North Harbor

by Kennedy Hudner

  There was a long pause. Corcoran became aware he was breathing hard, as if he had just finished a race.

  “We are businessmen,” the voice continued. “We happily pay for valuable services. And if you don’t want to provide those services, that is your choice. No harm, no foul. But confidentiality, Chief, confidentiality is important in life. Important to us. Were there to be a breach of confidentiality, well, the consequences would be dire, Chief. Very dire. It is important you understand that, Chief. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” Corcoran rasped, his mouth dry. “I understand.”

  “Now that you understand the playing field and the, ah, rules of the game, shall we send a man to talk to you? If the answer is ‘No,’ why then you keep the money and we part ways civilly, so long as you remember your duty of confidentiality. “What do you say?”

  Corcoran’s lack of hesitation surprised even him. “Send your man.”

  “Excellent,” Wallace Charles Moore III said. “I think you will find our proposal to your liking.”

  As it turned out, he did.

  ______________

  Now, sitting in his office, Chief Corcoran thought of what the night would bring. Once the drop-off date had been set, he had simply rearranged the Department duty roster to make sure his people were on duty that night. There was some grumbling, but most of the men usually on night shift found themselves working the Friday day shift for a change, or found they had an unexpected day off. And his men knew they were each going to receive a lot of money.

  So, not too much grumbling.

  One person who had questioned the changes was Jimmy McLeod, the senior lieutenant in the Police Department. Corcoran had dismissed him with a short reply. “Gotta shake things up every once in a while, Jimmy. Don’t want people in a rut.” McLeod had not looked convinced, but screw him. Corcoran grinned. He was going to make $30,000 for tonight’s work. And each of his boys would make $5,000.

  That was the essence of management: strong incentives and a win-win for everybody.

  ______________

  For Jacob Finley, Friday was a day of anticipation – tonight he would see Katie again.

  The Celeste had pulled away from the dock at 5:30 a.m. sharp, Jean-Philippe LeBlanc at the wheel and Jacob and a man named Leo as sternsmen. Leo was a cousin or something of LeBlanc’s and Jacob had seen him around the docks before. They cruised at fifteen knots and reached the area they had trapped within an hour and a half.

  There were eight, one-mile trawls of twenty to twenty-five traps each, plus some areas where there were up to fifteen or twenty individual traps. They all had to be brought up from the bottom, pulled onto the boat, opened and emptied, then stacked for reuse wherever LeBlanc decided to place them. Meanwhile the seas were running five to eight feet, not crashing about or anything nasty, but enough to constantly lift and drop the boat like a cork. The work was hard, even with the winch, and you had to be careful to avoid crushed fingers or simply getting caught in the yards and yards of loose rope on the deck.

  By lunch they had pulled five of the trawls. In one of them the catch was so good that LeBlanc immediately turned the Celeste around and they re-laid the trawl in the same location. Laying the traps was easy. You tied twenty traps together with roughly two hundred and fifty feet of line between them, lined them up like parachutists lining up for a jump, then kicked the first one off the open stern section. The first one hit the water and sank and, two hundred and fifty feet later, yanked the second trap off the boat, and so on until all twenty were off the boat in a line roughly a mile long.

  A simple procedure, but not without its own risks.

  Jacob never figured out what went wrong, but all of a sudden some rope coiled around his leg and he found himself flat on his back, getting dragged unceremoniously to the open stern as the traps were yanked off the boat one by one. He didn’t even have time to scream.

  About five feet from shooting off into the ocean, strong hands grabbed Jacob under the armpits and brought him to a jerking halt. Then the line tightened hard around his leg and he screamed in pain.

  “Leo, get his leg free!” LeBlanc hollered as he fought to keep Jacob from being torn from his grasp. The Celeste was still moving forward and the drag of lobster pots threatened to dislocate Jacob’s leg at the hip. “Leo!” LeBlanc called again. And then Leo was there, grunting and pulling at the rope to get a little slack, then reaching down with one gnarled hand to flip Jacob over and let the rope scrape over his leg.

  Then Jacob was free, being pulled hastily out of the way of the next trap as it made its lemming run into the ocean. Jacob lay on the deck, laughing and sobbing, and then abruptly screaming, though whether in joy, anger, or pain, he wasn’t sure. Jean-Philippe and Leo, who had both been in Jacob’s position more than once, laughed and helped him to his feet.

  “Jesus, Jake, this ain’t no time to go swimming! We got work to do!” LeBlanc laughed and clapped him on the back.

  Leo nodded somberly. “Water’s damn cold, boy. Cold! Shrivel your balls! You don’t want to go in that water, no.” He grinned a thin smile. “But you slide real good. Fast! Thought you were going to outrun Jean-Philippe for sure.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Jacob said weakly. LeBlanc disappeared into the cabin and came back with a pint of pear brandy. “Here, this will clear your head,” he said, handing it to Jacob.

  Jacob took a pull on the bottle and gasped as the liquid burned a molten path to his stomach. He coughed. “Jesus Christ!” he said again, and the two older men laughed and each took a swig. Meanwhile the last trap of the trawl pulled off the boat and sank to its appointed place on the bottom. LeBlanc took the tall, thin radar reflector and flag pole, which was tied to the last trap, and tossed it over as well. It would float upright and guide them to the trawl when they came to recover it.

