Big Bad, page 42
5
The Rockcliffe Police Department’s patrol boat was a thirty-one-foot rigid-hull inflatable with an enclosed aluminum helm and two Evinrude outboards, each producing two hundred fifty horsepower. Tess fired them up, then came out of the pilothouse, rifle still strapped across her back. She untied the bowline from the cleat while Emma and Guppy spoke on the dock.
“Kids? You serious?” Guppy said, hands stuffed in his pockets.
He was looking across the marina toward the Pelkey Fishing Company complex where, he had just been told, a shipping container full of children had been discovered. Emma could tell he was having a hard time reconciling the concept of a human being—and even worse, a child—being bought and sold like a head of cabbage. If the story she had told him earlier about Molly—what her sister had been forced to do by their mentally ill father—had shifted his notion of the world, then this new revelation had likely not only shifted it further, but perhaps shattered it into a million irreconcilable pieces that would never fit together correctly again.
“I wish I weren’t,” Emma said. “But it happens every day, all over the world.” And that was as far into it as she would go at the moment. It didn’t feel like the proper time to elaborate on what a big business human trafficking was.
Guppy looked back at her, his head shaking, a distraught expression in his eyes. “And you think there’s more out on that boat you saw?”
“Maybe, maybe not. But until I know for sure, I have to assume there are. And if that’s the case, considering what we found out, chances are they’re taking them out there to get rid of them. That’s not the only problem, though,” Emma said.
“Why?”
“We have no idea where they’re headed. Could be anywhere. And we only have one shot at a guess, so we need to make it a good one. We head in the wrong direction, that’s it, it’ll be too late. But I figure we can maybe increase our odds.”
“How so?”
“Fishermen are creatures of habit, right? That’s what you said. So you ever do any fishing with Clarence’s nephew, Kyle? That’s who we think is running that boat right now.”
Guppy scratched the side of his face and narrowed his eyes, thinking. “No, he was too young to captain anything when I was out there. But everybody learns from somebody. He and Clarence been fishing together since the kid was in diapers, and I been out with Clarence plenty. I know his routes, prolly know the kid’s too.”
“Any idea where that boat would be headed, then?” Emma said.
“Fastest way out deep would be to skirt around Rockcliffe, pass through Egg Rock and Elephant Rock, then head due east. That’s how Clarence charted his courses every time. If I was gonna take a stab, that’d be where.” Guppy began rubbing the back of his neck. “It’ll be rough in this weather, though. It doesn’t seem so bad here, but once you get out you’re gonna have good swell.”
“Okay,” Emma said. She could tell Guppy was working through the whole thing in his head, and she wanted to let him reach his own conclusions.
He was nodding now. “And a boat like this ain’t meant to go way out in these seas. Especially not at night.” He paused a beat. “But I don’t think we got a choice.”
“You do,” Emma said.
Guppy laughed, but it wasn’t because anything was particularly funny. “Gimme a break. The hell I do.” As he took his hands from his pockets, a look of vigorous purpose came over him. He stepped down off the dock and onto the boat with the clunky grace of an old man returning to an even older routine. “Get the stern line and kick us out. Hard. If they left as long ago as you said, we’re gonna really have to lean into it. How we on fuel?” he said, heading to the helm.
“Full,” Tess said as Guppy squeezed by her.
“Good,” he said. “We’ll need every last drop. Everyone put on a vest. This’ll be a bumpy trip.” He went into the pilothouse and took the helm.
Emma undid the stern line, tossed it on the boat, stepped aboard, and pushed them out as hard as she could with her foot. The stern swung out, and a heavy cunk sounded as Guppy pushed the throttle into reverse and the engine gears grabbed, and the boat began backing out.
Tess tossed a life jacket at her. She caught it, and they both went into the pilothouse and shut the door. Guppy flicked a switch and the lights inside winked off, making it possible to see out. By the time Emma had the vest on and buckled, they were cruising out of the harbor, the hull up on a plane. Guppy was clearly far more at ease behind the wheel of a boat than he ever was a car. The cautious driver she had come to know over the last few days had been replaced by someone more comfortable and confident.
