Fade to Grey (Book 1): Fade to Grey

by Brian Stewart

  *click*

  OK journal, recorder, electronic memory lane . . . I don’t know what to call you. Anyway, we’re on the way back with our first load. My uncle prepays for fuel every year, and that’s probably a good thing, because there were lines of cars at the pumps. It turned out that Walter’s credit card machine had been down since yesterday, and even the little ATM machine inside the front door wouldn’t dispense any money. All it gives is a “temporary error” message. Top that off with the fact that Walter has never taken a check, ever. Even from Uncle Andy. It’s strictly cash or credit. And since the credit option is gone, that leaves cash only. I have a grand total of about forty-seven bucks with me, and that wouldn’t even fill half of my truck’s gas tank. I highly suspect that Uncle Andy has substantially more squirreled away in his mattress or stuffed in an old taxidermy deer head somewhere. Walter came out, posted some signs to the effect that he could only take cash, and spent a few minutes apologizing to the other people in line. Once that was squared away we made it to the pumps pretty quick. When Walter saw me he hustled over, gave me a combination handshake and half hug, and said, “Eric my boy, I am damn glad to see you.”

  I started to ask why, but he cut me off before my first word. “Because not only are you a fine, upstanding man in your own right, but let me tell you—your uncle has been driving me bat shit for the last two months. Maybe now he’ll stop pestering me and turn some of his hyperactive, attention deficit disorder company toward you.”

  I cut loose with a few deep laughs, already both dreading and anticipating the start of renewed assaults. I didn’t have long to wait. My uncle approached the two of us, smiling to beat all and whistling a lively tune. He stopped about five feet away, looked Walter square in the eyes and said, “Well Eric, it looks like you’ve found the man whose birth certificate is an apology letter from the condom factory.”

  Walter widened his eyes like he was seeing Uncle Andy for the first time and said, “Ho there . . . look who dropped out of the sky like a runny turd from a tall cow.”

  I shook my head and groaned at the two of them as they grasped calloused hands in greeting. I guess I should tell you about Walter. He’s been my uncle’s best friend since before I was born. Long before I was born. They grew up in the same town, dated a lot of the same girls, and even enlisted on the same day. My uncle went Air Force and Walter went Navy. Wherever you find one of them, you’ll normally find the other. Probably up to some mischief. Standing side by side, they both seem to be chiseled out of the same stock. There’s a lot more that I could say about Walter and my uncle, but like I said, this recorder can only hold 700 hours. So where was I? Oh yeah, we’re heading back to the cabin with our first load of fuel. Two more trips and we should have Uncle Andy stocked up with enough to last quite a while. I still can’t get any radio stations on the FM band. The few that I can pick up on AM fade away too quickly for me to gather any new information.

  *click*

  All right, second trip underway. We drove straight up to the fuel shed after the first trip and used the transfer pump to empty the barrels into his main tanks. One more trip . . . well this one I mean, will top off his main tanks. I actually think that we won’t need to take all the barrels on the third trip. I’m pretty sure at least one or two will still be full after his main tanks are filled to the top. I also think I’m being too wordy. I have a tendency to do that, especially when I’m a little keyed up. I don’t know why . . . OK, actually I do. I’m a little nervous. Like I’m the last one to pick up on a secret. Something is happening . . . I can feel it in the air. I mean seriously . . . our country has been through a lot of crap before, like the U.S. always defaulting to being the global policeman. Half of the world wants to be like us, the other half wants to kill us . . . give us your tired your sick your poor . . . got a dictator that’s pissing you off, give us a call we’ll take care of it . . . stock market crashes, universal healthcare fiascoes, the list goes on and on. But this feels different. Something in my gut . . . I don’t know, but it seems to make my hackles rise. And speaking of hackles raised, Max is looking at me, probably wondering why I didn’t give him another Slim Jim when we were at Sheldon’s. Crap, now that I think about it the last time either of us ate was the infamous powdered doughnuts and Slim Jim buffet. I’m gonna stop recording for now. I’ve got some thinking to do.

  *click*

  Remember my gut feeling? I need to listen to it more often. We’ve just left to head back to the cabin after the second fuel run and my hands are still a little shaky. I was “this close” to shooting the guy, or should I say the dickhead, in the parking lot of the marina. OK, let me just chill for a minute.