  “Christ Almighty, I thought my poor brother was going to have to deal with two dead bodies in two days,” Jacob said shakily.

  Jean-Philippe LeBlanc straightened slowly. “What’s that?”

  So, Jacob told him the story of the body of a dead lobsterman on Enchanted Island.

  Chapter 22

  Friday Afternoon

  Katie was waiting on the dock in North Harbor when the Celeste pulled in to sell its catch to Cadot’s. She was dressed in blue jeans with a soft white sleeveless blouse, setting off her café au lait skin. Her long hair blew in the afternoon wind.

  Jacob Finley thought he had died and gone to heaven.

  “Hey!” she said, all white teeth and brown eyes. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  Jacob was painfully conscious that he was sweaty, covered with salt and grime, and smelled like a boat bilge. He held up his arms helplessly. “Listen,” he told her, “I’ve got to hang around for a few minutes to get paid, then I really need a shower and some clean clothes. Can I pick you up someplace in about an hour?”

  Katie pouted, her lower lip thrust forward. “Well, you see, my daddy had to go to Boston for a meeting or something and – ” she paused and smiled mischievously – “he won’t be home until late tonight. S-o-o-o, if you want, maybe we could just get a pizza or something and maybe just have a bite to eat at my place.” She smiled and raised her eyebrows. “Hmmm?”

  Jacob felt a flush of hot blood race through his entire body. “That sounds…that sounds wonderful,” he stammered. Then the smell of low tide and mud flats wafted into his nostrils. “But I really got to shower.”

  “I’ve got a shower,” Katie said.

  ______________

  Jean-Philippe LeBlanc called the number for Bruno Banderas, but there was no answer. He frowned. He wanted to alert the Dominican that the police had found Henry Mitchell’s body, and that by now they would know he had been murdered. He considered calling Corcoran, the Chief of Police, but thought better of it. What if the Police logged in all their calls? No, not worth the risk.

  Besides, there wasn’t anything going on that he knew about, so it wasn’t as urgent as it might be other
wise. He put his phone away and went back to the dock to pay his crew.

  ______________

  The freighter, Tampa Bay, was eighty miles away from the drop point, steaming at fifteen knots. The Cartel’s man stood in a small storage room near the stern and looked at the two packages, each weighing almost twenty-three kilos. One was wrapped in black plastic, the other was wrapped in white. It was very important not to mix them up. Not that he would; he was a very careful man.

  He glanced outside the porthole and saw the cloud cover was thickening, then checked his watch. Just 4 p.m.

  Everything was on schedule.

  Chapter 23

  Friday Night – Opening Moves

  The sun was setting when Finley arrived at the trailer that Honeycutt was using as his Command post. The trailer was parked at the end of Naskeag Point in Brooklin, just where the asphalt road turned to dirt and disappeared further into the forest. In addition to the trailer, there were four unmarked cars. It looked, ironically, like a drug sale in action.

  There were two tough-looking DEA guards standing outside, but Finley showed his credentials and they let him in. Honeycutt looked up and nodded as he entered.

  “What’s the status?” Finley asked.

  Honeycutt motioned to the map of the Gulf of Maine. “Here is where the players are. Think of this like a chess game.”

  “First, this is the Tampa Bay, the freighter headed for Saint John. It is steaming at fifteen knots, about sixty miles from the Bay of Fundy, so figure four hours for it to reach the entrance. We have a Canadian Coast Guard patrol boat waiting just outside of Saint John, just in case everything goes wrong.” Honeycutt always planned for failure.

  “Second, here is the Coast Guard Cutter Vigilant, which has been shadowing the freighter for the last two days. Right now, the Vigilant is on the ocean side of the freighter, but the Vigilant can hit thirty knots and is only sixteen miles away. As the freighter closes in on the Bay of Fundy, we’ll send it on a high-speed run west, towards the Maine coast. If we’re right, that will put the Vigilant between the freighter and the Maine coast. It will also put her much closer to the freighter, shortening her time to respond to whatever the Cartel does.

  “Third, the Vigilant has launched its LUNA drone, which is flying in a wide circle around the Tampa Bay and keeping an eye out for any other vessels that might approach it and take delivery of the drugs. So far, nothing, which makes sense. I think that whatever is going to happen, will happen after sunset. But if the drugs are handed off to another boat, we should have them. It’s just a question of geometry, and we’ve got the angles covered.”

  “And if you see the drugs being picked up by another boat?” Finley queried.

  Honeycutt shrugged. “Then we have to decide whether to follow them to shore or arrest them at the freighter’s location.”

  “What if the pickup boat sees you and instead of running to shore, heads out into the ocean?”

  Honeycutt smirked. “If they head into open ocean, we’ve got them. The Coast Guard cutter may be slower, but it has a lot more fuel. The go-fast boat will run out of gas within three to five hours. Once it does, the Vigilant will be all over it. We’ll use the LUNA to track it so it won’t be able to shake us off.”

  “Huh.” Finley studied the map. “Weather is getting worse. How long can the LUNA stay up?”

