by Tim Junkin
Byron shook his head. “We ain’t takin’ it back out to the river.”
Clay was silent.
“Hey, partner. You know, we could go north. Figure out a way to sell it?” Byron shrugged.
“How much you had?”
Byron sniffed. “Just a taste. I’m fine. It’s pure. Lethal. Once cut, it will increase to ten times the powder.” He paused. “Hell, this right here’s probably worth enough to buy back Pecks from the bank and then some.”
Clay wiped his hand off on his jeans. He looked at the plastic packages, so heavily wrapped. Then he let his gaze sweep down the creek and out over the gleaming bay. He thought about Pecks, and about Kate and how he could be so close. He looked back at Byron. Then he shook his head. “We’ve got to get to a phone and call the police.”
Byron sagged, sitting on the rail, holding the package tight against him.
“You’re not thinking, Byron.” Clay spoke quietly and firmly. “These guys’ll chase it. Wherever it goes. This is heavy shit.”
“Could ask Mac Longley to help us. He’s still runnin’ it. It’d bring a pile a money.”
“My guess is Mac Longley’s a part of this.”
“Longley? Come on, Clay. That’s a stretch, ain’t it?”
“How did Longley know I talked to Brigman about working for him?”
“I don’t know. So?”
“I think I saw Brigman at the bull roast.”
“Here?”
“He was talking to Matty’s coke source. Guy with a ponytail and earring. Deals out of a crab loading dock. Get this: the business is called Indigo Seafood.”
“Indigo Seafood? Get out. No shit?” Byron shuddered.
“You said yourself it was a network.”
“Longley said it, not me.” But Byron wasn’t convinced. He held the package close. “We could still keep it. Sell it ourselves.”
“Money’s not what we’ve been after, Byron. Least not first off.”
“They won’t know who’s got it. Not for sure.”
“Of course they will. Take ’em two seconds. Why you think they wanted us out of here so bad?”
Byron shook his head, like he didn’t want to hear.
“Amos Pickett’s bad business, Byron. And he and the whole lot will be after us. Wherever we go. If I’m right, and Brigman’s with him, they’ll have people up and down the shore. We don’t know the extent of it, but it’s there. Christ. The chances of us dealing with them and survivin’ are about zero.” He spoke slowly, choosing his words. “And even if we could handle ’em, then we’d have to turn into a Mac Longley, or worse. Selling dope. Being drug dealers. I’m not ready for that. I don’t think you are, either.”
Byron heard him, though it was still hard to let go. “What if we can’t even prove whose it is? To the cops, I mean.”
Clay pulled the dock lines, bringing the bateau against the wharf. “The police’ll get it. They’ll believe us. And no one will have any reason to be coming after us. And even so. Losing this”—he motioned at the bags—“this here’s enough to hurt them plenty.” He climbed out of the bateau. “C’mon. We’ll use the phone outside the restaurant. I’ve got a dime.”
Byron still resisted. “I ain’t sure mixin’ this up with the cops is the right move for us.”
“We need to make the call,” Clay said. “Together. We need to decide this. We aren’t drug dealers.”
Byron sat still. Neither said anything. They just watched each other. Then Byron said, “I suppose we ain’t. Drug dealers, I mean.”
“No sir.”
“Just somethin’ else.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“What?”
“I see us more than ‘just something else.’”
“What?”
“I’m not sure. Just more, that’s all.”
Byron stood up.
Clay continued. “Nothing just average about being a waterman. Living independent. Feeding folks. I’d say that’s more than ‘just something else.’”
“And partners.”
“That too. Though your partner is someone who himself is falling right now.”
Byron caught the break in Clay’s voice. In his bruised eyes. “Hold on,” he said. He put the package down and climbed out of the Miss Sarah. “I’m coming. Let’s make the call.”
Halfway across the parking lot, Clay heard the sound of a car engine. He recognized the headlights of Kate’s Volvo coming up the gravel drive. They waited, watching it pull into the parking area. She got out and ran over to Clay, who was walking toward her.
“Clay,” she gasped. “Oh, Clay.” She threw her arms around him. “I’m so sorry about what happened.” She stepped back to look at his face and grabbed Byron’s hands. “Byron, what’s going on here?”