  *click*

  All right, I think I’ve cooled down enough to let you know what happened. So we make it back to the marina; it was just starting to sprinkle a little . . . Hmmm, maybe I was wrong; I still can’t believe how close I came. I’m still feeling a little nervous. Let me clarify that. I’m not “nervous” as in scared. It’s more of a “pumped up on adrenaline” feeling. Normally when I get like this I need to blow off a little steam. The best way I’ve found so far is some type of exercise, like jogging or swimming, something individual—not a team sport like basketball. Being the mental giant that I am, I figured out that it can be difficult to jog while driving this truck loaded with fuel barrels up an old dirt road. Which brings us to the second best way I’ve found to dissipate the “adrenaline rush” jitters—talking. So let me see, what can I talk about? Well, how about the marina, that ought to work. OK, Sheldon’s Marina is more than just a marina. It’s a combination gas station and food store that also carries some basic hardware and gear for outdoor activities, mostly fishing, camping, and hiking, although he has a few things for hunting as well. It’s located at the main access point for Ghost Echo Lake. The lake itself is fairly typical for northern North Dakota with a couple of exceptions. There are literally thousands of lakes up here, anywhere from a few acres to a few miles long. Ghost Echo Lake is about twenty-seven miles long, roughly oval, with about a bazillion small coves and inlets—picture a giant blob of ink dropped onto a huge piece of paper and you’ll have a good idea of what it looks like. Most of its shoreline is swamp. It’s also a bit deeper than the typical lakes you’d find scattered everywhere up here. If I remember right its average depth is somewhere around forty-five feet—it’s got some deep water drop offs as well—some of those are over one hundred fifty feet deep. Again, not too much out of the ordinary as lakes go. The two things that make Ghost Echo Lake such a draw are that it straddles the border between the United States and Canada, as a matter of fact the boundary line is almost exactly through the middle of the lake. I think Canada actually has about a half mile more on their side. The problem with this, believe it or not, is smuggling. There aren’t too many roads that cross the border up here, and the ones that do are regularly patrolled by customs agents and other LEO’s. It’s a lot harder to catch the bad guys when they can disappear into the swamps or coves. Also it’s a lot easier to get rid of drugs by tossing them overboard into a deep lake. The Border Patrol shares a station with the DEA on the eastern edge of the lake near the boundary line, and they run interdiction boats out of there. Sometimes they even cooperate with my agency. Sometimes. Anyhow, you would think that being a game warden is all about enforcing bag limits and busting poachers, but the truth is that more and more of our law enforcement duties relate to smuggling. And not just narcotics . . . there’s a lot of human traffic that crosses the US-Canada line. Heck, I’ve already had, let me see . . . three training classes so far this year on drug smuggling and counterterrorism, and another two on human trafficking and slavery. Anyhow, where was I? Oh yeah, the lake. So smugglers have access via dozens of little dirt roads that surround the lake, and the bottom line is that there’s just not enough manpower to patrol everything effectively. Don’t even get me started about when everything is frozen. So normally, all of this would not be very much of a problem for a lake that is basic
ally way out in the middle of nowhere. After all, there are a lot of lakes that span the border between United States and Canada. Which brings me to the second unique characteristic of a Ghost Echo Lake. In 1972, the North Dakota state record walleye was caught there. In 1987, the world record walleye was caught there. Since then, anglers have been flocking to the lake from all around the world. And that is why Walter stays in business. Sheldon’s Marina has facilities to house about forty-five to fifty average size bass boats. A couple years ago he built a storage facility to keep the boats in dry dock for the anglers who didn’t want to keep hauling their boats back and forth. He also has a thriving business of storing customers’ ice fishing shacks during the warm months. Once the lake freezes enough to permit the annual migration of the shacks to their winter home, the location of which is done on a first-come, first-serve basis—heavily influenced by fistfights, bribery, and copious amounts of alcohol—he’ll haul it out there for you, charging both for mileage and time. Before ice out, you are required by law to remove your shack, and most people just call in and gave him a credit card number and the location ID of their shack and he brings it back to shore for them. Quite a little racket he’s got going. Across the road from the marina there is a large gravel parking lot that can hold, oh, I don’t know, maybe 200 to 300 pickups, cars or SUV’s with boat trailers before they start spilling over into the grass. Eight miles northeast of the marina there’s a pretty big state operated RV park/campground. Most of the guys that come up here to fish stay there. The nearest hotel is about twenty miles further east. So there you have it, you now know almost everything there is to know about Sheldon’s Marina, except what just happened there. Deep breath . . . . OK, so we make it back to Sheldon’s and see that there’s about thirty people in the parking lot, not the gravel one across the road but the one right by the bait store. The way that Walter’s pumps are set up are in two banks of a “three-grade delivery pump?” I guess it would be called. Basically there are two gas pumps, each one can pump out of both sides and on each side you have a choice between regular, mid-grade, and high test. The pumps themselves are spaced about ten feet further apart than you would typically see at a gas station, with me so far? So, if it was just cars or trucks, there would be room for four of them to gas up at the same time. However the pumps are spaced apart the way they are because most people gas up their vehicle with one pump and fill their boat with the second pump. The diesel pump is located off the side of the parking lot on a straight stretch that allows larger trucks to pull up to it, but there’s only one pump for diesel since he doesn’t sell that much. Where was I . . . oh yeah, so there was a bunch of people milling around talking in the parking lot, but the line to the gas pumps was about seven truck/boat trailers long. There wasn’t anybody at the diesel pump. Before we left the cabin the first time, we had divided the barrels up. Uncle Andy had the gas ones on his truck and I had the diesel on mine, so I pulled up to the pump and Uncle Andy got in line. When you’re in line at the pumps the person working the counter can see you through the windows of the bait store. If they know you they turn the pumps on, if they don’t and you haven’t paid at the pump with a credit card, then you gotta come in and pay first. However, since credit cards were currently offline, cash was king. As was my uncle’s prepayment. I got out of my truck, grabbed the hose off the pump, flipped the lever up and climbed into the bed of my truck. Don’t give me any crap about filling a non-DOT approved fuel container. I opened the first barrel, put the nozzle in and squeezed . . . nothing. I turned to look toward the window to try and get their attention but I couldn’t see inside because of the glare on the glass, so I climbed back off the truck and put the hose back. My door was still hanging open and the tailgate was still down.

