“Christ Almighty,” Cudworth said with a sigh. “Am I glad it’s you. I thought maybe some of those fellas from the south side of the Cove came over for a looksee.” He smiled in the dim light. “I see you got my message.”
“Ralph, is that thing loaded?” Finley asked nervously, gesturing to the pistol.
“Of course it’s loaded!” Cudworth snorted contemptuously. “Wouldn’t be much good to nobody if it weren’t loaded, now would it?”
Finley sighed. Too many guns, too many guns in too small an area. “Ralph, we’re set up just over there in the woods,” Finley told him. “I think it would be smart for you to get in your car and get out of here for the next three hours or so. Whatever’s happening should be over by then.”
“And miss all the fun?” Cudworth grinned like a little boy with a new toy. “Not a chance, Frank.”
Finley shook his head in exasperation. He didn’t have time for this. “Then stay in the house and stay down. And for Christ’s sake, be careful with that pistol.”
______________
Calvin stopped short before the end of Oceanville Road, doused the lights and crept towards the water’s edge, his waterproof carry bag in one hand and a pair of binoculars in the other. There were no streetlights at the end of the road, and no lights on the water, but he could faintly hear the rumble of diesel engines through the storm. He scanned the Inner Harbor with his binoculars, but while he could see the shadowy outline of three lobster boats a bit to the north of the rocky ledge that stuck out in Inner Harbor, he couldn’t make out which one was the Celeste.
Leaving the binoculars on the rocky beach, he crawled to the water and slipped into it. Once he was deep enough, he slipped on his fins and swam out to the rocky ledge. The water was freezing, but he was used to that, and after several minutes he warmed up to the point where he was just uncomfortable, not hypothermic. The waves were high for swimming, two to three feet even in the shelter of Inner Harbor, so he kept his head up and hoped no one would notice him. The tide was also high – extra high with the storm surge – but was starting to drain out into the ocean. As he swam towards the ledge, he was being swept to the right with the current. Well, all right, when the time came, that would help him get closer to the Celeste, assuming he could find her.
He reached the rock ledge and crept out of the water. The wind caught at him and a chill ran through his body, making him shiver for a few moments. He crawled along the perimeter of the ledge until he had a view to the north, but while he caught a glimpse of three lobster boats, he couldn’t tell for sure which was the Celeste. He slid backwards until he was mostly obscured by some of the protruding rock, then fished the thermos out of the carry bag and gulped some of the hot, sweet coffee. It felt like molten lava pouring into his stomach and he gasped with the pleasure of it.
A fresh spurt of rain splattered on him, but the wetsuit protected him from the worst of it. Lying there with his chin in the water, the question that had been snarling at him from the corner of his mind rose up: Was his brother safe?
Then a diesel engine growled loudly and Calvin peeked out to see one of the dark shapes moving towards him.
Crap, had they spotted him?
______________
Jacob was hunched in the corner of the equipment locker, wrapped in the blanket LeBlanc had left and a scrap of canvas. He shivered from the cold. The Celeste had stopped and was now wallowing in the waves. There was no light coming under the shed door, so it must be night. His watch had stopped working, so he really had no idea what time it was. Rain beat sporadically against the roof of the shed.
He was very hungry.
It occurred to him that he was going to die tonight, but he didn’t know which would be worse, to be shot to death by the hard-looking man or to die from cold and exposure. With that came another thought: did his parents and Calvin even realize he was missing and taken prisoner? If he died, would they even know?
Mostly, though, he was so confused. Why was LeBlanc doing this? What was going on?
Another gust of wind blew through the cracks and crevices of the shed and he pulled the sheet of canvas tighter around him. He leaned against the thin, plywood wall of the shed, his forehead rubbing against the cold, water-soaked grain of the wood.
He couldn’t take this much longer.
