“We’ll check it out,” Tanner said.
“That’s a 10-4. You can meet Mr. Jackson and his son at that small marina just inside the mouth of the river. You know the one I mean?”
“That’s a 10-4. Tell them we’ll be there in an hour or so.”
“That’s a 10-4.” Static. Then silence.
The GPS led them through Patchogue Bay to where the old man waited at the end of a long dock next to a flagpole, which was nestled in a tidal estuary that flowed from Abetes Creek. The pole had a guide rope that hummed and chimed as the wind tossed it about, and the air carried the scent of smoke and salt. It was a welcome respite from the salty-shit-rot aroma. Salty-shit-rot. His new designer scent to be sold at the candle shop next to the bacon and wood smoke.
“Morning, sir,” Tanner said as he stepped off the patrol boat onto the dock. He pushed the craft back, and Jane backed the boat out into deeper water. Randy jumped from the SAFE boat and he and Tanner shook Mr. Dopson’s hand.
“Morning to you both. How are things out there?” the old man asked. He was bent with the weight of his years, and the cane he held in his left hand wasn’t for show.
“Not bad,” Tanner said. “Everyone will have to be real careful for a while. Sir, my name is Tanner, and this is Officer Vernon.”
“Call me Randy.”
“You boys know why you’re here?” Dopson asked.
“Sure,” Tanner said.
“And you don’t think I’m cracked? Or drunk or high?”
“No, sir,” Randy said.
Tanner’s tongue had suddenly become tied.
“It’s just such a strange thing…” Dopson lifted his head and looked out to sea, the Great South Bay a mess of windblown whitecaps. “It was right out there. Just lounging around like a whale playing in whitewater. For the briefest instant, I thought I saw a tall tapered spike burst from the water and then two huge claws. Water rolled around it. Only saw it there for a second, but it was shaped like a scorpion. And the sound it made. Damn near burst an eardrum.”
Tanner and Randy exchanged glances.
“I saw that. You think I’m seeing things?” the old man said.
“No. I don’t think you’re seeing things at all,” Tanner said.
“Ah. You’ve seen it?”
“Not really. More like experienced it. Can you be more specific about what you saw? How big was this thing? What color?”
“Color?” Dopson appeared confused. “Real big. That I can tell you.”
“Bigger than that boat?” Randy asked, pointing at the SAFE boat.
“Way bigger.”
Tanner and Randy exchanged glances again. Tanner said, “Bigger than the big boat there?”
“I’d say it was about that size,” Dopson said.
Randy chuckled. “That boat’s forty-two feet.”
Dopson said nothing.
“Anything else you can tell us?” Randy said.
Dopson shook his head.
“Thank you for your time, Mr. Dopson,” Tanner said.
“Be safe out there,” the old man said.
Tanner and Randy boarded their vessels. Dopson’s sighting had legitimized Tanner’s encounters, and it was good knowing he and Randy weren’t the only ones who believed the thing existed. Big Boy’s inboard engine hummed and the aluminum hull vibrated as Tanner pushed down on the control levers and headed back out. The bay narrowed significantly as they approached Smith Point Bridge, beyond which lay Narrow Bay and the entrance to the amusement park that is the Hamptons.
Carmans River had a large mouth that narrowed quickly, and the marina sat nestled in a small cove to the west. The Jacksons had less to offer than Mr. Dopson, except they added a deep brown color and shell-like exterior to the description, though both said they couldn’t be sure because the thing never came out of the water. Their account of the sounds and smells lined up, and clearly they’d seen the creature.
The womp womp of a helicopter echoed across the water and a Coast Guard copter tore past. No sooner had its echoes faded than the call came in. Someone had been shot out on the bay, and Tanner ordered all marine units to the scene.
“Head out Stones Throw way,” he said.
“Your town?” Jane said.
“Yeah, off Sapphire Point. Apparently, two alphas disagreed over who was more stupid, and Lenny put a bullet in a fireman’s leg to subdue him. This all the speed you got, Jane?”
“What were they fighting over?”
“Who knows, probably whose booger was bigger.”
