'Yes, sir.' McCaverty looked at the patient and said, 'We've got to save this one.'
'Any reason in particular, beyond the Hippocratic Oath?' Joseph asked.
'Yeah. I need him to get better so I can kill him.'
Joseph laughed. 'Sheeettt.'
D-Day, MV
'Mierde,' said Luis Acosta, the headman of the Mexican ground crews, as he looked over the wreckage of the two aircraft, under the gantry and pushed off to the port side. 'Shit.'
Acosta was a bit over thirty years old, short, stout, brown, and with stiff black hair that jutted almost straight up from his hairline before rolling its way back over his head. The other sixteen Mexicans clustered around him, ten on one side, six on the other. All from the same area-Guadalajara-and many of them related; they tended to look much alike. Only one was substantially taller and he was also much lighter.
Manuel, Acosta's number two, and the tall, light skinned one, shook his head and said, 'Man . . . Luis . . . no fucking way. I mean no fucking way. Shit. How much time did you say we have?'
'Twenty hours,' Acosta replied. 'That's when we need to have made one good plane out of these two wrecks.'
Manuel looked again at the wreckage. 'Man, I can't even tell where one plane ends and the other begins. Shit.' Manuel sighed, and asked, 'What did you say they'd pay us if we can make one out of these two?'
'The bonus? Seven thousand pesos. Each.'
'Ohhh. Well, fuck; that's different. What the hell we waiting for? Let's start sorting and inventorying parts, man. Seven thousand pesos and I'll carve us any parts we need.'
Manuel glared to his right and left at the others. 'What are you maricones waiting for? Didn't you hear the man? Seven thousand fucking pesos if we get one of these things running. For a day's work? Move it, you chingada assholes!'
D-Day, Bandar Qassim, Ophir
All in a night's work. They'd done it; the thirty-six most dangerous or economically significant ships and boats in the inner and outer harbor were mined. Now, out past the harbor mouth, Antoniewicz and Morales treaded water while waiting for Simmons to raise the submarine.
'Where the fuck is he?' Morales asked aloud. He took his GPS from his belt and raised it above water, pressing the query button as he did so. 'We are exactly where we're supposed to be. Exactly.'
'Relax, Morales,' Eeyore said. He glanced at his own watch. 'Simmons has four minutes before he's due to rise.' His face acquired a puzzled look. 'Did you hear something?' he asked.
'Something like an out of tune lawnmower? Now that you mention it, yes.' Arms being busy, Morales pointed with his chin. 'It's coming from over there.'
They'd both rotated their night vision monoculars away from their eyes and turned them off once they'd passed the mouth of the outer harbor. Eeyore now rotated his monocular back into position and turned it on.
'Oh, fuck,' he said.
The second pirate ship limped; there was no better word.
Oh, sure, cursed the captain, we went out in high style. looking for the best prize we'd heard of lately. Quite a show, the bow cutting the waves and the men waving their rifles and RPGs like they meant business. And then the fucking infidel engine decided to go asthmatic on us. Even a stinking fat merchantman can outpace the miserable seven or eight knots we can do.
The captain looked behind him and down and spit at the engine. That wasn't satisfying enough. He turned the wheel over to another and walked to the housing, delivering it a solid kick. Bastard.
'Captain,' the helm called out, 'we've got something coming up out of the water.'
Simmons had timed it pretty well, he thought, raising the small sail within two minutes of when he'd been supposed to. Setting the engine to idle, he backed off to all fours then pedaled back to where he could sit and then nearly stand. He took a quick glance out of the sail's forward, wrap-around, view port-which was also the direction any threat was most likely to come from-and saw nothing to worry him. Then he reached overhead and turned the wheel to open the hatch. It opened with only minimal sound and with little salt water dripping in. With the hatch out of the way he was able to stand up fully to scan for his two mates. As soon as he stood, he heard the asthmatic coughing of a marine engine in truly sorry shape, coming from close behind him. He barely had time to register the sound and turn when something close by struck the sub, right on the tower.
Nothing cracked, Namu was small and slight enough to give readily in the water. But the angle of the strike pushed it over, rotating the sub about its long axis. The boat-Simmons realized it was a boat-began to ride up on the sub, forcing the turn to continue. And then water began pouring into the open hatch.
'What the hell was that?' the pirate skipper asked.
'I don't know,' the helm answered, 'but we hit it and it went under.'
The captain considered this for a few moments, before ordering, 'Engines, all stop. And some of you ferret- faced weasels break out a half dozen or so grenades. Maybe we can force whatever is down there up again.'
'By the way, did you see it?' he asked.
The helmsman shrugged. 'Yeah, maybe, kinda, sorta.'
'What did it look like?'
'Well . . . I didn't see much, but I thought it looked a little like a killer whale. You know, like those ones in the movies.'
Struggling against the push of the in-rushing water, Simmons managed to get one hand on the hatch's wheel. He pulled for all he was worth, the water resisting even his prodigious strength. He managed to close the hatch, and to dog it, too, but not before the minisub was more than half full of water and sinking. The lights stayed on, which was some comfort. Life support, however, choked and died. Simmons doubted he'd be able to get the thing off the bottom once it settled down.
With water above his thighs, and the sub slowly sinking, he said, 'I'm so fucked.'
***
'Come on,' Morales insisted, 'we've got to go get Simmons out.'
Eeyore put a restraining hand on his team mate and answered, 'Yes, but not yet.'
'Why?'
The answer came in the form of a small flash on the boat, followed within a few seconds by a wallop that came through the water and that felt highly analogous to being kicked in the testicles.
After half an hour, and the expenditure of a dozen grenades, the captain decided that if there were anything down there, it wasn't coming up for anything he could do. Shaking his head again, and spitting once more at the engine, he said, 'It was probably nothing. You said it looked a bit like a killer whale?'
Again, the helmsman shrugged. 'Yeah. They're rare around here, I know, but they're here. Seemed kind of small, too.'
'Hmmm. Small, you say. Well . . . let's get to harbor and get this fucking engine in the queue to be fixed before its mother shows up.'
'Oh, man, that hurt,' Morales moaned.
He and Antoniewicz had swum off as fast as possible once the first explosion had gone off. At the range
