Hazardous Duty (Presidential Agent 8)

“Here, it’s a smile of intense personal pleasure,” Castillo said.

“What’s your point, Charley?” Radio & TV Stations asked.

“Take a wild guess, Chopper Jockey, what the premium is to insure a one-hundred-million-dollar supertanker loaded with two million barrels of oil at a hundred dollars a barrel.”

“I can’t do numbers that big in my head,” Radio & TV Stations admitted.

“Based on my experience in the insurance industry, I would estimate twenty-five million,” Annapolis said pontifically.

“Well, you’re the expert, you should know. So twenty-five million it is. Now, take two million, plus the price of a Mercedes convertible, a dozen dirty movies, and a Sony DVD player from that twenty-five million and what would you say is left?”

“Oh, those goddamn Swedes,” Annapolis said after a moment, his voice heavy with admiration. “They’re worse than even the goddamn Dutchmen and the goddamn Swiss! Why didn’t I think of this?”

“What have the goddamn Swedes, Dutchmen, and Swiss got to do with anything?” Hotelier asked.

“Ninety-point-seven percent of maritime insurance like this is underwritten by those clever sonsofbitches,” Annapolis said.

“And everybody is happy,” Castillo said. “The pirates, they have their ransom and the Mercedes and the dirty movies; the shipowners, who have their tanker back; and, of course, the smiling maritime insurance companies of whatever nationality who have a profit of, say, twenty-two million.”

“Pure genius!” Annapolis said. “My hat’s off to them.”

“Is there no way to stop the piracy, Charley?” Radio & TV Stations asked.

“President Clendennen could send Delta Force teams into Somalia with orders to shoot every illiterate eighteen-year-old,” Castillo said. “That’d stop it.”

“Do you think he’d do that, Colonel?” Annapolis said, worry evident in his tone.

“I think he might order it,” Castillo said. “But I don’t think Delta Force would go. I don’t know anyone in Delta who likes shooting illiterate eighteen-year-olds. Unless they shoot first.”

“If he did and they did,” Radio & TV Stations said, “he’d have a hell of a public relations problem with his legacy.”

“With his what?” the Widow Alekseeva inquired.

“Let’s move to the airfield, Drug Cartel International,” Annapolis said. “How about that, Charley? How difficult would that be to seize?”

“Not hard at all,” Castillo said. “The only problem would be keeping all the Delta Force guys who wanted to go off the C-130.”

“Delta Force would want to go, is that what you’re saying?” Radio & TV Stations asked.

“That’s what I’m saying. They’re still smarting after the drug cartel guys whacked Danny Salazar. They’d all love to go to Mexico and whack as many drug guys as they could find.”

“You mean as vigilantes?” Radio & TV Stations asked.

“No. If Clendennen sends them down there, the people they would whack would be whacked as they carry out their official duties. They would have a license to whack, in other words.” He paused, chuckled, and added, “I think most of them would even wear the kilts of Clan Clendennen if that’s what they had to do.”

“And Clendennen doesn’t know this? Or at least suspect it?” Radio & TV Stations asked.

“I don’t think he would care if he did.”

“That’s surprising. I would have thought—he’s big in the ego department—that he’d really be concerned with his legacy.”

“There’s that word again,” the Widow Alekseeva said. “What are you talking about?”

“You used the word, Chopper Jockey, you explain it to the lady,” Charley said, chuckling.

“The way that works, Mrs. Alekseeva—”

“My Carlito likes you,” she interrupted. “You may call me Sweaty.”