Walk The Plank

Lindsay Olsome was seventeen years old when pirates boarded her parent’s magnificent 175 foot super-yacht, The Happy Acre, as it sat at anchor in the Dry Tortugas, half way between Key West, Florida and Cuba. Her father would later determine that their helicopter pilot had been watching for an opportunity to grab the young heiress and was in a unique position to know when the regular security detail was off the boat. In this case, they were guarding her parents as they attended a Trump fund raising event in Mar-a-Lago.

To preserve the element of surprise, the frogmen were dropped by a tugboat that never slowed a knot as it passed within a few hundred yards of The Happy Acre. The four man assault team used scuba equipment to make their approach undetected.

Captain Jones was on watch late that night. A former Commander in the USN, he was intensely aware of the ship’s vulnerability without the two Black Watch security men on board. Most people in his position would think that his worries were overblown. Yachts are not targeted by sea going burglars-- if there even is such a thing. Unlike the brigands off the coast of Africa, the Caribbean variety gave little thought to grabbing larger vessels. For starters, it is tough to approach such boats undetected. There is always someone on watch, and they have radar. Even if one could get aboard and somehow take control, where will the thief take the ship? Most of these boats are visible from orbit. Their security involves constant check-ins with shore based support that monitors everything, especially the engines and all navigation. There are transponders everywhere. It would take about ten seconds for the corporate people ashore to realize something was wrong at sea.

So let’s say some Cartel assholes do manage to grab the boat, like something out of The Hunt for Red October. That only works for submarines. There is no such thing as a high speed get away on this form of transportation. At best, you might manage twenty knots. Aside from ripping out electronics and computers that can be bought on the used market for peanuts, you can’t take a super Yacht to a chop shop and harvest the parts. There is no profit in grabbing a mega-boat unless the owner intends to have it sunk for the insurance money. So what is left to grab? A bunch of high priced loot like Patek watches and paintings?

Hardly. Those can be stolen dockside.

There is only one commodity of any real value on any floating Xanadu--the passengers themselves. Grabbing someone at sea is ideal. Unless the target is an Olympic swimmer, there is no escape. Help takes longer to arrive, and when it does, the interlopers can see it coming from miles away. It is this eventuality that caused ship designers to create safe rooms on mega-yachts. Of course, those of us who believe in self-defense ask the obvious question: what kind of firepower do you pack on your boat? Surely you don’t swim naked out there, right? What if you have to throw down on a shark? (They are always begging for it.) Or how about recreational shooting? I would trap shoot off the fantail. Though it creates legal problems in many ports of call, some of the super-rich quietly arm themselves or hire professional gun slingers to be part of the crew. In Linday’s case, aboard The Happy Acre, they pursued both strategies.

Having firearms aboard did cause some adjustments. Some ports of call  take a dim view of gun ownership and might raid even the most haughty billionaire’s barge if they thought they could catch him with an illegal pistol. Though the weapons were deeply hidden, The Happy Acre often anchored in international waters where no police would ever bother them. Helicopters or super sleek cigarette boats whisked the family ashore.

Captain Jones preferred to sail through the night as underway The Happy Acre was all but immune to boarding, but the risk of an overnight loiter seemed remote and Fort Jefferson Island remained to be explored by the history buff heiress the next day. She wanted to see the Devil’s Island where Lincoln assassination conspirator Dr. Samual Mudd did his time. With the parents ashore, the crew had the night off and most relished a good sleep. With the exception of an electric generator, the engines were shut down. The boat was unusually quiet. Jones stood outside the bridge and smoked a cigarette. His trained ear heard diesels growing closer. He used binoculars but could see no running lights. He located the direction of the sound before stepping back inside to check his radar. A large ocean going tugboat passed The Happy Acre.

Like most highly intelligent people, the captain often spoke to himself when alone. “That is a little close there, big boy.” He picked up his radio and called after the ghost but heard nothing back. One rarely saw a larger tugboat so far out operating late at night especially without navigation lights which was dangerous and against the maritime regulations. The lack of radio response was truly disquieting. “Are you having electrical issues? Where are your backup lights?”