“Where is Matty?” Clay said.
Kate shut her eyes. “Oh, Clay, I’m sorry.” She opened them and looked at him. “He had a fight with his father and came back early. I couldn’t tell him. Not yet. I didn’t know what to say. I told him I thought Byron was in trouble and that I’d be right back. I promised him. I should only stay a minute.”
Clay kicked at some gravel. “You better go on, then.”
“But what’s going on here? Please tell me.” She seemed about to cry.
Clay started to try to explain. But then he heard another engine and looked down toward the road. This time it was a truck he saw coming. Up from the Pepper Creek turnoff. A pickup. In the moonlight he could see the silhouettes of at least two men in the back, standing as the truck moved across the flats. They had rifles or shotguns pointed in the air. He knew it was Pickett’s truck. There was no way past them.
“In the bateau!” he shouted at Byron, taking Kate’s arm and running her back with him to the Miss Sarah. “They’ve got guns.”
Byron saw the truck and was running behind them. Kate kept turning and asking what was happening. They got her on board and followed behind her. “Hold on,” Clay told her. In seconds he had the engine started and Byron had the lines off. Byron pushed against the piling, and Clay backed the bateau up quickly, to give him enough room to turn, and then shoved her into forward and gunned the engine. He watched behind him, over the bateau’s stern, as the pickup came up the lane and into the parking lot, spewing dust and gravel behind it. Two men jumped out of the back, and two others from the front. Running toward the dock, one raised his gun. Clay saw the man had a ponytail. He grabbed Kate and pushed her down, but then he heard somebody yell to put the gun up. “Out of range!” the man shouted.
Clay saw them talking. One of the men remained on the dock with what Clay figured must be a shotgun. The others got back in the truck. The headlights from the pickup swung out and away from the parking lot. At the end of the drive the truck turned toward Pepper Creek. Byron stepped close. Clay had eased her back to midthrottle. The creek was too narrow and shallow off the channel to risk going faster. He knew, though, that in a matter of minutes, the larger and faster Vena Lee would be pushing out of the mouth of Pepper Creek. She could get into Mobjack Bay as fast as he could. She wouldn’t be far behind him.
“They must’ve come right after me,” Byron said.
“Figures they wouldn’t let this stuff sit in the river for long.”
“You could swim her ashore here,” Byron offered. “I’ll make ’em chase me clear to Easton.”
Clay studied the marsh along the shoreline. “Too risky, Buck. In this light. With guns and a truck. They’ll be hunting for us. Truck’ll probably follow us down the creek. We’d probably get stuck. Up to our knees. And even so there’s nowhere to hide or run to. If they spotted us, we’d be done.”
He looked forward and saw that Kate, sitting on the washboard, was shaking. Clay asked Byron to take the tiller and, once past the red markers, to head straight for the black spar blinking a three-second green and then to the southwest mark off the lighthouse. He went over and put his arm around Kate. He took her inside the cabin and talked to her, tryin
g to calm her. He started to tell her what had happened.
She interrupted him: “Why don’t we just swim for it?”
Clay thought he heard something and wheeled and looked across the flats, west toward Pepper Creek. He couldn’t see Pickett’s workboat yet. But the lights from the truck were running back toward them, down the creek road.
“They got a pickup, guns, radios, and it’s dark. And they’re looking for us. I don’t like the odds if we jump. They’ll hunt us down. They have to. We know too much now.”
“What?”
“It’s over drugs. It’s a drug operation. Cocaine.”
“Oh, my God.” Kate wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her shirt.
She already knew about Amos Pickett and the cut pots and the damage to the boat. Clay tried to tell her the rest calmly. He walked her aft and showed her the drugs. “Smart operation, really,” he said. “Avoids customs or deck searches. Ocean trawler smuggles the stuff in crab pots. Inside U.S. waters, another boat gets in sight, they throw the pots in the ocean. Note their location. Foolproof.”
Kate reached down and touched one of the packages. She lifted it, feeling its weight. “This is a lot, isn’t it?” she said.
