True Patriots

by Russell Fralich

  Wiseman gave her a brittle look. Was it because some unseen bureaucrat was lecturing his captain, or because he wanted to do it, too? Claire couldn’t tell. Sullivan watched his radio console, Barry his navigation screen, but she could feel their gaze as well.

  This isn’t going to work, she thought.

  Twenty minutes later, Claire slammed her clipboard onto her armrest while she spat into the microphone in her other hand. “They escaped?”

  The voice on the other end was gasping. “They’re making a run for the border.”

  “You said they wouldn’t be able to squeeze through.”

  The wheezing crackled on the radio.

  “You made us wait on the wrong side of Grand Manan. So we wouldn’t be seen.”

  “Look —”

  “But that also meant that we wouldn’t be able to catch them if they escaped. Merde de tabarnak. Where are they?” She faced Sub-Lieutenant Barry, the navigator.

  The nav muttered while he scanned the radar display. “Less than five kilometres from the border. Moving fast. Only minutes to American waters.”

  She stood up from her captain’s chair, looked at the radar screen for a moment, and turned to the helmsman. “Steer three zero zero. Ahead flank.”

  Wiseman repeated the order. The bridge banked to the left as she was slammed into her chair by the sudden acceleration.

  She steadied herself, grabbing the handle on the ceiling, then shot a look at Wiseman. “Prepare for boarding.”

  He winced. “It’s going to be close, ma’am.”

  “They’re not at the border yet.”

  Claire saw Sullivan, the radio operator, wave his hand. A low voice over the speaker: “This is the United States Coast Guard station Boothbay Harbour. Please identify yourself.”

  Claire clutched the microphone. “Coast Guard. This is the captain of the HMCS Kingston. We are in pursuit of suspected smugglers now returning to your waters at high speed.”

  “Kingston, understood. You do not have authorization to enter United States waters. I repeat. No authorization.”

  “We are working with the FBI and RCMP on this —”

  “Captain of the Kingston. We’ll take it from here. Stand down.”

  She slammed her clipboard on the floor. Its clang echoed for a moment, like the frustration in her head.

  Câlice. They won’t do a fucking thing.

  FORTY-ONE

  THE PREMIER WAS ANGRY with him again. “I haven’t heard from you. This better be good news, Garth.”

  Garth’s hand shook as it held his cellphone to his ear. “It is. We have taken direct action and I am waiting for confirmation that —”

  He could hear the premier’s snarl over the line. “I don’t want to hear ‘waiting for confirmation.’ I want to hear that it’s confirmed.”

  “We’ve got him this time. There won’t be any more surprises.”

  “Your confidence worries me, Garth.”

  “I’ve learned.”

  “The stakes are too high now. You have to be sure.” He paused. “I want you to personally deal with it.”

  “I am.”

  “No, I mean in person. I already told you I want you to fly over there and oversee the operations yourself.”

  He couldn’t leave when he hadn’t yet fixed the weapons shipment problems. He had to convince the premier without exposing his plan. “But you need me here.”

  “There’s nothing more to do here. And the most important thing you can do for the campaign is to make sure that no bad press comes from your cleaning up your mess out East. I don’t want any more surprises.”

  “This is ridiculous. The East Coast doesn’t matter for us. I don’t need to go over there. Everything will be under control soon.” The weapons are coming here. I need to be here.

  “This is not a debate. We need good news. Your inability to control the situation has given me pause, and a new idea born out of necessity. We do need to better promote our message of hope across the country, not just here in Alberta. The opinion of Canadians will count when we negotiate with the Feds. When you’ve cleaned up your mess, I want you to do a fast coast-to-coast tour.” Brewster paused. “Start out East. Halifax will do just fine. Then do one in Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, and don’t forget Vancouver.”

  “But the vote is in less than two days.”

  “Take the campaign plane. It will be waiting for you. Use my stump speech. Don’t get too creative with it. Stick to the talking points. I’ll make sure the media show up.”