The tug was gone in thirty seconds, and the captain watched the radar blip track away toward Key West. He was about to scold himself for paranoia when at a mile’s distance, the radar blip came to a stop.

“What are you doing tugboat? I classify that as damn odd. I… am not liking this. Just to be extra careful and add a little drama to my evening…” Jones turned to his computer screen and typed in the command: Repel Boarders. A schematic of the ship popped up that showed red for locked and green for open doors, hatches and portholes. He double clicked the lock all option and watched the colors change.

Captain Jones thought, Let’s see what’s happening under the boat.

Infra-red lights flooded the undersea world with zillions of lumens, but no human eye could see the light. They were in eighty feet of water with a clear sandy bottom that made images in the foreground stand out. Cameras mounted in the hull were meant for watching sea life. In this case, death at sea was making an obvious play for The Happy Acre. Jones picked up the bridge phone and hit the panic button as he watched the divers sort themselves out for entry. An automated signal went out both to the Coast Guard, the crew spaces, and Stateroom Three, two decks below where a teenaged girl of privilege was doing a bit of her assigned summer reading. Lindsay decided to read the entirety of Hemmingway’s Old Man and Sea in two sittings. It was set in the area. She enjoyed his sparse writing style and how people didn’t beat about the bush too much when they spoke.

She dictated a note in her cell phone. “Start paper with quote from page 23. I may not be as strong as I think,… but I know many tricks and I have resolution. This paper is going to write itself.”

The head of the Olsome security detail stood in the parking lot at Mar-a-Lago. He answered the Captain’s call before the first ring ended. “Martin,” the captain said dryly, “listen carefully. We are about to be boarded by three or four divers. I think they are operating from a tug anchored two thousand yards to the north of us. I have disabled the ship, and we are locked down tight. They are cutting the anchor cable. Maybe they intend to tow us. If I weren’t paying attention, that would have drawn me out on deck for sure. Jesus. They are coming in on the fantail. They are going to hate our NASA glass. Lindsay’s safe room has been activated, but I can’t talk to her for some reason. But she has to be in there. The Coast Guard is on the way by now. I’m heading for the crew’s safe room and will reestablish contact with you shortly.”

Martin was an experienced operator with a deadpan affect perfectly matched to emergency communications. “Understood. Captain, the Olsomes are on their way out of the party now. The decision to take the intruders on is up to you, but I recommend that you go to ground and stay there. You have to hold on for a half an hour at most before some sort of help arrives. It will be the Coast Guard first, but we are on the way. Captain, consider that we do not know who is in on this. Be careful what you say in front of the crew. There could be listening devices all over the boat.”

Meanwhile, on the phantom tug, two goon level operatives prepared a zodiac outboard  for launch. They were to retrieve the kidnap team and their target. The captain cracked open an unassuming crate and produced a Stinger missile. It was old, obsolete for a modern battlefield, but it would take out a Coast Guard helicopter sure enough. He had three battery coolant units needed for targeting. They were old and known to be finicky. Once inserted, they were good for minutes, not hours. The would be SAM gunner hoped to be well away before any alarm was raised. With luck, his boss would get his missile back. The henchmen reported in.

“The ship has gone dark. Have they checked in?”

“I don’t think this is the time to interrupt. Sleep tight little girl. Here we come. Send Sebastian the signal. The conditions are good for his floatplane. With any luck we will only have her aboard for a few minutes.”

The frogman leader removed his oxygen tank and fins just below the surface behind the yacht. He grasped the ladder and got both feet in place. Thus set, he shot out of the water ready to throw any sentries in the drink for his buddies the drown. He met no resistance, and the three other men followed quickly. The first two had their weapons up. The second pair secured their team’s tanks, masks and fins for pickup. Seeing no one, the leader turned to the massive glass sliding doors that blocked the shortest route to the family quarters. He shook the water out of his silenced MP-5K and loosed a few rounds at the lock mechanism. The 9 m/m ammunition was subsonic, and he was stunned to see that it lacked the punch needed to gain them entry into the main salon. One of the rounds ricocheted and hit an oxygen tank, denting it. Frustrated, he risked the noise of shooting a glass door itself. Though this produced pockmarks, the glass didn’t fail.