As they left the marina behind, Tess grabbed the radio and tuned the dial until the little digital readout showed CH. 16. “US Coast Guard, US Coast Guard. Mayday, Mayday, Mayday,” she started. “This is Rockcliffe Police Department, Marine Patrol One. We’re heading due east off Rockcliffe Island at twenty-five knots. Requesting emergency assistance in locating the fishing vessel Erika Sea. We’re en route to its possible location now. I repeat, requesting emergency assistance. Possible hostile situation.”
A moment later, someone responded. “Rockcliffe PD, this is US Coast Guard Air Station Salem. We read you, Marine Patrol One. Go ahead and state your situation, we’re listening.”
Tess did just that, giving the Coast Guard a best guess of where they thought the Erika Sea might be headed, as well as what might be on the boat. Then she signed off.
“We’ll find them before they do,” Guppy said. “They can’t be more than eight or nine miles out. Boat like that cruises around thirteen, fourteen knots tops—slower in this—and they ain’t been out better than an hour. If we don’t see their running lights off the bow in twenty minutes, we might’ve missed em.”
“Or they might not be where we think,” Emma said.
“That too,” Guppy said dourly.
The engines whirred and churned behind them, propelling the boat through the night. The first five minutes or so were a fairly smooth ride, the deep V of the hull splitting the small chop with ease, but as they came around the eastern side of Rockcliffe and began heading farther out to sea, the waves grew and the turbulence picked up. The boat started to rise and fall with huge grace, the hull slamming down with teeth-chattering impacts. The engines raced each time the boat launched off the steep peak of a wave and the propellers slipped out of the water and spun freely.
Guppy spoke loudly to Emma. “I’d grab hold of something.” It was hard to hear inside the cabin. He had one hand on the wheel and the other on the throttle, working both nonstop with automatic precision. “We’re getting into it now.”
She found a grab rail and held it tight. Her legs had already begun to ache from being turned into a pair of off-road shock absorbers. She felt like she was riding a stone that was being skipped across the top of a boiling pond. Something caught her eye outside. Framed in a dark window beside her was the vague silhouette of a landmass, like some enormous and silent black freight train passing by in the night.
“What’s that?” she said.
“Egg Rock,” Tess said, then gestured to the opposite window. “That’s Elephant Rock over there. Two little islands.”
“All boats pass through here on their way out,” Guppy said, eyes straight ahead. “Tess, they keep any binoculars on here?”
“Should be.” She went to a little footlocker at one of the back corners of the cabin, moving with practiced sea-legs, and pulled out a set of field glasses.
“Visibility can’t be any better than a mile, but I’d start looking,” he said. “Just in case. Here.” He moved to the side so Tess could stand next to him and see out the front windshield.
“Can’t see much in this,” she said.
Emma turned and looked out the back window of the pilothouse. The lights of Rockcliffe Island were just barely visible now, the night and snow closing in on it like a curtain. They continued, the boat pitching from side to side, dipping and climbing, taking small waves across its bow. Emma’s whole body felt numb from the vibrations of the water slamming against the hull and the engines running near full throttle. Every so often weightlessness would drop her stomach, as if she were on the downward dive of a rollercoaster, and then the boat’s nose would crash down and a powerful jolt would travel up through the soles of her feet and ring her spine like a tuning fork. The farther out they went, the more insignificant she felt, and the more she began to understand why Guppy had said the boat wasn’t meant for these waters. They were being tossed around like a cork, and Guppy was fighting to keep the boat on a straight trajectory.
It went on like this for what could’ve been an hour, even though Emma knew that to be incorrect. It had probably been something closer to fifteen minutes. Traveling through blackness, with no landmarks to offer a sense of progress forward, seemed to distort her perception of the passage of time. And if it hadn’t been for the glow of Rockcliffe slowly fading behind them—and now completely gone—she might’ve been convinced they’d never been moving forward at all, instead just being jostled up and down and left to right. Then, just as suddenly as she’d lost her sense of reference, it all returned with stark clarity.