______________
Bobby St. Clair took one long, last look through his binoculars, but saw nothing amiss. Or more to the point, he really didn’t see anything at all. Turning away from Elm Tree Cove, he blinked a flashlight at the two lobster boats behind him. Immediately, his phone chirped to signal an incoming call.
“See anything, Bobby?” LeBlanc asked him gruffly.
“All clear, as far as I can tell,” his nephew replied, trying to sound nonchalant.
“Okay, I’m going to call them and tell them you’re coming in. Keep a man on the radio in case I need to warn you off.”
“Understood,” St. Clair replied. “Walk in the park, Jean-Philippe.”
“Don’t get cocky,” his uncle said sternly.
St. Clair grinned in the darkness. He stood to make $50,000 cash if this worked. He turned back to the pilothouse and nudged the throttle forward. Time to go make some money.
Chapter 55
Inner Harbor/Elm Tree Cove
Chief Corcoran and his five men drove slowly up Rte. 15 with all their car lights off. About a quarter mile from the little bridge that crossed by Elm Tree Cove, they pulled off and parked in an unused fire lane. Corcoran took a knee and his men huddled around him.
“Okay, keep your laser sights off until we are in position,” he told them. “Safeties on until I say so. You know the drill. We are going to go through the woods until we are about a hundred feet from the south shore of Elm Tree Cove. The drug guys should be in position close to the water, but hidden in the trees.” He looked around to each of them. “You’ve all got radios and ear buds.” They quickly performed a radio check. “Nobody talks but me. Nobody! I don’t care if you’ve got a snake biting your balls, you don’t make a sound. We go in quiet. We mark their positions, then we wait until all three boats have dropped off their loads.”
He grinned then, joyous and predatory. “Then we take out the fuckers. All of them! No witnesses. If we can, we take out the lobster boats as well.”
The men nodded, but one asked, “What about the DEA guys on the north side?”
Corcoran nodded to Duffy, the group’s best sniper. “That’s his job. Once there is a firefight between the DEA squad and the druggies, Duffy will take out as many of them as he can with his sniper rifle. Most importantly, he keeps them on the north side of the Cove. Don’t have to kill ‘em all, but have to keep them on their side.”
Duffy nodded, his earlier nervousness gone. He understood shooting.
Shooting was what he did.
______________
On the north side of Elm Tree Cove, Frank Finley lay on the wet ground, covered with pine needles and mud, holding a pair of low-light binoculars and scanning the Cove and, just past it, Inner Harbor.
Or trying to. Between the intermittent rain and the damn humidity, his binoculars kept fogging up. He wiped them off with a handkerchief and tried again. He could make out the rock ledge that formed the rough boundary line between Southeast Harbor and Elm Tree Cove, and aways beyond it, three dark shapes. He lowered the binoculars and wiped a sweaty hand across his forehead.
Was Jacob on one of those boats?
One of the DEA agents crawled beside him. “Picking up movement on the south side,” he whispered.
“What kind of movement?”
“Four guys with assault rifles have moved to the water’s edge,” the man said. “Looks like they’re getting ready to receive a shipment.”
The words were barely out of his mouth when the deep-throated rumbling sound of a ship’s diesel engine came over the water.
It was starting.
“No one shoots!” he whispered into the radio. “If they’r
e going to bring the packages in one at a time, we will wait for the third boat, got it?”
A series of clicks on the radio handset served as the reply.
“Stay down, out of sight. Agents Meacham and Sadler, you take as many pictures as you can. Try to get faces when possible and be sure to get the name of the boats.” Finley looked up into the sky, wondering if the wind had dropped down enough yet for the drone. “Agent Cipollone, see if the Coast Guard can get the drone back into the air.”
His cell phone vibrated in his pocket – Howard Honeycutt.
“Frank, I just pulled in and parked my car near yours,” Honeycutt told him. “I’ve got the two Coast Guard shooters with me, but I left Ensign Kauders and Commander Mello to man the command trailer. Where are you?”