Clay nodded as she set the package down. “Once in the Bay, the trawler drops them up here and Pickett picks ’em up. He’s a crabber. Who would suspect? Moves it to a seafood wholesaler. Brigman, I think. Indigo Seafood. Christ.”
Kate looked startled. “Brigman? From the sailboat?”
Clay let out a deep breath. “I think. Probably moves it in seafood trucks. Or cars. Or his yacht. That would be good cover too.”
Kate seemed to be trying to take all this in.
“That’s why he wants the seafood operation at Pecks, I suspect. A Maryland base. And it’s an all-cash business.”
“My God, Clay.”
“I know.”
“What’s going to happen?”
Clay took her shoulders. “Get you safe, first of all. And then get me and Byron out of this. Get to the police.”
She shut her eyes, took a breath, and opened them. “And then?” She spoke quietly, looking at him.
Clay started to speak, but Kate put her hand over his mouth. “Don’t say anything now.” She took her hand away, studying his face. “Just know I meant every word I said to you,” she said. “Everything I told you is true.”
Clay knew he heard something this time and turned. He saw the reflection of a spotlight back over the marsh spit and knew it was them and knew they were coming. He listened harder and heard the motor, faint in the distance. Before he reached the island and the opening to the Bay, before he found a cut or swash to hide in, Pickett would be behind him and would have him in sight.
Clay turned back and reached over and touched her damp cheek. As he did so, he felt the gradual veer of the hull as they neared the eastern shoal guarding Davis Creek and Byron began angling toward the stone lighthouse in the mouth of Mobjack out beyond. As they slowly turned, Clay saw the spotlight already out of Pepper Creek to the west behind them. Pickett’s boat was less than a mile away. He nodded to Byron, who levered the throttle down. He looked back at Kate and saw the tears holding in the corners of her eyes and her fighting them back. He brushed each one with his thumb and kissed her lightly, then rose back up and looked.
“I’ll get us out of this, Kate.” He looked back at the spotlight. “This problem here. One way or another. Then we’ll work on these other things.”
He led her back to the controls, the engine straining as the Miss Sarah sliced through the waters of Mobjack Bay, heading east for the mouth. Taking the tiller, Clay looked at the clear sky and took the measure of the bright night. He had easily seen the shining white of the boats moored along the creek and now saw the water shimmering out in the Bay. Even the marsh flats alongshore reflected the moonlight. The darkness wasn’t deep enough to shroud them, even without running lights. The stars were faint, but Clay found the Dipper’s handle off the horizon to the west. Four or five hours left till dawn. The moon would not set first. Shadowed against the sandbanks, the floating spartina revealed an ebb tide that would bottom sometime after sunrise. He considered these things against where they were as he listened to the second engine drumming. It was coming. And he knew there was no meeting it and surviving.
Pickett’s boat ran without lights but periodically shone its spot in their direction. Clay asked Byron to check their fuel. One tank was half empty; the other full. That was good news. He studied their pursuer. He had sized up the boat before. He knew it was fast, slightly faster even than the bateau. It would take a while, though. Pickett would be surprised at the speed of the Miss Sarah. But the Vena Lee would creep closer. A good hour—maybe an hour and a half, Clay gauged. That’s what it would take for them to catch him, to get within a shotgun’s range. Somehow he had to keep from being overtaken, at least until Byron and Kate were safe. Or if only he could make it to home waters. Then he knew he could lose them.
They ran the mouth of Mobjack Bay, the blinking red southwest marker approaching close on their port side, the black-and-white nuns way off to their right, the silence of the great estuary around them broken by the hammering engines of the two workboats, one leading the other, and by the sound of the wash off their hulls and of the waves breaking in their wakes. An osprey, startled at the intrusion, left her nest atop the red buoy and circled, screaming, overhead, her shadow large under the moonlight on the water. She came around three times before settling back behind them on her nest. Clay heard her again moments later, upset by the boat behind them. She circled and cried out until finally quieting down in the receding distance of Mobjack Bay. They pushed on. The drum of the bateau’s cylinders filled the air as she pushed with all of her power, and behind her the more distant hum echoed over the water. Ahead the pulsing moon glowed over a vast silver plain, the blinking green and red lights marking the horizons in the distance, clear and true, markers of the deeper, safer waters. Clay took note of the slight breeze and kept constant watch of the steadily gaining Vena Lee.
