//------------------------------//
// Chapter 3 
// Story: Corsair 
// by totallynotabrony 
//------------------------------//

	Nika made some kind of soup for dinner.  Russian cuisine, to my taste at least, is kind of hit or miss.  Luckily, this was one of the better ones.
Andy quizzed me about the shootout.  He said that he would have come to help if Nika hadn’t told him he would be of more assistance if he stayed in the CIC.  Across the table, she nodded in confirmation.
Hawker asked what all the shooting was about, and Stuart took her aside and talked to her for a few minutes.  By the sound of it, he told her that she didn’t really want or need to know.
It was amazing how much could change so quickly.  What should have been a simple transatlantic cruise had turned into something else that I didn’t know what to call.  A porn star in the middle of some kind of organized crime trial, emergency stops in foreign ports and meeting terrorists who wanted us all dead all in the same trip defied description.
We were originally supposed to be in England by now.  I would make sure Hanley negotiated with the Brits to get us a larger payment.
It was also time to call Dr. Games.  I wasn’t looking forward to the call.  I didn’t like to talk about getting people killed.
Later that night, Andy was on the bridge again.  I decided to talk with Nika about the gunfight earlier in the day.  Dr. Games had reminded me that it had been in self defense, so I felt justified.  It’s still a load on your mind.  As a business partner, I thought Nika should know that I was thinking about it.  Andy wasn’t really a partner, just a temp for the summer before he went back to teaching.
Nika calmed me down.  “We both knew something like this might happen when we started.”
“I suppose.”
She put her hand on my head and rubbed me behind the ears.  It made me feel like a dog, but it was pleasant.  I hated to think about it, but Andy might have a competitor for title of Sail’s best friend.
After a long trip up the coasts of Spain and France, we arrived at Monaco.  It was possibly the one place on earth where my boat would be amongst a crowd.
Monaco was a tiny country located between France and the Mediterranean Sea, with Italy nearby.  It had Monte Carlo and a host of other world-class casinos.  Rich people from around the world came because of its great weather and lenient tax laws.
The Serious Organized Crime Agency had contracted with an Italian private investigator to obtain information about the case that Hawker was a witness to.  Stuart still hadn’t told us anything about that.
Hawker wanted to explore Monaco, but Stuart said absolutely not.  Not only would getting her out on the streets make her an easier target, but neither of them happened to be carrying the kind of cash that it took to do literally anything in high-rolling Monaco.  At the same time, Stuart didn’t trust us to keep her safe.  I had hinted that we would take her out to party the moment his back was turned.  
Regardless of who the gunmen from Morocco had belonged to, Stuart knew that someone wanted everyone on the boat dead.  In the end, he decided to send Nika and I to meet the investigator while he stayed with Hawker.  Andy said he would stay and keep the boat ready to go, just in case.
I had been to Monaco once before and remembered how much money I had lost gambling.  Not that I couldn’t afford to play a little now and then, but it was an experience I didn’t wish to repeat.  Nika, who had grown up with the memory of the old Soviet Union, was naturally frugal with money, and we agreed to stay away from casinos.
The details of the meeting with the investigator were hurriedly changed.  I hoped that that wouldn’t spook the guy and make him skip the meeting.  We left a little early so we had time for dinner.
Not that I minded Nika’s cooking, but it was nice to eat something once in a while that hadn’t come out of the boat’s galley.  The restaurant was expensive, everything in Monaco was, but unlike gambling you were guaranteed to get something in return for the money.
We were probably overdressed for a covert meeting with a private investigator, but the restaurant wouldn’t have let us in dressed more casually.  Nika wore a silky red dress.  I had begrudgingly put on a jacket and tie.  Luckily, everyone else seemed to think they were extras in the casino scene in a James Bond movie, so we didn’t stick out.  
Calling last minute to tell the investigator that someone else would be coming to meet him had thrown all the carefully laid plans out the window.  He insisted on changing the location and details.  Luckily, it only takes about half an hour to walk from one end of Monaco to the other, so we didn’t have any trouble getting there.
The instructions from the man were clear.  Arrive promptly at the appointed time.  If he was satisfied that we were alone, he would show himself.
We sat on the bench for almost ten minutes before a short, trim man with a briefcase appeared and sat down as well.
“You must be Sail Canvas,” he said.  His English was very good.
“That’s right.”
“You’re Americans.”
