Devil's Harbor (3 page)

“You see it?” said Finn.

“I don't see anything,” said Diego.

“It's right there,” said Finn.

“Yeah, well, I don't see it. She's got her lights out, that's for sure.”

“Give me the binoculars.”

Diego was right. The binoculars revealed nothing. Yet there she was, on the radar.

“Kill the lights,” said Finn.

Diego switched off their navigation and interior lights and dimmed the display, blacking out the boat. Water splashed against the hull. It sounded louder in the dark.

“I don't like it,” said Diego.

Finn didn't, either. “Better get the M4,” he said.

He switched the lights back on. Diego hadn't moved.

“Did you hear me?”

“Why? We got nothing to shoot at.”

“We got an unidentified boat blacked out right under our nose, Diego. I don't want to get shot.”

“Let's find it first, see who it is. Could be nothing, Finn. Could be some bozo on a Sunseeker he bought last week, looking for Avalon.” Then, more quietly, he added, “I don't need you shooting another Mexican.”

Finn stared at his friend. “You're an idiot, you know that?” he said. “Fine, I'll get it myself.”

He started moving toward the forward cubby where they kept the M4 carbine.

Diego pointed at the screen. “Don't bother,” he said.

Finn looked at the radar.

The green dot was gone.

*   *   *

Finn pushed the twelve hundred horses wide open and sent the boat straight into the blackness at forty knots, the boat leaping from the crests of unseen waves, the whine of her spinning blades rising an octave each time they broke free from the surface. He knew what he was risking. The quarter moon wasn't giving much light; driftwood, migrating whales, and containers floating just below the surface were not uncommon in the channel.

He didn't care.

They reached the point where the phantom had been when her echo had disappeared. He slowed down, looped the boat across her own wake, and idled the engines.

Nothing but cold air and dark sea.

“How does a boat just disappear like that?” said Diego, turning 360 degrees with the binoculars. Finn looked at the compass dome and speculated on which direction the phantom might have gone. North, toward Oxnard or Santa Rosa Island? West, back to Catalina? Southwest, to the naval base on San Clemente?

The naval base brought to Finn's mind another axis. “Maybe she's a sub,” he said, “one of those narco-subs.”

Diego lowered the goggles. “Seems weird how she didn't dive till she's this far north of the line,” he said.

“Maybe she's too small, a custom job with a limited amount of air, built in some guy's backyard,” said Finn. “So she stays on the surface as long as possible, till she sees us or the Coast Guard.”

Diego nodded. “That would explain her vanishing act.”

Finn switched on the sounder and turned the beam-width knob to its maximum so that the sounder revealed the widest possible wedge of water beneath them. Schools of fish at different depths appeared as bright green arcs.

“Jesus, look at that,” said Diego, pointing at a slow-moving, inch-long block of solid green.

“Whale?” said Finn.

“Not on its own. A big shark, more likely.
Real
big.”

A swarm of butterflies took flight in Finn's gut. He hated sharks.

He nudged the throttle forward and set the Interceptor on a course to follow the phantom's projected track. If the phantom was a sub and she hadn't changed course, the sounder would pick her up.

By five
A.M.
they were back at their original intercept point for the tenth time. They'd sounded the depths of a large patch of water north, east, and south of Two Harbors and had found nothing but fish. The radar had not picked up the phantom again.

The two CBP marine interdiction agents gave up the search and resumed their patrol. An hour passed without incident and in silence before Finn said, “About Perez … have we got a problem there, Diego?”

Diego lit a cigarette. “If you mean for the incident report, no. The guy opened fire and you returned it. That's what happened and that's what I told them. If you mean out here…” He dragged on the cigarette and searched for words. “You were a sniper in the navy, right?”

“I was the designated marksman on our patrol boat.”

“And for that you had sniper training, right?”

Finn nodded in the dark. “Sure, I had a bit of training,” he said. In fact, Finn had served with the navy's Maritime Expeditionary Security Force, and had been trained to shoot accurately from one moving boat at another. Finn was a very good shot.

