Red Paint

by Valerie Van Clieaf

  “What if they put them ashore at the plant? It’s probably too late already and we’re wasting our time!”

  Alex didn’t answer. He was thinking, and not just about what a piss-poor officer this guy was. Victims of sex trafficking were often the poorest of the poor. Too often, they were women of colour and Indigenous women, like the mothers and aunties, sisters, and daughters of half the people in the town he was sworn to protect.

  The ship appeared below them.

  “Here we go,” said Alex. We’re looking for activity near the lifeboats.”

  “I think we’re wasting our time,” McGee mumbled. Alex turned in his chair and looked at him. McGee raised his binoculars.

  They didn’t see any activity near any of the lifeboats on the first pass.

  “Let’s try the other side,” said Alex. Jim headed out over the sea behind the ship and circled back.”

  “Keep us here for a few minutes,” said Alex. “Not too long. If the captain is turning up the Skeena River, it’ll happen soon.”

  “Roger that.” Without the ship as a visual anchor, the copter was once again a tin can adrift. The night vision lamps cast their garish light, creating a claustrophobic, shifting, red-orange universe that hugged the copter like a second skin. Alex concentrated on the churning sea below them, their only visual anchor. McGee groaned a few times, but he managed to hold onto what remained in his stomach.

  “It looks like the captain has entered the Skeena River,” said Jim. “I’ll take us back to the ship.”

  “I should have mentioned that there’s a bad patch along the coastline not far beyond the northeast tip of De Horsey Island,” said McGee. “A stretch of submerged rock, even in low tide. The boys and I were out fishing in the channel last fall. Ran into a little trouble there.”

  “What’s the bad patch called?” Alex asked.

  “Don’t know that it has a name.”

  “Nothing showing on the map,” said Alex.

  “There’s a buoy marking it,” said McGee. “We’d been partying a bit, so we missed the buoy. We were lucky though; we got clear before any real harm was done.”

  “How close to shore is the bad patch? said the pilot.

  “Pretty close. About twenty meters.”

  “We need to make sure that Harvest hasn’t run aground,” said Alex. “How close are we?”

  “The ship’s just ahead; the captain seems to be sailing a little closer to shore now.”

  “I just caught a glimpse of the coastline.”

  “I’ll follow it around,” said Jim. “And it looks like the rain is turning to sleet.”

  “That won’t ground us?”

  “No. I can work with sleet. It doesn’t stick to the rotors. An ice storm is different and can cause serious problems for us. That would ground us. I wouldn’t have a choice.”

  “Understood. Radio the Tanu and give Captain Meighan our position.”

  Jim radioed Meighan.

  “We’re close by,” said Meighan. “On the waterway heading up the Skeena, just under a mile from you. I’ve got you on the scanner.

  “And there’s Harvest!” yelled Jim.

  “I see it,” said Alex.

  Jim banked right and dropped lower.

  “Captain, is Sergeant Kwan with you?” asked Alex.

  “Kwan here.”

  “Kwan, we’re going in now to look for lifeboat activity on Harvest.”

  “Copy that.”

  “The Inspector’s copter was in touch a few minutes ago. Still no sign of the trucks on Highway 16.”

  “Copy that,” said Kwan. “Could mean the women are still on board.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking,” said Alex. “Just to warn you: I’ve got a corporal with me who has personal experience of a bad patch of submerged rock, off the main coastline, about twenty meters from the shore, a little north of De Horsey Island. It’s not on the map, but he says it’s marked with a buoy. Harvest might miss the buoy in this weather.”

  “Copy that.”

  Captain Meighan spoke: “We won’t be coming in that close.”

  Jim brought the copter along the port side of the ship. “I saw a flash of light in the window of the first lifeboat at the bow.”

  “No men visible near that boat. It didn’t look like it was free of its cradle. There’s activity around the lifeboat at midsection,” said Alex. “Two men. Not doing anything.”

  “Was it swinging free?”

  “No.”

  Kwan’s voice filled the cabin. “Desocarras, how many men do you count on board Harvest?”