Apparently he’d looked up my citizenship.  Nika corrected him, however.  “I’m not.”
“Pardon me, madam.  I did not mean to presume.  You sound…Russian?  Prijatno poznakomit’sa.”
She answered him in kind.  I was impressed.  The man had an ear for language.
“If I may ask,” he said, “what is one American pony and one Russian woman doing here on behalf of the British government?”
“It’s complicated,” I said.
“Confidential, then.  Very well.  I am Mario Rossi, investigator for hire.  I have information for you.”  He presented the briefcase.
Nika took it from him.  I said, “I’ve been told that your fee has already been paid.”
“Yes, Mr. Canvas.”  He stood up.  “I’ll be going now.  I hope you’ll find all the information to your liking.”  He walked away.
“Mr. Stuart told us that we should bring this straight back to the boat,” said Nika.
“It’s almost like he was daring us to take a look.”
Nika smiled, obviously liking my idea.  She popped open the latches on the briefcase.  Inside was an assortment of documents and photographs, with a few computer disks mixed in.  We quickly decided that we had five minutes to look before Stuart would get suspicious.
It quickly became apparent that everything pertained to a Mr. James Winfield Herrington, a British businessman who had fled the country ahead of several embezzlement charges.  He had turned up in The Bahamas where he had partied with Hawker Hurricane and gone a little too far.  She didn’t respond well to unpaid sexual activities.  She would be testifying that he had been in The Bahamas during a certain time period.  There might be something else that she knew, but Mario Rossi’s notes only speculated as to what.
Most of the pictures were of people who pertained to the information, like James Herrington or Hawker Hurricane.  We didn’t have time or equipment to look at the disks.
When we returned to the boat, Stuart looked at us suspiciously but didn’t say anything.  I told Andy to get us moving.
A quick internet search revealed that “Mario Rossi” was the Italian equivalent of “John Smith.”  Given the level of security the man had insisted on, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a fake name.
I decided to tell Hanley.  I got the impression the Brits were keeping him in the dark about our current operation, too.  I understood that the reason for that was probably to preserve security, but I trusted Hanley not to tell anyone else and I figured that if I was volunteering information it might help get me on his good side.
On the phone, Hanley listened without interruption.  When I finished, he said that he would look into Rossi.  I knew that most law enforcement people had a distrust of private investigators.
“Oh, and while we’re talking,” said Hanley, “that dustup you got into in Morocco was in fact linked to Al-Azhem’s old group.”
“See?  They’re still after me.  This is why I need heavier weapons and the ammunition to get the CIWS working.”
“You did all right without them.”  I think we both knew that I wouldn’t hesitate to get things using unofficial methods if I had to.  I was just trying to get stuff from him for free.
Hanley said he might get back to me with more information about Rossi, and we broke the connection.  I went to find Nika.
“I think it’s time we got the CIWS loaded up,” I said.  “We could use some other things, too.  In your time investigating black market affairs, I’m sure you know how we could get some.”
Nika smiled.  “I will make arrangements.”
A few days later, off the coast of Spain, we were waiting for a rendezvous.  Our weapons dealers were a little late.
I punched the intercom button and asked for Andy.
“He’s busy.  What can I do for you?”
I stared at the speaker Hawker’s voice had come from, not expecting her to respond.  “I’d like a little more return on the radar.  Maybe widen the beam and increase emission power.”
Five seconds later, she said, “Okay, done.”  I saw the picture on the radar screen in the bridge change a little.
I wondered if Andy had actually taught her to use the controls, or if he had simply adjusted them for her.  I shrugged it off and waited.
When the radar contact eventually came, we steered that way.  It turned out to be an old rusty fishing trawler flying a Russian flag.  The crew looked tough and almost as weather beaten as the boat.  We had told Stuart that it was a scheduled meeting with a government weapons supplier.  I doubt he believed us, but he didn’t ask questions.
The men greeted Nika warmly.  Evidently, news of her desertion from the FSB had spread widely and was well received by weapons dealers.  I went with her aboard the boat to see what they had available.
The cargo hold was crammed with weapons, stacked in piles.  All of them looked pre-owned.  We picked through them, occasionally getting advice from the arms dealers.
We decided on three AK-47s with a dozen magazines and a couple of thousand cartridges for them, a couple of RPGs, and some twenty millimeter ammunition.
