The door to the command trailer opened and his brother-in-law stood there. “He’s okay,” Finley told the soldier. Then, to Dumas, “Paul, give him your car keys so he can park your car up in the trees, out of sight.”
Dumas handed over the keys. Finley nodded at the soldier. “Thank you, Petty Officer Josephs.”
Josephs went to move the car and the second soldier melted back into the trees.
“Jesus, Frank,” Dumas whispered. “Who are the Neanderthals?”
“Security,” Finley said. “They are very serious guys, so don’t be a dick or they might shoot you, and then Danielle would be mad at me. C’mon, I’ve got to introduce you to my boss and put you to work.”
“I, for one, welcome our new Neanderthal overlords,” Dumas deadpanned, glancing back over his shoulder to the men with the assault rifles standing amongst the trees. Then he swung back to Finley. “Frank, what are you doing here? Who’s taking care of Danielle and the kids?”
“Three State Police are with Danni. Calvin’s at Luc’s and Jacob is working.”
Paul Dumas nodded, then followed his brother-in-law into the trailer. The space inside was crammed with three radios, a large screen that showed a real-time map of the archipelago of islands off Stonington and North Harbor, and ships in the water with identifying names on some of them. The funny thing, though, was that the view on the map kept changing, as if the map was being dragged by a computer mouse. Then the perspective on the map zoomed in and Dumas realized he was looking at waves. Real waves, the kind that moved.
“Wait!” he exclaimed. “Is this some sort of live feed from a plane or helicopter?”
Everyone in the trailer – three radio operators, a woman holding onto what looked like a joystick and frowning at a video monitor in front of her, two guys wearing windbreakers that said “DEA” on the back, a young Coast Guard Ensign, who nodded politely to him, and an older man who looked like a balding accountant, all turned and stared at him at the same moment. Dumas felt like he had showed up at church with his fly open.
The older man stood up and extended his hand in greeting. Dumas automatically shook it.
“Mr. Dumas, I am very glad to meet you, and I hope you can help us out of a jam we’re in,” the man said.
Dumas glanced at his brother-in-law, his confusion evident.
Finley smiled thinly. “Paul, this is Howard Honeycutt, the United States Drug Enforcement Agency’s Regional Director in charge of the New England Region. And, he’s my boss.”
Dumas’ puzzlement grew in leaps and bounds. “Ah, I thought you already had a boss, Frank. You know, the Police Chief?”
Finley shifted uneasily. “Yeah, about that…”
Honeycutt stepped in. “Mr. Dumas-”
“I think you’d better call me Paul,” Dumas said. “If we are all going to the insane asylum together, I think we should be on a first-name basis.”
Honeycutt chuckled. “Okay, Paul, that’s fair enough. Frank here is one of my agents. I’m not going to tell you what he’s doing for us just yet, but I can tell you that what he is doing is dangerous and you should be proud of him.”
Dumas shot Finley a look, and Finley could see pieces of the puzzle suddenly beginning to fall into place. He sighed. This could get ugly.
“And does this dangerous work explain why two men tried to kill my sister and father last night?” Dumas asked coldly.
“Yes, I’m afraid it does.” Honeycutt nodded, then frowned, then sighed in resignation. “I’m going to tell you several things now, but you need to know they are highly confidential. If you mention them to anyone, you could be charged with obstruction of justice.” This was said all matter-of-factly, but Finley knew his boss well enough to know that he was trying hard to keep tempers under control.
But Dumas was already hot under the collar. “Mr. Regional Director or whatever your title is, let’s cut the crap. You need me to do something for you, but first I want to know how this involves the attack on my father and sister.”
“Paul,” Finley said softly. “The gunmen were from one of the Mexican drug cartels. They were going to make an example out of my family because they discovered that I am working undercover for the DEA.” He paused. “At the same time they were breaking into our house, two other gunmen tried to kill me while I was driving to Bangor. All four of the gunmen are dead. Danni, God bless her, went all commando on them and protected Calvin and his girlfriend. She killed one of them and the Coast Guard arrived and killed the other. You dad got shot as he tried to help Danni.”
