Once more I should have felt safe since we were on the fishing boat. The idea was to hide in plain sight. Instead, we simply traded one threat for another. The real Cuban navy gunboats might appear any minute. Even the old Soviet era fighter planes were a possibility. I could only hope that we were under some kind of air umbrella. I had a pretty good idea that the drones were hovering overhead. A drone in international airspace was entirely different from a man with a gun in Cuba. The government of the United States didn't want anything to do with that.

There was one other possibility. Swamp Thing had just kidnapped the doctor and planned to sell him to the highest bidder, which would of course be the United States government. As far as I personally was concerned, the government supported mission was preferable. Those drones and the air umbrella being the only real advantage.

Everyone, except the Doctor and the mission commander, sat huddled along the deck rail. Those two, as well as the Captain of the fishing boat were huddled inside the blacked out pilot house. Thank God it was a warm part of the world. That kind of mission in Alaska would have been a killer.

I stayed on edge for the whole time that we were in the Gulf of Mexico. I took my first full breath when we were pulling into the fishing dock outside of Fort Meyers. I was glad to see land fall, even if it was still dark. The dock had a few of those lights which stay on all night. Those, I suppose, were to try and keep the drunken sailors on the pier as opposed to walking off into the Gulf by accident.

The captain or the Mission commander seemed to have called ahead. There was an unmarked ambulance waiting at the end of the pier. Jason was still hanging on, probably proof that only the good die young.

The Swamp Thing van was right where we had left it. Why wouldn't it be we had been gone less than 24 hours. It seemed like a lot more, but it was actually a quick raid. It hadn't gone without a hitch, but it was at least over and most of us were unharmed.

I hadn't expect what happened next. "Rick, I want you to baby sit our Rocket Scientist." I would have expected the mission commander to have done that personally. I nodded my agreement. The small guy, who had been wrapped in a blanket, came to life as we all stood to leave the boat. The blanket slipped and I realized that the North Korean Scientist wasn't a man at all, but a slightly past middle aged woman.

"I didn't think it was possible, but I like this even less now," Gloria said.

"Don't let your Arab bitch side show. It isn't a pleasant thing to see." I was happy that I could say it without getting my butt kicked. Ghost just don't have a way to cause living people real pain. She might drive me insane, but she lacked a left hook or a trigger finger.

The woman thing came into play every time we stopped for gas or food. The Scientist would ask to use the toilet. Her English wasn't very good, but she spoke a lot more English than I did Korean. From the start I figured that I was chosen, since I was the so called expert on unconventional weapons. All our armament was locked away in the under floor gun safe. It was all licensed and legal we just didn't want or need the attention of four heavily armed men, a woman and a ghost ridding around the south. After the scientist's sex was revealed, I figured it was punishment of some kind.

The real problem with Kim, a name I gave her, was that she had to be accompanied to even public rest rooms. I had to knock on the door to be sure that it was empty. I didn't watch her go but I did check the restroom after she finished. I wanted to make sure she didn't leave one of those, help me I'm being kidnapped, messages scrawled on a mirror in some filthy bathroom. The bathroom ordeal happened five times. Two stops were for gas, three for food of different types.

If we hadn't had Kim in tow, we might have stopped at really nice restaurants even though we wore clothes more suited for fast food joints. We did eat in greasy Mc's once, and in a pancake house once, finally we pulled through a Wendy's for burgers and shakes a final time just a few miles from Swamp Thing's compound.

I had been a little surprised that the CIA or whoever the finally stop for Kim was, hadn't been waiting for us on the dock. I wasn't surprised to see the three black cars with Government plates in the compound. Those kids of cars showed up often in the Swamp Thing compound.

Only the mission commander and Kim went into the office to meet with the Suits. The rest of us went off to bed in the dorm. I was glad to be rid of my charge, but something gnawed at me as well.

"What?" Gloria asked as she sat on the edge of my bed starring at me.

"Kim was entirely too docile. She had to have been in on it."

"If she was in on it why didn't she just walk away, why the kidnapping plot."

"Most of the top people who serve the government are told that their families will be killed if the leave."

"Would they really do that?"

"They have done it many times as a warning to others. Killing them serves no real purpose except to prevent others from defecting."

"So your government made it look like a kidnapping?"

"I think so?"

"So your highly Moral Administration was willing to trade one of theirs for her family?"

"It would seems so."

"Would you have gone if you had known that it was a sham?"

"I did it for the money so of course. It would have been nice to avoid hanging out in ladies rooms all day, but sure I would have done it anyway."