Troublemaker

by totallynotabrony

2:6

Gene met me on the beach when I got back. “Your lawyer called.”

I remembered that I had a company to save. Or destroy, depending on the viewpoint. “What did he say?”

“He said you’re now richer by over a billion dollars. Must be nice.”

“Yes, it is.” I got out of my gear while Gene called the boat. I dried my knife off again and checked the rebeather to make sure I’d turned the gasses off. It wouldn’t be good to have them leak out and be gone when I needed them.

Scorpion said that FSB agents were on the way in a helicopter. It was a good thing our boat had a tank for aviation fuel, because I imagined that we were too far out for most helicopters to come to and get back without refueling.

We waited for a few more hours. The men on the beach had ceased loading the RTGs and sat around waiting for the tide to come back in. I found myself pining for animal crackers.

“So is there a mare in your life?” asked Gene. I guessed he had had prior experience breaking up the monotony of a long time spent watching people from far away, so I continued the conversation.

“Not at the moment. What about you?”

“I’ve been married almost fifteen years. I’ve got two kids.”

“How does your family deal with you going away like this?”

“We set up a system where they don’t ask where I went and I don’t tell them.” He grinned. “The money’s good enough, so that helps. So if you’ve got money, then why don’t you have somepony?”

“I did, not so long ago. I liked her quite a bit until I found her in somepony else’s bed. I found out that it wasn’t the first time that it had happened.”

“What, aren’t you any good in the sack?”

I shrugged. “The point is, if she really loved me, she would have stayed true regardless of any shortfalls I might have had. So I kicked her out. I almost burned down her apartment building, but my lawyer, who you spoke to on the phone, talked me out of it.”

“Smart man.”

“Instead he suggested that I take up marital private investigation. If I was helping out those in a similar situation that I had been in, it might bring me some closure.”

“How did that go?”

“Well, on my first case the husband and wife both tried to murder me because I knew too much. She’d killed a man, and he was trying to cover it up. There were drug dealers involved. Ironically, the only thing that wasn’t going on was sleeping around. They were both still faithful.”

Gene shook his head. “I don’t know if you’ve led a more interesting life than I originally thought, or you’re really good at coming up with lies on the spot, but it sure makes for good storytelling.” He cocked his head. “Do you hear a chopper?”

Now that he mentioned it, it did sound like a helicopter was on its way. I scanned the sky and spotted a dark shape moving above the ground to the east. The men we were watching had heard it too. They abandoned the boat and began crawling under the camouflage net with the RTGs.

The helicopter was black with no markings. It banked low over the boat but didn’t stop to check it out. It flew on, heading out to sea. I figured it was heading for the boat.

When the helicopter was gone, the men began to come out again. A few minutes later, the phone rang.

I picked it up. It was Scorpion. “Agent Ivanova is here with a few heavily armed men. They say the Kursk Star is on its way. When the tide comes in, let the boat go. If we catch them transferring the RTGs to the ship, it gives the FSB evidence they need to be able to board and seize it.”

“Ask him when we’re getting out of here,” said Gene.

“How and when are we getting back to the boat?” I asked the phone.

Scorpion had a quick conference with someone and came back. “When the boat leaves, we’ll send the helicopter after you.”

“All right. See you then.”

In a few more hours, the boat appeared to be floating again and the loading operation recommenced. It didn’t appear that the boat was going to be able to hold all the RTGs in one trip. It fired up its engine and began to move away. I relayed the information back to Troublemaker.

In a few minutes, I heard the helicopter again. I stood up and waved. Gene suddenly grabbed me and pulled me down.

“There’s one out there!” he said. I looked out across the expanse to see one man standing up. He threw down something, maybe a cigarette. We probably hadn’t seen him up until that point because he had been sitting down and not moving.

I grabbed the binoculars. The man looked like he was working on something. A weapon, maybe? I suddenly recognized it.

“He’s got an RPG!” I said.

Gene grabbed his rifle and lay down on the ridge. He braced his elbows on the ground and appeared to be taking his sweet time setting up.

“We can’t let him shoot down the helicopter. Hurry up!”

The RPG was unguided, but against a hovering helicopter it would be devastating.

“Screw you,” said Gene. “I don’t see you taking a five hundred yard shot.”

He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. His finger squeezed the trigger. I looked through the binoculars. He missed. The man looked around as if he had heard the bullet passing close by, but didn’t appear to realize what it was.

Gene swore softly and took another deep breath. Downrange, the man stood up and lifted the RPG to his shoulder. Gene fired again.

This time, the bullet struck the man in the hip. He twisted and fell to the ground, although he didn’t stop moving.

The helicopter was almost on top of us now and the rotor wash was beginning to kick up dust. Gene and I grabbed our gear.

When the helicopter touched down, we ducked under the blades and climbed inside. Besides the pilot, Ivanova was the only one there. We had the back area to ourselves.

I quickly grabbed an intercom headset and told Ivanova about the man who’d tried to take out the helicopter. She translated for the pilot and we swooped over the ridge to go collect the man. Gene had found a safety harness and put it on. He now leaned out the open door with his rifle at the ready.

The man had crawled a little way from where he’d been shot. Gene and I jumped out and dragged him to the helicopter. I went back for the RPG. I’d never handled one before. Gene took it and did something that he said would keep it from going off accidentally.

If the beard was any indication, the man we’d picked up looked Arabic. Gene and I attempted to stop the blood flow. I didn’t know if he was going to live, but I wasn’t great at guessing things like that.

The boat was only a few minutes away. As we flew back, I asked Ivanova where Demidov was.

“He decided that his leg hurt too much to come. He’s never liked boats.”