Finley gave him directions. “Stay low, no noise and call me again when you’re close,” he told Honeycutt. Then he radioed his men that friendlies were coming in behind them. “Resist the temptation to shoot them.” He got answering clicks and a chuckle.
Honeycutt crawled up beside him several minutes later. “What’s the status?” he asked, puffing a little. He was getting long in the tooth to be crawling around the woods in a storm.
“One boat coming in now. A bunch of bad guys, maybe six or more, on the other side of the Cove,” Finley replied, still peering through the binoculars.
“Any hot coffee?”
Finley shot his boss a look. “Only if you brought it.”
“Ah, well,” Honeycutt sighed. He peered out into the darkness and recalled what the map looked like. “Josephs, Santana!” he called in a low voice. A moment later the two Coast Guard Petty Officers First Class appeared next to him, looking like a pair of mismatched, diabolical twins.
“You two have the best rifles,” he told them. “Light-enhancing scopes, right?”
They both nodded solemnly.
“Good, find a position where you have a clear field of fire along the south bank. When the shooting starts, you are our big guns. You need to identify each enemy’s location and take them out as quickly as you can, then move to the next one. Questions?”
Josephs and Santana looked at each other. “No, sir,” Josephs said, “but we can’t see shit in this weather. What’s behind these guys? If we shoot and miss, are we shooting into a house or something behind them? Commander Mello will be pissed if I shoot up an orphanage or a convent or something.”
Honeycutt started to answer, then realizing he had no idea, stopped and turned to Finley. “Frank, do you know?”
“Yeah,” Finley said. “From the water’s edge, the ground slopes up to a height of about eight feet. As long as you don’t shoot high, you’re okay. There is a house about one thousand feet back. Be careful if they retreat over the ridge line. Unless you have a really good shot, don’t take it.”
“Roger that,” Josephs said. “Get your ass in gear, Santana, time to save the world.” The two Coasties exchanged grins and crawled off into the darkness.
Finley stared after them a minute. “You know, they saved my family, but they’re still two of the scariest guys I know.”
“And more importantly,” Honeycutt snorted, “they’re on our side.”
Finley looked out to the Cove. “First boat’s here.”
______________
Petty Officers First Class Josephs and Santana crawled to the edge of the woods, found some cover behind a clump of gnarled pine trees and took a long look at the south side of Elm Tree Cove. Their binoculars were good in low light, but on the other hand they weren’t high-tech night-vision binoculars, either. Not much to see, other than a shadow or two moving dimly in the woods on the other side.
Josephs gauged the width of the Cove at 400 feet, give or take. The wind was a bitch and almost directly in his face. “Wind is going to play hell with our shots,” he murmured. He looked once more at the south shore. It was invitingly close.
“You know,” he mused, “it’s so narrow here we could swim across in no time. Once over there, we could have a lot of fun.”
Santana gave him a scornful glance. “You think you’re the only guy here with a low-light scope? Swim across there with our rifles held up to keep ‘em dry? Shit, you’ll stand out like a priest with an erection at church.”
Josephs snorted. “Have I ever told you what an eloquent sonofabitch you are?”
Santana shrugged modestly.
In the end, they set up on either side of a stand of three pine trees, within whispering distance of each other. There was also a good-sized boulder sitting between two of the pines, so if things got really hot, they could get under cover. Each man set up a gun rest and cleared the ground behind it so that they could lie down without anything sharp distracting them. Each put five loaded magazines on the ground just to the right of their position. Then they slowly scanned the far bank with their magnified lenses, the low-light feature giving some definition and contrast to what they were looking at.
“See any assholes?” Josephs whispered.
“Couple of guys for sure, and maybe two more a few feet back in the trees. You can bet your ass there are more in the woods,” Santana said confidently. “When the boat gets there to deliver its goodies, they’ll come out of hiding.”
Josephs grunted. “Shit, with the firepower we’ve got here, we might just want to ask them to surrender.”