“Fuck me,” Dumas said shakily.
“For what’s it’s worth, I am very sorry,” Finley said. “I never thought it would come to this. I’d never forgive myself if anything happened to Danni.”
Dumas closed his eyes and blew out a deep breath. “Okay, but you and I are going to have a long talk about this.” He shook his head, as if trying to shake away what Finley had just told him. “Now what?”
“We have a drone looking for three lobster boats,” Finley explained. “But there are dozens of boats out there and none of us has the expertise to tell one from another. You know the fleet better than anyone, so we need your help.”
Dumas blew out another breath. “Sure…sure, whose boats are you looking for?”
“Three boats belonging to the LeBlanc family,” Finley told him.
Dumas recalled the “mapping” the LeBlanc boats were doing. “What are they doing?”
Honeycutt shifted forward just an inch, taking control of the conversation. “We think that the Mexican cartel dropped three large bags of drugs into the ocean north of here, near the entrance to the Bay of Fundy,” he said. “Apparently the plan is that the bags will drift down into the island cluster off North Harbor and Stonington.”
“The Eastern Maine Coastal Current,” Dumas said.
Honeycutt looked impressed. “You know about it,” he said approvingly.
Dumas snorted. “It’s my backyard.” He looked thoughtful. “You guys are the ones who caught that go-fast boat a few days ago. I assume that after the drug guys tried bringing in the dope above water, they decided to let it drift in with the current. Weighted down somehow, right?”
“Little more high-tech than that, but that’s the gist of it,” Finley said.
“Hell of a risk for them,” Dumas said.
“Big rewards,” Finley reminded him. “The lobster boats will find the parcels using some sort of radio transponder, then take them ashore. Once ashore, they’ll be taken by the local gangs, cut up into little packets and sold. The cartel could make millions. Tens of millions.”
“And this year several hundred Maine citizens will die because of it.” Honeycutt was grim, his arms folded.
“Okay,” Dumas said. “Show me the map and where the drone is.”
As it happened, the drone was flying a circle over Spruce Island.
Paul Dumas rubbed his chin. “Is there a way to pull the camera out? You know, so it’s not in so tight?”
“I can do that,” Gardner said briskly, and the camera zoomed out until it showed a three-mile area around Spruce Island.
Dumas leaned forward, studying the screen. “I’m not seeing anything. From this height, should I be able to see a boat the size of a lobster boat?”
“Let me show you,” Gardner said. She banked the drone and took it west, unknowingly away from the area where LeBlanc and his relatives were sailing. After a few minutes they could clearly see a small shape at the head of a long inverted “V” wake.
“Now we zoom in,” she explained as the camera attached to the belly of the LUNA drone did just that. In a moment they had a picture of a small, red lobster boat, at a forty-five degree angle.
Dumas leaned forward a little further. “That’s the Witch Hunt!” he exclaimed. “Sam Hutchinson’s boat. I can even read her name on the bow. I’ll be damned.” He turned to Gardner. “Okay, I guess this height is just fine, at least until the storm comes in.”
Gardner, H
oneycutt and Finley looked at each other in consternation.
“You do know a squall is going to pass through here within an hour or two, right?” Dumas asked. “Only, now the weather forecast says it looks more like a gale mixed with some godawful rain, with winds up to forty-five knots and waves five to seven feet.” He peered at them from the corner of his eye. “I mean, you do know this, right?”
Commander Mello and Honeycutt looked at each other, their expressions sour.
“Well, crap,” Honeycutt muttered.
Gardner frowned. “Let’s get to work, then. Mr. Dumas, tell me where I need to look.”
Dumas blew out a breath. “You say some packages went into the water last Friday and the Eastern Maine Coastal Current is dragging them down here?”
Everyone nodded.
“And they went in near the Grand Manan Island?” Dumas pressed.
More nods, but noticeably more tentative.
