The Inside Passage (Ted Higuera Series Book 1) (22 page)

Malcolm Island, Canada

“Wake up man.
Let’s get the anchor up. We’ve gotta catch the tide.” Josh, a tire store
manager in Port McNeil, shook his friend Toby.

“Wha? What time is
it?”

“Three a.m.” Josh
returned to the galley and poured two cups of coffee. “We’ve got to get up to
my secret spot by slack water if we’re going to do any good.”

“Damn, man.” Toby
rolled over and looked at his wristwatch. “You didn’t tell me that fishin’
meant getting up at three in the morning.”

Josh poked his
head out of the Bayliner cruiser’s hatch and scanned the fog enveloped world.
He had hired Toby almost six months ago. A close friendship had developed.
Toby, a refugee from the big cities back east, knew nothing about salmon
fishing.

Growing up on
northern Vancouver Island, salmon fishing came as naturally to Josh as
breathing. He bought the rundown old Bayliner Victoria three years ago,
meticulously rebuilt the engine, and restored her to sea worthiness. She didn’t
look like much, but she was a great fishing platform.

After coffee and a
hearty breakfast, the two weighed anchor and started out across the Queen
Charlotte Strait in the dark. In a few minutes they emerged from the fog bank.

Josh had made this
trip countless times before. He wasn’t careless, but he did push the Bayliner
at twenty knots to make his rendezvous with the slack tide.

“Did you see that
sailboat go by?” Josh asked over the roar of the engine.

“No, what
sailboat?”

“Right before
sunset, they went sailing by in the fog. They musta been out of their minds,
sailing in weather like this. It’s a miracle they didn’t ram us. I wonder if
that’s what all the sirens were about.”

****

Malcolm Island, Canada

Ted felt more than
heard the collision. The impact catapulted him over the bow. He held onto the
forestay by one hand, his feet dangling over the icy black water. He grabbed
madly for the forestay with his other hand. The thermo mug and flood light went
clattering over the side. Then the boat righted herself and he regained his
footing.

The moment flashed
by in a series of snap shots. Ted saw Chris sanding at the wheel. The bow
tipped forward and dug into the water. Chris was thrown forward, the wheel
catching him in the chest.

Chris gasped for
breath. For an instant, Ted thought Chris was dying. He couldn’t get any air.
He let go of the wheel and grabbed his throat. He gulped, wheezed, gasped. Then
he seemed to catch his breath. Air filled his lungs. Chris stood and shook his
head.

Ted saw Meagan,
caught totally unprepared, thrown forward in the cockpit. Her head smashed into
the coach roof. She crumpled to the cockpit floor.

Chris spun the
wheel all the way to starboard. Ted heard another crunch, then the
Defiant
was in clear water.

 “Meagan, take the
wheel!” Chris didn’t pause to see if she responded to his command.

Meagan staggered
to her feet and reached for the wheel to steady herself, wiping blood from her
eyes. She eased the boat to starboard. 

“I’ve got to check
the bilges!”

Chris leapt down
the companionway ladder in a single bound. Ted dashed back to the cockpit. He
couldn’t decide whether to help Chris or Meagan.

In the cabin,
Chris ripped up the floor boards next to the cabin table looking for the flood
of water rushing in. About two inches of water sloshed around in the bilge.
Dirty water. It wasn’t fresh sea water pouring in.

Chris reached up
and flipped on the bilge pump.

He pulled the
cover off the engine and the floor boards up all over the cabin. No new water
rushed in. In less than two minutes the bilge pump was sucking air.

He obviously had
the situation under control. Ted turned his attention to Meagan. “Hey,
chica
,
you’re bleedin’. Here.” Ted reached in his hip pocket and pulled out a
handkerchief which he gently applied to Meagan’s forehead. “Hold the pressure
on it. I’ll get the first aid kit.”

“Props to you. I’m
glad someone’s worried about my well-being.” Meagan smiled at Ted. “Chris is
only worried about his boat.”

