A Shooting at Auke Bay

by Parker, Gordon;

  At last a horrible shriek came from deep inside her. She swept her arms across the desk, scattering everything on it. She stood and stomped around the room, throwing anything she could reach.

  She shouted curses. She excoriated everyone who came to mind, starting with Pietro Greco. And yes, she reverted to calling him by his name. What a fool he was. He let someone take a fortune from him. Either that or he stole it himself, leaving her to take the fall for who knows what.

  She cursed Cameron McGraw and Fiona Robinson, the only names she knew for them.

  She cursed Trent Marshall, whose appearance in Juneau had been the catalyst for the crash of Greco’s empire.

  Marshall! She didn’t know if he was dead or alive. But his wife was alive. And Colombo knew where to find her.

  There were things to do before she could think about Marshall’s wife.

  She opened the small safe tucked into a corner of the office. She knew Greco kept some cash on hand. There was almost fifty thousand dollars. She stuffed the cash into the oversized bag she carried.

  The restaurant’s checkbook was also in the safe. There was another fifty thousand in that account and she was a signer on the checks. She put the checkbook in her bag as well.

  She called Caine and told him not to bother coming to work the next day. The restaurant was closing. She gave him no more details except to say she would have a job for him soon. She didn’t tell him she had no intention of paying him for the job nor did she let him know she would kill him when the job was done. She made a crude sign saying “Due to Unforeseen Circumstances JS Bistro Is Temporarily Closed. Will Reopen Soon.”

  She found a stool at the bar where she sat in the dark drinking scotch.

  Captain Place told one of his crew to check the anchor line.

  “Feels like we might be drifting a little,” he lied.

  The crewman didn’t like the order but feared his captain’s discipline more if he disobeyed. He stepped out on deck.

  On the larger vessel, the skipper watched as the crewman stepped into the open. He brought his Smith & Wesson Model 25-5 .45 caliber long barrel revolver to bear and fired. The crewman was knocked off his feet. He tumbled into the sea.

  With the captain’s shot, his crew opened up on the yacht. Smashing glass, splintering wood with a hail of bullets. The long barrel revolvers were effective weapons given the range of fire. The extra length added punch to the .45 caliber rounds.

  Captain Place was appalled as he watched his precious Dancer being rapidly shot to pieces. He ordered his men to return fire.

  Dancer’s crew was more heavily armed with their AR–15s. Unfortunately for them, they came to the fight with too little experience.

  The three so-called male guests rushed to join the fight, armed with the rifles they were given when they came aboard. In one of the cabins, the three women guests, all of whom were hookers from Seattle, lay on the floor, holding each other, as they listened to the battle raging around them.

  The skipper of the larger vessel ordered two of his men who he knew to be better than average marksmen to aim at Dancer’s waterline. He would sink the yacht to repay them for reneging on their agreement.

  Captain Place saw the two crewmen using two of the ship’s hatches to steady their long barrel revolvers. He saw their angle of fire. He realized they had been ordered to sink Dancer.

  “No,” he shouted, as he ran from the bridge onto his own deck. “No, you won’t sink my ship!”

  He fired as he ran. It was the first time he had ever experienced a gunfight. He lost control of himself. His shots went wide, doing no damage to vessel or personnel.

  This was not his counterpart’s first fight. He realized he had the opposing commander in position to be taken out. He stepped onto the deck and aimed.

  His first bullet struck Place in his right foot, slowing his charge across the deck. The wounded man was hit a second time in his left elbow, shattering the union of the humerus, radius, and ulna. His left arm now useless, Place stood bleeding and helpless, unable to raise his rifle into firing position.

  The captain on the opposing vessel, smiled and gave Place a mock salute. Then he shot Dancer’s skipper squarely in the chest. He calmly turned and stepped back into the bridge of his own vessel.

  The cove in which the fight was taking place was only a few miles from the small community of Port Alexander. Guests at a luxury fishing lodge were enjoying a night cap in the bar when they heard the sound of gunfire. The guests, most taking their drinks with them, followed the lodge staff when they stepped outside to better hear the racket.