  Now Honeycutt grimaced. “That’s the question, isn’t it? Specs say it can stay up six to eight hours, depending on how much weight it’s carrying. We decided not to arm it at all, too much weight. It’s just carrying cameras. But it has to fly under the clouds and the wind is getting stronger. The Coasties say they can keep it up at least five more hours, but–” He shrugged again. “We’ll see, I guess.”

  “And if they run?”

  Honeycutt pursed his lips. “Well, the freighter is too slow to run. We’ve got that in the bag one way or another. If a go-fast boat comes alongside and picks up the package, then we can follow it with the LUNA and vector in the Vigilant’s go-fast boat. It’s got a heavy machine gun. If that doesn’t work, we’ll scramble the helicopter from the Coast Guard base in Rockland.”

  “So now what?”

  Honeycutt sank back into his chair. “Now we wait.”

  Finley picked up the shopping bag he had carried in. “Anybody want a donut?”

  ______________

  Mateo and Pablo untied the lines holding the Shockwave to the pier. Mateo glanced at the sky, which was grey with thickening clouds. Good, the clouds would make it harder for the Yankees to mount aerial reconnaissance.

  But not impossible. One thing the Yankees were very skilled at was finding you in the dark. But he had a little something up his sleeve that would help with that.

  The engine started with a low rumble. Mateo went through his mental checklist. Food, fuel, water, GPS and maps, first aid kit, guns and spare ammo.

  Just another day in Vacationland.

  The Shockwave pulled away from the pier just as the last bit of the sun sank beneath the horizon. Mateo turned the boat north and increased power. He glanced west, admiring the sunset. He never passed up an opportunity to look at sunsets – you never knew when it would be your last.

  ______________

  On the Tampa Bay, Felipe Ochoa stood back and looked at his handiwork. The black bag had a flotation device wrapped around it. In addition, it was tied to a brightly colored orange float. No chance that it would sink beneath the waves and disappear.

  The white bag was different. It had a precise depth gauge strapped to it, along with a small flotation device and some weights. They had experimented until they got it right. There was also an electronic device strapped to the bag with electrical lines running to two waterproof battery cases. The batteries were high-end lithium batteries, and he had them on a trickle charger until it was time.

  He checked his satellite phone. Fully charged as well.

  Satisfied, he lit a cigarette and sat down to wait. Maybe later there would be time to watch the football game tonight, Monterrey against Club Tijuana. They had already tied once this season, but Monterrey was the better team and should win.

  ______________

  Jacob took the motorcycle over the crest of the hill toward Stonington. Katie sat behind him, her arms around his waist. It was fully dark now, with stars brilliant above them, but clouds surging in from the northeast behind them. The downhill portion of the slope was straight and there were no cars coming. On impulse he turned off the engine and then flipped off the headlight.

  The steep road in front of them vanished into darkness.

  They rocketed down the hill in the dark. It was like a roller coaster ride through a tunnel, the wind howling in their faces and not being able to see a blessed thing in front of them. With only the sound of the wind, it was like flying at night in their own private universe, hurtling through space while the Milky Way galaxy hovered over them, so close they could reach up and touch it.

  Their senses went into overdrive – their eyes told them they were barely moving, while their inner ears told them they were falling, falling through the blackness. Over the roar of the wind and his motorcycle, all Jacob could hear was Katie’s laughter and, he thought, the sound of his own heart.

  In front of them, the star-drenched sky was enormous.

  Behind them, the storm-roiled sky was black upon black.

  Katie screamed in delight and hugged him tighter, burying her head into his shoulder. “Oh my God, this is awesome!” she yelled in his ear. Her fingernails raked his chest and her thighs clamped tight against his.

  A single, dim streetlight marked the bottom of the hill. Jacob braked slightly, restarted the engine and engaged the clutch, then flipped on the light just in time to make the turn onto Airport Road. His heart was beating wildly and he was grinning like a fool.

  “You are the best!” Katie shouted over the engine noise, then ran her hands over his groin. “I am going to give you such a good time!”

  ______________


  Mateo stopped in the lee of Clam Island and the three men set up the spray canopy, carefully tying it down to make sure that the wind would not rip it apart if they were running at speed. Pablo and Arturo checked their weapons and laid them out on the floor behind the seats. The ocean air was cool and the wind teased at their hair and clothes.

  The spray canopy was their low-tech secret weapon to defeat the Coast Guard’s infrared sensors. If the storm didn’t hit them, or if the rain was not very heavy, they could use the spray canopy over the engine housing to mask the heat of the engine. It was an old trick, used by smugglers for years. And it worked, most of the time.

  Then they were off again, the Shockwave punching through some of the growing waves, and hurtling off the tops of others. It was so noisy that the three men put on radio headsets with thick earmuffs so they could talk without shouting. Everyone put on their safety harnesses. It was rough now; it was going to get worse before the night was out.

  Pablo activated his headset. “How fast?”

  Mateo glanced at the speedometer. “Forty knots, except when we’re airborne. Faster then.”

  The boat slammed down once more into a trough, then skimmed up the slope of another wave and went briefly airborne, only to slam down again.