The Problem with Sylvestrina by Drake Koefoed - HTML preview

 

 

 

 

Chapter 18 You May Be Right To Be Angry

Musical Theme; Chain of Fools by Aretha Franklin

 

 

Dave might have gotten up on the wrong side of the bed, although it was his usual side.  He threw a bunch of guns in a duffle and went down to the truck.  Sylvie followed him, and asked if she could come.

“Fine.  Do what you want.”

They went in silence to a range where Dave would not be asked any questions.  He took the 60 out of the bag, fitted the belt, and opened fire on a five gallon bucket.  The other shooters on the range raised an eyebrow when they saw the machine gun firing, but nobody said anything.  Most of them were ONI, Marines, FBI and alphabet guys.  

When the belt finished, the guy in the next bay asked Dave if he would like to shoot at some soup cans he had.  Dave nodded, and the guy threw one out in front of him.  Dave pulled his .357 and nailed it six times without letting it stop.

“I’ve heard of Wild Bill Hickok doing that, but I didn’t believe it.  Greg Andrews, DIA.”

Dave shook his hand.  “David Cale, ONI.”

Greg chuckled.  “Sure.  I know who you are, General Cale.”

“I’m not a General.”

“Yeah, and I’m not a New Zealand white rabbit.”

“I’m not having much of a day.”

Sylvie spoke.  “You got some good toys, Greg?”

“Well, not compared to what you guys brought, but I have some handguns, A semi auto shotgun, a BAR.”

“Can I shoot your BAR?”

“This will be all right, Dave?”

“She wants to she can.  Sylvie, be very careful with that piece.  It’s a valuable antique.  It cannot be replaced.”

Greg handed Sylvie a for real BAR, and a magazine.  She laid it on the bench and inserted the magazine.  She worked the bolt, dropped the safety, and blew the 5 gallon bucket to bits.  She handed it back.

“Greg, you could shoot my 60 but I don’t have a belt with me.”

“I’ve shot some 60s.  How about an M-79?”

“Can we?”

“Down there we can.”

They got in their cars and drove to the other range.  Greg got an M-79 without any showing of credentials.  They went to the range.

“Think you can drop one in that oil drum, Dave?”

“Sure.”

“A hundred bucks on this? Flip you for first shot, and we trade off till someone does it.”

He flipped a coin.  “You start.”

“Good by me.”  He took the grenade launcher, held it up, and popped a round at the oil drum, which was about 250 yards away.

It hit very close, but no cigar.  Greg took a shot, and gave the drum a good scare.  They took a few more like that.  Dave gritted his teeth, and took a careful shot.  The round fell into the drum and blew it to bits.

“I heard you were good, but I didn’t think anybody could be that good.”

“We’ll buy you lunch.  Let’s get underway.”

Greg turned in the 79 and they went to the steakhouse.

It seemed dark after the brightness of the sun outside.  Sylvie sat next to Dave and put her arm around him.  They ordered the Porterhouse specials with fries and green beans.

A guy came and started some kind of nonsense with Sylvie.   Dave and Greg got up.  The guy headed for the door.  Dave took after him, but Greg held him back.  “Don’t do it, Dave.”  They went back to their table.

The manager came over.  “Is there a problem?”

Greg took over.  “Sorry, Sir.  We didn’t mean to make a disturbance in your restaurant.  That guy was bothering my friend’s wife.”  He showed his DIA badge.  “It was a case of a petty criminal doing something that made him look like a major felon.  He’s gone, and I don’t think he will be back.  You may be assured that if there is any threat to yourself or your staff, we will be here for you.”

“I don’t need to call the cops.”

“No.  I’m not telling you not to, but it would be counter productive.  They would come, and then there would be the usual nonsense between local police and feds.  It would waste a few hundred dollars of law enforcement money that could have gone to getting some criminal.  If that guy comes back, and attempts to harm you or your staff in any way, we will take him down, and then you can call the local police.”

“I’m good with that.”

He left.

The waitress came with their food.  “A little excitement here at home.”