  “Sounds like a full-scale war,” one of the guests said.

  “Sure does,” the lodge owner said. “I’m calling the Troopers.”

  The Coast Guard had three Sikorsky Jayhawk helicopters. At the request of the State Troopers, Captain Van Patten ordered two of them to fly the seaward coast of Baranof Island and find the altercation. He ordered the third to standby in reserve.

  It was roughly sixty miles from Sitka to Port Alexander. The Jayhawks would cruise at 140 knots, or 161 miles per hour. They would cover the island’s coast in well under an hour.

  He also ordered the Cutter Bailey Barco and a buoy tender from Ketchikan to Baranof Island. They would be guided by the crews of the choppers once they located the source of the gunfire. The Bailey Barco, which could cruise at twenty-eight knots, or about thirty-two miles an hour, would arrive four and a half hours later. The slower buoy tender sometime after that.

  The choppers and the Cutter were both armed with medium machine guns. They were prepared to do battle or rescue survivors. Or both.

  The Jayhawks flew with starboard doors open, machine guns at the ready. Each member of the crew was armed with an M4 fully automatic rifle and a Sig Sauer P226 semiautomatic handgun.

  Three State Troopers were in the lead chopper, adding their arms to the mix. Each Trooper carried a Glock. One held a Remington 870 shotgun, the second an AR–15 rifle, the third a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun. All standard issue for the troopers.

  Unlike Captain Place and his crew, the Troopers knew how to use the AR–15 and their other weapons.

  Half an hour into the flight, those aboard the helicopters heard the faint sound of gunfire, muffled by the sound of the rotors and the rush of air going by the open doors.

  The pilots turned toward the sound of the guns as best they could figure it. It was the light from a burning vessel that pinpointed their destination.

  The pilot of the lead aircraft held them at the cove’s entrance while he surveyed the dramatic scene below. A yacht, flames shooting from the main cabin, was listing heavily to starboard. A larger vessel lay alongside, its crew continuing to fire rounds from long barreled revolvers into the already defeated smaller boat.

  The pilot issued orders to the second aircraft, then pushed his chopper toward the fight. Using the bullhorn feature of his communications system, he directed that fighting cease and ordered the combatants to lay down their weapons.

  When a foolish crewman on the apparently victorious vessel raised his weapon toward the helicopter, the pilot didn’t hesitate to give the order to fire as he swung his aircraft to port. The two men manning the M240 machine gun in the open starboard door sent a stream of bullets into the fight. They raked the deck with the machine gun, watching four of the exposed crew drop. Realizing they were heavily outclassed, the remainder began dropping their weapons to the deck and raising their hands.

  The skipper, furious at being denied his victory and unwilling to be taken captive by the Americans, stood in the entrance to his ship’s bridge, firing ineffectively at the helicopter. State Trooper Corporal Susan Duryea braced herself against the aircraft’s door, taking careful aim with her AR-15. Duryea was an expert with the rifle. Taking windage and elevation into account as well as the up and down movement of her target’s ship, she fired three rounds in quick succession. All three struck the belligerent seaman in the chest. A pattern of hits close enoug
h for Duryea’s hand to cover.

  Duryea had an interest in the events that had unfolded in recent days. She was suspicious of Jim Segal the day the two men were shot at Auke Bay but had let herself be convinced he wasn’t a problem. She let him go then. If only she had pressed him that day so much of what had happened might have been prevented. What was turning out to be a major smuggling operation could have been shut down much sooner.

  The lead pilot lowered his aircraft, allowing the State Troopers to leap onto the deck. They began rounding up the crew, checking the wounded to determine who was still alive and who was not.

  Meanwhile, the second helicopter focused on the yacht, which was clearly on the verge of sinking. Three women, one middle aged, slightly overweight man dressed as a passenger, and two younger men, probably crew, were clinging to the deeply slanted deck.