I was worried that Russian twenty-mil might not work with our weapon, until I noticed that the markings on the crate indicated that it was property of the U.S. military.  I wondered where they had gotten it, but didn’t inquire because that’s one question you just don’t ask black market arms dealers.
I called my lawyer on the satellite phone and gave him instructions for moving a sum of money into a bank account that the men told me about.  They called someone of their own to confirm that the money had arrived.  
They helped carry our purchases back to our boat and after handshakes and hoof bumps they left.  Stuart watched as Nika and I hauled the boxes and containers to the center of the foredeck.  It didn’t take a genius to figure out that we had just made a weapons deal.
There was a cargo elevator placed in the center of the flight deck.  It was square and when not in use sat flush with the deck.  Once our new guns and ammo were on it, I signaled for Andy to actuate it, and it took us below.  When the elevator stopped, we got our things off and sent it back up, while holding down an inconspicuous button the side of the shaft. As the elevator rose, the CIWS beneath it was revealed.
The Close In Weapons System was a six barreled gatling gun controlled by a computer connected to radar.  It was a deadly combination.  It could hit air and sea targets with a barrage of 4,500 rounds per minute.  It was standard issue aboard Navy ships for defense from missiles, small boats, and everything in between.  Ours had been modified with a surrounding cage.  The top of the cage formed the floor of the elevator.  When we wanted to kill something, the CIWS would be pushed up out of the elevator shaft.
Nika and I loaded a fifteen hundred round belt of twenty millimeter ammunition into the CIWS.  It could fire the whole belt in twenty seconds, so it was good that we had some more to reload with.
At some point, Stuart walked by.  The elevator doors were about halfway closed, concealing most of the weapon, but the multi barreled gun was unmistakable.  He stared for several seconds before moving on, shaking his head.
We continued on towards jolly old England.  We expected to meet people from the Serious Organized Crime Agency on the docks, but the day before we were scheduled to arrive, plans changed.
A call for Stuart came on my satellite phone.  I found him and handed it over, listening while he spoke.  It sounded like someone was giving him a change of orders.  I was a little concerned that such things were being conducted over an unsecured line. 
When he hung up, he told me that a helicopter would be arriving soon to take Hawker away.
“What about you?” I asked.
“I wasn’t specifically told that I would also be boarding the helicopter, but I can’t imagine why I wouldn’t.”  He handed the sat phone back to me.  “I really want to get back on dry land.”
He and Hawker began gathering their belongings.  Ten minutes later, a target appeared on radar, and I watched as it resolved itself in to a medium sized passenger helicopter.  The pilot called us and we arranged for him to land on our deck.
Andy came up to the bridge to watch the landing.  He whistled.  “A Eurocopter Dauphin.  Those aren’t cheap.”  
After the helo touched down, the pilot and copilot kept the engine running while a man in a flight suit got out of the back and came to the superstructure.  He was a big guy, and had a pistol holstered by his side.
“We’re here to take her home,” he said, nodding at Hawker.  He noticed Stuart also standing there with his luggage.  “Who’re you?”
“I’m A.J. Stuart.  I’ve escorted her from The Bahamas.”
The helicopter crewman looked surprised.  “I wasn’t told anything about that.”
“I’m coming with her.”
“No way.”
“Do you want me to call my boss and have him explain to you just who the hell I am?”
The crewman instantly backed off.  “No, don’t do that, you can hitch a ride.”
“I’m coming too,” said Andy.
“What?” said Stuart and I simultaneously.
“I want him to come,” said Hawker.  “He knows enough about electronic security that I think he can help set up protection for me until the trial.”  Stuart looked like he doubted that, but didn’t say anything.
“You’ll be arriving tomorrow,” said Andy, looking at me.  “You don’t need me to run the boat.”
I shrugged.  “I guess not.  Have fun.”
The three of them followed the crewman out to the helicopter and boarded.  Nika and I went up to the bridge to watch them take off, and then set a course for land.
About half an hour later, the helicopter was back.  It wobbled in the air and didn’t respond to radio calls.  There was something wrong.
We brought the boat to a halt to make the landing as easy as possible for the pilot.  It took a couple of tries to get the helo lined up correctly, but it was eventually hovering a few feet off the deck.  The landing was rough, the helicopter smacking the deck so hard it almost bounced.
If they were in trouble, the helicopter wasn’t going to be taking off again.  I ran out with tie down straps to secure it to the deck.  I noticed what looked like a bullet hole in the window nearest to me.