Greg answered.  “We didn’t want to make any trouble here.  We deal with some pretty bad things sometimes, so we kind of got our fur up over not much of much.”

She leaned over him a little.  “I’m Laurie.  I don’t mind a little excitement with you here to protect us.”

“Greg Andrews, DIA.”

“What is DIA, are you a spy?”

“No.  I work for the Defense Intelligence Agency.  I’m counterintelligence.  I hunt spies, actually.”

“This guy with you?”

“There is nobody with me.  You never saw those people you thought you saw, they were not there, and you don’t know anything about them.”

“What will you be doing after dinner, Greg?”

“Probably drinking some tequila.”

“Coincidentally, I have some Cuervo gold.  I’ll be off in about two hours.”

“I don’t expect to be doing anything important in two hours.  If, you know, you could spare a shot or two.”

“What always seems to happen is, I buy it, and then I don’t have anyone to drink it with, and it just sits around.”

“I’ve been having that problem with some I.W. Harper.”

“What we might do is, I could call you when I get off work, and if you will drink some of my Cuervo, I could help out a little with the I.W. Harper problem.”

They exchanged phone numbers.

Dave put a bit of a damper on things.  “Laurie, can I see your ID?”

“Sure.”  She handed him a driver’s license.  He set it on his palm top and scanned it in.  “Would you put your thumb on this?”

She did.  Dave hit a few keys.  “I had a reason to do this, which I do not want to explain.”

“I’ve read La Carre.”

“He is as French as a Ball Park hot dog.”

“If I don’t ask any questions, will you tell me no lies?”

“Deal.”  

Dave and Sylvie paid a lot of attention to their food, and a little small talk between them.  Isn’t it amazing how people can be unaware of what is going on around them?  Dave even had Greg’s phone numbers, so he could have checked in and found out what was going on.  With the laziness typical of Marine officers, he didn’t bother.  This, naturally, concluded with Laurie having her way with our poor innocent Greg.  There is always a waitress somewhere, lurking, ready to take advantage of an Army Major.  Actually, four times in the same night.

* * *

Saturday morning, Dave heard a great deal of running around being done on deck.  He didn’t worry about it.  In the Dave view, they should have lots of fun now, because you never knew if you would be there tomorrow.  He could put up with the noise.  That was what he was here to do.

A few years back, a 17 year old guy was not doing very well in high school, and dropped out to join the Marines, serve his country and learn a trade.  The Corps got his parents’ permission to enlist him, and taught him a trade.  Rifleman.  He was posted to Dave’s company, and was blown to bits by a machine gun mounted in a pickup within days of getting to the sandbox.  The “technical” that killed the kid got hit by a Marine fast mover in less than a minute, disappearing forever in a blast of napalm fire.  It did not bring the kid back, or get Dave out of writing an “I regret to inform you” letter.

Dave got up and took a shower, and got dressed.  He went to the galley and ate some oatmeal and had a cup of coffee.  He went up to the wheelhouse.

“They’re hyper today, Freddie.”

“Phase of the moon, maybe.”

“I hope nobody goes over side while we are running.”

“Steve is watching.  Fortunately, the screws are pretty deep.  There isn’t much chance of getting sucked in, but it would ruin your whole day.”

“I’d like to get them in some fast action with all this friskiness.  What do we have in the 4/0 Red Senators?”

“47 fast retrieves, 41 who might fish.  Including some parents who probably will not.”

“Any of the shallow reefs look good today?”

Freddy put his finger on the chart.  “This one at 80 feet.  We could get most of our fish, and then go for the very deep ones for the hard cores to get something real big.”

“Best way to go, your opinion?”

“Yeah, until we don’t do good, I’d like to do that.”

“Head on.  What’s our Estimated Running Time?”

“1:40.”

“We can convene the rig tying crew, then.”

“You should.  5 loop shrimp fly jigs snaps on top and breakaways on the bottom.  Rigs in 60 Stren, and breakaways in that cheap 40.”

“Some of the rigs have IGFA 80 on them.”

