“No brah. Off the charts means on the charts.”
“Off means on?”
“Dude she is a fine piece… ok?”
“Ah… I see,” said Torgeir Larsen.
“Ya man, see this Norwegian dude knows what I’m talkin’ about. Bet you ate out a blonde for breakfast.” Sanders then proceeded to high five the General Secretary of NATO. The alarmed Frenchmen said “But… but…” in unison. They had eaten too. Not that morning, but not that long ago.
Not wanting to leave them hanging, Sanders high fived them too. With the atmosphere disintegrating, the American instructed the NATO General Secretary, to get some fine Belgian ales immediately. The Secretary obliged.
“So here is the deal fellas… the first option is we ‘borrow’ the ships from France, as in the French ‘lend’ the ships to the US Navy. Pretty cool right?”
“Oui.”
“Yes. So chill.”
“And we would rename them USS St Petersburg and USS Moscow after our meth capitals in Florida and Idaho.”
“That’s bold my man. Maybe you should go a step further… as in pinch the jugular… go for the kiss… just do it… and make it USS Albuquerque and USS White,” said DGSE Jean.
“Wow Jean, that’s terrific. I could French the shit out of you right now. Bravo boy… name their ships after America’s new manufacturing hub… and a genius. Hell yeah. Fuck St. Petersburg. Brother Lefebvre, please tell me there is third boat in the works. Please… I so, so want a USS Pinkman… please…”
“Non, Monsieur. Sadly not.”
“Ah fuck it. Anyways, best part is we could simply grant asylum to those cooped up Russian sailors. Win-win-win-win.”
“So your plan… in broad strokes… is to copy the Hunt for Red October?” asked a bewildered Jean Bernard.
“Basically,” shrugged the American, suddenly feeling nervous. Had they discovered his lack of originality? Was this going to hurt his coolness barometer?
“Ah that’s fantastic.”
“That’s so radical man,” chimed in the rest of the gang.
“Actually your plan is better than the Hunt for Red October. Unlike the book, where the sub is destroyed for research, you actually want to co-opt it… very cool”
Doug Sanders stopped breathing, “Wait did you just say the sub gets destroyed in the book?”
“Oui.”
“Fuck the book dude. Who cares about books? The movie is where it is at… especially when Connery and Ryan ride off into the twilight… always thought it was pretty romantic…”
“Oui,” said one of the Frenchies.
“Oui.” The second was more enthusiastic.
“No homo… no homo… just saying,” Sanders interjected hastily. After all they were still French.
“Non, Monsieur. There is nothing wrong with that”
“Non. Non.”
“Ya. Very good movie. God, your America is cool.”
With the coolness barometer intact, Doug Sanders ploughed on, “Well there is one hitch to this plan. Some of the defense contractors have their panties in a bunch about missing out to you Frenchies. Some bullshit about setting a precedent and jobs and feeding America and… ”
“Oh I see? So what do you propose Doug?”
“Well, I thought long and hard just now, damn these Belgian ales are really hitting the spot… and I just got a great idea.”
“What is it?”
“Oui?”
“Ok, two words.”
“Oui?”
“Orlando Theme Park.”
Chapter 8
Kremlin, Moscow
By the time President Petrova retired to bed, it was close to midnight. Under her leadership Russia had entered unchartered territories, especially dwindling friends and mounting sanctions. Publicly she had repeated what every Great Russian leader before her had said, “Russia is vast — Russia has lots of natural resources — We are just short of a couple of reforms from taking on the West — And who needs the West anyways.”
Russians over of 35 neither agreed nor cared. The young on the other hand… well they were young.
Anna Petrova wondered what the hell was wrong with her great nation. Russia had more oil and gas than the Gulf States combined. Yet OPEC the tail wagged the Russian Husky. Coal, iron, diamonds, fish, timber — there was almost nothing Russia had less than any other nation.
So why did Russia suffer? What the heck was wrong with her country? Some blamed it on pop-history. They accused the Bolsheviks and their purging of intelligentsia. But that was almost a century ago.
So why did Russia suck? Some blamed it on geography. The lack of warm accessible ports and the dependence on Sevastopol which incidentally had also brought about the Crimean crisis.
Some said Russia was just too cold. Too much ice, too much snow, blah blah the permafrost, blah, blah… the harsh winters. But without the cold, Russia wouldn’t have stood a chance against genocidal losers like the French midget and that German eunuch.
Some blamed it on Vodka. Heavy drinking among the young. Even more so with the old. This wasn’t even factually true. The scheming Poles and Finns, lead them by almost a gallon per capita.
Some said Russia was too old. Not enough births. Faced a demographic Anti-Armageddon. Yet, so did Germany, Italy and Japan. Latest data even suggested an uptick in Russian births. And unlike the west, Russia had done it the old fashioned way — by giving a fuck where it mattered.
Some blamed it on how thinly the Russian population was spread and how it took a week to travel or ship between Siberian cities and how Russia was bleeding by supporting unsustainable settlements in the Far East.
Petrova begged to differ. Ninety percent of Russian settlements and cities were bang on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Which essentially made Russia into a very, very long country… not unlike Chile, a libertarian darling bent over by Pinocchio. Or perhaps, more like Canada, whose populations, ever afraid of grizzlies had never ventured 10 miles beyond the 49th parallel. The Canadian fear of the grizzlies was so epic, that a few years ago they had rounded up a bunch of grizzlies and shipped them down to Memphis.
Some blamed it on communist infrastructure. While the Trans-Siberian had been about sustenance, the Baikal-Amur Magistrale over the Tundra, had been all about foresight and growth and trade.
Yet, something had gone wrong.
After the fall of the Union, some Western analysts and ‘think tanks’ had even suggested to split up Russia into three or four ‘manageable chunks’. Obviously Muscovy would become a basecamp of sorts, to ravage the wild east, while the rest of Russia disintegrated to become the apocalyptic New Africa.
But despite the self-denials and an army of Soviet apologists, something had gone wrong. Something had terribly, terribly gone wrong with Russia. Anna Petrova tossed and turned in her bed.
At half past one, the President heard a muffled noise… a grating. She sprang up and sat on the massive Catherine the Great’s bed. She wasn’t sure if she had imagined the noise.
Eleven seconds later she heard the noise again. But the grating didn’t come from the main door. It seemed to come from the fireplace. The Federal Protective Service, tasked with her security had assured her that the fireplace was decorative. The chimney had been sealed and the fireplace hadn’t been used since the days of Khrushchev.
Anna Petrova, the first ever female President of Russia contemplated the situation nervously. She didn’t want to alert her guards just yet. Being a member of the female form, the guards had assumed her to be soft and often treated her with kid gloves. For some reason they were also under the impression that she was afraid of the dark. Sure, she had had a couple of nightmares involving Iron Felix and Yezhov, but who could blame her… some real dark shit had gone down in the Kremlin’s five hundred year existence.