“What do you make of this sea scorpion stuff?” Jane asked.
“I don’t make anything of it,” he said. He didn’t like not knowing what was happening, confronting something unknown that couldn’t be planned or prearranged.
When they arrived at the scene, Jane pushed through the knot of boats, fully taking advantage of the ship’s size and rank. The vortex of the bullshit swirl was three civilian center consoles; one with Auxiliary Policeman Lenny Crimpatlon on it, and two light-duty fire rescue boats with firemen dressed in civilian clothes. The wounded fireman paced back and forth on his deck, his hand pressed against a bandage on his leg. He looked fine. Hurricane accident.
Tanner stepped off his ship onto one of the rescue boats and then continued onto the part-time police boat. He said, “Lenny, what the hell were you fighting over? And you drew down? Are you nuts?”
“He threatened me, sir, and I thought this was important, and they were messing around with it.” Lenny wore a reflective vest and a whistle on a lanyard around his neck. He handed Tanner a bucket full of the brown fish turd he’d seen the prior day.
“You were fighting over fish shit?” Tanner asked. He dumped the bucket onto the deck, and said, “I’m willing to forget this bullshit if you morons apologize to each other. If not, I’ll write this up and it looks like shit for everyone. Lenny, you’ll lose aux status, might be brought—”
The bullhorn atop the pilothouse boomed. “Tanner, we gotta go. We’re getting a distress call,” Jane said. The large police boat spun in place as she turned the ship’s wheel and fired the left mobility thruster.
Tanner hopped boat to boat until he was back next to Jane. The rescue boats parted much faster the second time, and when Tanner looked back, he saw that Randy and Gipp were right behind them. Jane dropped the hammer, and the boat leapt from the water, driving through the waves and spraying the front windshield.
“It’s Kipper, says he’s under attack,” she said.
Tanner held the comm button. “Kipper, you copy? Kipper?”
“I’m here. It’s coming at me, Tanner.” Static. “Huge claw cut right through the hull. I’m going down. Mayday. Mayday. Help. Hurry.” Help and hurry came through loud, but when Tanner tried to raise Kipper again, he couldn’t get him.
There wasn’t much left of the boat when Tanner got there, and the monster was long gone. Ralph Kipper’s twenty-two-foot SAFE boat was crushed to nothing, its debris field barely identifiable in the green water. The crushed aluminum pilothouse stuck from the water like a forlorn tooth, but that was the only big piece. Tanner trolled through the wreckage, searching for survivors.
A blood slick drifted on the surface, undulating and rolling with the waves. Pieces of flesh and fat floated atop the blood and slowly sank below the emerald water into the deep black mud below.
6
Losing the police boat and the presumed deaths of two crew raised Tanner’s investigation to fast pace status at DEFCON two, full red. The captain was getting his nuts twisted from above, though most of the press had chalked the loss of the police boat up to storm debris in the water, and the brass had done nothing to dispel that theory. The mainland was hanging on by a thread. No power, and fuel, food, and water shortages were Long Island’s main concerns. Kipper and Johnson’s funerals had been postponed, and Tanner was thankful for that. He didn’t think he could face Judy and Laura. They were nice ladies, and each woman had to explain to young children why their d
addy wasn’t coming home ever again. The thought of it made him tear up.
He’d crashed from exhaustion and hadn’t gotten drunk the prior night. It felt good not to be hung over. The morning wasn’t such a choir and the sounds of the birds and sea eased his mind instead of driving nails into it. The moment of serenity was lost when he pulled into the mud lot next to the temporary station and saw a young woman sitting on the front step holding a pad and pen. Lois Lane had finally shown.
He hopped from the Jeep and walked past the woman without a word.
“Sir,” she said. Then she yelled, “Lieutenant Tanner, may I have a word?”
He stopped and sighed, making a show of turning around slow as if she was this biggest bother since poison ivy. “No. You may not. Who are you?”
“Betsy Lindholm with the Suffolk County News. Can I ask you a few questions about the deaths on the bay?”
“Suffolk County News.” He whistled. “You must have been in the top ninety percent of your class in journalism school.”
