*
Right before dusk, they found a likely spot. Len had heard through the grapevine that one of his dubious acquaintances (smugglers didn’t have friends) was going to be heading this way tonight with a load of cash and guns being smuggled out of the country. Probably for the Mexican cartel, which wasn’t any healthier to mess with than the Russian mob, but hell, what choice did he have?
It probably would have been simpler to find a ship smuggling drugs - there were plenty of those. But not only did Len not have the connections to move large amounts of cocaine or marijuana, but if the mob got word of him doing so, they might decide he’d made up the story about the Coast Guard and figure he’d just stolen their drugs. That would be bad. Very, very bad.
They might be willing to let him try and come up with the money to replace their lost merchandise, but if they thought he’d stolen it, they would hunt him down and kill him slowly and gruesomely to serve as an example to anyone else who might be stupid enough to try the same thing. No thank you.
So here he was, out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, holding onto his grandfather’s talisman and planning to call up some mythological creature to attack another smuggler’s ship. When had his life gotten so crazy? He wanted to be anywhere other than here, doing this. Len wasn’t a huge drinker, but right now he wanted a stiff drink so bad he shook with the thought of it.
“Stiffen your spine, boy,” Red said with a sneer. “It is time. Are you ready?”
Ready to go home, hell yeah. “You bet,” Len said. “So, how do I work this thing? Are there some kind of magic words or something? I said a bunch of stuff the first time, but I have no idea which one worked.”
Red laughed, the sound rolling out into the encroaching darkness to mix with the noise of the waves crashing against the side of the hull. “There are no magic words, silly man. This is an amulet for a pirate, not a witch’s toy. Hold out your hand, and think of how badly you want the kraken to come.”
Len did as Red asked, the talisman sitting in his open palm, stretched out before him. Before he could brace himself, the tattooed man pulled out a huge knife and sliced into the fleshy part of Len’s hand, right next to one of the brass tentacles.
“What the hell!” Len shouted. But then the blood oozed from the shallow cut into contact with the amulet, and that strange buzzy feeling echoed through his arm and up into the rest of his body. The amulet seemed to writhe in his hand. The stone in the middle slid open to reveal its single swirling eye.
Magic. Shit. It was real. Painful, apparently, but real.
“Find me the ship with money and guns,” he whispered to the eye. “Sink it, and bring me the money.”
Red nodded with satisfaction. “Now you will see,” he said. “Now you will see the might of the kraken.”
Len put the amulet down reverently on a storage chest nearby and wiped his hand with an almost clean rag. “You could have warned me about the blood part,” he said to Red with a scowl.
“What would the fun of that have been?” the pirate said. One gold tooth gleamed when he grinned. “You should have seen your face when I pulled out my knife. Ha ha ha.”
Ha. Sure. Very funny. Len settled himself against the side of the boat to wait for the kraken. After all, just because he’d gotten the strange medallion to activate, didn’t mean that it would actually control the monster, or that the thing would be able to find the ship they wanted. Or that it would be able to retrieve the money, even if it did.
The more he thought about it, the less likely success seemed, and the more he longed for a warm room and a bottle of whiskey.
“Aha!” Red bellowed, startling Len so much he almost slid onto the deck on his ass. “Look!”
Len followed Red’s pointing finger toward the setting sun. Just barely visible against its orange glow was the silhouette of a much larger ship, its back end tilting precariously as a giant tentacle wrapped itself around the stern. Len almost imagined he could hear the screams of the men aboard as they fell into the sea. Within minutes, the entire ship had vanished beneath the surface. Len knew he probably should have felt bad about the crew, but instead, he felt a heady surge of power. Who was the weak, skinny kid now, eh?
“Come on, kraken,” he said to the empty ocean. “Bring me my money, there’s a good little monster.”
The big man next to him coughed. “Our money, was that not what you meant to say? And I suspect it would be best not to speak to the mighty beast of the deep as if it were a pet dog fetching a ball.”
“Um, yeah, sure thing,” Len agreed, gazing greedily out over the waves. Still nothing. Where was it?
Suddenly, a massive tentacle rose over the side of the boat. Len’s stomach lurched; he’d forgotten how huge and frightening the damn thing was. But it was on his side…right? It wouldn’t hurt him. He was its master. The hovering tentacle, larger than a ship’s mast, made those probable facts hard to remember. He swallowed hard, tasting bile.
A thud made him jump, but it was just a heavy package being dropped onto the deck. The tentacle slid back down toward the sea, leaving a glistening trail of salty slime behind it on the edge of the hull.
“Uh, thanks!” Len said as the medallion’s eye gave one more eerie swirling movement then blinked closed again, returning to its usual inert and benignly ugly appearance. But he waited until the rubbery appendage had completely vanished before walking slowly toward the dripping mass sitting in the middle of the deck.
“Allow me,” Red said with a purr of satisfaction in his voice. He took his knife and slid it through the black plastic and duct tape as if they were tissue.
As the wrappings fell away, they revealed smaller bundles enclosed in clear plastic. Len stifled a cheer as he spotted the hundred dollar bills on the top of each stack. The kraken had done it! It wasn’t Red’s legendary treasure, but at least it was a start.
“This is what you wanted?” Red said, look at the money with a dubious expression. “It is not very shiny.”
“It’s cash,” Len said, shaking his head. “It’s not supposed to be shiny. But it sure as hell can buy you plenty of shiny things. I’m guessing there’s about twenty, twenty-five thousand there. Not bad for a night’s work.”
Red still seemed less than impressed. “I would have preferred diamonds,” he said. “But if you say this is good, I suppose I believe you. Is it enough to get us a larger ship and men to crew it?”
“You bet,” Len said, picking up the talisman and hanging it back around his neck. He stroked it fondly before he tucked it back under his flannel shirt. “We’re in the pirate business, my friend. Let’s go rent a ship.”