Anderson shut down both engines and dipped his fuel tanks before checking the engine oils. He had lots of fuel for whatever they would do for the rest of today, but he made a mental note to re-fuel first thing in the morning. He made written notes in the boat’s log book – in more detail than usual, making sure to log the times when he met up with Willy and his boat, anchored offshore, as well as the fly-over this morning and his route home. He went into the forward cabin and made sure his shotgun and rifle were safely stowed and out of sight under blankets, and that the boxes of shells were in a small locker on the opposite side. No point in pissing off a senior cop I haven’t even met yet.
While he waited for his odd mixture of guests, Anderson poured a cup of lukewarm coffee, sat down in the wheelhouse, and emailed himself all the photos he had taken over the last few days, and in particular the two snapshots of the airplane. He played a little on his smartphone screen with the best of the airplane photos, and thought it possible that he – or someone in the police lab – might be able to read the identification numbers. And any airplane expert could easily tell the make and type of plane.
Of course, he thought, he hadn’t seen or heard Willy arrive. He looked up suddenly to see him standing on the dock beside the wheelhouse. “Hey, Willy, you made it. Come onboard; I’m just waiting for the gang.
“Yup, saw you come in. I have a boathouse slip over there and had to pull some other guy‘s boat out of there before I could tie up. So, you been making phone calls... who is in the gang?”
“The sergeant, John MacLeod. Marion, and MacLeod’s senior inspector. And you and I.”
“You work fast.”
“That’s not all – I have the Webster girls digging up stuff about the Robertson empire.”
“I know all about you and the Webster girls. Like I said, you work fast!” And he gave a wide grin.
“Geez, nothing is sacred around here,” Anderson laughed.
Willy looked out onto the lake and paused. “Love is sacred.” Turning back to Anderson he said, “So have you made coffee for your guests? I’m pretty dry.”
“Good idea. We have been promised donuts, too. I told John to bring lots.”
Anderson started the genset, and had just finished pouring the water over the coffee and turning the maker on when a somewhat dusty-looking police cruiser pulled up to the end of the dock. The sergeant got out of the driver’s seat and walked along the dock with a shorter, stocky man, also in uniform, and Anderson went out on the dock to greet them. “Hello again, John. You bring a guest...”
“Frank, this is Superintendent George Daniels. He is the man in charge of all major crimes investigations, and boy have we ever had a major crime, as you know.”
“Good to meet you, Superintendent,” said Anderson as he shook the big man’s hand.
They had arrived at the boat, and the sergeant stepped onboard immediately and went to Willy. “Mr. Antoine, I’m John MacLeod and we have met before, a couple of years ago. It is good to see you again.
The Superintendent had stopped on the dock, and was looking over the launch from one end to the other. He nodded, as if to himself, and turned to Anderson: “Permission to come aboard, Mr. Anderson?”
“Permission granted sir, with pleasure, and welcome!”
The two men joined Crazy Man and the sergeant, who introduced Willy to the Superintendent. “I told you, George, that I was thoroughly impressed with our SMEs and it just gets better: Willy is a wise and honoured man, well-connected in the First Nation community.”
“Well, our SME team is almost complete,” Anderson said, looking down the dock. “Here come Arnold and Marion Jamieson. Arnold is dropping Marion off with us... she is the wisdom of this village community and beyond. Knows everybody, not only where they were born but also, I expect, where they were conceived.”
“Damn, I forgot the donuts,” the sergeant said as he jumped off the boat and headed back to the cruiser. “I’ll be right back,” and he waved at Arnold and Marion as he went by. Anderson finished off the introductions, then Arnold shook hands, smiled at Willy and squeezed Anderson’s shoulder as he left to go back to his truck.
***
Anderson put the coffee pot and some cups on the navigation table and fired up the main engine. He went out on deck and was watching a couple of little fishing boats and a family runabout that were moving around between the dock and open water. The Superintendent came to him and said quietly, “I’ll slip your lines as you direct, if you want to take the wheel.”
