“And the quarters and the rest,” Steve said. “The main thing, though, is the power and the prestige. The multitudes bowing and scraping. And, eventually, Riverside.”
“If you can swing it,” Zumwald said.
“There will be politics involved,” Steve said, shrugging. “You’re generally good at that. If you have a reason to support my position, that’s a benefit. And, as with Isham, if you fuck me you had better run far and fast.”
“You really did miss your calling, Smith,” Zumwald said, laughing.
* * *
“Oh, thank God,” Sophia said as the Senorita cleared the harbor and hit the first rollers.
A slight squall had come through the night before and the water was a bit lively. But nothing that the Senorita couldn’t handle and it seemed as eager to hit the waves as its captain. Not so much the crew.
“I think I’ve sort of lost my sea legs,” Paula said. “I am mildly queasy.”
“Not me,” Sophia said. “I am sooo ready to go see some new harbors that don’t stink of rotting bodies and rotting liners.”
“Can I come up?” Olga asked.
The girl had been a late addition. Turned out she had significant civilian shooting experience.
“Sure,” Sophia said. “As long as you promise not to hijack the boat.”
“Very humorous,” Olga said, sitting down on one of the benches of the flying bridge. “You forget, I was the bait, not the hook.”
“You’re forgiven,” Sophia said. “And I was joking. I wouldn’t have let you on my boat if I thought you were going to take it over.”
“How the hell did you end up on the Money?” Paula said. “You said you were an American. Where did the Russian accent go?”
“I can get it back if you want,” Olga said, with a Slavic accent. “But I grew up in Chicago. And I’m not Russian, I’m Ukrainian. Yes, there’s a difference and yes I care. I moved to the US when I was six with my family. My father sort of had to leave. The FSB had recruited him and he told them to fuck off. They did not take it well.”
“FSB?” Paula said.
“Russian spy agency,” Sophia said. “Was he normally a spy?”
“Sort of,” Olga said. “He was mostly a foreign military attaché prior to that. FSB wanted him to… do some things in the Middle East he did not agree with. It wasn’t even spying. It was, basically, money laundering. When he said no, well, there were issues? It was not even legal as far as legal ever matters in Russia. He became a liability. I don’t really remember it very well except a safe-house in Turkey. We were there for some time. Then we were in Chicago where I grew up.”
“So how’d you end up with Mister ‘I have a Rocket Launcher’?” Sophia asked.
“I was on a modeling tour in Europe,” Olga said, shrugging. “You know, it is hard to get a job as an international model these days if you are not Russian? So I told them I was Russian. I speak Russian. And read it. And French. And Spanish. German. Italian. Ukrainian obviously.”
“Wow,” Paula said. “I mean, why?”
“I wanted to be a spy,” Olga said, shrugging. “I applied to the CIA. I was turned down. I did not meet the psychological profile. Oppositional Defiance Disorder. Basically, I have a hard time taking orders from idiots.”
“Don’t think of me as an idiot and I won’t give you an idiotic order,” Sophia said. “But if I give you one, you’d better do it. Because it’s probably going to mean surviving or dying.”
“You I don’t mind,” Olga said. “Or I wouldn’t have joined your crew. Don’t ask me about Nazar. So I was in Spain with the troupe. When the Plague hit, they shut down travel. And all my guns were in America. In a zombie apocalypse. I was quite upset.”
“You should have seen Faith when they told her she had to be disarmed in New York,” Sophia said. “Then they gave her a taser and that was mistake. What kind of guns?”
“I like that your family prefers the AK series,” Olga said. “I really do think it’s superior to the M16 series in many ways. Much more reliable. They say it is less accurate but that is at longer ranges. The round is not designed for long range.”
“I can hit at a thousand meters with my accurized AK,” Sophia said. “It’s a matter of knowing the ballistics. It’s not real powerful at that range, but try doing the same thing with an M4. I’ll wait.”
“Oh, jeeze, you two,” Paula said. “Get a room.”
“So continue with how you got on the yacht,” Sophia said. “We don’t want our cook getting all woozy with gun geeking.”
“We were called by the agency and asked if anyone wanted to ‘catch a ride’ on a yacht,” Olga said. “When they said who owned the boat… I nearly said no. We all knew Nazar. Or at least of him. Not a nice man, as you might have noticed. We knew what we were getting into. But then we were told he had vaccine… ” she shrugged again.
“Accepting Nazar’s offer was perhaps not the worst decision I have made in my life. I survived. Not how I would have preferred to survive, but I was vaccinated and I survived. But I did not even hint that I knew more about his men’s weapons than they did. They were pigs. Tough guys. But none of them were military and none of them really knew what they were doing with them. When they brought out the RPG, I nearly peed myself. Irinei had no idea what he was doing with it. I don’t think he even knew the safety was off.”
“You know how to use an RPG?” Sophia said.
“My family liked the United States very much,” Olga said, sadly. “We all like guns and anything that goes boom. And in the US, you could find people who had licenses for anything. I’ve fired an RPG, yes.”
“Well, if we find an RPG you can have it,” Sophia said.
“Oh, thank you, captain!” Olga said, clapping her hands girlishly.
“But we’ll be keeping the rounds and the launcher separate,” Sophia said.
“Oh, my, yes,” Olga said. “And both will have to be in a well sealed container. This salt air would cause corrosion quickly.”
“I guess you miss your guns?” Paula said. “That’s not a request for an inventory and loving description of each, by the way. Got that enough from Faith.”
“I do,” Olga said. “But I miss my books more.”
“Books,” Paula said. “Now you’re talking my language.”
“I have more books than shelves,” Olga said. “And I had many shelves. I collect old manuscripts when I can afford them.”
“If we do any land clearance, look in the libraries and big houses,” Sophia said. “I bet around here you can probably pick up some great stuff.”
“This is okay?” Olga said. “We can, salvage?”
“If there’s time and if we clear the town,” Sophia said. “Sure.”
“Oh, thank you, captain!” Olga said, kissing her on the cheek.
“Okay, now you definitely need to get a room.”
CHAPTER 20
The vote, I thought, means nothing to women. We should be armed.
“Okay,” Sophia said. “Don’t think we’re clearing this one.”
The town of El Chorillo was not at water line. The marina was at the waterline. The town was on top of a two hundred foot bluff. Most of it. The rest was condominiums built into the bluff in racks up the to what was a small mountain. There was a large public park right at the waterline behind a massive rock breakwater.
“Senorita,” Chen radioed. “Drive into the marina and check it out. All I see is sailboats.”
“Roger,” Sophia said, engaging the motor on slow. “Paula. Get up forward and check the water.”
“Roger,” Paula said.
“Check the water?” Olga said. She’d changed into a bathing suit. The girl was about covered in fine scars including one on her chest that didn’t look like a surgery scar. More like a knife. Sophia had decided she wasn’t going to ask.