The door slid open and Andy stumbled out.  He helped Hawker out the door and Stuart followed.  All of them had blood on their clothes.  Stuart closed the door behind him.
“It was a setup,” he said.  “I should have called my boss.  They weren’t from the Agency.”
I finished with the straps and crawled out from under the helicopter.  I had a look through the windows and soon realized why Stuart had closed the door.  All three of the crew members were dead.
The helicopter’s engines finished spooling down and we went inside.  Stuart decided to let a shower wait while he grabbed a phone and chewed out someone on the other end for quite a while.  I could see why he would be angry.
He finished with, “Confirmation?  How’s this?  If you don’t send either someone I know personally or the queen herself to pick Hurricane up, I’m not letting her out of my sight!”  Yeah, he was definitely angry.
I made coffee and waited for everyone to calm down.  When they were all in clean clothes, I got them all to come to the galley so I could figure out what the heck happened on the helicopter.
Andy had some coffee and explained that the helicopter crewmen had been using the intercom to talk amongst themselves.  They appeared to reach some kind of decision, and that’s when the man in the back with them drew his pistol and prepared to kill Stuart and then presumably Andy, too.
Stuart added that he had been suspicious of the helicopter crew ever since they had arrived.  I thought that he must have really been taught some good stuff by the SAS, because he was able to get the gun away from the man.  In the process, a bullet went through the window.
Stuart had then put two bullets in the man’s chest before advancing into the cockpit.  He killed the copilot for trying to pull a gun.  After that, he held the pistol on the pilot and told him to turn the helicopter around.
The pilot jerked the control stick hard to the side.  Stuart reflexively shot him as he was thrown off his feet.
Hawker broke in, saying that Andy had jumped into the cockpit, grabbing the control stick as the helicopter tumbled out of control.  He had shouted, “Everybody chill out!  I got this!”
Andy went bright red.  “Well,” he muttered, “I once read the flight manual for the Dauphin helicopter.  I felt that I was the most qualified to fly it.”  He brightened.  “Can we paint this on like we did with that boat?”
“You managed to fly it back,” I said.  “It’s not destroyed.”
“Yeah, but we captured it.  That counts for something, right?”
“Close enough, I guess.”
I found out that Stuart had broken his fall with the radio.  That explained the lack of communication.  Changing subjects from the confrontation aboard the helicopter, he said that it would be nice to have some weapons handy, in case things got ugly again when we made landfall.
“Like that cannon you have downstairs,” he said.
The technical term was “below decks” and we wouldn’t be able to raise the CIWS into firing position with the helicopter sitting on the flight deck anyway, but it was nice that he was acknowledging what we were capable of.
It was at that moment that Nika came in, one of the AK-47s slung on her back.  It was one we’d gotten that had a folding stock.  The dirt it had accumulated sitting in the pile aboard the dealers’ boat hadn’t been cleaned off yet, but there’s something comforting about a friend with a gun.
We spent some time talking in the dwindling hours before we reached the shore of England.  Andy was able to find the registration of the helicopter linked to one of James Herrington’s satellite companies.  He printed the information off and added it to the briefcase of information Rossi had provided.
Speaking of Rossi, how did Herrington’s men know what boat we were on?  The easiest explanation was a leak in the Serious Organized Crime Agency, but I personally preferred the theory that Rossi was playing both side of the game, and had sold us out.  There was nothing we could do about it now.
At the docks, Stuart met up with several agents that he knew.  They took Hawker away in a convoy of government sedans.  Andy was not allowed to go along.
Stuart had said that it could be anywhere from weeks to years before the trial was over.  She was going to be kept under protection for as long as it took.  I asked Andy how she was going to work.
He shrugged.  “We both doubt they would allow a camera crew into the safe house.  She was thinking of moving into the live webcam show business.”
Lovely.  At any rate, we didn’t have months or years to wait, so Andy was aboard when we departed.
Hanley had been silent for a while.  When we called him looking for something to do, he said he would get back to us.  We’d managed to negotiate a nice payment for the last job due to all the unforeseen circumstances that had popped up, so we had some money to burn.  
The temptation to go back to Monaco and try to shake something out of Rossi was strong.  Sure, he might not have anything to do with our troubles at all, but we didn’t have anything else to go on.  Plus, Rossi seemed like a smart guy who would find ways to protect himself.
