Notes: This story was written entirely for the sheer pleasure of seeing myself as a modern-day pirate and of watching good old Captain Jack stumble and swagger through modern-day Miami. Small debts are owed to the Gerow and Friedman families for taking me out on the Great Lakes to water-ski and dock-hop; a slightly larger debt is also owed to the five-year-olds who christened me "Sarafeena" at a Traverse City resort and then insisted that I tow their inflatable rafts; the rest of the very small debt is owed to Dave Barry, without whose colorful descriptions of Miami and Bimini I wouldn't have thought of this fic.
Soundtrack: "Vanessa Mae the Violin Player" by Vanessa Mae, "Loud Fast and Hard" by the Ramones, and assorted Jimmy Buffet songs.
Sarafeena Detroit tossed the last bale on board the deck of her vessel, the Flying Weasel. Most of her colleagues had to deal with secret compartments, which was a hassle if you forgot to clean out the bilge, because then the merchandise would get wet and ruined. You had to spend most of your profits on pumps and such if you used a secret compartment, especially if your boat was old.
Sarafeena's boat was, in fact, quite old. It wasn't meant for the open sea; the man who she bought it from used it to putter around on the bays of Lake Michigan. But she had fixed it up quite well, and now it was one of the seaworthiest vessels you could find.
Her brisk trade was the envy of her friends. Well…not that she had any friends, but the acquaintances she'd made in the business. While everyone else had to struggle with secret compartments and bribes going through Customs, she used her own methods.
She twisted the throttle. The Weasel's Zodiac engine sputtered to life as she headed out to sea, spraying oily water in her wake.
Captain Jack Sparrow had just woken up. He had a bad hangover, and the first time he saw the tiny boat zipping along like a dolphin, he was sure he was imagining things.
He poked Anna Maria in the ribs. "Hey Anna. Anna!" he whispered hoarsely.
She glared at him. "I'm not steering for you if that's what you're thinking. If you drank all that rum last night you've got no one to blame but yourself."
He shook his head. "S'not that. Look over there."
Anna squinted. "What are you showing me? I don't see…" Her eyes widened. "What in the name of Baron Samedi is that?"
"Looks like a boat." Jack left the wheel and leaned over the edge.
As the strange little boat came into view, he could see…well, he assumed it was the captain. Long brown frizzy hair whipped into dreadlocks by sand and days of not washing, blue denim breeches cut off at the knees and a stained white tunic with the familiar Jolly Roger symbol painted on it in black. Definitely a woman—not surprising, there were plenty of female buccaneers.
What was surprising was her boat. There were no sails and he couldn't see how she was steering it. It was going faster than any boat he'd ever seen before.
Sarafeena was making good time. She had popped her treasured "Jimmy Buffet and the Beatles—Live!" tape into the deck and was singing along with it. She'd picked up a few bottles of Captain Morgan's Spiced Rum and some pistachios at the little general store in Bimini.
"We all live in—" she gulped the liquor "—a yellow submarine. We hate the stupid thing. We—" another gulp "—want to paint it green."
"AHOY!" Sarafeena twisted her head around, trying to figure out where the shout came from.
It was a pirate ship, one of the old ones you usually saw in Disney films and tourist traps. The hull was made of dark, weathered wood, and the sails were black and tattered.
"Shit, not another fucking ghost ship," she muttered. The last time she'd had to deal with something like this was that run-in with the Marie Celeste. Her propensity for pistachio nuts had saved her then; it was a little-known fact that the shells of white pistachios could fend off ghosts.
She checked the plastic bag that sat beside her on the pleather seat of the boat. The pistachios were red. So much for that.
Of course, there was the possibility that it was another one of those tourist boats. But she was in the middle of the 17th century; no tourists there, unless her genius ex-boyfriend Daniel had sold another one of those nifty little temporal displacement devices to an unusually entrepreneurial cruise line. Besides, the ship was creaking and she could see rats. No self-respecting travel agency would stand for rats in their ships.
She squinted back at the ship. "Ahoy yourself. Who the hell are you?"
"Captain Jack Sparrow of the Black Pearl," yelled the raggedy figure standing on the deck. "Who're you, then?"
"Sarafeena Detroit of the Flying Weasel. I'd call myself a captain but I have no crew." She steered the boat closer to the side of the huge ship. "It's great to meet ya, Captain Jack. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a huge shipment of coke to deliver to some Don Johnson wannabe in Biscayne Bay."
"A what-a-what?" The captain looked extremely confused. Sarafeena had to admit that it was a cute look on him.
He was quite an attractive guy, in a sexually ambiguous Keith Richards sort of way. The beaded hair was a very nice bohemian touch, and only the gayest goth would ever dare to smear kohl around their eyes the way this guy did.
It was too bad she couldn't meet men like this every day.
Jack stared at the bottle that Sarafeena had just given him. "S'nice. And you said this is rum?" He took an experimental swig. It wasn't as strong as the rotgut he was used to, but it had a very smooth flavor.
"Sure is," said the lone captainess. "Of course, you can't get it around here."
Jack examined the bottle closely. "And who's the picture of? Looks a little like me, but with nicer clothes."
"A fictional character," Sarafeena explained. "Some ad agency made him up. It's their idea of what a pirate should be like."
"Ad agency, eh? What do they do?" Sarafeena had been explaining futuristic concepts to Jack for several hours. He could grasp the concept of time travel quite easily; it made a lot of sense to him. A lot of what Sarafeena was telling him didn't add up, though.
First, she had attempted to explain her cargo. "You've heard of the coca leaf that the Mayans chew?"
Jack had nodded. "Tried it once."
"Well, this white powder is made from that leaf. You're not allowed to bring it into the country. What you do is you snort a bunch of it up your nose, and you get high." She'd offered Jack some of it. He got the hang of it after a while. Oddly enough, the sensation that the powdered coca brought seemed natural to him. Maybe, he thought, it was from all the rum, or spending too much time in the sun. Then again, it might be because he was Captain Jack Sparrow. Yes, he liked that explanation best.
"In the future," Sarafeena had gone on, "America is a country that guards her borders very closely. The border starts at Florida, where there's a city called Miami. There are a lot of people there who would pay a lot of money for some of this stuff. But the border guards inspect all the ships to make sure they're not bringing in any of this stuff."
She held up an interesting device. "This sends my boat back to this time. There aren't any border guards here, so I can sail into Biscayne Bay and then send it back into the future."
"So you make this stuff yourself, do you?" Jack wondered if she'd share the recipe.
Sarafeena shook her head. "No. There's a Colombian guy who makes it. I pick it up there, stop over in the Bahamas, and then take it to Florida."
Jack had her draw a map to show him the route. "So how d'you make money off this?"
Sarafeena grinned. "That's the fun part. The guy in Florida gives me some money. Half of it's for me for taking it to him, and the other half is to pay the guy that makes it. When I give the money to the guy that makes it, he gives me half of his share for delivering it." She leaned back with a smug smile. "I get three-quarters of the money. Pretty neat, eh?"
She had to repeat it a few times before Jack could quite grasp the mathematics of the situation (numbers had never been his strong suit) but it sounded like a pretty good idea to him.
