“So we sink the attack vessels and take no prisoners. Fine with me.”
“Good. I want you and Bibi to familiarize yourselves with each and every weapon on board. Can you tell me what items you shipped to us in your personal baggage?”
“Here’s the list for both of us, Captain. I haven’t opened the trunk in my cabin, but the seals were still in place and as soon as you say it’s okay to do so, we’ll break out our personal stuff and do some tests off the fantail, day and night.”
“Excellent. Your fingerprints are already in this data base, so, just as a test, why not open up that locker?”
Gross went to the indicated metal locker, pressed her right thumb onto the print reader and the locks instantly released, allowing her to open the heavy door, which slid back to reveal not a locker at all, but a small room. The deck to overhead racks held an array of weapons designed and effective for close and long range engagement.
“Ammo?” Groff asked as she removed a classic infantry Springfield M1A with bi-pod, Leopold scope and rails holding an array of accessories, including lights and laser aiming devices.
“That locker holds fully loaded magazines with a variety of loads and effects: tracer in two colors, standard ball, and hollow point in several versions, incendiary and frangible. Each mag is marked accordingly and colored for additional recognition.”
“I think we’ll be right at home here,” Groff said, replacing the rifle and admiring the facility.
“Well, I hope so. I’m glad you two are on our side. I know you’ve read the SOP and are comfortable with our protocols in each of the various threat responses.”
“Absolutely.”
“Great. Let’s check on the brig and then get back to the bridge.”
They left the armory and headed further aft. The brig was a small complex with two tiny offices, and six equally tiny cells. There were no bars. All doors were solid and had a single peek hole and a lower pass-through. Entry to the entire area was by fingerprint and lock code. Groff idly peered through one of the cells’ observation hole and was surprised to see that it was occupied.
“You have an offender here?” she asked, trying to get a better view through the small port.
“Tell you the truth, I’m not really sure who that is,” said Ingram, looking a bit embarrassed. “Let me take a look.” She put her eye to the port and then, out of either frustration at the bad view or from not knowing what was going on, pressed her finger to the key pad and the door unlocked. Sitting on a narrow bench inside the tiny cubicle, facing the door, was a young woman wearing only a bra, bikini panties and a pair of black, ridiculously high heels. Her hands were cuffed behind her back and her feet were shackled to a ring on the deck. She was blindfolded with a wide, fitted leather panel over the upper portion of her head and gagged with a similar leather pad that covered the area from below her nostrils to her chin. When the door opened, she began to shout into the gag and tried to stand until the short chain from her handcuffs to a ring on the wall pulled tight and halted her. She sat back down quickly and bent her body forward. As she did this, her left breast fell out of the skimpy bra cup and hung there, its brown nipple winking at the two women standing in the doorway.
“Interesting welcome, wouldn’t you say?” Ingram said to Groff, smiling.
The prisoner sat back up and wiggled her shoulders, making both breasts jiggle and sway, while babbling incoherently into the gag. Ingram looked the prisoner over briefly, then touched Groff’s arm and motioned her backward, out of the cell. The captain closed the door and turned to Groff.
“I had to think about this a bit. Too much going on. This is one of the new cook’s assistants. We had to re-staff several positions in the galley after the Sous Chef retired. This one came aboard yesterday and presented forged documents. She’s here until Norquist, or you, decides what to do with her. He thinks there is something going on here that she isn’t telling us, so we are keeping her incommunicado until the decision is made.”
“You think she’s involved in some sort of intrigue?” Groff asked, turning around and glancing again at the locked cell door. “Isn’t this bondage treatment a bit extreme?”
“I know this seems like overkill, but you have read the reports and the threat analysis, so you know why you are here and why we are so heavily protected. This just looks like an attempt to infiltrate the crew and that sort of thing can have very bad repercussions.”
“You said there were more replacements. Have they arrived?”
“The new Sous Chef will be on board and her docs and references seem impeccable. She came to us through a respected crew service here in Miami. The rest of the fill-ins we have not yet found, so we’ll sail with some shortages. Better than taking on the unknowns.”