  If they couldn’t be rescued before Dancer sank, they would go into a state of shock within the first minute of immersion in the cold water, leading to the possibility of heart failure. If their hearts weren’t overpowered by the immediate shock, they could survive as long as thirty minutes. But that was risky. After ten minutes their body temperatures would be lowered to the extent that the effort required to swim or tread water would become more and more difficult.

  While the pilot hovered above the sinking boat, the crew dismounted the machine gun and stowed it. They broke out the rescue basket and hooked it up to be lowered. They tapped the pilot on the shoulder to let him know the basket was ready.

  The pilot activated the loudspeaker function of his communications system again, directing the six people clinging to the boat to get into the basket one at a time, starting with the women.

  The basket was lowered, the first woman climbed in and was pulled up to the helicopter. Over the next half hour, all six were lifted from the doomed vessel. Twenty minutes later, Dancer slipped beneath the waves on her way to the bottom. Captain Place remained aboard as she sank.

  The chopper with the survivors from Dancer started back for Sitka. They would arrange for medical care and, as the six were suspected of being part of a smuggling operation, for incarceration pending investigation.

  The crew would refuel and return to the cove to assist their companion aircraft. The two aircraft would take turns maintaining watch over the surviving vessel until the arrival of the Bailey Barco.

  The State Troopers aboard the ship had opened some of the boxes stacked on deck. They were filled with electronic equipment. Video games. Tablets. Integrated circuit boards. Flash drives. All brand names. All either stolen or counterfeit. Most likely counterfeit.

  The Troopers were the first to witness firsthand Greco’s smuggling operation. The conspiracy he had launched while posing as Jim Segal, successful businessman and restaurateur.

  Though it was late, Van Patten called Monk to report on the evening’s activities.

  “Now it’s time,” Monk said.

  “Time for what?” Van Patten asked. He knew Monk had been doing everything he could to keep the Coast Guard, FBI, State Troopers, and local police from taking action over the past week. He didn’t know why Monk wanted them to hold back but he trusted the old cop’s judgment.

  “Something has happened,” Monk said. “Greco’s operation has been brought into the open. His remaining people will be confused and scared. We need to increase their confusion. Scare them more.”

  “What do you suggest we do, Robert?”

  “Tomorrow morning is the time for the Troopers to announce the grisly murder of Jim Segal, reveal his true identity, and report the disappearance of Cameron McGraw and Fiona Robinson.”

  “Yeah, now it’s time,” he said aloud as he ended the call.

  August 13th

  It was unusual for a press conference to be called on a Sunday.

  Commissioner of Public Safety Val Murphy caught the early flight to Anchorage. Captain Van Patten traveled with him. They arrived shortly after nine o’clock Sunday morning.

  In Anchorage they were joined by APD Chief Ben Kline, Tom Wofford, FBI Special Agent in Charge for Alaska, and Captain Doc Williams of the State Troopers Bureau of Investigation. Williams was once a highly decorated Navy corpsman attached to a Marine unit. He was still called Doc as a mark of respect.

  At two o’clock Sunday afternoon, the room was filled with representatives of Alaska’s print and broadcast media. Others from around the state joined the session via teleconference. Commissioner Murphy opened the conference by announcing the death of the man known in Alaska as Jim Segal. He then turned it over to SAiC Wofford.

  “Jim Segal’s real name was Pietro Greco,” Wofford said.

  As Wofford revealed all they knew about Pietro Greco, a buzz went through the gathering of reporters. Several of them had dined at JS Bistro and knew him as Jim Segal.

  The room became quiet, though no less attentive, when Van Patten described the gruesome scene the Coast Guard found when they boarded Greco’s boat. He also noted the disappearance of Cameron McGraw and Fiona Robinson. With regret, he said they did know if the two were victims or perpetrators.

  The captain then announced the discovery of Greco’s smuggling operation. Doc Williams described the fight on the coast of Baranof Island resulting in the sinking of the yacht Dancer. He limned the cargo of counterfeit goods the State Troopers found when they boarded the surviving ship.

