There has been a submarine on this lake for a while now. She comes up somewhere on three kilometres of water, lies there for two or three minutes, throws dive cylinders at aeroplanes, and goes back down. She is on no map and she has no crew. Everybody who has played this game has seen her, and nobody has ever been able to do anything about her.
There is also a barge called Freedom that the water police cannot see into. Twelve divers in a marked box off zandeiland 4. Three yards that will put new paint on a hull and take the hire sticker off, as long as nobody official is watching. A snackbar afloat with four things under the counter that are not food.
All of that was built as flavour. Every single piece of it is evidence, if anybody ever asks a question about it.
Nobody ever asked. Now somebody does.
De flessenlijn
Air tanks are the only weapon in this game. You throw them, they go off, they sink boats. You get them off Paula, or by running down a diver, and in eleven weeks nobody has once wondered where they come from.
They go down full of air off zandeiland 4. Some of them come up full of something else.
You are Kroket, or you are Tubbe, and you are on a hire dinghy with a sticker on it, because that is what nobody looks at twice. Seven missions, in order:
- The first run. A cylinder is waiting in the legakkers and a yard on the Zuwe wants it inside three and a half minutes. Nine kilometres an hour will not get you there, and getting written up ends it.
- Follow the diver. A dive boat leaves the duikzone heavier than it arrived. Stay behind him, not on top of him, not over the horizon. That is Thea's water and she can hear a throttle from the far side of the plas.
- The onderzeeer. Be alongside when she surfaces and stay there. She is up for two or three minutes and she throws cylinders at whatever is on the water when the sky is empty, so she may well throw one at you.
- Under the counter. Paula knows every hull on this water and it will cost you a frikandel speciaal, which is not on her board. You then have forty seconds of nobody booking you for speed, and a crossing that takes about forty seconds.
- The yard. They do not talk to men with clean hulls. Take one that is not yours and have it resprayed at Havenhotel Berger. Thea turns out for a theft personally, and no yard lifts a spray gun while she is watching.
- Freedom. He will only meet where the police cannot see, and there is exactly one such place on this water. Forty seconds in her shadow.
- The slipway. No cover left. The last load is going up the Noordplas and onto a trailer at the boothelling, and you have a kilometre of lake and one throw.
The tour boat is the office
Bootje Kroket has been going round the plassen since the day she was drawn, telling anybody who steps aboard about the peat diggings. She takes you on her deck and tows your own boat behind. She refuses to take anybody with a wanted star on them.
She is, in other words, the only place on this lake where a police officer can stand in the open for ten minutes and be furniture. So that is where your handler works, and the guide with the microphone has been him all along.
Board her clean and after a couple of seconds of the usual patter he gets to the point. The job appears in a card with a button on it. Press it or do not press it. Step off her deck without pressing and the lake is exactly what it always was; board her again next week and the same job is still on the table.
The clock does not start until you are off her, because until then you are on a tow rope, and a mission timer that runs while somebody else is steering is a mission you lose standing still.
Failing costs the mission and nothing else
Run out of clock, get stopped and lectured, sink, or let the boat you were following get where it was going: the job goes back on the table exactly as it was, and the guide offers it again. There is nothing in here you can lock yourself out of, and nothing that ends your run.