“Yes. I agree. And I can understand your not wanting to just throw this one back into the pond, so to speak. They’d just send someone else. If your suspicions are correct, it’s better for whoever sent her to think she is in place. I also imagine that few, if any of the crew, know she’s here, right?”
“Correct. Even I had forgotten about her. Her name is supposedly Denise Montelana, but in her carry-on baggage, Reinholt found, among other things, a folded up letter to her, mailed from Madrid, and addressed to Marianne Castillo. The letter contained a photograph of her and another woman whom we haven’t identified. Written in Spanish, the letter indicated that she would get in touch with someone else on the boat. A woman named Hermann, so that is why she’s being kept here for now. Reinholt will brief you on the search for this Hermann.”
“Seems pretty deep. Do you think this is a conspiracy or just someone playing games?”
“No game. This goes on all the time. Norquist has many nasty enemies. The boat allows him to change his location more easily than if he had a shore home and, of course, the aircraft allow for even faster relocation. Last month, because of a serious threat, we took the family off by helo, using both choppers. The family dressed as crew and crew members dressed as family. The chopper with the fake family did a drop off at a nearby airport and the other took the real family to a safe house. The crewmembers, looking and dressed like Norquists, got on a charter jet and flew VFR to parts unknown. Flight plans filed after leaving local airspace.”
“Jesus. That’s pretty elaborate.”
“Norquist is one of those billionaires who handles his fortune in a very low key manner. He doesn’t show up on the global wealth radar and wants it that way. He’s no celebrity. Forbes magazine would love to have him on their list, but he’s not there and won’t be. Frankly, I suspect this woman is a reporter rather than a terrorist threat.”
“That’s an interesting thought,” Groff said. “We’ve been there before. The global media can be more dangerous than attackers because they think, and are often correct, that they are protected from privacy invasion charges.”
“Right. This one isn’t going anywhere until she tells us who sent her and why. I am concerned that we find out what we need to know before we leave Florida so that if she was supposed to contact someone, she will do so. That will take some convincing. If you can help get her to talk, let me know and you have carte blanche.”
“Suppose we get the information later on, once we leave Miami? Groff posed.
“We can always dump her in the Bahamas or even at Key West if we want her taken into custody,” Ingram said.
“Bibi is pretty good at that Q&A stuff. We work well as good guy, bad guy and usually it doesn’t get too physical. Is there someplace where we can interrogate her?”
“This way,” said Ingram, pointing down the narrow corridor and opening a watertight door that led to an empty room that had a series of lockers on one wall. The space looked like it was designed for storage and had rails and rings along the deck, ceiling and walls. “In bad weather, this room was intended to allow us to use cargo nets and tie down dangerous gear. That was the supposed intent. We use it for, ah, other things…now and then.”
“Okay. Let’s go back topside. I want to bring Bibi up to date and hear exactly what Reinholt discovered before we take on this spy.”
“Right. Like I said, you can do whatever is necessary, but I’d prefer she emerge from your interviews with her head still connected to her torso,” Ingram said with a wink.
“Understood. Me too. I hate having to clean up.”
Their visit to this area below decks was short and Groff noted that if there was any interest in keeping someone incommunicado, this was the place to do it. Without a map and a clear knowledge of its location, no one would ever find or enter the brig suite.
But something else was nagging Groff’s senses and she wasn’t sure what it was. There was something strange here on this huge, floating, private city. Aside from the all female crew and the extreme defenses, Groff simply couldn’t pinpoint what else was bugging her.
“Maybe once we settle down and cruise, it will come to me,”
she thought. The one big thing that bothered her was that Ingram only showed her a very small portion of the entire ship and Groff knew that she was going to have to start her own survey at once if she was to be comfortable with handling any emergency. The lone woman chained in the brig didn’t disturb her as much as the seemingly contradictory information Ingram gave about her. If she knew that the spy was locked away, why did she seem surprised when they found her in the cell?