“Plan B. Go!” The intruders bounded up the portside external stairs and made for the bridge. Once inside, they would eliminate everyone in their way as they descended two decks to the family quarters.

It took seconds to reach the pilot house. As they peered through a window, all was dark. The radar was shut down, and they could hear no radio chatter. Only a flashing dialogue box on a computer screen and the boat’s running lights on the mast tops, bow, and stern, offered any evidence that there was electrical power on the enormous ship. The leader expended several rounds on the door lock, again to no effect.

“Who makes these damned locks? Fan out, find us a way in.”

One of the men signaled. “Over here. Look, they must be doing repairs here. This panel is just a sheet of painted plywood. Shoot the screw heads. I’ll bet I can squeeze through into the head behind the pilot house.”

The captain watched the enemy’s entrance on his monitor in the crew safe area. It was a tight fit with the maid, both chefs, the engineering team and the dive master in the cramped space. “Damn! If I stayed up there I could have taken them out one by one with a butter knife as they climbed through that hole!” He thought about handing out a stash of weapons hidden in the saferoom, but as he looked into the frightened eyes of the crew, he realized that they would be slaughtered by these professionals if they didn’t shoot themselves or each other first. Worse still, he was stunned at the thought that one or more of them might be in on the attack.

The infiltrator’s leader cursed as he read the flashing message on the bridge computer screen. “Repel Boarders? Fuck! So much for surprise.” He radioed the tug. “They sent out a distress call. Be ready.” His men awaited the order to proceed. “We might have only minutes. The kid’s suite is down those stairs two flights and to the left, end of the corridor. Let’s do this quick!”

Lindsay was startled by the flashing red light and the triple chirping smoke alarm code for pirates. This was no drill. She leapt off of her bed and pulled at the edge of a picture frame, opening a well-blended door to what can be described as an empty closet with a reclining seat in it. She stepped inside and pulled the heavy door shut which locked. This put a solid inch of Kevlar and other ballistic resistant composites between the outside world and her valuable person. From the outside, the wall looked smooth. She breathed her own recirculated air, had a supply of food and water, even a way to relieve herself if she was in for too long. She flipped a switch, powering up the compartment, and put on a headset that connected her to the other safe areas. This automatically cut lights in her bedroom room except for a strip of florescent glowing dots that ran horizontally at waist level across the wall that adjoined the corridor, one every two feet, seven in all, ending at her bedroom door.

Lindsay thought, I should be crying. I should be shaking. But she wasn’t. She was a Texas Olsome and her father’s daughter. In her short life she had already sky dived, dared the deepest powder of the Swiss Alps, dove to 120 feet with sharks, and survived a small plane forced landing when the Cesena her mother was flying experienced engine trouble and had to put down in a farmer’s pasture.

A nine year old Lindsay sniffled, “Are we going to die mommy?”

“No! Well, only if we hit a cow, but it will be the farmer who kills us. Pull that seat belt as tight as it will go. We’re not going to die. I have this. Be brave.”

“Oh, OK. Can we try to crash near a bathroom?”

Their landing was a little hard on the fixed landing gear, but otherwise the entire affair was anticlimactic.

Lindsay actually smiled as she remembered how the hunky security guys taught her to shoot her 9 m/m version of the X-95 rifle. It was a little heavy, but she liked to work out and she shot it well off the bench. She learned the controls and how to clear a stoppage. The family imported the best trainers in the country (and their movie star clients) to teach weapons and tactics during the day and then party for as long as it took to bond with them on a deeper level at night. This ensured loyalty and built a network of assets who could be invaluable in a crisis.

In order to protect the safe areas, there was only an audio connection between them. Lindsay whispered into the microphone, “Captain? Are you there? Captain Jones? Wally? Come on. Fucking thing! What is wrong with it?” The only antiquated tech in the saferoom was the headphone jack and in her gyrations, Lindsay managed to pull it ever so slightly out of place.