  “There’s not much time.”

  “Do it.”

  FORTY-TWO

  CLAIRE TAPPED HER PEN on the armrest of the captain’s chair. Tat-tat-tat. Everyone in the bridge heard it. Tat-tat-tat. No one said a word.

  Thoughts about her orders, the man she had met, that idiot Lansdowne, and most of all, the crew member who had complained threatened to overwhelm her. Who was it? She wanted Captain Hall’s trust, but she also wanted to trust her own crew. And that macho moron Lansdowne had screwed up. Fury at him spun in her head. Captain Hall told her that he tried to pin the blame for losing the smugglers on her. Said she had positioned the Kingston too far for pursuit. Said she hadn’t followed his orders. Said that he wanted another officer to work with. Hall got her side of the story over the phone, with plenty of expletives in both official languages. He told Lansdowne that Claire would remain the navy contact.

  Now a third vessel had been spotted sneaking up the coast.

  She had no time to process everything. Her life suddenly spiked with activity after weeks of training, criticisms from the fleet captain, more training, and her first solo as captain of the Kingston. She sank a suspicious ship then capped it off with the failure with the CBSA. And now, this new hunting mission with clear operating instructions: box in the suspect ship, prevent them from escaping, and wait for police to arrest them. This time, navy takes the lead.

  Her crew had only been given one hour to assemble on board from whatever lives they had suddenly been forced to give up, at least for a few more days. She had gathered the group of twenty-two and told them their mission was to intercept a third suspected smuggler vessel similar to the one they had sunk. It had been spotted leaving Boston. She had explained that she expected everyone to focus on his or her job and the mission would be successful.

  The ship curved around the tree-tufted coast and entered the Bay of Fundy.

  Claire realized her tapping had accelerated.

  Wiseman, standing near, reminded her in a whispering voice that they shouldn’t be sailing into this particular bay, at least not too far. There was something special about it. It wasn’t that it was ringed by countless pretty fishing villages, or swarmed by flocks of squawky seagulls. What made the bay truly special was its tides. They were the highest in the world, and they could spell doom for the ship and her career.

  In just over six hours, the sea level dipped sixteen metres. More water than flowed in all the rivers in the world rammed into the bay, and then, six hours later, went back into the open ocean. The tides were generated by a curious and fortunate series of coincidences. The floor of the funnel-shaped bay descended a staircase toward the ocean. The moon pulled on the water, just at the right time as it flowed in, then out of the bay. Together the moon and the peculiar shape of the bay created a natural resonance, like pushing on a swing. If you pushed at the right time, the swing rose higher. But in this case, what rose was the water level.

  Her potential problem was therefore one of subtraction. The bay’s depth hovered around twenty-five metres at high tide. At low tide, only eight. The bay was also shallower along the eastern Nova Scotia coast than along the western New Brunswick side. Toward Truro and Maitland, it was very shallow, essentially becoming a mud flat for a few hours. But the Kingston’s draught, the minimum depth of water needed for the ship to navigate, was just over three metres. So at low tide, there wasn’t much margin of error. If she miscalculated, the multi-million-dollar ship would be stranded
on a suddenly exposed sand reef.

  Tat-tat-tat.

  Of course, she would never jeopardize her ship and career by chasing smugglers deep into the bay. She only had to prevent them from escaping.

  Preventing the smugglers’ escape was the main problem, but there was also the fact that someone in her crew had been complaining directly to Captain Hall about her decisions. How to expose the mole? Who could she trust? She should be able to count on her number one, Wiseman, the XO. He was biding his time on the Kingston until he could get his own command. No way he would jeopardize a strong recommendation from her when the time came.

  Although they had only sailed together for a few months, she had come to rely on her bridge crew. They had performed as an amazing team during each exercise and certainly when they encountered the hostile ship two days ago. The engine crew below deck she was less familiar with. But they gave her a rock solid ship that did everything she had ever asked, even when under fire — the ultimate test for any crew.

