Epic.
“This what you do?” she said. “Get a girl on your boat, take her to a quiet bay?”
“Could tell you you’re special.”
“Don’t need to.” Hooking her thumbs on her jean shorts, she considered him, then she undid the snap and pushed them down, could tell the thong was working its magic.
“You like?”
“Red’s my favorite color.”
“It’s raspberry.”
Fingers going inside the strap, he walked her to the transom, bumping the fishbox, Beck thinking the last time he was this close to a woman, she stuck a knife in him.
Unlashing his canvas belt, Vicki breathed words in his ear, “Sorry about the vegan thing. Should’ve warned you.”
“No sweat. Got Stouffer’s in the box. Mac and cheese, Fiesta Bake, couple more.” Beck hurried, fingers feeling clumsy.
Lifting his T-shirt over his head, she let it fall and ran her fingers across his chest, touching the long scar, saving the questions for later, guessing he’d hand her some macho line about nicking himself shaving.
Kicking off his deck shoes, Beck peeled down his roll-ups, didn’t mind her looking.
“Commando, nice.” Liking that he wasn’t shy about it, but thinking a little manscaping wouldn’t hurt. Drawing into him, she fished for her handbag, slid her leg up his, whispering, “All hands on Beck.”
Snap.
He opened his eyes, her arm outstretched, the cell phone in her hand, pointing at them, snapping a selfie.
“Come on . . .”
Snap.
His hand moved for the cell, Vicki playing keep-away, teasing. “Didn’t say cheese.”
Snap.
Wrong time for a Kodak moment. He took the cell and tossed it on the aft seat, remembering he hadn’t dropped the anchor.
“Just a social media thing we do,” she said.
“We?”
“Couple of friends I don’t see much.”
Fingers at her tube top, he eased her against the helm chair.
Lifting the top over her head, she tossed it on the phone, pulling her shoulders back, letting him look, leaving no doubt she was cold. Kicking off her pumps.
Beck smiled, this girl wearing heels on a boat.
“What’s funny?”
He kissed her, forgetting the anchor, forgetting to ask if she wanted to go below, drop the table, pop in the cushions, and . . .
Something caught his eye past the bow and he stopped, looking at a tugboat and some kind of a sub, men with guns, all staring.
. . . SCRATCHING THE SURFACE
Ramon Sanchez eased the throttle, the Mañana plowing low, the harbor tug leaving its fat wake, entering the cove. Remnants of a wooden hull showed like ribs among a tangle of bramble along the shore, old paint flaking above its waterline. A rock outcrop boxed the cove, plenty deep and hidden from Howe Sound, Ramon motoring up around the bend. Rain to the north.
Eduardo Oliveira Soto went by Eddie. Served as mate on the Mañana nearly a year now, pretty much the same time his uncle started moving from the legit work. At the bow rail, he scanned the tea-water ahead of the rubber fenders, watching for deadheads. Anybody cruising on the far side of the rocks would see a tug searching for stray logs to tow. Nothing out of the ordinary.
Cutting his engines, Ramon stuck his head from the cabin, calling, “Okay, ready the anchor.”
“You see her?” Eddie looked around.
“Just do it.”
Stepping to the windlass, Eddie hit the switch, the chain grinding through the hawsepipe. Glad to be up at the bow. Didn’t need Ramon telling him he looked like shit, hearing how his uncle had paid his dues towing barges, pushing log rafts for better than thirty years, hungover or not. Ramon sounding pissy when he talked like that. Eddie wanting to duck into the head, do a line fat enough to mellow him out.
Scoring an eight-ball off Regular Joe last night at Rudi Busch’s lodge out past Hope, Eddie overheard the two Rockers talking, throwing numbers around the pool table, Billy Wall bragging how the Baja Maritano cartel signed up the club, the bikers with visions of West Coast distribution. Regular Joe grinned at that, Joe with the gaunt cheeks and hollow eyes. Eddie watched the guy rail a g in one fat line off the sink in Rudi Busch’s can, Eddie thinking it should have knocked the guy over. Nobody did that much in one line. Eddie cutting eight lines from a gram when he started out. Now he cut four, doing more all the time.