One explanation,
Groff thought
, was that perhaps the girl was to be kept elsewhere and ended up in the brig by mistake or misdirection
. In any case, it would be interesting to hear both Reinholt’s and the spy’s versions of how she got there. Once back at the bridge, Groff asked for Roz and was told that she was briefing the new Sous Chef, who had just come aboard.
Chapter Seven
Guests
“We have two new guests joining us tonight, twins.” Ann Norquist told the small group at the dinner table in the family dining saloon that night. “Lynda and Gail Johnson, high school friends of the girls, will be joining us. They are ardent SCUBA divers and good swimmers. They are coming in on Helo One at about 2000 hours, so make them welcome and at home, everyone. They will be together in Stateroom Five. Their parents are good friends of ours and they get along well with everyone. Groff and Lynx, you should make sure that they understand your function and share their schedules with you whenever they leave the ship. Any problems, come to me,” Ann added.
Both women nodded that they understood.
“Do you want them to wear the security anklets, Mrs. Norquist,” Bibi asked as she waved her left hand over her head, indicating the stunningly fashionable silver bracelet that she wore. Norquist himself developed the electronics of these sophisticated tracking devices and Ann designed the actual bracelet to look like a normal piece of jewelry that men and women could easily wear without being too conspicuous.
“Yes. Of course. No exceptions. It’s a valuable safety device and we all have them. Please make sure theirs are coded and fitted. No excuses, please.”
The twenty-year-old blond Johnson twins created a suitable stir among the crew when their copter delivered them to the aft landing pad #2 at exactly 2000 hours that night. As the copter approached the ship in the early evening twilight, two crew members attached to the aviation section stood by on aft-most the landing deck, which was already illuminated by floodlights and the computer-controlled landing grid which was linked to the copter’s instrumentation. Despite the substantial sea and the steady twelve-knot breeze, the chopper set down smoothly without human control. Now in their second university year, the girls were both a bit pale from too much study time and not enough tanning opportunities, something they intended to immediately remedy on the yacht’s sundeck and pool area.
Watching them disembark, Bibi noted that they would not be hard to identify or tell apart. Lynda was slightly taller and slimmer than her sister Gail, who, in turn, displayed a more voluptuous figure. “Displayed”, Bibi thought, was the correct word for the minimal attire both girls wore, showing a great deal of youthful leg and, in Bibi’s somewhat conservative opinion, a great deal too much breast. Both girls wore white cotton, one- piece jumpsuits with deep slashes up the outside of each leg and an equally deep V neckline that plunged to their waist and failed to hide their more than adequate breasts.
“This is going to be interesting,”
Bibi said to herself as the girls disappeared down the ladder leading towards their quarters.
“Let’s see who in the crew makes the first move on them.”
Chapter Eight
Research
From the time she first arrived on board Altuna, Jean Groff, who had more than a layman’s knowledge of naval architecture and design, remained puzzled about the yacht’s unusual design. After doing some relatively complicated math, taking a few measurements and pacing off the distances, she arrived at the unsurprising conclusion that a substantial portion of the yacht was missing…as much as twenty or twenty-five percent of the boat’s massive hull appeared to be inaccessible from below decks. Groff sat on a small hatch near the stern and studied the deck. The double circular landing patterns for the helicopters, the safety nets rigged outboard around the pads and the sophisticated elevator that could lower the copters to the hanger deck below were all normal, as far as she could tell. Despite assurances that there was nothing of interest to her there, Groff continued to press for access to the hanger deck. Eventually, she and Roz Reinholt took a detailed tour of the area, revealing nothing out of the ordinary other than the fact that the hanger deck smelled badly of jet fuel and was not as well ventilated as it should be. Reinholt made notes and said she’d make sure that these problems were quickly taken care of. Asked what was below the hanger, Reinholt provided extensive details regarding the fuel storage tanks, noting that both the Bell and Sikorski choppers used the same Jet-A fuel as the ship’s turbines. From her excellent knowledge bank about Altuna, she provided more data than Jean wanted about the range and endurance capabilities of ship and aircraft, but little more about the seemingly unused areas below deck aft.