“Rig those in 100 mono, same 40 breakaways.  But don’t you have the 4/0 fast retrieves with 50?”

“Uh, yeah.  Maybe we do those in 60 Stren and 30 cheap?”

“I’m with that.  By the way, I think you should use the Ethiopian shrimp flies.”

“They are better?”

“Tied on Mustad hooks.  Good work, and you remember we owe Ethiopia.”

“Right.  Let’s get another 100,000.  In those funny little paper wraps.”

If you shop at Greed Mart, you won’t know what you are buying or from whom you are buying it.  If you have ears in the secret world, you know who we owe and who we do not, and you buy from friends first.  If US policy was rational, we would charge tariffs on goods produced by slave labor by our enemies, and reduce the tariffs for our friends.  If someone did something very nice for us, we would waive tariffs for them for a little while, and let importers buy up their goods.  

You asked the body shop about a lens cover for your car, and they said, “Take one off that car over there.  No charge.”

Someone smashes into your car.  It’s covered by insurance.  Who do you go to with this nice little job?  The same guy who will give you a lens cover for your taillight.  He will tell most people he doesn’t sell lug nuts, which is true.  He gives them away to his friends, who can dig in the bucket for one the right size.

The rig tying crew came in and started throwing rolls of line in buckets and tying knots.  There were some new members who wanted to learn, and, Shelly, who ran the crew showed them how to tie the knots and the secret of wiping the knot on your face to get a little skin oil so the knot would close.  Shelly showed them how to roll up the rig and put it in a zip lock bag.  Most of the bags were used, and some were yucky.  You could use a bag for bait, but after that, it got tossed.  One of the girls ran around on the deck distributing rigs that had not been bagged, and made sure they were tied on correctly.  

They came up on the grounds, and Freddie called “gear down.”

Dave ran up to the wheelhouse.  “Freddy, do we have crab traps out?”

“Yeah.”

“We should save time to haul them?”

“Right.  We could go there first, and then backtrack to fish, but I would prefer to fish first, and if we crab in the dark, no big.  It will be crew only, except for coiling the extension lines, and those kids have done it before.”

“The work lights, though.”

“Man overboard would be harder.  The line crew is all water safety certified, so we put the rest in the cabin.”

“You have it figured out.”

“We are coming up on the shallow reef.”

“Captain to fishermen.  Prepare to let down with your light gear.  The 4/0 Senators, the red reels.  Everyone should have 5 shrimp fly jigs.  The fish finder says we are over a lot of fish.  If you didn’t get some bait bits from Casey or Billy, it’s too late.  Experts, help the novices.  We are in a lot of fishes here!  Gear down.”

Everyone let down, and the fishes piled on.  Some of the parents went to work with pliers and routed fishes to the fillet table, where the legendary Maria was cutting fishes to fillets faster than they could be put on the table.  One of the scouts was holding out a plastic bag for each carcass, and having a hard time taking them out fast enough.  Maria took a fish, and made one cut from gill cover to just before the tail, flipped the fillet, and took the skin off, and flicked it into the bin.  Each had the required one square inch of skin left.  Everyone on board had a fishing license.  That was pretty easy, since the Marciella could issue them.  Nobody was asked for the money for the license.  Those who did not have the fee would be taken care of by De La Perez foods.

One of the parents, who did not fish, counted the fillets as they hit the box.  Luckily for her, she could count fast.  When she got to ¾ of a limit, Freddie called gear up.  The 4/0 reels were put away, and the 6/0 reels came out.  

Freddy took everyone over to the deep reef.  “Captain to crew.  We are going to nail some big ones here, and then go get our crab traps and head in.  When we tie up, we are going to make dinner for all of you, your parents, and your kid brothers and sisters.  So get ready to put down some heavy gear.  We have some super heavy rigs with wire leaders, so we can take out a big shark if we get the live bait fish to catch him on.”

They ran for a while, and then Freddie called “Gear down.”

Several nice fishes came up, and then they had powerful hits on two rigs.  The fishes were on, so Freddie called gear up.