He asked Byron to open the engine box. Byron knew what he was thinking and found some twine. Opening the lid to the engine box, he tied the carburetor throttle back as tight as possible to maximize the engine’s power.
“Byron,” Clay said.
“I’m sorry about this, Clay.”
“Yeah. Well, what’s done is done. Forget it. I should’ve figured it out before. Hell. Who was to know?”
“How would anybody know?”
“You keep a hand check on the engine. Every ten minutes or so. Make sure she isn’t running too hot.”
“I will.”
“You got any heavy weights in that tackle box of yours?”
“A few.”
“Weigh those buoys on the crab pots down. I want them as low in the water and hard to spot as we can make ’em.”
Clay turned to Kate. “Look in the drawers up in the cabin—dark pens, markers, anything like that.”
She hesitated, uncertain. Then she went forward and started searching.
Clay thought for a moment and opened the stern hatch. Inside the toolbox he found some black electrical tape. He called to Kate to come back. “Wind the tape around those buoys Byron is weighing down. Make ’em look black.” She didn’t ask why, just began to work. Clay wanted to get out where the swells from the south might help, but not too far, and then slow them down with the buoys. The shoreline was his best hope, he thought. The shallows. He drew less water. He’d run for it then.
“Byron.”
“Yeah, Clay.”
“When you’re done, unravel each buoy line. When the time comes, I want all the pots over at once.”
“You’re gonna tangle her up?”
“She’ll probably cut right through most of ’em. Maybe one or two’ll slow her down. Or maybe they’ll think it’s their dope and hunt for it. Course, her propeller may get fouled.”
When Pickett got close, Clay intended to throw the b
uoys, then to swing back toward shore to set up below the long shoal protruding from Windmill Point. He hoped to lose his pursuers by heading north, across the shallow bar where they couldn’t follow. But he was uncertain, disadvantaged without a working depth finder. If that plan failed he’d need more than one trick to keep them at a distance. Pickett’s fuel might run out first, but Clay knew he couldn’t count on that. If he could just figure out a way to gain a sufficient lead, he’d cross the Bay, run for the shoals around Smith Island, above the Maryland line, and Deal and the Hooper Islands beyond, maybe even the Little Choptank, where he knew the waters. If he couldn’t lose the Vena Lee, he’d need to get Kate and Byron off and safe. And himself as well. But he wanted to save his boat too. In Maryland waters along the Eastern Shore, he thought he’d have a better chance. At top speed the Miss Sarah ran about fifteen knots. Smith Island was forty-plus miles away, across the wide Bay—with the wind and tide, at least three hours. Deal Island was an hour more.
Out in the Bay proper, the swells rose from the south, pushing the bateau’s stern and helping them along. He kept a steady course, and the bateau ran down the crests and held her bow high as she overtook the waves below her. She was lighter and could make better use of the waves and tide than the Vena Lee could. On the open water, he set a northerly course. They all sat together, listening and watching—watching the luminous Bay around them, the milky-dark sky above them, the blinking green and red lights in the distance, hearing the drumbeat of the engines, their hunters behind them, their hunters getting closer mile by mile, their spotlight flashing intermittently.
Clay held their course steady so his pursuers would do the same. They were getting discernibly closer now. It wouldn’t be long.
He held her steady and used the power of the waves behind and underneath him. Ahead, still a speck in the distance but sparkling bright, he recognized the lights from a tanker coming down from Baltimore.
After a while more, he decided it was time. The Vena Lee was close enough, almost too close. Every few minutes they would turn on the spot and isolate the bateau’s wake in its beam, then scan the water and turn it off. Clay waited until the spotlight finished searching the water the next time, then put Kate on the tiller and pointed out the course setting, and he and Byron heaved the pots over the stern and port and starboard sides. They threw over thirty or so, tightly bunched, hoping the lines would snag in the propeller of Pickett’s boat. At least, Clay thought, she’ll have to slow and navigate through them. The weighted buoys, most darkened with the black tape, settled low in the water and were not easy to see.