This new gig for the Rockers MC was different, running up here instead of taking the tug out to tall water as usual and picking up the dope the crew on the Sun Sea pitched off its stern. Ramon and Eddie fishing it out with boat hooks and stashing the loads under the false floor and up in the hidden compartments, bringing it back to the shipyards. Trucking it out to Rudi’s lodge. A good payday, Eddie feeding the cravings. Sucking up eight-balls till his nose bled, Eddie trying to deal with the paranoia, thinking cops were around every corner.
Ramon told him to keep watch for the narco sub, the thing built in some Amazon jungle, the bikers starting this new deal with the cartel, the crew subbing it all the way from Mexico, non-stop.
After Uncle DeJesus got nailed in a sweep at the North Shore shipyards nearly a year back, Eddie’s habit had doubled, the paranoia growing along with it. His uncle was serving his stretch in Kent for the case of auto weapons and twenty keys of blow the combined forces took off the sister tug. The Knot So Fast had been confiscated by the Crown and put up for auction. Refusing to name names, his uncle was handed maximum, the kind of shit Eddie wanted to avoid. No way he could do that kind of time, stuck in a grimy cell through a coke crash.
The same task-force cops came with their warrant and searched the Mañana, turning up nothing. Lucky that time, but it kept Eddie looking over his shoulder. Ramon chalked up Eddie’s chickenshit nerves to the poison he was sucking up his nose. Ramon warning him it was fucking him up. Eddie saying he had it under control, no way he was ending up like DeJesus.
“Worse things than doing time,” Ramon told him, coming to the bow, handing Eddie a jacket. “Like growing old with nothing to show, no one to grow old with.”
Eddie slipped into the jacket, imagined trying to score in prison, thinking what could be worse.
Like he read his mind, Ramon said, “Shit you can get on the outside, you can get on the inside, mostly cheaper.”
“Yeah, but what do you do for cash?”
“What you have to,” Ramon said. “But to do it, you got to have your head on right. And you, sobrino, don’t have it on right.”
Eddie looked out across the bow, Ramon walking back to the wheelhouse. Eddie thinking his uncle was all pissy on account he got elected to tell the cartel guys on the sub the three hundred Chinese AKs weren’t on board, still on a cargo ship caught in a storm, North Korean–flagged. Not his fault, but still . . .
The deal was the coke was coming north, and the AKs were heading south, money changing hands by wire transfer. The sub was making the drop and turning right around. The storm at sea would delay it an extra day, maybe two. Meant the sub needed to hover around in Canadian waters. Not something the cartel bosses would want to hear.
Nothing to do with Eddie; this run paid ten Gs, twenty-five hundred going straight into his pocket. Ten times what dragging logs and busting his hump fetched. For Ramon, it meant smoking better than the native illegals he kept lighting up, his lungs rusting out faster than the old tug.
Coming back from the wheelhouse, his pack of smokes in hand, Ramon tossed a match over the side. Dragging on a fresh one, he let his eyes scan the waters. Looking at Eddie, saying he was full of shit about what he said before. “About all of us having a natural twin.”
“What I saw on the 60 Minutes.” Eddie sniffed, saying, “That Morley guy talking about it.”
“Fuck him.”
“What the man was s
aying is we all got different DNA, but still, we got a mirror twin. Out there somewhere.”
“Guy looks just like me, lights up when I do, pisses when I piss?” Ramon shaking his head, thinking the kid had fried his brain.
“No. Guy pisses when he pisses. Only looks like you. Somewhere out there — in the wide world,” Eddie said, no idea why he’d told Ramon in the first place. Wishing he hadn’t.
“Don’t go believing all the crap on TV, kid,” Ramon said, sounding pissy again, dragging on the smoke. “Kind of crap that ups their ratings, doesn’t matter if it’s true.”
“You say so.” Eddie hated when Ramon called him kid, his hand twitching on the rail. The zip bag in his pocket.
“Guy doing what I do,” Ramon shook his head, dredging up phlegm, leaning and spitting, a herring gull dropping its splatter near the spot, Ramon watching the bird fly off.
“Sure this is the bay, huh?” Eddie asked, putting his twitching hand on the rail.
“Only one deep enough.” Shielding his eyes with his hand, Ramon searched around. No cottages. No homes. He thumbed for Eddie to climb up top.
