Chapter 20 Back on the Med
Musical Theme; On the Border by Al Stewart
In the morning, Quint was back, and the boat was delivered. A 65 foot commercial fish boat, steel hull. twin diesels. The staterooms had been reworked for comfort. The galley had been set up for fancy cooking if it was wanted. She was not a yacht. She looked more like a gunboat. There were no paintings on the walls, and no fancy furnishings. She was as well found as a salvage tug. She had lockers full of lines from rolls of light fishing line to masses of heavy tow lines of braided nylon.
Her wheelhouse had several GPS systems, electronic charting, a big drawer of paper charts, and a lovely magnetic compass. She had spotlights, a water cannon on the wheelhouse roof, and everything you would have ever wanted to pull out of the gun locker from a scope mounted rifle to night vision binoculars, and a few other things. On her starboard side, she carried a 22 foot Carolina skiff with two 90 horsepower Yamahas and a crane to put it in the water. On her port she had two 13’ Boston Whaler outboards with 20 hp Mercury motors on them, and a crane that could launch them. She had two life rafts on her cabin roof.
Inside, on port side, there was a good sized walk in refrigerator, and inside that, a fairly small but adequate walk in freezer. On starboard side, there was a locker for fishing gear that would make most look sporting goods stores look inadequate. She carried several hundred fishing poles and inner lockers with rolls of mostly heavy line secured against fouling with giant rubber bands. There were hundreds of boxes of fishing hooks, and near the deck, drawers offered any sinker you could have wanted. There was a clear plastic fronted locker with lures and jigs.
Forward, there was a clothes closet that contained everything from insulated coveralls and wetsuits, blankets for anyone the boat might need to rescue out of the drink, and sweatshirts and such for visitors who were not dressed for the weather that came along, to such emergency gear as a huge collection of swimwear, negligees, Phillipa shoes of course, and such necessaries as Aurora wool dresses and pantsuits for the unexpected cool day, and the needs of those who did not wish to be unfashionable in it. Naturally if it was a little splashy, you could look here for some sea boots to keep your feet dry. You could be reasonably comfortable sitting on the lid of the chain locker.
Marcie had noticed this nicely padded upholstered door into a place she would of course never go, and thought it looked quite suitable for a dalliance of a sort she liked to engage.
All in all, Marcie was happy with the boat, which bore the stern markings:
Jared C. Monti
Scanzano Italy
She had no idea why Will would have named his boat with such a name. It sort of looked Italian, but maybe not. Will refused to discuss it at all.
The delivery crew offered to go out with Will to ‘wring her out’.
Will told Marcie this would be a guy thing, and she left. They hauled the gangplank. They were tied up on the starboard side, going in. Will took the helm.
“Cast off forward.”
He put starboard in at about ¼. As the bow came out, he stopped starboard, and gave port a little pop in reverse. “Cast off aft.”
When the line was aboard, he put starboard in full forward, put her in full left rudder, and put port at about ½ reverse. The boat spun around, and he put her both in full and ripped down the channel. There was no posted speed limit, nor was there anything to be damaged by her wake, but this was not the done thing. He took her into the Med, full power on, and put her into a hard turn to port. She took it well. Leaving white water behind her, she came around 360 degrees. He put both screws in reverse and came back into the channel under full power, taking it off right when it looked like it was too late. As she came up to the dock, he put them in forward and powered her to a near stop.
“Make fast on port side.”
The deckhand hooked the bollard and took up as much slack as he could. Will put the starboard ahead slow, and popped the port in reverse. The boat came around and pulled up on the fixed line. He cut the screws and the bow came to the dock.
“Make fast forward.”
The deckhand threw and hit the bollard on the first try. He took in all the slack as he could. Will put port aft dead slow and pulled the line tight. The deckhand aft took up the slack.
“Double spring lines midships, please, gentlemen. Nice line handling.”
They rigged it, and took up slack.
Will popped starboard forward, and the forward hand took up some slack.
Will shut her down. “All hands to the wheelhouse, please.”
They came.
“I don’t leave boats unattended. I need at least two of you guys, at least for a while. Anyone want to work for me?”
One of the deckhands and the mate held up their hands.
“You guys have work. I need another mate and another deckhand, so tell your buddies.”
“You have a captain?”
“I have a 200 ton license but I want a captain.”
“My son and I are in if you won’t drive the boat like that again.”
“You said I should wring it out Cap. I’m a Marine. Retired, but.”
“I asked for it.”
“That’s what you did.”
“What are you paying?”
“Do y’all get 401(k), health and dental with those boat delivery guys?”