She was short and petite, and very attractive in a twenty-four-year-old sort of way; firm in all the places that sagged on him, bright innocent eyes, and a block of solid granite on her shoulder. He liked her. “What have you learned about the foot you found?” she asked.
He froze and looked at her, and almost asked how she knew about the foot, but didn’t. Apparently, she’d done a little better than the top ninety percent.
“Two boaters and two police officers are also missing? Do you have any comment on that? About their possible whereabouts?”
Now Tanner was pissed. “Their whereabouts? Which parts?”
Betsy’s mouth fell open a crack, and she went a paler shade of white, the red blotches on her neck standing out like hickeys. “Have you seen it? What killed them?”
The conversation was getting out of hand, like a wave sucking you into darkness. “If you have questions, you need to go through the command press office. Hang out here and I’ll get you their number.”
“Why are Coast Guard special ops being brought in? You guys can’t handle it?” she taunted.
He turned to stare her down, but had to settle for a draw. “What? Special ops?” He had to get up earlier.
“The Commandant of the Coast Guard dispatched a cutter last night. They’ll be here today.”
Tanner turned and unlocked the office and went inside, locking the door behind him. He instantly felt like a shit, but what was done was done, and in this situation, the press was the enemy. If they ran stories about a monster in the bay, every dumbass want-to-live-in-video-game apocalypse freak would be on the shoreline with their binoculars, serving themselves up like appetizers.
He dropped into a folding chair and it almost collapsed. The day had already beaten him. Tanner pulled out the stainless steel flask his father had given him. The Navy logo was on the front in raised brass, and he stared at it a moment before he twisted off the cap and took a nip.
The station was pumped out, though still an island, but soon they’d be able to abandon the temporary base. The floodwater continued to recede, and soon it would be too shallow to take a boat out to the station and he’d have to take the Jeep on the road through water that was still two feet deep.
Tanner had to get nasty with the captain’s assistant to get Quinn on the phone. “Are you shitting me? Threatening to call FOX? I got a four alarm here in case you didn’t know. What the hell do you want?”
“You got Coast Guard special ops coming?” Tanner asked. “When the hell were you going to tell me?”
Captain Quinn laughed, and it wasn’t a patronizing laugh, like ha ha. It was a he might fall off his seat and break an arm laugh; full, loud, and inspiring. “Gods, I love you, brother. I’m a captain on the Suffolk County PD. Last time I checked, the Commandant of the Coast Guard outranked me, but it’s sweet you think so highly of me that you believe he’d call me personally. Get your shit together and go meet the coasties. I put a whirlybird up so you know where they are.”
Quinn had a way of helping Tanner put his foot in his mouth. “Thanks, Quinn.”
“Make nice or you’ll be scraping hulls until you die. Savvy?”
“Savvy.”
“I’ll see you tonight at the New Week party?”
“Lacy coming with you? I want her to meet my new little boy.” Tanner always flirted with Captain Quinn’s wife because she loved it and the captain didn’t. Mrs. Q would love Lucky-shit.
“Screw you.”
***
The Great South Bay was a choppy mess. A northeast wind blew out the two-foot waves that rolled and broke in random patterns across the bay, and a light mist that wasn’t quiet fog settled over everything. Tanner helped crew Big Boy, which floated with the current just east of Smith Point Bridge. He had his entire operational fleet behind him, four cop boats and eight fire rescue boats, all spread out in front of the bridge. No special ops team would get into the bay without stopping to say hello to him first.
Aerial reported that the ops team broke off from the USCGC Vigilant, which continued to chug through the ocean along Fire Island seashore toward the breach. The ops team had to enter the bay via Moriches Inlet because there was no other way to get to the Great South Bay from the ocean that far east.
The coastie SAFE boat roared through the inlet and came toward Tanner’s armada. The ship looked similar to the boats the PD used, except it had orange pontoons, and a pilothouse painted white with the Coast Guard logo on its side. A black M2 Browning .50 caliber machine gun mounted on the bow was pointed at the deck and unmanned, as were two smaller guns to port and starboard.