“Much appreciated. We’ll start with the stern, on my call. I’ll twist the boat a little, then call the bow.” He went back to the wheel, blew a long blast on the horn and checked again to see if there were any boats beside him, then bellowed out the window, “Let go the stern!” In two seconds the rope was lying in the well-deck, and the Superintendent was walking quickly to where the bow line was cleated to the dock, took off a couple of wraps and waited. Anderson put the transmission in forward and spun the wheel clockwise. The rounded bow pulled in toward the dock and the stern started to move out. Anderson put the transmission back into neutral and centered the wheel before calling out, “Let go the bow. All aboard!”
When the Superintendent was back on the boat, Anderson took the launch away from the dock in reverse, straightened her around and gently edged her out into the lake. The sergeant turned to his boss and said, “You’ve done this kind of stuff before, haven’t you!”
“Five years in the Coast Guard out in B.C. Still miss it. And you have a good boat and captain here... I couldn’t resist showing off!”
Anderson took the launch about a quarter-mile offshore away from the pleasure boats, turned east toward Ship Island, throttled down to a couple of knots and punched in the autohelm. “Okay, we’d better start sharing some information, try to fill in some blanks or at least learn what more we need to know, and then figure out what’s next to do. Willy, you have a lot of really important stuff to start off with, so why don’t you start...”
And he did, explaining all about Juan, how he was involved through Anita with Hassan and some of the bad guys out along the east shore. He emphasized the Mexican or Californian connection through Juan, the angry brutality of the young man, and the probable Robertson connection. A conversation that took a couple of hours this morning took less than fifteen minutes. When he was done, Anderson said he had the Webster sisters digging this afternoon for information about the Robertson Group. He pointed out that the company was, in fact, paying the lease on the property on the east shore, and told whose names were on the lease, as the sisters had discovered yesterday.
And Willy talked about the airplane. Anderson showed the officers his cellphone with the photo, and they immediately asked him to email it to an address in Ottawa the Superintendent provided. As Anderson was emailing, the Superintendent was on the phone to the photo lab. Anderson’s phone had no sooner finished sending the photo when it rang. It was Wendy.
“Hi Frank, got some info for you.”
“Hi Wendy, I have John and his Superintendent out here on the boat with me, along with Arnold’s wife Marion and Willy Antoine. Can I put you on speakerphone?” He throttled back the engine to make it easier to hear and called the gang into the wheelhouse. “Okay, fire away Wendy!”
“Okay, the Robertson Group has an office in San Diego, and several operations in western Mexico, in the mountains. There are some news reports of Mexican staff involvement in the drug trade over the last four or five years, but the reports appear unverified and appear to have stopped a year ago when the reporter – an American – was killed in a car accident. There have been no arrests or charges, at least in the US. I have bushels of paper and links for you, which we will bring with us tomorrow unless you need something scanned and emailed tonight. I raised some eyebrows at the Robertson office when I asked a bunch of questions, but even though they are mad at me, they know I am always a curious kind of a cat so I didn’t get grilled.”
“Thank you Wen
dy,” said John. “Drive carefully you two, and hope to see you soon. That is invaluable information, and I want to take you out for dinner when things settle down. Anderson?”
“Bye Wendy, and many many thanks. Tell Marjorie I’ll give her a call later tonight.” He clicked off the phone, and turned to the sergeant. “See what I mean? There’s too much there to be coincidence. I’m not so very sure how big an operation this is, or how high up the food chain Juan really is.”
“High enough to plan a successful assassination in a very public place and not even let us capture a live suspect,” chimed in the Superintendent. “And at least in our country, the concern is rippling all the way to the PMO. The yanks don’t seem as concerned as they should be, so they may not care if our kids are frying their brains on this stuff, but I sure as hell do.”
“Amen,” said Marion.