  “Seven, but that can’t be all of them. It’s a big ship.” The pilot swung out over the coastline and circled back to the ship, coming up beside it from behind once again. The copter was about ten meters above the water and was just pulling abreast of the ship.

  “I see lights on in the mid-ship lifeboat!” said McGee.

  “Kwan, we’ve had some activity near two lifeboats on the port side: bow and amidships.”

  “Copy that.”

  “You hear that,” said McGee. That horrible screeching sound!” McGee had taken off his headphones and was listening.

  “I hear it,” said the pilot, lifting one headphone off an ear. “Sounds like Harvest has run into some rock.”

  “No kidding,” said Alex. “Get behind the ship and stay close.”

  “Roger that,” said Jim. He switched the radio frequency to the distress band and dropped behind the ship.

  They listened as the screeching continued for another full minute, then suddenly stopped.

  “No distress call yet,” said Jim.

  They waited a few more minutes.

  “Still nothing,” said Jim. “Ship must be okay.”

  “Take us out to the Tanu,” said Alex. “The captain won’t put the lifeboats in the water with us so close.”

  Chapter 20

  The hysterical voice of Captain Donaldson crackled over the short-wave radio in Jonas Cartwright’s cabin.

  “This is the stupidest thing you’ve ever made me do! You want me to follow the shoreline. I can’t see the goddamn shoreline! How the hell am I supposed to follow it! I need my AIS! Give it back to me! Now!”

  “I can hardly give it back to you now,” said Kirigin. “How would you explain your presence out on the water in the middle of a storm when you’ve already reported that your AIS is down? Anyway, you’ve got your radar and I’m guiding you.”

  “You’re risking losing the ship and the life of everyone on it!” The captain was interrupted by a piercing screech that continued without letup. “Do you hear that!” he wailed. “I’m up against rock. Radar doesn’t give me any warning of submerged rock and my online system has to be right on top of it to spot it for chrissakes!” Other voices could be heard yelling midst the screeching din. There was a scuffle and it sounded like someone had taken a fall.

  “Captain are you still there?” asked Severall. No reply.

  “Are you okay? Answer me now!” yelled Kirigin. Nothing.

  “That’s enough Greg! It sounds like the ship is in real trouble!”

  The two men leaned into the receiver, listening intently. After a few minutes, the screeching stopped as abruptly as it had begun. It sounded like someone was righting a chair. Then a voice, not the Captain’s, could be heard reporting that the hull hadn’t been breached. Kirigin rolled his eyes and opened his mouth to comment when Severall raised a hand to silence him.

  “Enough, Greg,” he hissed. To the captain: “It sounds like you’re out of danger captain. Don’t worry. Greg will get you where you need to go. You must be awfully close. I understand the buoy is impossible to miss. Once you reach it, you can hand the women over to the smaller boats and take shelter with your crew until the storm has passed.”

  “Don’t interfere, Eric,” said Kirigin, petulantly.

  “I said enough! The captain’s no good to us if he’s terrified, which
he must be. Equally obvious, the ship’s no good to us at the bottom of the strait!”

  “I know what I’m doing!”

  “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” yelled the captain. “There was no sign of a warning buoy anywhere. Not that I could see it in this friggin’ storm.”

  “It’s obvious you missed it,” sneered Kirigin. “Which is why you didn’t avoid the rocky section you just scraped past. And yes, I know what I’m doing, and if you want to keep your job, you’ll remember that.”

  Severall held up a hand to Kirigin in warning. “Captain, what about the fishing boats? They’re sailing down the coastline toward you. Can you see them?”

  The captain conferred with someone. “Radar hasn’t picked them up. They can’t be in the water yet. The only thing I see is fleeting glimpses of forest, sometimes right down to the shoreline. When I can see the shore!”

  “You’re not going ashore!” yelled Kirigin.

  “I know that!” the captain yelled back.

  Then Kirigin had an idea. “Stay by the receiver. I’ll call you back.” He radioed Cartwright who was on one of the fishing boats and asked where the boats were in relation to the warning buoy. Getting the information he needed, he radioed the captain. It was a full minute before he picked up.