  When Williams concluded his remarks, the room was silent for several seconds. Then it erupted into chaos as the officials were deluged with questions.

  Finally, Commissioner Murphy brought the conference to a close by announcing that the combined law enforcement agencies of the states of Alaska and Washington, the FBI, and the Coast Guard were immediately launching a joint effort to shut down the remainder of Greco’s criminal activities and take into custody everyone involved. Even at that moment, Murphy said, the effort was underway in the San Juan Islands.

  It was a cloudy, cool day in Anchorage. Robert made the decision that the cocktail of the day would be bourbon on the rocks. It was a day of forceful action. He thought it should it be paired with a cocktail equal in force.

  He poured the drinks while the group in the Anchorage penthouse, at Robert’s insistence, gathered around the large screen television in the main sitting room to watch the evening news.

  At the end of the report, the group of friends clinked their glasses together. Pietro Greco had paid for shooting Trent. His empire was being disassembled.

  He had also paid for other sins. They could only guess what those sins might have been.

  Jayne Colombo watched the news in her Spenard apartment. Once again, she couldn’t believe what she was seeing and hearing. How could this have happened? How could Greco be so stupid as to let himself get murdered?

  The thought set her off again perseverating Pietro Greco. It had become a daily ritual.

  She knew it did no good. Greco was gone. He wasn’t coming back. His smuggling operation was broken.

  One of the yachts was lying on the bottom of the sea in a Southeast Alaska fjord. The others were likely tied up at the abandoned dock in the San Juans, oblivious that they were out of work.

  She could change that and maybe salvage something out of the mess Greco had made. She picked up her phone and dialed a number with a 206 area code.

  The workers in the old warehouse on the abandoned dock in the San Juan Islands looked up into the dusk of the evening sky as they heard the sound of the helicopters. Two Coast Guard Dolphins had been dispatched from their base at Port Angeles. On arriving at Greco’s confiscated island they found his workers moving as fast as they could to load cargo onto the three remaining yachts and a beat-up commercial fishing boat used to ferry counterfeit merchandise to the Port of Seattle.

  As the choppers drew closer to the island, the yachts and the fishing boat attempted to start their engines and put to sea. While one of the Dolphins hovered to provide covering fire if needed, the second swung to bring the Herstal M240 belt fed machine gun moun
ted in the starboard doorway to bear on the fleeing vessels.

  Firing at a rate of six hundred rounds per minute, the machine gun chewed up the water, sending hundreds of mini tsunamis splashing onto the decks.

  If anyone on the four boats thought they could outrun the rounds being thrown at them, the skippers quickly learned otherwise. Three Coast Guard cutters, armed with heavier machine guns and grenade launchers, came into view. Two circled in from the west side of the island, the third from the east. Escape was completely cut off.

  All four skippers killed their engines, letting their vessels settle heavily back into the water. All four stepped onto open decks with arms raised, surrendering their boats. The AR-15s with which all four were armed remained locked away.

  When the helicopters settled onto firm ground, FBI agents and armed Coast Guardsmen swarmed around and into the old building. The workers were arrested and handcuffed.

  The yachts and fishing boat, now completely docile, returned to the dock. The captains and crews were taken into custody.

  As the warehouse and boats were searched, ladies’ fashions, jewelry, and shoes, all designer brands and all counterfeit, were found. With more relief, the FBI agents searching the warehouse discovered counterfeit drugs worth millions. Fake products that would have killed the most vulnerable.

  All telephones were seized. An observant agent noticed one had received a call from an Anchorage number within the past two hours. The agent turned the phone over to his boss, who dialed the number.

  Jayne Colombo was surprised when her phone rang. The call was from the number she had called to warn the people on the island to pack up and get out. She hesitated to answer. It could be good news. Probably not.

  She let it go to voice mail.

  The phone was a burner. Whoever was calling would hear only a standard greeting. They would not hear her voice. They wouldn’t know who they were calling. They couldn’t trace it to her.

  The message left on her phone was another notice of disaster.