John Ringo - Ghost 05 - A Deeper Blue

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A Deeper Blue-ARC

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Sequel to Ghost, Kildar, Choosers of the Slain and Unto the Breach.

Heart-sick over the deaths of so many of his Keldara followers, and one in particular, former SEAL

Mike Harmon, hero of Ghost, Kildar and Choosers of the Slain, decides to sit this one out. WMDs

headed for the US no longer matter to the Kildar. But when his best friend and intel specialist both are

seriously wounded in an ambush aimed at him, the Kildar gets his gameface back on. Mike has always

said that he's not a nice guy, and he's about to prove it to a boatload of terrorists and Colombian drug

dealers. Set in the Bahamas and Florida Keys, A Deeper Blue is a fast moving thriller that never slows

down from the first page. With the return of some old faces, the action-packed novel proves, once again,

the adage that sometimes it takes some very bad people to do good things.

About the Author

John Ringo had visited 23 countries and attended 14 schools by the time he graduated high school. This

left him with a wonderful appreciation of the oneness of humanity and a permanent aversion to foreign

food. A veteran of the 82nd Airborne, he brings first-hand knowledge of military operations to his fiction.

In addition to his nationally best-selling techno-thriller novels about Mike Harmon, his novels for Baen

include the novels in the New York Times best-selling Posleen War series (A Hymn Before Battle, Gust

Front, When the Devil Dances, and Hell's Faire), the Council War series (There Will be Dragons,

Emerald Sea, Against the Tide, and East of the Sun, West of the Moon), the novel Into the Looking

Glass, four collaborations with fellow New York Times bestselling author David Weber (March

Upcountry, March to the Sea, March to the Stars and We Few) and three collaborative spinoffs from the

Posleen series: Hero (with Michael Z. Williamson), Watch on the Rhine (with Tom Kratman) and the

New York Times best seller Cally's War (with Julie Cochrane).

Cover Art by Kurt Miller

First printing, July 2007

ISBN-13: 978-A1-4165-2128-0

ISBN-10: A1-4165-2128-3

Electronic version by WebWrights

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Dedication

For the poor bastards, male and female, guarding the thugs in Guantanamo, stuck in paradise doing

pretty close to the world's crappiest job. This one's for you, folks.

And, as always:

For Captain Tamara Long, USAF

Born: May 12, 1979

Died: 23 March 2003, Afghanistan

You fly with the angels now.

No more will my green sea go turn a deeper blue

I could not foresee this thing happening to you.

If I look hard enough into the setting sun

My love will laugh with me before the morning comes.

Rolling Stones

Paint it Black

Prologue

The freighter rolled eastward on easy swells, but nothing was easy about the task.

It might have helped if some of the crew were handling the winch, but they were all below under strict

orders to forget anything unusual had occurred. And even stricter orders to keep quiet if they did. The

crew wouldn't talk, though. They were all good Islamics and supported the jihad. What was more, they

knew that if any word of this event got out, their families as well as themselves would pay the penalty.

So Ibrahim had to keep an eye on it all. He had carefully instructed the fedayeen on the plan, but nothing

beat experience. And he was the only one with experience. He'd shipped out on boats just like this in his

youth, escaping the hell of the Karachi slums. And over time he had worked his way up to bosun, the

senior deck worker of a ship. It was then he came to the attention of the Movement.

The Movement often needed cargo shifted around and it had ships aplenty. What it did not have was

enough trustworthy people who knew the ins and outs of how to move cargo. . . covertly. Oh, there

were many such but there were never enough. Guns, rockets and ammunition, women and drugs to pay

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for the weapons, people, there were so many things the Movement needed. . .moved.

This mission, though, was so complicated Ibrahim could only hope any of it went right. But he only had

to ensure this one small part. And that was difficult enough.

The off-shore speed-boat touched the waves and Ibrahim slowed the winch. The massive boat, nearly

fifteen meters long, was big and tough but it wouldn't take it well if the waves slapping the ship's side

overwhelmed it or it slammed into the ship's hull.

Hiding the damned things had been bad enough. If Ibrahim had had his way the boats would have been

locally purchased; there were many such in the area. It would have been a joke straight from Allah to buy

them from the American government. The Americans often seized such boats running drugs in this area

and just as often sold them back to the drug runners at auction.