“That’s another
lesson my father taught me.” Chris resumed the helm. “Take care of the boat
first. If the boat sinks, it won’t matter if we stop your bleeding or not,
we’ll all be dead.”

Ted returned with
the first aid kit, sprayed antiseptic on her forehead, tore open a sterile
gauze pad and taped it over the cut. “It looks like you’re gonna need stitches,
chica
. Maybe they can give you a sexy scar.”

“Sick. That’s just
what I need. Now I’ll have to wear bangs for the rest of my life.”

“I need you back
on the bow, Ted. By the way, how are you?”

Ted held up his
hands. Large red welts covered the palms of both hands.

“Nothin’ that
won’t heal.” He touched the welts. “Yow! Man, that’s my taco eatin’ hand.”

The
Defiant
continued on around Poultney Point and entered the half-mile wide Broughton Strait between Malcolm and Vancouver Islands. The tidal current grabbed her keel and
the GPS showed them cruising along at nearly six knots.

“The fog’s
liftin’” Ted shouted back to the cockpit.

“It’s been hours
since the terrorists shot at us,” Meagan said. “They’ve got to be far away by
now.”

“I think we’re
safe,” Chris agreed. “They wouldn’t try anything with all the people in Port
McNeil.”

“Man, look at them
stars.”  As the
Defiant
slipped free of the fog bank Ted glanced up at
the night sky ablaze with stars. The Milky Way formed a white dome over their
heads. Far from city lights, he could see every star in the sky.

****

“Harbor lights.”
Meagan sat slumped in the cockpit. They had been up for nearly twenty-four
hours and she looked it. Ted had never seen her without perfect makeup and hair
before. The crude bandage tied around her head gave her a vaguely piratical
look. The wind mussed her hair and tear stains ran down her cheeks.

She’s a mess,
Ted
thought.

“That should be
Port McNeil,” Chris said.

Ted noticed the
hard set to Chris’ jaw and the bags under his eyes.

Fatigue
overwhelmed Ted.

“It’s time to take
down the sails.” Chris’ voice showed the strain of the past day.

Ted helped Meagan
douse the jib and lower the main while Chris fired up the engine and slipped
behind the breakwater. Ted scanned up and down the docks, looking for an open
slip.

He spotted an
empty float at the end of the dock, but bright orange saw horses marked it off
as “reserved.” A huddle of boats anchored outside the breakwater.

“They’re full. I
guess we have to anchor out.” Ted was beyond caring.

“That’s a good
idea. NOT!” Meagan said. “If we’re out there the terrorists can spot us. Maybe
come aboard in the dark. How about if we tie up at the fuel dock?”

“Yeah, I guess
that’s okay.” Chris eased the boat into the fuel dock and Meagan and Ted took
the dock lines ashore.

“You guys grab
some shut-eye.” Ted stifled a yawn as they descended to the cabin. “Ted’ll keep
watch just in case those
hombres
come back.”

Chris and Meagan
retired to the forepeak.

This may be the
first night of this trip that they’ve just gone straight to sleep.

Ted poured himself
another cup of coffee.

He took his coffee
on deck and sat in the cockpit watching the stillness of the night. When his
limbs began to ache with the cold, he got up and wandered the docks, looking
for the big green fishing boat. It wasn’t in Port McNeil.

As the sun teased
the hills of Malcolm Island to the east, Chris popped his head above the
companionway hatch. “Some lookout you are.” His loud voice nearly startled Ted
to death.

Damned morning
person.
Ted had been dozing off in the cockpit.

“Why don’t you
climb into your bunk if you’re going to sleep?”

I hate him. Not
only is he perky this early, but he’s generous. 
“Yeah, sure. I’m beat.
Call me when breakfast’s ready.” Ted climbed down the hatch and crawled into
this bunk without even removing his clothes.

Port McNeil, Canada

“Hey handsome, get
up. Bacon and eggs.” Meagan waved a spatula above Ted’s head. He slowly opened
his eyes.

The seductive
aroma of coffee and bacon teased his nose. Mixed with the smell of propane
burning and the salt air, Ted had come to associate the fragrance with home.