“Fishing crew, we are in a tough situation.  We have two big fishes on, and they can go different ways.  I can chase one, but not two.  Try to make the fish work but don’t panic him.   I can’t maneuver very well to deal with this.  I will try to take you to deep water.  Please move one line toward the bow and one toward the stern.”

Dave came up.  “What can we do?”

“The girl aft is static.  She has an eel.  So we work on the fish forward.  A grouper.  They bite when you are on board.”

“The eel will abrade the line.  We will lose him if we can’t pull him out of the rocks.”

“Main force, Dave.  Win or lose.  I can give you a few minutes.”

“Get ready.  I’m going to back down a little, and off to starboard, get right over him.”

“Where is the grouper?”

“Midwater.  We’re taking him with us.”

“Tell the kids on the bow to stick on him.”

“Captain to fish crew, on the bow we have a grouper, and that is a tough fish, but you have to hold him so we can work aft on a huge eel, which is much more difficult.  Keep your fish away from the bottom while we work on the eel.”

Freddie worked away from the grouper.  “He is in midwater, Dave.  We need to get up and down on that eel and see what we can do.”

Dave ran down and got with the fisherman who had the eel on.  “I have the bottom.”

“No, you don’t.  You have a big eel, we think.  We are going to get up and down on him, and you are going to work him out of the rocks like you work out an anchor.  We’ve done this before.  You will bring honor to the Marciella and your shipmates if you can get this fish.  It will be very hard, but I think you can do it.”

“You should take this fish.”

“No, I should not.  This is your fish.  If I was the only fisherman on this boat, then I would be back on the Clarissa Marlene in the Gulf of Alaska or the Bering Sea.  I can kill lots of fishes with my 22 thousand shaft horsepower boat. This is you against the fish.  Keep that line real tight.  What is the apex predator of this planet of all time?”

“Tyrannous Rex.”

“No way.  The Marines could teach you how to fly a Cobra in a few months, and you could exterminate T. Rex in less than a year.  You’re going to kill this eel within the hour, and your friends, your family, and all of us are going to eat him.  Now get with it.  You are our point chick.  Put some pressure on that thing.”

She pulled up hard.  The line was up and down.

“Keep it on.”

“He isn’t going to give up.”

“Yes he is.  It is you who is not.  We do not ever give up.  We’re Marines, Navy Seals, Coast Guard Swimmers.  You are fishing with people who have never given up, Never!”

“I may not be that strong.”

“If you want to fail, you will,”

“He just came loose!”

“Reel up.  Keep the pressure on.  That sticking in the rocks was his only move.  You have him now.”

“Captain to fishing crew.  We have the eel off the bottom, and we will now maneuver to get the grouper into deep water.  The fishing crew is doing a great job, and we look forward to eating your catch.”

A few minutes later, the eel came alongside.  Josh gaffed him, and the guys pulled him on deck, where Sylvie beat hell out of him with a piece of pipe.  

She thought about what it would be like to see this same crew kill a Rex.  She thought how much Dave would care about the danger, and blanked on that.  Dave had not kidded her.  Mammoths were killed by crews just like this.  

Dave was asking if anyone wanted to fish any more after the grouper was taken.

Nobody did.  In not long, the grouper was alongside, and then he was on the table being filleted.  The boat went over to the bank and hauled crab traps.  Dave filled a 50 gallon pickle barrel with salt water.  He saw to it that the crab traps were stacked neatly in a locker made just for crab traps.  The doors were ventilated to let things dry, and once latched, they would hold the traps in any sea.  The bait was dumped in to plastic bags and frozen.  

Freddie took the Marciella in.  

`When they tied up, most of the scouts went ashore with bags of fillets and their personal gear.  Dave started up the crab boiler.  Some of the parents came aboard.  Everyone had wine, beer, brandy, whisky or something.  

Dave mostly noticed the lady in black.  She was tall, with the sleek lines of a fashion model.  Her long black hair hung in a carefully careless pony tail that made it to her waist.  She wore a black silk pantsuit with a leather belt there was no need for, which had a gold buckle.  If you were paying no attention whatever, you could think it might not really be gold.  Her high heeled sandals were gold colored, and there, you know it couldn’t be metal.  The buckles of course, were.

