“All Father,” Vil whispered, looking at the boats.
Each of them was different. Two had two hulls, the others just one. But all were in a series of wild colors and just looked fast. He suddenly knew how Captain Bathlick must feel when she looked at the Dragon. But the captain, he reminded himself, was a highly trained professional. He had no clue how to even start one of these.
“We got one Fountain, a Nordic, a Cigarette, a Drone and a Hustler,” the regional supervisor said. He didn’t know who these guys were, but they had White House clearance so he was going to handle them with kid gloves. “You’ve driven one before, right?”
“No,” Vil said, shaking his head. “But we are to pick up instructors on the way. We must get them from here to there, though.”
“Ever driven a boat before?” the RS asked cautiously.
“Never,” Vil replied. “I grow up in mountains.”
“O-kay,” the RS said. “In that case, take it slow. There’s no such thing as too slow. They’re all gassed, but I can’t guarantee performance. We sell these things as is. They all worked when they got here and none of them have been tied up long.”
“We will be careful,” Vil said. “I can assure that.”
The RS gave each of the two-man teams a short class in how to handle the boats, then helped them untie and get pulled out. Two of them collided, briefly and lightly, getting pulled out. Then he made sure the gate was open as the line of boats slowly motored out towards the intercoastal waterway.
He wasn’t sure where they were going but he hoped that nobody got in their way.
“We will go very slow,” Vil said. He’d donned the standard team headset as had the other drivers. “Very very slow.”
“Where are we going?” Clarn Ferani asked.
“A bar,” Vil said.
Randy Holterman sat at the Caribbean Sports Bar and Grill and considered whether he was making one fucking huge mistake.
The former PO had been a FAST boat driver with the Norfolk Underwater Support Group up until about a year before. The reality was that while FAST was the shit, the guys they were supposed to support, SEALs and very rarely Delta, hardly ever used them anymore. Most of the ops that Norfolk supported were in Europe and Africa. And nobody had used a FAST in operations in a couple of years.
So when his reenlistment date came up he got out and turned his car south for Florida.
His rep as a former FAST driver had gotten him a gig as a mate on a dive boat which gave him time to get his civilian captain’s license. The combination had him doing gigs as a part-time captain, filling in for guys who had been around for a while. He’d figured out the deal; you worked your way up in the local community, you learned the fishing waters and eventually made enough to get a boat. Maybe you got picked up by some guy with money who had the sense to know he needed a captain. You networked. You built customers. In the meantime, you got a lot of water time, which was the name of the game.
Randy was an easy-going guy and he got along with the customers so he was doing well there. But he was a long way from his own boat. Not a good one. He wanted either a good solid yacht or a fast fisher. And that was serious money. You had to show you had a business before you could get the financing on one. Randy figured five years.
Then he got a call.
“Captain Randy. The fish are here, where are you?”
“Randall Holterman?” the woman had asked. Foreign accent, Slavic probably.
“That’s me,” he said, trying to figure out which payment he was behind on.
“Mr. Holterman, my employer would like to retain your services for up to two weeks. Are you available?”
“I don’t know,” Randy said, thinking about his schedule. He had lots of things going on over the next two weeks; you stayed busy or you got poor quick. But nothing he couldn’t slide to somebody else if the money was right. “That would depend upon the nature of the job and the price. If he wants to go fishing for a couple of weeks…”
“That is not the nature of the job,” the woman had said. “He has some employees who need training in handling small boats. Fast boats.”
Randy’s alarm bells started ringing hard at that. There was only one group in South Florida that had multiple fast boats and people that needed to learn how to use them. Racing teams, well, they didn’t need trainers. And nobody had multiple boats and needed a trainer except druggies. Randy didn’t really give a shit about the running, but he also didn’t want to end up with a Colombian necktie, also known as having your throat cut and your tongue dragged out of the hole to hang down in front.
“Not interested,” he said.
“I suspect you think we are drug runners,” the girl had said. “Very far from the case, Petty Officer. We obtained your name from your service record, not from ‘the street’ as you would say. The vig, as my employer would put it, is twenty thousand dollars. It can be in cash if you so desire. Oh, and at the completion of our stay here, one of the boats is yours.”
“What kind of boats?” Randy asked.
“I do not know,” the girl said. “I am only told they are very fast ‘cigarette’ type boats.”
“Jesus,” Randy said. Anything along the lines would set her “employer” back a hundred and fifty, two hundred big ones. The pay was peanuts compared to getting a boat like that as a fucking tip. “You’re sure you’re not drug runners?”
“Quite,” the girl said, chuckling. “We are in, as you say, the other war.”
Randy frowned at that and then nodded.
“Which side?” he asked. There had to be a catch.
“The side of the angels, Petty Officer,” the girl said placatingly. “Truly, we need your expertise. Are you in?”
I’m going to regret this.
“I’m in.”
So here he was, eating a cheeseburger and nursing an overpriced but really fucking good Mountain Tiger beer while watching the sun slowly sinking towards the yard arm. Two o’clock in other words. Whatever you could say about the gig, whoever these fuckers were, sitting on a dock, eating a burger, beer in hand, watching the intercoastal on a balmy day in a Florida winter, well, that weren’t bad.
He didn’t know who, exactly, he was meeting. Not even any names. No names at all, in fact. All he’d been told was that there would be five boats, “fast boats.” Five turning up all at once, well, he’d be able to figure out who that was.
And sure enough, here they came, motoring along in a straggling line and really slow. Not even idling. Lug speed, that spot where a boat still wasn’t planing but it was digging up one monster wake, nose pointed at the sky. It was just… ugly.
But, Oh, My, God, the boats! A couple of them were in rough shape, one was a Cig 36 circa ’99 if he was right, and the Nordic had seen better days. But the lead was a practically mint fucking Fountain Lightning 42! He’d nearly fainted when he saw one at a show; the fucker smoked. Reggie Fountain made “the fastest, safest boats on the water.” Just ask him. Not to mention some of the most luxurious. Forget two hundred bills, the Fountain was closer to three quarter mil and worth every penny. God, if only he got to choose. He didn’t even care if it had the full racing pack. Fuck selling it, too.