The bottom of the
cockpit was only about a foot and a half from his face. To the right a shelf,
stocked with his personal belongings, ran the length of the berth. To the left
was the engine box.
This must be what a
coffin’s like
, he thought
every time he slithered into his little hole.

“Hey, what’s with
your cat?” Oscar curled up in a ball on his chest.

“He’s a little
whore” Meagan answered. “He doesn’t care who he sleeps with.”

The sun, pouring
in through the hatches and windows, assaulted Ted’s eyes. He felt the long day
and his stint on watch in the cockpit. Every muscle in his body ached.

“Let’s get a bite
in us, then see if we can find the Coast Guard station in this town.” Chris,
much too perky for this early in the morning, sat at the navigation station,
separated from Ted’s quarter berth by three quarters of an inch of teak
veneered paneling.

“Ted thinks we
should take Meagan to see a doctor first.” Ted crawled out of his bunk and
pulled on a pair of sneakers. “She needs stitches for that cut.”

After breakfast,
they walked up the dock to the harbor master’s office. Row upon row of boats crowded
the city’s floats. Ted noticed a decided lack of sailboats. Sailboats were
slow. Unless you had a six or eight weeks to spend on a cruise, you couldn’t
get this far from Seattle.

Large powerboats
costing quarter of a million dollars and up covered the floats. The few small
boats must belong to locals, little boats didn’t come this far north either.

He also noticed
the crews. They were all old people. Retirees. Young people couldn’t afford
boats that would take them this far from civilization and middle aged people
all had jobs. They couldn’t take a summer off to go cruising.
I’m lucky to
get to make this trip. I may never have this kind of opportunity again.

Seagulls cried and
a hint of creosote assaulted Ted’s nostrils. Early morning sun warmed his bones.
There was no trace of the fog and clouds of the previous day.

“Is there a Coast
Guard station in town?” Chris asked the young man behind the counter at the
marina office.

“Yes, sir. At the
south end of the marina.”

“How about a
hospital?” Ted indicated Meagan’s bandage. “Where can we get her cut looked
at?”

“About three
blocks up, on the right, there’s a walk-in clinic.”

****

Meagan combed her
bangs forward to cover the small bandage applied at the clinic. “You know these
stitches are going to leave a scar, don’t you.”

Ted looked at her
for a minute. “If that’s the worst we got out of yesterday, we can count
ourselves lucky.”

“It’ll give our
kids something to ask you about.” Chris smiled a crooked grin at Meagan

Ted didn’t miss
the reference to kids. This was the first sign he had seen that Chris was
getting serious. Maybe that wasn’t really a bad thing after all.

After the stop at
the clinic, the three made their way to the Coast Guard station. It could have
been any office in any town in Canada. A Formica-topped counter separated them
from four desks and a table full of electronic equipment.

The tall,
dark-haired woman in uniform behind the counter focused on the computer screen
on her desktop. She ignored them as they entered the office.  

“Excuse me; we
need to report some suspicious activity.” Chris raised his voice to get her
attention. “Who can we talk to?”

“What kind of
activity, sir?” The woman barely looked over her shoulder at them.

“We think it may
be terrorists?”

“Terrorists?” The
woman turned from her computer and studied the trio.

Ted had seen that
look too many times before. “Yeah, we saw an Exocet missile.”
This bruja
isn’t gonna take us seriously
.  “And they fired off a couple missiles and
shot at us.”

“Where did all
this happen?” The woman kept looking over her shoulder at a computer monitor on
her desk.

“In Nelson Inlet,” Meagan answered. “And in the Straits, on the way in last night.”

The woman paused
and thought a minute.

“Okay, can you
describe how they shot at you?”

“Yeah,” Chris
said. “We were crossing the Queen Charlotte Strait and we saw the boat, a big
green fishing boat, coming out of Fife Sound. They chased us and when it looked
like they were going to lose us in the fog they shot a couple missiles at us.
When they missed, they started shooting at us with assault rifles.”

