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It’s hard to believe that almost a year has gone by since we’d recovered Captain Kidd’s pirate treasure. We had to battle modern day Caribbean pirates for the right to own it. But Seal Team Six wasn’t about to lose the battle. One of our friends had been tortured and killed by the pirates and that had just plain pissed me off. I don’t take losing one of my own lightly. Just ask any of our team members and they will tell you how true that is.
Anyway, we’d recovered over 400 million dollars in gold and jewels while ridding the islands of a band of pirates that had held Jamaica in a death grip of fear for nearly forty years.
Because of our operation we had decided to form a private company that could handle ticklish situations that couldn’t be handled through normal channels. We took the name of the Sea Demons because that’s what the pirate leader had called me just before I’d crushed his windpipe with my size 13 foot ending his life of crime. (If you’d like to get the full history of that adventure it can be found in the book Dead Men’s Isle.)
Anyway like I said it’s been nearly a year since all of that had taken place and we’ve been busy setting up operations. Danny Mazuzu had donated Dead Men’s Isle to the cause. It’s a four hundred acre isle eight miles north of Montego Bay. We charged our team members ten million dollars each to buy into the company. They could afford it after they got their share of the treasure.
My Seal Team consists of myself, Lieutenant Rick Chambers, team leader. Senior Chief, Jake Morrison, who is my second in command. Steve Jones, we call him Doc, he’s our team medic. Patch is a Chiricahua Apache, the best man I’ve ever seen with a knife and the team tracker. Scott and Dave Lofton are brothers and our team snipers. They can hit a flea’s ass at 1000 yards with their big 50 caliber sniper rifles. Brian Jennings is our computer guru. Gary Brady, we just call him Brady. He’s our pilot and can fly anything with wings or a rotor. He’s also the team clown, there has to be one in every group and we have Brady. Sam Brody is our gunsmith and machinist. Rounding out my Seal Team is Bill Wagner; he’s our radioman and communications expert. Many an enemy has dismissed Bill for his size and paid for it with their lives.
We started with ten Navy Seals and added the three who we’d come here to help. The group is rounded out by my brother Chris Chambers who had been an investment banker on the 28th floor of the North Tower when the Twin Towers were hit. Danny Mazuzu who was my brother’s partner in a charter boat fishing business and Karen Jacobs who was Danny’s grandfather’s nurse during the last year of his life.
The reason we are able to do this operation instead of still serving in the Navy is we were court-martialed for attacking a Mosque. We’d taken fire from it and three of my team members were killed by the blast and several of us were wounded. I’d ordered an air attack and we’d cleaned out that hell hole. Our government being what it is tried to appease the Iraqis by giving us a court martial and then disbanding us. It was bullshit pure and simple. We were added to the long list of scapegoats, a fine military tradition. If it sounds like I’m bitter I was, until our last mission exonerated us. Our President had to finally come forward and replace our general discharges with honorable ones. We’d saved his ass big time in the operation I just got done telling you about.
Anyway I’ll be running the field operations while my brother Chris takes care of all the administrative and financial stuff that goes along with it. Danny is now the captain of the Sea Eagle and Karen is half of our medical staff. The others form the team just like they did while they were Navy Seals.
All ten of my Seal Team members have gone thru the world’s most rigorous and grueling training and have seen a lot of combat in the Middle East, and more recently in Jamaica. We’ve also served in the jungles of South America tracking down cartels and have helped the DEA in trying to stop drugs from entering south Florida.
The pirates have donated a few things to our operation too. We took their ship from them. It’s a 160 foot yacht called the Sea Eagle. We also took ownership of their Bell Ranger helicopter. They didn’t seem to need it anymore since we didn’t leave any of them alive, plain and simple.
For years they’d terrorized the islands at will. There was no one to stop them but that had all changed when Gene Barclay, Danny’s first mate was tortured and killed by the modern day pirates. They found out what happens when they mess with people who aren’t helpless or afraid.
So we have 130 million dollars to play with to build and outfit our new operation. It sounds like a lot of money but we have a lot of places to spend it. We had to run power to our island from Montego Bay. Do you know how much a cable that size costs per foot? We needed to run eight miles of it to reach our island. That’s over 42,000 feet of cable.
We had a small lagoon dug on the leeward side of the island to provide a sheltered anchorage for our smaller cabin cruisers and the float plane we had to buy after the last operation. The owners were unhappy with the bullet holes that were in it.
We had a pier built to tie the Sea Eagle up to. You have to realize the Sea Eagle is 160 feet long. A dock like you’d have at your summer cabin just wouldn’t do. It had to be big, made out of pilings and concrete.
We are building our homes on the leeward side of the island also. Behind the two hills that cover the center of the island. The operations center is a two story concrete affair located on the western end of the island. It houses our offices, conference rooms, sickbay, and communications center.
The western most of the two hills holds our satellite dishes and antenna array. Underneath the hill lays the cavern where we’d recovered Captain Kidd’s treasure. It’s going to be made into a storage area for arms and ordinance. We’ll need to seal the opening that goes out to the ocean for two reasons, to provide security and to seal out the dampness of the water.
A large machine shop is being built between the two hills. It will also be the way into the cavern once everything is completed.
The Sea Eagle is also going thru a refit. We need to build crew quarters instead of staterooms. We also have to give her some teeth. It needs armament to defend itself from attack.
Best part of this whole damn operation is that it’s in the sunny, warm Caribbean Sea. I love the smell of the salty air and warmth of the tropical sun. My gimpy leg feels almost normal in the warm sun. My wounds are becoming a distant memory now. Almost three years have passed since I got them.