Instead, these had been purchased in Europe, shipped in one of the many freighters owned by the

Movement to Africa, transferred to another and transferred again to Ibrahim's ship, carefully secured out

of sight in the hold. The transfer had been effected in west Africa in a port notorious for its lax customs. If

anyone had noticed the midnight transfer no word had come to the Movement.

Now it was Ibrahim's job to get the damned thing into the water without it smashing against the side of

the moving ship or being swamped by a wave.

It was down and he waved to the men on the boat to unhook. They had better get that one right; if one

of them slipped over the side they were likely to be crushed between the two vessels. And even if they

were not, the ship was not going to stop. Once this boat was in the water it could pick up anyone

overboard. Until then, though. . .

The fedayeen, though, did the job right. Allah knows, Ibrahim had been careful enough in his

instructions. First the young man, a Yemeni with some small boat experience, started the engine and

unhooked the rear connection. Very important. If he'd unhooked the front, the boat would have spun in

place and probably swamped or been pulled under the ship. Starting the engine was only good sense

before casting off. Only when it was free did he make his way forward, carefully crawling over the broad,

flat expanse of the front surface, and unhook the front connection. They were both fast connections with

lanyards to release them. The front connection was under massive tension and sprung back with a

twanging sound, striking the side of the ship hard enough Ibrahim knew he'd need to check it before the

next boat was released.

It took nearly an hour before the five boats were in the water, following the ship in a long string, then

came the last, and strangest, part.

A crew of fedayeen had been working on one of the surface containers, a standard shipping container

carried on the deck. The fedayeen had fitted the container with a set of pontoons and a cable. The cable

was attached to a massive steel plate.

The steel plate had to be suspended over the side, first, then the container swung out.

Ibrahim couldn't handle both of the winches for this one. The commander of the mission was on the main

crane, holding up the container, while Ibrahim handled a smaller crane that lifted the plate. With both of

them swung over the side, the ship was listing by nearly seven degrees, but it wouldn't stay that way long.

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Ibrahim released the connections on the steel plate and it splashed into the water, the cable attached to

the bottom of the container spinning out furiously. A bare moment later the container splashed into the

briny deeps, floated for a moment on the surface, supported by its pontoons, then was snatched under

like a fishing bobber. All that was left was a trail of bubbles.

"You have done well, Ibrahim," the commander of the fedayeen contingent said as the bosun climbed out

of the seat of the winch.

The fedayeen commander was strange. He wore the proper dress and prayed five times a day as the

Prophet decreed. But his eyes were gray, unusual in a believer, and sometimes he seemed more

European than Middle Eastern for all his dark skin and hair. Little things you'd only notice on a long

voyage, but telling.

"Thank you, Haj," Ibrahim replied, breathing in relief. "Go with God."

"And you as well," the man said, drawing a pistol. "Go with God."

* * *

Kurt Schwenke watched the body tumble over the side, slid the silenced pistol into the rear waistband of

his pants then walked to where a ladder dangled over the side. As he climbed down, one of the boats

came alongside. It was tough getting from a moving ship to a small boat but Kurt had no particular

problems. He kicked outwards and landed on one of the seats of the boat, then settled into place.

"Do we have it?" he asked.

"Souhi has it on sonar," Sayid al-Yemani replied, powering up and turning, the boat splashing up and

over the waves then crashing down in a shower of spray. "Allah's beard! I am still having problems with

these, Haji. Sorry."

"Not a problem," Kurt, AKA Sabah Arif, replied, wiping at his face. "You will have much time to learn."

The boat turned away from the waves and powered up more, jumping over them now so that Kurt had

to put on the safety belts. It was only about a quarter mile, though, to the place where the container had

gone over the side.

"There," the driver said, powering down and pointing to the sonar screen. "It went deep, though. Now it

is on its way up."

Kurt nodded and watched the sonar contact rising. The water in the area was nearly two thousand feet

deep, so the massive plate had a ways to descend. The coil of cable on the container was supposed to

play out evenly, never letting the container get too deep, until the plate hit bottom.

The container was hanging, now, between about seventy five meters and a hundred. Deep. Possibly too

deep. But even as he watched the numbers began to drop. Sixty meters. Fifty. It leveled off at twenty

and stayed there, steady.

"Are you ready, Kahf?" Kurt said, looking over his shoulder.

The Egyptian already was pulling his SCUBA rig out of the racks. A former dive instructor at the resort

in Sharm Al Sheik on the tip of the Sinai peninsula, he was experienced in both conventional and

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"technical" diving. The rig he was using for this was a simple SCUBA apparatus, one steel 80 cubic foot

tank, two stage SCUBAPRO regulator, the only difference from beginner-quality equipment being that it

was a NITROX setup, which used extra oxygen in the mix to extend down time.

