“I don’t get it,” Britney said, blanching at the very direct threat to the president of Russia. “Why didn’t they tell you?”
“Because then I’d have aborted the op,” Mike said, his face hard. “We had ghosted into deepest darkest Injun country. The intel was building when we were still in movement, we hadn’t launched the op. We could’ve aborted and ghosted out. But that meant somebody else would have had to stop the… package. And we had a deal. I did the mission, I didn’t tell the U.S. what the package was. If ANV or Delta did an op in, say, Azerbaijan, then the U.S. would know what the deal was. They’d know what the Russians had really lost. They wanted me to stop the transfer even if it meant hanging us out to dry. Maybe especially if it meant I got smoked. Dead men tell no tales. The motherfuckers.”
“What was the package?” Britney asked. “Shit, that’s well above my clearance… Forget I asked.”
“It’s okay,” Mike said, taking another sip. “I’m not going to tell you anyway. Funny. They go and royally butt-fuck us and I’m still holding up my end of the fucking deal. Go figure.”
“You’re a good man,” Britney said. “And I think I really don’t want to know.”
“I’m a very bad man,” Mike said. “I will tell you this, though. Feel free to pass it on to anyone you can who has National Security Counsel clearance. Please fucking feel free to pass it on. The Russians told the U.S. it was nukes. Three of them. That was what I was getting paid to recover. Three nukes.”
“That’s serious enough,” Britney said, her eyes wide.
“Nothing compared to the real package,” Mike said, his jaw working. “The real package was Armageddon on a fucking platter. But here’s the kicker. I told the fucking Russians if I was going to keep their secret I wanted the deal sweetened. Four nukes. Five mil apiece was the vig. Twenty if I recovered all three. Hell, I turn up with four, that’s another five, minimum, right? Enough to keep my mouth shut.”
“Yes,” Britney said, shaking her head. “That must have been an interesting negotiation.”
“If I’d known they were going to fuck me as hard as they did, I’d have either told them to piss up a rope or told them ten,” Mike said. “Then I’d have sent them back, VPP. But here’s the real kicker. Guess how many I gave the U.S.?”
“Huh?” Britney said then her eyes widened. “Oh… shit.”
“Three,” Mike confirmed. “Hey, that was all they were expecting.”
“You have a nuclear weapon in your possession?” Britney said carefully.
“Yep,” Mike said. “About ten kilotons. In the basement of my castle. Partially disassembled I might add, thanks to the WMD expert I picked up on the same op. Something about retaining the quality of the tritium. But it can be assembled in about three minutes. And one of these days, oh let that day be soon, I’m going to take it and shove it up Vladimir’s ass, then blow the son-of-a-bitch.”
“I so didn’t want to know any of this,” Britney said, shaking her head. “I’m not even sure who I can tell.”
“I can put you on the phone to the President if you’d like,” Mike said, putting the boat back up on plane. “And you’d be surprised the shit you don’t want to know about what’s in the basement of my castle. Belts.”
“We were talking about Gretchen,” Britney said, strapping in.
“Yeah, we were,” Mike said, powering up. “And now we’re not. Thanks, though. I appreciate it.”
“We’re not done,” Britney said as the boat started hopping waves again.
“No, we’re not,” Mike admitted. “And, yeah, we’ll talk again. But it was a good start.” He tossed the remains of his drink over the side and looked over at her. “Think you can survive making it down to the cabin and getting me a Coke?”
“Can I ask you one thing first,” Britney said, undoing the straps while bracing herself.
“What?”
“What is the Navy’s first rule about a fire fight?”
“Send the Marines.”
Chapter Seven
“Who now?” Jason O’Connor asked. “The Marines?”
O’Connor was the desk manager of the Hollywood Florida Central Governmental Surplus Repository. Run by the Marshals Service, it was the place where everything the United States government seized in its ongoing war on drugs was dumped for eventual resale. Stuff seized by the IRS, despite the “Central Government” part, was sold through another agency.
The law under which the government seized most materials was incredibly archaic, going back to the middle ages. Effectively, the condition of forfeiture meant that when a crime was committed involving a device, vehicle or even home, that device, vehicle or home was considered an accomplice in the crime. And being an inanimate object, it had none of the “rights” of an individual. It was assumed to be guilty.
Thus when a person was pulled over and drugs were found in his car, the person would be arraigned, have hearings and in some cases eventually be tried if there was sufficient evidence and if the DA was feeling lucky.
The poor car had no such rights. Oh, if the owner contested it was given a trial, but no peers! And if the owner didn’t contest, usually because they were guilty as hell, the poor thing was sent directly to the Hollywood Florida Central Governmental Surplus Repository where it languished behind chain-link fence and barbed wire until some individual bought it at auction and freed it from durance vile.
Quite often that person was a friend or relation of the original drug dealer, who then transferred the title back. This was especially common with boats, some of which had been “incarcerated” four or five times for the exact same offense, the definition of recidivist. Alas, there was no three strikes law for boats.
Jason was having a bad day. Apparently, every government service in the nation was descending on South Florida for reasons he didn’t know and, frankly, could care less about. And they all wanted vehicles. Since the HCGSR had lots of vehicles, of every shape, model and description, and since the U.S. government already owned them, it was a natural source. Cars had been rolling off the lot all day. Not only did every one mean more paperwork, he knew they were going to be returned in poor to awful condition. Virtually unsellable. Cops never took care of their cars. Fibbies were the worst. No, DEA was the worst; what DEA did to a car shouldn’t happen to a junkyard dog.
But this guy wasn’t BU or DEA. No suit in the first case, no jeans and dreadlocks in the latter. He might be BATF. Some of the BATF guys had that military look. And those cars… Jesus.
“What?” Jason snapped.
“You have five offshore power boats,” the man said in strongly accented English. He handed over a distribution form. “The Kildar wishes them.”
“And what the fuck is a Kildar?” Jason asked, sitting on his stool and looking at the form. All the blanks were filled in but none of them made sense. He’d never seen the authorization code and the security code was… He turned to his computer and made his way through the menus, hunting up the code list. The authorization code was through SOCOM, which he’d sort of guessed. He’d seen one like it before. But the security code… The issuing office was listed as “Need-To-Know.” Fucking black ops. It was a valid code but it just pissed him off. The five boats were the best thing he had in the yard. They were going up for auction, one at a time, over the next month and were going to mean real money to the U.S. government. Money that was going to buy new gear for cops for one thing. The fuck if he was just going to let them disappear into a black ops hole. Fuck them. He had authority to deny requisitions and he was God damned well going to use it.