The phone rang.
The woman picked it up, ignoring the last half of Chris’ statement.

“Coast Guard
station Port McNeil. . . No. . . . We don’t have any further information. We’ll
have a statement as soon as we know something.” She hung up the phone and
looked at the trio as if to say
“You’re still here?”

“I see.” The woman
returned to her desk and picked up a piece of paper. “I don’t think you have
anything to worry about. We had a report of this incident from another boat.”

“What other boat?”
Ted felt the anger rising is his chest. “We didn’t see any other boats out
there.”

The Coast Guard
woman consulted the paper in her hand.

“It was from the
Pegasus
.
They reported some drunken fisherman firing off fireworks and shooting in the
air from the bow of their boat. We’ll follow up on the incident when we have
time. You don’t need to be concerned.”

“No, you don’t
understand.” Chris got louder. “We saw them unloading missiles.”

The two-way radio
on the desk behind the woman began squawking. She turned to answer it.

“We went into
their camp.” Chris slapped the counter with the palm of his hand. “They chased
us across the strait and tried to kill us.” His voice cracked.  “It isn’t just
drunken fishermen.”

“Don’t raise your
voice to me, young man.” She picked up the microphone. “We have a full-fledged
emergency on our hands. A ferry went on the rocks in the fog off of Malcolm Island last night. We have reports of people in the water. Every asset we have is
involved in the rescue operation. Fill out this incident report.” She shoved a
piece of paper across the counter at them. “When we have time, we’ll
investigate.”

With that, the
woman turned back to the radio and started making calls to the Coast Guard
units involved in the rescue effort. Ted felt the fire burning in his belly.

They stood there
ignored for a moment, then Chris reluctantly filled out the form.

****

William and Mary Island, Canada

Dawn found Josh
and Toby baiting their hooks around the calming tide rips at the mouth of
Nelson Inlet. The Inlet always reminded Josh of an Alpine lake. Protected in
any direction from the winds by high mountains, the water was mirror-smooth at
slack tide. Permanent glaciers slowly crawled down the slopes of dramatic
mountains on both sides of the Inlet. Their trolling motor made the only sound
for miles.

To Josh’s chagrin,
they trolled the Inlet’s mouth for two hours with no success.

“I don’t get it,”
Josh said. “This is my secret hole. There’s always fish here.”

“Yeah, sure.” Toby
traded his cup of coffee for a can of beer. “Is this another fish story, like
the one that got away?”

“No, really. I
always catch fish here.” Josh scanned the horizon. “There’s no birds today.
That means that there’s no small bait fish. Without bait fish, the salmon won’t
be here. We’re wastin’ our time.”

“What ya wanna
do?” Toby pushed back the hat on his head. He always wore that stupid bicycle
cap. “Head home? Find another spot?”

“We really need to
be back at our hole at slack tide. There probably’ll be fish here this
afternoon.” Suddenly Josh was feeling hungry. “That won’t come for another six
hours. We might as well drop the hook and wait it out.”

“You wanna go
explorin’? I heard there was a research station on an island up here that’s off
limits.” Toby pointed up Nelson Inlet with his beer can.

“What research
station? Yow!” Josh slapped at the mosquito that had just taken a bite out of
his bare calf.

“I had a customer
tellin’ me last week.” Toby reeled in his line and secured the hook. “He’d been
up here and was run off by a bunch of scientists. They said their research
station was private and no one could go there. I wonder what they’re hidin’.”

“What would a
bunch of scientists be doing up here in the middle of nowhere?” Josh secured
his line and shut down the trolling motor.

“I don’t know. But
it’s supposed to be on William and Mary Island. That isn’t too far from here,
is it?”

“No, it’s only up
the inlet a bit.”

“Let’s go see what
they’re up to.”

****

Port McNeil, Canada

 “
Caramba.
”
Ted’s pulse raced as he struggled to catch his breath. “She didn’t believe us,
dude.”

“Shit, I never
expected that.” Chris furrowed his brow. “What do we do now?”