Santana grinned, his eyes alight with humor. “Where’s the fun in that?”
Then they heard the sound of a diesel engine close by.
______________
St. Clair brought the Samantha past the rock ledge and into Elm Tree Cove, keeping his eye on the depth finder. There was a very narrow channel running into the Cove, left over from the days when the Cove was used by fisherman to off-load their catch near Rte. 15. Fishermen stopped using it when the big docks were put in and the Cadot family built the fishery. The channel had silted in a lot over the years, but the depth finder still showed water five to seven feet deep. Not great, but good enough.
The channel slanted on a diagonal across the Cove to the southeast corner. St. Clair played the throttle like an orchestra conductor, keeping the Samantha moving at one to one and a half knots.
“Okay,” he said to one of his men. “Give ‘em the signal before they get nervous and shoot us.”
His second-in-command lifted a flashlight with some red Saran Wrap taped over the lens and turned it on, then blinked it three times in the direction of the south side of the Cove. They waited for a long moment.
“Wonder how many rifles we got pointed at us right now?” St. Clair mused, which was, perhaps, more ironic than he intended. The Samantha reached the end of the channel and he pulled back on the throttle, giving it just enough power to prevent the wind and tide from pushing it backwards. He did it without thinking, muscle memory learned from thousands of hours at the helm.
______________
One hundred feet away from him, the leader of the Dominican smugglers was studying every inch of the Samantha through his binoculars. To his left and right, seven men had their AK-47s aimed in, ready to fire. After scanning the boat, then sweeping the Cove and Inner Harbor once more, the leader raised his flashlight and blinked it twice, paused, then twice more. Beside him, his men relaxed and lowered their rifles. As one, they stood up and stepped forward to the water’s edge.
______________
Every man aboard the Samantha felt their balls shrivel when eight armed men suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Then there was a collective sucking in of air and nervous shifting of feet.
A voice from the shore called, “Can you come in any closer? Close enough to throw it to us?”
St. Clair checked his depth finder – four feet. Just enough, but no safety margin. But then, this really wasn’t a night for safety margins.
“Maybe a little,” he called back. “I can get the bow in the mud a little, but I can’t risk getting it stuck.”
“Okay,” the voice called back. “Come in as much as you can.”
&
nbsp; St. Clair tweaked the throttle. Just a touch, and the forty-foot vessel crept towards shore. Five feet later, St. Clair could feel the bow begin to ground in the mud. Still too far from shore to throw the package, he pushed the boat into reverse and backed out.
“Hey!” the leader shouted. “Where the fuck are you going?” Beside him his men raised their rifles threateningly.
St. Clair killed the throttle and leaned out from the pilothouse. “My bow was grounding. You know what that means? You want this boat stuck here so the other two boats can’t bring their packages in?” Even in the darkness he saw the doubt and annoyance on the Dominican’s face. “I’m going to back out about fifteen feet and try coming in twenty yards or so to your right. I only need another foot or so of water under the bow and I should be able to get in closer to shore. You cool with that?”
The leader knew nothing about boats and channels, and he didn’t like this man backing his boat further away before he delivered the package. “You try anything, puta, and I’ll blow your fucking boat to matchsticks.”
Fighting the urge to vomit, St. Clair smiled at the man. “Of course you will, and everyone within half a mile will hear your gunshots and call the police. Won’t that be good? Now stop fucking around and let me do my job. Just be cool and you’ll have the package in ten minutes.”
“This goes wrong, you die first,” the leader growled.
“Yeah, yeah,” St. Clair shot back, then put the boat in reverse and backed out into the channel, spun the wheel to the port side and edged her forward. As he hoped, the water got a little deeper here as the Cove widened towards the Inner Harbor. Not much, but he didn’t need much. After fifty feet or so, he brought the wheel over and turned the bow into shore again. The depth finder showed four and a half feet. He could see the Dominicans walking along the shore to where his bow was pointing.
North Harbor Page 34