Six coasties stood nut to butt next to the pilothouse, three on each side. They wore full dark blue body armor and carried MK18 carbines, the shorter brother of the AR15 designed for close quarters combat. The Coast Guard boat made straight for Big Boy, leaving no question of its heading. The SAFE boat roared in at full speed and reversed thrust two hundred yards from Big Boy’s aft deck, stopping on a dime. A fine piece of piloting.
As the coastie boat inched closer, a woman in a casual dress uniform exited the wheelhouse and headed for the bow. Without breaking stride, she stepped up onto an orange pontoon and jumped onto Big Boy’s aft dive platform just as the two ships gently kissed amidst the rolling sea with a squeak of rubber on metal.
Tanner went to meet her, unable to stop smiling. She spied him and made straight for him. “You in charge of this blockade?” she asked. She looked immaculate in her light blue dress shirt stacked with a full salad bar, her cover cocked slightly to one side, dark hair peeking out from beneath it. Nothing looked out of place on her except a thin sheen of sweat glistening on her brown skin.
“It’s a welcome party,” Tanner said. It was, of a kind.
“Petty Officer First Class Belinda Jefferson. You can call me PO Jefferson. Some welcome. You’re full of shit. We saw your bird.”
Tanner smiled. Gorgeous, feisty, smart, and accomplished. He felt attracted to her at once. “I thought it best if we spoke before you entered my bay. So we can share information, help each other out, and avoid misunderstandings.”
She laughed. “Your bay? It’s funny you think you stopped me.”
Tanner looked around and smiled. “I have stopped you.”
“Little old me? I suppose you have. My Triton 3300 submersible that’s making its way through the breach right now hasn’t been stopped, and that counts, right?”
Tanner fumed. “You put a submersible in the breach? The first boat went down in there.”
“That’s why we’re here. Now are you going to move your tubs or do I need to move them for you?”
“Easy. Easy. I’m sorry if I offended you, but we knew the guys that were killed so this is a little closer to home for us.”
That cracked the ice. Jefferson looked at her shiny patent leather shoes, and said, “I’m sorry for your losses.”
“So what’s the plan?” he asked.
“We’re going to run the sub
in a grid pattern all over the bay and see if we can find this thing.”
“This thing? What have you been told?”
“Not much,” Jefferson said. “Just that something big has been causing all types of mayhem, and that the something definitely isn’t a shark.”
“That about covers it,” Tanner said.
“Then let’s get going before I get an alpha charlie call.” Tanner said nothing, but he must have looked confused because Jefferson said, “An ass chewing. When we get there, you can join me on my boat and we’ll monitor the sub together. That work for you?”
“Sure.”
“Then shut your crumb catcher and let’s get going.”
Tanner smiled at her and she smiled back.
7
The command console on the coastie boat made Tanner’s SAFE boats look like children’s toys. High-end sonar, radar, communications and navigation, all controlled via touch displays set at an angle in the front of the pilothouse. There was a traditional boat wheel mounted in the center of the console, but two helmsmen controlled the vessel via touchscreens and the manual wheel rotated as if a ghost was at the helm. Tanner didn’t know if he could pilot the thing because he’d first have to turn off whatever digital controls were in use, and he and computers had a destructive relationship.
One of the large displays was divided in two and showed the aft and forward views from the Triton submersible’s exterior cameras. The green water was murky with particles of decaying vegetation and visibility was less than ten feet. In the lower right-hand corner of the aft video was a small punch-out showing the sub’s pilot. A coastie called Sharkey sat in what looked like a dentist’s chair, enclosed in a glass bubble. Sharkey slowly worked a joystick that steered the forty-six-hundred-pound sub across the sandy bottom of the breach.
Tanner and Randy stood with Jefferson and her first mate, Cuddy, behind the helmsman.
“Why they call you Cuddy?” Randy asked. “Sharkey kind of looks like a shark, so I get that, but why Cuddy?”
“Cause I was always asleep in the cuddy cabin when I was a kid. Real names PO 2nd class Dinkins, sir.”
The Breach Page 3