Dumas ran his hands through his hair. “Well, I am no oceanographer, but from what I’ve seen over the years, you are looking too far north. Unless the packages have run aground somewhere and they found them, chances are good that they are further south-“” he pointed on the map, “near Isle Au Haut or, hell, even Matinicus. Remember, we had that storm last week that was pushing everything to the southwest or south. Now, this gale tonight will slow things up a bit, if – and it’s a big if – the packages are near the surface, but by this time tomorrow, if they are around here at all, they will be moving east into open water.”
“So, we find them tonight or they’re gone?” Honeycutt asked.
Dumas grimaced. “Christ, they’re probably gone already, but if you want to find the LeBlancs, I’d start south and work north. Frankly, if we don’t find them at the Isle Au Haut or below, we probably won’t find them.”
Honeycutt nodded to the pilot. “Ms. Gardner, can you reposition the drone?”
“With alacrity, sir,” she answered.
Ensign Kauders whistled. “Alacrity, is it? Pretty big word for a pilot.”
“I am no less astonished that a mere ensign would know the meaning,” she answered sweetly. “But then I’ve met so few. Most of them flunk out of pilot training very early.”
They grinned at each other.
Commander Mello sighed. Young people were constantly distracted. “Do try to focus on the work at hand, people.”
“Yes, sir,” Kauders said, trying and failing to get the grin off his face. Finley glanced from Kauders to Gardner. Huh, he thought to himself. You could almost smell the hormones.
In the next fifteen minutes, the drone picked up three more boats. Two were lobster boats heading west towards Stonington Harbor, the third was a fishing boat heading towards Vinalhaven. Paul Dumas recognized all the boats and knew the captains. None of them were suspicious.
Then as the drone flew within visual range of the northern edge of Isle Au Haut, the camera caught three boats sailing in line, then dividing into two groups, with one going down the west side of the island and two going along the east.
“Lock in on those boats,” Dumas told the pilot. Then, to the others, “See those boats? They ought to be running to a harbor, but they’re not. Well, maybe this guy on the west is going to the Isle Au Haut Thorofare, down here where Kimball Island pinches in real close to Isle Au Haut. That’s no more than seven hundred feet across at the widest point, maybe only three or four hundred at its narrowest. That would give them some shelter from a storm coming from the southwest. But that still doesn’t explain what the other two are doing. No good harbor on the west side, and if the storm shifts around to blow from the south, those boats will be mighty unhappy.”
“I can zoom in,” Gardner reminded him.
“Sure, that would help,” Dumas said. She zoomed in on one of the westward boats and Dumas leaned forward, rubbing his chin and peering at the monitor. “You’re sure they can’t see the drone? Or hear it?”
“Don’t worry, sir,” Gardner said, with only a hint of condescension.
“She knows what she’s doing, Paul,” Finley said. “Just tell us if these are the right boats.”
Dumas peered at the boat again, but shook his head. “Can you take her in lower? I want to see the bow.”
Gardner dropped the LUNA a thousand feet, got it stable and locked the camera on the bow of the little ship. Even for a working boat, she thought it was cute. “That better?” she asked.
“Much,” Dumas grunted, standing up. “That, my friends, is the Rosie’s Pride, out of North Harbor and skippered by Marc LeBlanc, one of the greatest weasels ever to skipper a lobster boat. Need a lobster buoy cut, a trawl line sunk or even a boat burned, he’s your man. I’m not exactly sure what his relationship is to Jean-Philippe LeBlanc, maybe first cousins or something like that, but they’re two peas in a pod. They’re both greedy, ambitious, arrogant sons of bitches who never overlook the chance to make a crooked buck.”
Finley looked thunderstruck. “Dammit, Paul, you never told me any of this!”
Dumas shrugged. “Can’t prove anything, can I? Best to mind my own business.”
“Ah, Christ,” Finley muttered.
“Coming up on the two other ships,” Gardner announced.
The two boats were rounding the top of Isle Au Haut and just beginning their turn to the south towards Old Cove. Gardner brought the drone across the island and circled over them at 10,000 feet, then killed the engine and let the drone lose altitude, traveling in a wide spiral around the lobster boats, but locking the drone’s cameras on them so that they were always in the center of the picture.