“I don’t know.”
Ted stopped to think. “I thought they’d jump right on it.”

Ted scanned the waterfront.
Restaurants and coffee shops pandering to tourists mingled with ship chandlers
and insurance offices. He felt like he was in a time warp. The few cars slowly
making their way along Front Street seemed strange. He realized that they were
the first automobiles he’d seen in over a week.

 “How about the
Mounties?” Meagan asked. “My dad says the Mounties always get their man.”

“Yeah, where can
we find one in this town?”

“That’s easy.”
Chris pulled the Blackberry from the cargo pocket of his shorts. “We’re back in
the Twenty-First Century.”

****

“Royal Canadian
Mounted Police, may I help you?” A professional sounding woman’s voice answered
the phone. Chris’ Blackberry was on speaker phone.

Chris, Meagan and
Ted sat on a bench in the little park overlooking the waterfront, the quiet
marina below them. Beyond the marina, boats lay peacefully at anchor in the
mile-wide channel between Vancouver and Malcolm Islands.

It was surreal,
the peaceful morning with seagulls calling and everyone going about their
business, when danger was so near.
What would these people do if they knew
that armed terrorist were so close by?

“We need to report
some suspicious activity,” Chris answered. “We think we may have stumbled on
some Arab terrorists.”

“I see, sir. Where
did this activity occur?”

“William and Mary
Island in Nelson Inlet. We saw a fishing boat unloading missiles.”

“William and Mary Island . . .” There was a slight pause, Ted could even hear the faint click of keys on
a keyboard in the background. “And how do you know they were unloading
missiles. Maybe they were just irrigation pipes or something.”

“No, there was an
Exocet missile and crates of SAMs. We went ashore. We saw them.”

“I see. I’m going
to need your name and contact information.”

“Chris Hardwick, from
Seattle. Listen, what’ll you do? We’re sure that they’re going to try to blow
up a cruise ship. The
Star of the Northwest
is going to be here in a day
or two. It’s the perfect target. There’s going to be all sorts of celebrities
aboard.”

“I’ll file a report
sir. We’ll pass this information along.”

“Pass it along. To
who? Aren’t you going to do something?”

“Sir, the RCMP
will investigate. If we find that there is some terrorist activity, we’ll pass
that information on to JTF2. Dealing with armed terrorists is the job of the
JTF2.”

“JTF2?”

“Yes, sir. That’s
the Canadian Forces Joint Task Force delegated with the responsibility of
dealing with terrorists. We’ll pass this information on to them and they’ll act
on it.”

***

“What in the hell
is JTF2?” Ted asked as they walked back towards the boat. Maybe they were some
sort of central contact for reporting suspicious activity, like Homeland
Security in the U.S.

“I don’t know.”
Chris was clearly upset. He never did like being brushed off. “Let’s hook up
your lap top and Google it.”

They descended
into the cabin. Ted sat at the chart table and fired up his lap top. Chris and
Meagan crowded close to the screen.

He got dozens of
hits on JTF2.

“The Joint Task
Force Two is like our Delta Force.” Ted clicked on the Canadian Forces Web
site. “It says here they’ve been operating in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

“That’s great. But
we’ve got real life terrorists right here in BC.” Chris pointed to the screen.
“I don’t see any way to contact them.”

“It’s an American
cruise ship.” Meagan crossed over to the galley and fished a bottle of water
out of the ice chest. “Maybe we should contact Homeland Security.”

Ted surfed through
the Department of Homeland Security Web site. He didn’t see any place where he
could report terrorist activity.

“Try the Coast
Guard,” Meagan said. “They deal with threats on the water.”

He found his way
to the U.S. Coast Guard page but couldn’t find a contact phone number. There
was only a mailing address and an e-mail form.
How in the hell do you report
these guys?

“At least fill out
the form,” Meagan said.

“Dude, they don’t
have people monitoring this shit.” Ted reluctantly filled in the form. “They
might not see this e-mail for a day or two, maybe a week. They might not even
know how to respond.”