  As the setting sun glowed through the window on her left, and the coast, ablaze with snow tinged red and orange, lazily passed on the right, the printer wheezed out a sheet of paper. The radio operator, PO2 Sullivan, handed it to her. “Ma’am. A message from Maritime Command.” Maybe he’s the traitor, Claire thought. She shook her head in disgust at her rising suspicion.

  The report updated what was known about the suspected smugglers. The FBI had advised the RCMP that a second boat had left the Boston pier under surveillance. The report warned that the smugglers probably had sophisticated weaponry, maybe even machine guns or Stinger surface-to-air missiles. Most importantly, the report said that the smugglers had evaded police on both sides of the border.

  Her orders had changed; Maritime Command ordered the Kingston to intercept the boat as it entered Canadian waters.

  She showed the communiqué to the XO.

  “So what do you think?” He was at least a head taller than her. The ship must feel cramped to him, Claire thought.

  Wiseman cleared his throat. “Looks straightforward. But …”

  She eyed him. “Tell me. I need your opinion, especially if we might be putting the ship and crew in the line of fire once again.”

  She noticed the bridge crew perk up.

  “Our approach is high risk. Maybe higher risk than it need be.”

  “Spell it out, X.” She swivelled in her chair, where only the captain could sit. When she wasn’t around, it stood empty, a powerful symbol of her sole authority on the ship. The XO was a year older than her and just as ambitious. She saw the way he longed for a chair of his own. She liked that; he wouldn’t hold back. But would he rat on me to move me out of his way to a promotion?

  “Do we really need to enter the bay? We could wait here, at the entrance, until after they off-load whatever shipment they have. RCMP nab the haul and we catch them on the way back.”

  She nodded slowly. “I want to force them to act. At a time of my choosing. To catch them off guard. Then catch them red-handed. And vector in the police. To do that, we need to be close.”

  “But the bay. The tides. It’s tricky to manage the clearance. We could be stranded with no warning.”

  “That’s why I’m counting on you and the rest of the crew. I want navigation calling out sounding depths and three spotters at all times.” She swivelled away to look at the front window. “But I appreciate your counsel, X.” She offered him this gentle termination of the conversation. It was her ship. Her decision stood. He got the hint and said no more.

  All she had to do was contain the smugglers, send out the Kingston’s rigid-hulled inflatable boat, or RHIB, to hunt them down, box them in at the bay, and tell the RCMP where to pick them up. And at night, the Kingston, with its high-tech imaging system, would have the advantage. The only real problem was the tide, maybe giving her insufficient water to navigate. But, unlike the unknown mole on board, at least it was predictable.

  Tat-tat-tat.

  FORTY-THREE

  “DEPTH SOUNDING,” said Claire. She crouched over the map spread out on the small table in the centre of the cramped bridge, compass set in her right hand, her other hand tapping her pen. Her navigation officer, Sub-Lieutenant Barry, nervously looked outside as the jagged black wall of trees rushed by in the moonlight.

  The junior bridge officer read the echogram on the green electronic display. A stream of vertical lines spilled from right to left on the screen. The lines were getting shorter. “I read eight metres sixty and shrinking fast, ma’am.”

  The tidal current was fierce near this point, as water squeezed between the narrow peninsula on the Nova Scotia side and the New Brunswick mainland only a few kilometres away.

  “Ma’am,” said the radio operator, “Hotel-one-oh is reporting movement on the New Brunswick side.”

  Claire grabbed the microphone dangling from the ceiling. “This is the Kingston CO. Report Hotel-one-oh.”

  “O’Brien here. Nice to be working with you again, Kingston. Hope this mission goes better than our first one.”

  “I hope so, too, Captain. What do you have for us?”

  “Infrared shows suspicious movement on the New Brunswick side. I’ve given the coordinates to your radio operator.”

  Claire saw Sullivan nod.

  “We have to leave. Low on fuel.”