“And you were in Iraq, so, you know, you've probably been in firefights before,” said Diego. “Me, I've never been shot at, or seen anyone get killed before. I'm not too proud to say, it shook me up.”

Finn got where Diego was coming from. The CBP Office of Air and Marine was nominally a civilian organization, not a military one, but the fact was that 90 percent of the guys serving in it were ex-military. Diego was one of the 10 percent. He'd started out in a booth at San Ysidro, waving through cars.

“You've seen bodies before,” he said. “How many floaters have you and I pulled out?”

“I don't mean Perez. I mean
you
. I'd never seen someone kill another human being. You were just so
cold
. It shook me up, man, after knowing you all these years.”

The sun was rising. Finn stared into the blackness to the west, screwing up his eyes.

“You get used to it.”

He realized he'd said the exact same thing to Mona. He was speaking the words without believing them.

An irregular shape in the near water caught his eye. He grabbed the handheld marine spotlight and aimed its beam at it.

The beam passed over something matte and gray floating on the sea's shimmering, blue-black surface. Phlegm caught in his throat. He jerked the beam back to the object.

“Over there…”

“I see it,” said Diego. He took the wheel and drove the boat toward it.

They drew nearer. Both men recognized it long before they drew alongside. Over the years, they'd pulled dozens of floaters from the water—freighter-crew suicides, murder victims dumped from boats, rank, fish-eaten John Does. It was almost a routine part of their jobs, yet neither man had ever managed to formulate the right thing to say. So they did what they always did and said nothing. Diego handed Finn a set of latex gloves and pulled on a pair himself. Finn passed him the handheld spotlight and took out the boat hook from under the rail. He was nervous. A dead body in the water was like a beacon to sharks. Diego used one hand to keep the spotlight shining on the body, the other to steer the boat toward it. Finn leaned far out, with his thighs pressed against the rail, holding the gaff pole in both hands, his torso bent forward, just a couple of feet above the water. He sensed a presence beneath him and looked down. A huge black shape glided beneath the hull. He jerked back into an upright position.

“Jesus,” he said, sweating cold.

“What?” said Diego.

“Shark.”

“Well, hurry up, then.”

Finn leaned out again, not so far this time. He kept one hand on the rail and with the other gaffed the body and pulled it aboard as quickly as he could. He was surprised at how light it was.

Then he saw why.

The shark had taken the man's legs.

He laid the body down on the stern deck.

The sweetish, sickening stench told Finn that the bloated corpse had started to putrefy. He made a point of not looking at the stubs where the man's legs should've been and instead concentrated on his face.

The floater was a young Latino man. He had on a blue-and-white Dallas Cowboys jersey, the hem black with blood. There was peach fuzz on his upper lip. Rust-colored liquid streamed out of his mouth. His hazel eyes pointed at the lightening sky.

Finn went forward to fetch the body bag from the cubby. When he came out, he saw Diego looking at the GPS, fixing their position. Diego took the white plastic bag from him and wrote their coordinates and the time on it with a Sharpie. They laid the bag down next to the body and unzipped it.

Once they'd bagged the body, Diego turned to Finn as though he wanted to say something. But whatever it was slipped away unsaid. Instead, he picked up the mic and radioed in what they'd found.

Finn turned toward the eastern horizon. He heard his own shallow breathing and the sound of the water slapping against the fiberglass hull. In the far distance, first light was creeping over the endless sprawl of Los Angeles.

 

CHAPTER TWO

The emergency workers were waiting on the dock, one of them sitting on the gurney, looking relaxed, the sun behind them filling the world with gold.

After they'd trolleyed the body away, Finn slipped off his life jacket and got to work scrubbing the floater's blood out of the deck with a hard-bristle broom. Diego hosed it down after him. Finn tried to steer his mind away from the image of the legless young man, but it kept coming back at him like a tetherball.

He heard steps, looked up, and saw a pair of boots on the dock at eye level. He looked up some more and saw Garcia, a short, very overweight man in a CBP dress uniform—midnight-blue shirt, black tie. He had a rolled-up newspaper tucked under his arm. Finn had never seen Garcia in work overalls.

