"How much you pay?" He replied, curiously.

"Enough to keep you in retirement after a year. I'd need some insane dedications on your part, but that won't be a problem, no?" The Weaver said.

The man with no name thinks about the proposition. "Alright." He shakes the stranger's hand. "You have a deal, name's Bill Kaycee."

The Weaver shakes hands with Bill, and places his arm around his shoulder and begins to walk with him on the road. "Excellent. Call me the Weaver, the real name doesn't matter and is only a detriment. From here on out, your new name is," he paused, taking a deep breath while rapidly thinking.

"Nudist Beach."

"Uh, no. If we're going to be using nick names, then just call me Jericho. That's what they called me in the Army."

"Alright. Jericho it is. You're going to have some fun times. . ."

FlaxMaster grinned. The money was rolling in from his occasional sales, but more so from the royalties he made off of the network. He'd never dreamed of this level of success. Weaver was coining it too, and in their online chats he had mentioned that he was planning to beef up his security.

FlaxMaster been able to buy a boat. It had originally been a fishing boat, but he took some time to weld thick steel plates onto the insides of it to protect it from roving Coastal Patrol boats, who would stop any privately owned boat entering international waters. Oh, warships, cargo barges, and government-owned fishers were allowed to go through the screen, but the government owned those, and they didn't see any reason to encourage the increasing smuggling.

FlaxMaster had also paid for a more powerful engine, plexiglass windows, and a small turret-mounted light cannon on the top to discourage the Coastal Patrol from engaging in pursuit. It had cost a lot of money, and his normal pay from his quiet gas-station job was not enough, especially since most of the materials had to be purchased on the black market. He had, however, been able to dip into his Linen Road funds, and after a month of welding, tinkering, and haggling with vendors via IRC, he was looking at a fully serviceable smuggler ship, with the words Sea Camel still drying on the side.

He contacted a few smugglers that he knew from the Linen Road business. They made a deal: the ship was theirs, as long as they agreed to take drug shipments for him on their way out of the country.

After a few hair-raising night runs, the smugglers began to get the hang of the Coastal Patrol schedules, and made a successful and fairly uneventful run to Bonaugure. The success got them overconfident. On the next run, they plotted their course carelessly. Half a mile from international waters, a Coastal Patrol vessel spotted their lights and radioed to them.
"Mystery vessel, please come in. This is the Coastal Patrol. State your business in these waters."
"What should we do?" hissed one of the smugglers.
"Tell them that we're just out for a little midnight cruise," replied the quick-thinking leader.
The first man nodded and walked over to the radio. "We're just out for a little cruise, sir."
"All right, then, but stay within Darkstraitese waters. We'll keep our eyes open. There's been some nasty business with smugglers lately, and we can't have anyone hurt."

The smugglers relaxed as the lights of the Coastal Patrol vessel moved away.
"What now?" asked the first man.
"We stay the course."
"All righty. Staying the course, coming right up."

Meanwhile, the Coastal Patrol vessel reached a small island not far from the smuggler ship. There, they turned their lights off, muffled the engine, and headed back toward the smugglers.

The smugglers had almost reached international waters when the radio crackled again.
"Mystery ship, come in. This is the Coastal Patrol. We demand that you immediately pull back from international waters!"
As one man, the smugglers jumped. They immediately began moving to their battle stations.
"I repeat, turn around! Repeat, turn around!"
The helmsman pushed the throttle lever all the way up. The ship began to accelerate.
"Idiot!" the leader hissed. "We can't outrun a Coastal Patrol cutter!"
The radio crackled again. "Mystery ship, stand down! Repeat, stand down or we will open fire!"
"They're going to shoot at us!" one man yelped.
"Turn off the lights!" the leader yelled. "They won't be able to see us!"
"What about radar?"
"Does that help you when you're trying to shoot?"
The lights went out, but too late. The patrol cutter had gauged their speed and position, and was now heading straight for them. A warning shot was issued---BLAM---that whizzed over the ship. One smuggler had gotten to the turret. The helmsman gritted his teeth. The rest of the smugglers produced submachine guns and hunting rifles, taking up various positions on the deck and in the cabin.

The cutter was closing in. There was a spitting noise as the Coastal Patrol opened fire on the smuggler with machine gun fire, most of which missed entirely but some of which came too close for comfort. One smuggler produced a pair of night vision goggles, took aim through the scope of his rifle, and fired at the cutter.

Aboard the cutter, the men stared in shock at the bullet hole that had appeared in the side of the cabin. Clearly, they were not dealing with a group of troublemakers or amateurs. They were tangling with a well-armed and equipped group of smugglers.
"We need reinforcements," the captain said. "Contact Base. Tell them we need another cutter as fast as they can get it here, and a helicopter. Not a rescue one, but one of the trackers. The good ones."
"Yes, sir."
"And continue pursuit."
"Yes, sir."

Back on the ship, the rest of the smugglers opened fire on the cutter. Although many of the Coastal Patrol men had been warned by the first shot, a few were caught without cover when the barrage began. One man was wounded badly, and dragged to safety by a brave comrade. The others returned fire on the smugglers' ship. One smuggler was hit and killed. The smuggler in the turret, concealed above the cabin, rotated the black-market light cannon and fired a shell at the cutter. The resulting explosion wounded two men and knocked a third overboard. The cutter stopped to find him, costing them the pursuit.

The other patrol ship and helicopter, meanwhile, had come upon the scene. The second cutter had its lights on, making it an easy target for the turret. Within a minute the ship was burning.

The helicopter encountered better luck. A spotlight was trained on the smuggler vessel, and the cutter's crew were able to see their target. Another barrage of gunfire killed two more smugglers, before a third carefully shot out the spotlight. A fourth with a submachine gun fired a burst at the helicopter, damaging it.

By morning, the smugglers had managed to escape the Coastal Patrol. The story, however, made the front pages, and emphasized the need for both better anti-smuggler vigilance and better defended drug ships.

Jericho was brought to Darkstrait, in an old warehouse that served as one of the many hubs for the linen road. Sipping on a beer, he listened to Flaxmaster talk about his ship's getaway. Looking down into his bottle he pondered how to better sneak the smugglers past the tight borders.
"Your mistake was not having the ship as a marked Darkstraitese ship. What we need to do, instead of buying boats upon boats and suiting them up for a small naval battle, we need to use the Darkstraitese ships. Tell the government we're shipping clams or some sort of mollusk or crustacean that we can stuff drug bags into, we shell out the insides, put our coke in there, then we can superglue any openings. And the fact that they'll either put them in a cooler or hurry to get there before they start to stink means that the product will stay fresh. We can have some of our boys put on the ships carrying your product, as long as you know a government official who can be either blackmailed or bribed."

The Weaver got up from his stance in the back of the room and said, with a blank face, "I can get that for you. Most politicians these days just do it for the money, and I got plenty of it."


~Professor Henn, Hardcore Leftist, Totally not a Dinosaur

FlaxMaster pondered the proposal. "As long as it doesn't get too expensive. Bribery is difficult; stop the money flow and they can start blackmailing you. I'm thinking about moving on anyway from actually supplying the drugs--- I'm making enough on Linen Road to live comfortably for a while. This means that you'll probably get most of my new business."