Dumas snorted. “The first one is easy. That’s the Celeste, Jean-Philippe’s boat. See that equipment and storage shack he has on the stern of the boat? Lot of boats have them, but he painted his dark gray on top. Most captains in North Harbor paint the top of their storage shacks International Orange or fluorescent green or something bright like that.” He wanted to say ‘Screaming Yellow,’ but he suddenly couldn’t recall whether that was a color, an ice cream flavor or the name of a local rock band. “They know that little splash of bright color might make the difference if they’re caught in a storm without power and need rescuing. Not LeBlanc. You might wonder why he doesn’t want his boat easily recognized; I certainly do.”
“And the second?” Honeycutt raised his eyebrows in question.
Dumas leaned in again for a better look. “That would be the Samantha, skippered by LeBlanc’s nephew, Bobby St. Clair. Very bright young man, Bobby St. Clair. Ambitious, but not as…overt as Jean-Philippe and many of the others.” He rocked back on his heels, pursing his lips. “But don’t underestimate Bobby, he has big plans.”
“Capable of smuggling drugs?” asked Honeycutt. “Capable of dealing with one of the cartels and not getting burnt?”
Dumas rolled his eyes. “Oh, Good Christ, I really have no idea! I don’t know what it takes to deal with a drug Cartel and bring drugs in from the ocean. Hell, I sit in my office and make sure everybody pays their docking fees on time and don’t cheat when they top off their gas tanks. I don’t know about drug deals. This is North Harbor, not Portland, not Boston, not Providence and most certainly not New York City!”
Honeycutt nodded, accepting it for what it was. “How about this: Is LeBlanc capable of killing another lobster captain to protect an illegal racket he’s running?”
Dumas considered this, but not for very long. “Yeah,” he nodded. “Oh, yeah.”
“They’re changing course!” Gardner called out.
“Where to?” Dumas’ face lit up. Finley and Honeycutt crowded closer to the view screen. The two boats had suddenly turned southeast, slowly pulling away from Isle Au Haut.
“I don’t know, sir,” Gardner answered. “I mean, east southeast, but there’s nothing much out there.”
“Remember,” said Finley. “They’re looking for a fifty-pound package. Not very large in the scope of things. We don’t need an island, it could get hung up on a rock.”
“The other boat, the one on the west side, has turned around and is heading north again. From the wake, he’s at full throttle,” Gardner told them.
“LeBlanc is sniffing something and the other boat is coming to help, I’ll bet.” Finley turned to his brother-in-law. “What do you think, Paul?”
“Let me see the map again.” He peered down at it, studying the area east of Isle Au Haut. There was York Island about halfway down, and Doliver Island, and the Rabbits Ear, but the boats would have to turn much further south to go there. He glanced again at the path of the Celeste and Rosie’s Pride. Definitely not south.
“Pilot, can you take the drone along their present heading and pull the camera back a bit? I want to see what’s out there.”
“Certainly, sir,” Gardner replied cheerfully.
“With as much alacrity as you can muster,” Honeycutt added, a small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. Ensign Kauders shot him a smile. Commander Mello shook his head.
“Do my best, sir,” Gardner said, but even as the drone altered course, it was obvious that there was little to see except whitecaps and sea spray. The wind was picking up and roiling the surface of the ocean.
Paul Dumas stepped closer to the large viewing screen. He glanced at the others. “Do you see anything?”
______________
“Do you see anything?” Jean-Philippe LeBlanc asked, peering through the pilothouse window.
“Water,” Banderas answered sourly. “Lots and lots of water.”
Beside them, the speaker on the searcher unit emitted another loud ‘Ping,’ making them both jump a little.
“It’s close,” LeBlanc said. “Very close.”
PING
The radio crackled. Not the ship’s radio, which could be heard for miles, but the small family-style walkie talkies intended for short-range work. These had a range of just over a mile, making them very hard to eavesdrop on.
“Can you see anything?” LeBlanc asked over the walkie talkie.
“Nah, water’s too choppy,” Bobby St. Claire answered from the Samantha. “But Richs Ledge is right in front of us, no more than two hundred feet. Can’t see it, but with this wind, the water could be washing over it.”
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