“Of course not.”
“My secretary, Poquita, will figure something out for y’all, but she has to do a background check on y’all. We can do that in a few minutes, though.”
“Is this job something we might get in a jam over?”
“Fishing, cruising the Med, all that kind of thing, You don’t want to do that?”
“I mean people who can check someone’s background in minutes?”
“Anyone who pays these services can find out more about you than they should know. We don’t share information with anyone, so it’s just us making sure who you are before my friends and family and girls who are learning to be models go out with you running the boat. If you let your 15 year old daughter go thousands of miles from home, would you want the owner to check out everyone before he put them on the crew?”
“I sure would.”
The guys went to Poquita, who passed them all, and offered them too much money, and everyone accepted. She asked the captain, Ronnie, if he thought the Jared could do charters or weekend trips and make a few bucks. He emphatically agreed, and hooked her up with some brokers who arranged such things.
At lunchtime, the dorm mothers took the quail to eat at a little deli a half mile away, and the big kids ate at home.
Poquita summarized what she had found out about chartering, insurance costs, and so on. The bottom line was, Jared could make good money working weekends, easily in the black. Will and Chrissie thought they should have Poquita charter Jared for any time she could make some good money, mostly weekends. Will and Chrissie could go out as much as they wanted in 5 days a week. Chrissie kind of liked the sea, but had no desire to go cruising. Will had been on the water enough to like a day out there every so often, but not enough to want to live on the boat. Marcie liked to fish a little bit.
Ronnie suggested that they could charter the boat for a weekend of fishing with Marcie. Billionaires who had done everything else had never had Marcie Della come and pick them up in her seven three and take them cruising the Med. Poquita would conference Pauli and Ken. It was too early now, but in the afternoon, it would be fine.
Will addressed the boat crew. “Concerns, objections, observations? I would like to hear from you guys starting with the most junior. Mel?”
“I would be concerned with control of all those guns. Also valuable property. This crew knows how to fish, and how to run the boat. We are not bodyguards.”
“Jill?”
“Sir, we have…”
“That’s Will to you, Jill.”
“Sir, I am a reserve sergeant in the Carabiniere, and you are a colonel.”
“Ma’am, this boat does not belong to the Carabiniere, and neither of us is active duty. If and when we are in uniform, you may address me as ‘Sir.’ Until then, and let us hope that day never comes, I am ‘Will’ to you.”
Marcie giggled. Chrissie spoke. “Jill, he does this all the time and nobody has ever won this argument. Call him ‘Will’.”
“Mel pretty well said it. I see Marcie as a potential target of terrorism. We need more than boat hooks and fish clubs to deal with that.”
“We have a lot more than that.” He picked up a radio. “Overlook, Kitty. Drill Drill Drill two seven.”
“Drill two seven. Out.”
“Is that all that worries you, Jill? Or any other concerns like vacation days or something?”
“No, Will.”
“Well, then, that brings us to Carlo.”
“I would like to get home for Christmas. But we could work if we needed to.”
Two fast movers stood up on their wingtips and dropped down to masthead height above the Med, split and passed over the house on both sides at a sedate 400 knots. They turned and elevated at the same time, and headed into the stratosphere on back burn.
“That was our something more than boat hooks, Jill.”
“Overlook, Kitty. Drill graded A. It almost looked like your boys had done this before.”
“Thank you Kitty. Out.”
“What were those, Will?”
“Italian Air Force Tomcats. Carlo, we don’t expect to work Christmas. If we do, it will be some big fancy party for someone with much more money than sense. Marcie will come, we will bill them like a Wall Street law firm, and everyone will have to have Christmas a few days late but lots of money for presents. Marcie will explain that your kids need something in Bentley, not Schwinn. Poor Marcie only has a Lear and a seven three. She needs something more transcontinental.”
Marcie giggled. “I want an SR-71.”
“Naw, Marcie, you want an um er, yeah, which is ever so much faster, prettier, and flies a lot higher.”
“Is there anything like that?”
“Of course not. But if there was, that would be what you would want. Suppose you were a little late for an appointment, you could jump in your birdie and fly west, and land yesterday.”
“The only thing is, I come late and I never apologize, because why should I?”
“Maybe we can put you in an AWACS, then. You fly so high almost nobody knows you are up there, and if anyone does cut you off in traffic, you just have your minions blow him away with air to air missiles. You can probably see the stars in the middle of the day, you are so far up.”
“Suppose I want something sneakier.”
“Well, consider a nuclear powered attack submarine, then.”
“But it might take two weeks to cross the Atlantic.”