  “Roger, Hotel-one-oh. Thanks for the heads-up.”

  Claire motioned to Sullivan to cut off the call. After he flicked a switch on his radio console, he sat tense, motionless, for a moment. He scribbled on his pad then swung in his chair to face Claire. “RCMP has cordoned off the area and is requesting our assistance to ensure that the suspects do not escape by sea.”

  “Where?”

  “Coordinates coming in now. Five kilometres west of Fundy National Park. Same area that Hotel-one-oh reported suspicious movement.”

  Claire whipped around to the navigator. “Can we turn around here?”

  Barry consulted the map, mumbled a few calculations, and said, “Yes, we have enough clearance. But we’ll have to hurry. The tide’s still going out fast.”

  “Seven metres,” said the officer watching the echogram.

  Time to turn, she thought. “Quarter speed. Helmsman, steer two seven zero, rudder thirty.”

  “Aye aye, ma’am. Quarter speed. Steering two seven zero. Rudder thirty.”

  The ship lurched in a high-g left turn, tilting the floor at a steep angle. The hull shuddered under the strain. Claire grabbed the overhead handle to steady herself. As the ship righted itself, she said, “Ahead full.”

  “Ahead full, aye aye, ma’am,” said the helmsman.

  She felt the slap of the ship’s sudden thrust. “ETA?”

  The navigator looked at his chart. “Twenty minutes, ma’am.”

  “Sullivan, advise the RCMP of our ETA.” She slouched a bit in her captain’s chair. She could relax for a moment.

  Time to get some pre-authorization from HQ, she thought.

  “Then contact Maritime Command. I want to speak with Captain Hall. In my ready room. XO, you have the bridge.”

  “I have the bridge, ma’am,” said Wiseman.

  She hopped up from her chair and walked to her cramped room directly behind the bridge. She closed the door, sat on her chair, and waited less than a minute before Sullivan called. “Captain Hall on the phone, ma’am.”

  His voice was stern. “What are you up to?”

  “Sir, Lieutenant Commander Marcoux. We are approaching the location of the second shipment. We have a few minutes before contact, and I want to know what options I have.”

  “Be specific.”

  “If I get into another RPG situation.”

  “You know what you can use.”

  “I want permission to use the Bofors, sir.”

  “You cannot fire that cannon on Canadian soil without ministerial approval. You know that, Commander.”

  “I don’t intend to use it, sir. I just want to know that I can use it if I deci
de I need it to protect the ship.”

  “You can’t use it. Period.”

  “I expect to face at least the same kind of resistance as before. But the opposition may have access to more weaponry on shore than on the first boat we encountered.”

  There was a long pause before Hall said, “Your orders are not to engage. Just prevent them from escaping. Let the police do their work.”

  “Police already en route. But we don’t know where they will land. We will be positioned to keep them from escaping at sea. But considering the fight they put up before, I expect fiercer resistance, especially if they feel trapped.”

  She had thought a lot about the situation. When she heard no sound from Hall, she continued, “Wherever they go, we will pin them down on land, at their most vulnerable. When they’re transferring the cargo from ship to car. But timing is tricky. We are shadowing a suspicious vessel. I estimate maybe a ten-minute window to act. The police may not have enough time to catch them.”

  Another long pause from Hall. “I’ll see what I can do. Until then, you do not have permission. Not. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir. Kingston out.” She replaced the phone. A feeling of jitteriness grew in her stomach. Those people, the smugglers or whatever they were, would be better prepared this time. Defending their mysterious shipment would be easier on land than on a small fishing vessel alone in a snowstorm.

  And this time, they would be expecting trouble.

  She returned to the bridge, busy with electronic bleeps and the bustle of the six-bridge crew watching and reacting to an ever-changing situation. She had to trust them all. And they had to trust her. In another firefight, it would be a lot easier if she could use the cannon.

  “Sounding. Six metres eighty,” called out the navigator. We’re losing manoeuvring space, Claire thought. I’ll have to move fast.