She had all the details, like the gold chain around her ankle, the gold bracelet, the hoop earrings, more gold of course.  

“Melanie.  This is my wife, Sylvie.”

“I know who she is.”

“Would you like to have some crab with us, Melanie?”

“I would rather take back what belongs to me.”

“That was a long time ago, Mel.”

“I have not forgotten.”

“Nor have I, but that is the past.”

“You still belong to me.  Me, Dave, not her.”

“It doesn’t work like that, Mel.  Now you think of this.  There are 4 billion people on the planet.  2 billion are male.  ½ billion around the right age for you.  Clip the dumb ones, and you have 250 million.  Maybe 100 million are single.  Naturally, being pretty, you want a looker, so that takes it down to 10 million.   Not that I was that good looking anyway. You never seemed to care about me not having money, so we can discount that.”  

“I was nothing special, and you left me.  Mel, you have had a couple of years to look over your 10 million, and now you’re thinking maybe you should not have pushed me to the curb.  But you did.   The way it works is, you stake your claim or you don’t.  You didn’t.”

“I should have.”

“Hitler should have left Russia alone.  The Titanic should have had lifeboats.  The Exxon Valdez should have had a captain.”

“I should have some crab.”

“If you like.”

The kids continued to run around the deck.  Parents had brought chicken, tacos, and burgers.  Running around seemed to be the top choice.  Dave had butter and garlic sauce with a little cayenne, and boiled crabs.  Someone was grilling some of the fish.  Melanie fiddled with a crab.  After a while she left.

“Dave, what’s with her?”

“Someone should tell me.”

“Do you love her?”

“I care about her.  I don’t know that it was ever love.  Nothing like you and me.”

“Why not?”

“Passion, but no understanding.  She’s glamorous, she’s pretty, she knows all those little things like tossing her hair.  But she couldn’t tell you what I liked or did not like about jobs I had when I was with her.  She would know which negligee I liked best.  She could tell you the perfumes I liked best, and she could tell you I like that gloss lipstick.”

“Maybe she will come and try to get you back.”

“She just did.  It isn’t going to work.”

One of the boys had set some perch traps up on end near where they were, and they threw some crab junk into them.    

One of the girls and her fishing partner came around and put some small fish carcasses in.  Dave took out his cell phone and asked the wheelhouse to turn on the work lights at ¼ power.  Residents of the neighboring berths had said ¼ was kind of nice so you felt safe.  Full power made it hard to sleep.  

Carrie, the maid, brought a bottle of Cuervo Gold and some glasses, and a small bucket of ice.  As she poured drinks, she said. “Freddie says there are tuna off shore.  Out on the outer shelf.”

Dave picked up the marine telephone, which was kind of like a cell phone in the same way that a 40 mike mike mortar is like a .22 long rifle.  “Ay, Dad, you got a reason we can’t go out into the blue water?”

“No.  The plant is doing just fine.  What happened, El Nino?”

“Yep.  We have reports of tuna within 100 miles of the coast.”

“Hold the boat.  I will be there within the hour.”

“Great.  You ever fish tuna?”

“It’s something I always wanted to do.”

“We’re commercial on this trip, so you can do all you like.”

“Do we need supplies?”

“Fuel, water, bait.  We’ll buy lots of groceries.  You can get by on the stuff in your cabin.  If Michael has them get us two thousand tuna hooks.”

“See you in a few.”

“Captain to deck.  We are going to take on fuel, water and bait.  At our third stop, at Robert’s bait and fish processing, anyone who does not want to go out into the deep blue for a week or so should get off the boat.  The port crew is instructed to re-rig the perch traps to the docks, and leave no slack, to make sure the screws do not hit those lines.”