“Okay folks,” said Anderson, “that looks like all the info we’re gonna get today. Superintendent, do you have a drug investigation group to call in, or does this start to touch the Mounties, or...?”
“We do have a team, but when it gets across borders – east, west or south – we need to work with the RCMP. I called our guys in Toronto half an hour ago and told them not to go home until I called, which I am going to do right now. I expect a couple of officers from both departments will fly in to Maple Falls in the morning.” And he walked outside and along the deck forward of the wheelhouse to make his call. He waved the sergeant to go with him. Willy and Marion sat deep in conversation outside the wheelhouse, and Anderson noticed that by now they were close to Ship Island, so he decided to make a pass around it before they headed back to the village. He took the speed up to about four knots, turned a few degrees to port to miss the island and re-set the autohelm. He found his stash of cigarettes, went outside and offered them to Willy and Marion, lit them and one for himself and returned to the wheelhouse and his remaining half-cup of coffee.
He had barely started the turn around the south side of the island when the two police officers came back and joined him by the wheel. Sensing that they wanted to talk, he throttled back down again, looked up and said, “Gentlemen?”
“Captain Anderson, I am going to sound very official for a moment. I need to officially commission this vessel and her captain for officially-sanctioned support during a crime investigation. The owner of the vessel will receive our standard day-rate for vessels of this size. Are you the sole owner?
“Yes, I am.”
“Good. Are you willing to lease this vessel as I just outlined?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Good. There’s more. If you are willing, I am officially appointing you as an Auxiliary Sergeant in the OPS Auxiliary. You will have similar powers of a police officer during the length of this engagement. I need to do this in case we have other members and forces working with us and I need Sergeant MacLeod here to be able to set the correct chain of command as far as the operation of this vessel. Do you agree?
Anderson looked over at the sergeant, who shrugged and smiled somewhat thinly. Anderson looked back at the Superintendent: “Yes, I agree.”
“Thank you, Sergeant Anderson.”
He called the Willy and Marion in from the deck, and explained what he had just arranged. “And now, one last thing which I should have said earlier. My name is George. That’s John, this is Frank and that’s Willy and there’s Marion. Let’s just call each other by those names except in front of the media, which we will all avoid as much as possible. As the senior officer on location, for now, I handle the media anyway, and that’s the only bunch I want to call me Superintendent. And in public, this is still Captain Anderson, a Sergeant in the police auxiliary.”
As he made his last turn before heading the boat back to the village, they were a good distance away from the little bay where the sisters docked their little outboard, and where it would have normally been, there was a much bigger boat. “John,” he yelled, “grab the binoculars and check out that boat in the bay. I think it’s the same one that shot at us!”
Everyone, including Superintendent George, was staring off to starboard while John peered through the glasses. “Almost sure that’s it.”
“Whoever it is, they are trespassing and probably stealing Wendy’s and Marjorie’s stuff,” said Marion. “Shouldn’t we pay them a visit? Couple of uniforms onboard should probably scare them off.”
“Not a chance. I have a small shotgun and a bolt-action rifle on board and only a handful of shells. You guys aren’t even carrying side arms, and those idiots almost certainly have big guns if they are involved with the same group we’re chasing and I think they are. Willy says those two yahoos – Mistraika and Giordano or their little buddies - are very likely involved with Juan even if they are only bottom feeders. I think we should motor casually by and head on home.
“Yup. Captain’s right. We’ll live to fight another day. Let’s go back to the dock.” Anderson held his course and speed for a few more minutes, then sped up to eight knots and pointed The Beaver home.
As he pushed the throttle up, a cellphone rang. This time it was the Superintendent’s: “Daniels here. Yes Corporal. You did get some numbers? Owned by who? Really! Okay, thanks. E-mail me the report right away. Thanks. G’night.” He turned to Willy. “Your airplane from this morning is owned by Robertson Logistics, part of the Robertson Group obviously. It’s registered in the US. It’s definitely time to tell the boys and girls at head office to call in the RCMP. I’ll set that in motion right now.” And he started stabbing buttons.