“I heard you guys picked up half a floater,” said Garcia, grinning down at them.

Finn frowned and went back to scrubbing. Garcia picked up on the vibe.

“Seriously, though, how far were you from Catalina when you found the body?” Garcia said, the humor gone from his tone.

Finn stopped scrubbing and looked up. “Few miles. Why?”

“I saw on the TV this report about how there's been a bunch of shark sightings off the island lately,” said Garcia, “way more than usual.”

Diego cut the hose. “Every time anyone sees a shark, the TV people make like it's a big deal,” he said. “It's the ocean and there are sharks in it. Period.”

Garcia shrugged. “Just telling you what I heard. Also, the DMO wants to see you in his office, Finn, A-sap.”

“Where'd they say they've been seeing the sharks?” said Finn.

“Out off Catalina.”

“Channel side or ocean side?”

“Channel side.”

“The DMO say what he wants to see me about?”

“No, but I think I got an idea,” said Garcia. He handed down the newspaper.

“Page three, metro.”

Finn leaned the broom against the rail and watched Diego open the paper.

Diego read in silence and started shaking his head.

“Holy fuck,” he said finally.

“Gimme that,” said Finn.

FAMILY OF CBP SHOOTING VICTIM SUES U.S. GOVERNMENT

by Garrett Smith

In the early hours of October 8, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection Marine Interdiction agent fatally shot a 46-year-old man some two miles east of Catalina Island.

Rafael Aparici
ó
n Perez, a citizen of Mexico and the father of four, was aboard a fifty-five-foot Hatteras Sport Fisherman called
La Catrina.
After allegedly failing to respond to the CBP agent's order to heave to, he allegedly opened fire at the CBP Midnight Express Interceptor with an automatic rifle. Marine Interdiction Agent Nicholas Peter Finn (pictured) then allegedly shot him dead.

The law firm Edsall, Luna, Cheng of Los Angeles has confirmed that it is representing the family of Mr. Perez and that it intends to file a civil lawsuit against the U.S. government for wrongful death.

“The best-case scenario is that Mr. Perez is dead because he didn't understand English,” said Jim Edsall, lead counsel for the Perez family. “The worst case? He's dead because of endemic bias and racism within the CBP. The agent saw an Hispanic man driving an expensive boat and assumed he was a drug dealer, when in fact Mr. Perez, a businessman who owned three gas stations in the Tijuana area, was simply out fishing. This is yet another example of the total failure of our border policies.”

In a statement released to the press, the CBP said it regrets the loss of life and is conducting an internal investigation. A source within the CBP confirmed that Agent Finn remains on active duty.

Finn folded the paper and handed it back to Garcia.

“There's an editorial, too. The DMO is pissed, Finn,” said Garcia, before walking off.

When they were alone, Diego said, “Edsall fucking Luna Cheng. They've got themselves the best law firm drug money can buy. You need a lawyer, Finn.”

Finn forced a grin. “Good thing I'm married to one,” he said.

He went back to scrubbing. He knew he should've been worrying about the lawsuit, but he couldn't stop thinking about the sharks.

*   *   *

Heading up from the dock to the Long Beach Air and Marine Station, Finn saw
La Catrina
sitting in a cradle at the top of the launching ramp. He hadn't seen her since she'd been lifted out of the water. He figured Immigration and Customs Enforcement had their forensics guys combing over her. Finn wasn't a forensics guy, but he knew boats, so he figured he'd take another quick look. The director, Marine Operations would just have to wait.

La Catrina
was fifty-five feet of gleaming white freeboard, superstructure, and deck. Her tinted windows were set at a raked angle, which, along with her flared, Carolina-style bow, gave her an aggressive, raptorlike look. A week after the fire in the engine bay, she still smelled of burned fiberglass. After he'd shot Perez, Finn had boarded
La Catrina,
found her fire extinguisher, and tried to put out the fire, but the extinguisher had failed. Diego had had to throw one over to him from the Interceptor.