We touched down on the helicopter pad a few minutes later. We dragged the man out and laid him on the deck while the helicopter’s engines spooled down. His condition had been called ahead and Scorpion and John were waiting with the hemostatic powder.

By the time the helicopter had gotten quiet enough for us to talk in a normal voice, the bleeding had been stopped. The man wasn’t exactly alert, but alive.

Ivanova asked him a few questions in Russian. He didn’t seem to understand. We tried English. Same story.

As it turned out, the helicopter pilot spoke a little Arabic. That got a reaction. The two of them talked for a few minutes.

The pilot spoke to Ivanova who spoke to me. “He says that he won’t tell us anything. I suppose it doesn’t matter. We know that the boat with the RTGs on it is going to rendezvous with the Kursk Star.”

Talking with Scorpion, Ivanova came up with a plan. We would go in with our boat and the helicopter at the same time. The boat was crewed by Russian sailors who knew that they were illegally smuggling, but would probably give themselves up without a fight when the realized the FSB agents were heavily armed.

The terrorists, on the other hand, probably would not go quietly. We still had the AT4 anti-tank rockets, but it would be nice to capture them without resorting to that.

We headed off to where the RTG transfer was probably going to take place. A Russian flag was hung from the stern of our boat. It would help us look as if we belonged in the area and maybe put the Russians aboard Kursk Star at ease. I talked with Ivanova on the way.

“If they left an RPG with the one man who was guarding the other RTGs, what kind of weapons do you think they’ll have on the boat?”

“It doesn’t matter. Igor—” The pilot looked around upon hearing his name— “is a veteran of Afghanistan. He knows how to avoid missiles.” She sounded confident, but appeared a little apprehensive about assaulting the two vessels as they were transferring RTGs. I knew the feeling. I had it too.

All the Russians piled into the helicopter and took off, circling around to approach from a different direction. Gene took the prisoner below deck to keep an eye on him. Scorpion and John each grabbed one of the AT4s and stood on deck while I steered from the bridge.

We came upon the boat tied up alongside the freighter. A crane on deck of the ship was lifting the RTGs aboard. When someone noticed our boat, the operation was stopped and the boat began to cast off.

The helicopter arrived from the other side of the ship. The heads of all the men on deck swiveled to look at it. Then the shooting started.

Most of the fire was coming from the men on the boat. The helicopter slid sideways behind the ship’s superstructure to avoid it. With that target gone, they started shooting at us.

John ducked down behind the raised bow to escape the bullets. I couldn’t see Scorpion from where I stood on the bridge, but I assumed he had taken cover behind the aft corner of the superstructure. With them out of sight, the gunfire turned to me.

Their weapons were only AK-47s. A heavy machine gun might have been able to penetrate the tough polycarbonate bridge windows. Still, it didn’t feel great having nothing but a piece of clear plastic between you and incoming bullets. I covered behind the bridge controls.

With John and Scorpion forced to keep their heads down, we had no offensive capability. Wait, that wasn’t true. I reached over to a control panel near the wheel and flipped the CIWS power on, setting it to manual target acquisition mode. When the weapon had righted itself into position, I fired a long burst into the boat. The 20 mm armor piercing bullets cut through it like tissue paper. Suddenly, they stopped shooting back.

A gatling gun fires much faster than an assault rifle. You can’t hear the individual rounds being fired. Instead, it blends together into one continuous burst of sound. Everyone in the area seemed stunned by the noise, particularly John, who had been up on the bow near the CIWS.

The noise was nothing compared to the destruction, though. The boat had been completely riddled. Most of the holes in it were quarter-sized, but in places where a few holes had randomly come together, areas that were fist sized or larger had been punched out. I didn’t see anyone aboard who was still capable of fighting back.

Some of the RTGs were bound to have been hit, but it looked like the boat was beginning to sink, so they wouldn’t be a problem much longer. We might have been able to get over to the boat and pick a few up with the davit mounted near the CIWS, but I sure didn't want to go anywhere near the radiation.

The helicopter hovered low over the deck of the freighter and the men began jumping out. They’d made a radio broadcast beforehand telling the ship crew who they were and why they were there. It didn’t look like any of the sailors were resisting.

I saw Ivanova get out with them. The helicopter came over to our boat and Scorpion and I got on to be ferried to the freighter while John took the wheel. I looked back at our boat.

The bulletproof glass had done its job. Some of it was chipped and pitted, but none was broken. There were numerous holes in the fiberglass, but only scratches on the metal.

We took the captured ship back to Murmansk. It was not immediately clear who was going to end up in prison. Obviously, transferring cargo in the open ocean was suspicious, but that hadn’t stopped any of the crew from protesting the legality. Technically, they were all guilty, but maybe only the captain would go down for it.

The crew stayed on board and performed their duties all the way to the dock. It helped that the CIA/FSB group stood around with firearms watching them. There was a crowd of FSB and other Russian law enforcement gathered on the pier to meet us.

Troublemaker, back to flying the flag of the United States, docked unobtrusively at another location. The scarred bulletproof glass would catch someone’s attention, so the bridge glass had been removed and clear plastic sheeting installed in its place as if it was meant to be, creating a kind of open bridge. The holes in the fiberglass had been patched and painted.

When we got back, we learned that Ali Al-Azhem had been observed taking a flight out of Russia a few days previously. By now, Ol’ Triple A had probably heard what had happened to his shipment of radioactive junk.

At least I was done and could go home. Or so I thought.

End of Part Two

Comments

[djthomp]

I was waiting for the CIWS to get some use, that was awesome.

[Macedoneus]

CIWS, the burp of death.

[totallynotabrony]

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My inner nerd sometimes can't be contained.