“The space shuttle, of course has a bad safety record. 30,000 non identical tiles for re-entry. What did they expect? Yeah, I think you want the SR-71.”
Ronnie laughed. “I would go for something much more classy and forget about being fast. Why not an aircraft carrier? Something nuclear powered, of course. Splitting atoms was the worst idea Man ever had, but now that it’s been done, why not get that who knows how many times around the world fuel endurance? Maybe you could fish from a helicopter. You keep a Combat Air Patrol up there, nobody cuts you off in traffic. First, you’d just run them over, and second, the CAP has nuclear missiles anyway.”
“Marcie, your view?”
“Take them for all they are worth. The crew, and our shore support all have to be paid shameless prices. Even the girl cutting carrots in the kitchen needs 500 bucks for the day. Sorry, Mr. Billionaire, that’s the best we can do. Ronnie’s being funny, but he’s right. ‘Do you know what it costs Marcie to have her seven three detailed?’ ‘Don’t you understand that she needs something faster for all those transatlantic flights? Of course it’s going to cost you a million dollars or maybe ten, to do Christmas with Marcie and friends.”
Carlo asked, “What did you get when you started?”
“Uh, maybe ten or twenty bucks. I met Will when he was soliciting glamour shoots in a garage. He was on the beach with one of those umbrellas and he had this table that said “Will Ames, fashion and glamour photography.”
“I stopped to talk, and he said I had some special something. He shot me a portfolio for almost nothing. We got some jobs, we went on the road, we worked like dogs, but we didn’t eat that good. I would go to ad agencies and change into my nice dress in the bathroom, with Will outside watching my suitcase. Will got a nice shot of a really gruesome collision between a train and a tank truck. We held on to the money from that, and all of a sudden, I got a magazine cover, and I was in the air!”
Carlo pondered. “How did you get those news pics that made your name, Will?”
“Luck, and chasing them. The train wreck was just there happening. I pulled out my camera, gritted my teeth, and shot it just before it happened, and the impact, and the result. We got a break in Chicago on a structure fire. Marcie saw a column of smoke, and she stopped a guy who was at a red light, and said, what was it?”
“We’re news photographers. We need a ride to that fire, darling!”
“So he took you?”
“What was it?”
“12 stories, I think. I got pix before the first fire truck came. It went up like a torch. A bunch of people died. I developed my film that night in the guy’s bathroom. He was pretty cool. He didn’t think Marcie would let him have any, but the tail end of that roll of film could have made it look like that way.”
“What Will is saying is, the guy was kissing me and had his hand inside my blouse. I imagine he still has those pix.”
“From there?”
“We went to a hostage situation, and Will got a guy in the second floor of a building just outside the police line to let him in. He put the camera on a tripod, and the apartment and I chatted with the guy talked while I more or less spotted. Will had this huge telephoto lens, and he was focused on the action. After about four hours of nothing, and the cold air coming in the open window, the police shot the guy. Will had a pic of the guy with his gun to this girl’s head, and his brains being splattered on the wall. We ran downstairs, and the girl came to me, and I hugged her. The cops would have liked to run us off, but they couldn’t. I tried to comfort her. ‘It’s over, you’re all right.’ The cops would have pursued their own interest, which would not have been to care for her. Will shot that whole thing. The only thing the cops did right was a real nice shot by the sniper. When the first TV crew came, the cops thought they could take her away, but Will got in their faces and demanded to know if she was under arrest or free to leave. The TV station started filming, and Will got the director or whatever he was, and he said ‘She will talk to you if you give her $50,000.’”
“The director says ‘No way.’ Will takes off his coat and puts it over her so she can hardly even see, but they can’t get a shot, and he says we are leaving. So the guy says maybe he could do 40 for an exclusive interview. Will tells him he could come down to 55, best he can do, and starts taking us away, and the guy says he will do it.”
“Sounds almost like extortion.”
“Check out the legal system baby. Extortion is the name of the game.”
“So what happened next?”
“We took her to our motel room, and Will told her she didn’t have to talk to them, he could still say she refused to talk, but if she did, he had this $55,000 deal that we would all lose. If she would tell her story, we could all have some money, and she probably needed it. She said split it three ways, bring in the camera, hold on to me, and I’ll tell them what happened.”
“What then?”
“She kind of got in Kitty’s mane and cried a lot and told a terrible story about abuse, beatings, and you can’t imagine it all, but you can get it out of the archives, I guess.”
“Marcie, who is Kitty?”
“Will. The big kitty cat. The pride lion.”
“Is he dangerous?”
“Is the sun hot?”
“Will, are you going to comment on this?”
