Chapter 4

Anne. ticket holder and pilot

Carl. cook

Henry. diesel mechanic

Jim. fire control/radarman

Janet. housekeeping

Kim. medic

All right, let's Think about this before diving in. On the plus side, I'm a decent plumber and electrician. I know my way around a diesel engine. I've got enough cash to get it done without trying for a loan. I don't get seasick. A ship has great security--it's hard to sneak up on a ship.

On the minus side, I don't have a captain's ticket and hiring anyone to be a captain would hit me for over forty thousand a year, depending on the person and our contract. My income isn't much and diesel fuel isn't cheap. Ships the size of the bus can burn 5-7 gallons per hour at cruise. Ships need insurance and periodic maintenance on the hull and engines. Also, I'm getting up there in age and working full days doing maintenance isn't my idea of retirement. Zincs (anodes) have to be replaced regularly so that they disintegrate and the rest of the ship doesn't due to seawater.

What about cutting it down the middle? If I found a retired captain that wanted to get back on the water and screw around a little maybe we could work a deal. If I bought a small cargo vessel with a boom crane instead of investing in a rich man's diversion we could haul a little freight around the small islands and island homes in the Carribean--sort of a tramp steamer gig.

Two retirement incomes plus a little freight haulage should keep a couple of people in diesel fuel and grub. It was worth a try...

I read through the ship listings until my eyes bled. I found a vessel that, if I could pull it off, would give me a wonderful opportunity. If it fell through then I'd lose it all. Shake the dice, Tony. Shake the dice. Fuck it. DO it.

I found that Peru had the highest value of gold at that time, at 2265 per ounce. I took about half the gold with me. I booked a flight to Lima with a single--very heavy--carry-on. I returned with 1,467,400 U.S. dollars in hundreds. I took a flight to Mexico City where my bank had its foundation branch. I put all but 20,000 in my account. Next stop, Long Beach, California. I paid cash (well, certified check) for a Coast Guard fisheries patrol vessel--179 feet long, 31 feet wide and 188 registered tons. I recieved a packet of certifications that filled a brief case. The thing just had a mid-life refurbishment a few years before. I paid 650,000 for it--a fucking steal! After settling up I paid the next couple of month's wharf fees, found a hotel and started sending out Craig's list and newspaper ads advertising for retired marine engineers, cooks, captains and mates. I included a picture of the Jamieson nee Lady Chebukto so they'd know what they were getting into. I actually got responses!

Ellen had been a captain on a naval dry cargo and ammunition ship--over ten times the size of the Jamieson. We shook hands on a share of the ship. She immediately registered for the captaincy course with the coast guard to get her civilian papers. She said that the course was a 'gimme' and she'd see me in a couple of months. She was 51.

Carl had been a ship's cook on a big 160-passenger ferry and was burnt out. After he saw the kitchen he said 'With a kitchen like this, cooking for a dozen is just enough to keep my hand in. Count me in." He was 44.

Henry caressed the engines and smiled. That's all I needed. Henry was about 60.

Jim was just out of the navy and knew his way around a CIC. (command-information-control station) He grew up in a family-owned restaurant and said cooking was in his blood. He wanted to be our part-time baker. Hey, if it made him happy, more better! Jim was 29.

Janet was a housekeeper on a cruise ship until she got caught smoking reefer on board. Hell, I didn't care and I doubt the rest of the crew would either. She came on as housekeeping and cook's helper. Janet was 26.

Kim was a Physician's Assistant. She wanted to travel for a while to get the taste of Los Angeles emergency rooms out of her mouth. Great! With her help we got our sick bay stocked. Kim was 28.

A lawyer drew up the paperwork to incorporate us under an LLC--limited liability corporation. The corporation would own the vessel and pay shares to the shareholders as determined by the board of directors. The LLC would be liable for the bulk of the taxes, not us.

I got busy with a marine engineering firm. We opened up the cabins to double their size without screwing up the load bearing strength of the main deck, ripped out the mil-spec stuff and put in decent bedroom furniture. One of the rec-rooms grew and got turned into a small THX-enabled theater. I set up an account with a ship's chandler to stock the kitchen's larder, walk-in fridge and walk-in freezer. We invested in six pressure washers to make it easy keeping the deck, kitchen, passageways and heads clean. It cost about a sixty thousand bucks to fill the diesel tanks! Holy shit!

There was no way that I could upgrade the radar, GPS, sat-nav or autopilot beyond what we had. I added a commercial ship-to-shore radiophone and a sat phone to our electronics profile. A 15-foot hot tub mysteriously appeared on deck--purely in the name of hygiene, of course. Back where a fan-tail should be I had a barbecue grill welded into place off in one corner. It was out of the way, protected by the side-walls and fulfilled my demented demand for barbecued meat and jerky. It looked goofy as hell but fuck it--it worked Goofy, hell. It looked redneck...

The ship had a crane that covered the rear half of the deck. We had room for a few pallets as it was once we lost most of the dories, but a marine engineering firm took it one step further. We had a waterproof hatch put in and gutted the four smallest staterooms below the hatch for cargo space. We had eight pallet racks welded into place that carried four pallets per rack. As long as they weren't filled with steel castings or something else obscenely heavy we'd do fine. I learned to balance the load and run the crane. A small reefer box was mounted on deck to hold one full pallet of meat. A tiny little propane forklift moved the pallets into and out of the racks.

When Ellen got back I thought she'd shit little green martians, but after a tour of the changes and a meet-and-greet with the rest of the crew she was all smiles. Since she'd been in the business of supply while in the military she took it in hand to design a ship's chandlery inventory and re-supply document. Hell, it was a system! I borrowed her text books and got busy reading to be her captain understudy.