The video screen in Lindsay’s panic room was small, about the same size an i-Pad, but the resolution was top notch. The distress call icon flashed reassuringly in the bottom corner. She checked various cameras throughout the ship and took stock of the four men on the bridge bathed in night vision green light. She noted their firepower and made a decision to use what her father called “every alternative” at her disposal.

“Nope. Not on our boat.” Lindsay punched a three digit code into the pad face. A hidden locker popped open at her feet. She reached down and picked up her X-95, a one of a kind special order model covered with her artwork, specifically a dragon in flight breathing fire. She named it Lisbeth.

The saferoom door that protected Lindsay also offered her a chance to easily blast anyone she deemed a threat. The teenager opened the gun port in the door just below her shoulder height. It was designed to fit Lisbeth’s muzzle perfectly with enough clearance for both laser and holographic sights. The muzzle protruded perhaps two inches, and the bullpup layout of the rifle was short enough for Lindsay to operate in the confines of her armored safe room. Two short slings were mounted to the wall and snapped into the X-95’s QD mounts. These held the rifle up should she lose her grip. She activated the laser sight and night vision monocular mounted on the top rail. The magazine was already in place. Lindsay found the X-95 a little hard to cock in her training sessions, but this time she got the bolt back with no effort. Once all was in position, she was prepared to make the fourteen foot shot across the room to and through her locked bedroom door.

I am safe in here. Stay calm. This is my rifle. There are many like it but this one is mine.

Lindsay did not have time to finish the Marine’s recitation. The leader and his henchmen descended to the family deck, but unlike the rest of the ship, which was pitch black, the living quarters hallways were brightly lit with emergency lighting disks shining up through the floor, one lamp every few feet all the way down the hall. The leader made the mistake of thinking nothing of it and slid down the hallway. Lindsay could hear his wet suit rub against the wall. The other three men gaggled behind him, ready to rush in with chloroform and a body bag.

Lindsay studied her enemies on the monitor. She chose the overhead view just as she had been trained and counted the floor lights to reference exactly where each man stood in the hallway. In this case the leader stepped right in front of her door and raised a foot to kick it in. He had a flashbang breaching device ready in his left hand and the MP-5K in his right. The second man stood on top of light number two and the followers she could see were steady between numbers  four and six.

  Lindsay counted the corresponding lights on her bedroom wall and took a split second to envision the shot just like she was playing golf. She spread her feet and put her shoulder squarely behind the weapon. She aimed the laser dot at the center of her suite door, flipped the safety off with her right thumb, and pulled the trigger. She expected a burst, but the rifle was in semi-automatic mode. Her single 124 grain Black Tallon round began to expand when it passed through the lightly constructed door. It’s razor sharp edges were already exposed and spinning when it hit the breacher in his sternum. It ripped through his thorax and broke his spine. He dropped both his weapons as he fell. The flashbang detonated in the hallway which actually stunned the intruders for a moment though, of course, it did not affect Lindsay in the slightest. She realized her selector switch mistake and cooly flipped it to full auto as she clamped down on the trigger. Lisbeth’s laser dot passed through wall light number two, and Lindsay let up on the trigger just after it passed number six. The dragon’s muzzle flash in the black room was indeed belched fire. Hit several times each, three of the insurgents died instantly while the other shuffled off rather noisily to drop dead in the stairwell.

I’m alive. I am safe. Stay vigilant. The fight might not be over.

Lindsay remembered her protocols and reloaded a fresh magazine. She considered spraying the bodies through the wall just to be sure they were dead, but there was zero movement showing on her screen and she knew that every bullet hole was an issue. She made the weapon safe. A minute passed as she watched her monitor for any sign of life in the hallways or elsewhere on the ship, but it was the pirates who had walked the plank. She pulled the rifle in and closed the port. It took about thirty seconds for her heart to really start pounding, but the training she received prepared her for this eventuality, and she was sure in her heart and head that she did the right thing. If anything, she felt the way a soldier feels when he finds himself alive and well amidst the carnage.