“Meow.”
Carlo turned to Marcie. Can you get him to tell us what it all means?
“He doesn’t know, Carlo. He’s a lion. He protects his cubs and his territory and his lionesses.” * * *
They left the table, and May started cleaning up. Will stopped. “May, if you want to put the dishes in the sink and fill it, you can wash them at breakfast. You should get your sleep, too.”
“I finish each day.”
“Then you start before us? I don’t want to keep you up and get no rest, and then you have to work all day. That isn’t right. Go to sleep. Worry about the dishes when we cook breakfast.”
“I cook breakfast.”
“I do, too. I’m pretty good.”
“You can wash these while the eggs cook. Get your sleep.”
“Will, it is my job.”
“If I say it is not your job, then it is not. So go to sleep.
* * *
In the morning, Will found all the dishes dry in the dish rack. He had insisted that the staff did not use dish drying towels. In his view, they spread bacteria, and accomplished nothing except maybe getting rid of water spots. In the Will view of the command, there was not doing what you had been told to, which was not good, and there was doing what you had been told not to do something, and doing it anyway, which was worse.
“May, go use the restroom and then get back in bed.”
“I need to make breakfast.”
“You are my subordinate. I give the orders. Use the restroom, and get back in bed. That is an order.”
May scurried up the stairs. Will made biscuits and pancakes and omelets with cheese with sausage. He fried some bacon, and melted some cheese and milk with a little Salt free Tony’s. He made up a platter with a little bowl of butter, another of heated real maple syrup, and another with the cheese sauce. He put a plate on the platter, and on that he put the omelet, and several strips of bacon. He put a cup of coffee and a glass of orange juice there, too, along with tiny creamer container and some sugar packets. He went up to May’s room. He knocked on the door.
“Yes.”
“May I come in?”
“Yes.”
Will brought the platter in, and put it on her end table. “You are confined to quarters until 11:00 am.”
He went out and closed the door.
When he came back, Chrissie was frying some eggs. “What happened to May.”
“I told her not to wash the dishes last night so she could sleep. She disobeyed orders.”
Sassie laughed.
Chrissie turned on her. “There isn’t anything funny about disobeying orders!”
“Will, what did you do?”
“Served her breakfast in bed and confined her to quarters until 11 hundred hours.”
“Machiavelli. I sure didn’t fall for the dullest rock in the jewelry box.”
“We’re tossing lines at 0900. At about 0830 she will come down the stairs, and we will chase her back up. Anita, can you make sandwiches for all hands? If you don’t, it’s no big deal, we can make them on the boat. If you’re going, you could do it all on the way out. Whatever.”
“I can’t swim. I don’t want to be on the boat.”
“You know that as an employee you are required to graduate from a water survival course within 3 months of hiring?”
“I don’t go on the boat. So I don’t do this.”
“Chrissie, will you ask Josh and Kevin to the pool house?”
“Oh, Will.”
“Shush.”
Josh Evans, a former Navy SEAL, and Kevin Clarke, a former Coast Guard swimmer, were there in the right now. They came to the pool.
Will dipped a hand in the water and flicked a few drops on Anita.
“Anita, are you afraid of this much water?”
“No.”
“If you have anything in your pockets you don’t want to have wet, put it on the table, and your shoes, too.”
She put her wallet and shoes on the table.
“This dress is water wash, right?”
“Yes.”
“So I can dump a bucket of water on you, and it won’t do any harm?”
“I, no, it wouldn’t, but I don’t like to get wet.”
He put his hand on her chest, below her bosom, and pushed. Chrissie was astonished at the power he had in one hand. Anita was taken off her feet and landed in the pool about 8 feet away. She sputtered and dog paddled. Josh was at the deep end.
“I’ll give you five hundred bucks to swim to Josh.”
She did it, and Josh picked her out of the water as if she was a trout. She was shaking, but it was obviously not hypothermia.
“You just made $500 Anita. You swam into the deep water to Josh. You didn’t think you could swim when you came in here, and now you are going to leave knowing you can. The way they taught Josh, they threw him out of a helicopter a quarter mile from shore. Chrissie, would you take her into the ladies’ room and find something nice for her?”
The ladies left.
Josh chuckled. “You might have a hard time coming tonight, bro.”
“Am I wrong?”
“It depends on the student. You may get her afraid of water with that. If you don’t, then she will be real empowered. She can do whatever, she will survive. Maybe a SEAL even.”
“Not a Marine, of course.”
“No. Marines are born not made. God puts the globe and anchor on their shoulder.”
“I don’t have one.”
“That’s because He knew everyone would know you’re a fucking jarhead, Ames.”