Kahf just held up a thumb and fore-finger in an "Okay" signal and kept getting it on. In a few seconds he

was ready to dive.

He tucked his regulator in his mouth and slid over the side into the warm waters, grabbing a rope on his

way. Using the rope, he trailed behind the boat, searching the waters and occasionally using his body to

plane downwards. After a moment he surfaced again and held up another "Okay" signal then let go.

"He's spotted it," Kurt said. "Hold this position."

Kurt was surprised to see that he could pick up the diver on the sonar. The sonar system tagged him as

a fish, admittedly, but he could still follow his progress on the three-D imager as the "fish" made his way

down to the container.

The "fish" hovered around the container for a moment then came back up.

"It's all good," Kahf said, pulling himself out of the water on the dive platform at the rear of the boat. "I

got the doors open. That was harder than we expected but they're open."

"Right," Kurt said, waving at another boat and making motions for them to dive.

This time the diver was carrying more gear. Double air tanks, a third dangling in front of him and float

bags being the big part. As Sayid pulled away the second boat came over the container and as soon as it

was there the pre-rigged diver hit the water. It was a bit of a wait but Kurt was patient. After a moment,

though, two lift bags popped to the surface. Kurt watched as the boat came alongside the bags and the

driver and a third man pull a blue barrel over the side, carefully. The barrel was rolled out of sight just as

another bobbed to the surface.

The process was repeated three times, a total of four of the barrels, and then Kurt gestured for the boats

to assemble.

"I repeat," Kurt yelled. "Only one boat at a time. That is very important. Follow your bearings. You all

know where to pick up your routes. Souhi goes first. The rest of you will wait." He stopped and then

grinned. "By the way, welcome to the sunny Bahamas!"

* * *

"What are we doing about this?" the President asked.

"It's tough," the FBI director replied. "We don't want people panicking. But we've upped the terrorism

alert level and we're flooding the south Florida area with agents. They've been told they're looking for a

major shipment of something that's going to look like drugs but is terrorism related."

"We're clamping down on port checks," the head of Customs and Border Protection added after a

glance from his boss, the Secretary of Homeland Security. "All my people are on overtime for the

foreseeable future and we're checking both pre-checked containers and uncleared. But even with the

extra manpower we can't check them all, Mr. President. We're up from our normal, low, percentage but

short of mostly closing the ports down. . ."

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"National Guard is helping with the search," the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs said. "And I'm pulling in all

the teams. We're not going to get caught forward like we were the last time. If it's something that Delta or

Rangers can operate on, they're going to be ready to shoot."

"Shaking all the trees," the Director of National Intelligence added. "NSA is on high alert and I've sent

out a classified memo for any information, barring what we already have, on the shipment."

"Same here," the Defense Intelligence Agency Director added. "And we're trying to squeeze anything we

can from recent detainees. But I don't think there's much there other than what we got from Al Kariya

and his computer. Once Kariya broke, he broke hard. We've pretty much got everything he knew. Short

of picking up someone high-level who is aware of the op, I think we're about done there."

"Where is the ship?"

"Should be just about to Miami," Homeland Security said. "We're low-keying it."

"But they were supposed to be 'transferred' before reaching port, right?" the President asked.

"Yes, sir," the DDIA said. "We picked the ship up late. It was definitely off the sea-lanes. The transfer

possibly occurred somewhere north of the Bahamas."

"The Navy's looking for it," the CJCS added.

"Mr. President," Secretary of Homeland Security said, "we're using every available resource."

"Not every resource," the President said, looking at the Secretary of Defense. "Call Pierson. Now."

"Sir," the DNI said, rolling his eyes since the President wasn't looking, "you're not talking about. . ."

"Get me the Kildar."

* * *

The painting had been made by a renowned cover artist, an artist of the "old school" that still used

acrylics to create massive paintings just to grace a book.

The subject was a Valkyrie but one far different than most. She had the blonde hair and busty build of

one, but her hair was unbraided, long golden tresses floating in the breeze of her passage. And instead of

the traditional over endowed "breastplate", she wore only a white dress, rich with seed pearls, cut

daringly down the front to nearly the navel and short in front, high on the thigh. She was riding,

side-saddle, a white, winged horse and held in her right hand a blazing minigun, pointed at the ground.

