To Sail a Darkling Sea

* * *

“Ooooh,” Olga said, stroking the breach of the Browning machine gun. Her eyes were closed and she was writhing in time to the stroking. “Ooooh, ooooh… ”

“You wanna… ” Mcgarity said, trying to keep some professional demeanor. “You wanna… ” He finally just started laughing.

“I think I need some alone time… ” Olga panted.

“You need some alone time?” Rusty said. “What about us?”

“I dunno big boy,” Olga said in a perfect Mae West voice. “Is that a roll of silver dollars in your pocket or are you just glad to meet me?”

“So… ” Mcgarity said. “You wanna blow off a few rounds on the big gun?”

“I’m not sure I can get my mouth arou… Oh, you mean fire it?” she asked. “That would be swell!”

* * *

“Where’d you find her?” Skipper Poole of the Noby Dick asked.

“She was one of the chicks on the Russian yacht,” Chen said, sipping a beer. They were up on the flying bridge of the fishing boat watching the team prepare to fire. Okay, watching Olga prepare to fire.

“She’s a pistol… ”

* * *

Anarchy went through the procedures for arming and firing an M2A1 BMG Mod1 while Rusty opened up the battle box and got it loaded. The battle box was a customized water proof rounds case produced on the Grace Tan that held ten thousand rounds of linked ball. One of the reasons to use the fishing boats as gunboats, besides hard points, was that they could handle the weight of all the rounds.

When they’d all donned hearing protection and the gun was ready, Olga let loose a five round burst at the dimly visible cluster of infected on the shore. Most of the rounds were high but she didn’t seem to care.

“Oooh!” she said. She fired another, longer, burst. That one was on target. “Mmmm… ” she moaned. She held down the trigger…

“Oh, God! Oh, God! Yes, yes, yes! God YES, YES, YES, OH GOD, OH GOD, OH GAAAAAA… ”

She stopped firing when all the infected were clearly down.

“Oh,” she moaned. “I need a cigarette.”

“Seaman Recruit Zelenova?” Chen called from the bridge. “A moment of your time?”

* * *

When Olga got up there, Chen gestured with his chin for Poole to find business elsewhere and patted the vacated seat.

“Sit, Seaman Recruit,” Chen said. “You said you liked to be trained. Time for some training.”

“Of course, sir,” Olga said, throatily.

“That would be ‘Aye, aye, sir,’ ” Chen said. “I enjoyed, as any heterosexual male would, your little display. But this is not play time. This is professional time. Can you distinguish the difference?”

“Yes, sir,” Olga said. She’d dropped the accent.

“The display was more or less what I expected,” Chen said. “Which I didn’t mind. It was good for morale. All good. But tomorrow, you’re going to be over there,” he said, gesturing with his beer bottle to the shore. “With a bunch of other people. With guns. Surrounded by infected. Trying to do a very demanding and stressful job. People will be barking orders. Some of them conflicting. Things will go wrong. Problems will have to be solved on the fly. Even if things go wrong, people will have to stay focused. They cannot, absolute can not, be focused on Seaman Recruit Olga Zelenova and her shapely ass and legs. Which means that Seaman Recruit Olga Zelenova has to be a non-entity. Just someone to be given orders and obey them to the best of her ability without being Olga the Great and Sexual. The question, SA Zelenova, is can you do that? Because if you cannot, you need to be back on the boats, not on the land.”

“I can dial it down, sir,” Olga said. “I can even turn it off without… turning people off, sir. Yes, sir.”

“Good,” Chen said. “I hope you’re right. Because Petty Officer Mcgarity will be your boss tomorrow. And I need him thinking about the mission, not how he can convince you to get in a little quicky in an unoccupied condo. Cause sure as God made little green apples, the shit will hit the fan right when he’s thinking about it. And, Seaman Recruit, if you actually do bunk off for a little bunk time, or wall time or floor time, I will put both of you off these boats so fast it will make little blue Cherenkov radiation trails.”

CHAPTER 21

The most consistently successful commanders, when faced by an enemy in a position that was strong naturally or materially, have hardly ever tackled it in a direct way. And when, under pressure of circumstances, they have risked a direct attack, the result has commonly been to blot their record with a failure.

Sir Basil H. Liddel-Hart

“Go, go, go,” Sophia said, waving for the crew to get off the boat. She’d been the first one from the “security” team to set foot on the island.

Olga stepped off the dinghy and looked around. A couple of the security guys were looking a little pale, but she’d been on one of the “forensic cleaning crews” cleaning up infected held boats and the Boadicea. She’d seen messes before.

And there was a mess. A few more infected had trickled in to the park overnight giving the gunboat crews something to fire up in the morning. Not many, though. She’d gotten most of them earlier in the evening. The pile of bodies was covered in shrieking seagulls making it hard to hear the Lieutenant.

Uniform for the day was Navy “bluecam,” body armor and helmets. They were wearing Marine body armor since the Navy version was just a flak jacket.

She pealed right, covering “her” sector, as the team assembled to follow the Marines.

“Steinholtz,” Mcgarity said. “Keep an eye on your sector.”

Seaman Recruit Matthew Steinholtz had been an Brinks armed security guard who won an all expense paid trip on a cruise liner. It was the worst cruise of his life. But he sort of knew how to use a gun and that was about as good as they were getting.

There were seven security specialists considered “functional” for this operation. Some needed to stay back on the gunboats to provide cover. Others really weren’t “up” for a landing in an infected held town.

And the ones they had weren’t really trained in this.

“PO, you take point,” Sophia said. “We’re going to swing down to the vehicle opening. Just follow the Marines.”

“Roger, ma’am,” Mcgarity said. “Steinholtz, again, look that way,” he said, pushing the SR’s weapon to the south. “If I hear one of you lock and load without my or the Lieutenant’s specific orders, I will personally shoot you. We’re more likely to get killed by ADs than zombies. Move out. Slowly.”

The group began to shuffle down the beach, stepping around dead infected.

“Zombie,” Olga said.

“Where?” Steinholtz said, spinning around.

“Steinholtz!” Mcgarity said, grabbing him by his harness and spinning him back around. “Keep your eye on your sector!”

The Marines had spotted the infected loping down Avenue De Colon. They turned as if they were one mind and each fired a burst. The zombie was hit by at least thirty “Barbie Gun” rounds and dropped like a stone. Then they all swiveled back to covering their sectors. It was over in less than a second.

“For any of you who saw that, that is not how we do it,” Mcgarity said. “Cover