Clomping up the bridge ladder, Eddie leaned over the rail, the rain building up by Hermit.
Ducking into the cabin, Ramon grabbed a soda from the mini-fridge. Cold enough, he popped the top and took a slug, thinking some guy somewhere was doing the same, feeling fizzy pop going down, making his eyes water. Going back out, he called up, “You want one?”
Eddie told him no, turning his head. Nearly jumped, he wagged his hand, pointing.
Looking to the stern, Ramon caught the periscope sawing the surface, a conning tower rising up, water pouring off its hull. Looking like a surfacing whale.
“Jesus H. Christ.” Eddie with images of German U-boats. Grabbing the rails, he jumped down, him and Ramon at the port side, the sub pulling alongside. No identifying marking. Seventy-four feet of Kevlar and carbon fiber, its hull painted a dull camo blue. Colombian coke packed in a Mexi sub surfacing in Canadian waters. Nearly impossible to detect, camouflaged from the air, electric motors running them silent for eighteen hours, twin diesels capable of making ten knots on the surface — high-tech and cutting edge — hugging two thousand kilometers of coastline.
The Baja Maritano cartel was stepping up their game, branching out. Come a long way from extortion on local melon pickers, elbowing into the drug trade, shooting it up with their cartel neighbors and feds on two sides of a border, taking on all comers. Gaining respect.
Cutting a deal with the Santacruz family in Colombia, the Baja Maritanos paid up front for the fleet of subs to be built in the mangroves, hidden deep in an Amazon jungle, the Maritanos ordering up a half dozen more. Two million a pop, pocket change in the drug game.
“Goddamn,” Eddie said, watching the hatch flip open.
Thirty years of long-lining salmon and trawling prawn, hauling barges and shoving logs, Ramon looked on. Never seen anything like this. Lighting a fresh smoke, he watched the skinny guy climb out, buzzed hair and a goatee, tattoos on his neck. The guy shielded his eyes, looking over at them, a metal case in his hand, a pistol stuck in his rope belt.
Ramon wagged a hand, not getting a good feeling.
. . . HEAVY BLOW
Lines were tossed and tied, the yayo sub bumping the tug’s fenders. The stench wafting from the hatch made Eddie turn away, putting fingers over his nose. Smelled like these guys had been pickled in shit and sweat. Nearly a dozen days below the surface with hardly room to turn around. Chowing on what a stray dog would pass up, guzzling agua and Leche Gloria, Peruvian condensed milk. A bucket with a makeshift lid for a toilet. Exhaust from the twin diesels seeping in.
Better than a ton and a half of coke crammed the cargo hold, every available space — twenty-seven million bucks for the cartel bosses — these guys with barely room to crawl. A wheel, GPS, radio periscope. Diesel tanks and battery banks packed under the berths.
A ghost slipping undetected past the coast guards of three nations. No choppers, patrol planes, no radar picked them up. Come a long way from the early DIY subs built in the rainforests a decade ago, only capable of short hops from Colombia to Ecuador, easy to spot and unable to dive, sitting ducks with hulls looking like Play-Doh. Most ended up scuttled after delivery, if they made the trip at all. This one was the Cadillac of yayo subs, set to head back with a load of Chinese AKs, the cartel hungry for firepower to take out the judges, officials, politicians, anybody getting in the way of doing business.
Two of the crew hauled up the body, arms limp and hanging to the sides, flesh turned pasty, one guy lifting from under the arms, the other shoving the legs, flopped the body out on the hull. First thought, it was a mannequin. First time Eddie ever saw a corpse. He thought he might puke. Really needed to do that line.
The last of the crew clanged up the steps into daylight, four guys standing atop the hull, squinting and looking around. Unshaven, scrawny, filthy clothes hanging off them, all sucking in Canadian air. Two had tats from head to toe, standing barefoot and shirtless.
All four dove off, trying to rid themselves of the smell, splashing around in the cove, climbing back out. Eddie thinking of the time his Lab got nailed by the skunk under the shed steps, a couple buckets of tomato juice and a week out in the doghouse took care of it. This was worse. Wishing the breeze was going the other way, he kept his hand over his nose.
“The smell of money, kid,” Ramon said, walking past and fetching a six-pack of Steam Whistle from inside the cabin door, stepping to the rail, swinging and tossing it, the guy with the goatee catching it. Ramon guessing it didn’t matter that the beer was warm, Ramon getting set to tell these guys he didn’t have their guns.