The kids tied off the perch traps very close on the pilings.  The Marciella went to another dock and filled her water and fuel tanks.  She took on about 20,000 live anchovies, and three thousand pounds of groceries.  The liquor store on the other side did a lively business.  The telephone companies got lots of calls to process about someone who was sick, or who really needed some vacation time or whatever.  Quite a few parents simply told the boss that El Nino had brought tuna to the West Coast, and they wanted their kids to have this maybe once in a lifetime chance to catch some.

About 0200, the Marciella took a 245 from the South Tower of the Gate Bridge.  She ran a steady 12 knots all night.  At first light, she was well outside the Farallones.  At 0800, Dave and Willie launched a drone of about a six foot wingspan off the after deck.

The Marciella headed on West, about a 280 degree heading.  The drone came back in, and landed on the afterdeck with a loud smash.  It was not damaged.  

The Marciella headed into the action where the birds were working.  

“Captain to deck.  This is going to happen real fast.  Throw your fish on the deck, and get another one.  You may never see fishing like this again, so don’t waste a second.”

Sylvie looked at Dave as he put a live anchovy on her hook.  “Is that for real?”

“Fish, honey, it is.  We are in albacore.  You may never see this again.”

For twenty minutes, they pulled big fishes up and flung them on the deck.  The lightest line on deck was 100 pound nylon monofilament.  Dave and Sylvie were using 250.  When the school was gone, Dave re-rigged them with new leaders and hooks, crushing the barbs so the fishes could be thrown off faster.  Parents and kids around the deck were stunned.  Even some of the girl scouts had pulled 50 pound fishes up by themselves.  The dozen or so fishermen on deck had taken five tons of fish in 20 minutes.  Freddy was running at full speed to another spot where the birds were working.

Dave started pushing fish into the hatch to the hold.  Several others got with him, and they soon had the deck cleared.  One of the moms, Marti, came over to Dave.

“What are we going to do now, Dave?”

“Find more fish.  Kill more fish.”

“How many is enough?”

“We can feed people at St. Vincent’s with frozen fish for years.  But even for you, we can put a nice dinner in front of your family every week for the next year.  If Freddie catches that big school over there and we fish it well, you can cover your kid’s first year of college.”

Freddie did catch the school, and the fishing crew did a great job.  They took 10 tons of fish in a little over an hour.  Freddie lay on the settee, and let the autopilot bring the Marciella in.  A very smart 14 year old girl, Jennie, watched the radar.  She had two kids on the wings of the bridge on each side.  She had one of the parents with her at all times.  She woke poor Freddie up every 15 minutes so he could look everything over.  Finally, they got to port, and he was able to tie up at the processing plant and sleep knowing the Marciella would not be wrecked.  The plant worked out the fish, and ground the garbage into fish meal and fish emulsion.  Willy took the Marciella to her own berth, and tied her up solidly.  Despite the lateness of the hour, some people wanted to eat fish and crabs.  

Dave started the crab boiler with some new salt water from the ocean.  One of the dads started some fish grilling over an electric coil.  

Sylvie came and put her arm around Dave.

“Dave, it’s never going to be better than this.”

“I don’t want to think that.  I want to always think something great is around the corner.”

“You are not happy with me?”

“No, nothing like that.  You’re my sunshine, Sylvie.  It’s just, I don’t know, something that can never be fulfilled, some kind of emptiness at the center of the galaxy.”

“Will light, even, from that place, ever get here while we live?”

“No.”

“So what you are worrying about is all God’s problem.  You can sleep while Freddie runs the Marciella.  Why not sleep while God runs the universe?”

“I guess every time I sleep, he is running it.”

“There is a step.”

Dave’s pager went off.  He looked at it.  “Two steps back.”

He handed Sylvie his wallet, watch, and everything else in his pockets.

“Will I ever know where you go when this happens?”

“I hope not.”

He ran into a nearby field, and a black helicopter with no tail numbers set down.  Dave got aboard  and it took off into the night sky with no navigation lights.

* * *

Two days later, Dave got out of a black Lincoln Town Car and came to the door.  Sylvie let him in.  He went to the shower, and then laid in bed.  Sylvie got in with him.  He put his arms around her, and held her like she li