And she was smiling, a vicious smile of triumph and victory.

Her face was a vision, but only to Mike. Oh, she was pretty, even beautiful, but you could see a dozen

like her in any American college, three or four as good looking among the Keldara and several who

were, arguably, more beautiful. But none of that mattered to the man in the comfortable chair placed at

perfect viewing distance from the painting.

Mike lifted the glass and considered the lips for the thousandth time. He had given the artist very precise

instructions and even a picture. And in almost every way the artist had caught Mike's vision, or surpassed

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it. That, and the secrecy with which the picture was made, was why he'd been paid a fee four times his

normal. But if the artist had one flaw, it was in lips. He almost invariably used his wife as a model for his

art, and she had a very definite Hapsburg lip. Oh, pretty, yes, but not right. Not for this painting.

Everywhere else the image was perfection. A way to ensure that no matter what, Mike would never

forget that face. But the lips were creeping in, erasing the image of them caressing his chest, his stomach.

. .

He lifted the glass, realized it was mostly ice, and poured in more Elijah Craig. Hey, you couldn't fly on

just one wing.

Or two. Or a dozen or a thousand. At this point, the bottles lined one wall of the small room.

"When the mound reaches the very sky," Mike said, not looking at the bottles.

There was a tap on the door and he pressed a solenoid, dropping a steel plate over the painting. Then he

hit the release on the door.

"Come."

"Kildar," Mother Savina said, diffidently. "There is a call from Colonel Pierson."

"You can tell Colonel Pierson to fuck off, with my compliments," Mike slurred. "And tell him to tell his

boss the same thing."

"Yes, Kildar," Mother Savina said, closing the door.

Mike pressed the solenoid again, locked the door, and took another sip.

"When the mound reaches the sky. When the mound reaches the sky. When the mound reaches the sky.

That's when I'll talk to fucking Pierson or his boss. When the mound reaches the sky."

Chapter One

"Anybody got a fucking clue?"

The meeting was unusual. The group had all met each other before, even had meetings together, but

there was one person missing and that threw the whole balance out.

Nielson looked around at the faces, searching for an answer to his question.

All six of the Keldara Fathers were present as well as two of the Mothers.

The Keldara were an ancient race of mountain warriors, descendants of the Norse guards of the

Byzantine Emperors, the Varangians. Marooned by the flow of history as the Empire receded, they had

endured a series of conquerors over the years but always maintained their traditions. Forced, like the

Ghurkas and the Kurds, to be farmers for survival, they had, nonetheless, kept up their warrior tradition.

In part this was due to a quiet and subtle breeding program.

Over the years they had had many "lords" occupy the caravanserai where the meeting was taking place.

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Some of them were courtiers exiled from centers of power but most had been foreign adventurers

attached to whatever empire "owned" the Keldara at the time. The courtiers didn't tend to last. They died

mysteriously of diseases or sudden heart attacks or hunting accidents.

The other lords, the warriors, well "a soldier that won't fuck, won't fight." Those lords, naturally, wanted

to sample the beautiful Keldara girls. And they were beautiful, so much so that people that met them

commented on it constantly. Most such lords assumed the right as part of their position.

The Keldara had made that right their own, though, sending only girls who were about to be married and

also in their period of maximum fertility. And they had insisted, quietly, subtly, but very determinedly, that

the "lord" pay for his "rights" by presenting a dowry to the young lady.

Called the "Rite of Cardane", over the centuries it had been used to carefully breed to dozens of different

races, but every bit of that genetics had been from proven warriors. Those that weren't. . . Well so many

accidents can befall a person.

Tartar eyes, a legacy of Genghiz' hordes, blonde and red hair from the Norse, black from the Turks and

Ottomans, the men were powerful and handsome, fell beyond belief in battle, the women gorgeous and

fey and nearly as dangerous.

But they needed their lord, their Kildar. They needed his genes, yes, but very nearly as good sat in the

room with them. What they needed, most, was his leadership and the knowledge that each generation

had brought to the Keldara of the best, most modern, way to destroy his enemies. The Keldara had been

axemen from the North, bow-men riders and armored knights in their time. They had swung swords and

fired long jazeels. They lived on the cutting edge of the blade, whatever would kill the most enemies was

fine by them.

Now they armed themselves with M4s and machine-guns, MP-5s and sniper rifles. Their armor was

Kevlar and composite.