“How about Kev, then?”
“We don’t brag in front of them because we know they’re better than we are.”
Anita and Chrissie came out.
“That’s a really lousy way to teach a lady to swim.”
“The idea is, you panic once, and get past it, and then after that, you are confident, because you’ve already been scared witless. If I made you afraid of water, I’m sorry.”
“I’ll show you how afraid of water I am.’
She took her shoes off and put them on the table. Then she took her dress off, and folded it on the table. She jumped into the water and dog paddled to the deep end. She grabbed the edge of the pool and pulled herself up, getting a fingertip grip on the diving board. She squirmed around a little, and got her other hand on it, and pulled herself out by walking up the wall of the pool. She got out and came around to the table.
Josh smiled. “She looks good doing it, too.”
“Let me see you do it better.”
“A novice swimmer challenges a SEAL? Darling, it’s only fair to warn you that I’m not wearing underwear. If I do this, you may be disappointed for the rest of your life.”
Will chuckled. “Until she makes it with a Marine.”
“If the Marines had the brains or the genitals they think they have, nobody could take them on.”
Josh took his pants off, and dove in at the shallow end. By some unimaginable method, he surfaced under the diving board, and shot up to grab the board and then did a pull up, and suddenly he was on the board, standing. Everyone clapped their hands. Josh dove again, and this time came up alongside Anita, pulling himself out of the water, and spinning around to end up sitting on the pool deck. “What sort of plans do you have for dinner, darlin’?”
Will intervened. “She can take the evening off if she likes.”
“Well, I was planning on some fish, maybe crabs, clams. Depends on what I could catch.”
“I had much the same idea. I don’t know if you realized it, but SEAL breeding season is coming up soon. This week, it’s when we walk on the beach. Next week, when the moon comes out, we bark, and then after that, you can’t be sure.”
“Well, the walking on the beach part sounds all right. I don’t know if I’m going to bark or anything, yet.”
They got dressed, and everyone went in the house. Anita made a lot of sandwiches. She decided she would go on the boat, also, even though Will said she had to wear a life jacket any time she was on deck. Fortunately, the jackets they had were self inflating ones with radio beacons. They looked almost like fishing vests unless you inflated them. They got ready to go out, with the crew, Josh and Kevin, Anita, Will and Chrissie, Poquita, Quint and Karl. The dorm mothers brought the covey out, and off they went to various places Ronnie and Carlo knew. They caught a lot of fish. Everything they caught had to be approved by a fisheries biologist, Roberta. The boat was allowed to fish under a ‘letter of accommodation’ which exempted it from the requirements of fishing licenses and all that. Will could fish with his own license if he liked, but the covey and employees could also fish under the letter, but only if they took a fisheries biologist with them, who could then tell them what they could take and what they must release. They also stopped here and there for water samples, and to net plankton and such things. Roberta, a tiny brunette with a very long braid of hair down her back, tended to want to sample things in some really great places to fish, which all got recorded on the boat’s extensive computer system. The special services must have been very expensive, but Will never saw the bills. The reader would probably be entirely correct in that suggestion that the magic wand of General Barnes was involved somehow.
Roberta took a call around lunch time. A buoy had gone adrift, and it would be real nice if Jared could go get it. It weighed about ¾ of a ton, so fetching it with an outboard boat would not be real convenient. Buoy tenders being the expensive things they are, were not in the neighborhood, and not available. Jared was equipped as a Marine officer would be inclined. Why buy a one ton crane when a seven ton one would do? Jared would be glad to go. Yes, her Starboard crane could pick up seven tons at the full extension of 32 feet.
Will noted the location and speed of the current there, and glanced at a trig table, and gave Ronnie a course. Jill went up into the observation tower, with a pair of binoculars you could probably get at a discount store for less than the cost of a racehorse. She picked out the buoy at about 15 miles, and took a bearing. Her binoculars had a GPS system built in, with a radar range finder and compass, of course.
She spoke into a headset. “Buoy sighted. Bearing 193, range 29 thousand 422 yards.”
“Roger that, lookout, we have it on radar. Do you recommend we track by radar, and get you down out of the radiation, or do you want us to put the radar on standby and continue to track visually?”
“I’ll come down and we can track by radar with the Captain’s permission.”
“Come on down.”
She put the binoculars inside her windbreaker and zipped it up. Down she came, and into the wheelhouse.
“It was a little speck that came and went, but now we know where it is. We’re seeing more of it.”
Kevin came in. “Josh won the toss, so I am the crane, and he is getting in a wet suit. We want you to put the boat up