We settled on a monthly first Monday morning breakfast and ship's business meeting. We agreed on a ship's account and funding. Five of us had pensions and paid them into the ship's account. That gave us over 8,000 a month operating budget. Rather than take the ship down to Chile to get my stuff I flew down, sold the bus virtually as-is, gave my boat to my hosts, packed a half-container with all my cooking gear, tools, saved supplies, electronics, DVDs and ordnance. I had the meat from the freezer packed in dry ice. I then had it shipped to Long Beach. It damned near beat me back and I flew first class!

I wanted to arm the crew well enough to repel boarders. We had a fire-control system built into the ship but I didn't know what we'd need to integrate that with a weapons platform. I took a hundred krugerrands with me on a trip to Midland Texas. I had a good old boy that I wanted to deal with.

Once on the ground I hired a ford cargo van with no rear windows. I drove up to Bob's place with a smile on my face and larceny in my heart. I knocked on his door and stood back a bit so as not to spook the man. "Hey, Bob! You outa the rack yet?" I heard what must have been profanity coming out of the prefab house, but the insulation kept me from making it out. Soon the door opened and Bob peered out at me. "Jesus, you'd think we were getting raided by the feds from all the ruckus. Who da hell is it?"

"Bob, it's me, Tony. Remember the golden boy?" I shook a little bag of gold coins to remind him. He brightened up and grinned. "Hell, yeah! Good to see you 'gain. Come on in!" I sat down and had a coffee with him, then brought up some business. First, I slid a photo of the Jamieson towards him. "I bought it. It's ex-coastie. I've collected a crew and we're off to do business in the Carribean but I'm worried about piracy. She's got a fire control system but I have no idea how to interface with it. Can you help me out? I figure if you've got any blue water navy guys you know somebody's got to know what to buy and how to get it integrated."

He sat there and looked at me, then laughed. Then he reached out his hand and shook mine. "Chief Petty Officer Bob Conway. Nice tameetcha." He grinned fit to beat the band.

"So, what's it gonna cost me for two M61 vulcans and ten cases of HEI?" (high-explosive/incendiary)

He grinned, showing lots of teeth. He dropped the good-old-boy accent. "One hell of a lot. We can probably steal what we want from the naval stores depot near Galveston. We drive up with a fork lift and a cube truck and drive out with ten pallets or so worth several million. We can probably find the vulcans already on universal mounts. All you have to do is bolt them down, plug them in and run a couple calibration rountines."

I threw him a pouch holding ten krugerands. I said "We'll probably want to blow the local power grid transformer before knocking on the door. It gets their attention elsewhere and confuses the issue."

"Shit! That was you! That bank never knew what hit 'em. They're still talking about it!" I just grinned "Not bad for an old retired fart, eh?"

We got busy planning the operation. Bob had three friends that he had 'history' with. They were a bunch of grizzled old warriors that still had some hell-raising left in 'em. I agreed to pay them five grand per man for the job. I paid in gold. They agreed to furnish the propane-powered fork lift, the C4 and the truck. I called the ship's sat-phone and asked Ellen to cross the Panama canal and come up to the port of Texas City. I'd have a dock reserved for them. It took a couple days to get everything ready. I then made a couple of cell-phone activated bombs under the interested eyes of our team. We had a 12-volt battery and a big search light fastened to the fork lift so that we could find the right pallets. A gas welding rig with big tanks and a cell-phone operated detonator was rolled into the huge dry stores building and the valves were opened. The fuel-air explosive took out most of the building bringing base personnel running from all directions. Then the lights went out when the transformer blew.

Nobody noticed us breaking into the secured stores building and carting off all that the semi would hold. I got my vulcans and TWENTY cases of HEI ammo, the biggest mortar that I could find along with a couple cases of rounds, a half-dozen 50-cal sniper's rifles and a pallet of hi-tech night vision gear. The other half of the semi load was stuff that the guys wanted--miniguns, 7.62 ammo, combat weapons, explosives, you name it. We sedately cruised out of there, breaking nary a law. That semi sat there in plain sight with all that loot for four days before the Jamieson came into port. (Just for the hell of it I made off with a 7.62 caliber minigun on a tripod mount along with a couple cans of belted rounds.)

"Okay Bob. Now let's finish what I'm after. Let's see if you can produce 6 FN FAL rifles equipped for 3 round bursts, with scopes, 6 good vests with trauma plates, six helmets to hold the night vision gear, six 12-gauge street sweepers and 5000 rounds of both 7.62 and 12-gauge ammo. Now that she's in port I've got access to the rest of my gold reserves. How much do you need?"

He sat and figured a bit then made a phone call. "Twelve coins. I can have it here in three days. Meanwhile the guys probably want to mount the vulcans to see if they still remember the tricks. You've got a nice crane there. That'll make it a lot easier than it could be. I've seen one of those things installed with a pallet jack."

I retrieved the gold and handed it over with a handshake. "Same deal. You get a coin for greasing the wheels." He grinned. "Deal."

I got the black water tanks pumped and flushed, the water tank flushed and filled, the diesel tanks refilled and the bills paid. Carl took care of ship's chandler duties with Ellen's tables. Henry got a CNC machine, a MIG welder, a big metal lathe and a shitload of stock. Bob's team swore a blue streak but smoothly got the vulcans mounted and the ammo pods loaded with a thousand rounds each. I was glad that the barbecue was mounted below the guard rail or the first test firing would have blown the hell out of it. I'd be pissed without my barbecue! Jim grinned like crazy when the ready lights came up in the CIC for the vulcans. He typed in a few lines and we waited, and we waited, and the lights came up green. Successful integration!