“I’ve got something,” Tess called. She had her eyes pressed to the binoculars and was looking slightly to the right.
“Where?” Guppy said, pulling back on the throttle.
“Two o’clock,” she said.
“Let me see.” Guppy took the binoculars and followed Tess’s pointing finger. After a moment of glassing the direction in which she was pointing, he said, “Could be them. Gotta get closer.” He handed the binoculars back to Tess.
Emma moved toward the front of the helm and looked in the direction Tess was looking. The faintest glob of light glowed on the horizon. “How far out is that?”
Guppy began turning the wheel and adjusting the boat’s course. “About a mile, mile and a half.”
“Can we cut our running lights?” Emma said.
“Uh-huh.” Guppy flicked two switches, and all the running lights on the outside of the boat turned off. “What do you plan on doing if that is them?” he said. “Because not for nothing, but we’re not exactly the USS O’Bannon.”
“Get us close enough so we can see what’s going on aboard,” Emma said. “If it looks like we can wait on the Coast Guard, we will. If not…” She looked at Tess. “You and that rifle are the best chance we have.”
Tess said nothing, just turned back ahead, lifted the binoculars, and resumed her watch.
Guppy pushed the throttle forward, and the boat skipped across the tops of waves again. With each impact, the faint glob of light in the distance became more visible and defined to Emma’s naked eye. By the time she could actually make out the silhouette of a boat, Tess had confirmed it was in fact the Erika Sea.
“Can I see those a sec?” Emma said. Tess gave her the binoculars. Emma couldn’t see any movement on the boat, but the shipping container was sitting solemnly on the deck. “Yeah, it’s them. Can you bring us out wide so we can come at them from the side? It’ll give us better coverage. Hopefully it’s not too late.”
“I’m on it,” Guppy said, and began steering the boat left.
As he did so, Tess jumped on the radio again and updated the Coast Guard on their position. The man on the other end—who identified himself this time as Ensign Pollock—said air support was still fifteen minutes out.
6
Guppy had taken the boat way out left, and now he was curling back in and coming at the Erika Sea from its port side. At about three hundred yards out, he pulled the throttle back to just above idle. The boat stopped and began to bob and pitch at the mercy of the sea as they sat there.
“Can they hear us?” Emma said.
“Would be tough in this wind,” Guppy said.
“What do you see, Tess?”
“They haven’t dropped anchor, but they’re not moving. Just drifting. And I don’t see anyone,” Tess said, looking through the binoculars. She lowered them and gave a frustrated little sigh. “These are too weak.” She handed them to Emma, slid the rifle over her head, then opened the pilothouse door and went out on the front deck.
“Stay away from the sides!” Guppy called after her.
“Bring us a little closer,” Emma said, then followed Tess out with the binoculars. She stopped at the door and looked back. “This thing have police flashers?”
Guppy looked around the dash panel. “Looks like it, yeah.”
“If I give you a thumbs-up, I want you to hit em and head straight at that boat. Pull right up alongside it. If I lift my hand, it means faster. Lower it, it means slower. Fist is stop. Got it?”
“Yeah, I got it,” Guppy said, nodding.
The wind shoved Emma sideways the moment she stepped onto the deck. She shut the door behind her, then made her way up to the bow of the boat. A spray of seawater painted the side of her face, and she tasted salt as she shimmied carefully along the edge and past the pilothouse. Tess was standing in the center of the front deck with her legs apart, the Remington tucked in the cup of her shoulder, and looking through the scope at the Erika Sea.
“Can you see better?” Emma had to push her voice above the roar of the wind and the surging ocean.
Tess nodded, keeping her eye to the scope. “A little.”
“Could they see us if they looked?” Emma said.
“If they looked,” Tess replied distractedly. “Let’s hope they don’t.”
