have a habit of stirring up trouble overseas and then expecting us to smooth things over for you.” Meir said, pulling a chair and easing himself down on to the seat.

“No, Sid, I don’t. You are just being pissy because I told you to go pound sand when you wanted me to toe the government line on a private matter. As for the current mess overseas, nothing I did was illegal or even embarrassing to the United States, so you have no cause to detain me. You want to let me go before this turns from an annoying delay into an illegal detention?”

Sid Meir sat back and shook his head. “You are about the most mule headed kid I have ever run in to.”

“If you had fucking asked me, come to me and asked me like an adult, rather than think you can dictate to me from on high, I might have been more malleable. I thought you were a good one, Sid, one not corrupted into thinking just because you were from DC, you know best. Turns out you are a petty tyrant with delusions of competence just like those morons you dressed down when they defied you. Next time your masters in DC want something, they better send someone else. If it is you, the answer is and always will be no.”

“Look kid, you have no idea what you are messing with.”

“Fuck you, Sid. I want my lawyer.”

He stormed out and we were held for three more hours. Every piece of clothing, our suitcases torn apart and we were strip searched. Twice. We missed our flight and the next one wasn’t for six more hours and there wasn’t a charter to be found or, at least, none who would admit to having a free aircraft.

My cell phone was not working and no matter what pay phone I tried to use, it was out of order. Same for Dean. We took a taxi to an airport hotel and, after checking in using cash, since our cards were evidently not working either, Dean did a ninja and snuck out unnoticed. He was able to call Jake and Dave, get the cavalry rolling.

We didn’t even bother to try and sleep, sure that something would come up and, sure enough, there was a heavy-handed knock on the door and a voice demanding that we open up, that federal officers wanted to question us.

The story was that the bills I used to pay for the room were forgeries and that we were being arrested and taken to DC for questioning by Treasury cops.

I think Dean had heard enough, dealt with enough. He opened his badge folio and stuck it in the face of a young treasury agent, demanding that she call and verify his identity. When she did, and found that he really was a deputy US marshal, he snatched the cell phone out of her hand and dialed his contacts in DC.

In mere minutes, every cell phone on every cop in the room started ringing and the looks of shock and consternation on their faces was almost comical. When my cell phone rang, I knew the end was in sight.

“Jack, you okay out there?” Judge Ramirez, my self-proclaimed god father and guardian angel, never sounded so good.

“Judge, you would never believe the amount of bullshit that peckerhead from the state department started today. I am going to hire a whole gross of law firms and give them instructions to bankrupt the government if they do not fire that asshole and every single one of the corrupt idiots who played a part in this.” I ranted, as pissed as I can remember being in a long time.

“Well, don’t hold back, son, tell me how you really feel!” The Judge was laughing at me, but he knew that I was not joking and I had the money to do exactly what I said I would. “Look, Jack, these guys were sent here from DC in a government jet. Ride back with them, get a good night’s sleep, and meet me for lunch in DC tomorrow. We’ll get this all straightened out.”

“Judge, you have been nothing but good to me, offering me support and advice and looking out for me my whole life almost. I am not joking or exaggerating when I tell you that I do not feel safe flying on a government aircraft and I sure as hell don’t feel safe in Washington, the seat of power for the petty bureaucrats who can ruin a man’s life with the swipe of a pen. Let me tell you what happened when I landed in Miami.”

I spent the next forty minutes laying out exactly what happened, what was said, how we were treated. Then I laid out the violations of the law that had to occur to selectively target our individual cell phones, without a court order, and they had to have someone complicit in the telecom company too. Then to blank out public pay phones selectively, based on our attempted use, holding us incommunicado without a court order, and they had to have someone watching every move we made through the airport video surveillance.