  “Where the hell were you?” Kirigin demanded.

  “Checking on the damage to the hull! I needed to see for myself.”

  “Of course, as well you should,” Severall soothed.

  “Cartwright said the fishing schooners just put in the water,” said Kirigin. “Are the women in the lifeboats?”

  “Not yet.”

  “They’re not ready?”

  “We’d just started moving them from the containers to the lifeboats when we hit the rocks!”

  “You did take much longer than expected to get there,” said Kirigin.

  “Maybe you haven’t noticed the storm! How the hell am I supposed to safely offload in this weather? And it doesn’t help that you’ve been moving my ship around like it was a fucking puppet!”

  Before Kirigin could retort, Severall interjected: “You’d best insure they’re all wearing life jackets. Just in case.”

  “I only have 50 jackets! I need 20 for me and my men!”

  Kirigin cut in. “You’ll be putting them in lifeboats.”

  “Well I wasn’t planning on dropping them over the side!”

  “They won’t be needing life jackets then. They’ll be in boats. Tell them to hold on to each other.”

  “What language would you suggest I use? Most of them don’t speak English, or had you forgotten.”

  “They’ll figure it out if they want to survive.”

  “If any of them are swept overboard during the transfer, we’ll not be going in after them and it’ll be on your head!”

  “Just get on with it, and make sure you’re ready for Cartwright and his men.”

  “I still haven’t seen the bonus you promised me!”

  “You’ll get your bonus,” Severall assured him.

  “As soon as we have word that the women are on shore and loaded into the trucks,” added Kirigin.

  “That wasn’t what we agreed on!”

  “It is now. Make it happen.”

  “Wait, Kirigin. Before you hang up. I might have to delay putting the women in the boats and transferring them.”

  “Why?”

  “There’s a rescue helicopter in the area, searching for a boat that might be in trouble. They radioed me ten minutes ago to ask if I’d seen it. They’re searching the waters on either side of us now.” His words were met with silence from the other end.

  “Kirigin? You there?” Kirigin and Severall exchanged a glance. Kirigin spoke first.

  “There was no distress call on the marine band. I would have heard it.”

  “I don’t think the boat put out a distress call. The family called in Search and Rescue when the boat didn’t make it to port.”

  “Wouldn’t Search and Rescue have a boat nearby?” Severall asked.

  The captain had a brief discussion with someone. “There’s a few boats in the vicinity. One is a small fishing boat; they’re behind us, probably trying to get to shore and there’s a larger vessel about a mile from us; that might be SAR.”

  Kirigin pulled up a window with shiptracker.live. “CG Tanu is about a mile from you. I don’t like them being so close.

  “Neither do I,” said Severall. “Where are the women?”

  “Two containers have been emptied and those women are in one of the lifeboats. All hell broke loose when two of them tried to jump ship. One of them nearly took a man over the side with her. We were just about to empty the other containers when we ran into the rocks.”

  “Any more casualties?” Kirigin asked.

  “Not since Seattle.”

  “Well there’s that at least,” said Severall. “The Coast Guard is too far away to see what you’re doing. As soon as the helicopter is gone, get the rest of the women ready.”

  The back door of the cabin burst open, and Severall entered with an armload of wood. He tried to close the door with one shoulder. Cursing, he hooked one foot around the bottom of it and managed to get it halfway closed, then walked it back, pushing hard to get it to close. He carried the wood to the stove in the kitchen area and dumped it with a loud clattering on the floor. Kirigin was on the short wave with Cartwright discussing how best to offload the women. Severall listened as Kirigin cautioned Cartwright that several of the women had tried to jump overboard.

  “The rain has turned to sleet and it’s going to make the transfer next to impossible on open water. If we bring the lifeboats to shore, it will be much simpler and a hell of a lot less risky, a simple transfer from the boats to the boxes on the trucks. We can control the exchange on land with a lot more precision.”

