CHAPTER 1: The Cash On The Pier
The hydraulic line hissed against the salt mist, and Officer Keller did not blink when he kicked the aluminum gangway three inches off the harbor bulkhead. The drop between the dock timber and the steel hull of the North Star was four feet of black tide, churning around creosote pilings that had rotted since my grandfather ran freight out of Elliott Bay.
"You pay or you stay docked, Miller," Keller said.
He shoved the manila envelope into his heavy duty jacket, the brass clasp bulging against his badge. It held three thousand dollars in wet twenties—every dollar of marine diesel surcharge my crew had pooled since Thursday morning just to clear the fuel dock before the five o’clock tide. My chief engineer, Frank, stood on the main deck behind me with both greasy palms flat against the wheelhouse companionway, his knuckles scarred white from thirty years of wrenching Detroit Diesels. Frank did not yell. In the Sound, when port authority security decides your permits have a smudge, shouting gets your vessel impounded before the line handlers finish their coffee.
"The manifest cleared customs at dawn," I said, keeping both boots set wide on the wet deck steel. "The regional port director signed the hazardous transfer permit."
"Director’s in Spokane until Monday," Keller replied, resting his gloved hand on the grip of his sidearm. "Out here, I sign the clearance slip, or your stern stays tied to Pier 48 while your cold-storage freight rots in the hold. You want to make Vancouver by midnight, you know the dock assessment."
The rain came down harder, driving off Puget Sound in flat, gray sheets that blurred the cranes across the terminal. Through the engine room casing, I could hear our starboard generator thrumming, vibrating through the sole of my boots. We had forty tons of fresh king salmon iced in refrigerated containers below deck. Four more hours tied to this bulkhead without shore power and the auxiliary chillers would trip, dumping eighty thousand dollars of contracted cargo into sour brine. Keller knew the numbers down to the cent. He had run the evening waterfront sweep for fourteen months, ever since the harbor privatized the service berths.
Frank leaned forward, reaching above the companionway frame to tap the gray galvanized conduit running beneath the wheelhouse awning. His thumbnail clicked sharp against the waterproof junction box. "The federal prosecutor is watching, Keller."
Keller smiled, a thin, crooked curl that barely moved his jaw. He looked up at the matte-black surveillance casing mounted to our forward mast bracket. The lens housing was supposed to feed the maritime safety channel for the pilot station, but everyone on the pier knew the county fiber hub had been severed during the dredging project three weeks ago. The housing sat dead, its glass dome beaded with oily rain.
"That camera hasn’t seen voltage since July, Frank," Keller said. He pulled his steel baton from his tactical belt with a dull friction scrape. "Keep your mouths shut and buy your clearance, or I write an emergency safety hold and lock your lines myself."
He took one heavy step toward the edge of the timber dock, swinging the baton upward to crack the polycarbonate dome off the mast mount.
He never hit the glass.
The surge surged under our stern, lifting three hundred tons of tug against the spring lines. The slack caught in the forward winch drum with a sound like a rifle crack. The floating gangway snapped sideways under fifty pounds of hydraulic backpressure, swinging hard against the dock face. The lower steel bracket slammed into the timber stringer, wedging Keller’s heavy tactical boot between the aluminum toe-rail and the treated piling with a dull crunch of vulcanized rubber.
Keller let out a ragged gasp, dropping the baton into the salt foam below. He grabbed the wet rope railing, his face draining white as the weight of the vessel ground the bracket half an inch deeper into the post.
I stepped across the deck to the manual winch release, but my hand froze above the valve.
Above our heads, inside the supposedly dead camera dome, a tiny red indicator diode pulsed once, twice, and settled into a steady, burning crimson ring. A motorized iris whirred softly against the glass, tracking Keller’s pinned leg.
Beside the lens housing, taped flat against the cold steel of the bracket, was a private fiber bypass cable running straight down into my own forward hold.
CHAPTER 2: The Red Light Kept Recording While Keller Demanded The Cable Cut
The tide surged against the pilings with a hollow, sucking thud that rattled the steel bulwark against my ribs. Keller’s right boot remained clamped between the aluminum toe-rail and the wet creosote timber, the heavy sole twisted nearly sideways. His breath hitched in short, ragged rasps as he fought to take the strain off his knee, his hands clawing into the damp splintered wood of the cap rail.
"Get the crowbar, Miller," he grunted, his teeth bared against the pain. His left hand pawed at his open jacket, checking the envelope of wet twenties still wedged against his ribcage. "Lever the bracket off before the swell rolls back. Do it now."