  “Max, guard the truck,” I said as I started toward the bait store. Max jumped off the front seat down to the ground, trotted around to the back, and jumped up onto the bed of the truck.

  As I got closer to the front door of the bait store I could hear some of the conversations that were taking place—mostly about the president’s speech. Two guys standing near an eighteen foot bass boat seemed to be having a slightly heated discussion about whether they’re going to go back out on the lake or head home. Another lady with two kids was digging through her purse and swearing; the kids were standing by looking bored. My badge was riding in plain view on my belt, the CZ slightly below and to the right in a tactical thigh holster. Neither brought more than a cursory glance from the small crowd in the parking lot even though I was wearing jeans and a slightly ratty “Tennessee” long sleeve sweatshirt. All the rest of my work gear—handcuffs, vest, uniform, radio, and belt gear were behind the seat in my truck. My hand was almost on the door to the bait shop when the glass partition shattered. I crouched down against the side of the building, hand reaching toward the CZ as a large man burst out of the remains of the door. A continual series of shouted profanities that would make a drill sergeant blush spilled out of his mouth as he made his way toward the gas pumps.

  “Freeze, sheriff’s department,” I shouted.

  Now, I know I am not a member of the sheriff’s department. I am, however a North Dakota State law enforcement officer, specifically a wildlife conservation officer, otherwise known as a game warden. I have all of the same responsibilities for upholding the law as any other law enforcement officer in the state. Where we differ is in our select area of primarily enforcement. A state highway patrol officer is going to be primarily focused on vehicular related offenses, where as myself, I’m primarily focused on natural resources management and enforcement. It’s not to say that I couldn’t give somebody a speeding ticket—I could. The same way a highway patrol officer could arrest somebody for poaching a deer. Which brings me back to my original point, why did I yell “sheriff’s department”? The answer to that is simple . . . it’s what I was trained to do in a “non-wildlife violation” situation. If I’m part of a raid on a warehouse that has been selling illegally harvested moose meat and bear claws, going in yelling “game warden” or “wildlife officer” is going to send the message that they’re in trouble because anybody working in that warehouse is going to know that the people most likely to bust them are going to be game wardens. The same goes if I pull over a truckload of guys driving around drinking beer and taking potshots at deer. However, in a situation that requires some type of interdiction by a game warden, a scenario that is not directly “wildlife” related, you yell “sheriff’s office.” The reason for this is purely psychological. Imagine if you’re a bank robber busting out of the vault with a bag of money in each hand and somebody yells “freeze . . . game warden” . . . you get the point.

  Anyway, I told the guy to freeze, and he didn’t. He spun around to face me, his left hand dripping blood and his right hand in his coat pocket. My thumb opened the break on the Blade Tech holster and my fingers went around the CZ’s grip.

  “Show me your hands,” I yelled. “Do it slow—do it now!”

  He looked at me, red face burning with anger, eyes clinched together, chest heaving. But he didn’t take his hand out of his pocket.

  I drew the 9mm and pointed it at his center mass. “Show me your hands now,” I yelled again. I could see him weighing his options in his mind, and I didn’t like the way it looked like he was leaning toward going.

  “Mister, you show me your hands right now or so help me I will drop you where you stand,” I hissed.

  Just then a woman’s voice shouted out, “Drake, what are you doing? Stop this! . . . Please! . . . You’re gonna get killed!” It was the woman with the two kids.

  Her voice seemed to bring him back to sanity, and his shoulders sagged as he slowly took his hand out of his pocket. There was nothing in his hand. A crowd was gathering as I got him to the ground, frisked him and then stood him back up, fingers interlaced behind his head, leaning against a cement roof support for the pump island. Uncle Andy caught my eye and gave a slight nod toward my truck. I gave a quick “affirmative” nod. Thirt
y seconds later he returned and passed me my handcuffs, which I used on Drake.