i The Privateer Clause The Privateer Clause Danger lurks on every cruise! Marsha & Danny Jones Thriller Ken Rossignol ii Second Edition Edited by Robert W. Walker Copyright © 2010 - 2016 Kenneth C. Rossignol Huggins Point Publishing LLC All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author. The characters in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead is coincidental and not intended by the author. iii THE PRIVATEER CLAUSE is dedicated to Donna THANKS FOR PICKING UP THE FIRST BOOK IN THE MARSHA & DANNY JONES THRILLERS --- As a special gift to you, please add your name to my VIP Reader Group for Bonus books and Free Giveaway Drawings of Kindle Paperwhites & Fires. Enter your first drawing at this link and click on RETURN OF THE SEA EMPRESS below to Download the next book in the series FREE! www.ThePrivateerClause.com v For Devices using the Kindle app: http://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle For the Nook app: http://www.barkingrainpress.org/faqs/load-epub- nook/ For Kobo: http://www.ucg.org/help/how-add-ebook-epub-or-pdf-kobo- ereader/ HOW TO SEND A MOBI OR PDF FILE TO YOUR KINDLE OR APP: • Use the USB cable that came with your device and connect it to your computer to transfer the file. You may need to refer to your paperwork or the company website for directions specific to your device. • Email the file to your Kindle email address. Don’t have one yet? No problem. Set it up here – you may need to scroll toward the bottom of the page. Now available in ebook, Audible and paperback the next five books in the Marsha & Danny Jones Thrillers: The Return of the Sea Empress Follow Titanic Follow Triangle – Vanish Cruise Killer BEHEADED – Terror By Land, Sea & Air BOOKS SEVEN THRU NINE COMING IN FALL 2016 …AND now with no further adieu…except for a brief introduction… "Ken Rossignol's Marsha and Danny Joins shipboard suspense series provide us insights into the inner circles of both the industry and security measures of major cruise ships as well as a rip-roaring, non-stop conflict and resolution. Rossignol keeps the reader's neck on the chopping block and fingers flipping pages." -- Robert W. Walker, author of Titanic 2012 & Bismarck 2013. www.RobertWalkerbooks.com Chapter One The day the Sea Empress was brought into port in Hampton Roads for dry-dock, the crew was happy it was late in the evening as the Seven Seas Company would have to pay to put them up in a hotel. This all before being bused to the airport for transfer to their new assignments. By the time that Sea Empress was cut in two, had a new section installed, and was refurbished, 9 months would pass and few of them would return to their old jobs. The chief engineer, the cranky Scotty O’Neil, would stay with the ship as the company’s representative, to examine every facet of the task of ripping apart a 10-year-old cruise ship and adding a new section to let it compete with newer ships by adding amenities and another 1,000 passengers on every voyage. The long trip from the Atlantic into the Norfolk harbor took the illustrious cruise liner, once the pride of the Seven Seas Company, past the aircraft carriers USS Reagan and USS Nimitz, one named for the architect of American sea power that defeated the Japanese in WWII, and the other for the U.S. President that restored American dominance in the oceans with a 600 ship Navy 40 years later. The Sea Empress would soon once again be among the top ships of the Seven Seas fleet of cruise ships. The lengthening and refurbishment of the Sea Empress would boast new specialty restaurants, special surfing, golf and skeet shooting ranges adding to many new fitness and fun options for the liner. But the new rigging of electronics, power and navigational aids were the responsibilities of O’Neil, who was more than concerned about the ability of the Virginia shipyard to do the work that should have been done by the shipyard in Norway, which originally built the beautiful vessel in 1998. The Seven Seas Company was trying to put as many liners to work as possible since they had perfected the winning formula for sea adventures and were quickly racking up customer loyalty percentages that had been unheard of in the industry. In fact, the customer base for Sea Empress was among the best of their fleet of 32 ships. When the Sea Empress was finished, she would be re-christened by the First Lady of the United States, Lydia Bryan, as the Seven Seas Chairman Fred Barton was an old friend and political ally of President John Hanson Bryan, and the new president was clearly trying to do all he 1 The Privateer Clause could to rebuild the industrial base of America, which included re- invigorating the ship building industry—an important part of his plan to achieve his presidential goals. As the U. S. steel industry began to rebound in 2007, just prior to the near depression of 2008, so had the shipyards, even though they were now increasingly being bought by foreign companies. But the new Bryan Administration was happy to get the jobs and stop the hemorrhaging of the foreign trade deficit. The President, if he could add jobs then he didn’t mind who owned the companies as along as Americans were working. While Chief Engineer O’Neil watched from the bridge, the Norfolk pilot was directing the bridge crew on how to navigate to the dry-dock at Hampton Roads, and the large cruise ship was gently slipping into the waiting grasp of what would become its landing for the next year and a half. The shipyard authorities were eager for the project to start, and an army of men and warehoused materials had been assembled to start work the very next day. From an engineering standpoint, as the ship was already 962 feet long, the mission to add another 200 feet to the Sea Empress was achievable but more ambitious than previous projects to stretch a ship. Month after month, as the seasons changed and even the skyline in Norfolk and Hampton Roads began to take on a different appearance, the gleaming new Sea Empress began to take shape. Scotty O’Neil was there every day to make sure welding, bolts, steel plating and cables were placed and attached as called for in the blueprints with Scotty keeping a sharp eye for contractor shortcuts. Scotty caught plenty of shady deals on non-specification materials and stopped them in their tracks, each time causing the shipyard to be penalized under the contract. As much as the Seven Seas Company loved Scotty, the Virginia Shipyard Ltd hated him. VSL had someone following Scotty around every day, equipped with a direct line to their naval architects, engineers and their attorneys. After filing his reports to the Seven Seas Company, O’Neil was picked up at the shipyard each day at 7pm for the trip back to his hotel by a special detachment of Black & Perkins Security. The former Special Forces operatives of Black & Perkins protected the engineer around the clock at a cost of $1550 an hour for each of the four man guard. The nearly $2,000,000 cost of security could turn out to be a 2 very small part of the contracted $350 million renovation of the Sea Empress. But, it could be the most important cost item by ensuring the safety of the man who insured the integrity of the contracted work and kept track of the materials being installed as agreed with no substitutions. It was about three months into the refurbishment that the huge ship had been cut apart and the new section which had already been built in advance was slid into the gap, and the process of melding it into the center of the ship began. Scotty was lifted on a cherry picker to see deep into the bowels of the ship. He was lowered by a boom and used scaffolding to climb so he could peer into every detail of how the huge ship was united. Giant bolts, huge plates of steel, welding, and more, using the latest computer assisted design and construction known to the ship building industry, the VSL put to work the expertise that they had gained from construction and repair of Navy vessels to the Sea Empress, a project that they hoped would be the first of a rebirth of American shipyard construction. The project came about at a heavy cost to the taxpayers in the form of tax incentives to VSL. The firm reaped millions in tax credits for landing the contract with the international cruise line and all of the politicians stood in line to take credit for what the new Bryan Administration had pushed and prodded through a reluctant Democratically controlled Congress. The left-wing Democrats had yelped for years about tax cuts for business, and now that they were calling the shots, they couldn’t find anyone around capable of competing with foreign industry to employ skilled tradesmen. That is except for the businesses that they once pilloried during elections. While the Democrats had talked a big game of wanting to return high paying jobs to American workers, they didn’t like the idea of voting for tax credits for American shipyards.