Chapter 17

“Your spy?”

“If the truth be told, we picked her up between Phucket and the Nicobars ... out of plain air ... so to speak. Poor thing was so exhausted she slept 18 hours.”

When only the truth will do ... make it short and sweet.

“She’s a real beauty...”

“Cassie? Show him your back.”

“Holy ... er ... Moses,” said the youngster. “That’s pitiful. What happened?”

“I think someone decided I needed a lesson ... I think,” Cassie said.

“When?” The younger Lieutenant asked.

“I think I might have been five or six. They wouldn’t let me go to school until it healed.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m a foundling.”

“Foundling? What’s that?”

“I was found on the orphanage steps.”

“You’re an orphan?”

“Got to have had parents to be an orphan,” Cassie said. “I wouldn’t know. I never had any.”

“Don’t know?” he said, “Don’t know who did this to you?”

“The first 10 years were traumatic. It could have been anybody.”

“How did you come to be here?”

“On the boat.” She never did say which boat and never mentioned the portal. “Flintkotes brought me. I was pretty exhausted.”

I said, “She slept 18 hours after she showed up.”

A SAR plane was sent to backtrack us ... and ... what do you know? Oil slick on the water in the general direction. Cassie was registered as a surviving victim of “white slavery.” They never did find any record of an abandoned baby girl ... or a ship ... This is Muslim territory ... they do like their blondes. Some of those guys don’t want to wait for their 72 virgins. ‘Get ‘em now and be a martyr later.‘

She received New Zealand citizenship because we were naturalized and we ‘found’ her.

The whole two months we were in Diego Garcia our flotilla of Cats was anchored on the south end while Flint was still docked at The Brit Club. Every single stitch of work was done at night so we were put up at “Quarters,” on the Base.

Cassie would look 19 or 20 to someone who didn’t know Crossroads. The women of Cassandra are ‘ready’ young. They don’t get many chances and take advantage of every opportunity.

Ain’t nothing like a Navy Base for ‘opportunity.’ During the day we all ‘played’ with JW, learning what he learned in Japan. At night Cassie went ‘out.’

Don’t know ... didn’t ask...

But she often had a big smile at breakfast.

The three .50 cal machine guns, three M30 106.7 mm (4.2 inch, or “Four-deuce”) heavy mortars, several dozen RPG 7 rocket-propelled grenades and one 3omm modified Soviet aircraft cannon were disguised as ‘safety gear’ ... life rafts, spare dinghy, davits, a man overboard hoist ... things a careful person would have aboard.

We have new radar and a ‘communications’ installation that connected us to the military sats.

It came time to go. By now, our little group of cats had been joined by all manner of recreational boaters. What with the pirates, going to the Red Sea was about as dangerous as things get. Places people wanted to see were going to be reasonably safe.

Don’t get me wrong ... the only scheduled stop was Port Sudan on the port side of the sea ... fuel and the market. Twenty four hours and gone.

Now ... if all the planing and preparation works.