That’s what you get, assholes. You go ahead and bleed. I’m going to hydrate.

Captain Jones watched the action and held his breath so long he gasped for air when he knew Lindsay was safe. He made a command decision, and even though he was unarmed, he left the safe area. He waved at the hidden cameras as he cautiously approached Lindsay’s saferoom door. It made a sucking sound as she opened it and fell into the captain’s outstretched arms.

“Oh my Gawd-- Oh my Gawd-- talk to me. Lem’me look at you.” Jones spun her around. “No blood or broken bones?” He took her face in his hands and looked deep into her eyes. “Are you OK?”

The squished face and earnest eyes replied, “Are you OK, Wally? Jesus Christ. Who the hell are those guys?”

“Am I Ok? Yes. As for, who are those guys? I have no idea.” He rocked her a moment then remembered the bodies in the hallway and the escape that they had yet to execute. “Get back in your safe room. We don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m going to floor it and get us out of here. Stay off your phone until we can make sure it hasn’t been compromised. Check the mike jack in there. It has to be loose. Watch your monitors, and don’t shoot yourself. Got it?”

“It’s going to be Ok, Wally.”

“Jesus. You really ate your Wheaties this morning, didn’t you?”

“What are Wheaties?”

“Go! Get back in there and read your book.”

“Wally… we are brave, aren’t we?”

Captain Jones paused to look at the heavily tattooed dead men. He picked up one of their machine pistols and tugged an extra magazine from its carrier. He took the steps two at a time as he launched himself toward the bridge. The ship was drifting and he had no idea what the sounding was. His first concern was running aground. He tossed the weapon on the counter and dialed in his passwords. It took several long moments to bring the engines on line. One simply didn’t throw the throttle wide open on a cold engine. It was in those fitful, anxious minutes that the captain saw a zodiac outboard closing rapidly. A man stood in the bow, holding on to a line for support. He waved a flashlight with his other hand.

When asked later why he did it, Captain Jones said he just wanted to get in his licks. In an inspired move, Wally threw an emergency rope ladder over the side but stayed back so that he could not be seen. The men on the launch took this to be an invitation from their boys so they pulled right up and sent a man climbing. He was three rungs from the top when he looked into the muzzle of the MP-5K. Jones shot him in the face. He fell backward and landed in the zodiac which sped off chased by the captain’s fire.

 The Happy Acre was quite fast for ship its size. Normally, they would have to haul in their anchors before leaving the area, thus signaling their intentions. In this case, the intruders made a mad dash possible by cutting the ship free. The Captain dialed up emergency speed within five seconds of expending his clip. He caught the shadowing tug off guard. It took them a few minutes to recover their zodiac. They briefly followed the yacht, but they no doubt interpreted Captain Jone’s intentions correctly. It seemed likely to the tugboat’s captain that they were in danger of   being tracked, and with no money to be made from a successful kidnapping, he decided to toss everything incriminating dead henchmen overboard. The stinger missile, however, was stored in an airtight locker and dumped in shallow water with a tracker for future retrieval.

The Happy Acre moved into international waters as the captain spoke by secure phone to Mr. Olsome whose private security team was finally in the air. When they finally made it aboard, they found the captain with a captured MP-5K ready for action.

They cleared the boat and hauled the dead men up on deck. The team leader reported back to the cigarette smoking captain. “Your crew is Ok, Lindsay is safe in her closet where she shall stay until her parents arrive and four bad guys down. You had a big night.”

“Well done, Captain. Well done indeed.”

“I shot one of them with this, but he went over the side. It wasn’t me that saved the day in Lindsay’s hallway. I didn’t want to say over comms. It was Lindsay and that X-95 of hers. She did a number on’m.”

“Lindsay?” The operator’s voice dripped disbelief.

“Look at the bullet holes. She followed the plan with the lights. I gotta admit, I thought it was stupid to shoot through the wall but it worked. They never got close to her. She caught them just as they were bunched up to come in on her. She only used a half a magazine and took out all four.”