It was becoming dusk, and Anderson flipped on the navigation lights and checked the radar, setting it back to one mile radius. He was kind of enjoying his new toy, but he knew there was no more looking everywhere but forward... there were likely a number of small boats out there headed for the marina, or back out to the cottages, and the radar wouldn’t pick up half of them. Twenty minutes later, he slid The Beaver alongside her dock, where Super George helped him tie her down. They put out spring lines for the night and locked the chains. Anderson opened a beer for each of his passengers, who sat around on the gunwales and talked about tonight – and tomorrow. “If one of you will give us a lift,” said Marion, “I’ll take Willy home so that he can visit with Arnold and get a decent night’s sleep that isn’t on the bottom of a boat.”
“Done,” said the sergeant. “I’ve ordered up two patrol cars to cruise the streets tonight, from your house Marion (where you have the two interns who are material witnesses, as well as Willy) and down to the dock and back again. Frank, I want you to go back to your house and get a good night’s sleep, because I’ll be waking you up really early in the morning. Breakfast is at the Zoo at 0600. Maybe by then we’ll have the beginning of a plan, and we will start assembling resources, like personnel and equipment.”
“Works for me,” said Anderson. “Just one thing, though. Not much point in taking action unless we know how – and where – we can nail the boss – Juan. We have no idea where he’s hanging out.”
“Exactly. But we may be closer to answering that by morning. I have some undercover guys working around – at John’s suggestion – between the Robertson property and Maple Falls. They are doing the land stuff. Tomorrow, Frank and a team will lead the water stuff, and I’ve ordered in an unmarked but very fast boat which should be here early in the morning, with her armed crew. On the subject of armed crews, there will be two on this boat in the morning, and our new Sergeant Captain Anderson will have a sidearm and shells before we leave tonight.”
The Superintendent continued: “The Plan, if you can call it that, is to flush Juan out before he can do something worse or – more likely – leave. If we wait around, he’ll decide he’s better off to find a way out. We have to force his hand, but we have closed all the small landing fields and the larger airports are notified. They all have his picture. Let’s get started – with a good night’s sleep, although it’ll be short enough.”
They walked to the patrol car where the
sergeant handed Anderson a sidearm and a box of ammunition. “Keep this with you tonight, then maybe stash by your controls in the wheelhouse in the morning.” He was dropped off at his door, and yes, he did have the keys.
He went in, turned on the lights, opened a second beer and sat at his table with a cigarette. His house felt friendly, even though he knew the relaxation would be short-lived. He dialled Marjorie, wondering if her voice would quiet the hollow feeling in his stomach and the slight headache at his temples.
05:30 JULY 26
Anderson rolled out of bed and shut off the alarm. He had slept well, although he was aware of the comings and goings of the police patrols during the night. Most times, that would be annoying, but last night it was almost as comforting as the ticking of a favourite clock. The phone call with Marjorie had also been comforting but of course he didn’t give out a lot of details – he mentioned that a top cop was in town and had “officially” requisitioned the use of the boat today as they continued their investigation out on the lake. He asked her to stop by Arnold’s garage and talk to Marion before they went out to their cottage, and of course to give him a call when they got there.
He dressed quickly and went out to his truck, where he stashed the P229 Sig Sauer and the 9mm shells under the seat on the passenger side, and shoved some rags and a couple of tools and an empty windshield washer jug over top before he drove up to the Zoo to meet the sergeant for breakfast. He had taken handgun courses when he lived in British Columbia, but he was not particularly keen on them: he knew this one was an efficient killing machine, but he had never visualized wanting to have one, never mind use it. He had read somewhere that if there is a gun on a wall at the beginning of a story, it will be fired before the story’s over. He hoped the story that would unfold today would be an exception to the rule.
Sunset at [20 47] Page 26