Guppy brought the throttle up and began crawling ahead. The engines were a low murmur, hardly audible in the wind. Emma raised the binoculars and glassed the boat. In the yellow glow of one of the bridge windows, she saw movement.
“You see that?” Emma said.
“Upper window? Yeah, I got it.”
Nothing was happening on the Erika Sea, and then everything was happening all at once. The stocky guy Emma had seen back at the loading dock—Jim had said his name was Sean Lanigan—came out of a door up in the wheelhouse. On his heels was a skinnier guy who followed him down a set of metal steps that led to the boat’s main deck.
“That Kyle Pelkey?” Emma said.
“Yep. That’s him.”
Kyle looked reluctant, almost as if he was trying to reason with Sean. Perhaps he was having second thoughts about what they were out there to do. He stepped in front of Sean and put his hand on his chest. A moment later Sean pushed past him, then lifted the back of his coat and took out a pistol. He went to the shipping container, moving with purpose, undid the latches, and yanked open the door. Then he pointed the gun into the container and gestured with it for whoever was inside to come out. When no one did, he stepped inside, out of sight. Kyle’s hands were interlaced atop his head as he looked on. When Sean reappeared, he was dragging a young girl out by the arm. It was hard to tell at that distance, but the girl looked a bit older than the girls they’d found back on Rockcliffe. She was still young, though. A teenager, perhaps.
“They’re doing it now,” Emma said, and glanced at Tess.
Tess adjusted her grip on the rifle. “I need to get closer.”
Emma looked back at Guppy and signaled for him to speed up. The engines’ whir slid an octave higher, and the hull began slapping and knocking through waves again. Tess’s body remained almost completely stationary as her legs counteracted the boat’s motion. She had said she was a biathlete in college, and now Emma, who had to steady herself with a hand on the pilothouse, saw Tess’s athleticism on display. The concentration. Her blocking everything else out.
They were drawing closer in a hurry, and it would be a matter of seconds before the sound of their engines was noticed, storm winds or no. Emma dropped the binoculars. She could see well enough without them now. Sean was dragging the girl by the wrist, moving in front of the shipping container and heading toward the back of the boat. The girl was putting up a fight, but it wasn’t doing much good. Sean looked sturdy and strong—a bulldog.
“Tess, wait until he clears the container. That’ll go right through.”
Tess didn’t respond, just took a long deep breath. Her finger rested calmly on the trigger. Emma knew she’d heard her and that she understood.
At a hundred yards out, Tess widened her stance further and said, “Tell him to stop.”
Emma held up a fist for Guppy. The engines cut back and the boat slowed quickly, its stern lifting under its own wake, then settling back down. Then they were sitting in the open ocean, rocking in the waves again. The wind howled and whipped the snow sideways. It was a strange scene. It felt like she was watching a play on some huge black stage.
Sean was at the back corner of the shipping container now. He was going to toss the girl off. He didn’t need to waste a bullet on her. In fact, it would be better if he didn’t. If her body washed ashore, a bullet hole practically guaranteed a murder investigation. But a drowning could come about any number of ways. Fifteen minutes in this, and anyone tossed overboard would be dead. No bullets necessary. So if ten or fifteen bloated Chinese corpses washed ashore in a few weeks, or months, it might be assumed a ship smuggling immigrants into the United States had sunk. It happened all the time.
Sean cleared the shipping container and was at the back of the boat. With more room to move, he wrapped his arms around the girl and picked her up. She started kicking wildly, her head thrashing from side to side, hair whipping.
“I don’t have a shot if he’s holding her.”
Emma considered it a moment. “Wait until he tosses her over. Then take it.”
“She could drown fast in this,” Tess said flatly.
“We won’t let that happen. It’s the better option of two bad ones.”
It only took a few seconds for Sean to carry the girl to the back of the boat, where like a frantic animal, she fought against it, planting her feet on the railing and trying to keep from going over. But he was too strong. With a final shove, he thrust the girl forward and she landed with a cold slap in the frigid waters. Emma set her eyes on her.