Instead, after a crane arrived and lifted the helicopter off the deck, we headed for Madeira to go diving.  It wasn’t exactly tropical, but the weather at the island off the coast of Portugal was decent enough.  Andy said he had no interest in being underwater with nothing but a tank of air to breathe, but Nika was up for it.
I’m no certified diving instructor, but felt confident in teaching her the basics of shallow water diving.  The water was clear and the coral reefs were plentiful.
On the second day in Madeira, the call from Hanley finally came.  He said, “You’re not going to believe who I have sitting across from me right now.”
“Try me.”
“Nevis.”
Admiral Benjamin Nevis was the man who, arguably, had set me on the path I was now on.  If I hadn’t owed him a favor, he wouldn’t have mentioned to the CIA what a nice candidate I would be for them to kidnap.  Even before that, I had shared a mutual dislike with Nevis, but we were usually able to do business.
“Speakerphone is on,” said Hanley.
“Admiral, what can I do for you?” I said.
“We’d like you to run your boat over a particular patch of ocean.”
“That’s it?  No getting shot at?”  It sounded too easy.
“That’s it.  Just show up, and then you can go on your way.”
“Why do you want me to do that?”
“Why are you asking questions?”
“I can think of several reasons,” I said.  “Most of them end with me getting shot at anyway.”
“It’s nothing like that.”
“Then tell me.”
“You may have heard of the new BBQ-76 sonar.”
“Yeah, it’s the new submarine sound system,” I remembered.  “I’m guessing you want to use my boat so your sub drivers can calibrate it.”
“Essentially, yes.”
“All right.”
“Was that so hard?”
“I could ask you the same thing.”
Hanley cut in.  “The Admiral gave me coordinates.”  He read them off to me.  “Get going.”
We got our gear secured and headed out.  After a couple of days, we’d reached point in the mid Atlantic where the water was two miles deep.  Military submarines couldn’t dive that deep, but at least you didn’t have to worry about scraping the bottom.
I figured that the submarine we were working with was already there, waiting.  I intended to give their new sonar a full workout.
As we arrived at the location, I throttled back and then turned the engines off.  The boat had batteries to handle electrical power, but they wouldn’t last forever.  Andy seemed sad to shut down all his computers to conserve energy, but that was replaced by excitement as he powered up the equipment for our own sonar.
The system had been designed by my company for small patrol craft.  It wasn’t too big or complicated, and it wasn’t the greatest quality, either.  It had a few hydrophones embedded in the lower hull, and a small active sonar unit.  
The active sonar was basically a big fish finder, only the fish we were after were man-made.  It was tied into the rest of the system so a target’s range and direction could be determined.  The towed-array sonar consisted of a hydrophone on the end of long cable to allow our boat to hear the area behind us, a place that the noise from the engines normally covered up.  It didn’t work when we were stationary, though.
For a while, nothing happened.  We were no stealth ship, but with no sound going into the water other than the waves lapping the hull, the boat was pretty quiet.  They’d probably heard us arrive and were now trying to locate us.
It was like a contest of wills.  If the sub captain got tired of waiting, he might make a move that would give himself away.  Since we were getting paid to sit still, we were only limited by how long the battery power lasted.
The sub broke first.  After almost half an hour, Andy said quietly over the intercom, “I think I hear air blowing.”
That meant the sub was forcing air into its ballast tanks to push water out and come up to a shallower depth.  We had the radar on, which ate at the battery, but it paid off when it caught a periscope breaking the surface a quarter of a mile away.
“Andy,” I called, “turn on active sonar and concentrate on that bearing.”  I cranked up the engines and we headed directly at where the periscope had popped up.
The submarine captain, realizing his mistake, sent the sub on a crash dive.  We were closing too fast, though, and our active sonar followed the sub down, blasting ping after ping of sound at it.
The sub tried all kinds of tricks to break away.  It turned around and went behind us.  It changed depth, sometimes going as deep as a thousand feet.  It even released some noisemakers to distract us, but we’d gotten too close and there was no way to shake us off.
Finally, the captain gave up and sent the sub off at forty miles per hour on a straight line back towards the United States.  We could have kept up, albeit just barely, but I didn’t see any point in rubbing it in.
It hadn’t been a thorough test of the new sub sonar, but Nevis had just said we should show up for the test, not that we should be sitting ducks.
Later that day, Andy painted a silhouette of a submarine on the side of the superstructure.