Catching the pack against the grubby undershirt, Diego Carrillo Guzmán tore into it and passed the cans around. Popping the top, foam fizzing out, he drank in long swallows, belching, didn’t matter it dripped down his chin. Tattoos on his neck looked like vines of barbwire. Goatee trimmed short, hair shorn close to the scalp. The look of a guy in charge, the metal case at his feet, his pistol poking from his rope belt. Popping a second can, he took his time with this one. Tossing the last one to the nearest man, he dropped the empty, torn pack on the deck of the tug, Ramon looking at it, puffing smoke, flicking the butt in the water.
Amado Ramírez Garza caught the last can. A Sinaloan, all sinew and bone, a Little Richard do with bushy brows over deep-set eyes. The two hanging back were Honduran, their bodies covered in tats, every square inch inked, Spanish words and images. The dead guy was Colombian, an out-of-work fisherman named Carlos, crewing on his first run, looking for something better.
Snapping orders in Spanish, Diego waited. The Honduran called Ismael giving him attitude, swallowing his beer, tossing the can onto the tug, tin bouncing around the bow. Took his time and climbed back down the hatch. The other one with ink was Reyes, waiting at the top.
“Couldn’t pay me enough go down that hole,” Eddie said, fingers over his nose.
“Yeah, I could, kid,” Ramon said. “And I were you, I’d keep that shit to myself.” Eyes on the Mexican with the pistol, the metal case at his feet, Ramon lit a fresh smoke, fanning out the match. He stepped forward, putting on the friendly, introducing himself and Eddie, saying to Diego, “Supposed to tell you there’s a slight delay, amigo. Understand, I’m just passing a message from the guys I work for.”
Diego stared, the crew forming a chain, Ismael relaying the bales from the hatch, legs straddled over the dead man, Reyes passing to Amado. On the bow of the tug, Eddie took the bales and stacked them inside the wheelhouse, setting them anywhere he found space, against the fridge, blocking the hatchway, not enough compartments to hide half of it. Like cocaine heaven. Stacking it by the door, Eddie was drenched in sweat, heart pounding.
Ramon finished explaining, Diego not happy with what he was being told. How they’d have to hide the sub, the crew waiting overnight
. The cargo ship coming out of North Korea with the guns got held up by a bad storm, Sea of Japan. Be a day or so before the Rockers from the East Van chapter could get their hands on it, bring it to the sub. Diego thinking he’d have to make the call to Lieutenant Topo Quintero and explain it, not something he wanted to do.
Far as Eddie had been told, they were to run the shit to the North Shore shipyards, dock the tug and truck the load out to Rudi Busch’s hunt lodge. Pick up their ten grand. Didn’t know anything about three hundred Chinese guns supposed to change hands. Ramon only telling him half of it.
Now Ramon was telling Diego this was a safe spot to hide the sub, extending an invitation for him and his crew, experience some of Rudi Busch’s hospitality out at the lodge. Diego’s nostrils flared, eyes burning into Ramon, Ramon reminding him he was just the messenger.
Rudi Busch’s eldest son was to run a load up to Pemberton. The two bikers back at the lodge waited to pack up Regular Joe’s truck and run it overland, a snaking trail through provincial and national parks. Get it to their Spokane brothers. Everybody making serious cash.
Diego put up a hand, Reyes and Amado stopped, each holding a bale. Said he was holding the rest of the coke, about six hundred pounds to stay on board till the East Van chapter made good on the AKs. Ramon argued they’d already been paid. Diego saying, “The way it is.” Patting his sidearm. Ramon shrugging, thinking fuck it, he was just the messenger.
Ismael stepped over the dead Colombian, bitching at Diego in Spanish, the two of them getting into it, Diego with his hand on the pistol.
“Is how it is,” Diego barked, staring at the Honduran, then back at Ramon, eyeing his surroundings like he was expecting something to jump out.
Ismael spat, turning with the bale, telling the other Honduran to put it back below, Diego calling after him, telling Ismael he was to stay on board and guard it, him and the others checking out this hospitality, saying it in English so Ramon and Eddie understood who was in charge.
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