“Our Lindsay did that?”

“Our Lindsay is a secret bad ass.”

“Boom. She ought to be a mess. She seemed fine to me.”

“She’s like her mother. Nothing fazes her.”

In the end, the situation was handled in the true Olsome fashion. Nothing ever disturbed their public image. They truly were a loving and well-adjusted bunch. Just don’t screw around with them. Once pissed, they channeled a blend of mafia and Texas payback backed by endless lawyers and blackmailed politicians with connection to the CIA. Yes, they were quite eccentric. When they sat down in a restaurant, they ordered everything on the menu and didn’t touch a tenth of it. It’s also true that they owned a herd of giraffes, well, technically that would be a “tower” of giraffes. But hey, they were all very happy animals that lived in an airconditioned monster of a barn munching on giraffe bob-bons. They had a cherry picker for the vet. A surprising number of people thought they could scam or cheat their way into that famous family’s wallet. Most of them simply disappeared. The rest suffered terrible bad luck.

The missing helicopter pilot, for example, turned up in an emergency room after a brutal hit-and-run car accident that left him with a dozen broken bones. He survived, but no sooner was he released from the hospital than he found himself back again after being bitten by a rattlesnake that found its way into his Arizona home. He survived this too, but he later wished he had not. He was audited by the IRS, then investigated by the BATF and FBI for weapons trafficking. He was found hanging in his garage at the very age of young forty two. So sad. A number of other dominoes fell behind him as the Olsome team cleaned up the rather hapless and poorly executed conspiracy.

The entire incident that night became a non-event. Eventually, the Coast Guard would find that the distress call was a “swatting” at sea. The intruder bodies went for a long, dark swim in, like, a million feet of shark infested water, and, it goes without saying that not a word was said about the events of that night to the press. The ship’s video was deleted, all phones checked, and the entire ship scrubbed for that which spies. Nothing was found. The crew was quickly cleared, and they all signed non-disclosure agreements as they counted small mountains of cash appreciation from their employer.

It took a few hours, but the tugboat was tracked down. Its progress was followed from the air. It was soon obvious where it would tie up. The crew was apprehended by Florida State Police who would search the boat the following day and find a kilo of cocaine in the engine room. This was planted by Olsome operatives to make sure that the crew was convicted of something. The suspects had no way of knowing who brought the drugs aboard, but they all had reason to suspect some other member of the crew. It took about thirty seconds for the men to turn on each other and use their knowledge of the stinger missile’s location to get a reduced sentence, but they all went to jail. The tug captain took it in the shorts over the missile that could be used to down an airliner or a presidential helicopter. He would die behind bars. The crew received lesser sentences of twenty years.

All repairs were done to The Happy Acre before returning to port so regular visitors could come aboard without a suspicious delay. The 9 m/m holes were easy to patch and paint. A few rounds missed the men, crossed the hall and penetrated the far wall which was reinforced for such eventualities. The slugs were all accounted for and tossed. The carpet change was the worst part, but thankfully, the wet suits worn by the enemy more or less sealed most of the blood next to the dead man’s skin.

As for the Olsome family, and Lindsay in particular, the fight would never be forgotten. They processed it as The Happy Acre motored in circles in the Gulf of America. Lindsay didn’t sleep for twenty four hours then crashed for nearly twelve straight. She awoke refreshed and ready to be off the boat. The chef was instructed to stock Wheaties in the galley.

They were comforted by their Olsome logic: These were the worst men imaginable who gave us no choice, so of course we killed them before they could kill us. The best defense is to behave as if it never happened while quietly strangling anyone whose finger prints were on the attempt. They had people for that and so they did not discuss the incident again, though a family expression was born. If someone crossed Lindsay, those in the know were prone to saying, “Don’t make her go Hemingway on you.”

Mr. Olsome did make one concession to their dedicated amnesia, a small private joke that he shared with his captain and daughter. Like a fighter pilot who keeps score on the side of his airplane, five small black flag icons adorned The Happy Acre’s wheelhouse door.