  “Two lifeboats coming to shore. seventy-three women being herded off and loaded onto trucks. What if someone sees them? I say no! I didn’t like the idea before, and I don’t like it now.”

  “We don’t have much choice. Heavy rain is one thing, but no one saw sleet coming. It changes everything.”

  “I think we should listen to Jonas,” said Severall.

  “Believe me Greg,” said Cartwright. No one is out in this weather. It’s the worst storm I’ve seen in years! If the ground temperature drops to zero, we’ll be dealing with an ice storm. I’m telling you we’ll be up against it, and not in a way we can work with! We’d have to find a place to stash the women for a few days and I sure as hell don’t know of one!” The normally patient Cartwright was losing it.

  Kirigin raised his hands in disgust. Severall jumped in. “What do you suggest, Jonas?”

  “A friend of mine has a private dock near Haysport, not far from where we are now. Perfectly safe, somewhat secluded. The dock is a little short, but there’s enough room to manoeuvre. It’ll take a little longer but will be a helluva lot easier. We’ll unload one lifeboat at a time, and we’ll get it done.”

  “The storm has gotten a lot worse,” said Severall. “I can vouch for that.” When he went out back to fetch the wood, he hadn’t bothered to put on the mackinaw that Cartwright kept hanging by the back door. “Just look at my coat. I’m soaked to the skin and I was only out there for a few minutes. I suggest we listen to Jonas. Bringing the women to shore will be easier, safer, and much quicker. For chrissakes, Greg! We need to get this done and over with!”

  A silent Kirigin examined his map. “Where are the trucks?”

  “They’re parked on a logging road adjacent to Skeena Drive, waiting for the word to move.” When Kirigin didn’t answer, Cartwright pressed his advantage. “We need to get those women ashore and loaded. If the storm turns to ice, those trucks won’t be going anywhere!”

  “Okay,” said Kirigin. “What are the coordinates for the place?” Cartwright gave him the address and the coordinates.

  “My buddy’s out of to
wn so the gate’ll be locked. It’s not much of a lock. The drivers will be able to deal with it. We’ll head to his property now, and I’ll put ashore with my crew. We’ll be ready for the lifeboats when they get there.”

  “Is there enough room for the truckers to pull in and turn around once they’re loaded?

  “They’re experienced long haul drivers. They’ll figure it out.”

  “Okay,” said Kirigin reluctantly. “I agree to the change.” He ended the call.

  “It’ll all be fine, Greg, you’ll see,” said Severall. “We couldn’t have anticipated the storm would be this bad. I’d say Jonas is demonstrating he has what it takes to run things up here, wouldn’t you?” Kirigin shrugged. “I’m telling you; he won’t rest till those women have been delivered.”

  “Yeah. He’s surprisingly good,” said Kirigin. He moved to the shortwave and radioed Donaldson to give him the change in plan. “But Rory. That man’s an asshole! Look at the latest from him.” He pulled it up and held out his phone so Severall could read it.

  “All operations successful. Will advise when job is completed,” read Severall. “Looks like good news to me.”

  “It’s been over an hour since I got this!”

  “But the important thing is that everything in Vancouver is going according to plan. And that’s one less thing for us to concern ourselves with.”

  Kirigin frowned. The storm raged against the only window in the main room and rattled the back door on its hinges. He’d taken off his jacket earlier. “Why isn’t Donaldson answering?” He shivered involuntarily. “It’s getting cold in here.”

  “I was just about to take care of that,” said Severall, heading to the pile of wood he’d dumped at the stove.

  The front door opened. Cartwright’s men entered, pushing Robbie and Levon ahead of them.

  “What’s this then?” said Severall, looking up from the pile of wood beside the stove.

  “These are the punks that were at the entrance to the plant,” said one of the guys. They pushed Robbie and Levon further into the room. Robbie managed to stay upright but Levon stumbled and fell to his hands and knees. Captain forgotten, Kirigin strode over to Levon and hauled him to his feet. They stood nose to nose; Kirigin, livid with rage; Levon, petrified.