“I thought you were the driver,” Britney said, smiling thinly. “The targets are for the guys with guns.”
“You haven’t seen our other bird. By the way, my handle is Dragon.”
“No, I haven’t,” Britney said, distantly. “You did say ‘harem,’ right? I’m sure you said harem…”
Greznya was an intel puke. And she was a good one. She, too, had the “touch,” that special feel for a situation. And hers was ringing bells about the new intel specialist. She had spent a long time with the Kildar but had not been briefed. She knew him from before. She had something for him, something like the Keldara did. She was bonded. But she had said she was not a former girlfriend and she had that look. Whatever had happened it had not been a romantic relationship.
The yacht was rented but it was top-of-the-line and had massive satellite connectivity, including to the internet. The Keldara were tapped into every available database on earth and at the caravanserai Sergeant Vanner, All Father let him live, had built a gigantic server system capable of crunching data as fast as most supercomputers. They also had access to remote data systems, buying time on servers all over the world for anything their in-house system could not manage.
So she ran the name Britney Harder into the query and then on a hunch threw in possible connection words of “terrorism,” “terrorist,” and the various synonyms the Western press preferred such as “militant.”
The system was highly intuitive and used advanced algorithms similar to those used by Google to get likely hits. The response was almost instantaneous and came from, of all things, Lexis/Nexus, the database for the international press.
Greznya found the girl’s name, then went back to the beginning of the article. Then she pulled up other articles about the same event. There were thousands of such; it had been a world-wide event even if the Keldara were unaware of it. But “most read” often did mean the best information and most of it was repetitive. She sorted for some publications she knew were capable of actual in-depth reporting and nodded to herself.
Finally she was done and wiped the search. The search had been sent through two different intermediate routers so she was comfortable that it would not have been traced even if anyone was looking for them. A college student researching “recent events” would have done much the same as she.
On the other hand she now knew that people were looking for them. At least, they were looking for the Kildar. And she knew that they had a true Kildar, warrior born, if it wasn’t evident already. And that if anyone could bring him back, it would be the blonde lieutenant, a girl that would be considered moderately pretty among the Keldara even if she was a “ten” for most cultures.
But how, exactly…
Chapter Six
“WOOO-HOO!” Katya hooted, taking a swig from the bottle of tequila.
She wasn’t the only girl on the yacht but she was, without question, the center of attention. Which had the other six girls somewhat pissed. And she was definitely the center of attention for the target.
The gathering could not be called a party simply because it was more or less continuous. Juan Gonzales was well-known as a center for partying, even in the fun-loving Bahamas. Wherever he went, his boat was filled with casual “company,” most of the company young, good-looking females.
But except for during spring-break — when things got wild enough to make any of the various “party” shows would it be possible to smuggle a video camera on-board — the girls were rarely so… exuberant.
“I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself,” Juan said, raising a glass towards the new girl.
“I LOVE the Bahamas!” Katya shouted, taking another swig.
Jay had given her a drug that counteracted the effect of alcohol but she hardly needed it. She wasn’t taking nearly as big slugs as it appeared for one thing. For another, she had a fairly high tolerance for alcohol. Despite that, she’d taken one of the pills, which were tucked in a special pouch under her left arm, before she came back on deck.
There were more devices secreted around her body. Under her right armpit there had been four bugs, newest generation “brilliant” monitoring devices. The bugs recorded conversation, screening for background noise and nonconversational sounds, then, when their memory was full, dumped a short directional squeal towards a central receiver.
One of the bugs, and the central recorder, Katya had placed in the bathroom. It was amazing what people, especially females, would talk about in the bathroom. And she’d wanted to get rid of the receiver as soon as possible. While it would normally require a body cavity search to find it, Juan might just be into backdoor.
The bug, which looked like a small wad of chewing gum, went under the sink. There was enough detritus under there it was clear that it was rarely, if ever, cleaned. The receiver went inside the holding tank of the toilet. It looked fairly natural there even if anyone bothered to lift the lid.
But she still had three more to plant, not to mention anything she could pick up.
Getting the data out, though, that was another problem. She could leave the boat freely, small dinghies regularly ran back and forth to the nearby town, but she couldn’t off-load any of the data loaded in her head as she was used to. However, Jay had given her a number of drop points if she had anything to report. “The old-fashioned way” as he put it.
Juan Gonzales was a known cocaine trafficker. Convicting him, ah, that was the rub. As was getting anyone to extradite him given that the few witnesses willing to testify against him had all ended up dead. And he had very advanced measures to prevent exactly what Katya was, in fact, doing. While Juan was fully immersed in the partying, the several “security” men in the area were carefully watching most of the guests. Most. They had clearly been well-trained to ignore the girls. Otherwise one could be used as a distraction, right?
The one guy that had Katya nervous was the security chief. Michael Ritter was an Australian, a medium-height blond guy with a hearty laugh and long wavy hair. Pretty good looking if you ignored the broken nose that had been inadequately set. An Australian SAS veteran, he now did “international security contracting.” He’d been hired by Gonzales after a serious attack that had nearly captured the drug trafficker while in transit in Colombia. It still wasn’t clear if the attack had been by the Colombian government, American special forces or competitors.
Gonzales had escaped but only barely. And his bodyguards had performed less than ably. He’d come to the conclusion that he needed a professional, versed in all the modern methods of security and countermeasures and Ritter was highly recommended. Despite being formerly on the side of Light in most people’s eyes, he had worked in enough shady places it was clear he’d gone over to the Dark side. What the heck, with rare exceptions the money was much better.
The rest of the security, though, were Colombians. They’d been spiffed up and given new shoes but they were still boys right out of the jungle. Big and probably capable in a firefight but they weren’t expert watchers. Ritter had the eyes. He saw everything and he saw through many things. He was the one to convince.
“So where are you from?” Gonzales said, waving for the girl to sit in his lap.
“North Carolina,” Katya said, dropping lightly into the lap and then giving a little wiggle. “I go to ASU, you know? And I just figured why hang around for winter quarter? There’s hardly anything going on. So I caught a bus down to Miami and a guy gave me a ride over here on his boat. But it wasn’t nothing like this! This is just fine.”