None of it was any good without the Kildar, though.

"I could beat him up," Master Chief Charles Adams said.

The burly and bald-headed former SEAL had known the Kildar for years, since both were in BUD/S

together in the infamous Class 201. They'd been on the same team, briefly, then the Kildar had gone off

to teach meats while Adams climbed the ladder of rank. Adams had next run into his old buddy in a

stinking underground fortress in Syria, finding him shot to ribbons after holding off, with very little

support, a Syrian commando battalion.

Later his "friend" had called him up and asked him to assemble a team and come train some weird group

of mountain people in the country of Georgia.

Adams had been hanging out ever since. The Keldara were great people, the scenery was awesome, the

living conditions, given that there were three hookers in-house, were great and the beer was fucking

awesome.

He acted as the Kildar's field second and had been at his side for several hairy ops. But it wasn't the

ops, directly, that had led to this fuck-up. Just one fucking casualty. You'd think a big guy could get over

one fucking casualty, no matter how good a piece of ass it had been.

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"I don't think that would help," Colonel Thomas Nielson said, dryly.

The colonel was a former infantry and civil affairs officer, Ranger tabbed, airborne qualified and once an

instructor at the War College. The only professional officer in the group, he acted as the Kildar's chief of

staff. Short with black hair going gray and green-eyes that worked remarkably well on the ladies, he was

about ready to go for the Master Chief's suggestion.

"It'd help me," Adams argued. "I'm about sick of his pouting."

"The Kildar is soul damaged," Father Kulcyanov said, wheezily. The oldest remaining Father, Kulcyanov

was a veteran of WWII, in the Red Army. He'd been in every major campaign, to include Stalingrad, and

had so many medals he kept them in a very large box. In addition, he acted as the Keldara's high priest.

Given that that position had to be held by a warrior, it made sense. "It has happened before."

"I hate to say this, but I have to question this whole Rite thing," Captain Kacey Bathlick said. One of the

pilots recently hired to support the Keldara she knew she was the most junior member of the group, at

least in experience. But not only had she proven her merits on the last mission, she wasn't the sort to just

keep her mouth shut. And, hell, Gretchen had been her crewchief. She was pissed about her getting

blown away but she wasn't sitting crying in her fucking room! She'd just sent the Chechens who did it to

meet Allah. Blasted the hell out of them, actually. "I mean, I get the whole point and the history. But

fraternization is never a good idea."

"That is, unfortunately, a point that is past," Anastasia Rakovich pointed out. The "house manager" for

the Kildar, she was a former harem slave and harem manager hired to fulfill much the same role. She had

more or less inserted herself into the position of "house manager" since the Keldara housekeeper, Mother

Savina, was less than experienced in managing the household of a lord. Anastasia had been a junior

manager from the time she was seventeen and the manager of an Uzbek sheik's household from the time

she was twenty-one. Still only twenty-seven, she was model beautiful with long blonde hair and blue

eyes, much like the late Gretchen Mahona. But while she regularly warmed the Kildar's bed, and he her

back given that she was a high-level sexual masochist, the Kildar had never been infatuated with her as

he had become with Gretchen. "And, frankly, if he'd had more time with her the hurt might have been

less. Or more, I don't know," she added with a sigh.

"The reason we originally gave for the Rite is, of course, no longer. . .effective," Mother Mahona said.

"Which is well, since I don't think the Kildar is willing to continue with the Rite."

The previous mission had involved the sale of WMD by the Russian mob to Al Qaeda. The mob had the

WMD, the Al Qaeda members had a very large quantity of portable currency and gems. Most of that

had been captured and brought back, despite the battle. Mike had stated, bluntly, that dowries, now and

for the foreseeable future, were covered.

Gretchen had not been her daughter by body but held her name due to being of the extended "Family" of

the Mahonas. Mother Mahona and Mother Silva, Gretchen's birth mother, were both at the meeting to

see if they had any idea how to pull the Kildar out of his depression. Neither had come up with anything.

"I'd be more than willing to let him sit in there until his liver gave out," Nielson continued. "But the point is

we've got a mission. Pierson is really exercised."

"What?" Patrick Vanner asked. The crew-cut and stocky former Marine, former NSA analyst and

current electronic intel chief wasn't sure what to do about the Kildar. The problem was, well, he was the

Kildar. He owned the damned place, he was a total free agent and he had more money than God. There

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John Ringo - Ghost 05 - A Deeper Blue

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